“BEING”
by HB Klein

“BEING” is four page comic arranged pamphlet style so that it folds out page by page and reads as a horizontal endless scroll online. The text is laid over the images, rather than inside specific panels.

The primary colors in it are blue purple, deep (royal) purple, dark purple, lavender, orange pink, hot pink, and yellow. The comic is colored in flats without shading.

[COVER]:

An apathetic YOUNG ADULT hangs from an IV pole by the back of their shirt. A catheter, like those used to get fluid from an infusion bag, is inserted into their belly button. The tube runs off page.

    TEXT: Being
    TEXT: by GHBK

[PAGE 1]:

Foregrounded on this page is a purple giant hand, fingers spread wide to reach the edges of the page. Between the fingers are inset panels. There is a yellow catheter needle taped down to the back of the hand, IV TUBING threading out and over the border of the page to continue on the next three pages.

PANEL 1: A concerned mother holds a distracted YOUNG CHILD with a ponytail against her hip.

PANEL 2: The CHILD sits on an examination table, kicking their legs while a doctor listens to their abdomen with a stethoscope.

    TEXT: I’ve had a long time

PANEL 3: The CHILD looks out nervously as they are sent feet-first into an MRI machine.

PANEL 4: The CHILD squeezes their eyes shut tight, wrist held out on a phlebotomy chair, tourniquet around their arm in preparation to take blood.

    TEXT: to adjust to my reality.

[PAGE 2]:

This page is divided into a tiled pattern of rooms in isometric perspective, the walls receding into the ground at the bottom. Most of the rooms are empty duplicates, so the panels can be understood as each occupying an entire row including the empties.

The IV TUBING from the first page weaves through holes in the walls of this page, looping around in the upper right corner.

    TEXT: It’s

ROW 1: Empty corner of a room is visible to the far left.

The middle room is occupied by the same ponytailed CHILD, slightly older now, holding a stuffed frog. They are in an upright hospital bed in an IV lab, catheter inserted into their left hand, leading up to a yellow IV pole in the same room.

The room to the far right holds only empty upright hospital beds, like the one the CHILD is on.

    TEXT: static and

ROW 2: The child, now a TEENAGER with a bad asymmetrical haircut and more acne, sits on a couch in the far left room, still holding the stuffed frog. A yellow catheter leading to an IV pole is inserted into their right hand.

The room to the right is empty but for a couch.

    TEXT: if occasionally objectively unkind,

ROW 3: The room to the left is empty except for a barely visible bed.

The teenager, now a YOUNG ADULT with a short boyish haircut and glasses sits on a dorm room bed, stuffed frog nearby. A yellow catheter leading to an IV pole is inserted into their right hand.

    TEXT: then at least predictable.

ROW 4: There is a pair of discarded shoes in the room to the right.

The room to the left is completely black, with white text.

    TEXT: I think what I now fear most is change.

[PAGE 3]:

This page is a 4x4 sixteen panel slow head-and-shoulders 360 turn around of the YOUNG ADULT starting from behind. As they turn around, the IV tubing from their right hand (off panel) wraps around them and becomes the new panel border, gradually shrinking the panel.

The IV TUBING from pages one and two threads behind them through the panels and under the gutters.
    
    TEXT: Reality is never inconsequential,
    TEXT: but it’s rarely relevant either.
    TEXT: So sometimes I forget.

[PAGE 4]:

The IV TUBING from the prior pages drops down from the upper left corner of the page, leading into an infusion bag. Inside the bag, the YOUNG ADULT is falling, reaching for the off-panel top of the bag as bubbles stream from their mouth, face invisible behind their hair.

    TEXT: I don’t feel very strongly
    TEXT: about it, because
    TEXT: if I did I would be

[END COMIC]