Writer: Jamie S. Rich
Artist: Joelle Jones
Company: Oni Press

When it comes to romance comics, manga pretty much has the market locked up right now. That’s where the girls are, and romance is a chick genre, right? Wrong. Well-written romance is the purview of both sexes, and there’s plenty of room for differences within the genre, from the teen sex comedy of many shojo to the romantic comedy of True Story Swear to God to the mature exploration of relationships that is found in 12 Reasons Why I Love Her. Oni Press has tackled the romance genre memorably before, from Christine Norrie’s Cheat to Antony Johnston and Mike Hawthorne’s Three Days in Europe to Chynna Clugston’s Scooter Girl and many more, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her is another feather in their cap.

Jamie S. Rich is an author whose tastes are worn more on his sleeve than many, thanks in no small part to his long work as an editor in the industry. Through the course of reading his letter columns, his blog postings, his DVD reviews online, one can get a picture of a guy with a fondness for the more nuanced storytelling of foreign film and the sweet, simple genre appeal of Audrey Hepburn movies. Rich is the perfect guy to write the modern romance comic, and 12 Reasons Why I Love Her draws equally on his honed storytelling sensibilities and love for the romance genre.

12 Reasons Why I Love Her is a simple story, about two young adults who meet cute, fall in love, suffer difficulties and… well, I won’t spoil the ending. It’s the kind of thing that, in movies, would be covered by folks like Nora Ephron, Rob Reiner or Woody Allen. What makes 12 Reasons interesting are two things: First, the characters, who are interesting enough that the reader wants to know them, wants to see the small moments of their relationship. Second, Rich does an unusual thing with the structure of the story, using 12 chapters to show 12 moments in the relationship and mixing up the order of the story, so that the beats of the relationship play out in a sort of skewed way where the reader is kept guessing at some of the history that the characters talk about.

This works for the most part, as it increases the tension in the story. We’re introduced to Gwen and Evan when they’ve already known and dated one another for a while, so that they’ve let their guard down and are showing their real selves, meaning that the characters are instantly recognizable and sympathetic. The awkwardness of the first date, the stress an ex places on the relationship and the big fight are all saved for later, when we already like these characters and really care about the relationship. When Gwen and Evan are having it out, whether it’s about the stupid issue Evan causes in the first date or the real problem that Gwen instigates later in the relationship, we’re already in there pulling for them to work it out, because we’ve seen how good they are together.

And that is where the out of sequence storytelling has a bit of a flaw, for me. A minor one, to be sure, but Rich puts the big knockdown dragout break-up fight very near the end, and though there is a sequence that follows it, it comes earlier in the book. It’s not hard to reread the book and see where the relationship ultimately ends up, and the closing sequence that Rich chooses definitely conveys the right mood for an ending, but… the emotional arc, which works for the most part, was disrupted for me by having the aftermath sequence play out well before the big fight sequence.

12 Reasons is Rich’s first collaboration with artist Joelle Jones, and I hope it won’t be his last. Jones is terrific, with a skilled hand at cartooning that reminds me of artists like Pete Woods (Robin) and Eric Kim (Love as a Foreign Language). Take a step back from the story, let the words blur so you can’t read them, and you can still read the emotional core of the story, thanks to her clear and bright expression work on the characters. She’s at her best with the tight close-up, when she lets the character’s eyes tell the story, but there’s also a lot being said in the body language and poses of the characters, the simplicity of a silhouette that often closes out a scene or the positioning of the characters with one another.

Jones creates a sense of intimacy with these characters that tells you instantly where they are in the relationship with one another, and it is this visual sense of relationship more than anything else that makes the out-of-sequence storytelling viable. Within a few pages of a sequence, you know where you are with these characters, emotionally. Check out the “first date” sequence and you can see that something is bothering Evan, and it’s annoying Gwen, even as they both try to have a good time. There’s also a nice sense of design at work, whether it’s the use of a telephone cord panel border to depict a phone conversation or the chapter cards, complete with a song title to set the mood.

12 Reasons Why I Love Her will not be a surprise to anyone who has been a fan of Oni Press and especially the work of Jamie S. Rich thus far. It’s a traditional romance with a non-traditional storytelling technique and plenty of influences from outside the world of comics, including music cues layered in for flavor and storytelling beats recognizable more from the world of novels and movies. If you’ve loved Oni Press romance books before, you’re going to love this one, as it’s another well-crafted, emotionally satisfying read. If you’ve never explored this genre in comics, but your movie tastes run to High Fidelity and Match Point as well as Spider-Man and X-Men, why not expand those comics tastes a bit as well? You might be glad you did.

12 Reasons Why I Love Her is scheduled for release on October 11. This is an advance review.