I did a book. I kind of forgot. Someone else read it and reviewed it. They liked it except for apparently the cover, which is okay, because I don't like the cover either. I apologize. I hope we have to do a second printing because maybe then I'd do something good for the cover.

Here is the text of Chris Allen's review:

LOST AT SEA by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Oni Press. $11.95

As catholic of tastes, as open a mind as I strive for as a reviewer, sometimes a book is passed over for fairly unimportant reasons such as, in this case, an unattractive book cover. So it took seeing a few good reviews of this graphic novel before I decided to go ahead and investigate it myself.

LOST AT SEA tells the story of fragile teenager Raleigh, who finds herself broken-hearted and “with no soul” on a road trip from California to Vancouver with some acquaintances from school. She’s in some sort of depression over her Internet boyfriend, her family life, and the fact she’s the outsider in the car. Will she “rally” her spirits, make friends and regain her “soul”? These are questions O’Malley sets out to answer.

O’Malley has a thick, confident line, and his characters are cute and affecting, looking appropriately childlike for their eighteen year old innocence rather than like magazine models. Like Craig Thompson, it’s a stylized but very warm, earnest style of art. And as with Thompson’s style in BLANKETS, it’s an extremely complementary style for a story of an adolescent’s intense emotional turmoil.

Raleigh has a very real voice, depressed without being depressing; melodramatic but charming; given to fantasies where the random incidents of life all tie together, conspiring against her. Cats are always nearby, and she’s allergic. Do they mean something? Do they know where to find her soul? O’Malley doesn’t indulge in magic realism, nor does he suggest Raleigh is disturbed. She’s just a sweet girl going through something deep and shattering. Thankfully, she’s not alone, and it’s moving and played just right the way the other girl on the trip, the tough-talking chain smoker, befriends her. And O’Malley really builds toward a wonderful scene of friendship, youthful adventure and catharsis when her new friends help her round up stray cats late at night to get her soul back. The others may look back at it and laugh, but it really does help her, and in the process she gets a new best friend in Stephanie. O’Malley remembers this age and conveys it with a wealth of emotion, but tempered by real storytelling craft and the instincts not to go too far. It’s an excellent debut, one of the better graphic novels of 2003.

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