Sherree’s Secret

    (Boom!, 2006)
™ and © Boom! Studios and Alchemize in association with Intel

A giveaway distributed at the 2006 San Diego Comi Con to advertise the Intel Corporation’s Intel® Viiv™ technology platform, this odd meta-comic overlays its commercial message with extensive domestic anxieties about marital fidelity and mid-life stupor. Utilizing the comic book format as an advertising medium goes back a long time, but most such efforts are shallow and peremptory. Sherree’s Secret, on the other hand, crafts a relatively complex mise en scène for its characters and hangs on to the comic book pretense long after the seductive advertising game is up.

In the grip of a mid-life crisis, male protagonist and tech industry drone Dan Jive comes to suspect his wife Sherree of cavorting with the salesman at the electronics store. By the denouement on page 20, close readers know more than they usually do about the motivations animating a commercial’s characters. Cool, collected Sherree contrasts with her husband’s grumpy depression and provides the fantasy solution to Dan’s malaise: better living through technology.

Published by Wizard magazine’s “Best New Publisher” (2006) Boom! Studios—in association with Alchemize custom comics publishers and Intel—with a story written by Autumn Udell and Marshall Dillon and cover art by Eisner winner Dave Johnson (100 Bullets, Superman Red Son), Sherree’s Secret makes for a somewhat disquieting mix of implicit messages and subtexts in competition with the book’s artistic and commercial imperatives. Imagining a future wherein this book might be considered a valued collectible makes for an interesting exercise.

— Leland Burrill
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