Free Comic Book Day 2024- Dying Inside *trigger warning*

 By Mark Rodriguez

Be warned, this comic deals with dark realistic subject matter. While I'll try to 'dance around the subject' the most I can, you might want to skip with one if you're dealing with severe depression and have dark thoughts regarding self-deletion. If you are dealing with severe depression and have dark thoughts regarding self-deletion please seek professional help.

This seemed like an interesting comic to pick up while I was checking the selection for this year's Free Comic Book Day. The comic does warn about themes involving 'taking yourself out' and purposely injuring yourself, so I will tread lightly as I do the comic summary. Let's check it out.

The story opens with a young woman named Ash looking out the window as it's raining. She marks a date on the calendar which commemorates the day Elliot Smith 'took himself out' and she plans to do the same. She is about to explain to the reader what is so important about Elliot Smith and he mother complains about her dragging her chair across the original wooden floors. Ash complains that original wooden floors are treated like holy scripture in Brooklyn.

Ash points out who Elliot is with a laser pointer, among her many wall posters. This drives her cat crazy, and Ash tells 'Shrimps' that not every laser pointer is for him. Ash explains that Elliot is her favorite musician, which she feels she has a lot in common with. For one thing, she says they both love drugs, though in her case it's anti-depressants.

We see that Ash gets to work at a concert despite not being old enough because she's the niece of the person that's running it. She goes the bathroom and hears Elliot's music. She also tells the reader that they're both artists... and then admits that only he is the artist. She's a lyrist but without a band, that's worthless. She then says the other thing she has in common with Elliot is that she hates herself and wants to take herself out.

Ash says the reader will most likely say she still has a lot to live for and things get better. At this point she is chronically depressed and tired. She's tired of the lows and the doctors and says at this point the world will probably blow up soon anyway.

A little bit of meme humor. Normally I'm not a fan of this because it dates the story horribly, but this one's been around for a good while. The 'Confused Math Lady' meme isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Ash intends to shorten her lifespan the day Elliot did and the same way he did it. She bought herself a fancy looking knife online. She warns the reader to skip the next few pages because things will get messy.

Ash's cat freaks out, so she goes to let her out. She takes the knife and tries to end it all, but hesitates every time she tries. 

Ash then decides to tape up the knife to her door, with the blade sticking out. She plans to run into it, but stops inches away from it. Her mom calls her and says 'Greg is here for dinner'. Ash hates her mother's boyfriend and remembers she would indeed rather check out than hang with him.

Ash runs towards the door and this time succeeds. She drops to the floor and looks at her own blood. Ash falls back and just lays there. She opens an eye and wonders if it worked. She sits up and notices the wound she has on her stomach isn't even as big as the knife and doesn't hurt at all. She wonders if she's in heaven now. She hears her mother call for her and Ash decides she's in hell. Ash is Jewish and remembers she doesn't believe in hell. Her mom continues to call her down for dinner.

Ash's mother finally comes in and asks what she spilled all over the floor. Ash says it's blood, but her mother barely reacts and tells her to stop her ritual and come to dinner. Ash takes a closer look at the blood on her fingers, and sees the knife still flipping up and down, blood also covering it. Ash is really confused and asks herself what the hell just happened.

My thoughts- 

So um... this one was definitely a lot darker than I was expecting. Sure I don't mind a story involving creatures of the night, but it hits different when it's something that is more realistic and closer to home for many. The book does give several trigger warnings and even says to seek help if you have these kinds of thoughts.

This story comes from the mind of Pete Wentz from the Fall Out Boys with help of writer Hannah Klein. It's been compared to a mix between Scott Pilgrim and Wednesday and I kinda get that with how Ash talks to the reader.

So Ash is tired of it all and wants to check out early so to speak. The triggering part was how excited she seemed to be about it and the overall 'cheerful'  tone as she kept talking to the readers. While she seems to take inspiration from her favorite musician, it seems she had her own deep issues beforehand and took to him for some way to cope. 

Tying the knife to the door was extremely dangerous. Even when she stopped herself at first, she was inches away from the knife. Had her mother opened the door at that moment, whether it was to find out what all the running was about or to tell her come down for dinner, she could have accidentally have impaled her daughter. I can imagine it being a much darker story had Ash decided to not go through with it and that life was worth living and so forth, only for her mother to suddenly swing the door open then and there. Almost like an episode of Goosebumps or something. 

So the book clearly has an interesting story to tell. Despite the tone, it is very clear that Ash intended to cash in her chips, but for some mysterious reason, she survived. It's not clear as to what exactly happened, for all know maybe she did die and is in some alternate version of her own reality now. 

The art is alright and the issue is mostly in black and white with occasional splashes of washed out color to not clash too much with the black and whiteness. I do like the splash of pinkish red when she pulled out the knife, as it really gave a sense of 'this is it'. 

I'm sure Ash could have just run into traffic or something if her death was needed to kick off the story, so I'm sure things needed to happen this way for the story to 'work'. With such an interesting design, I'm wondering if the knife is cursed or something.

The book leaves the cliffhanger for you to purchase the full Dying Inside graphic novel to find out. If I run into it some time, I might pick it up to see what happened next.

While it should go without saying, I still feel like saying that if you do in fact have these types of thoughts please seek professional help and therapy. While Ash seemed pretty excited about checking out early and she somehow miraculously survived, what she did was extremely dangerous and should not be replicated in real life. I'm glad the book had warnings about the content, I feel the most 'dangerous' part of the book wasn't so much the blood being portrayed, but the overall somewhat cheerful way Ash handled everything.