Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero

Starred review from January 23, 2017
This collection of the psychedelic webcomic from Canadian cartoonist DeForge (First Year Healthy, Big Kids) follows the titular celebrity hero—“former: Olympian, poet, scholar, sculptor, minister, activist,” among other things—through a series of one-page adventures. In the first we’re told that after a scandal, Sticks has decided to live in the forest with a group of talking animals, and the rest of the book explores the dynamic between hero and fans in surreal episodes. In one strip, a rabbit confesses a desire to be Sticks’s pet; in another, a moose (named after cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt) steals Sticks’s sweaters in a ploy to get closer to her. A character named Michael DeForge even gets in on the action, as a magazine reporter looking to interview the arrogant and impetuous Sticks. As a meditation on fame and as a beautiful, disturbing daydream in pink-and-black ink, the book marks a successful shift for DeForge after the sometimes detached body horror of his earliest works.

April 1, 2017

After her famous father is caught up in a political scandal, Sticks Angelica flees Ontario for the wilds of Monterey National Park, where she keeps company with a lovelorn rabbit named Oatmeal, a bear with literary pretensions, an otter with a mushroom growing out of his head, two geese (one of whom has a mosquito living in his head), and a moose who dreams of transitioning into a human woman. Sticks's life is thrown into turmoil when a small child is spotted wandering the forest, naked and alone. Yet writer/artist DeForge (Big Kids) is less concerned with plot than episodic explorations of unrequited love, regret, and the laws that govern animal life in the park. Fans of the animated series Adventure Time will recognize the author's illustration style and quirky sensibility, as he's a longtime designer on that show, but this offering is unmistakably aimed at a more mature audience. VERDICT DeForge crafts a work that is equal parts funny, sweet, sentimental, and scathing in its depiction of his main character's narcissism. Sure to be one of oddest and most beloved releases of the year.--TB

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