Loneliness in Comic Zines: “Incompatible,” by Mary Shyne and, “Can You Believe We Only Get One Life” by Anna McGlynn.
Hello! My name is Anna Sellheim and I will be curating the Our Comics Ourselves tumblr this week. I write comics about mental health and progressive politics. This will be a mix of both comics that were important to me growing up and helped shape my creative voice, as well as work that I find particularly exciting now.
THIS IS IT! THE FINAL DAY! LET’S DO THIS!
People have called my work brave. As mentioned above, my work often deals with my mental health struggles (anxiety and depression). I’ve not only done solo work about it but I’ve been part of projects like @sweatypalmszine. Or my work is political. Again, I haven’t just done my own political comics, but I’ve been part of other projects like @comics-for-choice. I am a very open book, I’m willing to write comics about almost any part of my life...
except loneliness.
Loneliness is a subject that I find too painful to acknowledge in my day to day life, let alone sit down for hours to draw a comic about it. Two zines I picked up this con season talk about loneliness in a totally raw, honest manner. I find both of these zines took a lot of bravery to create.
Mary Shyne’s Incompatible looks at Mary’s abysmal dating history, talking about 12 different romantic encounters, each corresponding to a different astrological sign. You see Mary in all sorts of horrible situations, because she’s insecure and afraid of being alone. She talks about unrequited crushes, dealing with jerky older men, men that use her, etc. It’s a brutal book, but if you’ve felt the insecurity and loneliness that so many young 20 something single people do, you totally understand why she’s getting into these situations (even if you handled it the opposite way like me and coped with those feelings by avoiding dating pretty much completely for fear of being rejected). This book would be beyond depressing but Shyne saves it at the last moment, giving us a little bit of hope. This zine is my favorite thing I picked up at SPX and is the reason I agreed to write posts for this exhibition.
SPEAKING OF LONELINESS AND HOPE, LET’S MOVE ON TO ANNA MCGLYNN!
(I am going to warn you straight up- these shots are crappy phone photos because when I tried scanning pages they looked CRAZY).
Can You Believe We Only Get One Life is a collection of diary comics from McGlynn’s summer. It is my favorite zine I picked up at @micexpo (and let’s be real here, I picked up a LOT of good stuff at MICE). I am not a fan of 90% of diary comics out there, it’s hard having something worthwhile to write about in the day to day. McGlynn’s comics show the day to day drudgery of life but the comics feel full of hope and very much ALIVE.
They are all honest and real. Some are really funny (^”Cool! What a great feeling it is to be loved and driving”).
(^ Let me tell you, as someone that makes a 3 hour drive to see her boyfriend every weekend and just has time to sit and THINK, the second panel is ON POINT).
Others just show the experience of having lonely moments, but there’s hope in all of these strips. Sometimes you have good days and sometimes you have bad days, and McGlynn’s comics show us both and there’s a real beauty in that.
Anyway, two cool brave ladies doing cool brave comics. A good thing all around. You can follow Shyne at @citygrump and her website is here. Anna McGlynn at @annamcglynn . I’m on here @annasellheim and my website is here.
MY GOODNESS! IT’S OVER! Thanks for reading ya’ll! I hope you check out the stuff I’ve talked about this week! Time for me to go draw my own comics again.
xx
-Anna








