Emitown Review

Emitown is new release from Image Comics and is a compilation of a year in the life of Portland native, Emi Lenox. Emi’s mother is from Japan and is a sushi chef at Ikenohana in Beaverton (and a friend of our family). Her idea was to draw a page a day, in the the style of a journal or diary, and Emitown is a compilation of this year of events and experiences.

The idea of reading a stranger’s diary can be both titillating and boring. However Lenox presents her diary in visual graphics, rather than words only. Is this story of of a twenty-something recent graduate looking for work, love and direction in life worth the price of admission? Absolutely.

Where we think of a diary as a story a day, Emitown is intelligent in that that sometimes the mundane “story of the day” connects itself to other stories in ways a typical personal journal writer wouldn’t achieve. What starts as a seemingly typical life of a young woman in Portland unfolds into a development of characters (both real and imaginative representations) and an unfurling of a narrative visual style that is both nontraditional and surprisingly gripping.

Sometime’s Lenox’s page contain many panels of simple exposition, and other times her unique style switches to a more detailed, although almost parodied, large graphics of emotional experiences she is actually experiencing, in what is real time. Lenox cleverly and carefully borrows from traditional comics as well as Japanese manga in creating a conglomeration of sensibilities that this reader found uniquely satisfying.

What I expected from Emitown was honesty. A work like this has to be honest and revealing, which it is, in spades. What surprised me was it’s cohesiveness. Emitown should be a collection of anecdotes, but it is a story despite its format. Whether that is a representation of Lenox’s genius, or a stroke of luck doesn’t matter. The winner is the reader.