SiP

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I've been re-reading Strangers in Paradise, which is without a doubt one of my all-time top five favorite comics. I'm finally caught up to the place I'd left off a couple of years ago and I am very excited to finally finish the series—a series I started reading sometime around 1995. It's been a long, circuitous, and melodramatic route, but it's been consistently entertaining, and you'll have a hard time finding a comic book by an artist who can convey such nuanced expressions in his characters. Yes, there are some really awful love poems scattered throughout, a few clichéd plot twists, some awkward and unbelievable moments. But more often there are moments of emotional honesty and poignancy, a healthy dose of misandry, and a sincere and successful attempt at the romantic that is hard to find these days.

If you haven't read it, I cannot recommend it highly enough. How often do you find a romance–thriller–soap opera with political intrigue? It's stocked in a fair number of libraries, so you can read it for free. Or if you're the purchasing type, it's stocked at every decent book store and comics shop.