Guest Edited Comics

Overdub

by Andrew Kozlowski

All nine frames make one picture of a long-haired person speaking. Their speech bubble covers most of the frames, whereas the person sits at the bottom left frame. The text reads in this order, "I'm too nostalgic and I've been wondering, if that's a bad thing, or just how bad of a thing it is. I mean, c'mon, just look around, why is it so bad? Given the state of - well - everything. Look- if I gotta reckon with the danger of nostalgia, then you gotta spend a minute with me remembering - lightning bugs - humid nights - firsts - lasts -"

The first six panels are covered in colorful cassette tapes. The text along them reads "But I've also heard our best memories, the most accurate, are those we don't remember. 'Cause remembering is an act of storytelling. So each time we remember, we tell the story a bit differently. The last three panels show faces like the first page, similar to each other, but all slightly different. The text comes from their mouth. It says, "Like a cassette tape, recorded, over and over, and over and over, until the sound- starts to warble."

Each row of panels shows a very long, stretched arm reaching for a pencil and then drawing with it. The arm belongs to the person from the previous pages. The text reads, "Despite my faulty memory, the right song finds me driving on a summer night, windows down, radio up. I'm there again, and the time traveling me can't help but feel an ache that says: "It was so much better then"... except... present me knows, it didn't happen how I want to remember."

The first panel is light pink and says "Of course, nowadays a key word search can render a story-" The second panel shows the top of the main character's head and has a blue background. It says "A picture, a song, a video." The next is yellow and displays the arm of the character, which is still elongated. It says, "some evidence, some proof." The fourth panel shows the arm again, on a yellow background, revealing bone like an x-ray. It says, "enough to make you believe it was all real." The next panel is the torso with a pink background. The character wears a skull t-shirt. It says "And what's wrong with that?" The sixth panel is blue and shows more arm. It says, "A memory is just a story I'm retelling, right?" The bottom three panels continue the color scheme and show the lower body. They say, "Let the A.I. assistant save us the trouble... except, we know that those images aren't the same as the feelings that dredge them up."

The top three frames show a broken bone. The middle three show a broken pencil. The bottom shows a curled up person, laying on their side and covering their face. The background of the entire page is dark gray. The text reads, "I mean it could have happened, but nostalgia is a fiction. More so than our well-meaning (but flawed) memory. Maybe the trouble starts when we don't treat nostalgia as a fiction, we want to believe it, the ache it presents persists in the face of us knowing better. A fake past becomes preferable to the present tense, better than the hope that things will be better tomorrow, giving us excuses to neglect the future."

All nine panels show a different scene of the protagonist walking around, seemingly searching. The entire background is a warm, light orange. The text reads, "It helps me to think of nostalgia like grief, a mix of good feelings, some guilt- a wish to preserve good- in spite of bad. Grief and nostalgia share circumstances that don't allow us to go back, to be there again, if it ever was there in the first place. We don't want to let go, but- can you blame anyone for holding tight- to a past of fiction, with a future so uncertain."

The nine panels make up a painting of the protagonist, who holds a hand to their face and walks through grass. The text reads, "But maybe that's it- the holding on... it can't be a shelter from the present or a way to hold onto the future, but we can see it- as those things that remind us who we are, where we come from, where we want to go. That's why we keep on telling these stories- cause we need the reminders to face what's coming."

Andrew Kozlowski is an artist and educator based in Jacksonville, Florida. He writes comics in an attempt to make sense of how he fits into an increasingly fragile world. Most often presented through monologue, his stories mix poetry, humor and anxiety, working to reconcile his roles as a father, husband, teacher, artist, and community member. In 2023, he opened Paper City Publishing, an imprint to self-publish his work and the work of other cartoonists, artists, writers, poets, and zinesters.

FROM Volume 75, Number 2

Issue 75.2, Spring 2026

Overdub

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