‘Snotgirl’ S’not Your Average Comic

When Jacques says “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” in As You Like It, Shakespeare is crafting a metaphor that reminds his readers of mortality and that they’re watching a play, but also that the people in the seats next to them are actors in their own personal dramas. This quote questions the sincerity of people, their actions and motivations and goes on to remind us that we’re simply humans, despite our ornate costumes and flashy dialogue.

While the stage Shakespeare wrote of was a physical construction, todays stage is social media, the tool people use to edit themselves (or not) into a finely primmed (or savagely base) digital representation. In Snotgirl #1, Bryan Lee O’Malley introduces Lottie Person, a 25 3/4 year old, image-obsessed, fashion blogging millennial. With a picture-perfect life, Lottie gets a painful reminder that her life isn’t quite as flawless as she would have the Internet believe when the season changes and her allergies return.

It’s the separation between how we represent ourselves on and off the Internet and who we really are that moves the first issue of Snot Girl. Living in Los Angeles, the land of actors and celluloid, Lottie is a well dressed, attractive young woman. She’s proud of her years blogging, where she influences people with her tips on fashion: “On my blog, I’m perfect. My nose never runs. Every hair on my head is exactly where it’s supposed to be.” She’s also proud of being the one that gives people nick names.

Perhaps because of this pride, she has problems in the form of an absentee boyfriend and an in-box filled with messages from strangers and none from friends. Added to these problems, her allergies are acting up to make her eyes tear and nose run, which can make it hard to look the part of a fashionista. These frustrations bring her to a panic where she wonders out-loud “Why even bother updating?! Just stop with the maxi-dresses! No one cares!”

With her social and romantic life in turmoil, things start getting better for Lottie when she meets Caroline (aka Coolgirl), another pretty girl that orders coffee the same way. After gaining confidence in the form of allergy medicine from a new doctor, Lottie goes to a bar to meet Coolgirl. While waiting, she rethinks her life and decides she’s changed. In honor of this step in self discovery, Lottie takes a picture and says to herself, “People can CHANGE! This selfie proves it!”

It’s this type of humor that keeps Snotgirl alive. Throughout the book, O’Malley mocks fashionistas and youth culture. While Lottie stalks her boyfriend through social media, the joke turns up when the person tagged in his photo gets written-off for not being as pretty as Lottie. Watching people talk to each other via text messages despite looking at one another through a storefront window, the book goes beyond a simple critique of social media and starts to comment on how technology as a whole is changing the way people interact. Leslie Hung’s animerican art style suits a story that makes fun of cutesy young characters. When the story starts to get serious, however, this style downplays the effect of the dramatic direction it takes.

Towards the final pages, Lottie’s allergies return while at the bar. In a social setting with her new bff, Lottie needs to excuse herself to the restroom. This is when the story takes a turn. While Lottie locks the door, someone she knows comes in, anyway, and decides Lottie is the one that needs a nick name. This is when Lottie realizes “I’m a monster that knows it’s a monster,” and acts like it. In this scene, the anime influence in the art washes over expressions to leave a trite and bland aesthetic where tension could be present through darker tones and rougher lines.

While the jokes lampooning social media and fashionista culture are funny enough, there isn’t much else fueling Snotgirl. The overly polished animerican art style offers nothing new to readers and doesn’t make the story much better (though it’s a lot better than O’Malley’s own). What the book does have going for it is what waits in the plot. It’s hard to know where the story is going, or how it got to be where it is by the end. What actually happened in the bathroom and if the pills Lottie’s new doctor gave her have anything to do with it are a mystery that will keep some around for more. The only question, is how much more can there actually be?