LORNA
Written and illustrated by Benji Nate.
Lorna takes slice-of-life comix and gives it a righteously savage twist of the blade. Here’s a bit of math for you: Think Gummo meets Nancy and you’re about there. It’s adorable, it’s depraved, it’s… oh, heck, it’s wonderful.
Benji Nate’s gnarly new strip is getting a killer reprint from those A-OK art brutes from San Francisco, Silver Sprocket. Acquire vital life advice from Lorna as she navigates the barren wastes of contemporary life, where fools get knives pulled on them and cats are the only things we can rely on.
Benji Nate’s Lorna is available in all fine bookstores and LCSs everywhere now. And to nudge our fine readers towards making a purchase, DoomRocket has a 5-page preview on offer below, courtesy of Silver Sprocket!
$10.00 | OUT NOW
From Silver Sprocket: Benji Nate’s LORNA is just like every other girl. She likes cats. She likes cell phone charms. She likes knives, punishing her enemies, and taking sunglasses from their dead bodies. You know, normal girl stuff.
In this reprint of Benji Nate’s original self-published collection, our titular heroine learns valuable lessons about how to attend parties (make friends with the cat), fighting off bullies (hack off your locker’s padlock with a bone saw), and even how to navigate the thrills of first romance.
Like Nate’s CATBOY, LORNA is the perfect blend of relatable circumstances and surreal humor. Lorna is the hyper-violent id we all keep locked inside; who hasn’t wanted to threaten boys with a knife? Though Lorna’s responses to inconvenience are hyperbolic, her violence unhinged, Nate’s humor and lighthearted tone keep the comic feeling fresh and fun rather than disturbing. Or rather, they keep it from being too disturbing—we’ve all got skeletons in our closet, but perhaps not as many literal ones as Lorna.
Nate’s a deft hand with humor, but her artwork, rendered in a brisk, exaggerated cartoony style with light pastel colors and stark black linework, is what makes the comic truly work. Too realistic and the comic would go from wonderfully dark to gruesome, and a style that’s too cute would rob it of its spookier moments.
Nate doesn’t shy away from showing us ugliness: knees crusted with grave dirt, rusty splotches on the edges of a saw, stink lines from a garbage can. Lorna’s actions are one step removed from reality, but these little details ground the comic, giving readers a delightful little chill when they’re confronted with the truth of all that catharsis.
Most importantly, LORNA reinforces the most universal truth: the best friendships are formed when we bury a body together.
