Steeped in conspiracy ideology: Ika Sterling explains in ‘The Great Reset’ what it feels like to no longer be able to reach your father.
Scene from Ika Sperling, “The Great Reset” (Reprodukt Verlag) Photo: Ika Sperling/Reprodukt
“Daddy, make a dog.” There used to be a loving relationship with the father, as the author of the graphic novel introduces. The first pages of the colorful watercolor comic are reminiscent of a caring father carving animal shapes out of apples. In the present of the story, student Ika then returns to “Bad Kaffheim” for three days. Her sister is waiting there at the train station. And as they drive home through the marked Palatinate vineyards, empty Red Bull cans roll through the car.
When Ika’s sister, who doesn’t want to talk about or with her father, is asked about ‘the old man’, she quickly loses her patience. She has to come to terms with it. Because she has become unemployed due to Corona and is living with her parents again. Ika has to find out for herself whether her father’s talk about giving up everything and emigrating actually turns into action. It would mean the parents’ divorce, the sale of the parents’ house, the eventual loss of the father – and what will happen to the old dog then?
When we arrive, a neighbor in a work jacket is wiping an outside wall with a cleaning cloth. Thanks to such carefully observed details The world depicted here does not appear to be a random background, but is very real and inhabited. Anyone who comes from the village remembers that everyone here knows everything about each other. You understand the irritated sister much better.
Ika Sperling draws the father as a transparent being. He almost looks like a ghost, somewhere between a Michelin man and a gingerbread man in shape, half filled with liquid and half empty. He lives in the living room with headphones and watches videos and sausages, disconnected from the other people in the house, which is repeatedly shown on two sides, like a so-called splash, like an open dollhouse. A room for each character. Everyone is for themselves.
Disturbed and washed away by madness
As if through a semi-permeable membrane, the liquid seeps out of the father’s container, dripping and flowing as he speaks about his subjects. The world painted from watercolors This story is constantly in danger of being fueled and washed away by his madness.
The reason for this may be that you meet people of the same faith at the local wine festival. But also his daughter’s vegetarianism. Or the request to wear a face mask in the veterinary practice.
“Why are you giving up everything because of something someone said somewhere on the internet?”
The transformation into a dripping wet ghost occurs before the action begins. And the plot will end long before the father emigrates and – to prevent the grand conspiracy – transforms himself. Both would have been thrilling to watch. What the author takes her readers along for the ride, almost as if seeking moral support, is to witness her attempt to reach her father again.
Networked in a parallel world. The forest bugs are among us. Scene from Ika Sperling, “The Great Reset” Comic strip: Ika Sperling/Reproduct
During the visit there will be two attempts to talk to him. Both times the space between them becomes larger. Both times it drips and flows. Both times Ika groans, overwhelmed by the burden of wanting to be seen and heard.
No revelation where there is none
Since she already seems to know that the controversial argument will lead nowhere, she instead tries to put the personal relationship in the foreground: ‘But you don’t care what happens to us?’ ‘How can you throw away everything you have? You have here. Your job. Your house. Your family. Why give it all up because of something someone said somewhere on the internet!
Ika Sperling shows no image of what he looked like before his transformation, or which father she lost. Perhaps a conscious choice because so many people now know someone who has become such an ‘after’ – and looks very similar (‘repopulation, dictatorship, gay frogs’ – you name it). But it becomes clear when he again cuts a little animal out of an apple for her, talks to her like he used to, a little regression at the breakfast table, to which the daughter responds.
It’s almost a verbal jamming that runs through the book. Despite the emotional urgency, the characters here behave in a way that repeats themselves; say they don’t understand each other, exchange platitudes or leave the stage altogether. That seems realistic, but more contradiction would have been good.
Because the author completely avoids introspection, thought bubbles, or a narrative voice that contextualizes actions, the various sad resignations of a conspiracy ideologist’s relatives are palpable, but there is no revelation for those who themselves lose relatives. Perhaps because there aren’t any yet.
On internet forums such as r/qanoncasualites People who suffer from the transformation of people close to them exchange ideas. The collective advice there is often: the person is no longer there. You can’t do anything. Just grieve.