My First Pandemic (2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Jamison Odone is a writer and graphic artist of numerous children's books and more mature-level graphic novels. His first published professional work was 2007's Honey Badgers about a young boy who was adopted by a pair of 'the most fearless species on the planet.'

Odone originates from Kentucky. He moved east to Connecticut for college. When he isn't creating fanciful stories or graphic novel adaptations of famous poems, like Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee, Odone is an associate professor of illustration at Frostburg State University in Maryland. 

Just like many of us, in March of 2020, Jamison Odone found himself with a lot of time on his hands. College courses were cancelled. Forthcoming publications were delayed. Projects placed on the back burner. COVID-19 and the resulting lockdown had reared its ugly head.

To bid his time, Jamison Odone read a lot of poetry and doodled. Sometimes he illustrated favorite passages of work. Other times, Odone used his drawings as a way to journal through such an uncertain time in the history of our modern world. Unable to be there for the passing of a step parent and then a best friend, compiled with the social upheaval brought about in the wake of the George Floyd killing and the chaos that was the 2020 election and the subsequent events of January 6th, 2021, Odone slowly sunk into a depression. 

As the promised 2 week lock down approached the one year anniversary, Jamison Odone's work becomes less refined and more frantic. His penmanship, which was a rough but clean version of what you'd see in professional comic books devolves into a chicken scratch by the end of this collection of thoughts, drawings and poetry. 

Confined to his home and basically cut off from friends and family, you can see Odone's anger and frustration bleed out onto every page. A recurring theme of this book are bunny people and a berating little blue bird. The bunnies are supposed to represent Odone and the bird is the illustrator's late friend Marc McChesney. Many of the interactions between those two characters are Odone's artistic way of working through his grief and loneliness in a cartoon version of the empty chair technique.

My First Pandemic is a work that is rather difficult to critique. This is about 18 months of an isolated man's attempts to reconcile with the dumpster fire that was 2020-21. I empathize greatly with Odone. Classified as an essential worker because I was a school teacher, I had to be on the front line when the government ordered the kids back in school. I had to be their counselor, their mediator and their refuge despite personally being high risk due to a genetic condition. I was so exhausted at the end of the day, I was avoiding my favorite thing to do every night, which is to review comics and graphic novels. As I wasn't journaling through my reviews, my anxiety got the best of me and I was back in counseling before the end of my Fall quarter.

So I won't negatively review or rate this book as I feel it's something very personal and honest that was shared by Jamison Odone in order for him to stay sane. The content inside is brutal and raw. But I just can't fault someone doing their best to take care of themselves. However, I do have to ask- was the misplaced ending of 'The Hero Nurse: A Covid Fairytale' on page 287 intentional or did somebody over at Black Pan El Press make a goof? That's something I really want to get to the bottom of.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #46 ( About Current Events) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.