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

by Julia Wertz (Editor), MariNaomi (Contributor), Gabrielle Bell (Contributor)

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.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Nonfiction, Humor, Graphic Novels Comics, Anthologies, Adult

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2009

About the author

Julia Wertz is a professional cartoonist, amateur historian, and part-time urban explorer. She made the comic books The Fart Party vol 1 and vol 2 (collected in Museum of Mistakes) and the graphic novels Drinking at the Movies, The Infinite Wait, Tenements, Towers, & Trash, (for which she won the 2018 Brendan Gill Prize), and Impossible People. She does regular short story comics for the New Yorker. Her work has appeared regularly in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the Believer, the Best American Comics, and other publications. Her photography of abandoned places has appeared in a handful of newspapers. She is a repeated MacDowell fellow but was rejected from Yaddo. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she spent a decade in New York City before settling in Sonoma County, CA, with her partner Oliver (yup, the Oliver from Fart Party) and their son Felix. She’s currently working on the graphic novel Bury Me Already (It’s Nice Down Here) to be released in 2025.

Reviews

[Hannah Garden · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun idea and I'm glad I finally got a copy, it's a bunch of Craigslist "Missed Connections" turned into tiny, mostly one-page comics by a bunch of different artists. Wertz edited it as a mini a long time ago and then an agent sniffed it out at an expo and was like SAY NOW WERTZ LET'S US GET YOU SOME MONEY AND PRESTIGE PLEASE, which is my favorite kind of story to have a sharp little cookie get scooped up and rewarded for her efforts.
Also Wertz draws a couple using her character and in one where the Julia character is pining for a coffee shop guy, she totally draws that guy as Oliver, which, waaahhhhhhhhh oh man so cute, so charming.
A fun toilet read. Read a couple while ya pee, it'll last a couple weeks. I like it.
Plus having once been a Strandie where we all loved looking at Missed Connections together because there were always a million for Strand, this made me flash back fondly on how fun and funny that was, looking at the internet together while we were supposed to be working, writing prank ones for people and waiting for the reaction, etc. Just very great dumb stuff.

[Wilmarie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is bad oh so bad. So creepy and the art is meh. Reading it was excruciating. I hate it so much!!!

[Raina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun little collection of comic artists riffing on real-life personal ads. They vary in length from a page to several, some are anecdotes of the creators actual experiences relating to personals, some use the sequential art medium to give the text a whole new (generally creepy) meaning. It was fun to see the variety of approaches and illustration styles (Wertz includes artists from both the published GN community and the zine community, which is very very cool), although I did see a prevailing theme of mocking the pathetic desperation of the persons who wrote the ads. Most of these feel kinda miserable and anticlimactic, which is fitting since we don't actually know the fate of the ads in almost every case. Fun to discover new artists for to follow, although none of the stories were long enough to convert me to a new style if I didn't have an immediate aesthetic connection. If that makes any sense. It's potluck day and I have very little brain. The end.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have never once written a "missed connections" ad, nor even a M4W ad of any kind... but you know, sometimes I read them in The Reader or places like that... whole stories there, waiting to be told or experienced, some hopeful, some sad... This comics collection gets at a wide range of stuff and is hard to put down... pretty fascinating view of human nature... of shyness and hesitation as one fundamental basis for missing connections...

[Stay Fetters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admit it.... home alone with nothing to do with unlimited internet. You hop on craigslist for a quick laugh and a few hours later you're worried about the human race. You may even feel discomfort.
The missed connections page is always great for a laugh or even a shutter. This compilation has the best of both worlds and alittle more.
Some of these are just plain weird and she could of found funnier ones. Still a good group of awkwardness.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is full of cartoons and graphic short stories based on real life ads found in Craiglist's missed connections section. I had no idea this existed, so that was surprise number one. Surprise number two was that such ads could inspire these comics and cartoon artists to create such amazing work. I loved immersing myself in their interpretations of what hides behind a missed connection ad, of what the person really meant, or what the encounter could have been like.
I loved what Julia Wertz, young cartoonist and editor of this book, said in her note at the beginning: "I became intrigued with the concept of a subculture of people who feel they missed something great because they didn't have the courage to speak up. I found it even more peculiar that there were many people who think that strangers they spotted in a passing car or on the other side of the bus must surely be the loves of their lives." The idea of people who feel such deep connections with complete strangers was a fascinating one to me, too!
I think that even if you are not drawn to this book conceptually, it would still be worth it to check it out, if only for all the cool artists that contributed their own interpretations to it. Thanks to this book, I discovered very young, very talented people whose work I can't wait to get my hands on.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always been intrigued by the little soap operas-in-miniature that are encapsulated in missed connections ads, and this book will help feed that morbid curiosity of anyone who has read those sections and found themselves mentally embroidering upon the fragmented recaps of transitory connections. The artists in this collection seize upon all of the inherent humor, pathos, and let's face it--occasional skeeziness--of the ads in exactly the same way the average reader would, so as satisfying as it is there's not a whole lot that's completely unexpected. What is really great though, is the number of artists that came through to contribute mini-comics for the book. Personal favorites include the cheerful delusion illustrated in Cathy Leamy's "Hello There Doctor Love", Rama Hughes's surprisingly poignant "Marshmallow!", Shaenon K. Gerrity's kooky "You had sideburns and a mullet...", and Aaron Renier's "Macrame & Cheese". Just a heads up: the contributors pages in the back not only lists the e-mail contact information and the websites of all the featured artists, and everyone came up with their own mock "I saw you" post to accompany their information. Not only is this a useful resource if you find an artist you like, but almost all of them are pretty funny. Don't skip over it.

