This was a standalone 4 part series with a slightly different tone than what I’d done before. It started with a blend of illustration and photography, trying to find new ways to use the more conventional techniques that had been developed in webcomics, such as trails and the metapanel. I was trying to use two narratives the written and the writer in a conversation, as a means to make a comic that stepped in and out visually. After a while a more minimalist approach takes over, as the series falls mostly into edited photography and altered text, using the webpage and screen sizes of the era as gutter and border.
In terms of story, it was one of the first and only where I spoke more directly about insecurities and self loathing. Using webcomics in a way that I hadn’t before by stepping away from aggressive formalism with little narrative, and trying to express my own thoughts and conflicts with a little more visual elegance. I thought by exploring some of these feelings in published work, that I’d manage them better. I don’t think that worked. 20 years later it’s painful to read, but it represents an unvarnished look at a time and place where I was.
The original files were very low res by today’s standards, so I upscaled them using AI and doubled the original display size within the comic in order to best recreate how they originally would have been viewed.
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