Processing, Tara Booth
100 comics that got me through it
In English, 408 pages in colour, paperback, 16.64 x 3.05 x 22.99 cm, Drawn & Quarterly, September 2024
Rebellious bodies abound in these deeply honest comics that will help you get through it (or at least help). «When you order CBD gummies for your anxiety, but forget to consider your eating disorder.» Known for her vibrant colors, charming patterns, sharp humor, and unwavering vulnerability, Tara Booth fails nothing in this exquisitely woven collection of pure, nasty magic. Part advice column and exposition, exploration of psychic pollution and tranquility, Processing is simply intrepid: in its honesty; in his remorseless rudeness; in his incomparable and frank portrait of life with a body that bleeds. In the great tradition of underground cartoonists such as Julie Doucet and Eileen Kominsky-Crumb, Booth draws a woman spreading rose petals on the bed, to distract from bedbugs before her date comes. She witnesses the reality of wearing a t-shirt without a bra when she stretches, and her breasts sometimes pop out. All of this is just life, but it's not something we often see on the page. Undeterred, Booth draws this. When the advice of spiritual gurus like Tara Brach and Ram Dass isn't enough, find solace in the genuine arms of Tara Booth: a fearless cartoonist who isn't afraid to put her existential angst, imperfections, and blemishes directly on the page and who, With relentless identification, it makes us all feel a little more at home in our human bodies. With vibrant colors and imposing fluids, Processing exposes Booth literally and figuratively.
