Let me tell you why I love independent bookstores. A number of our indie bookstores get really into SAL/SPL/KCLS Adult Summer Reading Book Bingo, posting numerous suggestions on how to fill the prompts. This includes Outsider Comics, an awesome queer comic and game shop. When I went in hoping to get either of the two graphic novels they had suggested for the Gender Bender square, they were sold out of both. But no worries, because the bookseller started making other suggestions that were still in stock. And that’s how I came home with Bolero by Wyatt Kennedy and Luana Vecchio.
This is a very personal multiverse story — what if you could go take the place of an alternate version of yourself? How many worlds would you have to travel through to find the one where you could be happy? Devyn, recently broken up, depressed, and having fallen off of the sobriety wagon, decides to try to find out.
She ends up in space, in knight’s armor, in a comedy of manners. Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man, often in the orbit of her ex Natasha (who I believe is a trans woman in every world). Always chasing love and happiness, or something like it. Sometimes she stays a while; sometimes it’s a short visit.
I found this to be a deeply moving and thought-provoking story. It’s not an easy book to read (especially since the visual format makes it harder to skim unpleasant parts), but that makes it all the more rewarding. Where books like Bed and Breakup leave me skeptical of sudden character growth, Bolero gives me a story of someone struggling, and trying, and failing, and trying again, slowly clawing her way to something better. Devyn’s growth felt hard-earned, and thus, it felt real.
Books like Bolero make me wish I was paying more attention to what was going on in the comics world, so I could enjoy more of the high-quality, queer, visually stunning work that’s being produced; although I’m not really about that bag, board, and longbox life anymore, so I’d probably still be waiting for them to be collected in beautiful TPBs like this one.
The bonus of buying a TPB is that this book not only collects the five issues of the original series, it also presents a story from an anthology and a whole bunch of cover art, sketches, and other behind the scenes process stuff.
Anyway, the moral of this story is support your local indie book stores (comic and otherwise). Ask them for recommendations. And buy and read queer books.
CWs and TWs: This book earns its mature rating. Full-frontal nudity, sex, graphic violence, strong language, addiction, vomiting, depression, abusive parents, parental death, just a lot of stuff going on. Like I said, it’s not an easy read.
Source and Format: I purchased a paperback copy at Outsider Comics.
Reading Challenge Prompts
SAL/SPL/KCLS: Gender Bender. Eh, not gonna lie. I didn’t love this prompt. It’s the closest we had to a “queer” prompt on this year’s card, and one could just as easily read a book that is all “What if this traditionally MALE character was actually a GIRL?” but is otherwise super cishetnormative. It also feels like it could be interpreted in a less than flattering way. That’s why it was really important for me to get a recommendation from a queer bookshop, where I would get a book that played with gender in a queer way. This wasn’t the most gender bender-y book, but it worked.
Reading Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 13 of 25, no bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 19 of 25, 2 bingos.
Book Riot: 15 of 25.
Physical TBR: 8 of 12.
World of Whimm: 20 of 24, 5 bingos.
SAL/SPL/KCLS: 19 of 23, 3 bingos.