{"id":3148,"date":"2026-01-15T17:10:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T01:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/?p=3148"},"modified":"2026-01-15T17:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T01:10:23","slug":"graphic-novel-review-pig-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/graphic-novel-review-pig-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Graphic Novel Review: “Pig Wife”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Abbey Luck\u2019s debut graphic novel Pig Wife<\/em> throws us into a deeply unsettling survival story centered on a teenager named Mary, who ends up lost in the winding tunnels of an abandoned mine. This underground world is dark, filthy, and anything but peaceful\u2014and if Mary ever wants to see daylight again, she\u2019ll have to push through some truly disturbing family secrets along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book kicks off with an excruciatingly awkward family road trip. Mary, her mom, and her stepdad are headed to the isolated country house of a recently deceased relative named Pearl, who\u2019s rumored to have left behind a fortune. Pearl was Mary\u2019s stepdad\u2019s aunt, and he\u2019s about as unpleasant as you\u2019d expect\u2014mean to Mary\u2019s mom and completely intolerant of Mary\u2019s teenage attitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time they reach Pearl\u2019s place, everyone\u2019s nerves are shot. The house turns out to be a hoarder\u2019s nightmare, falling apart and packed with junk. While Mary\u2019s stepdad digs through the mess looking for a will, Mary sneaks a bottle of whiskey out of his briefcase. This\u2026 does not go over well. To avoid his wrath, she bolts for Pearl\u2019s pig shed, where she finds a trapdoor in the floor. Figuring she can hide out for a bit, she climbs down\u2014only to discover the door won\u2019t open from the inside. With no way back up, Mary has no choice but to go deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where Pig Wife<\/em> really gets going. Most of the book takes place in the mine tunnels once owned by Pearl\u2019s family. Down there, Mary meets Pearl\u2019s son Ed and his \u201cbrother\u201d Tommy, two boys who\u2019ve been raised underground and taught that the surface world was destroyed in some kind of apocalypse. They worship Pearl, believing she bravely fought demons to bring them food. So when Mary shows up, they assume Pearl has sent them the ultimate prize: a wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Drawn<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Understandably, Mary is horrified. Ed is volatile and violent, and Tommy is terrified of him. But as bad as the situation is, Mary\u2019s past has sadly prepared her for it. She grew up with a biological father who was an alcoholic musician, dependent on Mary\u2019s mom for support. She knows better than to wait around for someone to save her. If she\u2019s getting out of the mine, she\u2019ll have to figure it out herself\u2014while navigating Ed and Tommy\u2019s warped, well-meaning, but deeply creepy behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, this might sound like a criticism at first, but stick with me: Pig Wife<\/em> leans heavily on familiar character types. You\u2019ve got the rebellious teen who smokes and fights, the deadbeat dad, the self-sacrificing mom, the selfish and delusional maternal figure, the violent man, the passive one. The city is grimy and dangerous; the countryside is full of deeply unsettling weirdos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here\u2019s the thing\u2014that\u2019s actually part of why the book works so well. Because we already recognize these archetypes, the story moves incredibly fast. And that matters, because this is a huge graphic novel\u2014over 500 pages. Despite that, it\u2019s completely possible to tear through it in one tense, breathless sitting. By skipping subtle character nuance, Pig Wife<\/em> goes all-in on momentum, and once it grabs you, it drags you straight down into the tunnels alongside Mary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those broad strokes also make the book\u2019s deeper themes hit harder. At its core, this is a coming-of-age story\u2014but it taps into a version of growing up that feels especially familiar for teenage girls (and for trans girls, too). It\u2019s not just about leaving childhood behind; it\u2019s about clawing your way out of what feels like a pit of internalized sexism, fear, and expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mine is a perfect visual metaphor for that pit. Ed represents violent masculinity, Tommy represents passive masculinity, and Pearl embodies a warped version of adult femininity\u2014controlling, delusional, and self-mythologizing. Meanwhile, the mysterious \u201cpig wife\u201d locked away in the tunnels represents another suffocating stereotype: womanhood reduced to something mindless and sexual. For Mary to grow up and move forward, she has to leave all of these roles behind and carve out her own path back to the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for what it\u2019s worth: no actual pigs are harmed. A lot of coming-of-age stories rely on killing an animal for symbolic weight, but Pig Wife<\/em> rejects that idea. If the pigs don\u2019t make it out okay, the book suggests, then none of us really do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visually, Pig Wife<\/em> is just as striking as its story. Abbey Luck and Ruka Bravo\u2019s art is highly stylized but easy to follow, leaning into the weirdness of the underground world. The early pages feel rough and gritty, like photocopied punk zines, before settling into a warmer, more inviting style that somehow makes the tunnels feel both charming and deeply wrong. That contrast works beautifully, especially as the characters grow more unsettling the longer we\u2019re with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot to unpack in Pig Wife<\/em>, and it rewards careful reading and discussion. But it also works incredibly well as pure, gut-level entertainment\u2014a nightmarish, haunted-house ride that never lets up. No matter who you are, there\u2019s probably a weird teenage girl buried somewhere in your heart, and spending time with her dark fantasies before letting her go can feel strangely liberating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abbey Luck\u2019s debut graphic novel Pig Wife throws us into a deeply unsettling survival story centered on a teenager named Mary, who ends up lost in the winding tunnels of an abandoned mine. This underground world is dark, filthy, and anything but peaceful\u2014and if Mary ever wants to see daylight again, she\u2019ll have to push… \u00a0Continue Reading: Graphic Novel Review: “Pig Wife”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11048,"featured_media":3151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/145\/2026\/01\/pigwife3.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p94S4R-OM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3152,"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148\/revisions\/3152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palomar.edu\/kksm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}