2011-10-28
Explanation
This is a wordless, experimental comic that traces the lifecycle of human thought and communication. It begins with a parent figure speaking to a baby -- the speech bubble is depicted as a simple, flat, elongated oval with horizontal lines, representing basic, straightforward communication. The baby then thinks about what was said, shown in a thought bubble of similar simple shape.
As the comic progresses through stages of life, the speech and thought bubbles grow more complex. Children talk to each other with slightly varied shapes. Teenagers and young adults have increasingly intricate, swirling, tangled patterns in their speech bubbles, representing the growing complexity of ideas, social dynamics, and communication. By adulthood, the bubbles are dense, chaotic spirals -- suggesting the overwhelming complexity of mature thought and discourse.
Then something striking happens: a figure wearing a graduation cap appears, and all the complex thought patterns merge into one massive, tangled, flowing stream above their head. After this peak of complexity, the pattern begins to simplify again. In the later panels, the speech and thought bubbles gradually flatten back out to the simple horizontal-lined ovals from the beginning. The comic ends with an older figure speaking to a baby with the same simple, flat speech bubble that started the comic -- the cycle repeating.
The comic is a meditation on how human understanding and communication follow a circular arc: we start simple, grow into dizzying complexity, and ultimately return to simplicity. The votey panel shows the cartoonist captioned "Me, whenever I do an experimental comic," looking anxious and sucking his thumb -- a self-deprecating acknowledgment that this kind of abstract, wordless comic is a creative risk.