The Customer Is Always Wrong is a Best Book of the Year

Mimi Pond’s latest graphic novel is loosely based on her own life as a waitress in 1970s America. It’s a chunky block of a book that takes on sex, drugs and minimum wage living. The result is feisty, funny and mildly horrifying. Pond’s art isn’t the slickest, but that just fits the grungy, working-class story all the better. Dirty realism revisited, this time with better jokes.