Review - Embroideries VS Peepshow

Marjane Satrapi's 'Embroideries' (2005) has a lot of good things written about it. Elle goes as far as to call it a 'Tantalizing . . . Bold, bewitchingly humorous and politically astute' in fact it is hard to find anyone who says anything negative about it.

It has about 150 pages and takes about 8 minutes to read. It depicts one lazy afternoon in her family's life in Iran where a bunch of women sit together to gossip about their sex lives, hymen reconstruction surgery, and the joys of being someone's mistress. It's a more realistic 'sex and the city' as one female blogger put it. I'd hate to break it to her but that's hardly a compliment.

What I want to talk about, is this widespread adulation for a comic that is mildly entertaining at best and annoyingly insipid at worst. Luckily before you know it, it abruptly ends.

Just because she is an Iranian muslim, and is a bit more open about slightly sensitive 'woman' topics, doesn't mean that it is a great book or that you must go overboard in your praise for it. I really liked her 'Persepolis' don't get me wrong, it was good to read about life in Iran before it went to the dogs. But seriously praise like Time's 'Embroideries is as funny, opinionated, controversial and surprising as any good comic or conversation should be' is a little too much for a story that took a few minutes to recall, and is basically her drawing rumors and gossip from her female relatives a few years back. You'd think she were the new Bukowski.

Now you want something truly funny, uninhibited, and downright outrageous (for the more normal folk out there) I would suggest Joe Matt's 'Peepshow'



Joe Matt is crazy, laying bare every minute, embarrassing detail of his life, going as far as to exaggerate it, and in the process showing the reader just how pathetic and vulgar human life is. A lazy but unique cartoonist, Matt Joe lives illegally in Canada, has impossibly high standards in women which is funny because like me, he has no tact and no talent as far as women are concerned. He is a porn addict, as serial masturbators usually are, and spends his time editing porn to remove shots of men and their 'hairy asses' from them. All of this and more find place in his 'comic diary' censorship? pride? dignity? why what is all that? words, nothing but words.

I read this comic in one sitting even with two finals the next day just because I could not get enough. If you truly want something that will make you laugh out loud, and make you angry, and hate the author, along with many other emotions, I suggest you go to your nearest comic book store and pick up the series as soon as possible.