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Come Over Come Over
The new collection from cartoonist Lynda Barry, featuring the characters who have become favorites in her recent syndicated features and her popular collection Down the Street.
128 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 1990
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About the author
Lynda Barry
45 books1,146 followersLynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author, perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
June 12, 2012
Lynda Barry is the best. This book makes my heart swell. It's like a hug for my kid self.
July 27, 2012
Another re-read. They are gems of unity, narrative arcs, and humor. They evoke the wild, totemic, self-directed world of childhood--separate from grown-ups, even if oppressed by them. The misunderstanding parents, the feared public school trolls. I still teach Lynda Barry in my short story workshops and--to my mind--every short story writer starting out should read them. They shake off pretention. They show the interconnection and difference between narrative a dialogue. Every time I want to stop taking fiction so seriously, every time I want to remember the sheer enjoyment I got every week before I knew about "good literature" and took my allotted 5 stories from the library every Saturday, I read Lynda Barry. Except this *is* good literature. And you can learn from it even if you don't know how to draw the kids who look the way many of us often feared we looked and often *knew* we looked on the inside.
August 21, 2015
This is a reread for me, in that I read the comics first in alternate rags in various cities, and then read the book collection in 1990 when it first came out. I reread it thanks to Dov's review, which you should just read to get more details if you want them, it's a great review whether you know this collection or Barry or not. But I reread this while waiting for my kids at the dentist's office (! Did this have an effect on my reading?! I have no idea! Though I have had a brutal history with dentists and so maybe a really funny book about middle school helped reduce sue of my anxiety there…). I loved all the late sixtes references, since she and I are close to the same age. This is a Maybonne book, not a Marlys book, and it is often hilarious, sweet, sad, and doesn't shy away from real problems in families. Even though this so clearly a GURL book I lived in a 3 sister house and regardless, is just funny and insightful.
Locker partners. Friends "staying over." Handwritten diary writing. Grading teachers.Drunk dads. Crazy aunts. BFF. The beach. Make out parties getting drunk until everyone pukes. Or barf is the operative word of the time. Frenching. Jive turkey. Hairstyles.
Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable is a direct descendent of Barry's trailer trash (okay, working class white, sorry!) world, same magic, same humor, same sketchy drawing, with more attention to social and cultural issues. Loved it, will always come back to Barry. For a long time, I was over saturated with her and sort of avoided her, but today was fun reading about my past.
Locker partners. Friends "staying over." Handwritten diary writing. Grading teachers.Drunk dads. Crazy aunts. BFF. The beach. Make out parties getting drunk until everyone pukes. Or barf is the operative word of the time. Frenching. Jive turkey. Hairstyles.
Esther Pearl Watson's Unlovable is a direct descendent of Barry's trailer trash (okay, working class white, sorry!) world, same magic, same humor, same sketchy drawing, with more attention to social and cultural issues. Loved it, will always come back to Barry. For a long time, I was over saturated with her and sort of avoided her, but today was fun reading about my past.
August 15, 2015
Where to begin? Hmmm. Why not at the beginning?
Cover: a color illustration of sisters Maybonne and Marlys in giant form, picking up a house and yard outlined in fire. I think they might have tails in the form fiery walkways leading to the entrances of two other houses, one on each side of them and ending as smoke coming out of the chimneys.
There is a night sky, the colorful title "Come Over, Come Over," dotted above with giant stars. A big green field punctuated with tufts of grass. Marlys says "surprise." Marlys and Maybonne both wear glasses and their signature prints (Maybonne flowers, Marlys stripes at a slight diagonal) and smile as mischievous as ever.
"Come Over, Come Over," a daunting, but irresistible invitation.
Endpaper: in a soft-cover book I am not sure it is called endpaper, but on the inside of the front and back covers and their opposing pages is a kind of endpaper, no longer in color, cluttered with cartoon flowers. (The whole rest of the book is just black lines and shading, no color).
Title page: on the right, and on the left hand side, Maybonne and Marlys again. Maybonne is looking at herself in a mirror wearing a dress that has the same cartoon floral pattern as the endpaper and she says, "Who am I?" Marlys says, "My sister!", which right away gets to the heart of this book. Maybonne and Marlys alone, together, against the world of adults, who are inaccessible at best. Maybonne and Marlys aren't always friends, but they are a consistently grounding force in each other's lives even when they're fighting.
Dedication: "This book is dedicated to Robert Roth and the city of Chicago." I'm not sure I've seen a book dedicated to a city before. Robert Roth of the Chicago Reader picked up Barry's comics and started printing them when she had just graduated from college. I guess he started her career as a comic artist.
Opposite the dedication, on the right hand page, Maybonne and Marlys lie in bed together. Again, the three houses from the cover are here, strangely but brilliantly placed in their dark (shaded with Barry's great little lines) room, at the foot of the bed, the alarm going off. Marlys reaches toward Maybonne with perhaps the slightest bit of hesitation. "Psst, Maybonne," Marly's says. "What?" "You asleep?" "No." "Me niether." This one graphic captures the tenderness, strong as a bull, egg-shell fragile, of their intimacy, never forced, never sugary, often fraught, and always felt with some small note of affection, even in their worst moments.
Chapters: I am not sure whether to call these chapters or stories. This book is a collection of connected segments, each with a title. I'll tell you the first five.
1) Ugliful
2) Perfect Art
3) Staying Over
4) Flatness
5) Beyond The Earth (Visit The Planet of Marlys!)
Each story builds on the emotional content of the ones that come before it, and yet, also washes it away.
Barry writes about such tough and painful stuff with so much compassion and humor and musical perfection, and the trauma is real, but so is the joy, which Marlys and Maybonne manage to find in unlikely places. The pleasure of a particular moment or inexplicable feelings of relief and joy manage to wash over the hard stuff in a way that is so true to childhood experience. There is one story in which Maybonne has lost her best friend and can't stand school and feels her life is over, her despair is so tangible, and then it shifts, there is some small shift and she comes back to the present and fights to find something in the world to care for.
I wonder if I would have appreciated this book as a kid. I don't know if I would have related to their particular experiences. Certainly I would have related to Marly's isolation and frustration with school and a lot of not-so-nice kids and so many absurd adults.
There is something of the magic of poetry in here and I think it has to do with precision and maybe eccentricity.
Well, and there you have it, my review of "Come Over, Come Over." Except on the very back of the book is another color comic (didn't I say only the front was in color? Well, the back is too.) And it's great. Maybonne and Marlys bickering about what and who this book is about. If there were a word for utterly charming and completely awkward, that is the word I would use here.
The end.
Cover: a color illustration of sisters Maybonne and Marlys in giant form, picking up a house and yard outlined in fire. I think they might have tails in the form fiery walkways leading to the entrances of two other houses, one on each side of them and ending as smoke coming out of the chimneys.
There is a night sky, the colorful title "Come Over, Come Over," dotted above with giant stars. A big green field punctuated with tufts of grass. Marlys says "surprise." Marlys and Maybonne both wear glasses and their signature prints (Maybonne flowers, Marlys stripes at a slight diagonal) and smile as mischievous as ever.
"Come Over, Come Over," a daunting, but irresistible invitation.
Endpaper: in a soft-cover book I am not sure it is called endpaper, but on the inside of the front and back covers and their opposing pages is a kind of endpaper, no longer in color, cluttered with cartoon flowers. (The whole rest of the book is just black lines and shading, no color).
Title page: on the right, and on the left hand side, Maybonne and Marlys again. Maybonne is looking at herself in a mirror wearing a dress that has the same cartoon floral pattern as the endpaper and she says, "Who am I?" Marlys says, "My sister!", which right away gets to the heart of this book. Maybonne and Marlys alone, together, against the world of adults, who are inaccessible at best. Maybonne and Marlys aren't always friends, but they are a consistently grounding force in each other's lives even when they're fighting.
Dedication: "This book is dedicated to Robert Roth and the city of Chicago." I'm not sure I've seen a book dedicated to a city before. Robert Roth of the Chicago Reader picked up Barry's comics and started printing them when she had just graduated from college. I guess he started her career as a comic artist.
Opposite the dedication, on the right hand page, Maybonne and Marlys lie in bed together. Again, the three houses from the cover are here, strangely but brilliantly placed in their dark (shaded with Barry's great little lines) room, at the foot of the bed, the alarm going off. Marlys reaches toward Maybonne with perhaps the slightest bit of hesitation. "Psst, Maybonne," Marly's says. "What?" "You asleep?" "No." "Me niether." This one graphic captures the tenderness, strong as a bull, egg-shell fragile, of their intimacy, never forced, never sugary, often fraught, and always felt with some small note of affection, even in their worst moments.
Chapters: I am not sure whether to call these chapters or stories. This book is a collection of connected segments, each with a title. I'll tell you the first five.
1) Ugliful
2) Perfect Art
3) Staying Over
4) Flatness
5) Beyond The Earth (Visit The Planet of Marlys!)
Each story builds on the emotional content of the ones that come before it, and yet, also washes it away.
Barry writes about such tough and painful stuff with so much compassion and humor and musical perfection, and the trauma is real, but so is the joy, which Marlys and Maybonne manage to find in unlikely places. The pleasure of a particular moment or inexplicable feelings of relief and joy manage to wash over the hard stuff in a way that is so true to childhood experience. There is one story in which Maybonne has lost her best friend and can't stand school and feels her life is over, her despair is so tangible, and then it shifts, there is some small shift and she comes back to the present and fights to find something in the world to care for.
