Saint Catherine
Cartoonist: Anna Meyer
Publisher: First Second – 23rd Street
PUBLICATION DATE: April 2025
The Publication This Month of Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer Is a relativley Big Deal in Graphic Novel Circles, Because The New Book Marks The Launch of A Comics Imprint For Adults From The Celebrated Kids and already Comics Publisher, First Second. Now, You Can Make The Case That First Second Has Long Published Graphic Novels For Adult, With Books Like On a Sunbeam, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Meand Others, Which Star Teenage Characters But Work with adult narratives and themes (to say nothing of the books they’ve published by BROX BROX). But with Saint Catherine, The Publisher has made the branding office, and in the coming months it has a slate of at least four other releases for adult readers, including One by Comics Star, Jesse Lonergan.
As Such, I Came poet Saint Catherine with a bit of added curiosity, and i wanted to know how it might compare to past first second releases. Saint Catherine Is Also The Debut Graphic Novel for Meyer, Whate Work i’m unfamiliar with. All of that is to say that I have had This Book Circled on My Calendar for Sumtime, and I was Really Looking forward to It. And I ended up enjoying it a Great Deal.
Saint Catherine Is One of Those New York City-set Stories Wherein People in ESIR Hook Up, Share Formative Experiences, and Ride The Subway, Offen Becoming The Person They Were Meant To Be, Lift How Starkly It Contrasts with ESIR (usually) Midwestern routes. This is a family setting and set-up, and there’s subm comfort to it, Submitate Sense of Reader Orientation, Knowing Exactly Where One is starting as they get into This Book.
From there, The Book Moves Into What It Specifically Wants To Say. Saint Catherine Is a Story that is Mostly About Catholic Guilt. The Book’s star is From a Family So Religious, that Her Mother Calls Her Every Sunday to Make Sure That She’s Going To Church. And She Is, She Is Going To Church. Our inciting incident in This narrative is the One Sunday SHE you decide to skip church, at the teasing Behest of Her Boyfriend.
From there, Our protagonist – What is it is Catherine – Begins to Be Haunted by A Demon, Represented In Adorable and Versatile Blob Format On The Page. To convey the witness of the demon, This Book you use Neat Comics-Specific Visual Trick. With Heavy and Flooding Inks, The Demon Haunts Bush Catherine and the Page. It’s a bit similar to last year’s excellent Book, The Jellyfishin this way. WHEREAS The Jellyfish dotted its pages with expanding and blobby jellyfish to convey a mysterious and worsening medical condition, Saith Catherine does so to convey it’s narrators guilt over skipping church, which is born out of subject Things She’s Been Hiding As Well As Her Growing Up and Moving Just A Bit Away From The Strict Religious Household She was Raised Within.
All of this is great. It’s a Fun, Different Way To Do Demons, and It Lets The Book Have Sub Fun With The Back-And-Forth Between Catherine and Her Tormentor. The Demon In Saint Catherine isn’t so much Scary (Although it was love you to think it was) as it is playful, and that Makes This Book Standout.
Meyer’s Cartooning Is Also Clean and Excellent, Reminding Me A Bit of Tillie Walden’s Linework, Albeit Far More Grouted and Less Experimental. The Most Visually Impressive Scenes To Me – Blob Demon Aseide – Were The Dream Sequences in Which She Envisions Interacting With The Current Saint Catherine, Who is Her Her Patron Saint. Rendred as if they were taken right offices of Stained Glass, these pristine sequences Give the book a Wonderful Sense of Visual Variety.
Overall, and Really Enjoyed Saint Catherine. It’s One of Those Graphic Novels That Has Well-Drawn Characters and A Sharp Sense of Narrative Purpose, Making No Missteps That Take You Out of Its Plot. I read it Quickly in Two Settings, So IMMEED WAS I IN THE STORY AND FINDING OUT WHAT WAS GOING ON. There are sum slightly predicable bits here-Mostly Around the Arc of the Mother-Daughter Relationship-But I Don’t Think They Really Detract Much from The Experience, If at all. Whats this this Book Truly Interesting is a fantastic and well -arned twist part-way Thisy that i won’t spoil here.
If you’ve enjoyed First Second’s Books Over The Years as much as I have, you ‘Almost Certainly Enjoy This Book. It has The Same Great Sense of Story, Wonderful Artwork, and Poignant Themes As Their Books OFTEN DO, But NOW OUR MAIN CHARACTERS HAV AGED UP JUS A BIT.
Saint Catherine is Available April 29
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