Day and Age, is yet another request to review a comic directly from a creator. Surprisingly, it’s not for a Kickstarter but an already completed autobiographical product available on the creator’s website. In it I find a strangely relatable tale about my own time in the pandemic. Sure unlike most people most of my time was spent doing a “necessity” job, but there’s how time moves for people. Because let’s face it, Covid lockdowns mess with a number of people’s sense of time.
Day And Age On Quarantine Time
The creator of this collection Andrew Oh recounts his time in Dallas, Texas at the cusp of life moving onwards. For an introvert like Oh, having a normal life was the only dream worth having. Only for the Covid-19 breakout to come in and make a mess of things. So he finds himself spending a year in the summer of 2020 to 2021. During this time, Oh reinterprets his experiences through cartooning.
Just about each week’s comic is a look into person’s need for connection and the awkwardly situations surrounding them. Oh’s online dating experience for example shows how hard it can be to speak with someone over the internet. Just because it’s the one of the only ways to meet people in quarantine, the need to keep your guard up is constant. As is the fact that Oh enters the pandemic soon after his first breakup. Plus, there’s a hard truth when it comes to online dating for Asian males (and Black women) that increases anxiety. For anybody dealing with loneliness, this need for vigilant connection can make people lose track of time.
Art Progression
It’s not all time consuming nonsense in Day and Age though. These weeks Oh spends allows him to pick up cartooning in a gradual process.
As a bonus to the Year One collection, it goes into how Oh develops his art skills after some trial and error. Just the first few stories demonstrate a growing skill in drawing. At the very least it allows him more confidence to transition into ink and digital.
More experience in drawing, writing, and composing seems to have a positive overall effect. For one Oh has become more efficient in his draw skills, more abstract, and apply these skills in different ways. In the above image for example, there’s some anticipation about reacting to a noisy dog. Only to look like it’s the same exact day, like nothing really changed. Speaking personally, this feels like my life where not even the outbreak makes a difference.
I could even say that Day and Age serves as pretty good therapy for Oh and some of his readers. For Oh, he not only finds a form of expression that could help in film story boarding… Wait did I forget to mention that he’s a filmmaker? Anyway, this comic allows expression for self-reflection. I mean after all of this Covid craziness, even the reader will want to better spend their time.
A Day and Age For Everyone
With Day and Age: Year One, readers will find something to not only relax with, but something to reflect on. Seeing a year’s worth of experiences in the life of an average person going through life might help with some connection. Overall, this series gets an 8.5/10.