depression in comics (part two)

Way back when, I promised a second post on "Depression in Comics," and then I got busy with traveling and the Blog-A-Thon, and it fell by the wayside.

So my second entrant in the series is not from the world of superhero comics but rather from the webcomics underground: specifically the comic Achewood. Achewood takes place in a fairly absurd universe, but creator Chris Onstad has used the recurring character of "Roast Beef" to do one of the most long-running investigations of depression that comics has to offer. [Beaten out only by Grand Prize Winner Charlie Brown?]

Here's Roast Beef in the early days, back in this strip from 2002:

And here's Roast Beef from this week, as he looks through an issue of Martha Stewart Weddings:

Roast Beef is really the character who got me hooked on Achewood, so it is only proper that he gets a shout out here, as we continue with our Raccoon Salute To: Depression In Comics!

This is a three-part series, but the third part will be a while in coming, for two reasons: one, I have to track down a copy of the graphic novel in question, and two, I am currently over 1,000 miles from my scanner.

Labels: comics, mental_illness

Saturday, May 31, 2008
11:37 AM
2 comments

depression in comics (part one)

One of the oft-repeated truisms of the comics world is that part of the appeal of Marvel Comics is that their heroes are flawed in ways that their target audience can appreciate. Spider-Man has to deal with financial worries and social geekiness, the X-Men are basically hated pariahs, etcetera.

And then there's Daredevil, who has the flaw of being handicapped (he's blind), but who also, throughout his run, has struggled with some pretty serious depression. The recent Ed Brubaker issues on Daredevil have been like a fucking case study:

(Clicking on the sample panel here will take you to a scan of the entire page, if you want to see it in context. It's worth a look to get the full impact of the example.)

Sheesh. Looks like Daredevil could use a good therapist. But is this even the best example of depression in comics? Stay tuned for Part Two!

Labels: comics, mental_illness

Tuesday, April 29, 2008
7:10 PM
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Comments still not working. My hosting service has been notified; we'll see how long it takes them to get back to me.

Yesterday, after I failed to get them working, I crawled back into bed, and stayed there until about 5 pm. I didn't get dressed or leave the house all day.

Today I continue to feel completely unproductive. I spent maybe an hour or two trying to write the Imaginary Year update before giving up in disgust.

This seems to happen to me all the time: I soldier on through periods where I'm intensely busy and stressed, just trying to hold on until I have an expanse of free time to call my own, only then when I get the free time I don't put it to any kind of use. Last week I was grading tons of papers, meeting with students in conferences, worrying about keeping my job, and I still managed to get the Number None CD put together. This weekend I found myself between batches of papers, with the CD done, and the job worries at rest—suddenly I had free time, and I found myself mainly just sitting around, utterly uninspired.

Am I just simply experiencing a period of creative / physical / emotional exhaustion? And using the free time, perhaps sensibly, as time to rest up? The funny thing is that these periods of idleness don't really help me to feel rested: when I'm unproductive I worry about it. The lack of interest in working on my own personal projects—or in fact in engaging with the world at all—seems to border on depression, and then I worry both about feeling idle and about feeling depressed.

I doubt that feeling worried about feeling depressed is of any use at all. It seems like it would be better to just let yourself feel depressed, riding it out instead of fighting it. I suspect that I shouldn't worry about the idleness, either—it probably is a necessary "resting up," and the anxiety about it may be a key cause of the depression-like symptoms.

Other people let themselves take time off, and they spend that time just sitting around doing nothing, and they don't spend the whole time worrying about it. I think?

I have to admit that the idea seems alien to me.

Labels: mental_illness, personal

Monday, April 22, 2002
12:18 PM
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