SQUID MAN VI

Episode Two Hundred Forty Three: Squid Man VI.
In which we lose a day.

1 comment:

  1. This one speaks to me of the frustration of my current situation. For the last few months, I've been working six to seven days a week, and often for 12-15 hours days - usually unplanned. This is the result: a frantically produced strip in about the quarter of time that I would like to have spent on it. It's a perfect symbol of how unhealthy my work environment is. Even as I try to write a strip of the thoughtless abuse of authority (Squid Man is representative of undeserved and censorious judgement), I am unable to do so satisfactorily because of the thoughtless abuse of authority that results in my frantically trying to hold my workplace from flying apart. It's just awful, and I have been miserable and exhausted for months. No wonder I've been fixated on Julien Baker's 'Little Oblivions'.

    This strip came from a conversation with a colleague about our workplace, and how the route to accomplishing what you need is to lead the C.E.O. by the nose by making him think that your idea was his idea. "How would it be if we were to accomplish something by discovering a solution...?" It's a maddening situation because without couching discussions in this reverse-psychology the solution will never be accepted. It's exhausting, expensive, and a huge waste of time. And I've had enough of it.

    So, here, in this strip, the person has performed that little dog-and-pony show as an illustration of what we have to do on a daily basis. Everyone sees what's going on, but, still, Squid Man is too wrapped up in his own ego to see his being led.

    One of the ongoing problems with this comic is that, although this is a direct reference to what's happening around me (I'm processing what's driving me crazy about my external life), it is also, and more pertinently, I think, about my internal life. SM is a voice inside me, and my reaction to the outside is only a reflection of my reaction to how I feel with who I am on the inside. Clarifying this difference is not simple, and rarely placates those who feel injured by what I put to paper.

    So, in that vein, this is perhaps an acknowledgement that the voice I identify as SM (undeserved censorious authority) can, possibly, be led by subtle suggestion. Looking at this, I'm wondering if this might be an unintended step toward agency; a liberation from the tyranny of that voice. Maybe. (But it's probably just a fluke.)

    Anyway, I was hoping the rushed feel would give a 'Pfeiffer' freedom to the character, but I don't see that at all. I just see a very sloppy, malformed figure. I don't like it, and all it does it remind me of how little time I have for my own well-being these days.

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