Kimball Anderson

What Is A Body

Image ID: “what is a body/what is a body” it says in yellow, handwritten text floating near the top of the page. Under the text are flowing white lines tinged with blue, lines that curve in unison. What might be a thumb is visible, and through that you could guess that maybe the shape it connects to is a distorted hand. The background is made of blocks of red and black, film grain and jpeg ghosting creating a consistent texture that might have the feel of moss if you were able to touch it.

Image ID: “flesh and whatever” it says, the bluish white lines under the text are more sparse. They branch out and and gently curve away from the center of the page, looking almost reminiscent of folds of fat. The blocks of dark red overlap underneath, making intersecting lines with edges. “who cares” it says.

Image ID: Strange, mirrored shapes connect along the middle of the page in bluish white lines. There’s a clear foot at the top left, pressing it’s toes up against the blobby something. The texture of the background now feels like smoke.

Image ID: Distorted hands loosely holding each other seem to come down along the left and right of a strange lumpy shape. “‘you’re beautiful’/you tell me/’I don’t think you know how beautiful you are’”

Image ID: “I look in the mirror” it says over lines that almost seem like the water line on a shore coming closer and closer. “and my body changes” it says, and to the left the lines connect and lead into a hand, it’s fingers folded under, pressing into the ground. “is always changing” it says, and the lines next to the leg seem like maybe they could be a kneeling leg. An ambiguous red shape comes out of the dark in the background.

Image ID: The lines are a little closer to white and green now, making the shape of a closed hand coming down from the top of the page. On the right the lines get stretched and skewed, connecting knuckles and making the thumb wide. Past the hand there’s a mess of lines that might have been another hand but are just a swirl of indiscernible shapes. The red underneath feels soft.

Image ID: The lines on this page are stretched so that even the marks seem jagged and ugly. They make up one big lump, with shaded areas that give no clues as to the nature of the shape. The red black has multiple textures and feels in different blocks.

Image ID: Swaying, flowing green lines fill the left, feeling like oil flowing on top of water. To the right, a clear soft stomach with light hair on it, a little of the chest with nipples stretched into lines, and the tops of thighs. The red is particularly brilliant underneath.

Image ID: “your eyes/the windows to your etc.” it says over lines that sway up into a bright blur of white near the top, “your fingertips/tenderness”. Bright crimson bursts out of the right corner of the background and is cut into sharply by a rectangle of dark brownish red. 

Image ID: Many lines that look like broken spiderwebs drifting down along a single unbroken thread. The rectangles of red have a feel of the inside of a vein pumping blood.

Image ID: Jagged, formless lines come down from the top, where they turn green and blurred. “delicate and fragile/breaking and rebuilding” it says over soft, textured purples and reds.

Image ID: A strange swollen form comes down from the top, twists and crunches, turns sharply, and at the end there are toes. Above the toes, what looks like another foot from behind. “who cares/who cares” it says. A more consistent darkness lies behind it.

Image ID: A garbled image, a soft stomach like before, a belly button, and then it stretches up and to the left and that same soft stomach is there again. Shading lines flow below it, making an odd shape, like an egg coming out of the hips instead of a leg. “I am soft and malleable” it says “I can become many things”. Bright red and purple behind, in a crunchy, pixelated texture.

Image ID: Lines swoop with no obvious form, but they feel energetic and elegant. In yellow it says “I am here”

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Kimball Anderson makes comics for people who fell off of the conveyor belt of life. Since they were young they’ve been disabled by chronic illness, and much of their work explores the ignored, quiet spaces along the periphery that people fall into. Their work has appeared in journals and anthologies like Anomaly, Ink Brick, and How to Wait. You can find more of their comics online (outside-life.com).