It’s Okay To Be Sad: March 2020 by Kevin Budnik: This minicomic collection from Kevin Budnik is great for a lot of reasons. But I particularly love the way it captures the precise moment when the switch flipped in 2020 and everything became terrible. One day, when things were still normal, Budnik draws himself feeling bad after a night out and stressing about his relationship with alcohol. And then— BAM! On the next page, he’s standing in front of an empty store shelf, fretting that he’s almost certainly going to run out of toilet paper. It’s a jarring contrast that perfectly captures how it felt to live through that month.

One of my favorite things about diary comics in general is their capacity to preserve small slices of subjectivity, especially during world-historic moments like the pandemic. Sure, I could go read news articles from March of 2020 about COVID-19’s arrival in the U.S. (and I definitely have done that). But I honestly prefer reading diary comics like this one: Somehow, they feel more real and true. They capture the emotional reality of 2020 far better than anything else from that era — or anything produced in retrospect that tries to examine it from a distance, at least that I’ve seen.

I bought this minicomic at SPX in 2023, and I think it might be out of print now. But there are definitely other diary comic collections available on Budnik’s website. Here’s a link to that.

Also:

• Go follow him on Instagram: @kevin_budnik
• Support him on Patreon: patreon.com/kevinbudnik