Author: Liz Baillie
Publisher: Microcosm Publishing
Genre: Minicomic
Pages: 128
Buy on Amazon.com

* COOZER PICK *

This second volume collects issues 6-10 of Liz Baillie’s excellent mini comic that follows the lives of LGBT teenagers in New York City as they navigate school, parents, friends, and relationships. As with the first volume, this mini comic is smartly written and touching.

A lot of “punk” zines/comics cop some ideal or idealized notion of how punks should act. In My Brain Hurts, the fictional characters feel three-dimensional and complex. Just like the real world, good people make bad decisions and bad people might not be so bad. Baillie is able to get across in just a few panels a sense of shared history between characters, their vulnerabilities and desires, their self-assuredness and teenage awkwardness.

My Brain Hurts is one of the best comics out there for its big heart and legitimate voice.

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