Anger Management

Man, this comic. It's a bit overwrought and I feel the way I drew the dude's face is quite bad, but I like the idea and the format. Upside-down speech is a good visual cue for subconscious thought patterns. I also like how the line-work in the top and bottom row is delicate and thin and the violence panel is made with a big brush that chops up the space harshly between space and object. If only I had structured that face traditionally a bit better. You can't improvise everything.

This idea came to me when I was visiting Brussels with my dad. I was very sad at the time, to the point where I couldn't sleep at night, and I paced and paced the hotel room (again a hotel room), I did endless series of push-ups to tire myself out and I broke the washroom's basin by mistake. Actually the worst of all of that is when you lie in bed trying to sleep with one ear on the mattress and you play rhythmic patterns with your fingers and hear them reverberate through the mattress, booming at the empty silence.

So perhaps the ugliness suits it! I have rationalized a small win for me right there.

On the formal level: 1) same face on all panels, slightly worked over to avoid cut-and-paste effect, but effective emotionally. Stonewall face. 2) throat gurgling sound effect: it works. Don't always put actual letters in sound panels, it's very useful to upset the reader expectation sometimes. 3) I went with the throat punch for extra cruelty. Of course nobody aims there on purpose but man if it happens it's much worse than a face hit. 4) Story starts 'after the fact'. The reader is encouraged to fill in the blanks. The 'plot' doesn't matter here, what matters is the human situation. When you just have a single page's worth of space you need to cut the most inessential corners and retain the gist of it. This was good practise for me regardless of how many pages a next comic I do will be.

Also, I wanted to say: thank you if you forwarded the comic to any interested friends. I really appreciate it. Don't hesitate to drop me comments, though, I see lately they've been sparser. That's fine, I understand there isn't an infinite amount of things to be said about what turns out to be a pretty homogeneous body of work but still, any communication is welcome.

- Helm