I wonder if I would have appreciated this book as a kid. I don't know if I would have related to their particular experiences. Certainly I would have related to Marly's isolation and frustration with school and a lot of not-so-nice kids and so many absurd adults.
There is something of the magic of poetry in here and I think it has to do with precision and maybe eccentricity.
Well, and there you have it, my review of "Come Over, Come Over." Except on the very back of the book is another color comic (didn't I say only the front was in color? Well, the back is too.) And it's great. Maybonne and Marlys bickering about what and who this book is about. If there were a word for utterly charming and completely awkward, that is the word I would use here.
The end.
July 10, 2022
This has been on my bedside for 4ish months as my Night Book (trademark), which just meant it was the designated comic or easy book to read every night in bed until I fell asleep with it in my hands and it falls out of my hands and hits me on the nose. Glad nobody gets to see those moments but me and Megan. Anyway I fell off the Night Book (trademark) horse for a while but finally picked it back up again to finish and I must say… Lynda Barry is wonderful and delightful and sweet and sad. She has such a way with writing comics that seem really silly and light but then all of a sudden you realize you’re so emotionally invested in these little naive dorky kids and their mood swings and friendships and drama that you could cry! The kind of sentimentality I love and crave because it’s so completely earned and these characters and their world are so thoroughly sketched out in all these jokey, bittersweet four-panel comics.
August 28, 2022
3.5 stars.
Classic Lynda Barry in many ways.
I'm not a fan of her illustration style, but this collection of 2 page comics wonderfully captures the angst of young girls.
The dynamics between the two sisters, and their struggle to understand and find their place in the world is really well done. A collection of vignettes that take an unflinching look at the drama and trauma of a young girl. I did tire of all the adolescent angst, but don't doubt its authenticity.
Classic Lynda Barry in many ways.
I'm not a fan of her illustration style, but this collection of 2 page comics wonderfully captures the angst of young girls.
The dynamics between the two sisters, and their struggle to understand and find their place in the world is really well done. A collection of vignettes that take an unflinching look at the drama and trauma of a young girl. I did tire of all the adolescent angst, but don't doubt its authenticity.
December 30, 2021
This reprint from D&Q is pretty great. Barry's work here has aged so well. Rereading it is a real nostalgia trip for me, and a reminder that she was a huge influence on my own comics back in the 90s when I was starting out. I eventually cycled through her influence, as well as that of several other folks, coming into my own as a creator, but I will always be grateful for the inspiration Barry gave me. Her liming of the language of teenagers and children remains uncannily accurate.
June 2, 2008
"This book is all against pollution, prejudice, and war." so say Maybonne and Marlys from the back cover of these collected late 80s works from Ms. Lynda Barry. And it is.... kind of. It's also about life getting beautiful, and then cruddy, and then beautiful again. In the magical style of Lynda Barry, Come Over, Come Over is about adolescence, parents, school, sneaking out, sex, and the making & breaking of juvenile friendships -- all subjects weighing heavily on my mind these days! Barry addresses some major thematic issues of childhood, from birthday parties & civil wars with siblings, to sexual assault & divorce. Big Ups for Lynda Barry all around!
My first book of June! What a way to start the month!
My first book of June! What a way to start the month!
March 7, 2022
a little treat from joey and a treat it was 🥰 full of empathy but not sappy which is yet another reason I Love Lynda
August 5, 2023
Read because it was in an Eisner category, but it’s actually insufferable. I could not care less about anything was happening and thought the art was… “not my style” (horrible).
February 13, 2024
Excellent book. I was invested in the main characters almost immediately and stayed invested. Lynda has such an incredible power of telling a story like a ten year old writing in a diary. It's honest, straight-forward and funny and heartbreaking all at the same time. I really enjoy her writing and comicing.
May 10, 2012
My friend sent me this for my birthday. It is classic Lynda Barry. My friend said it reminded her of our old apartment -- we lived in Chicago and put the Lynda Barry comeeks that we found in the Chicago Reader on our fridge every week.
Now we have kids instead of roommates, we don't live in an apartment (well, she does, actually), and the Reader no longer has comics (seriously!). Change will break your heart every time, and I guess that's what this little book is about. The end made me cry, parts made me sad and worried, and most of it made me "lol" as we say now...geez I'm old! No, it's just really late.
Important: if you like Lynda Barry, you should own this.
Now we have kids instead of roommates, we don't live in an apartment (well, she does, actually), and the Reader no longer has comics (seriously!). Change will break your heart every time, and I guess that's what this little book is about. The end made me cry, parts made me sad and worried, and most of it made me "lol" as we say now...geez I'm old! No, it's just really late.
Important: if you like Lynda Barry, you should own this.
February 3, 2012
Lynda Barry is a genius. She captures the experience of being an adolescent girl like a microscope, down to the emotional cells. And don't we all know that adolescent girls are personifications of all humanity? They are even more human than humans. You can cut the angst and insecurity with a knife!
