“Yung’s series is more than a time capsule: it captures a Generation X mindset. There’s a certain flavour of dialogue that flourished in the ’90s. Yung’s strips feature guys monologuing about advertising, irony, and nostalgia as a form of entertainment. Every opinion is undercut by commentary; expressing anything sincere is too risky. Irony was the generational currency, from Seinfeld to the dialogue that Kevin Smith built his career on. Yung pairs this cool detachment with a sarcastic takedown of his own generation’s artistic output. Call it what you will: metafiction, postmodernism, having it both ways, refusing to commit to a point of view, and getting away with it all with a smirk. Yung deliberately explores the tension between detachment and his desire to actually enjoy drawing. This juxtaposition is most notable in his Ninja Turtles pastiche, a series of comics featuring Ninja Bear, whose sword battles are undercut by wry authorial commentary.” — Quill & Quire
“Yung’s Stay as you are. mini-zines might just be the ultimate Gen-X underground comic. Two guys in their 20s simply banter away in that post-ironic tone that was cool when it came out in the late ‘90s. Collected at last, the zine is still despairingly hilarious, and when it doesn’t quite stand the test of time (musings on the internet, anyone?), grown-up Yung owns up to his misfires. Oh, let’s not forget occasional breaks for a homicidal bear! Far from an exercise in nostalgia, Stay as you are. is like putting on an old favourite album and finding that its subtle tunes and painfully true lyrics affect you in surprisingly new ways.” — Broken Pencil, Summer 2019 Indie Book Picks
“Not many minicomics get published in collections like this. It happens for some indie comics darlings like Adrian Tomine and Jessica Abel, whose later success warrants enough interest in their earlier work. The vast majority come out and are lost to time, as ephemeral as, well, comics were originally intended to be. I’m glad these strips will be getting a second look, or third if you count some of the individual strips’ publication in magazines and newspapers. They deserve the relative permanence of book form.” — from the Foreword by David Rust, reviewer for The Comics Journal
