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Think, for a moment, about what it would be like if you learned you didnt exist.
That youre a figment of someones imagination.
Worse, that the someone whos imagining you is doing so because of trauma and mental illness.
But heres the catch: You cant stop thinking youdoexist.
You have ideas, emotions, a body key in, a life story.
Now imagine, on top of that, struggling with questions about your sexual orientation.
And dealing with the realities of being transgender and having an eating disorder.
Oh, and trying to understand that many of your best friends ostensibly dont exist, either.
Welcome to just a fraction of the burdens borne by Rogan Lee.
Hes a brilliant and prolific cartoonist who, on one level, is based in the Boston area.
On another level, hes merely based inside a brain.
Rogan is part of a system of eight-ish people who live inside a single body.
Rogan is fully aware that he is what medical professionals refer to as an alter.
The brain they share is unwell, and they can all be described as symptoms.
But, again, put yourself in Rogans place.
Rogan has veered back and forth on that question.
Early on, Rogan suppressed his attraction, and not just because of internalized homophobia.
I am merely the fantasy of the Real Girl, who most definitely does exist, unlike me!
Nevertheless, in spite of these empirical, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Rogan and Macdidfall in love.
Its only slightly overstating matters to say no one has heard of these books.
But attention should be paid.
I dont wanna go viral.
Im a fucking tranny-faggot-lunatic existing in public.
Instead, I give a shot to have this slow growth.
Slow, careful growth.
LB are very much estranged from the bodys well-to-do family, so money is always an issue for them.
They make hardly any of it right now, but they also fear making too much of it.
People are like, Oh, have you considered Kickstarting?
Well, heres the problem: What if my Kickstarter becomes way too successful?
You wont find the series on Amazon or any digital-comics retailer.
Dude, he said, youhaveto check out LB Lee.
No further explanation was given, nor did I want any.
I picked it up and went back to my room to dive in.
What I found between the covers made my jaw drop.
All in the Familyis one of the most brutal and engaging comics Ive ever read.
More so than usual.
We see panels of the systems body struggling to stay awake and walking through a corridor while hugging itself.
A faceless black mass occasionally follows it.
I feel like Im being hunted, the narration reads.
But I dont know whats hunting me.
The body yells at the mass: What do you WANT?
TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!
The narration goes on: But it never answers.
It just follows me.
She returns to full form and brings with her a recovered memory of unspeakable agony.
A disturbingly paced trio of panels lays it out.
Panel one: a blank background and text reading, Yup.
Grampa totally molested us.
Panel three: another blank background, this time with tiny letters at the very bottom reading, Fuck.
What follows is a whirlwind narrative that is made compelling by its specificity and idiosyncrasy.
I can use that uncertainty to build the discussion, and give my readers more to think about.
After all, what better way to show all narrators are unreliable than to engage with that directly?
However, although Im no expert, Im inclined to say LB arent fakers.
Then, throughout the early 2000s, more arrived.
Initially, the Original Girl figured these were simply imaginary friends.
In her teens, the Original Girl had gotten into comics.
LB were still closeted vis-a-vis DID at the time, so they passed this off as fiction.
But it was the beginning of a calling.
Rogan argues that there is no better medium for depicting DID than comics.
And we can also utilize each others different art styles.
Like, if you readAll in the Family, you know that Gigi draws like a kindergartner.
LBs comics are a quiet expansion of how we understand sequential arts power.
They are also a clarion call for greater empathy toward the mentally ill and those with unconventional identities.
I was told in no uncertain terms that the latter, actually, is the more dangerous approach.
Thats not the only respect in which LBs comics feel eminently of the moment.
They also play into a much-needed trend in contemporary literature especially comics toward frank discussion of mental illness.
LBs headmates despise most of these fiction and nonfiction accounts and the stereotypes they reinforce.
My comics are, in a way, a desperate attempt to create the resources that I couldnt find.
They accomplish that task beautifully.
That friendship is woefully necessary, given how impoverished and isolated LB are.
They have to live with their own truth, however unreliable others may find it to be.
I didnt want to believe it, Rogan says.
Ive just kind of come to my own peace with it.
As of now, readers are few and far between.
The LB system doesnt seem to mind that much.
They just put out a book of prose fiction calledInfinity Smashed.
They are, in their own way, on a healing path.
But wonderful art deserves an audience, and perhaps LB can find enough success to become a full-time artist.
Work is my self-care, Rogan says.
I get to be something besides a trauma sponge.
*An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Original Girl died in 2004.
