Artist Jackie Davis embraces her awkwardness. Her comic is called Underpants and Overbites, and she is proud to let her true self come out in these charming and entertaining comics. By sharing her anxieties and vulnerabilities, she makes it easier for her readers to open up about their own fears and worries. And she is very honest.
Davis opens up about her time working in a coffee shop and how much she wanted to quit to become a full-time artist. She talks about how she used to be a jerk, but then she learned how to be a better friend. There are cartoons about when she’s feeling overwhelmed or exhausted, and cartoons about feeling brave and about taking chances. She talks about her marriage, her first boyfriend, and her family with honesty and, well, vulnerability.
She shares some of her least favorite feelings, like forgetting something at the grocery store, getting a tortilla chip stuck in your teeth, and growing apart from a friend despite all your best efforts. And some of her favorite feelings, like getting someone’s full attention, getting to go back to a warm bed on a cold morning, looking for something that’s lost and finding something else that had gone missing, and realizing that mistakes are just a part of life.
Davis also talks about the mundane things in life, finding magic in laundry, setting the alarm clock, and seeing fireflies. And she’s okay with showing how she can get caught up in dark and anxious thoughts. But she also celebrates her victories, no matter how small they might seem.
Vulnerability Is My Superpower is a moving and charming look at life as an artist, as a worrier, as someone who is socially awkward, and most importantly, as someone who is human. As Davis shares her best and worst moments, her favorite and least favorite things, and moments of real life, she shows us all what it means to be open to failure, to others, and to everything life has to give.
I found myself in these comics, and I don’t anyone who wouldn’t find themselves somewhere in these pages. We might not all be as excited at seeing butt cracks in the wild as she is, but we all have something potentially embarrassing that we probably wouldn’t be willing to draw and share with the general public. But Jackie Davis is just that kind of brave, and it’s humbling to be a small part of that by reading her work.
Egalleys for Vulnerability Is My Superpower were provided by Andrews McMeel Publishing through NetGalley, with many thanks.
