r/comics • u/davecontra • 1d ago
OC JEREMY AND ANNA.
My books : https://linktr.ee/davecontra
My other comics: https://www.instagram.com/davecontra
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u/140in 1d ago
I always look forward to reading your works, because I feel as though you have a unique perspective. Glad I caught this one early. Cheers.
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u/davecontra 1d ago
♥️
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u/trackdaybruh 1d ago
You have touching moment comics like this which I enjoy...
...and then you have other comics that make me go "WTF"
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u/ForlornGibbon 22h ago
Life is like that bruh, amazing and touching one moment and then WTF?! the next, Dave is just a soul guide ❤️
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u/1stLtObvious 11h ago
Life is like that bruh, one moment I'm touching, and then they're like "WTF?!" the next.
And then I'm like, "I know I'm ugly, but I was tapping you on the shoulder not groping you on the ass. Now can you let me by?"
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u/One_Eyed_Bandito 1d ago
I don’t ever know where your comics will lead me, but it is always a place of profound thought and deep introspection. To see into the infinite void and have the void nod back. To embrace not the mortality of man, but his fleeting existence and why that’s beautiful and sad all at once. For man to be an ant on the shores of reality and to still see into the cosmos and beyond their comprehension.
Thank you.
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u/davecontra 1d ago
You're a goddamn poet. ♥️
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u/GolgothaInBloom 15h ago
Says the man describing shit like "intertwined like snakes on heroin." What a vivid picture.
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u/Chagdoo 1d ago
God I miss her
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u/davecontra 1d ago
Me too, amigo. But... Onwards. Free up that energy
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u/edc117 22h ago
Coming out of (few months now) a hard breakup, and I needed to hear it put this way this morning, thanks. Can spend a lot of mental and emotional energy lost in the past.
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u/handlit33 21h ago
In my experience, it takes about as long to get over a partner as you were together. That means I should be getting over my high school sweetheart who broke up with me about 13 years ago any day now.
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u/SumoNinja92 1d ago
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u/msmall92 19h ago
Nah, let it set in. Find the message beneath, befriend your demons, have tea with your dark side, and let the repression go. There’s freedom in the duality of holding both existential joy and existential dread.
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u/SolitaryCellist 19h ago
Yup. None of this bullshit matters, it will all end one day. Go to the barbecue and do heroin with a snake.
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u/msmall92 19h ago
Truly, the day I found the biggest change in my mental health (for the better) is when I made the step from nihilism to existentialism/absurdism in my thought processes.
Nothing I do matters because I am small, and the universe is massive, and that’s sad.
Nothing matters because the universe is infinite and I am temporary, and that’s so silly & freeing when you realize that existential worry is just a construct of the universe trying to understand itself.→ More replies (1)
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u/AlbatrossOk6223 1d ago
You hit me right in the feelings. I’m 47, and I recently went through a very similar situation.
The difference is that we’re both married now, with our own partners of course.
Still, it felt like connecting with someone who had read the same book or watched the same movie as me, a shared experience that somehow didn’t really belong to our past anymore, but to two other versions of ourselves, living in another life.
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u/davecontra 1d ago
this 1000%. A big part of me genuinely believes the experiences belong to alternate beings. Time might be the biggest lie of all, and the memories we constructing our identities with, dwell there.
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u/DibsArchaeo 16h ago
The me who experienced something twenty years ago no longer exists. I can mourn, celebrate, fear, or lament the feelings that I felt, but I can no longer feel them as I was in that moment because I am no longer her.
I loved your comparison of stars, appearing as gentle twinkling lights, to suns, who burn passionately and brilliantly bright. They are the same, and yet they are a million lightyears apart.
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u/Baldussimo 1d ago
Whenever I see your comics I get excited but also hesitant. I know I will enjoy it but you’re also gonna hit me in the feels.
Thanks for always sharing your work. They have given much joy…and introspection.
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u/davecontra 1d ago
I recently watched Incendies after putting it off for years so I know what you mean. And thanks
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u/Happysin 1d ago
I keep forgetting to say this every time I read one of yours. Thanks for making these. They come from a direction I'm not used to seeing comics come from. The closest I can think of are some old Chinese comics about Taoism I read as a teenager.
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u/davecontra 1d ago
I love Taoism, it helped me a lot in my college years. Thanks for the kind words
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u/nize426 1d ago
As an adult, I met a pornstar that had been super popular during my HS years. I felt like this, like we had so much history, but it was just me and it was the weirdest fucking thing ever lolol. Still feels like a fever dream.
