One of the “new blacks” of webcomics has to be the autobiographical comic. These can come in a variety of flavors, starting with the diary comics and moving on toward storyline comics based off of the cartoonist’s life. And there is a certain logic to this; we write what we know, and what do we know more than our own life story? Unfortunately, after a little bit the genre starts to blur together and dozens of autobiographical comics saturate the webscape. One rather innovative standout among the blur lies with Naomi “Brigid” Gill’s comic Mary Quite Contrary, which talks not about Brigid’s life now… but of when she was a 13-year-old girl.

It’s a topic most readers can relate to. All but the youngest readers have gone through those awkward early teen years and remember (or try to forget) the torments of middle school, suffering through idiot teachers and young bastards honing their skills of torture for a future career at Guantanamo Bay. While MQC can at times move into the truly sappy material that we all suffered through at various points of our childhood, for the most part it manages to walk a fine line between humor and drama, and focuses as much on the character Mary (who is mostly Brigid) as her family.

Unfortunately, not all is rosy with MQC, and I speak not just of young Mary and her parents’ efforts to get her home schooled. The comic resides in two abodes, both in its original Comic Genesis abode, and in a later blogsite. While the blog allows easier and more directed comments for the comic itself, it can take forever for people on dial-up to load the comic… and readers can sometimes forget to read from the bottom up to catch up on the strip. Navigation issues aside, MQC is one of a small number of family-friendly comics out there, and quite likely one parents will enjoy as much as their kids.