Somewhere in between life’s big moments is hidden, I’m told, its secrets, its power, its richness. The literal “little things that make life worth living.” I humbly submit that no cartoonist around these days captures the often-bittersweet character of those “little” things than Keiler Roberts, and her latest Koyama Press collection, Chlorine Gardens, is the best evidence yet for this assertion.

Not that the book doesn’t chronicle huge, life-changing moments and do so with a kind of quietly vigorous poignancy : the birth of her daughter Xia, a fixture in her strips for years now, is related by means of both “emotional memory” and “just the facts” experiential narrative; her grandfather’s death is told as part rumination on the importance of familial ties, part philosophical treatise on mortality as that which well and truly unites us all; her continuing struggles with bipolar disorder give her ample opportunity to hone…