It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth - July/August 2024 Edition of Devin's Chicago Comics Book Club Digest
Also, Some Thoughts on "Being the Future"
Hello, everyone! It looks like our spring slump is over, as far as attendance goes. XD You’d better believe I brought a physical copy of CyberSync to show off to everyone, too (available in at least two Chicago-area comic shops now!). Lol We talked primarily about the selection this month because there was so much ground to cover, but it also brought up memories of the early days of the pandemic and led to a discussion of the payment structure at Image Comics. It was a very fun time, even as it got heavy.
This comic was either read voraciously in one sitting or in tentative chunks that involved a lot of emotional overwhelm. I stumbled over my words a bit as I related a personal story about dealing with depression and recommended Darkness Visible by William Styron, another memoir by a creative person who dealt with suicidal ideation. That book opened with the author receiving an award in France, and I could see the critical acclaim of It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth leading people to have similar knee-jerk, “what is this person complaining about?”-type reactions to it. Other members caught way more manga references than I did, including to One Punch Man and Chainsaw Man, though we all saw the “depression monster” as a sort of “reverse Studio Ghibli” type. I was also reminded of Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads, which we’d read in the early days of the pandemic, but nobody present for this meeting had been present for that one. That comic also explored depression and suicidal ideation, and used a grid-like page layout similar to this book. A couple of people who’d read It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth digitally were unaware of the grid layouts or that some of the more striking images were whole pages. There was some discussion of the cultural differences, especially when it comes to schooling, between the United States and England. The experimentation was considered effective and outstanding, especially the use of color and different media. Everyone agreed that there was much about this book that’s unique to comics and would not work in any other medium. Our next meeting will be Wednesday, August 21 to discuss The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
What We're Reading
August 21 - The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel
September 18 - Light Carries On by Ray Nadine
October 16 - Gideon Falls, Volume 1: The Black Barn by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino
November 20 - Earthdivers, Volume 1: Kill Columbus by Stephen Graham Jones and Davide Gianfelice
Next month’s selection is not on hoopla, but there are plenty of physical copies available. If anyone needs help getting one, please reach out and let me know! Feel free to drop any future reading suggestions in the comments below, too. I’ll try to organize another poll by September.
Shameless Self-Promotion
I’ve been accepted into another anthology! This one will be published by
. Please give the Kickstarter campaign a follow. I’m not sure when it will launch, but the more hype it can get ahead of time, the better. I’m going to be published alongside more indie comic creators that I respect and admire and I’m really excited for this book!I’ll also have a short comic in an upcoming folklore/horror anthology. The script is done and the art should be finished next month sometime. I’ve gone from having an anthology cancelled to having two on the horizon! And I’ve submitted to yet another. That one makes me wish I wasn’t missing San Diego again.
The long-term project I’ve started with David Escobar, the artist of my CyberSync page, is proceeding. Right now, it just has the code name Project: Weird Wild West. :) I’ll have more to share in the coming months!
The Blackout comic I wrote with art by Michael Howe is moving along nicely. Michael will have an art stream going live shortly after this newsletter does, so check it out! You might even get a sneak peek at this project!
I wrote another one-page comic that got posted over at The Comic Jam! This was a real fun one: the themes were assigned at random to both the writing and art teams. I had to tell a story about time travel and my artist, Judah Jones, had to make the main character a wolf. I also had the pleasure of working with letterer Kevin D. Lintz again. Enjoy!
Finally, CyberSync is available for purchase! I’ll never forget my first. XD
About What We’ve Read
It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth was nominated for Best Graphic Memoir and Zoe Thorogood was nominated for Best Writer/Artist and won the Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award at the 2023 Eisner Awards. She was nominated also for Best Adaptation from Another Medium, Best Cover Artist (for multiple covers), and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art) for her work on Rain written by Joe Hill and adapted by David M. Booher, the creation of which factored heavily into the narrative of It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth. She had the most nominations of anyone that year, a fact that got covered in a profile by The Guardian.
