This month I am posting a review of a different self-published comic book each day for the rest of the month! Here is an archive of the books reviewed so far!

Today I'm featuring The Rosie Stories by Diana Tamblyn.

One of the coolest things about mini-comics is the fact that there really is absolutely no "rules" involved in what you can write about. You're completely free to tell whatever type of story you want, whether it be wildly fantastical or deeply close to home.

In the end, while I thought Diana Tamblyn's mini-comic, The Rosie Stories, was good, I would have liked to have seen her embrace the type of "specific to her experience" type of heartfelt story that you usually only get to see in the pages of mini-comics.

In this short (under 20 pages) collection of quick stories about the the lead-up to the birth of her daughter as well as the time afterward, Tamblyn certainly gives us a heartfelt look into her life, but except for one especially poignant moment towards the very end of the book, I don't think she really gives us the sort of personal insight you hope you would get from an artist devoting her work to describing her relationship to her daughter. Mostly what we get is a pretty straightforward depiction of the joys and difficulties of having a baby.

And that's fine - don't get me wrong, Tamblyn does a good job with it, it's just that later in the book, when we see Tamblyn come to a personal revelation based on her views of how she wants her daughter to grow up - THAT was so powerful that I just thought, "Damn! Imagine a whole comic like THAT!"

But don't let that distract you from the fact that the comic IS good.

There are some comic strip style one-pagers starring "Lil' Rosie" that are especially cute.

Check out Tamblyn's blog here.

Overall, Recommended.