MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS by Mark Crilley

MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS is the first new fictional comics work by Mark Crilley in quite a while. Having spent the first two decades of his career working on fantasy/adventure comics like AKIKO (1995 to 2004, 52 issues and a one-shot, collected in 8 volumes, plus 10 prose books adapting and expanding on the story), MIKI FALLS (2007 to 2008, 4 volumes) and BRODY'S GHOST (2010 to 2015, 6 volumes and a one-shot comic, collected in one book in 2016).  He's also done a lot of art instruction work, both in print in a dozen books and on video on his popular Youtube channel.

This new book is a departure from his previous work in a lot of ways. It's complete in one volume, instead of serialized. It's full colour, while the previous books were mostly black&white (often with copious greytones), except for some short bits. And in the widest deviation from his previous work, there are no fantasy elements in MY LAST SUMMER WITH CASS.  Just a real life young adult story about art and friendship.

The "My" of the title is a young girl named Megan, who spends summers in her childhood at a cabin with another girl named Cass, where they discover a mutual love of creating artwork, and especially working together on pieces. After a few years apart they're reunited as teenagers when Megan convinces her parents to let her spend a few weeks in New York City, where Cass now lives. While some aspects of their relationship continue as if there was no pause, in other ways they find they've very much grown in separate directions, as Megan tries to fit in with Cass's big city lifestyle.

This is a pretty entertaining book. Crilley's art has always been detailed and expressive, but he seems to turn it up a notch in this book, maybe because he now has the extra tools of full colour to work with, maybe because he's drawing real-world settings. For me personally the story is a little less appealing than normal for Crilley, but then I'm increasingly far removed from the lucrative young adult audience this is clearly aimed at.  Even with that, I found a lot to like in the discussions about art that are interspersed with the relationship drama.

Highly recommended, especially to readers who liked stuff like Raina Telgemeier's comics, in particular DRAMA and SISTERS.