There’s something about comics that therapy just can’t touch.
Maybe it’s the way one panel can hold an entire feeling without ever having to explain itself. Or how the right graphic novel makes you feel less alone in a way no self-help book — or fourteen-tab google search at 1 a.m. — has ever managed.
Whatever it is, comics meet you exactly where you are — messy, confused, angry, heartbroken — and just say yeah, me too.
why comics hit different
Comics don’t perform healing. They just show it: raw, ugly, incomplete.
You watch the character stuck in the same loop you’re stuck in. You watch them not have the answers. Then you turn the page and they’re still not okay, and somehow that hits because it is just how things are sometimes.
Most books about trauma or growth want to tie things up. Comics don’t bother. They let things stay complicated. They let you sit in the mess instead of rushing you toward a lesson.
Sometimes that’s exactly what you need. Not a lesson, just proof that someone else felt this awful and made something out of it anyway.
comics that actually get it
“Somnambulance” by Fiona Smyth — A memoir compiling over 30 years of Smyth’s black-and-white feminist underground comics, dating back to the mid-1980s. Visually provocative and deeply feminist, the book moves through surreal nightmare-scapes, bodily autonomy, vindictive goddesses, and messy eroticism. It’s rooted hard in ’80s and ’90s underground punk and indie zine culture.
“My Favorite Thing Is Monsters” by Emil Ferris — A murder mystery wrapped in a coming-of-age story wrapped in a meditation on trauma and identity. The whole thing is drawn in ballpoint pen to look like a kid’s notebook. It’s about what happens when you start seeing yourself as a monster because the world already decided you were one.
“Hyperbole and a Half” by Allie Brosh — The classic. Crude MS Paint illustrations, brutally honest writing, and a talent for making your worst flaws feel less like shame and more like a punchline you’re actually in on.
what to do with what you feel
You don’t have to use these comics for anything. No journaling required. No turning them into art, no extracting a grand lesson.
Sometimes it’s enough to just read them and recognize yourself in the wreckage.
But if reading these makes you want to journal your anger, draw your own comic, or write your own zine — do it. You don’t need to be good at it. Just get the thing out of your head and onto a page.
Make a single-page comic about how today actually feels. Draw a three-panel zine about the thing you can’t say out loud yet. Write the version of the story that’s just for you.
Comics have already proved that feelings can be art. Now it’s your turn to prove it too.
If you want full reviews instead of a stack of recommendations, I’ve written longer takes on Teen Titans: Raven, Sacred Heart, and Through the Woods elsewhere on the site.
where to find these (and more)
Your local library probably already has most of these. If not, request them — librarians love graphic novels more than most people love their own hobbies.
You can also find them at independent bookstores or online. And if you want more, look for:
- Autobiographical comics (sometimes called “autographic novels”)
- Indie and alternative comics
- Anything from Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, or Silver Sprocket
These are the publishers putting out the weird, honest, deeply human stuff. Not the superhero stuff. The “I don’t know how to be a person but I’m trying anyway” stuff.
That’s where the good stuff actually lives.
