Roam Like Home.

If you’re Canadian, you’re probably familiar with that phrase. It’s been used by Rogers Communications for their long distance plans that partner with American carriers to minimize long distance charges when abroad. Because without it, calls and data can be ridiculously prohibitive. There were even times where some Canadian carriers’ phones wouldn’t even work with American networks.

It’s interesting to think of a time when we weren’t completely chained to our smartphones. Hell, it’s interesting to remember that time before smartphones. It really wasn’t that long ago, even if it feels like forever. Although I suppose in the measure of things, almost twenty years is a generation. The entire span of a person’s growth to adulthood. Or age of majority at least, as many of us are still fumbling like new born deer at that age.

To quote LP Hartley, “The past is like a foreign country.” I think that’s fitting for the themes and storyline explored here. Both allegorically and literally. How a piece of technology like a telephone can serve as a cultural touchstone to the past, representing a tenuous lifeline and the vulnerability of the family not working as it should in a literal foreign country.

“We are gorgeous. We are young. We are in New York City. Now put on your fucking shoes!”

Set in 2009, Roaming by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki is the story of three Canadian university students on a trip to New York City. Two of them long-time childhood friends reuniting. And the third a new friend made in university.

It hones in on a long-awaited journey between the two childhood friends, Dani and Zoe, as they meet in New York. Only to have that reunion thrown off because Dani brought another friend with her in Fiona. The third wheel dynamic throws conflict into the trip in multiple ways, especially as personality clashes manifest. And an unexpected fling. It’s interesting to explore how the relationships change and overall how emotionally manipulative each of the women seems to be. Leading ultimately to a bit hinging on Zoe turning on her data on her phone, despite the projected costs.

Jillian Tamaki uses a two-color approach for the book, bathing the pages in blue and what’s almost a coral. It works well with her minimalist style for characters and really helps make the more detailed life drawings pop when the story veers towards the museums and nature. It’s an interesting contrast between detail and simplicity, reality and exaggeration. I think it’s fascinating that slice-of-life, semi-autobiographical stories often adopt variations on this visual style. Almost like a shorthand.

““I don’t think I mean anything to her.”

These days it seems like we’re practically attached to our devices. And they do everything. We have a multimedia suite, communications device, and camera in our pockets and bags at all times. Like finding out that this work earned itself the Eisner for Best Graphic Album – New, Mariko Tamaki for Best Writer, and Jillian Tamaki for Best Artist while reading outside around a pool late at night just by perusing social media.

As someone who grew up in an analog period where if you went abroad you may as well have been on the Moon (if you didn’t come across a payphone), it’s a sea change. Roaming by the Tamakis doesn’t quite take us back to those times, but it does give us a transient period between when being connected to the grid wasn’t all the time. And there could be times when it was difficult to track someone down. It uses that analogy brilliantly to represent the in-between states of childhood and adulthood, navigating new and shifting relationships, while physically roaming a strange country.