Gwnewch y pethau bychain

Wow.

One of the Usenet newsgroups I still bother to keep up with is rec.arts.comics.strips. Today, one of the regulars posted a message about a comic he was working on. It’s still a work in progress, but he wanted people who appeciated the form to take a look and give him feedback, good or bad.

So I went to take a look.

Mom’s Cancer will not amuse you. It may not even entertain you. But it will affect you. The author, who is preferring to stay semi-anonymous for obvious reasons, has crafted an intimate, frank, and touching portrayal of what he and his family have gone through during the course of his mother’s treatment for incurable lung cancer.

It is a work-in-progress. It doesn’t yet have an ending. But in the space of time it took me to read the installments to date, I have come to know these people, to care for them, to worry about their outcome. I want to know what happens next. I need to know how the story continues.

This is undistilled Good Stuff. Read it. It’s worth the trip.

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6 Comments

  1. That strip is amazing. Thank you.

  2. I agree…that’s excellent in every way. Sobering as well.

  3. Pole Dancing

    “…will not amuse you. It may not even entertain you.”

    Gah. Talk about understatement. I read the Introduction and the first six chapters.
    Neither of my parents died of cancer, but I couldn’t go on.

    “But it will affect you.”

    Again, understatement. Very.

    “I want to know what happens next. I need to know how the story continues.”

    Me too. Definitely. Especially since my Chosen One is a health care professional who
    is very much a battler like Nurse Sis. I will return to this. To the finish.
    But not today.

    Darby Conley’s recent Get Fuzzy storyline about Rob’s (Wilco’s) cousin and
    Garry Trudeau’s current storyline about B.D. both pale by comparison to Mom.

    Thank you, I think.

    Ann O.

    PS -- Is a graphic novel / short story considered a comic strip

  4. Thank you. I’ve bookmarked this. It looks really quite good. But after three tries today, I think it will be a long time before I can read this.

    It’s only been thirteen months since I lost my mom to multiple myeloma, and the emotional scars are only more or less firmly scabbed.

    I hope someday to be able to read it. But not today.

  5. Wow.
    I had to read this all the way to the end and it did affect em.

  6. thanks

    I went and read it, and I just had to e-mail the author to say thanks. He e-mailed me back this morning. I thought you might like to read his response as well. 🙂

    Thank you very much for your kind words. Actually, I just posted a note to the rec.arts.comics.strips newsgroup explaining that I’d begun to feel like a fraud due to all the unexpected kindness and sympathy I’ve received. In fact, the most recent events depicted in the comic strip happened several months ago and Mom is still alive and doing much, much better. She beat odds that were stacked 95% against her, may be in remission, and is starting to think about living again. So, something good *does* happen; as I mentioned in my post to racs, I thought I was writing a story about Death and it turned out to be about Hope. That’s a good story, too, maybe better. I am sorry for the loss of your father and appreciate your good wishes.

    I have to confess that his response brought tears to my eyes. I’m so glad to hear that his mom is doing better; it’s so nice to know that somrtimes good things do happen. 🙂

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