written by Mats Jonsson

Just as there are different styles in writing autobiographies, there are different styles in presenting them in a comic book. Swedish comic book writer and illustrator Mats Jonsson records several years in his twenties with a self-deprecating style and purposefully crude drawings.

Most of the story, which does not have a central plot, revolves around Mats’s love life. No, that’s not quite right. Most of the story revolves around Mats’s lack-of-love life. Oh, he gets plenty of action from women, but everything seems to end either in disappointment or outright heartbreak. Every time he really falls for a woman, something has to go wrong.
 
Like Anna, the first woman we’re introduced to. She already has a boyfriend, but…one thing leads to another, and she changes her mind on whether she wants to be with the boyfriend, or Mats, or…long story short, they do end up being a couple, and then she dumps him.
 
There’s also Elsa. Mats is interested in her, even though he’s also tempted by Cilla, and there’s some irony in this considering how hurt he was by Anna balancing two potential lovers. Elsa moves to the UK for college, and that spells the beginning of the end.
 
Another relationship that stands out is the one with Åse, an artistic and deeply depressed woman. Mats wants to break it off, but is terrified she might hurt herself in response.
 
Some of Hey Princess is very funny, but more often it’s pathetic. I don’t mean pathetic as in the story is pathetic; I mean that time and again Mats shows pretty pathetic things happening in his life. Some of it is totally out of his hands, and some of it he brings on himself. In this sense, it’s an honest portrayal. Oftentimes in autobiographies, writers want to only show certain sides of themselves, but Mats repeatedly does not show himself in the best light. He’s sensitive, clueless, desperate, and many other things that everyone can be at one time or another, but most of us don’t want to admit to.
 
The photograph on the cover might throw readers off, making them think it’s not really a graphic novel. But the only photograph that exists is the one on the cover; everything inside is hand drawn in black and white. The art is very stylized in a cartoony sort of way, showing that, yet again, Jonsson has his own way of making comics.