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Goodnight, Irene
'Goodnight, Irene' features a collection of Carol Lay's 'Irene' strips from 'Good Girls' comics - which originally appeared in 1980 - including 23 pages that have never been published before.
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 5, 2021
the first 2 issues of good girls are great but then it loses focus from setruses island on, irene is too good of a char and all attention should be hers yet most of it shifts to useless side chars like the blind idiot and giraffe neck doing boring junk, i wish itd stayed the way it was at the beginning and focused more on irene as a person and her feelings, with irene in more normal situations instead of the kid ish nonsense it turns into, in good girls i also liked monica and wish that whole story of hers had kept going, shes a good char with underused potential and it was nice switching back and forth between her and irene
January 14, 2019
What an incredible treat reading a continuous (non-"re-booted") story coming out in intervals like this: See Below
Instead of a long gushing review I'll sum it up this way:
*If we were allowed a 6th star for every 100 books we rated this would get one*
*To be more specifically congratulatory- it would get a 6th for every 10 I gave 5 stars*
1980: 01-10
1987: 11-53
1990-1991: 54-107
2006: 108-125
Instead of a long gushing review I'll sum it up this way:
*If we were allowed a 6th star for every 100 books we rated this would get one*
*To be more specifically congratulatory- it would get a 6th for every 10 I gave 5 stars*
1980: 01-10
1987: 11-53
1990-1991: 54-107
2006: 108-125
May 19, 2012
I found a gem tucked into a bookshelf at a huge novelty shop that sells things like candy cigarettes, anime-wear and had a steampunk taxidermy art show going on in a small attached gallery. I was scanning the comic book section looking for work by women, pulled a maroon book off the shelf and read its introduction. Within the first paragraph artist Carol Lay mentioned Ubangi women featured in Hustler magazine, a DC collection of romantic comics and a bummer state-of-the-relationship conversation with a boyfriend in 1979. On the next page: A foreword by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo.
Sold. One of the highlights of my recent vacation was the discovery of Lay’s “Goodnight, Irene,” a collection of Irene Van de Kamp stories from the 1980s with some yet-unseen stuff. It is so ridiculously fun that snorting and cackling become involuntary.
The premise: Young Irene is orphaned when baboons attack her parents during a safari. She is taken in by native hunters, the Bongodians, and raised by the tribe. When she comes of age, she eagerly goes through the traditional ceremony in which her lower lip is extended with the help of an ivory plate and her upper lip is looped up over her nose. Though she has undergone a rite that assures her beauty matches that of the other women in the tribe, her white skin is deemed unlucky and none of the men will risk marrying her. She decides to leave the tribe and joins up with white traders and returns to the United States where a birthmark reveals that she is an heiress and now the richest woman in the world. Unfortunately … her face.
She begins dating a blind man, a lawyer, who is unaware of her money situation or her appearance. She keeps things chaste until finally he can’t take it anymore and asks to feel her face. When he encounters the jutting lip he freaks and dumps her and, meanwhile, Irene attends a cosmetics party where things get uncomfortable. (In one of the images from the book, she stares at a tube of lipstick with wide eyes and a question mark bubble). Her now ex-boyfriend takes his woes to a bar and explains the situation to a bartender, who determines that Irene is the heiress who has been all over the tabloids. Kurt suddenly expresses renewed interested. Unfortunately, his plans to get the band back together are thwarted when Irene is kidnapped right in front of him and an unscrupulous cab driver takes advantage of his blindness to steal all of his money and send him away on an airplane to nowhere-near-Irene.
All sorts of unconventional characters crop up including a two-headed collector of unusual women who has an entire island at his disposal, a woman with an extended neck and an evil three-breasted seductress who is out to get revenge on Irene.
These stories are hokey as heck and play on the uber-seriousness of romantic comics of yesteryear. They are self-conscious enough to in-joke about beauty and the nature of comic books. The predictable is taken and twisted into something very funny and not predictable, like the three-breasted woman who gets Kurt drunk and tries to convince him to have his face surgically changed to look more like Irene and win her love again. As a nice add, Lay introduces us to Irene’s daughter -- who as a teen really resents her conventional face and begins computer doodles of how she can make her own look more interesting.
