Preparing to Bite

Plot

Cartoonist Keiler Roberts quit making comics. Or did she?

Preparing to Bite, her latest collection of all-new, one-page comics is a return to perfect form. Roberts skewers innocuous aspects of everyday life and dissects them for their unique absurdity: from cooking meals, to keeping doctors’ appointments, to owning pets, and even navigating now-inescapable Zoom calls. These vignettes portray a woman in middle-age grappling with the realities of being a mother, a wife, a friend, a daughter, and lastly (perhaps even least of all), a practicing artist—all while dealing with the long-term effects of a debilitating disease.

From page to page, Roberts jumps from moment to moment, expertly using the comics form as nobody else can while showing off what it can do that no other form can. Preparing to bite captures the transient gestures of life in the modern age, both mundane and inane.