From a Broken Frontier perspective Small Press Day is one of the most rewarding days of the year not simply because BF has an organisational role in it, and thus a vested interest in its success, but also because of the possibilities it provides for discovering new work. One of a number of comics and zines I was given this year was You’re Just Lazy Vol. 1 by Bee Poole, who was one of the artists at London’s Cartoon Museum for SPD 2024. Looking to communicate the realities of living with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome You’re Just Lazy is a quietly powerful compilation of comics, illustration and poetry. It’s also a collection of work that I keep finding myself revisiting given the strength of Poole’s emotional eloquence in these pages.
You’re Just Lazy works so well precisely because it avoids presenting long-form narrative. Instead it concentrates on a number of vignettes that bring us into the moment and allow us to experience the impact of the condition via concentrated bursts of the artist’s thought. There seems to be a twofold mission here from Poole; to use You’re Just Lazy not just to to educate but also to express. In the first instance there’s plenty of information about the conditions, its symptoms, and their effects. In the second, Poole uses a variety of visual storytelling formats to convey the intensity of living with CFS.
It’s raw and uncompromising material. Early on Poole provides us with a list of ‘Shitty things people have said to me’; a litany of unpleasant empathy-free statements given a vivid reality by accompanying multiple drawn iterations of the word ‘Lazy’ leaping out from the page at us. A single illustration of a featureless individual metaphorically stabbed through the back is all the more painful for the dismissive words “You have Lazy-itis” echoing in the background. And dreamlike comics and imagery use extended visual metaphor to signify the feelings of helplessness that go with living with chronic illness.
What Poole achieves here is a careful balance of the practical and the representational, all keyed into allowing us to interpret and appreciate the messages of You’re Just Lazy on differing empathetic levels. Sometimes Poole is forthright and direct as when talking about the importance of self-care; on other occasions they use more abstract imagery to reach us, as with an illustrated sequence where lettering breaks up and distorts around waves of sudden dizziness. And peppered throughout are those aforementioned illustrated poems, ever resonant, ever fragile. This collection is labelled Vol. 1 which, of course, implies a second potential volume in the making. Important and valuable work not just for informing and explaining but also as a reminder to others in a similar position that they are not alone.
Bee Poole (W/A) • Self-published, £18.00
Review by Andy Oliver
