In times of crises, people often turn to the arts to express the human experience of the disaster and to make sense of the extraordinary situation in which they have found themselves. The Black Plague inspired the genre of Danse Macabre paintings. A Journal of A Plague Year was written by Daniel Defoe based on his uncle’s journals from an actual plague outbreak in London. When the pandemic began, we were faced with new terms such as “flatten the curve”, “hydroxychloroquine”, and “N95” that made their way into everyday conversation. Our friends and neighbors changed their behaviors from working at home to hoarding toilet paper to dealing with mass unemployment. In an attempt to make sense of our new lives under the COVID-19 plague, I began drawing a series of comics in the spirit of Edward Gorey. Known for his dark drawings, Gorey’s abecedarian Gashleycrumb Tinies contains 26 panels humorously showed the dangers of the world in how it could kill children. My COVIDcrumb Tinies similarly showed the dark side of our new pandemic reality: 26 single panel, color comics showing the challenges and new dangers we face. Each panel combines artwork with formulaic text. Unlike Gorey, I have also paid attention to diversity and inclusiveness in the figures and names used in this work.





