Confessions of a Nose-Picking Lover by Ruoki (Mini Kus! #141)

Sure, Confessions of a Nose-Picking Lover is exactly what it purports to be, ostensibly about a person who delights in unabashedly digging for gold, with sickly yellows and reds in the art that almost revel in the booger-sugared (sometimes) bloody consistency. But, what the heck is really going on here? The actual message is that any (consenting) indulgence in life can be good, no matter how taboo it may be perceived to be by outsiders. Ruoki states that nose-picking elicits a “Zen-life flow state” rather than the “wild frenzy” of, say, an orgasm, because it’s a return to some primal satisfaction. When you’re into something so passionately, you should share your love of that thing with the world, do it in public, teach others how to do it, and build a community of like-minded individuals. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that as I write this review, I’m preparing to depart for WonderCon in Anaheim, California to table and promote a new project, and the thought occurred to me that nose-picking is fundamentally no different than making comics. Once shunned by society as a “low brow” art form or pastime, but capable of enjoying mainstream success with an influx of thousands to a plethora of annual conventions. The booger museum full of different specimens that the writer/artist imagines is little different than a Comic-Con, with diehards and civilians alike gawking at all the wares and indulging in their interests among their extended tribe. Ruoki bounces visually between more traditional panel to panel storytelling with vibrant colors, and some lovely rough-hewn black and white images with thicker bold lines, almost mirroring the more socially acceptable hobbies being in the colorful spotlight, with outliers on the fringe still peeking out from the shadows. The final page punctuates the book’s core message; we all have our own kink, be it sexual, bodily functions, the type of media we consume, or different hobbies and passions. In our own way, we are all “soothing the kitten inside our nostril.”