One! Hundred! Demons!

New! Favorite! Book! Ms. Barry covers some similar turf as she does in The Good Times Are Killing Me, but O!H!D! covers a broader spectrum of her "autobiofictionalography," plus it's illustrated. In color--over 200 pages. I'm impressed Sasquatch Books was able to put this out for $24.95 in '02. Barry did some zen painting exercise where the artist explores her demons, and this is the result. She shares 17 of hers with us, mostly about her childhood and adolescence, but a few take place in grown up life. "The Election" about the stolen 2000 election cracked me up, especially because it took me by surprise with all of the previous demons being more about internal things and personal injustices. We find the autobiographical and/or fictional Lynda character unable to turn off the television.

It was two of the other adult pieces that are possibly the most memorable to me. In the first she is looking back at a childhood friend that she lost--actually cut off--when she started jr. high, and how she still misses the young Ev. I wonder if Ev ever got in touch after this comic appeared. In the second she is lamenting having listened to dog experts when integrating a stray into her home, rather than to what her and her spouse's hearts told them. "But I also grew up in a violent house. She was a fear-biter. She didn't wag her tail. She was nervous about being touched. I understood that." Never fear, it all worked out once they laid off the dog books, and the final panel of the comic depicts the two humans and five dogs all contently asleep on the bed, the spoiled stray in the center.