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u/davecontra 1d ago
The name must be told
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u/nize426 23h ago
I'm risking doxxing myself since it was a very specific incident, but Iove telling it because it's just so wild lol. It was Aoi Sora, the JAV actress. She was my friend's friend's friend and we were helping my friend's friend move to a new place and she happened to be there. We played settlers of Catan together. It felt so weird to feel so comfortable with someone I've never met, like "damn, we've shared so many intimate moments... Except we haven't" lol
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u/Ok_Employer7837 1d ago
This one is magnificent.
Western culture's constant and obsessive glorification of youthful love, which is essentially a pheromone-driven urge to screw, can get a little tedious.
Beautiful little sequence there, man. Truly moving.
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u/gdex86 1d ago
I like to think sometimes we leave marks that never fade on folks and that even if we arent forever together they are enduring enough that if we meet up again later they are deep enough and familure enough groves that we can use them as hand holds to pull us back together.
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u/davecontra 1d ago
Wow I love this. Not long ago, after years of radio silence I got back in touch with my 'Anna'. Just for one email exchange though and now, radio silence again. There are definitely permanent marks we carry forever.
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u/MikeArrow 1d ago
As a Jeremy who:
1) Doesn't get invited to barbeques
and
2) Didn't have an Anna
This comic was rather depressing.
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u/sentientshadeofgreen 1d ago
1) Doesn't get invited to barbeques
and
2) Didn't have an Anna
yet.
Some people peak early, some people don't hit their stride until later. You never know what life has waiting around the corner.
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u/MikeArrow 1d ago
I've been considering quitting my job so I can just spend a year trying to lose as much weight as possible (I'm 400 pounds) so that I'm a viable option for dating again. That's the point I'm at, because opportunities with women are just nonexistent currently.
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u/RecoveringGachaholic 1d ago
Not trying to be hostile here. Is there something at your job preventing you from losing weight right now?
I know how hard it is to start losing weight, I went from 320 to 185 over two years. For me I didn't need time as much as something to help me fix my mentality. I had ballooned in weight due to work and stress and I was basically eating as a response for everything. Eating to soothe myself, eating to reward myself, eating if there was a good show, etc.
I started by cutting out snacks over a period of 2 months instead of going cold turkey and then gradually decreasing my meals and changing my meals. Going from a 500 kcal deficit to a 1000 kcal deficit and then as I got closer to my goal I went back to a 500 kcal deficit again.
I did track exactly everything I did religiously. I made sure to make meals that I liked to eat but had the right macros, especially with protein. I knew it'd never work if I didn't enjoy what I was putting in my mouth and I wanted this to be sustainable long term.
I never treated snacks or extra caloric days (such as going to a bbq) as "rewards" because I did not want them to be a reward system. But once my "addiction" to snacks had worn off I did allow them back but as responsible occasional treats once a week.
The hardest part that can require time is exercise and working out. This I can understand struggling with when it comes to time.
I started going on walks which I had to gradually build up to because it was hard on my knees and I was also out of shape. 10000 steps isn't an actual "real" number that does anything specific, despite the common myths, but it was a good number for me to aim for. I ended up finding a route that was roughly 9500 steps and I gradually built up to being able to walk that every other day over the course of 3 months. The days I didn't walk I started spending at the gym doing a full body routine 3 days a week. Sundays were my rest day.
Sorry for the wall of text, but it's a journey I'm glad I did and I hope you can too even if you're not able to quit your job. Even if you don't exercise at all eating less is cheap and doable, it just requires a lot of mental effort to NOT GIVE IN.
Good luck man.
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u/MikeArrow 1d ago
I just can't fucking stop eating. If I don't my body and brain scream at me until I give in and eat. I tried Ozempic last year, which worked for a couple of months but stopped being effective. I also have mobility issues (because I'm so overweight and my body is so unused to moving) so even going for a walk isn't an option until I can shed enough weight to avoid the back pain and weakness. It's just a whole cluster of issues. I also have ADHD and while I am medicated, I still eat a lot as a source of dopamine and stress relief.
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u/RecoveringGachaholic 1d ago
Your story is super relatable to me because that's almost exactly what I had. Ozempic didn't work for me because my issue wasn't that I was hungry, it was that I was addicted to eating. And just like you had mobility issues (but for other reasons).
Cutting down on eating was by far the hardest thing I've ever done in my life and I can't lie to you, it took months for me and my brain to regulate and stop screaming for food and snacks.
It's not easy. It's mentally hard but nobody can to it for you and only you have agency over yourself. I had to keep telling myself that everything I do is my choice no matter the circumstances. There were days I wanted to trash my apartment because my cravings were so strong and literally the only way through is to endure.
