In 2009’s The Fart Party: Volume 2, Julia Wertz drew the slow deterioration of a two-year relationship. “After spending a week with Oliver in Vermont, I realized that there was now a distance between us that was irreparable,” Wertz wrote. “We were growing apart and heading in drastically different directions. I think we both knew we were going to break up soon.” Later in the volume, the split finally happens and Wertz is surprised by the intensity of her sadness.
Fast forward 17 years and Wertz has just released an impressive new book, Bury Me Already (It’s Nice Down Here): Comics on Pregnancy and Parenthood. The entertaining tome documents Wertz’s 2020 pregnancy, birth and marriage with — you’ve guessed it! — Oliver. Because, it turns out, some distances aren’t so irreparable after all. (As someone who followed Wertz’s work closely in the late 2000s, the fact that these two managed to work things out fills me with an irrational degree of joy.)
Bury Me Already is a continuation of Wertz’s unfiltered — and often hilarious — approach to sharing her life. In her 20s, Wertz drew her own creative process as a series of panels showing her puking, bleeding and pooping onto pieces of paper. Now that she’s in her motherhood years, the puke, blood and poop have become literal. Wertz does battle with bodily functions throughout this book: a repeatedly reopening cesarean section wound, several projectile baby poop/puke incidents and, yes, plenty of farting. If ever the world needed an honest depiction of child-rearing in all of its stinky glory, Wertz is an ideal person for the job.
The book is also a fascinating glimpse into what happened to new mothers during 2020’s pandemic and wildfires. Being forced to keep a mask on during labor, being treated dismissively by overburdened doctors and being denied access to new mother and baby classes were all part of Wertz’s struggle.
Compounding matters was the fact that Wertz was based in Petaluma at the time and therefore dealing with air quality warnings for weeks at a time with a new baby whose lungs were too delicate to even take on walks. Bury Me Already, then, is a perfect time capsule of a period that most of us have done our best to forget.
