Mimi Green is a popular essayist with a perfectly curated social media presence — until a blog post she wrote a decade ago, cruelly mocking fat people, resurfaces and sparks a viral furor. Mimi checks into an isolated mental health facility to ride out the scandal, but as sound baths and crystal healings by day give way to restless nights, she’s pulled into another version of the building. There the halls are old and gluttonous and gilded, and the vainglorious like Mimi and her fellow patients are punished again and again. Only local bartender Natalie, the lesbian lover Mimi hid from the public, stands a chance of tracking her down before it’s too late. Did You Hear About Mimi Green #1 is written by Connor Goldsmith, drawn by Josh Cornillon and lettered by Ariana Maher for Dark Horse Comics.
Your favorite comics writer’s favorite podcast host is diving head first into his own comic. Did You Hear About Mimi Green? is the debut series from writer (and Cerebro host) Connor Goldsmith and artist Josh Cornillon. The story follows a canceled internet personality after she checks into a mental health clinic, Answers, to try to move beyond a recent scandal. Old tweets of hers from when she was a teenager have resurfaced, turning her from the internet’s darling into the internet’s villain practically overnight. In the midst of a divorce, she puts her life in Los Angeles on hold as she struggles to confront what she said, how people reacted to it and how it has affected her relationships. A highly successful personality, Mimi remains confined to the clinic while in the outside world everyone seems to be asking, “Did you hear about Mimi Green?”
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
The first issue of the four-issue series thrusts us into the middle of a therapy session where Mimi is unpacking the scandal that brought her to the clinic. It must have been something pretty bad, but we the reader don’t learn exactly what she said. What we do know, however, is that it was something fatphobic she tweeted as a teenager. Ashley, Mimi’s roommate at the clinic who gingerly describes herself as “heavy,” tells Mimi she didn’t think what Mimi said was all that bad, that it was clearly meant to be a joke but got taken the wrong way. However, Mimi is a bit mean to Ashley at the beginning of the issue, manifesting her “I don’t want to be here” energy into eyerolls and jabs at Ashley’s perceived naivety. Though there’s something of a rapport between the two of them, Mimi seems hostile and annoyed by Ashley until she hears about Ashley’s dream. Something is chasing her through the halls of the clinic, and it wants her bad.
A running motif of the comic are these, for lack of a better term, flesh monsters that keep appearing in front of Mimi. In a therapy session at the top of the issue, we see Mimi reminisce about dancing with and then kissing a woman who is later revealed to be a bartender at a queer nightclub, a butch woman named Nat. As Mimi kisses her, Nat slowly transforms into a fleshy mass in what seems to be a hallucinatory daydream. The motif returns in a later scene when Mimi is looking at herself in a mirror. Her body is lined with scars that indicate some kind of surgery, perhaps as a result of losing stretched out skin after weight loss or something else to that effect. As she examines herself, we see an image of her inner organs spilling out from her scars as Mimi tells herself to “stop.”
The climax of the issue is a dream sequence in which Mimi is being chased through the facility by an undulating mass of skin and organs. She finds Ashley, who has had this dream before. The pair do their best to outrun the monster, only to find the lone exit leads to nowhere, revealing that the dream facility exists as an island floating in space. The monster closes in, and Mimi is forced to watch helplessly as Ashley is ripped apart by the mass. Gripping at Mimi’s arm, Ashley screams “Mimi, please! Help me!” but seconds later Mimi awakens from her dream. In a cold sweat, Mimi looks around her room before noticing that her arm has a red handprint where Ashley had grabbed her in the dream. As Mimi moves about her day, trying to pretend things are normal, Ashley is avoidant.
Meanwhile, Nat is doing her best to try to make contact with Mimi and check in on her, but on the last page we see Mimi’s phone left on the edge of a fountain with 18 missed calls. Mimi is rising out of the fountain seemingly attached to a flood of flesh that has taken over the room she is in.
Did You Hear About Mimi Green? is thrilling and unexpected; a meditation on body image and body dysmorphia told through the lens of horrific flesh monsters who cross between dreams, hallucinations and reality. Goldsmith has a mastery of how “over it” millennials speak to one another that is lots of fun to read. Snide remarks are Mimi’s first language, and though what she says can be read as mean, it’s often funny or just very real of her. Goldsmith doesn’t shy away from depicting queer life as it exists either, with drugs, cigarettes and alcohol being parts of the story in the way that they are parts of life for many people. It’s refreshing to see; many comics would try to avoid depicting those things for a host of reasons, but not this one. It gives the comic an edge of reality despite the fantastical nature of the plot.
Cornillon’s art compels the reader, rendering flesh and guts in horrific ways that anyone with body dysmorphia will feel familiar with. Pastels dominate the real world, with pink walls and pale green carpets, while in the dream world harsh reds and deep purples dominate. The bottom panel of Page 22 is my favorite. Mimi has this look on her face that shows so much panic and desperation. As Mimi and Ashley look beyond the door of the facility toward an endless night, Mimi turns her face to the building’s interior saying “Fuck! It’s here” with wide, fearful, eyes. It’s a look of immense hopelessness that clearly communicates the idea that Mimi has forgotten, or maybe was never even aware of, the fact that all of this is taking place in some nightmare scape.
The first issue of Mimi Green is a thrilling romp into the mind of a canceled celebrity trying to rebuild her mental health while confronting the underlying demons at the heart of her character. Mimi herself is a prickly person who can’t help but care about what people say and, despite herself, how they feel. I’m excited to read the second issue and beyond.
Buy Did You Hear About Mimi Green? #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Adam Garvey is a writer and illustrator with a passion for comic books, animation, history and politics. He works for the Rockland County Times in New York.
