In a new collection of Hanawalt's early minicomic work, I Want You, you can see the cartoonist's sensibilities – that penchant for slamming the manic and mundane into each other, to see what happens – coalescing into an aesthetic that belongs to her and her alone.
–Glen Weldon, NPR
The shorts collected in the book also preview the kind of work that would feature in Hanawalt's collections Hot Dog Taste Test and My Dumb Dirty Eyes, combining observational comedy, surrealist flights of fancy and unexpected beauty into something that is uniquely Hanawalt, and relentlessly funny.
–The Hollywood Reporter
Hanawalt's art has always explored the anxieties, humiliations, and vulnerabilities that come with living in a human body... Its underlying honesty is what continues to strike a chord with readers and viewers.
–
Vox
Hanawalt is a master of excess, and her early work is a marvel. –
San Francisco Weekly
A brilliant collection from an audacious and boldly inventive cartoonist with a distinct and necessary perspective.
–
Library Journal, Starred Review
[These comics] hit as freshly funny and subversive, and will appeal to dedicated fans of Hanawalt's peculiar oeuvre as well as those just getting an introduction. –
Publishers Weekly Her artfully drawn, frequently dark, generally hilarious panels are characterised by their distinctive use of an all-animal cast, in which universal bummers like self-doubt, loneliness, putting-your-foot-in-it, intimacy struggles and general low-level misery are played out with a profound sense of empathy and no shortage of gross-out humour. –
Elephant Hanawalt is a woman of many talents...
I Want You is a compilation of Hanawalt's early mini comics, illustrations, and art. It is her at the very beginning of it all. –
The Rumpus
