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Jeremiah
Jeremiah is the foreboding story of a teenager whose struggle with self-discovery may bring on the end of his world. A watercolor and ink graphic novel spanning 160 pages, Jeremiah explores the conflict between the physical and the inexplicable, asking questions about faith, adolescence and sexuality.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
About the author
Cathy G. Johnson
9 books35 followersCathy G. Johnson is an award-winning cartoonist and educator living on occupied Wampanoag and Narragansett land in Providence, Rhode Island. She’s the author of multiple graphic novels, including The Breakaways (2019), with her newest book Fox River Comics Camp coming out October 2026. With her teaching project Comic Art Ed!, she leads comics classes for all ages at libraries, schools, and universities across New England. She works as a professor in the MFA Visual Narrative program at Boston University, Center for Cartoon Studies, and RISD. When she isn’t drawing or teaching comics, Cathy makes band posters, watches scary movies, and hangs out with her pet box turtle that she’s had since she was 7 years old.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 22, 2019
If you are awed by metaphor and vague social commentary above plot or logic, this is THE book for you. It feels mysterious without ever offering any meaning. Its characters don't follow any logic, have any growth, or actually do anything for the entirety of the book except be generally maudlin at each other.
A character is supposedly bullied at a school we never see, there is reference to there being no neighbors around at all, every characters' back story is a mysterious unexplained trauma, a character who doesn't want to fuck his cousinsister anymore has an out of nowhere sex scene with the male drifter who challenges the mysterious status quo of his life, there is a forest and also a a cornfield that both represent "The Outside World" where everything the protagonist loves goes to ... die ? abandon him ? change ?
I kept hoping this story was going to somewhere other than Spookily Vague ending suggesting the death of innocence, but that's one of the more obvious interpretations of its deliberately obtuse metaphorical ending.
Also, if you enjoy books which are praised as "haunting" and "ephemeral" when the reviewers clearly mean "vague" and "aloof", this might be a five star book for you.
The watercolors and inks are lovely.
A character is supposedly bullied at a school we never see, there is reference to there being no neighbors around at all, every characters' back story is a mysterious unexplained trauma, a character who doesn't want to fuck his cousinsister anymore has an out of nowhere sex scene with the male drifter who challenges the mysterious status quo of his life, there is a forest and also a a cornfield that both represent "The Outside World" where everything the protagonist loves goes to ... die ? abandon him ? change ?
I kept hoping this story was going to somewhere other than Spookily Vague ending suggesting the death of innocence, but that's one of the more obvious interpretations of its deliberately obtuse metaphorical ending.
Also, if you enjoy books which are praised as "haunting" and "ephemeral" when the reviewers clearly mean "vague" and "aloof", this might be a five star book for you.
The watercolors and inks are lovely.
August 16, 2019
i'm not entirely sure what just happened, but i really enjoyed it
February 19, 2022
Plot. Story. These are the things you must not be concerned with if you're wanting to enjoy this book. It is very metaphoric so you can fill in the blanks with what you think the story is about. This may be what the author had planned but the sparse dialogue does lead to some disturbing conclusions regarding the age of the characters and the implications of what happens between them.
December 27, 2019
what have i just read?
March 2, 2021
What a goddamn depressing book
July 24, 2021
how fucking depressing.
December 7, 2021
Beautiful, sad, made me cry
September 1, 2024
My daughter told me this book changed her life. She told me on our last day together before she went off to college. Her life is beautiful, so I figured I should read it, too. Thank you, Scouty!
December 15, 2015
I couldn't give this a fifth star because there was a sex scene in it which honestly didn't work for me. It didn't make sense based on the actions of the characters beforehand. It was just abrupt and not convincing.
Otherwise, this is a brilliantly weird and creepy story, and I still don't think I understand some of it.
Jeremiah is a strange young man, probably a teenager. He never says, but then he never says most things. The other characters are his apparent father, a girl who may or may not be related to him, and a stranger who comes in to upset their "happy" home.
The farm is disturbingly isolated, in too many ways, and none of the characters could easily be called sane or normal. In fact, the missing dog was probably the only normal one on the farm.
If the author wanted readers to be really creeped out by the setting and disturbed by the story, then she succeeded magnificently.
The artwork is done in a watercolor style that is much richer than one would expect, using color and shading in strange ways as the story gets darker. There is a forest scene with what might be a wolf, and images of what might be a field on fire, but are they real? That is at the heart of the story.
It's powerful and intriguing and leaves the reader with lots of unanswered questions.
Otherwise, this is a brilliantly weird and creepy story, and I still don't think I understand some of it.
Jeremiah is a strange young man, probably a teenager. He never says, but then he never says most things. The other characters are his apparent father, a girl who may or may not be related to him, and a stranger who comes in to upset their "happy" home.
The farm is disturbingly isolated, in too many ways, and none of the characters could easily be called sane or normal. In fact, the missing dog was probably the only normal one on the farm.
If the author wanted readers to be really creeped out by the setting and disturbed by the story, then she succeeded magnificently.
The artwork is done in a watercolor style that is much richer than one would expect, using color and shading in strange ways as the story gets darker. There is a forest scene with what might be a wolf, and images of what might be a field on fire, but are they real? That is at the heart of the story.
It's powerful and intriguing and leaves the reader with lots of unanswered questions.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews