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Written by Erin Jameson Friday, 07 May 2010 00:00

Lauren Barnett offers up a pair of funny, poignant minicomics.

The inside front cover of Lauren Barnett's I'd Sure Like Some Fucking Pancakes is a surprisingly well-drawn cartoon bird holding a sign up that says "Sometimes it is just the right time to do exactly what you have wanted to do for such a goddamned long time you almost, ALMOST, totally forgot to do it, except now you did." The bird holds, folded into his other wing, another sign that says "GOOD JOB!!" and that approximately sums up how that and Secret Weirdo, Barnett’s other book, will make you feel. You're going to laugh, you're going to smile and you're going to think of that one time—yeah, that one—that you felt like that, too.

Secret Weirdo, a book that starts out with a cry for equality in art, covers some of Barnett's childhood, starting with her tale of mini-mogulship and Trapper Keepers, and moves to her urban alter-ego and friend in an episode of The Adventures of Master Driver and Navigirl. It seems equally personal but in a more straightforward way. Her recounting of some sick day science especially made me smile. Who hasn't gotten tired of daytime talk shows on a sick day and decided to see what they could get up to without having to put on proper pants?