"Tear Along the Dotted Line": Crippling Anxiety, Lots of Penises, and a Giant Armadillo

 Zerocalcare (Michele Reich, below) is, according to Europe Comics, "Italy's best selling graphic novel artist for the last 20 years."  His iconic character, a depressed cartoonist with a giant armadillo as a superego, appears in the blog zerocalcare.it, in a variety of graphic novels, most not available in English, and in a cartoon  called Tear Along the Dotted Line, whichjust dropped on Netflix.  Zerocalcare is a gay ally, so maybe there will be some gay characters.  

I watched Episode #2, the only episode to mention a male friend. 

Opening Credits:  Zero has a piece of paper with the outline of a muscular man.  He tries to "tear along the dotted line," but flubs the job, leaving a cutout of himself.   Next time just download a photo, dude.

Scene 1:  1995.  Zero narrates: as a kid, "I had the life of a mollusk, washed up in the third row."  There are goat and dog-children in his class.  He was the teacher's pet, and thought he would grow up to do  great things, like run for president of the United States (from Italy?), but one day the gates of hell opened, and fractions and long division emerged!  Now it was daily humiliation, and guilt over disappointing the teacher.  "Look how sad she is!" the armadillo exclaims.  "Tonight she'll start drinking to ease the pain."

Scene 2: Zero had only two friends at school: Secco and Sarah.  Neither understand his pain over disappointing the teacher, because Sarah is  "a fucking nerd with top grades" and Secco "doesn't give a shit." This dialogue is rather profane.  

He's constantly asking Zero, "Want to get an ice cream?"  Is that a character tick, or is he trying to ask Zero out on a date?

Scene 3: Sarah tells Zero to lighten up: you're not the center of the teacher's world.  You're one of thousands of students she'll have during her career.  You're a number, a blade of grass in a vast field.  No one but your mother cares what you do.  But your insignificance is actually freeing.  Now you can relax and have fun.

Scene 4:  Zero doesn't relax and have fun.  New anecdote: his friend Alice called, but he didn't feel like answering. That happens to me all the time.  Then he started to complain about something on Twitter, but the Giant Armadillo (Valerio Mastrada, top photo) stopped him.  What if Alice sees your tweet? She'll know that you didn't answer your phone on purpose! Stay off social media for the next few hours! 

 "But what if I have important messages, like a photo from Seco of a carp giving a blow job?"  Just a brief shot, but it looks like a boy carp -- no eyelashes.

Scene 5:  The adult Sarah and Zero driving to pick up Seco, when they get a flat tire.  Zero tries to change it, so he'll be a "working class hero" and his dad will know he's not a failure.  But he flubs it, inviting (he imagines) endless ridicule.  Sarah suggests calling for help, but he refuses: "As a man, I have only three tasks: hunting, commenting on football, and knowing about cars."  His book on the rules of manhood has an erect penis on the cover.  "If I ask for help  I'm insulting God, everything holy, and the foundation of this country!"  

What if his ineptutide around cars signifies a lack of sexual prowess?  The jack won't lift, the tire won't get mounted.  The tire is trying to mount a penis-shaped thing.  Zero is imagining that he's bad at being the bottom in oral or anal sex.  

He calls his Mom for help, but she refuses, so they take the bus.  The end.

Beefcake: A surprising number of penises.

Heterosexism:  Two women appear in Zero's life, Alice and Sarah, but at least in this episode he doesn't express romantic interest in either.

Gay Characters:   I don't think that Zero is canonically gay, but the sexual references all seem to imply same-sex interest. Zero imagines his sexual ineptness as a tire failing to mount a penis-shaped thing.  He's bad at giving blow jobs.

Plot:   Interesting exaggerations caused by Zero's out of control anxiety.  My only complaint is that the anecdotes seem random, not connected thematically, not building toward anything. There really is no plot.  Zero and Sarah never make it to Seco's house.

My Grade:  B

Update: The whole series takes place during a very long trip to Biella, about 100 km west of Milan, for a funeral. Taken together, the series has a very Faulknerian, As I Lay Dying  feel.  Sarah is gay, and Alice is bisexual.  Zero's romantic interests are unspecified.