Some days are better than others
A poem about depression
Hey everyone. If this comic resonates with you, I hope you’re doing OK out there.
Idea inspiration
Despite the heavy subject matter, this one was fairly smooth to write. I wanted to just air out some things without offering some twist or comforting message. If you’re like me, when you’re deep in these kinds of feelings, a clever or preachy comic is not something you want to read. But it can feel nice to hear others’ experiences and wallow together a little bit.
With that pressure off, I managed to write most of it in a waiting room.
It helped that the rhythm and rhyme was really simple and repetitive. The poems that are hard to write tend to be ones where I’ve committed to some complex rhyme scheme and everything has to be forced to fit.
Art inspiration
A couple of years ago I did a series of illustrations for fun, where every person in every picture was looking down at their phones:
I still like the idea, particularly the ones that get more and more absurd or surreal, but never ended up posting them anywhere (I was probably a bit self conscious about the art, which I care less about these days).
So I partially revived the idea of having a recurring facial expression in each illustration for this comic, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I’m not sure how I settled on the expression for “depression-face” and I think I was just aiming for as blank a stare as possible.
A couple of the illustrations are relying heavily on reference images. This was mostly done to save time but I’d like to explore some more interesting angles for my comics as they are usually pretty dull.
Let’s hear it!
Please feel free to drop me an email or a comment if this one struck a chord at all. I’ve found that my poems that are a bit more uplifting or “wholesome” tend to be received better (at least on Reddit), but it’s nice to be able to make comics about whatever happens to be in my head and heart at the time.
As always, you can find my full comics archives at my website. And if you’re reading this somewhere other than your inbox, please consider subscribing as niche comics like these don’t stand much of a chance on social media.
hang in there! i guess the mind is like the weather, there are worse days and there are better days, and not entirely under our control.
btw i really like the drawings with everyone’s head buried in a phone— very powerful. 15 years ago it might have been surreal, now it hits a little too close to home for comfort.