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The Suburban Review
  • ABOUT
    • Opportunities
    • FAQ
    • Donate
    • Contact
    • Jumpstart a Journal
  • SUBMIT
  • READ
    • Buy a New Issue
    • All Online Issues
    • Explore the Archive
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  • ANNOUNCEMENT
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  • THE REGIONAL REVIEW

Asexual Reproduction

Archive, #22 Organise & Mobilise, #22 Art & Comics / By Tara Black
Tara Black
Tara Black can often be found in the front row of book events, illustrating authors and their ideas. You can find her work on The Sapling, Stasis Magazine, NZ Poetry Shelf and her website taracomics.com. Her first graphic novel, This Is Not a Pipe, is available from Victoria University Press.
Comic. ‘Asexual Reproduction’ by Tara Black. 

This one page digitally illustrated comic is rendered in black and white. The text is in all capital lettering, and both text and illustrations have a free-drawn quality. There are four rows, each with four panels. 

In the first panel, the faces of five dragon-like mythical creatures are crowded into the frame with a dialogue bubble emerging from the mouth of one creature. Top text reads: 

‘Asexual Reproduction.’ 

Dialogue bubble reads: 

‘Or, what to do with a clone.’

In the second panel, two dragon-like creatures are side by side. Their faces are completely obscured by two identical books with the title ‘Pip Adam: Nothing to See,’ which they are reading. Bottom text reads: 

‘Only consume fiction with clones.’  

In the third panel, one creature is singing into the other’s ear. The singing creature smiles gently, while the listening creature has is contemplative. A dialogue bubble, with musical notes, emerges from the singing creature’s mouth. Top text reads: 

‘Find out what your singing voice really sounds like.’

In the fourth panel, the two creatures are stand back to back. Their wings are behind their firm haunches and torsos. They turn their heads back to look at each other, smiling. From both heads emerge thought bubbles, with an identical image of a smiling creature’s face within. Bottom text reads: 

‘Discover you’re actually cute when divorced from self-hatred.’

In the fifth panel, the two creatures place a slim, rectangular mirror into a garbage can. One lowers the mirror, while the other holds the lid of the garbage can. The face of one creature is shown reflected in the mirror’s glass, but its scales and other facial details are absent. Top text reads: 

‘Ditch all mirrors.’

In the sixth panel, the two creatures stand in front of easel with paintbrushes in hand, One easel is facing away from the frame; on the other, the creature paints their own face. Bottom text reads: 

‘Pretend to draw self portraits.’

In the seventh panel, the creatures stand in the middle ground, facing each other, holding hands. Through the background behind them stream a series of heart shapes, and beneath them are a series of flower stems with heart-shaped blooms on top. Top text reads: 

‘Fall in love.’

In the eighth panel, the creatures stand beside each other. One grimaces, while the other’s face is hidden by their wings. Bottom text reads: 

‘Worry that it’s incest.’

In the ninth panel, the two creatures stand in the bottom two corners, looking at each other warily. From the creature on the left emerges a thought bubble, picturing a hen and a freshly-laid egg. From the creature on the right emerges a thought bubble with a pair of wedding rings pictured. Top text reads: 

‘Break up because you’re too different.’

In the tenth panel, the two creatures each stir a mixing bowl. They look at each other with tense, unhappy expressions. Around them are littered fourteen cupcakes. Bottom text reads: 

‘Take stress baking to a whole new level.’

In the eleventh panel, only one creature is shown. They are surrounded by five Stormtroopers behind a dark sky. They hold a Stormtrooper hemet and gaze down at it apprehensively. Top text reads: 

‘Get a second job.’

In the twelfth panel, the frame shows a flow-chart style questionnaire. Bottom text reads: 

‘Suffer secondary tax.’

In the thirteenth panel, a segment of a production-line machine is shown. There is a pipe at the top with individual capsules spaced along its length. In the central capsule is a small dragon-like creature not dissimilar to our two protagonists. Text on this capsule reads ‘CLONE-A-MATIC.’ Bottom text reads: 

‘Consider making more clones.’

In the fourteenth panel, the two creatures’ faces appear, looking towards each other with energised expressions of consternation. Their arms are thrown up beside their faces. From the creature on the left emerges a thought bubble with an image of many dragon-like creatures inside it. From the creature on the right emerges a thought bubble with the earth, surrounded by layers of vapours, within. Bottom text reads: 

‘Decide the environmental implications are too problematic.’

In the fifteenth panel, the two creatures stand very closely together on the right, with two bird-like creatures opposite them on the left of the frame. Above the bird-like creatures is a dialogue bubble, with a symbol signifying ‘twins’ and a question mark within. Above the dragon-like creatures emerges a dialogue bubble with this same ‘twin’ symbol appearing with a strike through it. Text at bottom of the panel reads: 

‘Explain to strangers that you don’t identify as twins.’

In the sixteenth panel, the two creatures are in close-up framing, leaning over a thick slice of cake. Their forks are poised above it, and they smile softly to themselves. Bottom text reads: 

‘You just are.’

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The Suburban Review is a quarterly digital journal of short fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and art. We’re interested in publishing the work of writers from all over Australia and the world.  

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We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this nation. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri and Boonwurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Awabakal, Worimi, Wiradjuri, and Kaurna Peoples, and the Tasmanian Aboriginal communities of lutruwita, the traditional and ongoing custodians of the lands on which we produce and publish.

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