Page 45 Review by Jonathan
I suspect everyone remembers the excruciating nature of trying to puzzle out one of the great teenage mysteries most of us faced, that of finding a date, hot or otherwise. I know I certainly do. Noah Van Sciver (FANTE BUKOWSKI and SAINT COLE) once again treats us with a glass of his own very special brand of half empty, only this time it’s personal. In fact it’s autobiographical as Noah dishes the dirt on his own proto-romantic failings.
After chatting up his intended with his brash skatepunk, rap-inflected stylings – via the safety (now here’s an irony) of an internet chatroom – they finally arrange to meet at the local. It doesn’t go well as, if you’ve read any of Noah’s works, I’m sure you can imagine, not least because the girl in question is considerably older than Noah. It’s not quite up there with Joe PEEPSHOW - SPENT Matt’s romantic disasters in terms of scale, but it isn’t far off, and I’m quite sure for Noah himself it was painful enough.
Noah recently shared on Facebook a postcard he’d received from Robert Crumb of all people, singing the praises of MY HOT DATE and exhorting him to continue making more autobiographical comics. High praise indeed and I wholeheartedly concur!
* I feel strangely compelled to share this moderately synchronous story after enjoying Noah’s soul-baring honesty on this subject. Does anyone of a certain age out there remember Partyline? A strange, mid-eighties invention whereby eight people could speak on the same phone line, conference-call-stylee, though it usually felt like at least double or triple that as there was usually several teenagers huddled round each landline handset (no hands-free speakerphone in those days, either!!). They were all local as well, so there was clearly some sort of telephonic science involved behind the scenes working out where people were calling from and grouping them together.
Anyway, occasionally we’d get lucky and there would be far fewer people on the line, and my best friend Savage and I would get actually chance to talk to some girls. Eventually we managed to find some that were daft enough to meet us at the Merrion Shopping Centre in Leeds city centre. Excited thirteen year olds that we were, we were surprised / delighted / terrified to discover the two good ladies in question were considerably older than us. Where it all really started to go wrong, though, was when their two ‘boyfriends’, who unbeknownst to the ladies in question, had suspiciously followed them into town, suddenly revealed themselves and ended up chasing us round the Merrion Centre brandishing Stanley knives... I’ve never run so fast!! Good times!
