BIO

Corinne Mucha was born in New Jersey in 1983. She graduated from RISD with a degree in illustration in 2005. Her comics work includes the Xeric funded My Alaskan Summer, the Ignatz award winning The Monkey in the Basement and Other Delusions (Retrofit Comics) and the YA graphic novel Freshman: Tales of 9th Grade Obsessions, Revelations, and Other Nonsense (Zest Books). She lives in Chicago where she works as a cartoonist and teaching artist. As a child, she really believed that witches lived in her closet. Her overactive imagination continues to be a problem to this day.


IN PRAISE OF CORINNE MUCHA

THE 10 BEST INDIE COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS OF 2014
Heartbreak sucks. Corinne Mucha’s Get Over It! is probably as close to a cure as we’re going to get.

– Foreword Reviews

Mucha’s comic centers on her own experience of a messy breakup, chronicling the feelings of confusion and frustration that will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s been there before.

– The Huffington Post

Denial—check: Mucha spends half the book pining for her ex and convincing herself the relationship wasn’t as bad as it obviously was. Anger—check: Mucha seethes at the mere mention of his name. Bargaining and depression (check and double-check) are repeated until finally, three years later, acceptance is reached. It sounds grim, but in Mucha’s hands it’s actually quite engaging. She has a knack for drawing funny. This might seem like an obvious thing for any cartoonist to have, but Mucha shares with the likes of Kate Beaton and John Allison the capacity to elicit humor from the barest of sketches. It’s a gift, and combined with her self-deprecating manner, it turns a book about three years of anguish into a page-turner.

– The Onion A.V. Club

Her unique sense of humor balances a story that, at its heart, is very much about grief. Mucha’s constant use of wordplay, gags, visual metaphors, and childlike flights of fancy give her a self-aware edge. She balances difficult themes of grief and healing with a heavy dose of visual puns and irreverent humor, from Beyoncé references to surreal, drawn-out phone calls between her anthropomorphic heart and brain. She slips easily in and out of fantasy, with daydreams bleeding into reality.

If Mucha had tackled this comic in the midst of her breakup, the resulting story might have provided enough drama and heartbreak to fill a whole new run of Young Romance. But with the clarity born of time and distance, she’s crafted something extraordinary. A book about healing that never feels preachy. A look at depression that balances darkness with humor and tenderness.

– LA Review of Books

Want to know how long it really takes to get over your ex? At last, forget all the science studies, because Corinne Mucha has nailed it. She’s offered up her new theory in an autobiographical graphic novel; Get Over It! centers round her own messy breakup and probably tells your story, too.

It’s so easy, post-breakup, to beat yourself up that you’re not over your ex just yet. There are so many rules and mathematical formulas that tell you when you should’ve moved on. Take Sex and the City, for example, that says it takes half the total time of your relationship – well that’s without all the messy limbo, texting and evil memory prompts thrown in.

So, here you are. Proof you shouldn’t be embarrassed that you’re racing through Kleenex 10 months down the line. Or perhaps that all that back and forth isn’t doing you any good.

– Cosmopolitan

Part One starts with a charming scene of Mucha and her boyfriend in bed, joking and making plans for the next day. It’s wonderfully intimate and goofy and made me love them as a couple despite knowing what was coming. On the next page, Mucha asks, “Hey, can I ask you something?” No good question is ever prefaced with this question. (If you ever meet me at a conference, ask me about the last time my mother started a conversation with this gambit. It was heinous.) The turn in the story is immediate. When she asks where there relationship going it is truly, as the page says, the beginning of the end, and it took me right along on its emotional roller coaster.

– Unshelved

FAVORITE GRAPHIC NOVELS OF 2014
Mucha broaches the subject of breaking up with cleverness, playfulness, and a keen understanding that will ease the achiest broken heart.

– Whit Taylor

Corinne Mucha mines a personal relationship to effectively create this engaging manual on how to get over the ending of important relationships. Sharply insightful, funny, charming and loaded with feels.

