GIRL TOWN

Slice-of-life stories depict women navigating awkward and tender moments of connection in young adulthood.

Five stories (four previously published, the earliest two newly colored) reveal everyday women in everyday situations even if the settings may be slightly fantastical. A would-be astronaut-turned-farmer is infatuated with the girl next door. Kelly encourages Beth to be more adventurous at a fantasy market. Diana embraces companionship with a robot boyfriend. Mary and La-La record a podcast about a cult movie few of its fans have ever seen. Jess and Gwen spend a romantic and surreal couple of days in a cabin. The collection has a multiracial cast of young adults and teenagers and presents body types of varying size and physical ability with no judgment. These women drink, smoke, and bare their bodies. While Nowak (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2018, etc.) has refined her artistic technique, her style remains cohesive throughout, with pronounced outlines and unapologetic characters of both angles and curves. Except for some first-person narration in the title story, Nowak relates the narratives through dialogue and reality-check moments, some quiet, some direct. The stories deny readers any firm resolution, arriving at potential stopping points, then going a step beyond. Older readers, especially female-identifying ones, can share moments of intimacy with these characters.

Nowak creates raw female characters and, by spotlighting them, demands that they be seen.