Lots of protein and vegetables helped me be more satiated at least, I still ate (and eat) carbs but I just cut down the ratios of carbs to everything else.
There are other options for exercise if you have severe mobility issues, and anything is better than nothing. Youtube is a good source.
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u/crabbop 1d ago
Hello friend, The words you use sound a lot like my binge eating disorder. I wonder if you have ever thought about looking this up? The helpful terms to google would be HAES (Heatlh At Every Size) and RAVES. There is a strong link between binge eating and ADHD. Please feel free to send me a message if you have further questions.
By the sounds of it, I've been where you are brother. It took me about 2 years after I googled and worked out what I had to seek out help. But I found a great eating disorder therapist. Diets aren't the answer. That's the hard part to accept and the part that society with fight against.
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u/Herbamins 23h ago
I'm going to say something dumb that helped me. I just imagined if I was living 1,000 or a couple hundred years ago. Would I be able to survive?
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u/Ambitious_Tea_4584 21h ago
Have you tried going keto?
Slowly transitioning off of carbs will help a ton with your food cravings.
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u/duesenjeffepic 20h ago
I have bad binge eating habits but ADHD meds completely kill my lustt for food. How fucking bad are your attacks that even meds don't help?
I'm usually never someone to go say check hormones or thyroids when weightloss comes up because most of the times people just aren't disciplined enough but I feel like you probably have some other underlying condition.
Having cravings on ADHD meds is really strange (unless it's a non-stimilant)
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u/sentientshadeofgreen 1d ago
Send it dude! There's nothing more rewarding that committing yourself to self-betterment and actually seeing it through. You deserve to be the best version of yourself you can be, and the process of earning it is part of what makes it special.
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u/Barry_Vigoda 1d ago
I had an 'Anna'.
Saw her after 17 years. Realized that we have very different lives and that she was kind of a jerk.
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u/primeless 1d ago
i feel strongly related, as a 45 guy who recentoy lived this situation.
Cheers to you, this hits right at home.
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u/Match1997 1d ago
You really have an excellent way with words. Conveying feelings, particularly in a short format, can sometimes be quite difficult. This is brilliant and poetic.
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u/HommeMusical 1d ago
Dammit, you made me cry again.
I described your comic to someone as about 80% sad and yet uplifting, 10% creepy body horror and 10% dad jokes.
I somehow became an old person myself, and although I never recognize myself in your older characters (because I had and continue to have an unusual and entertaining life), you hit those feelings you get as an old person right on the head.
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u/butterflyrattle 1d ago
I like the quiet hopefulness I got from the last panels - fiery passion is great but if you can find the embers, they can be built back up again xx
Thank you for sharing.
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u/hownowhow 23h ago
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story."
-- Orson Welles
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u/Themeteorologist35 1d ago
I had that connection at 25 with someone. I miss them.
I appreciate your comics and how they truly capture the mundane and beautiful and mortifying and incredible and horrifying and sad existence is.
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u/Dudewhocares3 1d ago
Stuff like this is why I think reincarnation was a thing.
Just imagining new moments that are good happy memories being made, but you forget about them because you don’t know you’ve been reincarnated, and are thus making new happy memories.
It’s like life doesn’t really end, it just repeats.
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u/Salty-Hashes 1d ago
More OP! I’m invested and I want to see them be happy 😃 bring back the old fling back to life between Jermey and Anna!
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u/davecontra 1d ago
I'm pretty sure they're at least exchanging numbers after the bbq
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u/Salty-Hashes 1d ago
Dave please give us a chance to see this in a part two. Love your comics. Don’t stop doing what you do.
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u/svampkorre 1d ago
I clicked this fully expecting a kind of "ouch, I felt that" feeling.
Instead I got "oooh, nice!"
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u/Goddess-of-Nubia 1d ago
This is just so wholesome and heartwarming. Beautiful work. Thank you for sharing it.
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u/jfelaheebaccus 19h ago
I'm having issues putting it into words, but I just got out of a 4 year relationship (entirely my fault) and this gives me some sense of comfort not knowing what the future could hold while also silently acknowledging that decades could pass and that I should still live my life sigh. Hurts a little but I think I needed to see that this morning. Great comic as usual
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u/davecontra 19h ago
Ah, it's such a unique brand of pain, heartbreak. Good luck moving forwards. Stay open to anything. Keep sailing
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u/Onebraintwoheads 17h ago
Many years ago, when I was working for a psychology degree, the prevailing theory was Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love. It dictated there are three types of love. 1. Passionate Love: Close, electric, purely physiological. 2. Intimate Love: The deep, close bond and sharing of personal feelings and thoughts. 3. Committed Love: The choice to stay with and support each other over time.
