Today we’d like to introduce you to Mike Ahn and Seol Young Lee.
Mike and Seol Young, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Mike and I, Seol, are the creators of Out of Order, a comic book based on our relationship revolving around Mike’s mental illness. Mike was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia a little over twenty years ago, and for many years, he resisted proper treatment because of the side effects from the medication and because he often didn’t even believe he needed treatment. If you are not familiar with schizophrenia, it is a debilitating mental illness where you suffer from delusions and hallucinations. Mike thought (and still thinks) there is this group of people following him around, spying on him, and trying to kill him; he still hears voices, and in the past, he has had visual and olfactory hallucinations; he has been in and out of the psych ward.
By the time we started dating in 2003, Mike had been living with schizophrenia for around six years. We got married in 2008, and all the way up to maybe just three years ago, our relationship, and therefore our life in general, was very turbulent. Thankfully, though, Mike finally decided that he needs to take the medication more consistently because he couldn’t stand the voices anymore. When he took the medication, the voices would subside, not completely but enough so that he wouldn’t feel tormented. Consequently, his symptoms became more controlled, and he stabilized enough to get back into society and start living more of a “normal” life.
That’s when we were able to start thinking about pursuing our dreams, which was art for Mike and writing for me. Through some fortuitous events that we weren’t expecting, we were led to create Out of Order. In addition to sharing our story through it, it also served as our coming out book because even after nine years of being married at the time, we still hadn’t told my side of the family that Mike has schizophrenia.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Of course not! We continually face many struggles in our journey. First of all, Mike still has good days and bad days when it comes to his illness. One of the symptoms of schizophrenia is lack of motivation, so some days, Mike just doesn’t have the motivation to draw. Sometimes reliving the past as he draws some of the more painful scenes burns him out so much that he has to take a break for a few days. The medication makes his mind foggy, so he tends to hate how his drawings turn out and beat himself up for it. At times, Mike and I get into this negative space, where we feel discouraged and contemplate quitting. We’re actually very private people, and I suffer from social anxiety disorder myself, so sometimes we wonder whether we’re embarrassing ourselves by sharing our story so openly. We also desperately want to make it as artists and worry that we got started too late, that we’re too old, that it’s too hard to break in, etc.
But then we go to a comic book convention and meet someone who thanks us for sharing our story and giving them hope. Or we get an email from someone who read our book and tells us their own story of struggle. And if you’re a true artist at heart, whether you’re able to make a living through your art or not, you can’t stop what you’re doing because you know you won’t be truly happy if you abandon your passion. So we keep going because of our readers and because we love what we do.
Please tell us about Mike and Seol Comics.
Right now, we are focusing on completing all five issues of our comic book series, Out of Order. I think our comic book is unique because of the subject and what we’re trying to do through it. By sharing our story, we hope to spread mental illness awareness and fight the stigma that prevents so many people from getting help and living the best life they can.
We are proud of our comic books, but we are even more proud of the connections we have made through our comic books. In addition to meeting people at conventions and electronically through emails and social media, we’re starting to get opportunities to share our story through other mediums. For example, we recently had an opportunity to share our story with a group of parents with children who have schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses. We also have another event coming up where we will be leading a workshop on the topic of mental illness. These opportunities give us a sense of fulfillment that we have never felt before.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I don’t think we would have done many things differently. We are taking this as a learning experience, and we love all the mistakes we’ve made and the imperfections along the way. They have made this journey so much more interesting. We have met so many wonderful people who have guided, helped, and taught us both business and life lessons. We just hope to continue to grow and touch people’s lives. Our dream is to get picked up by a publishing company who would be willing to publish our book once it’s put into a trade, but other than that, we just want to keep working on creative projects and help combat the stigma around mental illness.
Pricing:
- Out of Order: Barefoot (issue #1) – $5
- Out of Order: Circle of Death (issue #2) – $5
- Out of Order: Implant (issue #3) – $5
- Out of Order: Distorted (issue #4, coming soon) – $5
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mikeandseolcomics.
bigcartel.com - Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeandseolcomics/
Image Credit:
Jon Nakamura
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