Life with Mr. Dangerous [Hardcover]

Paul Hornschemeier (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 24, 2011

Somewhere in the Midwest, Amy Breis is going nowhere.
 
Amy has a job she hates, a creep boyfriend she’s just dumped, and a best friend she can’t reach on the phone. But at least her (often painfully passive-aggressive) mother bought her a pink unicorn sweatshirt for her birthday. Pink. Unicorn. For her twenty-seventh birthday.

Gliding through the daydreams and realities of a young woman searching for definition, Life with Mr. Dangerous showcases acclaimed cartoonist Paul Hornschemeier’s gift for deadpan humor and dead-on insight with a droll aftertaste—an unlikely but welcome marriage of the bleak and the hopeful.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Though at first it's like just another story of a lovelorn 20-something frozen in depressive, media-saturated ennui, Hornschemeier's simple, sad but gorgeous novel about a girl, Amy, whose life is spiraling down into morose singledom, gets right what so many tales of this kind never do. Drawn with the kind of illustrative simplicity that makes Adrian Tomine's work so addictive—the faces and backgrounds are glassy and blank at first, but in fact draw the reader deeper in—Amy's story follows a downward arc. Working a dead-end retail job and having just broken up with the last in a series of uninspiring boyfriends, Amy loses herself in angry, self-lacerating interior monologues and reruns of a surreal cartoon, Mr. Dangerous. Her devotion to her cat and morose, divorced mother loom as forecasts of a future she hates to contemplate. In between rejecting any friendly co-worker or potential date who gets anywhere close to her, Amy agonizes over her life's sole saving grace: long-distance conversations with her friend Michael, who moved out to San Francisco and appears to be the only person who gets her. The conclusion comes down to a will-they-or-won't-they scenario that could easily be trite, but Hornschemeier handles it perfectly. (May)
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Review

“It’s a surprisingly rare thing to find the great comic artist who can not only draw with poetry and beauty, but write like a demon as well . . . Hornschemeier’s skills are nearly as verbal as they are visual.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“If other comics are easy chairs, his work offers the pleasure, and the pain, of reclining on a psychiatrist’s couch.”—Time
 
“Cringe and laugh and cringe some more—Life With Mr. Dangerous has it all. Also, you will cringe.”—Patton Oswalt

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Villard (May 24, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345494415
• ISBN-13: 978-0345494412
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 0.8 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #889,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic April 23, 2012

By Beverly Nerd

Format:Hardcover

Mr. Hornschemeier is a wonderful artist. He has the rare ability to bring together poignant meditations across word and image to create a mood that is wholly his own, and yet very identifiable to anyone who resides a bit adrift of the world. His is a storytelling you don't want to miss.

5.0 out of 5 stars Made me want to crawl in a box... in a good way. May 14, 2013

By fantasyfootballjunkie

Format:Hardcover

I met Paul at the AppleSeed Con in Fort Wayne over this past weekend. We talked a bit about his writing and life and I bought this book. The art is what drew me to his table but the words and story will stay with me. It's one of those books that I plan on keeping.

At times this book, which went by way too fast, made me want to crawl in a box and close the lid. It had me feeling so tight for Amy, the lead, that I also wanted to turn into the barrette which held her hair back just so I could see from her view what her life is like. Such a great read, that it mostly left me wanting more.

Paul, kudos on a fantastic novel and I can't wait to pick up more of your work.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Just more of the same October 18, 2011

By Andy Shuping

Format:Hardcover

Amy is a 20-something year old in a dead end job, without many friends, and is suffering from some form of depression. She's just broken up with her latest bad boyfriend and there's seemingly nothing positive on the horizon. And her best friend lives in San Francisco. What's a girl to do? She drowns herself in reruns of a cartoon called "Mr. Dangerous" and trudges through the day to day job, takes care of her cat, and talks with her depressed, divorced mother. But...new people enter her world and hope may come from an old friend.

I was really excited when I saw this graphic novel at the local bookstore. When I picked it up and flipped through it I thought the artwork looked interesting and that the description of the story sounded unique. I mean I came close to buying it on the spot. But...while it's a good story it's just more of the same that you already see from people like Daniel Clowes, Chester Brown, Jeffrey Brown and others. I just get tired of reading the same type of story time after time, of a lovelorn something year old that's working a dead end job and just doesn't seem to get out of it or have hope in their world. I want something different and this just doesn't have it. While it's a semi-realistic story, it's just depressing on the whole to read and there are only so many of them that I can read.

The writing style and the artwork both remind me of Daniel Clowes, especially in the color choices with the solid colors, and no real shadows to the figures. The artwork is solid and has some nice character design, and the color choices used are interesting. But...while it isn't bad there just isn't anything that stands out to me as being different or great, other than a few scenes depicting Mr. Dangerous.

It's not a bad book, but after reading it I'm not as excited as I was when I first picked it up. And I would recommend just picking it up from your local library for a read.