UK comicsmaker, Lizzy Stewart's US debut, It's Not What You Thought It Would Be presents a collection of nine short pieces, each of which has a character of it's own, tailored to its particular subject, yet that together ineluctably cohere into a portrait of a life under construction.  

"In beautifully observed moments on buses, in pubs and on rooftops, Lizzy Stewart delicately captures the ebb and flow of friendships over time, and how the long uneventful afternoons of childhood can linger on into our adult lives." – Jon McNaught

"Each of Lizzy Stewart's carefully fragmented stories deftly takes us on a journey from the tedium of a teenage summer to the uncertainty and anxiety of adulthood.  It is a quietly powerful book, and her well-chosen and often witty dialogue goes straight to the heart.  Her artwork is filmic and beautiful and the muted colors and huge washed skies are the perfect backdrops to this story." – Isabel Greenberg

PLEASE NOTE:  This listing is for a solid, very nice, SECOND HAND COPY

The story as well as the characters that populate Alison feel so real and ring so true that it's hard to believe it's a work of fiction.  And, of course, in some ways, it's not, as the portrait it provides of a woman artist coming of age in Britain during the 1980s and then continuing her career over the next several decades – which is also the story of a woman in a man's world (or, if you prefer, of women living under patriarchy), and the transformations that occured during these years – is, at its core a true story.

Alison is unquestionably Lizzy Stewart's most accomplished work yet – by a long stretch.  She has both developed and refined her storytelling techniques here, blending standard comics pages with collages of drawn notes, letters and intermittent, sometimes illustrated, textual narration in a manner that is at least related to if not informed by that of Posy Simmonds, and then managed to build a sophisticated narrative structure to house it all in.

To learn more, please take a moment to read Rachel Cooke's reveiw in The Guardian.

Hardcover | 192 pages | monochrome with inkwash tones | PREVIEW

PLEASE NOTE:  This listing is for a solid, very nice, SECOND HAND COPY