LDCOMICS ONLINE FAIR 2025! There’s an origin story of sorts to Rachael Ball’s 1972 short comic. The premise of it is based on an exercise given to attendees at her Comics Club – to make a comic inspired by an object owned by someone you love. In Ball’s case that relates to her mother. But this is also a tale very central to the artist herself. One of those instantly recognisable stories that has something universal at its heart. Ball, of course, is the creator of two similarly nuanced graphic novels – The Inflatable Woman and Wolf – that delicately explore the human condition with subtlety and quiet insight.
1972 takes us back over 50 years to Ball as a young child coming home from a family holiday by car with her mother and brother, Andy. The journey becomes a nightmare for Rachael as she realises she has left BeeBah, her dressing gown comfort blanket that she has anthropomorphised into a companion – somewhere in the caravan park they were staying at. It’s a devastating loss for the young girl and one that she struggles to come to terms with. But maybe the wisdom that only parents can possess will find a way to soothe away her fears…
We’ve likely all been here as a child, losing or misplacing a much-loved toy or item. Ball’s caricatured and slightly elastic visual characterisation is replete with key emotional indicators that bring us directly into her on-page junior incarnations sense of devastation and despondency, as she considers the impossibility of life without BeeBah while her brother Andy mocks and taunts her at the same time. There are sidesteps into visual metaphor too while Ball’s loose layouts give us the indication of events being filtered through the sometimes distorted qualities of memory.
1972 is a black and white narrative with the exception of uses of red later on. These use colour to anchor a certain comforting object (the ultimate focal point of the comic) to the nurturing and kindly presence of motherhood. The ultimate point of whole piece. This is simply lovely, slice-of-life storytelling that speaks to us all.
Rachael Ball • LDComics Online Fair, £4.50
Review by Andy Oliver
The LDComics Online Comics Fair runs across the month of July. Read all our coverage of the comics on offer here at BF.
