In Tinderella, Minneapolis-based cartoonist, M. S. Harkness has produced her most accomplished work yet: a graphic memoir of a Christmas Break past that, while it covers many aspects of her life including family, friends, school and work, places a special focus on her sex life, particularly her experiences on the contemporary online/phone-app dating/hookup scene. Its 120 black and white pages give an up close and (very) personal look at this slice of her life. She doesn't pull any punches or make any attempts to sugarcoat the events chronicled in these comics (quite the contrary, in fact), but also works to situate them in her overall life. In addition to portraying her exterior life, Tinderella contains some excellent comics representations of her interior life as well, including mental images and flights of fancy, all rendered with a self-assured yet simultaneously self-deprecating sense of humor. Her portrayal both of the strengths and weaknesses her own character and that of the milieu in which she finds herself together provide a portrait of the artist as a young woman that is a sign of the times.
In this high-octane, 28-page, black & white (with black & gold cover!), digest-size comic book, M.S. Harkness blazes a trail through her mind – while washing dishes to SZA's title track anthem. In the process clearly demonstrating that it's all about where your head is at; that the mundane can be transformed – perhaps even transcended – but that it won't happen by itself. And that comics have what it takes to make it happen, provided you have the chops.
An epic journey of self discovery that takes readers along for the (roller coaster) ride, Desperate Pleasures is M.S. Harkness’s most accomplished work to date, as she shows herself moving away from her earlier short pieces which tended to function in a more humorous vein, exploiting pathos for laughs. In its 200+ pages of crisp black and white comics, Harkness probes her psyche and unpacks some trauma while sharing an affecting tale of making a go of making a life, and in the process provides ample evidence that her developing cartooning abilities are in the midst of a “growth spurt”. Relationships lie at the core of the work. The difficulties in understanding them, establishing them and maintaining them. Desperate Pleasures also provides insights into how memory structures experience. Readers could be forgiven if they came away with the impression that she spends the bulk of her life in gyms and bars, on a bike or in bed – always accompanied by her mobile phone, of course.
Harkness presents her life as one driven by abreactive impulse, skirting the abyss ever in motion towards a goal that occasionally appears almost at hand yet continues to remain at the horizon. The “desperate pleasures” of the title are revealed, through the course of the work, as a cloak for the underlying quest for security and stability – not so much economic as emotional. Her quest is close to universal and one that her readers, while perhaps unlikely to share her methods will nevertheless share her goals and so be able to benefit from some of the hard won insights delineated in these pages.
In Tinderella, Minneapolis-based cartoonist, M. S. Harkness has produced her most accomplished work yet: a graphic memoir of a Christmas Break past that, while it covers many aspects of her life including family, friends, school and work, places a special focus on her sex life, particularly her experiences on the contemporary online/phone-app dating/hookup scene. Its 120 black and white pages give an up close and (very) personal look at this slice of her life. She doesn't pull any punches or make any attempts to sugarcoat the events chronicled in these comics (quite the contrary, in fact), but also works to situate them in her overall life. In addition to portraying her exterior life, Tinderella contains some excellent comics representations of her interior life as well, including mental images and flights of fancy, all rendered with a self-assured yet simultaneously self-deprecating sense of humor. Her portrayal both of the strengths and weaknesses her own character and that of the milieu in which she finds herself together provide a portrait of the artist as a young woman that is a sign of the times.
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