i've reblogged parts of the comic a few times but don't think i've ever really said anything about it so i'll take a moment to do so now. if you're not already reading max graves' What Happens Next then you really should be. in the about section, graves describes his own comic as being about:
the aftermath of a murder
the midwestern united states
being gay and transgender
which is completely accurate but also does not do a lot to convey just how good of a job the comic does at being about these things. It's able to deftly interrogate the relationships between queerness and isolation, isolation and criminalization, criminalization and sensationalism, sensationalism and Posting, and Posting and queerness with a sort of resigned lucidity that never devolves into preaching. not an easy feat when working with this subject matter.
The story centers around a cast of characters in proximity to a murder that has already been solved. There is no mystery here, other than 'how did it come to this'. Our main character is Milo, twentysomething my little pony enthusiast and murderer's accomplice, now struggling to stumble into early adulthood after 8 years of institutionalization in the wake of his conviction. As a teenager, Milo dismembered the corpse of fellow homeschooler Hayley Gorski at the behest of her murderer and his best friend, Griffin. Other prominent people of interest are the true crime youtubers making content about Milo's situation, the victim's younger sister who is converting her grief into misguided political activism, and the serial killer-stanning penpal/boyfriend of the still imprisoned Griffin who takes an interest in Milo in no small part due to his fixation on the intimacy of sharing a murder with someone. The rest of the cast is fleshed out with these people's friends, families, partners, colleagues, and acquaintances.
It would be difficult to describe any of these characters as likeable, but it would impossible to describe any of them as unsympathetic. With it's heavy reliance on extended flashback sequences, WHN has a real knack for introducing characters that could easily come across as hyperbolic caricatures in less skilled hands, and then retroactively contextualizing them into completely grounded and believable depictions of types of people that are not often afforded that honesty. The comic's unflinching portrayal of the nastiest aspects of many of these characters and the subcultures they reside in is never at the expense of compassion or humanity. It always feels that we are wallowing alongside them, rather than ogling at them from above. At least, to me it does.
As of posting this, the comic has 1,325 pages, but it's drawn in a single-panel format with a relatively very low text density, which makes it an impressively breezy read despite the heaviness of the subject matter and quality of the writing. Check it out if that sounds up your alley, and maybe even check it out if it doesn't sound up your alley because i think this work has the potential to provide a lot of bang for your buck in terms of horizon-expanding.
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