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Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I Learned
Struggling cartoonist Judd Winick earns a spot in the San Francisco cast of
MTV's The Real World. His roommate, Pedro Zamora, is an AIDS educator dying
of the disease. This is the story of their friendship and Winick's developing
relationship with housemate Pam Ling.
Judd Winick has been steadily building a career for himself in underground
comics, and he's currently the writer of DC's Green Lantern title, but he is
probably still better known to the public at large as That Guy From The Real
World. He combines the two "careers," as it were, in Pedro and
Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned, the story of his friendship
with fellow castmates Pedro Zamora and Pam Ling. Since Pedro died of AIDS
shortly after the San Francisco season of the show finished production, this
had the potential to fall into the trap of being A Very Special Comic, but it
doesn't.
Part of the reason is that Winick is a really good writer. Because the
book relies heavily on narration and because so much of the story is about
relationships and communication, the dialogue has to carry the book a great
deal, and Winick is very good at that. He has to cover a wide time frame in
one book, so he has to get the personalities of the main characters across
in a few vignettes, and he does. The relationship between Pedro and Judd,
for example, comes across as very real -- they seem like guys that became
close buddies in a hurry. And they both have great wit and humor, which
comes across clearly in the dialogue and narration. At the same time, the
conversations between Judd and Pam as Pedro's death draws nearer are very
human, emotional without becoming cloying or overly dramatic. (And I just
noticed I seem to be using "Judd" to refer to Judd Winick as a
character in the story and "Winick" to refer to Judd Winick as
the writer/artist of this book. I'm going to take that as a sign of how
well the writer/artist got me to connect with the people in the book.)
I don't want to take away from Winick's skill as an artist, though. He
definitely has a cartoony style that has its roots in the newspaper strips
he admired and aspired to draw, but it works well at showing emotion and
expression on people's faces. His facial expressions, in particular, are
outstanding, and while the art is for the most part straightforward, he
does take advantage of the comic form to illustrate some of the thoughts
and images he had in his head at the beginning of his Real World experience
- I particularly liked his visualization of his fear that he'd be living
with "HIV with legs."
This is not just a book for comics fans, although it's a good example
of the autobiographical comic. This is a book for anybody who likes to
read about real people in circumstances we all pray we never have to
face.
Reviewed by Dave Thomer
This Is Not News webmaster
- Year: 2000
- Author: Judd Winick
- Illustrator: Judd Winick
- Genre: Non-fiction / comics
- Length: 187 pages
- Publisher: Holt & Company
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