You Never Heard of Me is a high concept, yet easy to connect to comic from Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli. In the book, a teenager named William inherits the ability to see both the best and worst moments of someone’s life from his grandmother. This might seem like a powerful gift, but was also a curse leading to William’s family moving around from place to place to avoid people who wished to exploit his grandmother or do her harm. You Never Heard of Me #1 establishes the premises series as well as the dynamic between William, his family, his (non-existent) friends, and spends quite a lot of time showing the effects of this ability on both William and his grandmother to create an emotional bond between reader and characters.
Even before he gets his abilities, William is an easy character to relate to with his opposite of “main character energy”. He’s thoughtful and empathetic, if a little lazy as he doesn’t takes his studies or extracurriculars seriously like his older sister and instead spends his time vibing at the beach, listening to music, and trying to cope with how chaotic his life is. Having to go to a new school every year (Or even less time than that.) has taken a toll on William so, of course, he just wants to soak up the sun at the beach or escape behind his headphones while bullying and drama happens at his high school.
Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli don’t make his character a slacker per se with dialogue about him passing tests and showing interest in psychology as well as showing support for his father who think he’s a failure at life because he has spent his entire life as a a car mechanic. In his words, William just wants to “go with the flow”, which is why getting foresight abilities is so jarring and changes his pretty chill life in an instant. He’s not the nerd who gets great powers or the theater kid in a melodrama, but just a nice, quiet kid with good fashion sense and taste in music that happens to know the happiest and saddest moments of everyone he comes into contact with.
One element of You Never Heard of Me that I love is that Zanfardino and Romboli show the foresight powers visually instead of verbally beginning with a double page spread showing William’s grandmother’s relationship with her abilities. Romboli and Zanfardino uses pinks, red, oranges, and yellows to reveal the instability of her family’s life, and they also use visual shorthand like Game of Life car pieces to show how William’s mother chose to leave the family. This storytelling choice establishes important information about the main cast of characters and the comic’s themes without being bogged down in text. In fact, the blasts of color from the book’s creators create an initial emotional response that is broken down or intensified by Romboli’s line art, especially in the scene where William first discovers his abilities. There’s a real intimacy to experience someone’s best and worst actual or potential moments, and it’s a real burden to be bombarded with your peers’ psyches stripped bare while you’re still trying to grow up and find yourself like William.
You Never Heard of Me is for all the sensitive, quiet kids who had more active roles in life, their family, or workplace thrust upon them by a society that treasures being outgoing and charismatic above all. Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli craft a story of teenage kid dealing with a loss in his family and trying to keep his head above water while also getting extranormal abilities bestowed upon him. But this isn’t a gift he can punch, fly, or optic beam his way out of, and William’s psyche and capacity for empathy and connection are on trial and the driving force of this comic as he must choose whether to use his powers actively, passively, or somewhere in between.
Story/Colors/Letters: Iolanda Zanfardino Art/Colors: Elisa Romboli
Story: 8.2 Art: 8.6 Overall: 8.4 Recommendation: Buy
Dark Horse Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: TFAW – Zeus Comics – Kindle
