In My Darkest Hour

    (Fantagraphics, 2005)
™ and © Wilfred Santiago

Life ain’t always pretty deep inside the city, and this provides an emotional and painfully realistic slice–of–life example. Wilfred Santiago’s character is a Hispanic student named Omar who has his dreams but has already archived them in his mind, as he struggles with his troubled relationship and day–job drudgery. Life has sapped his will to do anything except wake up in the morning, and most days he wishes he didn’t have to even do that.

What’s most surprising about Santiago’s superb story is that his central character is a male—his concerns about such things as his appearance, his weight, and his significant other are topics usually shown as concerns of female protagonists. Other distractions, like perpetual background noise from TV or radio, and the bare bleakness of Omar’s apartment (he sleeps on a hardwood floor) hammer home the overall feeling of despair. And this is punctuated by Santiago’s use of limited colors and hazy images. The work’s length, combined with its emotion, paradoxically makes it difficult to keep reading, yet even harder not to.

— Jim Johnson
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