Webcomic Weekly: Nes Lee On ‘Lesbian Grief’ — Something Extremely Heartfelt, Important And Emotional In 15 Panels

Welcome once more to Webcomic Weekly, online comic goodness of all sorts offered up to you as and when (although in truth, rarely weekly). This week, something beautiful, powerful, affecting – Nes Lee‘s Lesbian Grief.

Nes Lee (Inês Fontes) describes themself as:

“A Portuguese-Venezuelan 2D and 3D animator and storyboard artist based in Worcester, UK. I am a University of Worcester animation and illustration graduate,’ and ‘Overall, I’d say I’m a storyteller at heart, and nothing makes me happier than knowing I’ve done a story justice.”

Well, this is one incredible story that Nes Lee/Fontes has done incredibly well and really done it justice indeed. They should be very happy and very proud of this one.

Lesbian Grief is simply described by its creator as ‘a short comic about my experience’. And also, after they’ve had it up on Twitter for a bit, says this:

“Never expected this rushed short comic to reach this many people but I am SO glad it resonates the way it does. Lesbian, and just in general queer grief is incredibly common and it can be awful to go through, but it gets BETTER!! pinky promise.”

It’s a really fabulous short comic, one that you should read for the truth it tells and how things can and should change…

Let’s have a look at the first few panels/pages…

 

 

I asked my l’il old lesbian kiddo Molly about it and, after she’d read it, she said this –

“Well that was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster of something I’d never thought about before,’ and ‘It feels very true.”

Then she went on with this:

“I still to this day struggle to use the word lesbian because the whole idea of just being attracted to women is so far out of what we as a society deem as normal. Even men being attracted to men is deemed more acceptable than women being attracted to women. I use the word gay more than lesbian. I don’t know, something about the word feels dirty even though it’s not. Arguably a lot of that probably has to do with straight men.”

And finally, nailing why Lesbian Grief is so good with this…

“They managed to convey something extremely heartfelt, important and emotional in scribbles, colour and 15 panels.”

Well, I probably can’t do better than that. But let’s give it a go…

15 very simple panels, text and cartoon simplicity personified. But simplicity done this way is incredibly clever. This is a perfect example of the text and images working so perfectly together, the imagery establishing the feelings of the piece and doing so much with so little on each panel, serving the text where the ideas are developed. It’s pure comics absolutely, text and image working in harmony to show us something in a way that only comics can.

There’s very little to tell you of the story of Lesbian Grief that you can’t immediately get from the comic and even the few pages/panels I’m showing you here. It’s all about the way that Lee has identified influences in their own life where society has pushed and forced their thinking, forcing them to deny to even themselves what they believe in, who they’re attracted to.

And then comes the painful part, where they talk of how it’s ingrained in women that the ‘correct’ path to choose, the one with the only value for a woman, is to marry a man and have kids.

 

Acknowledging it is one thing, but the power comes from what follows, the exploration of what happens when someone doesn’t want to go that route and then has to ask this…

 

 

And that’s where the grief comes from. It’s a simple yet powerful and absolutely heart-breaking way to express things and doing it so well in just these 15 pages is everything I love about comics and the creativity they contain.

But, as Lee says, importantly:

“Lesbian, and just in general queer grief is incredibly common and it can be awful to go through, but it gets BETTER!! pinky promise.”

And that’s where we go towards as we get nearer the end, an ending that will put a huge smile over your face – well, it should anyway. And if it doesn’t, if you find yourself questioning whether LGBTQ+ folks have a right to be themselves, then I don’t want to know you because you’re just wrong. And we need to keep moving towards a world where Lee’s message is increasingly redundant, where young and old can accept everything about people and there simply doesn’t need to be the idea of what you, me, Molly, Lee, or anyone needing to be anything other than whatever they want to be.

So thank you Lee for something very special. And you keep loving in the gayest way you can!

 

Lesbian Grief by Nes Lee (Inês Fontes) can be found in full here on Twitter. All their links are here at Linktree. Oh, and there’s also this…