[Gary Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too long and uneven to really be great; too short to be overbloated and awful.
This one had some great pieces scattered throughout, but most were mediocre at best.
Unless you want to help support indie comics published through a mainstream house, or you're a fan of more than five contributors found within, you can probably skip this one.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review: https://hiplibrariansbookblog.com/200...

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I need to get out more because I had never heard of Missed Connections on Craigslist before this book(…or maybe stay in more. Whatevs. )

Anyway, I felt that this was a good concept and a cool way to see a nice range of comic artists. After a while though, for me, it grew a bit tedious. Maybe two or three sittings instead of one long one like I did would have improved my enjoyment of it.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute.

[Rhlibrary]

This book combines two of my favorite modern-day phenomena: graphic art and Missed Connections.

If you’re unaware of Missed Connections, you should visit Craigslist.com immediately and click on the link for it. Missed Connections is a place online where people can post little love notes (or maybe “would-be-love” notes) about how they saw someone they were romantically interested in around town and neglected to say something. The posts can range from cute to creepy to wildly inappropriate, but, either way, they’re often very entertaining.

A typical example from today in New York City: “Sunday night…around 10ish. You were rocking a white hat and some killer sneaks. You kept looking at me, and made the same transfer from the southbound NQRW to the L train at 14th. You were standing next to me on the platform. You kept looking at me… you’re cute. Why didn’t you say something?…”

These are entertaining enough by themselves, but Editor Julia Wertz has collaborated with a ton of stars of the graphic art world to produce a whole book of comics inspired by real Missed Connections. I flipped through it for an hour yesterday, and now all my friends have been asking for it. It reminds me of a former staff pick of mine called Postcards.

[#ReadAllTheBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ended up buying this book after having read most of Wertz' other work. I knew that this book was compiling work from several authors, so I knew that the artwork & storytelling abilities would differ from person to person. For the most part this is actually a pretty good book.

The listings in this are pulled from craigslist as well as other venues, but seems to be predominantly craigslist. The stories run from funny to sad to downright tragic. We see possible reactions to these listings running from the embarrassing to the joyous. Some of the more memorable strips (to me anyway) had to have been the librarian strip as well as the "cute girl in the diner" mixup.

The artwork in here ranges from the cutesy to the elaborate to the surreal. Sorry I'm not more descriptive, but you'll find all types in this book. For this reason there might be some readers who will adore one style, only to be turned off by another. The overall impression I had of this book was favorable. It's a nice cute read that's perfect for picking up & flipping through at random. I'm sure you'll find your favorite but overall most of the excerpts were gems.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book combines two things I really like—comics and missed connections—and I like select stories in here, though the collection overall feels "off"/"weak". I would be very interested if this book were ALL w4w stories, but that won't happen, so at least more from the m4w (I think there was like, one?) and the w4w (again, like one) and the other sections. The organization/layout could be revised, too, like to sort it by w4m, m4w, etc & like, each contributor has their name all over the place: sometimes the comic-artist signs their name within the comic somewhere, but the editor also included a line beneath each comic stating the copyright year + comic-artist's name again in addition to listing their name a second/THIRD time at the bottom of each new comic. Maybe I was expecting this book to feature the most eccentric-absurd-striking missed connections but some that the artists chose to draw out were rather average-plain ones that ended up feeling repetitive if you read this book in one sitting. I like that a few Chicago ones are in here, and I like having found a few new artists whose work I'll check out-outside.

[Printable Tire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read. I especially appreciated the artists who took the time not to depict the usual fat redneck salivating over hot girl angle.

I want to do a comic of a craiglist mc I saw one time that started like this:

"Glasses, Hoodie, Skinny Jeans on Bike - w4m
I see you around school and at shows all the time, and I just had to get it off my chest: I think you're incredibly sexy. I love your tight jeans and dark eyes. You're always really funny, and I can't tell if you're flirting or just being nice."

