I walked away from reading Simon Hanselmann’s One More Year with a giggle on my breath & a weight in my soul — laughing in the face of imminent self-induced demise being the overall attitude of this collection of comic book tales, & an attitude particular to Gen X & Millennials familiar with the late 90s & early 2000s “end of history” cultural malaise. It’s whimsical decadence on the verge of going sour, like a sweet milkshake left in a hot car.
For anyone who’s lived in or been to a hard party house, the arrangement of characters won’t be unfamiliar: a down-ass cool chick & her casual boyfriend are the nucleus of an otherwise all-male friend group, the lads secretly (& not so secretly) pining for the lass. The visuals of the book are where the absurdity lies, allowing a certain satiric license to the characters & their misadventures: Megg is a green-skinned, pointy-hat-wearing witch (we assume — she has no apparent powers, this is not a land of magic) her boyfriend, Mogg, a smack-talking black cat (to scale, it’s worth noting, Megg often carries him in her arms), Owl is a humanoid white owl, the straight-laced, bill-paying foil to the pot-smoking, beer-slamming couple who often never leave the saggy sofa in their undecorated apartment. Then there’s Werewolf Jones, the Kramer of the group: he parties the hardest, is the father of two, is often in a jam of his own creation, & lives apart from the rest, a lovable instigator & an agitator.
The foul-mouthed humor dances on a razor’s edge of almost-too-dark-to-be-digestible, but it manages to succeed with bawdy delight. The characters are often urging each other to action, usually Owl or Werewolf Jones urging Megg & Mogg, who seem always to be on their comfortable couch, & groaning in response to these attempted urgings — the haunting indecision of early adulthood is met with apocalyptic saturnalia: the only way to face the looming dread of a decision made is to numb themselves with alcohol, drugs, & jokes. It exists in a distinctly amoral pre-cancel culture milieu; in one extended scene, “Heat Wave”, the group goes to a water park, & Werewolf Jones, who wears an outrageously skimpy thong, takes some “mystery pills” that end up being Viagra, & he walks around with an erection while his two sons booby trap a water slide with razor blades, sending Owl to the hospital. This is but one of many demented plots, replete with bodily harm, toilet humor, sexual shenanigans, &, of course, drug use.
“One more year" is a kind of unexplained mantra that Megg mutters here & there — one more year until what? The reader wonders. Until rehab? Until adulthood? Until the chaos of their ongoing shenanigans is tamed? There is definitely a rude awakening in store for this lot, or there is at least, through this mantra, the understanding that one should eventually come. It’s a rambunctiously good time, this book, while not shying away from peeking into the abyss. Just be sure not to fall in, for Pete’s sake!
—Cowboy Books