July 17, 2013
Perfect in every way :)
July 12, 2015
My very first Lynda Barry book. Felt like I was meeting my childhood friends, experiences, and fantasies for the first time. Love her - she is so talented.
April 17, 2016
QUALITY READING 10/10 please read
June 30, 2022
I've definitely read a Marlys before that had some of these strips in it, but this is a solid packaging of the story of the family that manages to mix a lot of bitter sad adult feelings in with the goofy kid humor. Don't buy it if you already own some Marlys, but if you've never read Barry before...read everything she's made.
May 2, 2023
“Maybe the surprise about God is that he is small. Maybe all he can say is keep your eyes peeled for problems and help each other and be careful where you get your instructions. Well that’s all I know to write. I hope you are doing good.”
June 27, 2022
Every book from Linda Barry is touching my heart, the same with this one. 😍
May 15, 2022
visceral ❤️ thanks lynda
March 13, 2022
Thank goodness there’s another Lynda Barry book to show a new generation how to laugh at their adolescent selves. Fourteen year old Maybonne and her eight year old sister Marlys contend with a depressed and erratic single mother and an absentee alcoholic father, as well as various cousins, a grandmother, and on again, off again friends. Maybonne narrates most of the (mostly) two-page stories, and her take on serious topics is stunning as well as laugh-out-loud funny. There’s a seventeen year old cousin with a baby, and the baby “thinks [his mother] is his personal Maid!” But there’s also the indecision about seeing a friend’s father touching her: “Is it my business?” and “…if it’s…her father? Where is she supposed to run to?” This is really serious stuff.
These comics from 1988-1990 are packaged in an attractive oblong shape, like several of Barry’s other books. The covers are in full color, and the interior pages are Barry’s traditional black and white pen and ink, but rest assured that the emotions and passions of Maybonne and Marlys are rendered with deeply colorful intention. Each story is told in square panels filled with handwritten text at the top, with the rest filled with detailed drawings of Maybonne and/or Marlys in their element. It has a retro look, but the issues and emotions ring universal and true today.
These comics from 1988-1990 are packaged in an attractive oblong shape, like several of Barry’s other books. The covers are in full color, and the interior pages are Barry’s traditional black and white pen and ink, but rest assured that the emotions and passions of Maybonne and Marlys are rendered with deeply colorful intention. Each story is told in square panels filled with handwritten text at the top, with the rest filled with detailed drawings of Maybonne and/or Marlys in their element. It has a retro look, but the issues and emotions ring universal and true today.
June 14, 2007
I really thought I wouldn't like it because the drawings are so goofy, but one of my favorite cartoonist/zinesters loves her, so I thought I'd give her a shot.
It was really great, though. Smart, sad, funny, ridiculous.
I laughed out loud at least 25 times. I really would have loved this in middle school.
Like Esther Watson's Unlovable + Winchell if she suddenly got un-cute and annoying + Welcome to the Dollhouse.
I plan to read a lot more of her work.
It was really great, though. Smart, sad, funny, ridiculous.
I laughed out loud at least 25 times. I really would have loved this in middle school.
Like Esther Watson's Unlovable + Winchell if she suddenly got un-cute and annoying + Welcome to the Dollhouse.
I plan to read a lot more of her work.
January 14, 2022
Simply the best... Barry's gentle sadness, her mastery of messy lines, the complicated understanding of teen angst, the brief interruptions by quintessential kid sister Marlys... This book is so special. I think it's a great into to Ernie Pook, because it's a little more linear than some of the other collections. Strung together, the Maybonne strips read like a really wonderful YA novel.
July 22, 2015
Ever since I read my first Lynda Barry book not too long ago, I've been making it a goal to read as much of her works as possible.
I love her art, I love her writing, and I love the way she tells stories. She captures the feel of childhood and adolescence so well and her narratives are just fantastic.
I love her art, I love her writing, and I love the way she tells stories. She captures the feel of childhood and adolescence so well and her narratives are just fantastic.
December 11, 2008
yeah. i don't remember this book. it was marlys-heavy, i think, which is a good thing. i think it had some maybonne in it, which is even better. it was probably pretty good & worth a read. that is all.
December 11, 2007
Lynda Barry is a genius. Marlys and Maybonne will break your heart. These books saved my life in early high school.
October 23, 2008
741.5 The trials and tribulations of a teenage girl in the 1970's. Funny and odd..typical Lynda Barry.
July 3, 2009
another teen fave
October 10, 2011
3.5 stars -- Barry's comics are fun and funny, although I did tire of all of the teenage gossip drama.
July 28, 2012
As always, Lynda Barry tells funny, moving, poignant stories. I love her combination of narrative, dialogue, captions, and art.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews