Tender
NPR Books We Love 2024
New York Public Library Best Comics for Adults 2024
Comic Book Herald Best Comics of 2024
WBEZ Chicago Best Reads of 2024
Carolanne wanted a perfect wedding, a perfect husband, a perfect family. She carefully performs her own roles (gal pal, bestie, girlfriend, wife, and expectant mother) and in trying to enact agency over her life, sacrifices it completely. Her desire to control the uncontrollable ultimately becomes her undoing. When things don't go her way, she exerts dominance over the one thing she does have total control over: her body; until that "betrays" her. After suffering a horrible loss, Carolanne spirals into a literal, all-consuming delusion that will engross comics readers and horror aficionados alike.
Chicago cartoonist and educator Beth Hetland's graphic novel debut is a brilliant psychological thriller that tears down the wall of a genre -- body horror -- so often identified with male creators. Heady and visceral, Tender uses horrific tropes to confront women's societal expectations of self-sacrifice despite those traditional roles often coming at the expense of female sexuality and empowerment.
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Community Reviews
This was an interesting little story about a woman obsessing over other people's lives going the way she wish hers was. I was iffy on the graphics at first, but they grew on me. Some of the writing was a little hard for me to read on the pdf, though.
I did enjoy how not everything was explicitly told to us. But it was clear what was happening and how the main character was feeling through the visuals and the framing of the art. I'm not sure how much men would relate to this; I assume it would be less accessible to them.
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