Our pal Seth Hahne, of GoodOKBad fame, came up with this 31 Days of Comics challenge, one of those things where each day of the month you're given a different category that you then make a choice of a comic to fill that category. I figured it would be a fun bit to do, so here we are! Click here to see each of the categories so far!

We continue with Day 14, which is a Comic That You Love That You'll Never Read Again

Read on for my pick and then you can share yours!

This is more difficult for me than for most, since you never really can tell which classic story I'll be needing to re-read to do a write up for any given list. To wit, no offense to Akira, I liked Akira a lot, but I wasn't exactly planning on re-reading it but then it was on one of the various annual polls so I had to (and then I ended up re-reading it for some other reason, so that's probably a bad example, but whatever).

So while most of you folks can pick a comic that you liked a lot that you just don't think you'll ever read again (likely for reasons involving the comic's plot being difficult to re-read, I'd imagine), I have to toe a very specific line. The comic has to be good enough that I "love" it but also there has to be a reason why I wouldn't want to re-read it and it also has to be not famous enough for me to end up featuring it for another reason on the blog.

Hmmm...this is a toughie.

I guess I'll go with...

Stitches



David Small's Stitches is an astonishingly haunting comic memoir that, as great as it is, is so rough that it is hard to re-read. It is not for the faint of heart to see a young boy be given radiation by his doctor father for years to help cure some sinus problems he had had for some time only to have the radiation cause a tumor to grow in his throat, leading to a horrific operation, a gross scar and a lack of the ability to speak for years!

And that might not even be the most messed up aspect of Small's life story!

No, that's the undercurrent of oppression that goes on in his household, which we see vignettes from from over the years.

Small is a great artist, and he does a superb job of depicting the stark horror of his life when he needs to.

This is a wonderfully horrible book.