Nostalgia can be great, but sometimes memories can give us a skewed, rose-tinted view of what really happened. In the recently released graphic novel House Party, Rachael Smith follows three friends who try to recapture the zest of their university days by throwing a house party like the ones they remember.

Gold medalist Doug Larson once said, "Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days." Or as a famous fictional space pirate once said, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

House Party has been described as a "a quintessentially British version of Scott Pilgrim," but that's only on the surface. It might be more aptly described as a post-modern sequel to the classic teen films of John Hughes. Not quite The Big Chill, House Party is The Breakfast Club picked up in the proverbial hangover years of the characters' early 20s, in between the first blush of adulthood and actually making a life for themselves. Don't get me wrong, House Party isn't droll -- it's quite the comedy, but told in service of a 20-something coming-of-age story.

Smith is a relatively new name to the world of comics; David Lloyd published some of her early work as part of his digital anthology Aces Weekly, but House Party marks her formal graphic novel debut. Published by Great Beast Comics, Smith's work harkens back to co-founder Marc Ellerby, as well as Bad Machinery's John Allison and Faith Erin Hicks' Zombies Calling.

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