August 11th, 2023
I love Abigail “Axis” Coire — aka The Sketch, though she’s never referred to by that name in Volume I — so much, for so many reasons, but one of the strongest is her complexity. The irony of this is not lost on me, because she began as a single question: “Wouldn’t it be cool if a stick figure fought crime in the real world?”
Axis was originally a dude (because I am deeply unoriginal), and a stick figure because I am a terrible artist or, at the very least, a terribly lazy one. I was tired of only getting marginally better at art, and thought I could create a shortcut by using a simple character.
She ended up being everything but.
With Axis, I wanted to talk about depression, and follow it to the point of suicidal thoughts. I’ve personally dealt with some pretty gnarly episodes of depression myself; despite how open I am about my other stuff (addiction, anxiety, grief, etc.), I am strangely secretive about it, except when it comes to fiction.
I feel more comfortable addressing deeply uncomfortable things through character.
Her story has many parallels to Ashley’s, but one is invisible to the reader. In The Flying Squirrel, we see Ash drinking from tiny bottles of vodka in public places; in The Sketch, Axis makes herself think about things like water and wind and the feeling of cold to prevent herself from throwing up. I used to do both of those things sequentially almost daily.
The reasons for Axis’ transformation into The Sketch are as complicated as she is, and I have no interest in spelling them all out. I have heard awesome theories about her from readers and there isn’t any reason that their ideas are any less valid than mine. She belongs to you as much as she belongs to me.
I do want to talk about what I feel is an obvious reason, though: her identity.
When we meet her, she is in the middle of a breakup at her favorite coffee shop, Helen of Chai. (This is also the first appearance of my now-legendary MN Nice mug.) She doesn’t get regular sad afterward, though; she drowns in her bed, sleeping for eight whole months, internally losing her identity and struggling to hold on to any sense of who she is.
And when she wakes up, she is reduced to her core.
She is, understandably, confused and angry and scared.
That her core is unimaginably powerful and capable of breaking the rules of the page says something about what’s inside each and every one of us, too.
The Den 