Jep – That’s Me in the Corner Part One

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That’s Me in the Corner Part One

What, you thought that Jep only had funny stories in him? I don’t know why you would assume that, but we’re dealing with your hypothetical illusions here, and you’re wrong, imaginary construct in my mind. This comic is made up of strips that Jep made weekly (ish) on his website. The idea was that he was going to tell the story of his introduction to religion and how he eventually fell away from it, including the event in particular that pushed him completely away from religion. But as he worked on the story things went off into different directions for him, and his memory proved to be far less certain than he originally thought. There’s a fine line in comics of relying too much on the “inside baseball” vein of comic strip. For those of you who hate all sports allegories, basically that just means that the artist is wallowing in telling stories about how hard it is to tell stories. That can sometimes cause a spiral where no stories get told, but Jep avoids that trap here and ends up making those strips essential to the story that he’s telling. For example, the event that pushes him away (spoilers here if you don’t want to know a thing about this book, which I’d recommend) is his witnessing the molestation of his friend by a priest. But it’s clear that he doesn’t remember exactly what happened, or how long it happened, or what he said to the guy to prevent himself from getting molested initially. The only way Jep could clear this up would be to contact the guy who was potentially molested, but he sees no reason to upend his life just so he (Jep) can get a little piece of mind. Even basic stuff like how many churches they visited before his mom settled on Catholicism proves unreliable, as his brother contradicts bits of his story. It’s a fascinating peek into a mind as it’s deep in the creative process, taking sometimes reluctant detours down unintended paths to tell this story. He was also nice enough to send along the second part of this story, so I get to see how it “ends” soon, as much as the story of his life can end when he’s still alive. This particular part of it, anyway, but he also mentions never being sure how far to dig in these stories. It was a damned great read, and I’m not just saying that because my own religious experience more or less mirrors his own.