‘You and Me on Repeat’ (review)

Written and Illustrated by Mary Shyne
Published by Henry Holt and Company

I love the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. I caught it at the theater and who knows how many times since?

Considering the film’s premise of a single day repeating, repeat viewing actually plays into, and enhances, the concept. There is also a pair (so far) of fun horror films similarly themed—Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U.

None of these are exactly time travel stories, although they do sorta/kinda fit into an offshoot category of same. I even tried to write one myself, once, entitled “Repeat,” in which a young man loses… ahem!… something very important, over and over and over again, as his day repeats. Let’s just say keeping all the necessary facts straight is not as easy as it may look.

Mary Shyne actually manages to make it all look quite effortless in her impressive new graphic novel, You and Me on Repeat, from Henry Holt and Company, the publisher which has emerged from the old Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, which published the early Peanuts books.

Oddly, I see where Ms. Shyne is a senior artist at Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates, working on Peanuts projects as her day job and then her own work after hours.

The artist’s immediately ingratiating and very detailed style reminds me of some of Dave Sim’s non-Cerebus work, in particular The Strange Death of Alex Raymond. Like Sim, Mary uses single colors masterfully, integrated with the standard black and white and generally separating each segment, each loop, by color—orange, blue-grey, purple, red, yellow. All of this helps set the tone for each loop as well, and the infrequent use of multiple brighter colors on a page highlights unusual happenings.

What kind of unusual happenings?

Well, as noted above, this is a Groundhog Day plot, only here it’s a young man about to graduate high school later that day who wakes up every single morning, ready to repeat the day. Our somewhat nerdy protagonist has seen Groundhog Day and presumes he has to get something right before the day will change, and he’s convinced it’s the all-important first kiss with the girl he’s been seeing. Thus, we find him navigating his graduation time and again in order to get to the evening’s celebrations and the perfect first kiss.

Unfortunately, he gets a big surprise during one loop, and it changes everything. Among other things, he realizes that life is not like the movies.

He also finds that his long-estranged childhood best friend, a Latino young woman who is Valedictorian at the graduation, is also looping, and the two of them attempt to make the best of it while trying to figure out how they got there and if they can get back!

The two main characters are sharply defined.

They both come across as very real, complete with all the positive and negative attributes that means. Each is given a path where they learn separate things because of their shared situation, making them both very different people by the end.

They rekindle their friendship as well as dealing with other feelings from their past, present, and any future they might actually ever see.

The writing is very modern, with plenty of hip, “in” references that feel natural, not forced for atmosphere. The story has plenty of humor, both visual and verbal, but also lots of on-the-mark angsty feelings that young people actually have. We basically watch the couple grow up in a single, oft-repeated, day.

It’s hard to deny the manga influence on the art but there seems so much more to it. Mary Shyne clearly brings a lifetime of wide-ranging influences to this masterful graphic novel.

At 224 pages, You and Me on Repeat is a page-turner. I’m an old guy and I loved it, despite the fact it’s clearly created for  and aimed squarely at a teen audience. While there was still plenty that I could personally relate to, I suspect that teen audience will love it all the more!

Going to be watching for anything and everything by Mary Shyne going forward. I suggest you do, too. She’s great!

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