Review by Frank Plowright
Want a satirical look at the frustrations of life in post-covid Britain? Emily McGovern’s Twelve Percent Dread has that tied up. It starts with Katie at the unemployment office, where the computer system is outdated and not working properly. While waiting for things to be fixed she watches a TV interview with Michelle, her best friend’s boss. It’s intended to promote a new ap, but becomes a car crash performance from the woman running an influential phone company. Emma is expected to soothe her neurotic boss’ ego after which she’s deposited with a newcomer who’s to shadow her around the company and who proves annoyingly persistent.
It’s strange to see something so resolutely British issued by an American publisher, but perhaps the US equivalent of the optimistically named Job Centre is very similar, although the feeling is that so much of what’s here will instead just fly over the heads of anyone not British.
McGovern delivers the chaos of multiple lives via massive amounts of small panels simply constructed. They look rapidly sketched and would seem pasted on the page old school fanzine style were it not for the constant phone interruptions so integral to the story, and indeed everyone’s life. Part of McGovern’s point is people are more likely to pay attention to their phone than the person standing next to them. The title comes from an ap Katie’s downloaded to provide her with a personality breakdown, possibly with the intention of avoiding a nervous breakdown, noting by far her biggest characteristic is dread. The only positive feeling clocks in at under five percent.
Remember 1990s TV show Absolutely Fabulous? The tone is very similar, except with the opposite side of the rich and glamorous life more in focus as a counterpoint. Personal problems play out against developing social issues, and McGovern has a fine sense of comic timing with her dialogue, but as far as the bigger picture is concerned she takes far too long to reach the point. There is a purpose to establishing the rats in maze life of almost all characters, and there’s a certain satirical bite to the celebrity comments, be they applied the washed out 1990s star or the gullible Michelle, but two hundred pages of meandering is just too long.
It is all building toward something, and some readers are likely to have figured out what before McGovern reveals it. Everyone else will hear the sound of a penny dropping in their head. Once the revelation is made the assorted difficulties McGovern has set in motion begin to come together, eventually cleverly, but still far too slowly. Yes, there’s the distraction of comedy scenes, some of them with laugh out loud punchlines, but the overall punchline never really arrives. There’s nothing poor here, so your response will be contingent on your willingness to follow the winding trail. For many, though, McGovern would have been better off cutting Twelve Percent Dread by around thirty percent, saving some material for her next project and ensuring this was a more focussed graphic novel.
