Something Terrible Favorite 

Something Terrible is the story of Trippe’s childhood sexual abuse and painful struggle with its psychological aftermath. Though the comic itself is sparsely scripted and free of gory details, Trippe provides an afterword that relates the hard facts: he was raped as a child by a teenager, and for three days. The older boy, who took advantage of the trust of someone much too young, threatened Trippe’s family and used a gun as persuasion. Though he was eventually prosecuted, there’s no undoing what was done.

The most interesting aspect of the comic is how Trippe addresses the convention wisdom of “the cycle of abuse.” Terrified by cop shows and other pop cultural procedurals that perpetuate the idea of abused children becoming child abusers later in their own lives, Trippe swore an oath to end his life if he ever had sexual thoughts about children. A distinctly dark and complex topic, it seems to have caused the cartoonist decades of anxiety. What happens to a victim of molestation who is constantly (if inadvertently) told that he himself will end up causing the same pain to someone else? Told that it is inevitable. How can someone live in fear, forever, that he might become a monster?

Read More: Dean Trippe's 'Something Terrible' Tackles Childhood Trauma | http://comicsalliance.com/something-terrible-dean-trippe-review-comic-ba...