I Met a Girl is the beginning of an amazing journey of self-discovery for Tyler. He imagines his last year of college will be about partying with friends, making memories, and producing his senior show before graduating into the real world and the struggle to find his own artistic voice. Then he meets Nanette and everything changes...Witness the birth of A Life in Comics.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Anyone who has the audacity to try to pull off [this] opening has my attention. -- Comic Book Resources, Pipeline Column, September 2002
In a book where you... show the minutiae of the lives of others... Page does it with aplomb. -- Sequential Tart, October 2002
It's well written, deeply romantic and has the sort of self-awareness that many comics aspire to [but] few achieve. -- RobotFist.com, December 2002
This ambitious work does an excellent job in getting the reader to invest in the characters and their relationship. -- Comic Book Galaxy, August 2002
In a book where you... show the minutiae of the lives of others... Page does it with aplomb. -- Sequential Tart, October 2002
It's well written, deeply romantic and has the sort of self-awareness that many comics aspire to [but] few achieve. -- RobotFist.com, December 2002
This ambitious work does an excellent job in getting the reader to invest in the characters and their relationship. -- Comic Book Galaxy, August 2002
About the Author
Tyler Page was born in the state of Minnesota on December 7th,1976. After spending most of his time playing with Legos and drawing, he attended St. Olaf College and obtained his BA in Studio Art in 1999. Determined to pursue "this comic thing," Tyler received his MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2002. Tyler currently lives in Minneapolis with his girlfriend and three bicycles.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Walk in the Mediocre,
By
This review is from: Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl (Paperback)
I had the unfortunate experience of running across this self-indulgent waste of time, in a comic convention. I often roam around the independent section of these cons, because you will always find an amazing amount of material that (most likely) you will never run across again. Granted most of it is terrible, or just a poor man's version of some Marvel character, but I still almost always find some redeemable feature in each piece; whether it be decent art, a new twist on an old theme, some bizarre stories, or just the raw enthusiasm that penetrates every shaky line and misspelled word. Stylish Vittles is the absolute exception to that rule. There is nothing redeemable or interesting about this book. I have never felt so completely ripped off by any other purchase.
We can start with the 20 page spread of the universe, which then, very slowly, zooms into the main character. I'm sure that this is meant to be awe inspiring and experimental, but it is neither. While it is true that no one has gone to these lengths, in what turns out to be the preamble to a pathetic and insipid love affair; the reason that this doesn't work is that it simply turns into page after page of extremely uninteresting material, and only serves to pad the book up to a certain length, so that people won't balk so much at forking over $[...]; not realizing that 1/5 of it is just drawings of outer space (ie. Lots of smeared ink and tiny blank spots or "stars.") Next we come to the main character Tyler, written by the author, Tyler Page. He is not exactly the most engaging of protagonists. It's pretty obvious that he believes that he's a great guy. He believes that he is a sensitive philosopher-poet type, whose opinions of religion and the universe are profound and ground-shattering. It's also pretty obvious to the outside observer that he is completely mistaken in this belief. He is a rather boring individual, who has some religious views which are out of the mainstream, but are still dull and ill-conceived. His views seem to revolve around the idea that God is in all of us, and that we have to be true to ourselves, and work together to make the world a better place, because there's no supernatural entity that will do it for us... or some such garbage. It's nothing that we haven't heard, after a fashion, 50,000 times before. He is also very big into defending or "being true" to his tedious religious ideas, and does so by pushing them in everyone's face and being obnoxious about it. In fact he seems more interested in "defending" his ideas, then using them to gain any spiritual enlightenment. There are also several attempts to build himself up as a sort of popular party-animal type; with secondary characters praising him in statements like, "You're the wild man." But from the action shown it seems his "wild man" status stems from that he actually goes up and talks to girls; other than that nothing is shown. It's interesting how in many of these supposedly autobiographical comics, a person gains respect for the author when they show themselves in a bad light; allow the world to see what true [...] they can be. The thought being; Well he's telling us the truth about his bad side, I guess I can believe the good stuff as well. While here we have the complete opposite reaction. The writer is going out of his way to portray himself as a wise, deep, and sensitive individual; while the resulting impression you have of him is of a shallow, arrogant, and dull person, who believes that he's great for no identifiable reason. The story in Stylish Vittles is as vapid as the main character. It's about his relationship with a girl, Nanette, who's about as silly a character as they come. The main character is obviously very taken with Nanette, but all I could do was groan. She comes across as a very silly, spoiled, and sheltered girl. They hang out, watch movies, eat popcorn, and that's about it. Normal? Perhaps, but it makes very dull reading. The only point of drama comes at the very end. The pair discusses their religious views. Nanette is a strict Christian and has been shown over and over again to be emotionally immature. Knowing this, the author goes into his usual spiel on religion, which upsets her so much that she bursts into tears and