Nemi

Two months ago I had never heard of Nemi. I had no idea that she was apparently known all over Europe, and especially a hit with her Norwegian countrymen, and across the UK.

And then I was browsing through Previews looking for stuff to order at my local comic shopI try to always do a pass through the “back” of the comics solicitation section–there’s usually a few gems among the dross. Often more than can be found in the “capes” part at the beginning., and I saw a solicitation for the first book collecting the strip. It looked kind of fun, and the description sounded fun, and I’ve been digging a couple of the other collections Titan have been doing, so I asked Cal to get a copy in for me.

It arrived last week.

I had a lot of fun reading the collection. I may even have possibly developed a slight yes-i-know-she’s-fictional crush on Nemi herself. (This, and my enjoyment of the strips, is probably tied in to my “I am getting old and boring” angst from my upcoming 35th birthday–the strip capture a lot of the essence of “twentysomething” including both the carefree, somewhat wild life, and the intensity of feelings about, well, everything.

During a bit of boredom today I did a little Googling on Nemi and found a veritable cornucopia of resources.

There’s a posting with a short illustrated history of Nemi, which was prompted by the announcement of the book.

There’s an article promoting the book by the Norwegian consulate in the UK. (I bet there isn’t one of those for Scott Pilgrim or Northwest Passage on the site for our embassy to America!)

And most importantly, there’s the Nemi archive at Metro.co.uk. Every day the strip shows up in Metro, to be see by millions of UKers (we can’t call them Britons–what do we call them collectively, to include everyone in the UK?), and it also shows up online. And the site has extensive archives going back at least two years (and possibly much further, but after reading two years of strips I had to take a break.)

So, you can buy the book if you want (it’s worth the dough), or you can just read the strip online for exactly no money. I’ve added it to my “first thing in the morning” set of tabs, and will work my way through the rest of the archives over the next few days.

And now, some samples to pique your interest:

Nemi uses science and books to meet her goals.
Nemi shares my pain at getting older.
Nemi and I relate to the upper class in kind of the same way.
Nemi can take care of herself.
Nemi makes a good babysitter.
Nemi makes a good babysitter (redux).
Nemi could roll with my pal Neil.
Nemi could relate to my pal Mike.
Nemi would also get along with Kira.
Nemi is all about self-improvement.
Nemi is all about truth in advertising.