– Large Hearted Boy

By slowing down and acknowledging her heartbreak, she can cultivate compassion for herself. If compassion is an act of putting others’ needs before your own, dropping her identification with her heartbreak is a prerequisite. She can treat herself with the same care, tenderness, and forgiveness that she would offer a good friend. Mucha illustrates this beautifully in a series of panels where she and her heart, haunted by painful ghosts, sit down together to share a pot of tea.

– Festival Season

I am a big fan of Corinne Mucha’s publications, and I have featured her first graphic novel Freshman on this very blog. Her second one, Get Over It!, is aimed at a more adult audience. It is about dealing with the fallout of a break-up, and it is at once bittersweet and entertaining. Part of what makes it work as well as it does is Mucha’s sense of humor and her unique way of depicting the jumble of emotions and behaviors that follow. For instance, parts of the narrative turn into small vignettes or quizzes that highlight some pretty horrible moments.

And the proceedings are further highlighted in a series of dialogues between body parts that dramatize many of the feelings but also are pretty ridiculous and hilarious in their literalness. I know that much of the subject matter in this book could be seen as hackneyed or cliched, but I felt that the artistic execution, insight, and comedic timing elevated the enterprise into something special.

– Graphic Novel Resources

Get Over It! sounds like the stuff of great romantic comedy, and indeed, there is much romance and comedy to be found in this slim volume. Corinne Mucha is skillful at soul-searching, relationship-pondering, and self-mocking as she relates the roller-coaster of love and breaking-up with her longterm boyfriend. All of this is well, and good, but it’s her nervy, imaginative and just a little kooky illustrations that really make this worth a look.

– Panel Patter

Her secret? Continuously changing up the panel style and the focus of her story from page to page. One wouldn’t expect a variety of narrators in an autobiography, but Mucha delivers just that as she seamlessly switches perspectives between her past self, present self, heart, and mind. The level of introspection and insight presented is just plain impressive. Lump that together with a healthy sense of humor and a beautiful art style, and you have an autobio comic like no other.

Mucha’s hard work and suffering pay off in spades. She is not just relating her experiences; she is making herself relatable, which forges a real connection with the reader. Anyone who has ever gone through a painful breakup is sure to have an emotional reaction to this book. The truly amazing thing that Mucha has accomplished here is to make it a positive one.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

– Rachel Loves Comics

Mucha’s loose, comic strip inspired style perfectly renders short, snarky stories that paint a true picture of the bizarre world of high school.

– School Library Journal

Corinne Mucha’s graphic novel Freshman: Tales of 9th Grade Obsessions, Revelations, and Other Nonsense is a fun but still insightful look at that intimidating first year of high school, when everything seems like it’s on the verge of disaster and you’re trembling at the brink of being a social pariah…

…The art, with spot colors in khaki green, is blocky and deceivingly simple. Mucha, who won a Xeric Award for her graphic novel My Alaskan Summer, conveys emotions beautifully and even scenes that depict only telephone conversations are lively and expressive, thanks to the nuances of the characters’ faces.

What is refreshing about Mucha’s work is that it captures all the charm of a John Hughes film without what have become teen movie cliches. The dream boy doesn’t miraculously become attainable, the best friend doesn’t suddenly become desirable. Mucha depicts adolescent life for what it is: baffling, messy, and, at times, unexpectedly awesome.

– Jennifer de Guzman, Blogcritics

In quirky but gently pointed vignettes, Mucha follows a small group of buddies as they experience their first year of high school: making new friends, learning to be supportive, putting fantasies into the perspective of realistic achievement, and other emotional situations that truly feel like revelations to many in their early and mid-teens. Mucha’s kids are long-armed, multiracial, and possess an almost boundless capacity to express their feelings with a roll of the eye or a change in shoulder posture. Almost uniform panels make for straightforward reading for those new to comics, and the placement of a dozen scenes on the page doesn’t make the image or the script difficult to see. A comforting read for the young and a nostalgic look back for those who have already sailed these hormone-perturbed waters.

