'I Feel Awful, Thanks' is a unique contemporary graphic novel about anxiety and depression, and seeking the right kind of help, that happens to feature witches. It is the most fortified slice-of-life, and it could actually help people with mental health problems. Maybe even save lives.
It is like 'Flying Witch', 'Doughnuts and Doom', 'Page by Paige', 'Living with Viola', 'The Happy Shop', 'Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story', 'Kiki's Delivery Service', and 'Inside Out'. It is far from overly or overtly magical and fantastical. Potion making doesn't factor into it much. And broomstick riding? Forget it. But it doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter. For 'I Feel Awful, Thanks' is a very human book about life. The "magic" lies in our emotions, and how we manage these natural occurrences. The book is a "spellbook" on how to live and deal with life, and how to find happiness within ourselves, and how to understand our own emotions; understand that none of them are really bad or negative. They are a part of us, after all, and they can go out of balance and overwhelm and frighten us, sometimes. It happens to everyone.Joana Shell is a young woman and witch from Spain who has received her dream job in London, as a potion maker in the giant corporation, WitchCo. Magic Enterprise. She wants to be a
Or is it?
She should be happy, joyful, on top, in control.
But she isn't.
City life - and the universal lie that is adulthood - these are hard. Joana is far from home and living independently. She has to find the right apartment, get along with people, make new friends, and along the way she gets a boyfriend, and she is feeling underappreciated and undervalued at work, and is pressured to meet everybody else's impossible standards, never mind her own... she deals with toxic people in her life... can't mess up in any way in life... always forces herself to think positively...
It's too much.
Joana is tired all the time; she can't sleep well, has bad dreams, and is moody, yet she keeps insisting she's fine to everyone, impulsively takes up exercise routines and diets, indulges in comfort food, wanting - needing - to feel better - happy, 100% happy, 24/7 - now and quickly (goddess, haven't we all been there?). She can't keep her true feelings, frustrations, worries and insecurities locked up in her literal-chest-she-keeps-as-a-handbag much longer. She's going to break down eventually, and her emotional dragons are going to break free and spill out.
Nothing is hopeless, however. With help, Jo will learn how to keep her dragons under her control, on her terms, in ways that are right to her and make her comfortable. She learns to love and care for herself, and not let her anxieties get the better of her, and let depression win.
'I Feel Awful, Thanks' isn't unimportant or mundane. It is life. No one, and no one's life and how they live it, are unimportant.
It is about therapy. It is about self-acceptance, self-love, and self-care. It is about how it is okay to not be okay. Nothing is wrong with you if you're not okay. Toxic positivity is just as harmful as overwhelming toxic negativity. Neither are healthy outlooks. It's about balance, understanding, meditation, introspection, reflection, and knowing what is and isn't outside of your control.
No one is perfect. Perfection doesn't exist. Perfect, forever happily-ever-after goals are not the be-all-and-end-all to existing. That's impossible. But again, with courage, persistence, and seeking the appropriate help, true, if-not-permanent happiness is more attainable than you think.
It is also why empathy towards others is vitally important.
Joana is lucky to have met such great, caring and supportive friends at her workplace, Adora (really?) and Bee (they bond over their favourite boy band). These two are too precious. Jo is never really isolated and alone. Her complex, if sudden, relationship with her new boyfriend James is handled well and realistically. Her boss is a toxic arsehole and bully, and so is her landlady. And she's a witch who loves cats. I wouldn't have her any other way!
It's scary how much I relate to Jo, and I'm sure many people will come to relate to her and her struggles, as a fledgling adult in modern times.
The colourful, cartoony and angular artwork is nice, and a comfort to look at. It's almost nostalgic, and therapeutic. Very fitting. I adore Joana's blue hair (I guess I'll always be a manga and anime girl at heart). Adoring also is the detail of nearly everyone wearing witch's hats, of different colours and styles, that fit their personalities and moods. Jo never wears the same hat throughout the entire book. A lovely, real treat this comic is. The anxiety representation - the cracking, the breaking, the darkness, the intensity, the falling-into-the-void of it all, and its slow, gradual, progressive lightening of its solution in the middle and towards the end - is much better than in 'The Marble Queen', another recently released graphic novel.
Only, and I'm afraid it is time for the negative criticisms: 'I Feel Awful, Thanks' is lacking in cohesive structure, even for something that isn't supposed to have a plot. Scene transitions are almost nonexistent, as are ways of knowing how much time has passed between them. Supposedly the whole book takes place in just over a year? The silly amount of instances where I was confused as to where Joana is, how she got there, and why, I mean honestly! Some scenes feel cut up and unfinished as a result. One particularly baffling moment is when Jo and James are suddenly, for no reason, in Paris. How and when did they get there? No explanation. The trip is not mentioned before and after the fact. It's completely out of place to what is currently going on in Jo's life. It's two pages long, and exists solely for another argument scene between the couple.
The sporadically-placed narration boxes become confusing, as well. Like, is Joana narrating, or someone else? She's just referring to herself in the third person in a few random occasions?
Who are her friends back in Spain? The reader barely gets to know any of them, if at all.
Maybe this is all intentional? To show that life, and depression acknowledgment and the healing process, are nonlinear? And feelings, as well as the external stuff, can happen at random, and for seemingly no reason? How life experiences, and people, come and go, and that's how it is? No structure, no perfection, it's widely messy and unpredictable, and that's fine?
On a minor note: As a Brit, I can confidently say that none of the Londoners here talk like they are British. It's a positive, a surety, they don't spell like British people, either. A Spanish-to-American-English translation fault? Other countries, try to be more authentic when representing London, please - it's the people, not only the place. It's like 'Manga Cruella' all over again.
Then there is the utter lack of LBGTQ+ rep to take into account, for a 2022 publication.
Oops. I've lost track of what I was saying, and what point I'm trying to get across. So I'll end the review on:
'I Feel Awful, Thanks' is a messy yet needed revolution. Learning about self-care, self-love, self-growth, handling anxiety and emotions, plus friendships and which people to preserve for the benefit of your personal, happy living - it has it all. It positively taught me some things, and made me feel lighter, happier and relaxed - in short, in an improved mood - after reading.
Maybe I'll go back to therapy soon.
And do some more writing.
Final Score: 4/5
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