I mentioned briefly at our meeting that the cover art for It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth sold for $7,000. Back in 2019, Comics Bookcase interviewed Zoe Thorogood. In advance of this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Tiffany Babb spoke with her for Publishers Weekly.
In a not-unrelated story, friend of the newsletter
wrote recently at his newsletter about supporting people who have suicidal ideation and what that can look like without compromising someone’s bodily autonomy or supporting a carceral state. of made an excellent video for his YouTube channel about It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth that looks at its experimentation and examines his own reactions to it. Zoe Thorogood herself shared it on social media!The latest NEWS digest is available here. The next NEWS digest will be posted in two weeks.
Some Thoughts on “Being the Future”
I was tempted to delve into my own struggles with depression that I mentioned above , but I don’t think I’m ready for that here. Instead, I want to write about another large theme of It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth. Early in the book, Zoe is told that she’s “the future of comics” by Kieron Gillen, a professional comics writer (The Wicked + The Divine). Despite leaving that meeting with more encouragement than she’s experienced up to that point, that phrase sticks with her so much that it becomes inescapable and overwhelming.
That’s an incredible weight to place on the shoulders of anyone, never mind someone barely out of their twenties! In the most literal sense, “the children are the future” in that they’ll be around long after the adults representing the status quo are dead (statistically, anyway), but they should be allowed to enjoy their youth without being made to think of such things. If adults did a better job being stewards of the present, they probably wouldn’t be in such a rush to hand it off.
The “gifted student to adult suffering from imposter syndrome” pipeline is almost a cliche, but that doesn’t make it any less real. It’s affecting to read about someone living under the burden of expectations, and understandable that Zoe feels being called “the future of comics” will lead to disappointment. Even if her next work cements that reputation (and the Eisner nominations indicate that they did), what about the work after that? And after that? At what point does the future become the present and that burden is alleviated?
I know that telling a young person they have a bright future is intended as a kindness and meant to encourage them, but we see time and time again that it can be cruel. No young person should think they need to have everything figured out. Zoe says later that she feels like being told she’s the future is “setting [her] up for a massive fall.”
Of course, when Kieron Gillen called Zoe Thorogood “the future of comics,” he didn’t mean that she was destined to usher in a new Golden Age or herald a sea of imitators. That Guardian article linked above provides the context that he was impressed by her self-assuredness and strong personal artistic style at an age when most people are still imitating their heroes. That development can sometimes take a lifetime.
I’m sure it will surprise no one that I have my own experience in this regard. This either started or peaked when I won a writing contest in my sophomore year of high school. I crashed harder than most, though, perhaps due to the added weight of being “blessed by God Himself,” according to various preachers, teachers, and prophets who could not or would not see that they were not helping. Failing to live up to my “potential” partly led to me experiencing a nervous breakdown when I was twenty-five years old.
It took a long time for me to recover, and even longer to get to a point where I felt comfortable sharing my writing and pursuing it as something more than a hobby. Along the way, I gained a great deal of perspective and set fire to a lot of manuscripts (sometimes literally). Part of me is grateful that I didn’t achieve my goals back when I was writing proselytizing nonsense masquerading as art.
I used to feel a combination of shame and condemnation when I saw someone of any age accomplishing things that I felt would be forever beyond my reach. Now that I’ve started to make inroads into the creative work I’ve always dreamed of, my primary thought is, “Good for them for having a support system!”
Zoe Thorogood writes that she finds it impossible to think too far into the future because she can’t imagine one with her in it. That’s the thing about the future: it hasn’t happened yet. It’s constantly being rewritten. I don’t know what’s in store for her, myself, or anyone else, but neither do any of the people claiming the opposite. That might be the most encouraging thing of all.
This essay was harder to write than most, I’ll be honest. I hope this made at least a modicum of sense. Feel free to share any thoughts or comments below! Have you read It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth? What did you think? Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Thanks for reading. See you next month for The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel!
Thank you so much for sharing a bit of your own personal experience with the topic.
I'm glad everyone enjoyed It's Lonely. I read it in one afternoon (with a few breathers as needed) and it was incredibly striking. Thank you for sharing your personal thoughts and experience related to it Devin.