A review by inthebelljar
.Self by Christopher Sebela

3.0

For a story focusing so much around identity and the self, this had just....so little character development/exploration for me? The art is great and I LOVED the concept of this, but I just felt like I got so little from Nat as a character. Like, I am told she is so cautious and careful and tries to do anything she can to be safe after her tumultuous upbringing, but also...I felt like I was just told this. A lot. It doesn't help that the very first scene I get is of her fighting and of relishing this - there was very little established about who Nat was before I'm told all about how different she is during all of this- which fell pretty flat for me.

At first I was also super interested in all of these other Nats, like, what made them tick differently than Nat 1.0, but really they felt like completely different characters from her for the most part, not just copies with slight adjustments,

Spoiler

besides our Final Boss Natalie, who I felt was the most interesting of all of them

. I kind of hoped there would be more exploration of the copies since they are...literally the driving force of the comic. But they felt extremely one-dimensional and almost always unrelated to the original Nat.

I also

Spoiler

hated how much of a non-character Nat's husband was? Besides him being the "safe" choice, I did not understand why they ever got together in the first place which left him feeling just....annoying and unnecessary. He was a vehicle for character development that felt very unearned to me, and I did not give a single fuck when Nat left him

.

I didn't hate this, but I really didn't love it. It felt so 2.5/3 star in the "It was alright but I'm not going to think about this a week from now" way.