It's interesting to make lists; lists can reveal profound subtleties in an unassuming way. Lists are especially interesting if, with every repetition, they have evolved slightly, reavling previously unseen nuance. Drinking in the Movies, reads like a list. Wertz basically spells out the entire book on page 13:

"To DO Today, Tomorrow, Forever

1. wake up grumpy

2. coffee, breakfast, 2 newspapers

3. take a dump

4.work on comics

5. stare vacantly out window

6. Lunch of leftovers

7. go to bookstore/ procrastinate

8. walk to work

9. resent work

10. walk home

11. Drink to forget miserable existence"



Like a repeated list, each scene in the book reiterates the same trite, drunken, middle class woes... She makes the same choices and mistakes without the added dimensionality of self realization or even attempt to interrupt the vicious cycle of self-limitation. On page 162, she sums up her response to social responsibility and self-realization: "Hm, the US is water boarding people like crazy and... oh look! Kittens!" While she means this as a joke, of course, and shows herself listening to the news frequently in her panels which is supposed to show us that she does, in fact, care, she seems just like every other citizen that mentions politics because you have to but averts their eyes when real social responsibility enters their sphere.  

I did get the feeling that this woman was representing a self that wasn't really who she was. Not only is she drawn as if she were Little Lulu or some other 1930's newspaper character, but she drops hints that perhaps she is more 3-D than she gives herself credit for. There are keyboards and tiny pianos in the back of her bedroom. Does she play music? She has artist friends in other cities who are excited to see her. She gets published. I marveled at the quote on the back of the book from Fiona Apple, "I wish the little 2-D Julia was my indian in the cupboard. I'd make an easy chair out of a ring box, fasten it to the front of my bike, give her a pen-cap full of whiskey, and off we'd go!" I was surprised by the enthusiasm for this type of unevolving cynicism. The break through, booze-tossing ending should have felt like the revelation we were waiting for, but instead it followed unannounced like a dull wet thud. She mentions it casually on page 187 without sharing any of the insight or struggle of her decision, which I found very unsatisfying. She has so heartily abandoned self exploration/ emotional content/ intimacy that even a comic about her life, a memoir, is impersonal. Her anxiety about her brother, as illustrated on page 117, is the only scene that hints at emotional content.

Upon further examination, I found pictures, interviews, and articles about Wertz that made her seem fairly interesting and decent. Her portrayal of herself is extremely limited in scope.

She says of herself in an interview,

"“Cartoon me is a lot more negative and ornery,” she says. Wertz in real life has never been the same girl who appears on the page, especially not these days. “Sometimes I don’t like the person cartoon me seems to be.” In the beginning, cartoon Julia would often eat the limbs of people who annoyed her, stuff babies with cocaine for drug smuggling purposes or spread her butt cheeks to defecate on a stranger who asked her a stupid question. “I like to fancy that I’m a lot more accepting and happy in real life.” Hearty Magazine, Nov 22, '10"
What does it mean to make a memoir that represents only a slice of who we are? Her character seems more fictional than autobiographical and many of the scenes deal with her experiences of the world around her, as does most fiction, rather than directly portraying a personal experience.

I thought this was a pretty good article about her- I enjoyed seeing photos of her and her studio as it totally
changed the perception I got of her through her work:
http://heartymagazine.com/features/julia-wertz-cartoonist-graphic-novelist-interview-photos