Since we reviewed the first issue of Sanika Phawde’s Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas here last year at BF the comic has gone on to win in the Outstanding Series in the Ignatz Awards for 2025, not to forget being nominated for a 2025 Broken Frontier Award for Best Periodical Series. Much deserved recognition for a comic I described as “both appealingly self-deprecating and subtly profound in its observations.” That initial issue focussed on Phawde’s upcoming marriage to partner John, drama around family and mixed race relationships, and the organisational chaos of one of life’s most celebratory and yet sometimes most stressful rites of passage.
In Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas #2 Phawde continues their observational humour as the intricacies and complications of a (second) wedding, initially planned over two continents, become ever more entangled. The awkwardness of hair and make-up preparations, family intrigue and possible sabotage, parental interference, and culture clashes, all get their moment in the spotlight in short strip vignettes that are candid but never unkind in their commentary.
The third issue begins with a dry remark about weddings being primarily for family and not for the couple themselves – an opinion which has to a degree certainly been thematically felt throughout the series so far. The opening story in this compilation is told from the point of view of John, giving us a different but aligned perspective on events. Forced into a shopping trip with his father-in-law to be for more appropriate underwear it’s amusingly anecdotal but also energetically illustrated by Phawde who captures the hustle and bustle of Indian city life with a busy, frantic and elastic cartooning quality.
The standout entry from these two issues is the poignant comedy that comes from the priest who gives Sanskrit to English translations at Sanika and John’s wedding ceremony. Here Phawde uses lettering and speech balloons in multiple inventive ways to convey the awkwardness and emotional reactions that follow to clever effect. Again, vibrant colour and intricate, almost frenetic, page structures and compositions all play their part in ensuring deep reader investment in what is being portrayed on the page. Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas is a self-published offering that has been building up a continuing buzz over the last several months. That acclaim is not without warrant. Pick up all three issues so far for the proof.
Sanika Phawde (W/A) • Self-published, $20.00 each
Buy online from Radiator Comics here
Review by Andy Oliver