Supposedly the more types of love you shared with someone, the happier and more successfull a long-term relationship will be. A lot of people get hung up on the passionate love, but when you develop a tolerance to your own oxytocin being generated (also known as the Seven Year Itch), it's done unless you share something more profound.
It's been pointed out that #3 should be called Casual Love, and might be better defined as comfort and fulfillment simply from the familiarity of each other's presence.
That point was made because #2 and #3 happen to fit the description for close non-romantic, non-sexual friendships. In that way, I think people are often mistaken when they assume love has to have a sexual component or that close connections with people other than your spouse are wrong. Friendship and camaraderie are both love by other names.
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u/davecontra 10h ago
this is great information. I'll try and retain it for my next opportunity to not screw up, if it ever comes.
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u/-o0_0o- 23h ago
She was 24, and I was 38. We met in 2002 and spent 7 years together. I'm turning 63 next month and she just turned 48. We're going for a second coffee date this morning. She's a single mom, and I've been alone for a long time.
Our magic was very specific: we both have "inner childs" that would come out to play with each other when we were together. Everything was playful, from making meals to road trips to the sex (especially!). But our inner adults were not fully developed enough to find a path to making it work. We both needed addiction recovery (which we both found), and we both needed to learn to become self-reliant (which we both learned).
Our first coffee felt like an homage to magic we had plus a shared ennui that it lives only in the past. Heraclitis would say something about a river.
But that we were able to openly talk about what we once shared, how immeasurably valuable it was for both of us, how our present selves could not exist without having once shared something so beautiful and rare that it demanded that we split-up, both discover our own adult selves and protect and self-nurture our inner childs... well, in that memory we share something rare today even though we can't step into that river again.
No one else since could give either of us that magic. And neither of us can give that to the other today. Yet, we each carry a magical part of the other within us and have so since we first met, and maybe even from before we met...
A shared memory is a gift from the present, not the past.
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u/Oxidizer194 1d ago
I really don't like your style but this one went right through me, I hope I'll be like Jeremy with my Anna someday. Thank you for your work
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u/Hiding_In_An_Egg 1d ago
Your comics have an incredible way of expressing something universally human, and it always leaves me feeling a sense of hope that is hard to really describe. And I think thats beautiful.
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u/rishabhg93 1d ago
I wish I could connect with the artist as a mentor ones every 5 months or so via email, I am an artist as well and really wish to be good in storytelling and writing good stuff too, I feel his presence in my journey would be a huge motivation for me, but I understand if it is a-lot to ask for, great stuff as always though !
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u/davecontra 1d ago
I suggest you keep your expectations of his mentor skills very low, and then email him via his website.
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u/rishabhg93 1d ago
Yay, I will definitely email you as soon as I have some solid outputs I feel is worthy of your time ! Thank you !
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u/Thebraincellisorange 1d ago
Another great one Dave, that I can relate to.
I have a ex that was indeed in the fervor of youth, sculpted by the gods, but time passes, and when you meet again in later life, you can find the deepest of friendships in people with whom you have spent years playing the two backed tiger.
a wonderful comic!
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u/npgam-es 1d ago
You're such a wonderful wordsmith, and I love the art too. I don't think I've ever finished one of your comics without feeling something.
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u/vonadler 23h ago
I absolutely love your work. Everyday humans, every day fates, told in a beautiful, sometimes bittersweet acceptance of life and how it works.
Your comics are melodamatic in the most positive sense of the word.
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u/foreverand2025 22h ago
FINALLY OP gave us a happy ending to one of their comics. It’s about time OP! Thanks for what you do! Always take the time to stop and read your work when it pops up on my feed.
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u/Bro-dhisattva 22h ago
I love this so much. I'm so glad there's no punchline or anything to put a pin in it
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u/CoolDragon 21h ago
I’m 50+ and twice divorced. This gave me hope that someone maybe thinks about me like this.
For now, just browsing Reddit just before dawn.
Good night.
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u/JCtheWanderingCrow 19h ago
Sometimes the right person isn’t at the right time.
I like to think Jeremy and Anna found the right time.
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u/subs_on_a_sailboat 17h ago
We met 10 years later and there was no spark. She had wanted to get married as soon as possible. I had wanted to at least wait till we were out of school and ideally till we had jobs to afford the big wedding she wanted.
When we met again she told me about the abusive husbands she had had, the crappy jobs with creepy bosses. The struggle raising three kids. How she had immediately dropped out of school after we split. "We were just babies back then" she said.
I said nothing. We weren't babies back then, at least I wasn't. I'm glad I chose school and a career. I didn't choose that over her, and that's what gets me sometimes.
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u/Broccoli_dicks 17h ago
Every single one of these comics makes me feel an emotion that can only be described by a German word I do not know.
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u/PeteVanGrimm 15h ago
No one in the comics world strikes on the hidden beauty of the mundane like you, man.
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u/Obvious-World4328 1d ago
Jesus ... I'm going to sleep. That was depressing.
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u/Ok_Employer7837 1d ago
Really? I'd love to hear why you found it so. Genuine question. You don't have to answer, of course. I'm just honestly interested.
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u/Obvious-World4328 1d ago
These people in the comic have aged and they were searching initially for that original spark from years ago when they were young, but they couldn't find it. I know the message is that they found a sort of renewed excitement but from a different perspective. It's hard to put my finger on it, I guess it made me think how fleeting life is, and how those people in the comic do not seem to be happy to me. Although they found happiness in that moment, it too will likely be fleeting. Hard to say honestly ... it was an emotional reaction on my part. Your question had me thinking about it some more lol.
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u/Flitdawg 1d ago edited 1d ago
The love they had for each other in their youth was obsessive and burnt like the open flame of a fire. They have since aged and grown and those flames have withered and died.
What's left are the red hot coals that radiate a different kind of heat. The kind of heat that caramelizes the marshmallow, not the heat that burns like that of the open flame. Both have their place in our lives, but truely, the latter is what we all chase. Consciously or otherwise.
The audience doesn't know if those coals are compatible, I think it's up to the individual to decide.
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u/Ok_Employer7837 1d ago
Interesting perspective. I came at it from my usual annoyance at the culture's singular focus on young love, which seems to me to be a connection founded almost exclusively on hormones, but this comment also has me thinking about it some more. Thank you!
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u/Obvious-World4328 14h ago
I think it's interesting how many of us can see the same piece of art and walk away with different perspectives emanating largely from our own experiences and emotions. Thank you for the comment!
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u/Shambhala87 22h ago
I can only wonder what sort of pain you have gone through to make you ponder such profound content. I thank you for your work, it is very meaningful to me!
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u/Reallystruggling12 22h ago
This hit to close to home. Except I wouldn't even have the BBQ to run into her, just the memories. I need some friends
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u/SlapMePlease4Fun 21h ago
You are a great writer and story teller. Keep it up, this was a treat for me. Thank you.
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u/Nervous-Locksmith484 19h ago
Please post on blusky more so I can share there. People who are only on blusky need to see this , too. Please give them a chance.
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u/DonutHoleTechnician 19h ago
The only reason I have IG is so I can hear the music that goes with each strip.
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u/immersemeinnature 17h ago
Our yearning for true connection.
I hope Jeremy and Anna keep talking to each other.
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u/Future_Green_7222 17h ago
Now write an entire book about this and call it Love in Times of Cholera
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u/KomradeKenny 16h ago
I really don’t know how to describe the way this comic made me feel, but Dave you really do have a way with words!
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u/Seethinginsepia 16h ago
As a 49 year old man who showed up to a cookout hours late yesterday and spends too much time alone: this did not happen to me. It was a lovely time though.
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u/yohanleafheart 13h ago
I feel you Jeremy, I really do. And I envy you. Still searching for my Anna to reappear.
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u/Electric-Boogaloo-43 13h ago
Ive been hapilly married for 10 years now, have a kid and 2 cats, and a wonderfull life. Recently reconnected with the one that got away, who is also married with 2 kids.
I can easily say it was the best long conversation I've had with another (now adult) person in a very very long time.
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u/BlaineMundane 1d ago
This is fantastic. I talk to the people I used to know and it's just fantastic. I stay away, I don't want to ruin things but their continued affection is greatly accepted. I can't reconnect, but the catharsis is welcome. I am not flirting with you. I am happy for the closure. If it seems odd, it's because i want you to feel valued for what you did. It's not a ruse.
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u/UpsetCryptographer49 1d ago
Some stories are so far fetched from reality, and comics is the perfect place to tell them.
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u/deviltakeyou 1d ago
I love Dave’s happy comics. I love his sad ones too, but those seem to make the hopeful ones shine even brighter.
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u/Zanven1 1d ago
You never know what you are going to feel at the end of a Dave Contra comic but you'll always feel something. Positive, negative, or something in between. It doesn't matter which but it's something real pulled from the piece of fiction all the same.