2 out of 5

I don’t trust this book. I know I’m not reading it “correctly,” as it’s meant to be exactly what it is – depicting a perfect, no drama, day between two beings in love; completely healthy, slice-of-life – but… is it? I mean, it is, but there’s like, subtle gender and religious stuff coded in here that is not at all purposeful, and not at all directly offensive, but maybe also background indirect suggestive beliefs, suggesting a perfect day should involve this stuff.

Oh, I am absolutely reading too much into it.

Our Day is 70 pages showing a day of farmer’s market shopping, gift-giving, snuggling, and sunrise / sunset watching by our lead alligator couple, anthropomorphized to wear a 70s housewife dress and a floppy 70s suit, and interacting with other besuited anthropomorphs along the way. Artist Randy Clute – who has shown a more detailed, Calvin and Hobbes-esque style in his Teegee the Tiger strip – very purposefully tries out a simplified style here, with linework reminiscent of one of his heroes, Stan Sakai, but applied to blocker, bumblier figures that remind me of Jeff MacNelly’s Shoe. I don’t know that I fully appreciate the “sophisticated” compositions Sakai praises in his back cover copy, but I do like the way Clute takes his time for this ‘Day,’ and spaces out simple events like reading a book while waiting for dough to set, or getting ready for bed.

But also… why?

Again, this is me not reading this correctly. I picked this up after hearing it praised on a podcast, and I do really like the idea, which I effectively described up above – slice-of-life, no drama. Just, like, if things were good, what would they look like? I enjoy meet-cutes; I enjoy those times in shows or movies when things are going well, and I’d actually prefer if they stayed that way sometimes. But something about Our Day ends up rubbing me the wrong way.

Reviewing my review, I’m reminded that I don’t like autobiographical comics; they tend to be paced very similarly to Our Day – events are dissected, and the seemingly unimportant is given focus – and subject to the same subconscious / unconscious biases I briefly sniped. Biases which are certainly part of genre stories as well, but when you code things as thrillers or horror or etcetera, it places the focus (generally) on events; it removes some burden in accepting the reality of the story and characters, because it’s more clearly fiction.

Er, so, this story about shopping alligators is nonfiction? What are we talking about here?

Randy Clute wanted to depict one perfect day, and couched that in a world of talking animals, and gave us a very heteronormative couple. I’m heteronormative. To a T. I don’t ask for characters to always be not that, but when something is trying to show me a version of perfection, it makes me really, really skeptical of Why this qualifies as perfection, and if the answer is along the lines of it being simple, and normal (or quirky normal!), and a healthy expression of love, well… damn, why all those things as well?

70 pages of Family Circus. It’s cute. It clearly made me question my whole existence, and Randy’s I’m-sure-totally-wholly-accepting-of-all-lifestyles perspective, and made me gets anxious while reading it, sweating through this overthinking-it-analysis.

On the other hand, if that was the point, whew, ten stars.