Relationships are complicated. Everything can be all perfect one minute, but everything can fall apart the next. That’s the basic premise to Andrew Tunney’s comic “Girl and Boy†and it has the ability to end any relationship.
The story is about two superheros, Girl and Boy, who are desperately in love with each other. It seems like everything is perfect- almost like they were meant to be with each other. Their relationship starts to get rocky as time goes on, though.
The story reads like a poem that goes back and forth between two points of view. It tells how each person is feeling both at that moment and for their lover. The problem is this poem reads like it was written like a sappy romance novel. Even when the relationship gets rocky, it basically says in the most purple way “it’s getting complicated.â€
To top things off, it tries to have some emotion behind it but it turns into a generic “I love you I hate you†poem. Also, it doesn’t explain why things are getting bad. If there’s no context as to why this relation is failing then there’s no reason to care about the relationship. It turns into an excruciating chore just to get to the next panel.
The artwork is your basic comic book superhero fare that’s in black and white. Very little happens in the panels that deserve to be looked at in order to understand what’s going on in the background. The action is mostly playful lovers getting hot and heavy. The art then turns into what the text is suggesting is going on, thus making looking at the action obsolete.
Then there’s the panels showing cell phone text messaging. Tunney tried to go for showing the characters communicating how they feel via text, but there could’ve been a better way to do that. Not to mention there’s no reason to show the same text from two different angles when all that’s happening is showing the text.
“Girl and Boy†is a boring relationship comic that is more painful than delightful to read. It’s ultimately a forgettable first date.
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