runs out of the room. Naturally he doesn't go after her, as he was just being "true to himself." And that's it, the high point of the book is an adolescent spat over a topic which holds no interest to anyone but the people involved. The story then shifts into its most pretentious mode; where the main character walks onto the roof of the dorm and has a conversation with God, who looks just like him. They engage in a yawn inducing conversation about how the main character loves Nanette, but has to be true to who he is and so forth. It finally ends with a pronouncement that there is more of the story to come. After 208 pages of pap, we aren't even given a decent resolution. This shows all of the hubris of Remo Williams: the Adventure Begins. Except that the author managed to put out two sequels to this volume. But it still makes the arrogant assumption that people will want to read it. The art is as uninteresting as the story. It is stilted, shaky and awkward. A couple of panels here and there were well done, but they are few and far between. Still the assumption is that he's still developing his art, so these can be excused. As a whole though, it leaves one with the impression of, "Wow, that was mediocre." After I read this book, I went to my local comic store, and gave it over to the owner. After refusing to hand over even one book from his quarter bin in exchange, he threw Stylish Vittles on his rack of free material. The book sat there for 6 months, before being claimed. He was nearly unable to give it away. If you feel like you might enjoy taking a walk in the mediocre, buy this book. Otherwise, don't waste your money.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Fifteen bucks that will never be returned,
By
This review is from: Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl (Paperback)
Tyler Page's Sylish Vittles: I met a girl is a profound indication of what not to do when making a graphic novel. For starters the title stylish vittles has no relevance to the story. Although the "I met a girl" portion of the title is right on the money it is an indication of all that happens in this "book". The main character tyler meets a girl, decides he loves her, tries to crack some jokes, and then argues about religion. That is all that happens! There is absolutly no drama, characterization, nor meaningful plot. He just meets a girl at college. The graphic novel begins with over twenty pages of useless novelty art that depicts the microcosom inside the macrocosom of the universe. This is a weak ploy to introduce his exitential religious beliefs that is basically a carbon copy of any hipster, nonconformist belief system that one can find at any college. And from here Page bores his audience with egocentric babble about his book, about how real and meaningful the whole thing is. And I admit it would be an interesting beginning if not for the story's completel lack of everything. His relationship with Nat goes as follows: He meets an attractive girl, he runs into her a year later, they talk, they have a thing for one another, they go on some dates, he can't decide if he should pay for the movies or a concert, she has her period, they spend the night together and don't have sex ("of course we didn't we didn't have the talk...), they come together, they argue in the end. That is it. There is no voice or characterization outside of his egocentric blithering. Page does introduce a few characters in as much fashion as saying "hi mom" on the Price Is Right. There is nothing deep about any character and this is a comming of age story if you've never came of age.
Although this graphic novel does have a very lack luster story the art is at times, okay. The cover is a good cover (which intrigued me to purchase the book to begin with), but don't be fooled. The panneles are difficult to follow and the proportions on the bodies are off for the most part. And something that absolutly killed me was his lack of passion for his characters. They seemed to be unattractive cartoons with anime influence (they were always running). No truth, just cartoons. So my suggestion to any graphic novel reader is to not purchase this book. You will regret it. The only justifiable reason to shell out fifteen buck for this book is to have an example of what not to do.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
a sweet change of pace,
By grrlpup (Portland, Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Stylish Vittles: I Met a Girl (Paperback)
The first, let's see, 23 two-page spreads in this graphic novel are a slow pan in from outer space... you know, first just stars, then the Milky Way, then Earth, then above North America, down to the studio at St. Olaf College in Minnesota where our hero, eponymous with the author, is drawing the very book we're reading.
Oh, man, how cheesy is that? I almost can't believe I'm reading it, while at the same time I think it's sweet. It brings out nostalgia for when I was a kid and wrote my address on as many lines of notebook paper as possible, ending with "planet Earth/ solar system/ Milky Way Galaxy/ The Universe." My experience of the whole graphic novel was like that. Tyler is in his senior year at college, and he meets a fellow art student named Nanette. She sits at his table at the cafeteria. They hang out and talk and it feels so comfortable and natural. Eventually they go to the movies. They see the Drew Barrymore movie based on Cinderella. It is so, so sweet, and I had no idea romance moved this slowly anymore for twenty-somethings anywhere in the U.S. From the outside, very little happens. At the end of the book they are talking about their religious beliefs and whether they're compatible. The emotion comes through in the words and the drawings as heartfelt, but ordinary too. The fight in me between "not much here" and "these people are so nice and I care about them" must have been won by the latter, because I immediately went in search of the next volume. The comics are drawn well, black-and-white with varied layouts. If you've read Ariel Schrag's comics about her life as a teenager, these have a similar honest feel, but more complex drawing and a simpler life being told.
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