All My Bicycles

Colombian cartoonist Powerpaola (Virus Tropical) delivers an evocative coming-of-age memoir in which various bicycles from her past represent touchpoints in her maturation from tweenhood to adulthood. In the opening vignette, she describes a brief fling that ended with her paramour’s bike getting stolen under her watch, after which he dumped her, claiming, “I can’t be with a Gemini.” Other anecdotes recall a fleeting friendship with a girl named Violetta, with whom she biked “all around Cali,” and a terrible accident in which she ran into an open manhole while drunk, which she relates over drawings of an alligator. In another episode, she wanders the city of Medellín after a breakup, interacting with various seedy characters and eventually acquiring a bicycle she loved so much that she “forgot about my broken heart.” By stringing these disparate events together, Powerpaola attempts to reconcile her past and present, understanding that pain and experience bring wisdom: “Through drawing and writing, you come to understand events as they occur in life.... You stop seeing them as surprises.” The charmingly naive drawings perfectly match her alter ego’s adventurous spirit. It’s a lovely ride. (June)