Octopus Pie, Volume 2

BOOKLIST -- Roommates Eve and Hanna have finally come to somewhat understand each other, but their lives are still chaotic. Eve and her boyfriend, Park, are navigating tricky relationship waters as he thinks about moving to Chicago for a job. Meanwhile, Eve still has feelings for Hanna's drug-dealer friend, Will, who is dating Marigold, and Hanna is caught up in the drama. Gran's second volume of her webcomic about slacker, stoner, and hipster twenty-somethings in NYC is slightly less random than volume one, as the stories deal more with the growing pains of young adulthood and focus less on odd-ball occurrences. Because of this, the characters' struggles are more relatable than earlier in the narrative, and readers familiar with the characters will find themselves a bit melancholy by the end, though new readers may be lost. Gran's figures-all big heads and wide eyes-are satisfyingly cartoonish, which in a strange way makes their antics ring more true. A nice addition to graphic novel collections needing realistic comics that aren't nonfiction or memoirs.