Christopher Fink begins his autobiographical graphic novel, Breakthrough: Life on the Brink with an introduction that starts with the line, “If I’m still alive when you’re reading, this I might have become immortal.” So you know from the get-go, you are about to embark on a story fraught with human peril. But this isn’t the kind of peril that you find in action films. Fink’s life story is filled with the peril of living as a working artist, broken relationships, loss, discovering yourself, and facing death in mid-life.
Buy Breakthrough: Life on the BrinkOver the next 156 pages, Fink combines his mixed-media art along with his handwritten narratives to reconstruct and tell the story of the life he has lived so far. From his confusing and fragmented childhood to his diagnosis of brain cancer, he doesn’t shy away from revealing the messy parts along with the personal wins that keep us all moving forward. It’s not a tidy and overly curated story, but instead a remembering and reconstructing, as if he is catching up not only us but himself on his own life.
Breakthrough: Life on the Brink is not a graphic memoir that you fly through, but instead a book that you feel the emotional weight of the more you engage with it. Fink’s drawings and collages shift with his emotions and circumstances as he recounts both the playful and painful parts of existing. He tells his story with a heaviness and honesty that will both resonate and challenge those who pick it up.
At the time of this writing, Fink is still alive so perhaps he has become immortal. But even when he does eventually shed his mortal coil, his art and story will live on. Breakthrough: Life on the Brink is available now through Fantagraphics or wherever you pick up your graphic novels.
