The final story is “The Golden Lasso,” was my least favorite in the mix. This is inexplicably shown on the cover, even though it’s probably the least representative panel from the book. There’s no sense of finality to any element, except that by the end she and her husband have the sex she was craving through the whole story. We see her flirt with an employee at the grocery, fantasize, visit her stepson and ex-daughter-in-law, teach a night class on film, and regret that she was never able to bear a biological child. There is a lot going on as we follow a week (maybe more?) in the life of Florence. ![]() Next is “The Egg Room,” which is my favorite from the collection. It’s also more streamlined, opting for a single point of view instead of complicated layers. The story is more linear than “Watergate,” but does feature some flashbacks. The artwork matches the cartoony style of “Watergate,” minus the color, with the cats evoking Richard Scarry characters. ![]() Things start off nicely, go downhill, but eventually come to a mostly happy conclusion. These cats wear butler and maid uniforms, bringing the family meals and acting as the young daughter’s nanny. In it, Carol and her family inherit her sister’s trained cats. The second story, “Cats in Service,” is easily the most fantastical tale in the book. By the end, both women have come to terms with their experiences, even if they haven’t exactly dealt with them, only for another ugly event to arise. As Sue learns the details her own birth, her fairytale expectations for her own motherhood are crushed. We’re confronted with a double whammy of America’s worst political scandal and a mother-to-be who can’t seem to separate her anxiety and frustration with Nixon from her feelings about her growing baby. These minicomics share a theme with whatever is occurring on the rest of the page. The third layer comes into play occasionally when Kelso uses the top row of panels to give us a story-in-a-story, such as housekeeping guidance from a magazine Eve is reading or showing how Eve’s obsession with Watergate affects Sue’s older sister, Josie. The framing device is Eve’s adult daughter, Sue, becoming pregnant for the first time and asking her mom to recall her pregnancy. The primary narrative is about Eve, a woman who was pregnant during the Watergate scandal. The first story in the anthology is “Watergate Sue,” which is told in three layers. The more I looked into her, the more I realized that she’s been operating completely outside of my literary Monkeysphere. At this point, I’d like to say I had an epiphany – ohhhhh, she’s that Megan Kelso! – but I did not. Her work has been published by “The New York Times Magazine” and Fantagraphics since 2006. ![]() She received a grant from the Xeric Foundation in 1992, its second award cycle. I expected “Pancakes” to be the breakout work of a fairly new talent, but it turns out Megan Kelso has been a successful cartoonist for over 30 years.
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