I can't help myself when it comes to diary comics. They depress the hell out of me; as with Twitter, they provide a window into someone else's life, and I find myself coming down with some serious career/talent/overall life envy. But as with mint Oreo ice cream and tortilla chips, sometimes I just have to indulge.

I was a ways into Marc Ellerby's diary comic Ellerbisms before I realized that Ellerby was the illustrator on Oni's romance comic Love the Way You Love. I'd thought his art was familiar, especially the way he draws women with thick eyelashes beneath their eyes, suggesting heavy use of eyeliner and mascara, but I actually greatly prefer his art here. His deceptively simple style comes to life, tracing each moment of frustration, hopefulness, heartbreak, and delight across his figures' faces. And he draws complex scenes full of crowds and detailed backgrounds with such mastery that it appears effortless. Certainly some of the drawings are less polished, probably due to a time crunch or Ellerby's repetitive stress injury, but each page is full of warmth, like a brief visit with friends.

Different diarists take different approaches to the diary comic. James Kochalka invites us into his life for five minutes of every day, while Erika Moen relates brief essays and anecdotes in graphic form. Ellerby generally takes the former approach, although is style is more narrative than Kochalka's. But it's clear from the early strips that Ellerby was initially uncertain what his comic was about, what he wanted to share with the world. Consequently, those first entries zig and zag a bit, full of amusing little moments -- conversations with friends, ventures to rock shows, private embarrassments -- but not quite settled into a rhythm.

But then something happens. Ellerby starts telling a love story.

Ellerby dragged his feet a bit in incorporating his girlfriend Anna into the comic, but as she appears more and more, Ellerbisms moves swiftly from a random collection of moments to an impressionistic story about a young cartoonist and the girl he loves. We get Anna and Marc's smaller, daily moments, but also follow them on their trip to Anna's native Sweden and the emotional letdown of their return to England. Ellerby is also admirably unafraid to share the low points of their relationship, a screaming (and largely one-sided) fight and some gorgeously meloncholy moments of uncertainty. He doesn't share the details of the events leading up to these moments, which is for the best; we get to experience them without being asked to make judgments, and Anna and Marc get to remain real people rather than being reduced to characters in a less authentic story. Their relationship doesn't feature in every page, but it doesn't need to; it simply serves to anchor the comic to something consistent and real.

Ellerbisms has really hit its stride and it seems that, regardless of what happens with Marc and Anna, Ellerby has developed a flexible, honest approach to the diary comic that could well make it one of the web's enduring diaries. Ellerbisms updates Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

[Ellerbisms]