Jon Vaughn's Schwartz on the Schwartz: What We Are Like On The Inside

Inside My Head

What are we made of? Objectively, we know what a human body contains. We even know the chemical composition of our body. But what about our consciousness? What about our souls? What are they made of? What are we made of? I am not sure if any of us have any answers, but Jon Vaughn tries to explore this in Schwartz on the Schwartz.

Vaughn depicts the outline of human forms in various positions, but the only signifier of humanity is this outline. We recognize what humans look like, but we don’t see them from outside, instead we gaze into what the souls contained in their bodies might look like. Lines twist and turn into abstraction in the outline of the bodies we see. Souls are warped and we observe them, unable to ever grasp what we’re meant to see. We dig deeper and deeper into a depiction of human psyche that is completely wild. We see what looks like cerebral tissue, overlapping flesh and weird shapes. As one tries to unravel the meaning of the book, we are haunted by the mystery that surrounds this oddity. It stayed with me long after I put it down.

The comic, although short, is quite dense. As one tries to unwrap the meaning of this, we get to hold this nicely risographed mini-comic on beige paper with blue and black ink. It really is a neat little book. I doubt I’ll ever see any other comic from Jon Vaughn; I’ve had a hard time finding information on him online apart from his artist resume. In any case, I see an artist with a grasp of perspective and potential to turn into a great comic artist.

A subjective view of a soul