The Greatest of Marlys - Softcover

Barry, Lynda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1570612609 ISBN 13: 9781570612602

Publisher: Sasquatch Books, 2000

Synopsis

Lynda Barry had a bona fide hit with Cruddy, and her fans are now calling for her older comic strips, all out of print. This book answers the call as it delivers the life and times of Marlys Mullen, the most beloved character in Barry's nationally syndicated comic strip, 'Ernie Pook's Comeek.' Way back in the mid-1980s, Barry introduced the character of Marlys Mullen, her crazy groovy teenage sister Maybonne, her sensitive and strange little brother Freddie, a mother like no other, and an array of cousins and friends from the 'hood. This oversized book presents the long strange journey through puberty and life that Marlys and company have experienced. Marlys's universe and galaxy are funny, rude, disturbing, tearful . . . in short, very, very Lynda Barry.

About this title

About the Author

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher. She is the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic strip "Ernie Pook's Comeek", and author of "The Freddie Stories", "One! Hundred! Demons!", "The! Greatest! of! Marlys!", "Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel", "Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!", and "The Good Times are Killing Me", which was adapted as an off-Broadway play and won the Washington State Governor's Award. Barry has written three bestselling and acclaimed creative how-to graphic novels for D+Q: the Eisner Award-winning "What It Is", and "Picture This", " "and "Syllabus" "Notes from an accidental professor."

From Publishers Weekly

Charmingly illustrated and written in the voices of fictional preadolescents, Barry's comics (The Freddie Stories) alternate between delightful comedy and un-self-conscious poetry. Her comics catalogue the incremental maturation of the smart but unpopular preteen Marlys; her painfully sensitive little brother, Freddie; her big sister, Maybonne; her cousins Arna and Arnold; and occasionally the various adults in their lives. The book collects more than 200 of her syndicated four-panel strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, in which Barry deftly maps the emotional terrain of Marlys and the inevitable social traumas inherent in growing up. Alternating among the voices of the family, Barry offers stories on difficult teachers (Mr. Valotto has sideburns, wears turtleneck dickeys and "thinks he's hip"); boys (Marlys goes broke "buying Twinkies to split with Kevin Turner"); Marlys's difficult mother ("five guys asked her to marry them before she picked my father, the worst mistake of her life") and much more. While Barry can be funny presenting the silly escapades and fantasies of Marlys, Arna, Freddie and Arnold, her real talent is the very nearly poetic invocation of moments of pubescent joy and humiliation as well as of the wonder at the fast-approaching, mysterious state of being a teenager. Her black-and-white drawings are crudely drawn, yet lyrical and emotionally complex. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sasquatch Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1570612609
• ISBN 13: 9781570612602
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 224