(courtesy Andrews McMeel Publishing)
We’ve all been there – innocently browsing through an online store when suddenly, or not so suddenly since they are stalking us every step of our impulsive shopping ways, the resident algorithm decides you MUST have a certain title.
These sorts of insistent suggestions can be handy – they also often aren’t since you know they get it wrong as much as they get it right – but in the case of Crabgrass, a delightful creation out and about in the comic strip wild since 2022 courtesy of the wonderfully talented Tauhid Bondia, it absolutely knocked it out of the park.
Ordering a copy on a whim, which is how a lot of my online shopping happens to the chagrin of my partner and credit card balance, I was delighted to discover that not only did the algorithm get it right but that Crabgrass is one those rare comic strips that is not only gently but incisively funny but which also has a tremendous amount of heart.
Centred around two young best friends, Kevin and Miles, growing up in small town America in the 1980s, and dealing with first crushes, summer holiday hijinks and the travails of school life, Crabgrass speaks evocatively and charmingly about what it is like to be happily lost in the years where imagination rules and your only concern is what time to be home for dinner.
What struck me on a first read, and yes, somehow despite loving comic strips all my life since I first discovered Peanuts as a kid and the wonder that is Calvin & Hobbes in my twenties, is how for all its warmth, fun and nostalgic innocence, that Crabgrass also acknowledges that growing up can be tough too.
(courtesy Andrews McMeel Publishing)
You trying to figure life out based on limited life experience and still-burgeoning knowledge, led by parents who love you dearly and alternate between finding you delightful or annoying depending on the great/terrible thing you have just done, and there are times, too many times, when you get it so very, very wrong.
Or when you’re beleaguered by bullies who make your life a living hell in a school system that doesn’t always appreciate how un-black and white the learning years actually are.
Crabgrass takes on those exhaustingly trying moments along with the nostalgically dreamy ones, painting a picture of how life often was, or could be, before adulthood comes along and makes things even more complicated, with the added difficulty that you’re supposed to know better.
Thankfully, Kevin, all wise-cracking and skin-of-his-teeth, non-reading and non-scholastically-excelling, and sweet, rule-obeying, study-hard Miles are still in the period where they are allowed to mostly make mistakes and learn from them – let’s be honest, Miles more than Kevin who seems to take it as a challenge to defy expectations and contravene the rules (to the exhaustion of parents, teachers and siblings and the often delighted consternation of Miles – and one of the great strengths of Crabgrass is how it lets them make mistakes and maybe learn from them while letting them just have fun.
It’s a balm for the soul, especially if like me school and childhood was all bullying and peer-engineered terror; losing yourself in a world where friends have your back and where imagination is king and queen, is a wonder and a delight, wisecracking fun that comes with a few sage lessons but which is mostly happy to simply kids be kids and grow up one hilarious, awkward lesson at a time.
Crabgrass volumes 1-3 are available through Andres & McMeel Publishing and Simon & Schuster Australia.
(courtesy Andrews McMeel Publishing)