Comics work centring on mental health awareness can broadly take two paths into communicating its message: a directly autobiographical or biographical route, or by embedding those ideas into fictional narrative. Both are, of course, equally valid. The first connecting with us by raw candour and first hand accounts, and the second by tackling important conversations within a framework that also looks to give us an entertaining story as well.
Lara Pickle’s I Feel Awful, Thanks is an example of the second. It uses fantasy elements to explore some very real issues surrounding mental health, including themes of anxiety, workplace bullying, and self-worth. Its protagonist is Joana, a young witch who moves to London after getting a dream job with a coven making potions. But this new beginning will prove not to be the idyllic one she envisioned. Her flatmate turns out to be passive aggressive and impossible to get on with. Her manager at work is dismissive of her and happy to take the credit for her innovations. And her mental health slowly begins to collapse. Can she find the help she needs to take control of her life again?
Pickle’s story is populated with characters, situations and scenarios that will no doubt feel familiar to many readers. Who hasn’t felt that sense of social solitude? Or had to deal with a superior at work whose behaviour is simply unacceptable? Or struggled to find their place in the world? I Feel Awful, Thanks is a journey through therapy and a coming-of-age story rolled into one, with its likeable lead providing us with an easy entry point into the deeper subject it examines.
Pickle’s artwork is lively, buzzing and animated, using varied page layouts and clever visual tricks to echo its lead’s emotional state. Her character work is particularly effective, using body language and expression to bring us fully into Joana’s mindset as she continues her emotional journey. If there’s one facet of the book that perhaps works against the story it’s that its smaller sized format doesn’t give her packed art the opportunity to breathe that it really deserves. But given that I Feel Awful, Thanks is probably aimed at the upper end of the YA market (and beyond) that’s a presentational style that no doubt appeals more to that demographic.
Another recommended addition to our comics Mental Health Awareness comics resource list which you can check out here at Broken Frontier.
Lara Pickle (W/A) • Oni Press, $17.99
Review by Andy Oliver
You can meet Lara Pickle at the Gosh! Comics and Broken Frontier Drink and Draw IN-PERSON in London on Friday, November 30th. Details here.
