So this is something a little personal to me, in a way. For the past couple of years I've been struggling with anxiety and depression, fighting through the bad moments and worrying over the good, seeing various therapists and thinking I have my shit figured out, only to relapse and fall back into terrible habits and difficult times where I'm feeling exhausted and alone.
One of the things that really got me through those times was webcomics. And I want to talk about them today.
Way back when, all the way in January (before Trump was president! Remember those heady times, folks?), The Adventures of Dr McNinja ended. From the beginning it had been irreverent, satirical and ridiculous, introducing over the course of its twelve-and-a-half-year run such oddities as raptor-riding archaeologist bandits, time-travelling astronauts, kings who ride dirt bikes and a unicorn who is also a motorcycle. And in the middle of it all was this Dr McNinja, a doctor who was also a ninja. Writer/illustator Chris Hastings injected his character with a larger-than-life personality to go along with his bizarre concept, and he filled the world with a sort of upside-down logic that still worked, and still made the world feel real. Of all the webcomics I read, this was the one I would come back to the most, to re-read old stories. They read like old adventure serials, they're like some over-the-top Saturday morning cartoon or an Indiana Jones film crossed with Hammer Horror. Everything is ridiculous and that's frequently lampshaded, and with every update I would wonder just how the good doctor and his companions (okay, now it sounds like Doctor Who) would get out of their latest scrape. Even revisiting it, I could admire the storytelling: picking up foreshadowing I hadn't noticed before, reading back through my favourite adventures ("D.A.R.E to resist ninja drugs and ninja violence" and "Army of One" are two of my favourites... I guess I just like watching Franz Rayner get his ass kicked), or just watching the art evolve from its inception, to the full-colour transition of Monster Mart. It's a webcomic I still go back to today, and I feel like there are still so many stories within that universe that could be told.
When it ended, I remember feeling like it was the end of an era. This ridiculous, over-the-top world and its characters, they would never again grace my screen with a new story. I would miss the adventures, but I couldn't fault the end of the comic. It was fantastic, amazing. Dr McNinja was one of the first webcomics I started reading; it was also the webcomic that got me into physical comics and comic shops. From there my love of Moon Knight, Hawkeye and probably even 2000AD really blossomed; Chris Hastings really brought me into the world of comics with his adventures, and for that he has my eternal thanks.
But this post isn't really about that. Dr McNinja serves as a good introduction, but it isn't the webcomic I want to talk about. Let's go back to the beginning.
I must've started reading Octopus Pie around mid- to late-2015/early 2016. I can't remember exactly when, but I was in the grip of a pretty severe depression at the time. I barely slept or I slept too much. I didn't speak to anyone. I was broken in a lot of ways, and I felt like this was an unending situation. Octopus Pie caught my eye because of the colour, but it was the story, reading from the beginning, that really hooked me and dragged me in. And for a time, Octopus Pie was my soap opera. It's a comic about drama - well, it's a comic about a twentysomething called Eve Ning and her group of friends as they navigate post-college life and work out the kinks of relationships, jobs, happiness and life in general. I think this is why it hooked me - these directionless kids were people I could identify with, their journey was in many ways my journey. They were broken, and they were trying to fix themselves. Eve is stuck in a dead-end job and feels powerless and small. Hanna and Marek are druggies who smoke pot all day and clash ideologically. Will is a drug dealer who's beginning to hate the day-to-day of his illegal work. Along with the rest of the sprawling cast, they struggle against the tide and push to work out their myriad problems and overcome the ennui of a mirthless life.
Look, go read this because it's funny. That's important. But also, go read it because it's poignant and cathartic and it's just great to read something that makes you feel like someone understands you. I think that's Meredith Gran's greatest accomplishment with this: Octopus Pie is a webcomic you can find yourself in. A lot of the problems that make up its stories are problems every young person is going to have to deal with at some point; friendships end, jobs are lost, you end up directionless or aimless or struggling somehow. Octopus Pie has been there. Octopus Pie gets it. And I think that's my favourite thing about it.
As for the ending... I honestly didn't expect it. It came totally outta nowhere for me. In hindsight I can see it - it was a whole big arc that dealt with love, major life upset, and a lot of the minor characters and side characters returned for one last hurrah. But it was still that little story, about Eve and Hanna and Marek and Will, and their friends were all around them and it felt just like another story. And the ending is still very open, it doesn't end smoothly. Which is as it should be, because that's not how life works. Life flows and judders and splashes over the sides, it doesn't have a fixed transition between one state and another. It's like people say: you wake up one day and suddenly you're forty years old and you haven't accomplished anything. Only in this case, you wake up one day and suddenly your favourite webcomics are ending without warning. But it ends with a sense that we don't need to see more. Things have resolved, dead ends have opened up, people are happy and they're getting better. Everything is fixing itself, slowly. The duct tape over the cracks may have peeled away a few times, but now they've got actual plaster and they can fill in those cracks properly.
Octopus Pie ending is a good reminder, not only that things do end - friendships, jobs, relationships... Hell, even life itself! - but also that things can end well. You don't have to leave everything on a sour note. A major disaster is not the only thing that can change things. You can change. You can get better. You can fix yourself.
It's reassuring. I like that.
Adieu!
No comments:
Post a Comment