Heart in a Box

Emma Elliot is in the midst of an epically bad breakup.  The kind where she’s been curled up in her bed for the past two weeks before some inspired needling from her roommate finally gets her to rejoin society again.  However, it isn’t until she meets a mysterious man named Bob that Emma finally has a chance to escape this heartbreak.  How?  By simply wishing her heart away with Bob’s help.  At first, feeling nothing feels great.  After a while… well, you can probably guess that the only thing Emma feels is that she’s made a giant mistake.  Fortunately for her, Bob has a way to get her heart back.  The thing is that her heart is now in seven pieces and she has to get them back from their current owners.  This can be done through contract, through trickery, through empathy, or quite literally with whatever sharp object she has on hand.

To give you an idea of how “Heart in a Box” rolls, only two people wind up dead over the course of Emma’s quest.  As for the rest, it’s entirely debatable how happy they are that this half-shaven-blue-haired hot mess came into their lives.  I, for one, am certainly glad she came into mine.  From the start it’s clear that she doesn’t have it all together, but it’s clear that she’s trying her best and this makes her very relatable.  There’s also the fact that she’s navigating her way through a very unusual situation, so her anxieties feel credible while her exploits manage to come off in ways that feel surprisingly unpredictable.

It’s that unpredictability that really drew me in here as writer Kelly Thompson and artist Meredith McClaren’s brand of magical realism manages to be funny, sad, adventurous and, yes, even heartbreaking.  I picked this up because I’ve really enjoyed Thompson’s Marvel work, and this is proof that she’s told quality stories before she came to the House of Ideas.  McClaren’s art is also very energetic and appealing in its wiriness, as Emma feels more sympathetic because she always looks like a bundle of nerves.  Some people may find this OGN’s tone and style to be too all over the place for their liking, but if you’re like me then you’ll agree that’s part of its charm, and hope that Thompson and McClaren will find a way to work together again in the future.