THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! 10 YEARS OF THE BF SIX TO WATCH! “We become what we consume > Your life is just the total sum of all the things you paid attention to. I heard it on a podcast and it’s a thought that keeps coming back to bite me.” In her own words this is both the premise of and the catalyst for Peony Gent’s latest comic Autobiography Has Become a Stone in My Shoe. For those coming to our Thought Bubble coverage this year unfamiliar with some of the names we have spotlighted, Gent was one of our Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch’ creators back in 2017 and has been much lauded here for her singular comics vision. One that combines visual poetry with an occasional tinge of abstract expressionism.
Autobiography Has Become a Stone in My Shoe is fascinatingly self-reflective in an almost meta way in that in one early aspect it’s a meditation on Gent’s own comics practice to date. So much autobio work comes from a place of contemplative sadness, wistfulness or even anger. So where does one go with that when they are happy? Where is the audience for that? The circular paradox here, of course, is that in the act of asking these questions a sense of dissatisfaction is triggered and the process of creation begins again. “Autobiography has become a stone in my shoe” Gent muses, before segueing into a wider exploration of how we are all now actively engaged in documenting our lives for an audience via the all-pervading presence of social media.
This, of course, could not be a more timely discussion, raising vital points for consideration. How do we break free of the attention-purloining pull of social media? How do we step back from the endless scrolling that we have conditioned ourselves to believe is an imperative part of our existence? What are we sacrificing in embracing this cult of self-indulgence? Why are we in thrall to the Machiavellian manipulations of our self-serving teach overlords and their commodification of our lives? There are, of course no easy answers here. But it’s important to ask the questions all the same.
Gent communicates her thoughts on this with her usual combination of eloquent text and scratchy impressionistic imagery, the latter as always conveying the message all the more empathetically for its detachment from the boundaries of more overt realism. Autobiography Has Become a Stone in My Shoe also employs thought-provoking visual metaphor, relevant talking point quotations from literary or academic sources, and occasional breakouts into more sedate imagery that, nonetheless, are a reminder of our obsession with online self-chronicling. Some of Gent’s most important work to date, this is one of our two Thought Bubble Comic(s) of the Festival for 2024.
Peony Gent (W/A) • Self-published, £10.00
Review by Andy Oliver
Peony Gent will be at Table B27 in the Travelling Man Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
