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    12 Comics That Perfectly Encapsulate The Vicious Cycle Of Loneliness

    Anne Emond talks real about the social panics we don't often admit to feeling, and why comics express them so well.

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    Some of the best comics plead empathy for alienated characters in ways less often achieved in other mediums (see: Chris Ware and Simon Hanselmann's comics). We asked Anne why that might be the case:

    "As an art form, comics have always been kind of on the fringes of respectability, and the sort of people who are drawn to making them usually have to be comfortable with a certain degree of isolation and no real expectation of mainstream acclaim (i.e. weirdos). And it's a form which is usually consumed intimately and solo, be it printed or on a screen; it's not necessarily made for a wall or to be viewed within a crowd (unlike music or painting or animation, for example). Plus the experience of reading and absorbing images side by side is visceral and immediate, and the speed at which one consumes them is entirely within the reader's control which I think heightens the intimacy. All of these qualities certainly contribute to comics being particularly well-suited to ruminations on loneliness and alienation, and the kind of existential dread that comes with time passing you by."

    Anne Emond is a writer, illustrator, and drawer of comics living in Brooklyn. She studied in the School Visual Art's MFA program for Illustration. You can see more of her works at Comiques.