Made with India ink, nib pen, and watercolour.
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Thanks for your feedback. Here is a walkthrough of what I intended for the reader to experience. Perhaps it falls short.
First, she asks a group of five people if she can join their telepathy club.
At first they are all looking at each other, as if to gauge each others' willingness to accept her into the group. You may assume they are looking at each others' facial expressions to see what the other people think about her request.
However, then it shows seemingly random people in other places, doing other activities: swimming, business deals, hair salon, working on telephone wires.
Then it switches back to the first group, who have come to a decision. You realize that the random people were all part of the telepathy club too, and they were communicating telepathically to consider her request.
I got it immediately, I thought it was clever.
Don't be discouraged by the minority of people and AI posing as people who have a hard time with subtlety.
I hope that nobody is using AI to read and comment on a comic on Lemmy! If so, what has this world come to?
I'm glad that many people got it, but I do sincerely appreciate hearing the alternative interpretations. I like breaking down the ways in which info is communicated in this medium, and ways it could be made more clear. At the same time, the subtlety and uncertainty is part of the setup, so I'm not super bummed that the intended meaning wasn't crystal clear to all.
There are not NEARLY enough subtle, cerebral comics out there, this is giving me vibes like the few good ones like Bizarro or Perry Bible Fellowship, lean in harder, make art and stories for yourself, not public appeal, you will get a much more loyal following and make bigger waves. (I used to be a professional artist, I know the pains.)
Also, yeah there are AI all over reddit asking how to be human, asking the meaning of things like comics and memes, the whole "explain the joke" ring of subreddits exploded in volume since reddit announced that they were going to partner with Google and AI companies to use the platform as a training ground.
AI is going towards some strange directions and it's going to be bigger and smarter than we expect. Eventually.
But it will be a long, long time before it starts making art like this, which gives a glimpse into an internal, personal idea or experience. Keep fighting the good fight.
Thanks, I appreciate your encouragement and compliments, especially the comparisons to such great comics.
I guess that in soliciting feedback, I'm not really aiming to make sure 100% of people "get" my next comic. I don't really see it as a failure if a few people don't connect the dots the exact way I intended. And especially because I'm not trying to gain internet fame with it (I don't have a website, or even title or sign these things; it's not my main creative pursuit right now).
But I do think it's valuable to learn from strangers how they connect the panels to create a narrative, and how the panel order, subject matter, colour scheme etc. can influence that. The way this medium is interpreted can also be deployed for misdirection, the way PBF does. Learning about how a comic is received can help me analyze that.
Thanks again for taking the time and sharing your thoughts, I appreciate it immensely.
I am happy I had a chance to interact directly, because you did touch on something in this comic that I appreciate and I know AI is a very long way from taking from us, which is that "flow of an experience" that comes with art. You feel a scene, a situation, an exchange or a mood, you have an internal experience born from your own imagination and you want to share that feeling. Keep doing that and you will easily compete with the "Greats."
Keep at it, the next biggest thing you need is just consistency and patience. It can take a long time before enough people experience the world through your eyes that they start missing it and seeking it out.
This is the best compliment ever. I hope your day job involves inspiring youth to reach their potential and believe in themselves, and to transform their cynical self-image into optimism. Thank you.