Barking

January 8, 2024
In fierce slashes and splashes of ink, the raw, haunting debut from Sullivan depicts the inner depths of a person struggling with mental illness. Alix, a young woman with vacant eyes and a spray of freckles, is picked up by police on a bridge as she contemplates suicide (“it will be a bit messy... but quick, at least”). She winds up committed to a psychiatric hospital nicknamed the “rot box,” where she’s consumed by voices of doubt. An orderly warns ominously of her fellow inmates: “Some’s bad for themselves, but some’s bad for everyone.” Alix comes to know the stories of how they were institutionalized, acquaints herself with the doctors and staff, and navigates treatments she’s pushed into, including medications and group therapy (“Angry girl, you got a problem,” quips another patient). Ultimately, she faces the fear that she’s inherited a fatal streak of madness, and seeks to discern whether she’s “safer in here or out there.” Sullivan’s bold, liquid inks, suggestive of Bill Sienkiewicz, evoke Alix’s disorienting inner world in constantly shifting visuals: her mental illness takes the form of a wolf that follows her, muttering intrusive thoughts; her head sometimes dissolves into a trailing black cloud; and words and figures fight their way out of puddles of ink. It’s a terrifying glimpse into a disturbed mind.