We Ate Wonder Bread

Book excerpt: Nicole Hollander’s internationally syndicated comic strip, Sylvia, ran for thirty years. We Ate Wonder Bread is veteran cartoonist Hollander’s first graphic novel, a coming-of-age story starring the gangsters, the glamourous, the bed bugs, the (enviable) Catholic girls, the police, the jukebox, the fortune teller, and the blue Hudson—the family car, always at the ready for frequent drives into better neighborhoods. Much of the milieu and many of the characters who inhabited Hollander’s progressive comic strip, Sylvia, originated in her childhood neighborhood; not only does this illustrated memoir give insight into how Hollander developed her style and wit, it’s a chronicle of a Chicago community that has since disappeared into an expressway.