i purchased friends of lulu's "girl's guide to guy's stuff" off the internet tubes, and so didn't get the blip on the back that explained that it was female comic book artists addressing the subject of how much they liked dudes. i thought the book would collect comics-based commentary on masculinity that was a little more biting. i didn't see much of the "wry" look at maledom in the collected stories; it was much more often a little too "worshipy" for my tastes.some of the stories were painful, cliched takes on heteronormative male-female interaction ("he didn't even notice when i changed my hair!" in "sigh..." by yali lin, "i could never date a boy that wasn't stronger and smarter than me," in "nemi" by lisa myrhe), and some others were kind of boring. one, "porn," by lorena caiazzo, includes the mis-information that women aren't as visually stimulated as men, and ends with the statement that all porn is "awesome." um.
however, the collection of so many female comics artists together is a really great thing all in all, even if it did turn out to be "the straight girl's guide to straight guy stuff" that i wasn't expecting. although it includes some artists i already love, like roberta gregory and dorothy gambrell, i was introduced to many artists that i hadn't heard from before, and i would love to find more work by hellen jo, monica gallagher, vicky hsu & anita cheng, mk reed, cathy leamy, julia durgee, t. streeter, and cynthia ward & katie skelly. there are a healthy number of really solid artistic works in this book, and even a few tiny masterpieces. definitely worth having, even for a person like me who isn't all that into dudes. except for occasionally being one.
