Nemi (Volume 1) - Hardcover

Lise Myhre is the artist and writer of Nemi (named after the famous Italian lake and Inigo Montoya, a character in Myhre’s favourite film, The Princess Bride). Myhe also designs CD covers and illustrates books. She lives in her native Norway.

Myhre's long-running Norwegian newspaper strip concerns a cynical young goth and her pals. Nemi's got a sort of Morticia Addams look about her; she has a very short temper and delights in shocking children and the bourgeoisie (not to mention reciting facts about spiders); she tends to party much too hard and to end up taking home the wrong guys. The daily strips (and an occasional full-page episode) are punctuated in the middle of the book by a longer story, Free and Fearless, in which she encounters her favorite imaginary friend, musician Alice Cooper. Nemi's a naturally funny character, but too many of these strips are generic gags that just happen to have her in them. Perhaps Myhre's jokes lose something in translation (or perhaps awkward lines like and here's me thinking they just threw a dice are a poor translation), but a lot of the verbal humor falls flat. Myhre's sight gags tend to go over better, but beyond her gift for exaggerated facial expressions, most of her artwork is purely functional, with a broad, big-eyed caricature style. In other words, although Nemi would probably stab anyone who said so to her face, the strip is almost an urban-hipster variation on Cathy. (Mar.)
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