Cometbus #55: Pen Pals

When you're within Cometbus's pages, you experience the work of one of the greatest writers of our generation through his eyes, as he invites you to be a tourist or a regular in an underground cultural milieu. It's a framework of beliefs that you can carry with you and mull over the contents therein for days or weeks. And in the last five years, Aaron Cometbus has again reinvented himself on a project he's been working on for over thirty years—writing brilliant novellas that are illustrative like all great literature is. After the achievement of cataloging the history of Berkeley bookstores and chronicling his Asian tour with Green Day, this issue beckons back to unique friendships like the one Aaron has had since 1988 in Berkeley with a woman named Yula and a collaborator named Andy as they shifted and evolved, involving many entertaining side-plots. It's about Aaron finding himself, casting his interests in stone, and friendships maintained through the post. And it's all held together by a wraparound Jordan Crane cover!