Soma

Abstract

Soma is an abstract comic exploring the relationship between the creative act and mental health with an emphasis on embodiment. The title derives from the Greek term as used in Homer’s Iliad, where the word is used to refer not simply to the body, but to the dead body and also refers to the intoxicant used in Vedic ritual. As an abstract comic, the emphasis is not on narrative momentum or the development of an argument, but rather the cultivation of a tone or mood. In line with this, the comic’s visual approach partly takes its inspiration from black metal and other extreme forms of music, where the lyrics’ deliberate indecipherability recasts them as pure musical elements rather than conveyors of information. In a similar vein Soma’s use of words is intended as primarily rhythmical rather than information-bearing; rendered in such a way as to make them at times illegible, they become subsumed into the design. This strategy lies parallel to the aim of the comic as a whole: the reintegration of mind and body through the creative act here imagined as an act of self-cannibalization, recasting, in the terms of the title, the dead body as a ritual intoxicant.