Vicieux, Mitch E. – Apoqueerlyptic

Website

Apoqueerlyptic

This was one of those side effects of the pandemic that I’ve been wanting to read a story about ever since: what happened to people who were transitioning at the start of it, and how was their experience getting through it? Mitch seems like the perfect person to tell that tale, as they were scheduled to get their top surgery in May of 2020. Otherwise known as the worst possible time to have a complicated medical procedure scheduled, if your short term memory is that bad. There were delays, confusion, annoyance at the world, and of course the inevitable constant sexy dreams/images. That’s what surprised me the most about this comic, and in a good way: once I read the synopsis, it seemed like I might be in for a depressing slog of a comic. Somehow it never ended up there, even though Mitch had every excuse for falling into a deep depression. Instead these strips were a lot funnier (and OK, hornier) than I was expecting. These are mostly 4 panels strips, chronicling their time before, during and after top surgery, and it’s the “before” section that gave Mitch the most time to consider their options, although it didn’t take long. Contrary to the beliefs of dipshits, getting top surgery isn’t exactly a casual decision, so they’d already had plenty of time to think things through. It’s also less linear than I was expecting but, again, in a good way. There’s a complete absence of “on this day this happened, the next day I felt this way about it, the day after that I etc.” type of storytelling, which was a solid choice. Some subjects of strips in here deal with trying to answer a gender question to a phone surveyor, making sense of famous gender quotes, contemplating why all their D & D characters were dudes, putting on a binder (before the top surgery, obviously), dealing with the aftereffects of the surgery, and being a lot more open about sex in their art than they are in real life. And lots more, of course; this is a fairly hefty mini. They also spend quite a few strips detailing the surgery (not in gruesome detail, for the squemish types), both the look and the feel of it. It’s informative if you’re curious about the procedure, and funny if you’re not all that curious, which means that heck yeah I’d recommend giving this a shot. $5