— Francisca Goldsmith, Booklist

On the heels of Into the Wild and Grizzly Man (two Alaskan adventure stories gone awry) and the shocking introduction of Sarah Palin to mainstream American politicking, most people are just starting to realize there actually is a state nestled on the shoulder of Canada – and they’re starting to form an opinion of it. Mucha’s story about a summer spent working with her boyfriend at a family-owned Bed & Breakfast dispels and explores some of the myths surrounding “The Last Frontier” but mostly relates quaintly one version of a girl’s first foray into adulthood after graduating from college. Without directly attacking big topics like oil and ecotourism, Mucha gently skirts these issues while she talks realistically and figuratively about the highs and lows of living in Alaska.

Mucha personifies objects throughout the book, acting out delightful imaginary conversations that address restaurant food, vacuuming and excess daylight. A highlight comes when her boyfriend-at-the-time Sam grumbles about what’s wrong with Alaska and points out the flaws of their local newspaper. He complains about the inferior Anchorage Daily News, preferring his beloved New York Times, and in response to his sigh, “Oh Times. I miss you,” the next panel shows the Times at a desk with a window overlooking the New York cityscape, dreamily touching a picture of Sam and saying “I miss you, too.”

– Sarah Morean, The Daily Crosshatch

A recent discovery: Corinne Mucha is the bee’s knees. It began with the Ignatz-nominated The Monkey in the Basement and other Delusions and continued with It Doesn’t Exist and My Every Single Thought. Ostensibly these come under the umbrella of ‘mini-comics’, but where even the best mini-comics often feel slight, Mucha packs so much into these pages, pictures brimming off the edges and words, words, everywhere (an unfashionable and dying art in comics), that you never feel you’ve read anything other than a full, dense and enriching narrative. Her shining quality is her ability to combine irreverent humour with more serious ruminations in a manner that’s honest and contemplative without being overly earnest or preachy. Her mini-comics are one of the best uses of the format I’ve come across, her narratives layered and rewarding.

– Zainab Aktar, Comics & Cola

There are times when, while reading comics, I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot. When reviewing Papercutter #8 last month, I’d commented on how much I enjoyed Corinne Mucha’s story “Growing Up Haunted,” and I remember thinking that I wanted to see some more comics from Mucha. Well, in what could only be termed perfect timing, I have in front of me Mucha’s Xeric Grant funded My Alaskan Summer, and I for one and more thankful than ever for the Xeric Grant’s helping comic creators get their creations out there…

…From the very start, there’s a real charm evident in My Alaskan Summer that Mucha keeps going through the entire book. While My Alaskan Summer might be constructed as a series of vignettes, Mucha’s thought very carefully about how to have one flow into the next, and so on. The book opens with Mucha presenting herself at the expert on all things Alaska to her friends, only for the next stories placing Mucha in situations where people feed her incorrect information on the state that she finds herself believing (the state bird being the mosquitoes, that clouds of the bug are so thick you can’t see where you’re going, and that people are vanishing left and right and it’s probably because of wild animal attacks). It’s that contrast of the all-knowing front she puts on for her friends, only to be duped by it just a page or two later, that makes me instantly like My Alaskan Summer

A good travelogue is worth its weight in gold, and I must say that My Alaskan Summer is a bargain and a half. I really felt at the end of the book like I’d been with Mucha and Sam to Alaska, and it makes me excited about the idea of going there myself at some point in time. Until then, though, I take comfort in knowing that I can experience it over and over again by pulling My Alaskan Summer back off the bookshelf. After appearing in mini-comics and anthologies, My Alaskan Summer shows that Mucha was more than ready to take the leap to a full graphic novel, and I look forward to seeing what she has in store next. She’s definitely a talent to watch.

– Greg McElhatton, Read About Comics


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