Panel Mania: ‘Cannonball’ by Kelsey Wroten

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.

The post Panel Mania: ‘Cannonball’ by Kelsey Wroten appeared first on The Millions.

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