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Pedro and Me (Best of the Week!)

RATING: Highly Recommended (10/10)

Buy this book. If you believe nothing else I ever say (and some of you don`t, believe me I know) believe that this is a book you should own. It is one of the few things I own that, if I see it lying on the table in the middle of doing something else, and I pick it up to just glance at a page or two, I don`t put it down until I`ve read at least 20 minutes` worth. It`s engrossing. It`s also funny, touching, makes incredible use of art and dialogue, has a positive message and is likely to appeal to such a wide audience you couldn`t fit them all in Texas if they all stood close together. Buy it. You`ll thank me. That`s the short review.

Longer review? OK.

At it`s heart, Pedro And Me is a tribute to Pedro Zamora. In this regard alone, it is incredibly successful. I remember very little of The Real World that I watched, I don`t remember Judd and Pedro and Pam and the others in this book. But after reading the book, I feel like I knew what kind of person Pedro was. Winick conveys everything, the larger role he played as an AIDS educator as well as the smaller things that made him a great friend.

There are several stories here, all tying together. Judd and Pedro`s friendship is the central point of course, but in telling that story there are a variety of others. Judd`s life up to that point. Pedro`s life up to that point. How Judd and Pam met and fell in love. How Pedro and Sean met and fell in love. The effects that Pedro had on the world, and the effect he had on Judd. Every single bit of these stories is told in these pages, in a format that incorporates short vignettes and longer sections. The result is that this book is at once one big long story, several shorter novellas and several even shorter anecdotes. The structure is impressive, and I`m sure it`s one of the things that makes this such a compelling read for me.

What I like about this book is that the people are people. Not heroes, not gods, just people. Winick is very honest in portraying himself and his hang-ups about AIDS, doing it for humor but also showing off that he wasn`t perfect, and that he had misconceptions that needed to be broken down as well. Pedro comes off as looking damn near saintly, but given all the good that he did, it`s hard to argue with that portrayal. In this story, Pedro is painted as a very special person, with hints in his childhood that he was destined for it, and it makes for a very moving tale. It also very definitely shows Winick`s affection for his friend.

For all the sadness that is inherent about a story that revolves around the relationships of a friend who passed away, this book never grows too melancholy. Don`t get me wrong... it made me cry more than once, and the unfairness of it all comes through very well, as the feelings of Pedro`s friends and family are expressed perfectly. But when things get awfully serious, often times Pedro or Judd will make a joke that will lighten the mood. This is never used to get out of something uncomfortable, but instead to remind us that Pedro was not a victim or some tragedy to be pitied... his death at such a young age was a tragedy, but his life and what he accomplished with it was a triumph.

Winick does terrific things with the artwork. He uses cartoony exaggeration (the "living with HIV" and "bagfuls of stereotypes" are both very funny) as well as more simple facial expressions, and these may be cartoon figures but they come to life and it`s easy to read their emotions, which allows us to connect with them. More importantly, his layouts are exquisite. He`ll use an entire page of black with one picture in the middle, and one caption, to make a point, such as he does with the first shot of Pedro and Judd together, or our first image of Pedro after the driving montage (another nice piece of work showing the confusion and how fast things must have seemed to be moving at the time) or the absolutely heart-breaking shot of the people surrounding Pedro`s bed when he died.

In addition to being a talented artist and writer, Winick has proven himself to have a gift for observation. The dialogue in this story, the stories he chooses to tell, absolutely serve his purpose. One of the reasons Judd, Pam and Pedro are so likable is because of how real their friendship is. Winick wisely focuses on the smaller moments in friendship, whether they`re humorous (such as the "Star Trek" discussion or the back-and-forth banter about hinting at being gay) or an indication of what these friends did for each other (the card that Judd gets from Pedro, or the discussion of Giardia where Judd cheers his friend up). The result is that we`re let into these people`s lives, we see them not just as actors in the story but people, whose experiences aren`t all that different from our own.

If you want a preview of next year`s Eisner awards, you should buy Pedro And Me. This is one of those rare books that makes me wish my ratings scale went to 11.

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