Title: Winter Beard

Creator(s): Cathy Hannah

Publisher: Cathy Hannah Productions/Shortpants Press

Format: Graphic Novel

Website Link

Price: $6

Pitch: Read previous review of Clumsy.

Coming back from snowboarding on New Years, with my own winter beard going (okay so I'm just too lazy to shave), I cracked open Winter Beard. Everyone in the packed car was startled by my sudden burst of laughter, which I tried to explain thusly: "Oh it's just... I sometimes can't help trying to mentally write a review while reading the book I'm reviewing. And I was thinking that all I would write in this case is: 'Read previous review on Clumsy.' But then on this page, the author did a comic about how afraid she was that people would think she's ripping off Clumsy."

Only one person in the car had read (or heard of) Clumsy, Jeffery Brown's diary in comic form, and everyone had forgotten — or didn't know — that I wrote reviews. Awkwardness ensued, which drove me back into the book I wasn't enjoying. Only now (remembering that I started out pissed at Clumsy, too) I was trying to look at Winter Beard with a little more kindness.

It's impossible not to compare Winter Beard to Clumsy once you have read both works. What's wrong with the comparison is that Hannah is only successful at imitating Brown's formatting. Like Clumsy, Winter Beard is a series of interconnecting autobiographical strips. This works well for real life because life is a collection of little moments. Hannah keeps her strips chronologically which doesn't cause the confusion that one can run into reading the seemingly random sequencing of Clumsy.

Hannah has a clean, classic comic strip style which compliments the sweet demeanor she depicts of herself. While I wouldn't say that it detracts from the book, it doesn't connect in a primal way like Brown's Clumsy does, because it's obvious that Hannah took her time to make a beautifully rendered book. Brown's work looks as if he is pouring his soul into a sketch book. Hannah's seems self-conscious. This is where the real problem sets in.

Autobiographical books are expected to be a raw tell-all or about something unbelievable yet true. Autobiographies are supposed to leave the author/subject naked before us so we can compare ourselves to them. Winter Beard didn't pay off in either way.

Winter Beard is primarily a vehicle for Cathy Hannah to tell her friend Mike that she has more than friendly feelings. It's hard enough to make a maybe-I-love-you comic, but it's harder when you know that the other person is going to see it. It doesn't help that Cathy and Mike seem too nice to be interesting. Maybe I'm cynical, but this comic was drawn with rose-tainted lenses. In Clumsy, Jeffery Brown does not shy away from his inability to "Be A Man" (a.k.a. be a pig). It's a source of conflict for him too that he is just too nice. Combine that with physical distance and the emotional problems of his girlfriend and you have melodrama. Where Clumsy gives you a peek into an intimate and often painful relationship, Winter Beard is merely awkward. In other words, the reason that Winter Beard doesn't work is because she's a girl, trying not to be such a girl.

The creator's goal with the book was to seek approval, and she was successful. She seems like a very nice girl, whom one would like to date. But I have a girlfriend so that doesn't do me much good, now does it?