For some couples at an impasse, a trial separation is in order. In British cartoonist Paul B. Rainey's Why Don't You Love Me?, a rather ingenious graphic novel touched by science fiction but centered on the earthy realities of marriage, a parallel universe may be the solution. Mark and Claire Hopkins ceaselessly snap at each other and sleep in separate beds. As Why Don't You Love Me? opens, Mark is on sick leave from his job as a website manager; he's coping with "mental and emotional issues." Claire can top that: she's been diagnosed with clinical depression and is extravagantly medicated with both prescription drugs and alcohol, although she's not so medicated that she can't have an affair. And then something happens that changes everything. Well, not everything: Mark and Claire's new reality doesn't absolve them of the need to deal with each other. But as they consider, as Mark puts it, "our other selves from over there," their exchanges stir up--what's this?--emotions other than hostility.
Throughout Why Don't You Love Me?, Rainey's lines are clean and sure, his choices effectively bracing: Mark and Claire's frequently overlooked children tend to be depicted as only the tops of their heads, and Claire's face is occluded by hair or a black, cloud-like shadow when she's at her worst. Rainey (There's No Time Like the Present) may be working in the comics form, but he leaves readers with the impression that they've just consumed a full-blown novel set in an adrift couple's world(s). --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer