Brave Hearts: Pages 1 and 2

A story about a brave grandma in a time of war

Dear readers,

I have to be honest. After announcing my comic Brave Hearts a few newsletters ago, I was secretly scared I would never start drawing it, and that my flashy announcement would remain a testament to my failure to start projects. Just to give you an idea of why I thought this: It took me more than half a year of procrastination to draw the first page of Bleeding Hearts after fully sketching it out!

Well, I am happy to say that I got over my ADHD self and created the first two pages! Note to self: The first page is always the hardest. And working on something every day for a bit ends up in the thing being done. Shocking, I know!

I apologize for a tonal shift in this post. After this light introduction, we are going deeper and darker.

Brave Hearts

This is an autobiographical story and all the events depicted here are true. However, as I chose to tell this story from my grandma’s perspective, the details of each situation are necessarily somewhat fictional.

Trigger warning: The following comic discusses events happening during the Croatian War of Independence and might be triggering for some people. The following pages do not contain any explicit violence.

In the first page, I tried to depict my grandma’s love for animals, flowers and nature. I can imagine feeding a cat is something she did on this day because, well, that’s something she did every day.

As a kid, I always found it so funny that my grandma only ever listened to the radio stations from Zagreb. When I asked why, she replied: “So that I know what’s happening where you are, my darling.”

My heart is with everyone who has experienced something like this, and especially those who are currently in a war zone. We might feel powerless in face of war, but we still have a voice. So, what should we say?

Whatever I write about this topic just doesn’t feel right. Yes, we can donate to people in Gaza, and yes, we can discuss politics and assign blame. But none of these discussions I see around me get to the root of the problem.

Besides leaders as the obvious culprits, do you know who is to blame for every single war that has ever happened? Every person who picked up a weapon.

That is the only way the wars can happen and the only way they can end. People laying down their weapons. It is that simple.

This is the only thing I can say about war that makes sense to me.

While this line of thinking is exactly the sentiment of Brave Hearts, this story is not about war at all. It is about me and my grandma, people who happened to live during a war, as most humans that have ever lived did. This is a story about what it means to be human.

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This comic will continue with regular updates whenever I finish new pages, most likely bi-weekly, and I will occasionally publish my short comic strips in between.

Thank you for reading! If you liked this, like, comment, and share it with others.

Until next time,

Ana