The Luke Healy who wrote this work and the Luke Healy who serves as the main character of the book bear a passing resemblance to one another, but they are certainly not the same person. Instead, the Luke Healy in the graphic novel conveys a sort of alternative life the author might live, one that the author worries could happen to him and the world. The title sets out both of his concerns, as the character Luke does not have much self-esteem, and an opening scene makes it clear he worries about the state of the world.

The book consists of four chapters with interludes between each, in addition to a reprint of an older comic Healy drew early in his career, one he references in this work. While the first section takes place in the present, each additional chapter moves forward five years, giving Healy a chance to develop the climate change aspect of his work. As the years progress, there are more and more references to floods and fires and heat waves, leading to the final chapter where many parts of California are underwater. Not surprisingly, those who are wealthier are still able to maneuver through this world.

He echoes those changes through other, seemingly mundane scenes in the work. For example, when he’s staying in a hotel, a man and a woman sitting beside him at the pool talk about the fear of the pool’s being on the fortieth floor. The man begins talking about what could happen if the building can’t stand the stress of that water, with the dialogue over an imagined view of the pool turning into a vortex that would, as the man says, “drag [them] to a cold, violent, watery grave.” The two panels on each page become increasingly filled with the blue background of the pool, but also the blue sky in an exterior shot of the building, leading up to the image of that whirlpool before shifting back to the six-panel spreads Healy uses throughout much of the work.

That water imagery comes up in every chapter, whether it’s a rainstorm that leads to an entire area being shut down, a landslide that injuries a young woman Healy is hiking with, or the movie version of Healy’s older work, Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales. While there is a moment that centers around that movie version that could lead to an optimistic view of the water, its connection with the “end of the world” of the title makes that a difficult reading to believe in. The shrug that the character Luke Healy gives in such a scene seems to contrast with the ideas the author Luke Healy wants readers to consider.

However, that water imagery might hint at a possible rebirth, or at least some sort of growth, for the character Luke’s self-esteem. In the character’s life, he has given up on writing, seemingly after Healy’s 2022 book The Con Artists. Instead, the character Luke takes various odd jobs to pay the bills, which provides Healy a chance to satirize a variety of workplaces and their behaviors. For example, when Luke is working for a call center selling insurance, the company monitors him with a smart cushion he is supposed to sit on. He straps it to himself, though, to provide continuous pressure, in an attempt to fool the self-described “employee watchdog” into believing he’s in his home office, though Luke is hiking on a Greek island. While such measures of employer surveillance are slightly exaggerated, they are only slightly so, especially as more people move to remote work.

Some of his jobs do relate to his writing, as one employer shifts him into writing a play for their corporate retreat, and the final chapter centers around a movie adaptation of Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales. None of these jobs satisfy him, though, and he sabotages all of them, even though he can’t bring himself to going back and producing books. The self-esteem of the title that Luke lacks prevents him from ever moving forward. He is, as his twin brother Teddy describes him, “stuck.” While the book progresses in time to reflect the effects of climate change, Luke barely changes throughout the work, though, again, there is an optimistic way of reading the ending.

That lack of development isn’t a complaint about the work; in fact, it’s one of the strengths of it, given that Luke tries various means to move on in life, but he’s unable to. On the one hand, Healy can use those moments to satirize other parts of contemporary life—such as the intense focus on self-help books and apps—but, on the other, Healy also clearly portrays those times in life that so many of us have when we are simply unable to move forward. That feeling is even more understandable, given Luke’s concern about the impending end of the world. One feels both sorry for Luke but also frustrated by him. To help communicate those feelings, Healy even uses scenes with talking animals who give voice to the readers’ thoughts.

Throughout the work, Luke also deals with his feelings toward his family. He feels like his twin brother is more successful for him, and he listens to one self-esteem app just so he can hear his brother’s voice giving him positive affirmations. His mother also accompanies him to both the play he produces for the corporate leaders and the movie adaptation of his book. In fact, his family has the best insights into his life, though that doesn’t help his lack of self-esteem, a feeling that many readers, again, can identify with.

Healy’s artwork is simple, with clean lines for characters and backgrounds, mainly with lighter tones of red and blue for both, making for clear reading. The older work in the appendix makes for a clear contrast, as he uses more of a sketchy style, keeping to a black-and-white palette. The new work, not surprisingly, looks more like a book, while the older work reflects an artist beginning his career. That said, though, both works share a common theme, if not artistic style.

What holds these two works together is the idea of grief or loss. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales tells the story of a mother and two daughters who have taken a cruise to pour their husband’s/father’s ashes into the sea. Liz, one of the daughters, has to process her grief over his death. In Self-Esteem and the End of the World, there is the cosmic grief over the effects of climate change that serves as the backdrop for the more personal grief of Luke’s not producing art. That decision, made partly because of the impending end of the world, changes the course of Luke’s life. Thankfully, the author Luke Healy hasn’t made the same decision. He continues to produce art that asks important questions about our world, while creating a character that, if readers are honest, can remind them too much of themselves.