by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
ages: 13+
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It seems a little strange to say that something called “The Eternal Smile” made me feel melancholy, but it did.

The book is three short stories, beautifully drawn, all muse upon the themes of belonging and purpose. They weren’t sad, exactly, and you can’t say they didn’t have happy endings, because they did. But they were bittersweet, edged with longing. Enough to make me melancholy.

I’m not quite sure which author wrote which story (or if they both wrote all three), since they drawing style for each one was so drastically different. That said, the art fit the stories perfectly. The first one, at first glance, seems to be a fantasy hero story: the downtrodden guy fights incredible odds (or in this case, revenge upon the king’s death by killing the frog king), only to find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem. The art is dark and brooding; it’s easy to sense that the end won’t be pretty.

The second story features animals: a greedy frog, who all he wants to do is get enough cash so he can put it in a barrel, dive in and never hit bottom; his toady (I think literally); and his two granddaughters. They come up with a scheme, based on this smile that the toady sees, and develop a religion based on it. Of course there’s more to it; it turns out that the story is nothing more than a children’s show. It’s a delightful poke at mega-churches, reality TV, and people who don’t have the backbone to say what they really think in the face of powerful people. And the art is bright and cheery, which perfectly juxtaposes the deeper, darker story.

The last story is the most heartbreaking, I think. It’s about a mousey woman, working in a cubicle for some large corporation. She wants a raise, and (of course) her boss deflects her and then laughs behind her back. Then she answers one of those “dear lovely, can you send $1,000,000 to help my family in Nigeria” emails. From there, they begin corresponding, and she imagines a whole story surrounding this mysterious African prince. Of course, things don’t work out, by any stretch of the imagination. The art is in shades of gray, the characters cartoonish, childish, which drives the somber point home more.

The one thing these stories do have, even with their melancholy, is that they make you think. About how things don’t always go as we planned. And that even so-called losers have dreams and aspirations. And how there is always hope, even in the face of hopelessness.

Which left me smiling, in the end.