New Swedish Books, Autumn 2018 1
New Swedish Books 30 Always Fuck Up Moa’s existen
ce is in chaos. She’s single, signed-off sick from work, and her artistic ambitions are at a standstill. She desperately attempts to regain some kind of balance after a drug-induced psychosis triggers harrowing panic attacks. She spends long, slow, lethargic days in a run-down flat in the Gothenburg harbour area, swiping through endless pathetic Tinder profiles. Her friends' banter gradually becoming as incomprehensible as hieroglyphs to her. Not even the pounding euphoria of the illegal nightclub’s dance floor gives her the same kicks as before. Moa Romanova’s debut is a stylish and visually explosive graphic novel about mental illness and being in crisis in your twenties, narrated with an imagery that borrows more from Japanese manga than Western indie comics. There is an aesthetic quality to the highly stylised scenes that is unusual in Swedish comics. Furthermore, Romanova dares to be bold in her imagery: anxiety overwhelms the main character like a rising sea, a dream sequence explodes into neoncoloured psychedelia, and a fantasy about strength is sketched in perfect rendition of dynamic action manga. It is these qualities that make Moa Romanova a talent to keep an eye on.