Lay also explains in the introduction that Irene was born of her work inking Donald Duck and Scrooge comics mixed with the cutesy girl hairstyles from “Heart Throb” comics. Anyway, all of this happened a long time ago, but since it’s new to me I’ll say this -- especially after being bored to brain itch by Alison Bechdel’s latest -- comic books just got fun again.
Sold. One of the highlights of my recent vacation was the discovery of Lay’s “Goodnight, Irene,” a collection of Irene Van de Kamp stories from the 1980s with some yet-unseen stuff. It is so ridiculously fun that snorting and cackling become involuntary.
The premise: Young Irene is orphaned when baboons attack her parents during a safari. She is taken in by native hunters, the Bongodians, and raised by the tribe. When she comes of age, she eagerly goes through the traditional ceremony in which her lower lip is extended with the help of an ivory plate and her upper lip is looped up over her nose. Though she has undergone a rite that assures her beauty matches that of the other women in the tribe, her white skin is deemed unlucky and none of the men will risk marrying her. She decides to leave the tribe and joins up with white traders and returns to the United States where a birthmark reveals that she is an heiress and now the richest woman in the world. Unfortunately … her face.
She begins dating a blind man, a lawyer, who is unaware of her money situation or her appearance. She keeps things chaste until finally he can’t take it anymore and asks to feel her face. When he encounters the jutting lip he freaks and dumps her and, meanwhile, Irene attends a cosmetics party where things get uncomfortable. (In one of the images from the book, she stares at a tube of lipstick with wide eyes and a question mark bubble). Her now ex-boyfriend takes his woes to a bar and explains the situation to a bartender, who determines that Irene is the heiress who has been all over the tabloids. Kurt suddenly expresses renewed interested. Unfortunately, his plans to get the band back together are thwarted when Irene is kidnapped right in front of him and an unscrupulous cab driver takes advantage of his blindness to steal all of his money and send him away on an airplane to nowhere-near-Irene.
All sorts of unconventional characters crop up including a two-headed collector of unusual women who has an entire island at his disposal, a woman with an extended neck and an evil three-breasted seductress who is out to get revenge on Irene.
These stories are hokey as heck and play on the uber-seriousness of romantic comics of yesteryear. They are self-conscious enough to in-joke about beauty and the nature of comic books. The predictable is taken and twisted into something very funny and not predictable, like the three-breasted woman who gets Kurt drunk and tries to convince him to have his face surgically changed to look more like Irene and win her love again. As a nice add, Lay introduces us to Irene’s daughter -- who as a teen really resents her conventional face and begins computer doodles of how she can make her own look more interesting.
Lay also explains in the introduction that Irene was born of her work inking Donald Duck and Scrooge comics mixed with the cutesy girl hairstyles from “Heart Throb” comics. Anyway, all of this happened a long time ago, but since it’s new to me I’ll say this -- especially after being bored to brain itch by Alison Bechdel’s latest -- comic books just got fun again.
March 26, 2018
Very fun book. Not quite essential, but Lay does a great pastiche of romance comics, but adds a nice subversion by having the woman be noticeably not the feminine ideal. She was raised in Africa and has had her face shaped, including a very prominent lip-plate. A few more bizarre and well crafted supporting characters, a blind love interest who's played more for laughs than as a valiant protector, and some great art - there's really nothing to complain about. Good stuff.
++++++++
I pulled this out for a reread, and it's still a good time. A nice examination of feminine beauty roles, with snappy humor, some good story twists, and a zinger of a cast.
++++++++
I pulled this out for a reread, and it's still a good time. A nice examination of feminine beauty roles, with snappy humor, some good story twists, and a zinger of a cast.
September 15, 2012
"Goodnight, Irene" collects the stories of Lay's most indelible character: Irene Van de Kamp, an heiress who was raised by an Ubangi tribe, had her face "shaped" with lip plates and whatnot, and has returned to American society with predictable (and unpredictable) complications. Over the course of Irene's trials and tribulations, Lay sharply satirizes old romance comics.
March 20, 2009
This needed to be soooo much longer. I read it out of pure morbid pleasure.
October 15, 2011
i loved this so so much.
July 6, 2013
I think this book is a great send-up of romance comics and a sharp satire on modern beauty. Interested to see what the rest of book club thinks - I know there's at least one who'd disagree with me.
April 3, 2016
on love, appearance, money, power, racism, and romance genre
March 3, 2018
Not enough queer in the quirky. Poor plot line.
June 2, 2012
Got to read these again!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews