Everywhere Antennas (comics)

A poetic novel that plumbs the depths of self-doubt and technological fatigue

Julie Delporte's "Everywhere Antennas "is a deeply affecting, sparely constructed novel, equal parts "Walden" and "The Bell Jar." Told in the first person, it offers diary-like entries from an anonymous narrator who is undergoing a nervous breakdown and struggling to hold together a failing relationship. In soft, flowing colored pencil, Delporte shows her narrator coming to terms with a rare and misunderstood sensitivity to the radiation emitted by the televisions, cell phones, and computers that permeate urban life.

"Everywhere Antennas" is the portrait of a woman caught in the margins, struggling to balance the demands of technology and modern life with the need to find meaningful relationships and work. Roughly hewn figures, sketched in pencil crayon on brightly contrasting backgrounds, populate the pages of this flowing, emotive work. With "Everywhere Antennas," Delporte proves herself a master craftswoman of heartbreakingly personal, beautifully literary graphic fiction.