LDC ONLINE COMICS FAIR 2025! Kama Mielczarek, aka Weird is the the Best, is a multi-disciplinary artist from Poland living in the UK. Her main aim with her comics writing and art is to take the mundane and ordinary and highlight topics such as mental health and social and cultural stigmas, which are often overlooked.
An intimate journey of self-discovery, Hidden Spectrum is a story told through vignettes, in a non-linear format. The story focuses on a girl trying to fit in the world around her. Simply named ‘the grey girl’, our protagonist struggles with anxiety from the first moment we meet her, reflecting that parachuting would cause less fear than speaking to her peers. She reflects on her time in school; she badly wanted to make friends, to reach out to another human, but felt an invisible barrier preventing her from breaking through.
Over time, rather than continuing to feel frustrated, the girl learns to be comfortable in her box of isolation: “I learned to be invisible, and to accept that I was different”. Yet, eventually, even the comfort of her own company began to feel like a restriction – this is illustrated as images of the grey girl begin to appear in a cage, rather than her box. Eventually, the grey girl begins to find beauty in the small things; the birds, the wind and the stars. These are illustrated in deep colour, in contrast to the almost messy-style sketches we get when the girl is feeling overwhelmed.
Refreshingly, our narrator doesn’t pretend that this transition is smooth. There’s still a lot of mixed feelings, grief and loss, and lots of things set the grey girl back. Yet, she doesn’t give up in her search for human connection, and to find real joy.
As Hidden Spectrum is semi-autobiographical, Mielczarek’s main aim is to help young girls and women (many of whom have been historically undiagnosed with neurodiverse tendencies or anxiety issues due to lack of research) feel less alone. One thing this comic does fantastically is to reassure those that aren’t neurotypical that they are not any less human, just because they don’t meet societal norms. And another thing? They aren’t alone.
Hidden Spectrum is available to buy online in the LDComics fair for the remainder of July.
Kama Mielczarek (W/A) • LDComics Online Comics Fair, £8.00
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.