The poster then suggests meeting up at a music show, and goes unnecessarily into describing what the show will be like. It seemed to me to be an ingenious marketing strategy: post a missed connection on craigslist describing every geeky hipster boy ever and suggest he/they meet you at a show you're putting on. Instant awkward audience! The last caption would be all these hipster dudes that look the same staring awkwardly at each other while some hot hipster chick plays onstage.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well. It only took an hour to read. Ultimately, it was a pretty sad book. But I suppose you expect that from a book about people searching for love no? A lot of the 'missed connections' were rather sweet in and of themselves, and you could tell when the artist had chosen a rather creepy one for the shock value alone. I did enjoy the ones taken completely out of context though. All in all, I suppose it actually made me feel a little better for the dozens of stupid little crushes I develop about people on a daily basis. I guess I can be a little prouder about these crushes (and actually one day being the creepy guy who acts upon a heart flutter as so I end up with a black eye, rather than a sad little comic about how indecisive I was.)

[Jai Hamid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember I first saw this collection of comics in the same bookstore that Ginsberg first performed and rattled from the jowls of the Earth "Howl." I found it quirky. I didn't get to finish reading it due to my hosts itching to get me to something (in their minds) more culturally profound. I ended up spending an hour at the pier eating stale and salt crusted calm chowder in a greasy sourdough ball. I again picked it up a few days ago with the same odd feeling of connection and attraction and am glad I did. Short, sweet, simple, laugh-out-loud-funny, cringe worthy, a tickle or two. I quite enjoyed it. You should check it out instead of staring at the Alcatraz ferry that is booked for the day.

[Chris - Quarter Press Editor · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were fun little takes, some better than others--as is always the case with such collections--but worth my time.

Some are nothing more than quick little jokes, while others take the time to give a heartfelt moment and how we react, why we react, or why we look for these "missed connections" with strangers.

There's a movie poster for LOST IN TRANSLATION with the tagline: "Everyone Wants to Be Found." I think that sums up the theme of this collection.

[eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

would've given it five stars if wertz had curated & edited it just a little more heartlessly...but still a fun, quick read, and more variety than i expected.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well put together collection of an interesting theme.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this little anthology to be completely fascinating. Prior to reading this I was unaware of the whole concept of having a missed connection and further more people placing ads for them. The stories range from “oh I can relate to that” to “what...that’s so outrageous” all illustrated by talented alternative cartoonists. With all anthologies I read and review on here I like to share my “top 3” entries.

Julia Wertz’s coffee shop cartoon which is also the cover. I was not familiar with her work prior to this. From this I’d love to check out the rest of her work.

Missing Out by Marinaomi is brilliant. I’m an admirer of her work and this was just another lovely comic that has a laugh in the right place. Also, her dialogue is always enjoyable to read especially aloud.

Liz Prince’s entry is also cutely drawn and the situation is totally relatable.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amusing quick read (edited by Wertz) - essentially, each comic is a recreation (with a lot of creative license) of a 'missed connections' post on Craigslist circa 2005. First, I had no idea what this was until I read the forward, but apparently if you're riding the bus and made eye contact with someone you found attractive or felt like you had a connection to but didn't have the nerve to engage what person you could (still can?) post a, to me, creepy message trying to reconnect with this person. Many of these cartoons and reimaginings of these posts made me laugh out loud. Not essential and not all of these are funny, but they do tap into a segment of society that I did not know existed, which made it all worthwhile.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these comics! I'm almost tempted to steal the idea but the pacing is AMAZING and I probably wouldn't be able to do as good of a job as these artists.

My favorites include: the library worker, the lonely guy wearing someone's grandmother's cremains, the stripper, the artist/author at a comicon, the shy, fat guy at another comicon, and the guy poking a girl in the bum on the subway. There's lots more to love, but those are the ones I remember most.

[Madalene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lisa Hanawalt and David Malki are in here! And lots of other intriguing artists. But man oh man is it a reminder that some of the craigslist missed connections are really a quieter extension of rape culture. Interesting concept all the same.

[Tom Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology of comics with the theme "Missed Connections" from Craigslist. The art styles are varied (of course) and generally well done. But the stories are spotty and, well, I dunno...

I supposed not every book can be a 4.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see that her humor is still the same compared to her other comics but was also thrown off by the haphazard style of storytelling and noticed a sloppier style of drawing compared to her most recent book, again not sure if that was on purpose or not.

[Elise Finlinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really cool anthology about Craigslist missed connections. It was super cool to see different people's takes on the quirky nature of these messages. Fun, quick, comic.

[Andy Stocker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun, cute, kinda creepy. It's a great collection of a lot of different artists. Check it.

[Nghi Vo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voyeuristic, whimsical and weird, so a winner!

[Cat Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like comics, and if you ever liked the missed connections section of the Village Voice or Craig’s List, then you should check this out.