Liz Prince's I Swallowed the Key to My Heart

In a word (or 3), Liz Prince rocks. She is a prolific cartoonist, cat lover, punk enthusiasts, and web maven. You can find her at two tumbler accounts, Fuck Yeah, Liz Prince and Fuck You, Liz Prince, a LiveJournal account there is no Liz, only zuul, a flickr account, a twitter account, and has over eighteen hundred Facebook followers.  Her web-site lizprincepower is also really cool.  I first learned about her on the interview she did for Indie Spinner Rack. Once I found her work I started to obsessively follow her, which she made really easy because of her web presence and her prolific posting.  A lot of her work to date has been single strip or singe page auto-biographical vignettes and a good deal of that can be found on her web-site free of charge.

The first two issues of I Swallowed the Key to My Heart got me to easily part with my money.  These two books are beautiful. They are self printed and distributed. They fit in the zine/mini-comic section of your store, but they are a massive 8.5″x11″ and the crisp black and white design of the book really stands out.

I keep on stressing the design and craft elements of these books and collections in these mini-comic reviews because I think they are more than decorative.  Each issue feels not only complete, but also intentionally complete.  Mini-comics have no publisher logo, bar code, nor any page or size limits.  They are an opportunity to experience a narrative object as nothing but an art object.  The hardbound editions of Tricked (on sale thru 9/28/12) and Essex County (out of print) are great examples of graphic design and book making, but there is something to say when the artist is responsible for editorial and quality control. But I digress...

I believe most of Prince's work is more cartoon journaling than auto-biography.  She shares funny and notable anecdotes about her life rather than tying them into a super narrative like Alison Bechdel's Funhouse.  The stories in I Swallowed the Key to My Heart are longer versions of her work.  In fact, the twenty plus pages of issue one transpire over a single night.  While there is an overarching narrative, Prince uses some of her comic strip sensibilities and so many of the pages can hold up as strips without context.  Dry wit and some sadness underneath very hip observations about absurdity in everyday life tie the piece together.

In interviews, Prince has talked about the loose and intentionally rough style she used in Will You Still Love Me If I Wet The Bed  and Delayed Replays.    If you start with the first strip on her web page, the format was a row of three panels with similar character framing and composition, the dialogue and subtle shifts in posture and expression tell the story.  If you continue to progress through the strips, her style tightens up and she starts to experiment with formats.  Some of her strips only really work in a web format, but the illustration always retains some of the playful looseness of her early work. 

She went BIG with I Swallowed the Key to My Heart.  The page layout is European with an average of four rows of two to four panels.  For me, that is one of the most exciting things about these books because Prince spent years refining her craft with very limited parameters.  I Swallowed the Key to My Heart is a chance to see her bring all of that skill to bear on a big canvas.  You can (and should!) pick a copy up from her store, or in person at one of the many con appearances she announces on her news section. She also has plenty of free content, so you have no excuse not check it out.