Panel Mania: ‘Cannonball’ by Kelsey Wroten

April 26, 2019 | 1 book mentioned

Kelsey Wroten’s new graphic novel, Cannonball, is by turns a satirical social portrait of a queer, binge-drinking, abrasively ambitious young writer and a hilarious meditation on artistic purity and self-delusion.

Dumped by her girlfriend, surrounded—in her opinion—by philistines and sellouts, and usually broke, novelist Caroline Bertram escapes her abusive middle-class family home determined to write a literary masterpiece and settle a few scores. Obsessed with a cheesy female pro wrestler and driven by rarified artistic ambition, Bertram is relentlessly entertaining, no matter whether she’s wallowing in boozy self-pity or spewing lengthy, hyper-articulate rants at friends, enemies, or anyone who will put up with her.

This is a 10-page excerpt from Cannonball, which will be published this month by Uncivilized Books.

This piece was produced in partnership with Publishers Weekly and appeared on publishersweekly.com.

is senior news editor of Publishers Weekly and editor of PW Comics World.