Serendipity is an odd muse and doesn’t often come to me. With Li’l Depressed Boy #16, I got to experience a little of it. Over the last few issues of LDB, I’ve grown frustrated with writer S. Steven Struble and artist Sina Grace’s inability to get LDB out in any kind of timely manner. Stories like these, built on being invested in relationships, only work if the story is paced and released with regularity. The way LDB had been handled thus far, the whole concept was starting to get boring. I decided that if something major didn’t happen in issue #16, I was all done with the series.
Here’s where serendipity stepped in. It turns out, that both Struble and Grace were concerned with the same problems I had with LDB, and that issue #16 not only had a major plot development but also marked a hiatus for the series. Both writer and artist have decided to get LDB in shape, to catalog enough material so that, when it returns, LDB will be a reliable title. I’m sad that no timetable was given, but hopeful that, before too long, LDB will reach its full potential. There’s magic in these pages and it deserves to be seen.
Back to issue #16. As we the faithful know, LDB has been dating his manager Spike in a secret relationship. Attempting to catch them is Toby, another manager at the movie theater and a sickening suck-up. Looking to get Spike and LDB fired for their violation of theater rules regarding managers and associates dating, Toby follows the two and snaps pictures of them kissing. As issue #16 opens, a snowstorm has hit the everytown where LDB is set. Patrons, bored and looking to escape the snowstorm, have filed into the theater. Spike and LBD, alone due to massive call-offs, face the crowd together.
During the melee, jerkface Toby shows the owner his pictures, expecting both LDB and Spike to be fired. Instead, the two are suspended, a fact that angers Toby to a point that he punches LDB. Then it happens, the big cliffhanger that will keep us on pins and needles until Li’l Depressed Boy’s return. The last splash page shows Spike and LDB together in his bed. They’ve done the deed. It looks like our hero finally has a girlfriend. So why does LDB look so unnerved by the situation? Guess we have to wait to find out.
Once again, LDB handles the joy and pain of normal life with a gorgeous and surreal narrative. Everything happening in this story could happen to any of us, yet Struble’s writing is so romantic, so melancholy that it feels like a world just outside our own. It’s not easy to make the mundane interesting, but Struble pulls it off. He knows when dialog works best and when to turn the scene over to Grace alone. It gives LDB a cinematic quality, as if you’re reading a small indie film instead of watching it.
Sina Grace’s art continues to be a contrast in minimalism and detail. He loves to keep the backgrounds vague. The lines and crowds in the movie theater often don’t have faces and are usually sketched out very harshly. Meanwhile the main characters and action are perfectly penciled. The contrast helps keep a focus on the action, it also helps with depth and perspective. Grace’s shadowing and colors assist in putting Struble‘s melancholic message across. The final splash page is one of the best slices of art Grace has done thus far. It tells the whole story with one shot.
As an enormous fan of Li’l Depressed Boy, I’m excited to see what happens when the series returns.
(4 Story, 4 Art)
