Now Endsville - Softcover

Lay has labored on the fringes of the alternative comic scene for more than a decade. A few years ago, she landed a regular gig drawing a weekly strip for a handful of alternative weeklies, and those efforts make up this first collection of her work. Much of it is short, self-contained strips that are effective in their economy even though most of them mine the familiar ground of relationships that's fodder for so many contemporary female cartoonists. Two serials reedited seamlessly into full-length stories, however, best show off Lay's imagination: in the title story, the heroine braves the afterlife to rescue the soul of her comatose boyfriend, while "Invisible City" is an epic tale about the blind potion-maker Madame Asgar and a lost tribe in the South American rain forest. All the stories are well-crafted, attractively drawn, and entertaining, but they lack the sense of artistic self-expression that characterizes the best alternative comics. Perhaps that lack is the toll exacted by weekly deadlines. It'll be worth following Lay's work to find out whether that's the case. Gordon Flagg