Sunday Pages: "Epiphany"

A graphic nightmare by Rebecca Migdal

Dear Reader,

My sleep cycle has completely changed this past year. The combination of Trump anxiety and advancing age was already doing its dread work on my body clock, but quarantine shook everything up. Now I wake up super early—four thirty, five o’clock, no later than six. I take a short nap in the afternoon, losing consciousness for 15 or 20 glorious minutes. By 9:30 or 10, sleep comes on suddenly, like I’m River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho, or some 37th level magic user is casting a spell upon me, and if I don’t retire immediately, I’ll collapse on the floor.

I’m not complaining. I feel fortunate that I sleep as much as I do. I know a lot of people suffer from insomnia—or “coroninsomnia,” as some clever wordsmith dubbed it. The other day I woke up at 3:30, went on Twitter, and was shocked to discover how many people were awake.

Sleep is one of the countless everyday things Trump has ruined.

Which brings us to today’s “Sunday Pages.” Rebecca Migdal—graphic novelist, author, puppeteer, performance and visual artist, and all-around genius—is known both for her confrontational political comics and nuanced explorations of gender issues. She is also the co-owner of a charming children’s bookstore in Easton, Pa., called Book & Puppet (she supplies the latter). Her work is featured in “The World We Are Fighting For,” the latest issue of World War 3 Illustrated, North America’s longest-running anthology of political comics, which focuses on the year 2020.

In her short comic, Migdal turns a bad dream into comic art. This is an actual nightmare that she really had…which, again—the President has ruined sleep, too. To paraphrase James Joyce, Trump is a nightmare from which we are all trying to awake.

For more of Rebecca’s work, check out her website, her Patreon, and her Etsy shop.