Remember when we were famous that one week, Andy?

I Saw You...: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections

by Julia Wertz

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

This anthology of comics inspired by real-life missed connection ads posted on Craigslist and in local papers around the country will tug at your heartstrings and make you think. Lonely hearts, romantics, and even cynics pore over missed connection ads in search of love, to gawk and giggle, or out of curiosity. These posted stranger sightings and chance encounters lay bare the truths and oddities of real-life loneliness and attractions and bring out the voyeur in the best of us. I Saw You takes this phenomenon and makes it even better.

Julia Wertz has gathered the stars and soon-to-be-stars of the graphic art world, including Peter Bagge, Jesse Reklaw, Tom Hart, Sam Henderson, Laura Park, Emily Flake, Keith Knight, Janelle Hessig, Gabrielle Bell, Aaron Renier, Austin English, Corinne Mucha, Jeffrey Brown, Alec Longstreth, Minty Lewis, Joey Sayers, David Malki, Kazimir Strzepek, Ken Dahl, Shannon Wheeler, Shaenon Garrity, Rodd Perry, Abby Denson, Damien Jay, Sarah Glidden, and dozens more, to interpret these plaintive, hopeful postings in drawings that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disarmingly strange.

When Andy and I first moved to Portland and I was still green enough to think that jobs were found in newspaper want ads, I happened upon the I Saw You section of the weekly free paper. I happened upon it because one of the headlines was "Andy and Sara From The Mill". Whoa! Fame the second week in town. The ad said that the secret admirer had seen us walking on Hawthorne by The Baghdad, so it has to be true. We always did stuff like that. Andy is forever mad at me for not cutting it out for his diary or something but it really happened. Andy K. and Sara H. had their day in the sun! Probably their last. I really should have cut that ad out.

As an apology to Andy, and a fond nod at our days of eating Hawaiian food on Clinton Street and reading personal ads to each other, we will be found at Powells this week, reading the new book to each other, pretending to eat food that is mayonnaise based and wondering which of the faces around us is creepy enough to take the time to put into print such weird shit in a free paper.