Why Don’t You Love Me?
By Paul B. Rainey
Most of Why Don’t You Love Me?, a serial graphic novel, is about as far from science fiction as you could imagine. A man and woman share a loveless trainwreck of a marriage. Claire is a stay-at-home alcoholic and can’t even take care of herself much less the two kids. Mark works for a company that does web development, but he doesn’t understand anything about the job. In fact, he seems to think he’s really a barber . . .
They’re a dysfunctional family, but it’s weirder than that. Then, at the exact halfway point in the story, there’s a global event that sets a restart button. Or causes a wrinkle in the fabric of the multiverse. And Mark slowly breaks out of a bed that’s shaped like a cocoon into a brand new life.
It’s hard to say much more about the story than this, in part to avoid spoilers but also because it’s hardly clear even to Claire and Mark what’s going on. Suffice it to say that Paul B. Rainey’s cramped and cluttered visual style is the perfect complement to a strange domestic tale of social order breaking down into isolation and chaos. Then a quick re-read is necessary to put it back together again.
Alex on SF 
Is banging pots at 2am involved? Because I’d say this book was a bad influence on you if it is.
What is the point of the book? To show how terrible the lives of these people are?
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Hm. I would say the point is how we imagine ourselves into and out of certain roles or ruts in our lives, and how we understand what our real selves consist of, what stays the same when everything else changes.
No banging on pots that I recall. That’s more a local thing around here.
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Thank goodness I am a rock in the sea of change. Unchanging and immutable.
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Does it have a happy ending?
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Um. No, not really. Neither life seems very happy
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Ok, I’ll pass.
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It’s hardly clear to me what’s going on either. Any hints?
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Somebody presses a reset button on life on earth and things get mixed up in the process.
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