An autobiography about somebody unknown and done in the format of a comic, how could that work?  Well it worked for me, I really enjoyed reading this, I can't stand those autobiographies by famous people full of name dropping and desperately trying to make every aspect of their life interesting.  Always Goodbye is the sort of book that could be about you, the reader, if you are a child of the 80's then you'll see similarities to your own life in this book, as Ray Hecht describes events you'll be going "I remember that" and you'll end up on your own journey down memory lane.  And being born in the 80's means a lot of big moments in your life would be defined by technology, getting that first email address, joining myspace and Facebook, games consoles and smart phones are all big points in Rays life and until reading this I have never thought of things like that before.

A huge part of Rays life has been spent reading and making comics, falling in love with Marvel and DC universes and because he has that huge knowledge about comics it has made this book much more special.  Some clever little bits really bring this to life, describing his parents, birth, upbringing and how they met was cleverly done, drawn as a column with each event side by side worked well.  Each chapter starts off with a year of Rays life and the first window shows a significant event from that year and I loved trying to figure out what they represented.  There was the odd quirky bit thrown in too which gave me a chuckle, favourite bit was Ray sat at his desk at school and the writing about the scene takes up so much space that he has to have his head at an angle.

The comic has been hand drawn, which gives it a personal touch that would have been taken away by a piece of software, whenever Ray draws one of his girlfriends the amount of detail increases until they are almost glowing, it shows just how important they were in his life.  

I have really enjoyed reading about Ray's life and now wish I had a time machine to go and get my hands on the sequel in 30 years time :-)

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2020/07/12/always-goodbye-by-ray-hecht/