I Want You

By Lisa Hanawalt. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. 

Softcover, 140 pages, B&W, 2020.

THE FILTHY, FUNNY EARLY WORK FROM THE TUCA & BERTIE CREATOR, AND BOJACK HORSEMAN PRODUCTION DESIGNER

Before the critically acclaimed animated shows, the bestselling graphic novel Coyote Doggirl, or the humor collections Hot Dog Taste Test and My Dirty Dumb Eyes, cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt was a comic book industry sensation with her Ignatz Award-winning minicomic series I Want You. Hanawalt’s outlandish humor and ingenious formalism are evident in the comics collected here. Her love of anthropomorphism and scatology are on full display, all lovingly and grotesquely drawn by Hanawalt in obsessive, unnerving detail.

The stars here are She-Moose, who we join sex-toy shopping, and He-Horse, who we learn mid-flight suffers from ornithophobia. The true star of I Want You may just be Hanawalt’s hilarious command of the graphic listicle. “Top Causes of Freeway Accidents” is a prescient pre-BoJack display of Hanawalt’s love for all things equine. “Things We Are Sorry We Did Last Night” includes the murder of all Hanawalt's Google doppelgängers. Whether she’s discussing the daily commute or masturbation, she packs each comic in I Want You with punchy cultural observations and sharp-witted reflections on typically taboo subjects. A master humorist and cartoonist, Hanawalt strikes the perfect balance of drawing the gorgeous and the repugnant, the fantastical and the lifelike, the bizarre and the hilarious–creating a deeply human experience that everyone can relate to.

Praise for I Want You

Hanawalt’s art has always explored the anxieties, humiliations, and vulnerabilities that come with living in a human body... Its underlying honesty is what continues to strike a chord with readers and viewers.

Vox

The shorts collected in the book also preview the kind of work that would feature in Hanawalt’s collections Hot Dog Taste Testand My Dumb Dirty Eyes, combining observational comedy, surrealist flights of fancy and unexpected beauty into something that is uniquely Hanawalt, and relentlessly funny.

The Hollywood Reporter

To read I Want You is to take a tour through Hanawalt’s brain. Personally, I enjoyed the ride because it’s not just the same old same old. She has a fresh—albeit twisted—sense of humour.

The Beacon Herald

Hanawalt is a master of excess, and her early work is a marvel.

San Francisco Weekly

Hanawalt is a woman of many talents... I Want You is a compilation of Hanawalt’s early mini comics, illustrations, and art. It is her at the very beginning of it all.

The Rumpus

[These comics] hit as freshly funny and subversive, and will appeal to dedicated fans of Hanawalt’s peculiar oeuvre as well as those just getting an introduction.

Publishers Weekly

In a new collection of Hanawalt's early minicomic work, I Want You, you can see the cartoonist's sensibilities — that penchant for slamming the manic and mundane into each other, to see what happens — coalescing into an aesthetic that belongs to her and her alone.

Glen Weldon, NPR

A brilliant collection from an audacious and boldly inventive cartoonist with a distinct and necessary perspective.

Library Journal, Starred Review

Her artfully drawn, frequently dark, generally hilarious panels are characterised by their distinctive use of an all-animal cast, in which universal bummers like self-doubt, loneliness, putting-your-foot-in-it, intimacy struggles and general low-level misery are played out with a profound sense of empathy and no shortage of gross-out humour.

Elephant