Forever and Everything #7
The pandemic comics are finally starting to arrive, and this one covers a few areas that I had no experience with in my particular bubble. Early in-person voting, sure, I know all about that (98% of the people were great, but that 2% who weren’t, whooo boy), but what happened in schools was all hypothetical to me until reading this comic. This one reads more like a regular comic than most of his books, if that makes any sense. Kyle tends to keep his observations short in past issues, but this one started with the first time he heard about the coronavirus, how he dismissed it several times along the way and downplayed the severity of it when it did hit, all taking up maybe the first half of the book. It also showed how he tried to comfort his students, their reactions when they got the news that the school was shutting down (mostly centered around how anxious they were to be able to take their art supplies with them), and a bit about how he handled classes remotely. Other stuff in here is similar to how a lot of us had to deal with things, going from not being sure if it was OK to touch anything to figuring out how it was all about the masks. Other subjects include the oddity of fishing on a random Wednesday afternoon, trying to get some work done while being attacked by his children, going to the doctor for what he was sure was the corona, and dealing with a sudden glut of homemade masks. As we in America are mostly in the clear (this is July 2021, dear readers, so if the Mechagodzilla variant has hit by the time you read this, my apologies), there’s been just enough distance for all of this to be fascinating to me. Your mileage may vary! Maybe you’ve heard more than enough about the virus and want some distance. If so, give this one a while before checking it out. Otherwise, all I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed it.
