Excerpt from new autobiographical mini-comic

Andrew Godfrey and I are completing a new mini-comic in time for my talk at Laydeez do Comics (so nervous!). As usual, it's on a cheery subject: my time in a mental institution. When I started writing, I realised I had a lot to say on this subject so it looks like this one will just be one of three issues, loosely centered around a particular focus. The focus on this one is on the strange and intense connections I made with my fellow patients and both the positive and negative ramifications of this.

And here is a little excerpt from the text:

"I have never, in my life, made friends as quickly and easily as I did when I was in hospital. This says something about me, I'm sure, but it also says something about the place I was in. A mental institution is no ordinary hospital ward. Here, the distance between patient and staff spans miles and miles. Whether they meant to or not, most of the staff treated us like we were contagious. And the more alienated from them we felt, the more we gravitated towards each other. We were kin, connected by disease.

We were all here, in this place, and no signifier was more obvious: there was something very wrong with us. No wonder then that we looked to each other for companionship, for some simple humanity. Our recognition of each other proved that we were still human."

Image by Andrew Godfrey