"Girls Gone Wild is mumblecore at its heart, the conversations and conflicts feel so real, the cropping of the panels is bodily, everything feels tactile. I Thought That I Was Wrong is like going to a noise show with a fog machine, everything's coming in and out of clarity, surfacing and submerging back into the noise." -Benny Johnson (Glue Press)
When "Girls Gone Wild" hit VCRs in 1997, I'm sure its creators knew the name would be ripe for parody. Katie Lane's comic is part of this history, though it's far from entirely satirical. Lane's pen remains crisp while depicting a stressed relationship, unlike its namesake's blurred lines. Girls Gone Wild's legibility contrasts with its dialogue and narrative; we wonder what's left out of the story due to the comic's spare exposition. Girls Gone Wild's sex scenes are rendered in drab gray ink washes. Most of the narrative's eroticism comes after arguments about movies and pronouns. Lane's scratchy renderings of hair and her muted portrayal of nudity lend gravity and nuance to the familiar strained couple narrative in her depiction of a fraught relationship. Compulsive mark-making and dialogue unite Girls Gone Wild: during sex, the narrator's partner says 'thank you' over and over again; loops of cursive strewn throughout the comic; and the lettering's repetitive, sometimes illegible scrawl that lets readers know that the couple's argument has played out time and time again. An exercise in cathexis and catharsis, compulsion, and agency, Girls Gone Wild is a raunchy and earnest take on a love affair run awry.
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