It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth: This Book Is for Someone, Somewhere.

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Her philosophy, her illustrations, and her worldview are IMO worth taking a look at if you can handle the subject material. Following the release of her well-received debut graphic novel, The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott, Thorogood finds that artistic success is no cure for lifelong depression, which she draws as a looming Babadook-like monster. But more importantly the metafictional aspects of creating and how we are in turn created through critical analysis in the minds of others. He is also a co-organiser of the annual UK Small Press Day and has been a judge or committee member for the Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition, the British Comic Awards and the SICBA Awards. And in doing so it gives a bleak look into a young person who is just starting to find herself, and the circumstances she's under having these thoughts.

Replete with visual metaphor It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth employs photo inserts, bursts of colour to emphasise mood changes, collage, some incredibly clever lettering choices to supplement theme and tone, and occasional step-backs into plot and art breakdowns. IT'S LONELY AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH is an intimate metanarrative that looks into the life of a selfish artist who must create for her own survival. It's that back and forth, the expertise in modulating the tone, which combine with the self-awareness and the irritation at the audience to make me want to give Thorogood the almost certainly unhelpful label of 'the Stewart Lee of miserable autobiographical indie comics'.There is not necessarily a message about mental health to take away from this—what will stick with me instead is the idea of the importance of stories and art in helping humans survive: the need to create a reason to keep living, the nature of humanity to crave expression. A poignant and original depiction of a young woman's struggle with mental health―through the ups and downs of anxiety, depression, and imposter syndrome―as she forges a promising career in sequential art and finds herself along the way. Imagine if Chuck Palahniuk slipped into a bout of life-long depression and shared the experience through the drawn and written word. The ever shifting approach in narrative presentation allows us to appreciate the story from a number of different vantage points; to act as both observer and confidante as the book progresses.

This combines with the hubbub of internal voices through which she constantly second-guesses herself, a technique which reminded me more than anything of the bickering personality elements in – a comparison I doubt Thorogood will welcome, though I still think it's a masterpiece of comics craft if not politics - Dave Sim's Guys. It is existence exposed in all its messy flaws and joys, a book teeming with life and the feeling that ‘ you’re getting older but you don’t know how to grow up. As we follow her across the months we watch her coming to terms with reader reactions to The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott, her social awkwardness at conventions, and an ill-fated relationship on a trip to the States. Some of the pages are stunningly beautiful, some are incredibly creative, some are staggeringly minimal. There's no humility to aid feelings of sympathy; in fact, she comes across as obnoxiously obsessed with her depression and how 'not like other people' she is because of it, which also makes her super relatable.

You can always find the big, heavy quotations that attempt to maximize the beauty into a universal struggle for goodness and connectivity that improves us all, like Leo Tolstoy saying art ‘ is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity,’ but whew, if this is at a party it’ll kill the vibes pretty quickly.

Thorogood depicts her depression as a huge black monster (kind of reminiscent of Hiyao Miyazaki's art) following her around and being her constant companion. after a little bit of the way through i was just reading it to get it over with bc it is a short and quick read. If you're looking for logical progression or just any kind of meaningful story in general, this is not for you, my friends. This is a visceral book; one that hits us on an instinctual, emotional level as much as it does on an intellectual, interpretive one.Who has to live every day with the cloud above them, with that monster that lurks in dark corners of mind waiting for an opportunity to attack. It’s a baffling phenomenon; the unwanted offspring of an unhealthy union between obscene privilege and a performative rejection of empathy. This book is presented as an autobiography, and much of it is the author trying to find material to fill the book - and much of the material she finds is her own mental state.