LDCOMICS ONLINE COMICS FAIR 2025! Hoorah for comics about English Literature degrees – a very niche gap in the market has finally been filled! As someone who absolutely loved studying English at university, Abrupt Transitions: Diary of a Midlife Opsimath is immediately appealing. Author Kristen Haas Curtis is a Switzerland-based American cartoonist and literary scholar. With a general focus on autobiographies and literary adaptations, her comics include themes of university life, pigeons, and, most excitingly for fellow English literature nerds, medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer.
Abrupt Transitions: Diary of a Midlife Opsimath begins with a definition of the word opsimath (much needed, thank you, oh wise author!). An opsimath is someone who begins to learn or study later on in life. This perfectly describes our narrator, a pencil sketched version of Curtis, who studied English literature at PHD level almost twenty years after originally completing her undergraduate degree in psychology.
The sketched Curtis literally pulls up the square panel they are drawn in to reveal the timeline of events; from graduating, to a first job, marriage, children, divorce, moving to Switzerland, and eventually, getting to her present, 2020.
Through fun, simple sketches, Curtis explains how making diary-entry comics prepared her for the challenges of a PHD, in particular, writing about Geoffrey Chaucer. These panels are hilarious, as ghost Chaucer appears as a character for Curtis to bounce off, being quite shocked at the news of his own death in the 1400s.
Curtis goes on to focus on how elements of life that people may see as counter-intuitive to studying, such as having young children, can actually encourage a good work life balance, and prepare you for the constant ‘whys’ of research and advisor feedback. More seriously, Curtis also reflects on the immense stress that comes with taking on a degree, and the feelings of anxiety that can so often outweigh the feelings of accomplishment. The text in these panels physically weighs on Curtis, like a large brick ready to crush her. Thankfully, she came out the other side all the better.
Curtis includes a detailed appendix at the back of the zine, which consists of diary comic pages. Deviating from the black and white sketches of the rest of the zine, these colourful one/two page-shorts are focused on the humorous side of her story, with gags at the end of each.
Abrupt Transitions: Diary of a Midlife Opsimath is available for the duration of July as part of the LDComics Fair. If you happen to pick it up, see if you can spot the regular appearances of Tiddly the cat in many of the panels – it was a detail I particularly enjoyed throughout.
Kristen Haas Curtis • LDComics Online Comic Fair, £3.50
Review by Lydia Turner
The LDComics Online Comics Fair runs across the month of July. Read all our coverage of the comics on offer here at BF.
