Much to the dismay of anyone who has tried to spend time with me lately, this summer I’ve been obsessed with Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. Also of great interest has been the recent food-related work of David Kessler, in The End of Overeating.
Here is the first installment of a comic based on that obsession.
A few things differentiate this comic from others. The most obvious difference is that I used watercolors rather than digital colors. I’ve been experimenting with style improvements, and this one may or may not qualify. Feel free to comment. At very least, it’s an attempt to emulate the work of two of my favorite New Yorker cartoonists, Roz Chast and Sempe.
And just to show you that though I’ve babbled about Pollan & Kessler’s work on how what we’re eating is killing us, and I have tried to live up to what I’m reading, I do approach this enterprise with the same sense of irony I embody in the comic. Here is me at the Berrien County Youth Fair with three elephant ears. It was real scientific research, to see if Kessler is right in his contention that our brains have been hijacked and rewired to crave any combination of sugar, salt, fat.
Just for the record, I only ate half of one. And yes, Kessler is right. Sitting there waiting for friends to return from watching a calf emerge from its mother in the “Wonders of Birth Barn” several people offered me three times what I paid for those elephant ears. In addition, I offer this image as a second piece of evidence:
Hope you enjoy the comic. And please do feel free to weigh in on any of this. (See what I did there?)