The DEADcomic Overlook #139: Split Lip

“Our bodies break down, sometimes when we’re 90, sometimes before we’re even born, but it always happens and there’s never any dignity in it. I don’t care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass… it’s always ugly, always. You can live with dignity; you can’t die with it.” — Dr. Gregory House

In the past four years, I’ve had to deal with the deaths of my grandma, my father-in-law, my uncle, my wife’s uncle, and my dear friend who left a grieving wife and four children behind. Every time my wife’s grandma — who turned 95 this year — ends up at the hospital, we all hold our breaths frightened that this may be the last day we see her. My own father died the same year I began this blog. You never get used to deal with it, and every death is a harrowing reminder of one’s own mortality and how short one’s time really is.

That’s when that quote from the great Dr. House haunts me. That picture perfect scene you see in movies where everyone gathers around the bed of a loved one as they slip off into eternal slumber? It never happens. It’s always messy. Maybe you spend a couple months in a brain dead coma. Maybe you live your last hours knowing your immune system is succumbing to the cancer. Whatever it is, it’s always ugly. Always.

Sam Costello’s Split Lip is a horror comic that contains ghosts and murderers and monsters. And yet, it’s the unflinching depiction of death and dying that I find most chilling.