Sensory: Life on the Spectrum: An Autistic Comics Anthology

In the graphic short story “Fly,” a hummingbird is admonished by a pigeon for not using the conventional upstroke and downstroke while flapping its wings. “You’re a bird, aren’t you?” says the clueless pigeon. “Just fly.”

Shamed for being different, the hummingbird tries to conform with tragic consequences. It falls out of the tree, plummeting to the hard earth over several panels. However, the final panel presents another possibility. The hummingbird accepts its natural tendency to sweep its wings rotationally and finds joy in hovering with a community of other brightly coloured hummingbirds.

It’s a beautiful image, and the story speaks to anyone who has ever struggled to accept themselves. The story, by Jo Svensson, is one of the pieces found within Sensory: Life on the Spectrum: An Autistic Comics Anthology. All the stories are by people who identify as autistic and each one has a different take on what being on the spectrum means, and what it feels like.

Many of the stories take on the responsibility of educating the reader about what it means to be part of this community. Autism Soup by Cy Popps makes the point that being on the spectrum does not mean that some people have more and less autism but rather that “everyone has different autism traits.”

Community by Alicia Wedderburn-Graham and Micaela Wainstein elucidates the complexities of being black and autistic.

The comics themselves encompass a wide variety of illustration styles. The medium of comics has an immediacy which for the most part works effectively to convey the writers’ experiences of the spectrum. Several stories delve into how people endeavour to mask their neurodiversity. Cover for Me by Alice Williams poignantly explores the embarrassment of having the mask slip. In Masking and Mirroring by Bex Ollerton, the narrator describes how every conversation involves running through a kind of script of questions and choices, illustrated effectively by a flow-chart.

Another common theme is the relationship of each of the creators to “stimming,” or repetitive self-soothing behaviour. Overwhelm by Chloe F McKay powerfully delivers the message that “nobody should be made to feel ashamed of who they are or how they soothe themselves. Everyone is valid.”

I was particularly struck by a common thread about the difficulties caused by a late diagnosis or even no diagnosis. In Self-Diagnosis, Bex Ollerton advocates for a more inclusive approach, saying “ultimately a person’s diagnosis - whether formal or self-diagnosed - is nobody’s business but their own. Gatekeeping autism only serves to deny an identity to those who belong to it and to deny a community to those who would benefit from being a part of it.”

Taken as a whole Sensory is very much a celebration of a community which is beginning more and more to negotiate such challenges, to speak up for itself, and to tell its own stories. And together those stories fly - on their own terms not anybody else’s.