#46: Health, heart and mind

Hello medical practitioners,

It’s that time of the week again, time for another set of cartoons.

This week we explore some ‘positive’ news, and let our bodies do the talking.

Bracing myself,
Chris

Like what you see? Follow me on Instagram (@chrisshorten), or talk a friend into following me on Instagram. Or, buy some prints from my website.

Caption: “It’s negative, but if we say it’s positive we can cancel our plans for five days.”

Believe it or not, COVID-19 is still out there and, for the first time, I finally caught it. As in, right now. As I write this.

But, even before I caught it, I’ve often thought about doing just this to get out of a particular social situation or two.

Maybe you can too?

A little artist’s note: Whoa, COVID. No one needs it, and apparently it’s much weaker now, but it still hits you all the same. But, like any harsh disease, it’s clearly something that also doubles as a fairly impressive excuse.

But, onto more interesting things. This cartoon is actually a full reimagining of a New Yorker rejection of mine (I submit to The New Yorker 10 cartoons a month, every month) from way back in May 2023, but it took a very different angle in that iteration. Here is the original:

As you can see, there is a lot to like about this but, and my memory is a little fuzzy here, I think my rationale for doing it this way was because it was a Friday evening and I had places to be but I really wanted to get this cartoon done.

So there you are, COVID becomes an opportunity to reimagine this cartoon into something better, with all the skills I’ve developed since May last year.

Caption: N/A

Sometimes, an alarm just isn’t enough. The brain can’t wake you, the heart can’t wake you, but maybe something else can.

We’ve all been there, trying our best to ignore the alarm before the bladder takes the controls and steers us out of bed. It’s like nature’s alarm clock. And, like all things nature, it’s probably more reliable than the electronic alarm.

Over to you, Bladder.

A little artist’s note: This cartoon is another one in my Involuntary series. And initially I had planned to see this series as a way to get quite a few cartoons done quickly and get some experience doing strip comics. However, what I’ve found so far is that these take just as much time as the other cartoons and, quite often, the final panel takes as much work as the other three to get right.

But, I’m quite happy with how this has turned out. As an interesting fact, drawing a bladder is actually pretty simple. Another interesting fact, I’m not sure many people know what a bladder actually looks like. The challenge here was very much about giving the reader as many clues as possible so that they realise that this third organ is actually one they know and, possibly, care about.

Thanks for reading MiddleSquiggle!

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