A Year of Free Comics: Exploring Reality, Nostalgia and Time in Rory Frances I’ll Be There

In I’ll Be There, Rory Frances manages to accomplish something extraordinary, using Final Fantasy VIII to explore nothing less than the very concepts of reality, of fiction and of identity. FFVIII is an odd game, it’s story is convoluted and hermetic, but it provides an interesting twist on time travel, or parallel dimensions. Rory Frances talks about the impact of the story and it’s theme of time, nostalgia and death. A powerful passage has Frances talk about nostalgia, and how it’s related to an idyllic time in your life that has ended and can’t be replicated and how it’s hard for gay and trans people to relate to that as there is a struggle with that concept of “time where things were perfect”.  It’s a strong comic that encourages multiple reading to unlock it’s multiple layers.

You can read the first part of I’ll Be There on Zeal and you can read the second part here. You can also follow Rory Frances on Twitter and on his website