Goodnight, Irene

by Carol Lay

Comprehensive collection of Carol Lay's Irene strips from Good Girls comics (Fantagraphics), which originally appeared in 1980, including 23 pages which have never been published before. Irene is a satire of the women in romance comics who are constantly in a state of heartbreak and falling in love. However, Irene has a lip plate that constantly gets in her way.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0867196599
• ISBN13: 9780867196597
• Release Date: February 2015
• Publisher: Last Gasp
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.3" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

What an incredible treat reading a continuous (non-"re-booted") story coming out in intervals!

Instead of a long gushing review I'll sum it up this way: *If we were allowed a 6th star for every 100 books we rated this would get one* *To be more specifically congratulatory- it would get a 6th for every 10 I gave 5 stars* Stories spread from: 1980: 01-10 1987: 11-53 1990-1991: 54-107 2006: 108-125

The incomparable Carol Lay strikes again

Carol Lay's Good Girl Comics of the 1980s followed a plate-lipped, scarified, white heiress on her quest for love and acceptance in a world that values only outward beauty. This volume contains all six volumes of the Good Girls series, plus a new story that brings us up to date. In Irene's universe, oddities such as a two headed man, a three-breasted woman, or a neck-ring sporting woman from Burma, are commonplace. But you haven't lived until you've seen the dream sequence. Carol Lay is a consummate draftsman, able to draw beautifully in a number of styles. Here, she artfully apes the Romance comic style of the 50s and 60s. The plot, too, harkens back to those comics, at least in terms of its hyper-emotional style. But Lay is also a brilliant, insanely imaginative storyteller, and she is in fine form throughout. The book makes for a wild ride, by turns hilarious, goofy, and occasionally even touching. There is an underlying core of humanity in Irene that makes her more than just a freak. We can all identify with her, as strange as that seems. It may be worth buying this book just for the painting on the front cover, a wonderfully rendered takeoff on John Singer Sargent's "Madame X". There is also a funny introduction by Mark Mothersbaugh (of Devo), who has apparently had a crush on Irene ever since he first saw her. Most of all, Goodnight, Irene is just plain fun.

Smart Send-Up of Romance Comics

You might recognize Carol Lay from her strip WayLay in alternative weeklies, but this longer story is even better. The first Irene stories appeared in her comic Good Girls in the 1980s, but she wrote the last installment for this volume. You can see her art and storytelling style change a lot over the course of the book, but somehow that makes it even more charming. The premise, that of a white woman with an African-style lip disk looking for love among men who consider her a freak, is intentionally silly, but as a modern fable, it's sweet and funny. As a parody of 1950s romance comics and an incisive criticism of superficial ideals of beauty, the Irene stories far exceed anything else in the indie comics scene recently. There aren't enough comics out there that appeal to an adult female audience, I only wish there were more like this.