By Dan Brown
The Wendy Award is the fourth book in Walter Scott’s hilarious Wendy series.
How is it different from her previous adventures? In this one, things take a metafictional turn.
If you like comics that call attention to their own constructed nature, or you just find the hot mess Wendy and her masked friend Screamo a hoot, check it out.
The Wendy Award takes the piss out of arts awards, museums, land acknowledgements, corporate sponsorships, life in the COVID era, addictions, sobriety meds, Gen Z, people who go by one name, and every pretentious panel discussion ever.
The premise, such as it is, is that the title character gets nominated for a prestigious art award for her autobiographical comic strip, called Wanda. You follow?
It turns out the people in Wendy’s life aren’t happy with how they are portrayed in Wanda. I’ll guess the inspiration for this theme is the way Scott’s previous work has been received by his own peers and acquaintances.
The contemporary art prize is sponsored by the national chain Food Hut, whose slogan is “Because you gotta eat sometime!’
The prize includes an exhibition at “the prestigious Art Factory on the Toronto waterfront.” Since I’m more than skeptical about Canada’s arts establishment, I love this kind of comedy.
Her fellow nominees include Winona, Octavia, Zima and Moonstone. The last of these is described as a “relentlessly ubiquitous artist of many mediums and collaborations.”
Even though she is in line for the big award, this doesn’t mean Wendy’s perennially chaotic day-to-day existence as an aspiring artist is any less turbulent than it was in her previous books.
She is still a sucker for wine and cocaine, and at one point takes a side trip to New York to find herself. She’s always trying to find herself.
The strip is now in Seinfeld territory – remember the story arc in which the NBC sitcom showed Jerry pitching a sitcom to NBC? The Wanda Award is kinda like that when it bends back in on itself.
Wendy crashes at the apartment of her friend Tina, who isn’t happy about the intrusion. “Maybe it’ll end up in your next book!” Tina yells as she tosses our harried heroine out on the street, terminating the tense visit.
There are some nice touches here, including an experiment splash page and a panel that’s an homage to the William Burroughs/David Cronenberg acid trip Naked Lunch.
While in the Big Apple, Wendy enters a cinema to watch a film in which moments from her own life are being projected on the screen almost in real time, recalling such self-reflexive motion pictures as Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.
You can feel Scott pushing the boundaries, trying to stretch himself as a graphic novelist and move the form in new directions.
At another point, an upset Wendy even asks for a respite from being the title character in a comic strip. “Can you please cut away to something else for a bit?” she says directly to the reader during a vulnerable moment.
Between you and me, I was unsure Wendy would be able to sustain as many books as she has.
But Scott has not run out of material and now, I am more than invested in this character, who always feels she is failing at life. The joke is still funny.
I am in it to the bitter end, whenever that might come.
Speaking of endings, The Wendy Award concludes with a wordless epilogue in which Wendy walks out of the Art Factory, leaving the white cube behind.
Is she finally forsaking the world of art for something more substantial that can make her feel whole?
I look forward to finding out!!
Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 31 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.