I Am Not Okay With This

by Charles Forsman

Overview

Forsman has expanded the 2018 first edition, which sold out quickly in the wake of the success of the Netflix adaptation of his graphic novel The End of the Fxxxing World, to include over 20 new pages as well as a new cover.

Coming to Netflix in 2020, from the production team behindStranger Thingsand the director ofThe End of the Fucking World!

With Charles Forsman's hit graphic novelThe End of the Fucking Worldalready turned into a hit Netflix series, 2020 will see the Netflix debut of the series adaptation of another Forsman classic,I Am Not Okay With This,starringSophia Lillis (It) as Sydney! Sydney seems like a normal 15-year-old freshman. She hangs out underneath the bleachers, listens to music in her friend’s car, and gets into arguments with her annoying little brother — but she also has a few secrets she’s only shared in her diary. Like how she’s in love with her best friend, Dina; the bizarreness of her father's death; and last but not least, there's those painful telekinetic powers that keep popping up at the most inopportune times. Forsman expertly channels teenage ethos and ennui in a style that evokes classic comic strips while telling a powerful story about the intense, and sometimes violent, tug of war between trauma and control.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683961932
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	11/06/2018
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Charles Forsman's The End of the F***ing Worldgraphic novel has been adapted into a critically acclaimed television series that is distributed by Netflix. He is also a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies. He lives in Hancock, Mass.

Editorial Reviews

"Forsman’s conclusion exerts a continued, nagging pressure once the book is through, hovering on the edge of your consciousness... It may be the only way to wind up a story that lurches so unpredictably from the ordinary to the ominous. — NPR: Books"

NPR Books

"A vision of what the X-Men mythology might be like for a mutant who never got that reassuring visit from Professor X. This rocky journey it is as insightful as it is brutal.”— Vulture"

Vulture

12/11/2017
Forsman (The End of the Fucking World) draws heavily on the aesthetics of classic Popeye comics in this dark tale of adolescence. Sydney is an apathetic and depressed 15-year-old girl, tasked by her school guidance counselor with keeping a journal to help sort out her feelings. This allows for pitch-perfect unreliable narration to run over visual depictions of events. Sydney’s troubles are easily relatable: fights with her mother, grief and guilt over her father’s death, a crush on her best friend, questions about her sexuality, and experiments with drugs. But Sydney is also burdened with a terrible power. Her rage manifests as a shooting pain which she can direct at others, causing nosebleeds, migraine headaches, and worse. She has to live through the pain right along with her victims, but sometimes that seems worth it. The pages are drawn with a scratchy quill pen line, with occasional subtle grays interrupting the harsh black and white. As with Forsman’s best work, it’s another troubling yet poetic exploration of young adults working through their mental pain via its physical projection. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"I Am Not Okay with This brings together teenage angst, PTSD, sexual confusion, classically retro visuals and telekinesis in one unmissable story."

Broken Frontier

"Forsman’s ability to maintain the immediacy of Syd’s point of view without completely surrendering to it results in a complex piece of work and one of the most honest depictions of the emotional telescoping effect of both depression and adolescence."

The Comics Journal

"Forsman's conclusion exerts a continued, nagging pressure once the book is through, hovering on the edge of your consciousness like Sydney's power-monster. It may be the only way to wind up a story that lurches so unpredictably from the ordinary to the ominous."

NPR: Books

01/01/2018
Fifteen-year-old Syd feels totally out of place. She's skinny but not "hot-skinny," she's dealing with the death of her father in silence, and her best friend (with whom Syd is in love) is dating a homophobic bully. Syd's guidance counselor gives her a diary in which to vent her frustration, but Syd has another outlet for her anger. When her rage boils over, she can't help but telekinetically inflict pain on others. And when her powers go too far, the teen must face the consequences. While the simply drawn, round-headed characters in Forsman's story are reminiscent of the kids in Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts, Syd's exploits could not be further from sweet schoolyard pranks. She treats sex and drug use with frank indifference, and the jarringly bleak conclusion firmly cements this story as a starkly depressing tale. Forsman's avoidance of the all-too-familiar teenage redemption story is refreshing but certainly not for the faint of heart. VERDICT A frank and refreshing take on teenage dissatisfaction for older young adults who are mature enough to handle an unhappy ending.—Anna Murphy, Berkeley Carroll School, Brooklyn

School Library Journal