Odette has a jellyfish in their eye. It’s like a floater, only larger, opaque, and, most disconcertingly, not going away. Not a threat, exactly, but it isn’t harmless either. Advised by their optometrist that it’ll eventually go away, they go out to live her life. They’re a university dropout living in Montreal (which is the last city on Earth in which you can be young and have your own apartment), enduring Montreal winters while working in a bookstore, attracting the attention of manga-loving Naina. Things are turning out great…Except the Jellyfish isn’t going away.

Boum (Samantha Leriche-Gionet) is a Quebecoise comic artist, published by French Canadian graphic novel powerhouse Pow Pow Press. The Jellyfish is inspired by her similar experience with vision loss (she is blind in the right eye). As the comic progresses, the jellyfish invades the artwork. It progresses from being a nuisance and a distraction to concerning when it appears to multiply. For much of the comic, it’s just there, not impairing either Odette’s life or our enjoyment of the comic.

The longer the jellyfish stays there, though, the more the reader’s attention is drawn, in parallel with Odette’s, to the fact that it’s still there. Over time, it starts to increasingly obscure the world of the comic, just as Odette’s relationship with Naina starts to take up an increasingly large part of her life. Naina has a stormy relationship with her parents, and Odette works to help her overcome them. That’s enough of a problem to focus on. 

Unfortunately, Odette’s vision takes a turn for the worse. Boum, in a discussion at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, spoke of the second-hand grief that others experience when you go through a difficult, life-changing health situation: whatever you feel, your friends and family will experience it more profoundly than you. Your health and your feelings are almost a secondary experience in the lives of your loved ones.

Similarly, Odette experiences the spectrum of emotions that occur when part of your body fails you. Denial, trying to live their life as normal, even if the proliferating jellyfish make that difficult; bargaining, in trying to adopt a healthier lifestyle and giving up smoking in the vain hope that it’ll make a difference; depression, in attempted isolation from their life when the extent of the health condition starts to impact her relationships. 

One thing that struck me when reading The Jellyfish was the spectacular similarity to Zoe Thorogood’s The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott (I bought both during the last TCAF). Both deal with vision loss, both involve LGBT relationships with a person of colour, except Thorogood treats the experience as a bildungsroman and an exercise in self-actualization. Both treat disability as requiring a community of friends to help not only overcome the obvious complications of the situation, but the deeper work of rescuing yourself.

Vision loss is a phobia of mine. When I was a boy, I had an eye injury that has made me vigilant regarding my eyes. Without sight, a comic is impossible. Life as we know it is impossible…at least if you try to live underneath it, like a weight pressing you down. If you have others to help balance the load, you can emerge from underneath.   

By the end of the comic, the jellyfish thickly speckles the page. Only snatches are visible, enough to get the context but the overall detail is lost. Odette starts to sink into darkness. Blackness absorbs the pages, up to the point where the comic disappears, leaving us with a ghost of what we were reading. But the comic is rescued from darkness thanks to Naina’s intervention, both literally and figuratively (the comic turns into black pages, with Odette sinking into an inky abyss, with Naina as a rescuing angel). It’s a cliche that love conquers all, but it is true that it makes a significant difference in life. The comic concludes with vision as “we” see it, with Odette forced to navigate by memory, touch, and instinct. And she’ll have people helping her take the next steps forwards. Even though she can no longer see, she can still enjoy the simple pleasures of taking in a breath of cool Montreal air. 

Some things just can’t be taken away.