Thorogood's manga-influenced inking style conveys a raw aesthetic that lends to the authenticity of the artwork. By being completely open, she discovers the joy and pain of the vast world outside the self-imposed exile of her bedroom. I think the author has a lot of potential to bringing to life her images, but without a backbone of a good message it sadly doesn’t work for me. Aside from Oracle and Professor X, positive portrayals of disabled protagonists seems rare in comics, if not almost exclusively negative (David Beauchard’s Epileptic comes to mind).

Best Of British: ‘The Impeding Blindness Of Billie Scott

Overall, there are more people willing to come to her aid than want to take advantage of her, which feels honest to the world in which Billie lives. Thorogood continues this delicate tightrope walk by giving Billie a supporting cast that’s neither completely threatening nor saintly, but simply human. The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott dismisses this redundant habit and replaces it with a powerful message: we are not defined by how or what we create, only by our willingness to choose to carry on trying. It’s a pretty unique premise, and feels like the story is a great debut, with some pacing issues and prescriptive messaging the reader could take away without it being explicit.

Her rambling quest takes her through a bachelorette party that busts through on the train, a homeless shelter, a junkyard encampment, and other personality-filled hangouts. I thought she had just become besties with her roommates (who didn't know she existed until a minute before that). Billie’s sketchbook fills quickly with drawings and observations about each one, guiding the reader to view them through her perspective as a young person who might not be aware of just how vulnerable she really is. On the surface, The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott is simply a coming-of-age story, a sweet and delightful portrait of the wild and wonderful people you can encounter in your early twenties, provided you’re amenable. It felt very surface level with the relationships and I wish we spent more time on a small cast of characters as opposed to being rapidly introduced to a larger cast of new ones.

The Impending Blindness Of Billie Scott (Paperback) - Waterstones

After a night time run in with a thug who (mistaking her as a guy) punches her, black spots start appearing in her vision - we are shown these from a first person perspective, a relatively unusual POV but one that Thorogood executes effectively. The representation of a variety of British towns, spanning both the North and South of England, were highly convincing.That’s probably an unanswerable question and certainly, plenty of arguments exist that fall firmly on the side of “it doesn’t matter” or “humanity is not a pre-existing necessity for anything,” but The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott certainly falls on the side of advocating for a human component to art. The story follows a young adult (I don't actually know how old she is) artist who has been granted gallery space for ten paintings. It's all a little too on the nose, and I was slow to warm to it, but the characters, art, and dialogue won me over by the end. It’s not likely to change your view, but it will offer an engaging street drama in its attempt, while it posits some big ideas about how art is made and what gives it depth and growth.

The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott by Zoe Thorogood The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott by Zoe Thorogood

This book is a stunning revelation of a tender heart, embracing all the tools the medium of comics have to offer.After an incident she’s also faced with the fact that she is going blind quickly, and only has a few weeks left with her eyesight. That would likely panic just about anyone, but Billie has the additional complication of needing to complete ten paintings for a prestigious art gallery before atwo-week deadline (imposed by her impending loss of vision) is up. It feels like Thorogood doesn’t trust the readers, or herself, enough to come to the book’s conclusions on their own, which is a shame; her storytelling up to that point is far more confident and deft than she seems tobelieve it was.