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Overview
Here’s a new turn for the controversial cartoonist and commentator Ted Rall. Not only is this autobiographical but he has paired up with the acclaimed artist of Bluesman and The Castaways for fully painted art. It’s the eighties and Ted is in college in New York City and slipping. His pranks, lack of focus and restlessness get him kicked out of school. Unable to find a job, rejected by his parents, he’s on the verge of suicide. Instead he finds comfort in the arms of many women he meets casually and puts up a front for. Hey, better than being homeless and begging, but then is it? It may sound like an ideal grift but the toll is much higher than one may imagine. Between acidly funny and disturbingly real, Rall, a cartoonist whose work has alienated half the world, pours out his guts on a hard turning point in his life. Callejo adopts a new fully painted color style for this work, showing his versatility.
Synopsis
The long hot summer of 1984 in New York City. Duran Duran and the Scorpions on the radio. Mayor Ed Koch flipping off anti-Reagan protestors as he pulls into Gracie Mansion. Wannabe Madonnas strut the streets of Manhattan wearing Lycra mini skirts and bras on top of fuchsia blouses. Jersey girls from exurbia turn heads with one exposed shoulder, á la Flashdance. Down on Wall Street, "power dressing" rules men with yellow ties and women in jackets with shoulder pads jostle and sweat in pre-air-conditioned, graffiti-covered subway cars on their way to jobs at companies like E.F. Hutton and Prudential Bache.
Uptown in Morningside Heights, which snottier downtown types call Harlem, summer session students at Columbia Univeristy loiter on the steps in front of Low Library, making college-age jokes about the phallicfountains and playing guitar.
Inside the relatively new (yet rat-infested) East Campus complex, however, Ted Rall has just received an eviction notice. He has twenty-four hours to leave his summer dorm room. He has nowhere to go.
In a mad panic, Ted boxes up his worldly possessions, dumps them in an unlocked janitor's closet, and prepares to leave behind his comfortable life as a college student. No more meal plan. No more classes. No more school dances. No place to live. No way to get money. Just like that, Rall is homeless.
With art by "Bluesman" artist Pablo G. Callego, "The Year of Loving Dangerously" is a graphic memoir about coming of age under the worst possible circumstances. It's a story of sex, despair and embracing life no matter what.