Big Mushy Happy Lump: A Sarah's Scribbles Collection

These are great. It starts with one-page comics. You’ve probably seen the meme from one of them. She goes from store to store buying whatever’s on sale, the cheapest brand, then goes to the bookstore (or whatever hobby someone chooses to adapt the strip to) and throws open a coat tossing cash everywhere. If you liked that meme, you’ll like this book. The humor is consistently like that. She sort of gives a nod to it in one of the strips. It then moves into running jokes that carry over for a few strips. You can read the first alone, but the later ones start to depend on the ones that come before. There is a run with a character called OverThinking that is awesome. I love the “I Don’t Care” superhero. I love how relatable this book is. As an introvert who spends way too much time stressing about sending work emails that amount to “here is the exact thing you ask for” I relate to this hard. She’s amazing.

Yeah, I'm old. Cathy Guisewhite started cartooning when I was in my twenties. It helped me in trying to understand the woman who consented to marry me. Now Sarah's Scribbles, every bit as funny, is helping me understand my grownup daughters. But life lessons aside -- this book is funny. The drawings are delightful. Worth every minute.

Sarah's scribbles nunca decepciona

This book was quite similar to the first one, with the exception of three segments, in which Sarah has told a story with funny, related comics. I never imagined I'd become a fan of comics. Probably because my perception of comics was DC or Marvel comics, but Sarah's work is so funny and, at times, relatable that I couldn't help but become a fan.

So the thing about Sarah Anderson and her Scribbles is that she feels small and insecure and flawed, and she takes all that and puts it into an adorable comic, and those of us who can’t express ourselves as well as she can all look at those comics and see ourselves. Big Mushy Happy Lump is filled with these moments, of honesty and clarity and irony and self-consciousness. These comics take on a lot of different topics, like a self-esteem roller coaster, the importance of female friends, procrastination, stuffing your feelings, cats, flirting, periods, sexual harassment, nightmares of high school, and social anxiety. The comics are spirited, showing her willingness to make herself the butt of a joke and her skill at self-expression. And she’s just funny. In this book, she talks about her struggles in social situations and how sometimes she finds being around others exhausting. Introverts can certainly relate to that, and to understand the opposite of that, when we pull away so far we let ourselves get isolated. The struggle is real, and Anderson opens up about trying to find that balance between the anxiety of being around too many people and the depression of being alone too much. She also talks about bonding with a kitten and learning why the internet loves cats the ways it does and how she is a serial sweater stealer. I love to reach for a Sarah’s Scribbles book when I need a pick-me-up, when I want some company to be alone, when I want someone to be weird with, and when I want to smile. Big Mushy Happy Lump is a sweet reminder to be kinder to myself, to take risks, and to be strange whenever possible.

Just like her previous book, "Adulthood is a myth", Sarah Andersen's new compilation of comics strikes right into my socially awkward heart. Her strips are as cute as they're funny, and easily relatable for people like me (though they're bound to be quite more relatable if you're a woman). Also, the cover is once again fuzzy, which I find ridiculously neat. The main difference between this book and the last one is that somewhere mid-point the comics start being more related to each other, falling into certain categories (such as Sarah's love for cats or her confessions about sweater thieving), and including her narration outside the strips. This is neither better nor worse than the previous approach, it's just different, but it's understandable for you to feel a bit down if you preferred the more randomized format of the previous book (or the previous section of the current book). Now go and order a dozen of these and spread them among all your friends and family.

I always love Sarah's work. I've seen her work online over the years and didn't realize the cryptid comic book I'd ordered a while back was from her. (That is a masterpiece, too!) This is the second book of hers I've ordered and it absolutely does not disappoint. Hilarious stuff!

I mean, it's Sarah, so it's hilarious. What else do you need to know? She keeps printing books and I'll keep buying them.