The past is another country — except when it isn’t.

Noah Van Sciver has long been one of the undisputed modern masters of autobio comics, to the extent that even his most famous fictional character, Fante Bukowski (whose trilogy of books recently concluded with A Perfect Failure — reviewed a few weeks back on this very site) is obviously liberally populated with (admittedly exaggerated) people, places, and events from his own life — but a close look at one’s upbringing and how it continues to inform life right up to the present day, well, that’s quite a thematic evolution from, say, My Hot Date and similar works, is it not?

Which isn’t meant as a slight against his earlier, Ignatz-winning work, mind you — anything but! That comic more than earned its near-universal praise. But how the kid we met in its pages grew into the man we’ve seen in…