Numerous chemical reactions occur when a person eats chocolate. First there’s the taste, smooth and sweet (or bitter, if you’re a dark chocolate fan) on the tongue. The flavor of chocolate has been identified to consist of over 1,500 different components. Then there’s the numerous chemicals that hit the brain, causing feelings of happiness, alertness, and energy. The sugar in chocolate even specifically activates a portion of the brain associated with rewards.
For Mindy, the protagonist in cartoonist Sweeney Boo‘s forthcoming BOOM! Box graphic novel Eat, and Love Yourself, a special chocolate bar has an entirely unexpected effect. Boo, colorist Joana Lafuente, and letterer D.C. Hopkins tell the story of Mindy, a woman with an eating disorder, as a magic bar of chocolate takes her on a journey to reckon with her past, and gives her an opportunity to learn to accept who she is. And to think, it all happened because of an impulse buy at the corner store.
Check out a nine-page preview, exclusive to The Beat, of Eat, and Love Yourself below. Published by BOOM! Studios as part of the BOOM! Box imprint, the 160-page graphic novel is due out in comic shops on Wednesday, April 15th, with a wide release on Tuesday, April 21st. Final order cutoff for comic shops is Monday, March 23rd, 2020.
Mindy is a young woman living with an eating disorder and trapped in a battle for her own self-worth. When she accidentally discovers something that will give her a chance to revisit her past—the relationships she’s lost, the mistakes she’s made, all of it— she thinks she has a chance to undo every wrong turn, to put her life back on track. But will she be able to find a way back to her present, and just as important, a way to treat herself with love and kindness, at any size?
