Howard, Luke – Our Mother

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Our Mother

Quick show of hands, who suffers from some form of clinical depression? All the technology at our disposal and nobody seems any closer at being able to fix any of that for a sustained period of time. This comic is the story of Luke’s mother and her history of depression… sort of. Things start off with a darkly hilarious bit about her parents meeting a mysterious figure in an alley and trying to come up with the best way to make their daughter’s life miserable. They settle on making it so that she doesn’t even want to eat food any more, and from there we get to see the incredibly awkward explanation given by Luke’s father (while his mother is slumped insensate on the couch) about why he’s leaving them. Still, a comic purely about her depression would be unspeakably, well, depressing, so Luke mixes it up with a science fiction story about giant robots in the future who are looking for living humans to care for, the humans who are seemingly invisible to them, and the fruitless nature of them trying to change anything. We also get peeks into Luke trying to give his mother any kind of happiness or relief, a quest to find and use a mysterious portal, the attempted training of an ape and finally the actual history of her depression and the efforts she’s made to get over it. The ending sort of petered out about, but since Luke actually incorporated that fact into the story I think he gets a pass on it. Plus we get to see a farting hotdog, which I did not think I would be doing when I woke up this morning. If you have any history of depression or know anybody who does (which should cover the entire population at this point), there’s a lot to love in here. And who knows, maybe you’ll even find something in here to help you or your loved one. If not, at least you get 20 minutes or so away from the harsh realities of the world, and isn’t that more or less priceless? $9