I think I have a new hero in Julia Wertz.

To ring in the New Year, I treated myself to two of her comic autobiographies, and to say I had a good laugh or two would be an understatement. Before proceeding, though, I must warn that those who don’t have a tolerance for crude humor or profanity, these might not be the right books for you.

Fart Party, published in 2006 after originally appearing in smaller pieces online, is Wertz’s story about life as a 23-year-old in San Francisco. In it, we’re introduced to boyfriend Oliver, her younger brother, her older brother, and her mother (my favorite character). She lives on her own, works a job she loves, and does her comics on the side.

The story is told through vignettes that progress chronologically. To give the story some sort of anchor, I’d say it’s primarily about the development and ultimate death of the relationship between herself and Oliver. That’s not to say every comic is about that, but he plays a lead character in her life at this point, and she spends significant time talking about the growth and development of their relationship, up to its premature death. The end of their relationship comes thanks to his acceptance to school in Vermont and the reluctance on both their parts to change their minds — Julia’s to leave the city she loves and Oliver’s to engage in a long distance relationship.

But this is also the story of a girl learning how to devote herself to her art. Anyone who has had a passion — be it drawing, music, writing — will relate to Julia’s struggle to create. Amid the challenges thrown in her way, she still finds small pockets of time and energy to tell her stories, and she finds the humor in every day situations for fodder. And yes, she’ll even tackle that itself in more than one scene.

Although the art of the comics is nothing spectacular (simple pen and ink), it compliments the writing well. Wertz has an incredible sense of humor and although it is crude and at times offensive, this is the lens through which we get to know her characters so well. Julia is a 20-something navigating the tricky terrain of being on her own for the first time in a big city where things don’t always come easy nor where there is some sort of instructional guide. There are entire comics devoted to drinking the day away, the fact that cheese can make up a person’s complete diet, and how finding a television show you love can turn you into a zombie who needs nothing more than their next fix (ahem, not that that’s relatable or anything). But they are supplemented with comics about having her comics published, where she finds her inspiration, and the moment she knew her relationship with Oliver was officially over.

Fart Party’s tone is direct and honest, and although it is humorous, there is a lot of heart behind the story. This is a collection that begs to be read cover to cover rather than in spurts to get the full impact — in one strip you will be laughing to tears and in the next, you’ll simply be in tears because you understand completely how awful what’s happening really is.

What I found I loved in Fart Party I thought worked better in her 2010 book, Drinking at the Movies. Although the artistic style remains the same (and still works), the story arc and character growth and development are top notch in this volume. It feels more like a straightforward autobiography.

Drinking at the Movies chronicles 25-to-26-year-old Julia’s decision to leave San Francisco — the city she loves — and try to make it by in the mean streets of New York City. Now single, she has a little more freedom to roam, and like all good artists, she believes NYC (and the struggle to survive there) is a natural progression. Even though she doesn’t know a soul there, she packs up and moves.

We watch as she bounces between low-paying part-time jobs that offer no fulfillment, apartments that come with a myriad of quirks, and a variety of interesting health and art related challenges. She struggles with learning about her older brother’s inability to control his drug addiction, a family member’s cancer, and how to cope with her father’s new life with her step mother in Arizona. Then there’s the challenge of discovering how a city so different from the place she lived the first 25 years of her life works.

For me, Julia was a fuller character in this volume, and perhaps it’s because this is more a story of her figuring who she is through herself rather than a story about her relationships with other people and how they make her who she is. She has a lot of challenges and doesn’t deal with things particularly well, but they’re honest. She struggles to find the time and drive to make her art amid the personal challenges — and in this book there are far more personal and family challenges than in Fart Party — and she maintains a sense of humor throughout her huge and minute struggles.

Because I don’t want to spoil the end of the book, I won’t explain why this book resonates so strongly with me. But Julia comes to a conclusion at the end about herself and about where she is in her life that is something I still wrestle with on a daily basis. It’s a moment I felt coming and one which I wanted to tell her to look out for, but because I still can’t come to terms with it in my own life, I kind of hoped for a bigger fall. I suppose that will be tackled in her next volume.

Maybe Wertz’s style can best be described as what would happen to Daria when she leaves home and tries to make it on her own. Her books encapsulate life in one’s 20s with spot on humor and unflinching rawness. They are sad and funny, full of hope and hopelessness, crudeness, rudeness, and downright heartfelt moments. I am eager to dive into her other work and look forward to the possibility alluded to in Drinking at the Movies that Fart Party may become a television show in the near future.