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Comics creators depicted pandemic life in sharply different ways: as household comedy, a shared record of upheaval, stories of illness and loss, social critique, or something to acknowledge indirectly—or leave out of a regular strip altogether. These works capture conflicting lived experiences, not one settled definition of a “new normal.”
From household routines to pandemic material
The disruption did not have to appear as a grand crisis in every panel. Repeated days at home, family proximity, food, and changed routines could become stories in their own right. In a May 2020 profile, WBUR described Cagen Luse’s LunchTime ComiX series, “The New Normal,” as comic relief rooted in daily life during the pandemic. Luse’s work already drew on his life and family and on what he called “the racially ambiguous experience”; living at home with his family prompted a burst of creative work.
Luse described the project as becoming more personal than he first expected: “Then it turned into something way more than just doodling at my desk. …I was searching my own experiences and revealing myself in a way that I’d never done before and …it turned into something much bigger than I expected it to be.” WBUR reported that he developed ideas mentally, made thumbnail sketches, and then created the finished artwork. The process and subject matter show one route by which an extraordinary period entered the ordinary frame of a family comic. Read WBUR’s profile of Cagen Luse.
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Anthologies gathered experiences a single strip could not contain
Where a recurring strip offers one creator’s lens, an anthology can hold many accounts side by side. Graphic Mundi describes its 2021 book COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology as containing more than 60 short comics. The publisher lists it as a 296-page paperback with 158 color and 100 black-and-white illustrations. The stories range from realistic to fantastic, and from heartbreaking to hopeful or humorous. See the publisher’s book page.
The subject matter stretches well beyond infection and stay-at-home orders. The anthology includes working from home, homeschooling, missed birthdays and weddings, fear of leaving home, illness and bereavement, racial bias, government failures, and the social safety net. That range matters: the “new normal” was not simply a changed schedule, but an uneven mix of domestic adjustment, public policy, vulnerability, and community.
A 2023 abstract in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics gives a more specific description: 64 mini-comics by 70 contributors, edited by Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson. The publisher’s “more than 60 short comics” and the abstract’s count refer to the book in different terms, so they should not be treated as interchangeable measurements. The same abstract discusses The Lockdown Lowdown, describing two zines and a special issue on women and COVID-19, with artists from Europe, the United States, and China. Read the journal abstract on pandemic comics anthologies.
Writing about COVID Chronicles on the publisher’s page, Candida Rifkind calls comics “ideally suited” to the task, describing the book as both “an archive of the new normal of COVID-19” and a challenge not to return to the old normal. The anthology’s many voices make that idea concrete: it documents overlapping experiences rather than proposing a single universal account.
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Some creators chose not to put COVID in their regular comics
Direct depiction was not compulsory. In a June 2020 Washington Post report, Loose Parts creator Dave Blazek acknowledged that the coronavirus offered abundant material but said, “I just decided to not address it in ‘Loose Parts.’” His choice distinguishes a comic’s story world from a creator’s other public actions.
Blazek did participate in a cartoonist campaign that hid symbols in strips to thank essential workers, including medical personnel, scientists, teachers, food workers, grocery workers, and delivery or transportation workers. Baby Blues co-creator Rick Kirkman described the discovery of each symbol as “a little vibe of gratitude for the people it represents.” The report also recounted that Blazek’s father-in-law died of COVID-19 and that his wife said goodbye by video call—an account of his family’s experience, not a template for everyone’s grief. Read the Washington Post report on the tribute.
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What these pandemic comics reveal—and what they do not
Taken together, these examples show several distinct creative choices:
- Personal or domestic: Luse turned family life and everyday routines into comic material.
- Collective and varied: Anthologies such as COVID Chronicles placed everyday disruptions beside illness, grief, inequity, and political failures.
- Indirect or deliberately absent: Blazek kept COVID out of Loose Parts while joining a separate visual tribute to workers.
- Different tones: The work could be humorous, documentary, hopeful, or elegiac rather than fitting one pandemic-comic style.
These examples document projects and decisions made mainly during the acute pandemic years, from 2020 to 2023. They do not establish how all comics creators responded, or define a definitive post-pandemic normal. Their value is in showing how comics could make private routines visible, gather contrasting accounts, register public failures and losses, or offer gratitude without requiring every strip to tell the same story.
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