Under the Water

A comic about baptism, the rising seas, and the end of the world. Drawn Spring 2017 for Guernica Magazine

*A note from Madeleine in 2022

Some of my thoughts about how to make art about the climate crisis have shifted in the five years since I wrote this piece. I hope there’s still good in it, and I think it’s important to preserve the ways we’ve thought about things over time (If you’d like to read some work that better reflects my thinking about climate now, check out this op-ed I wrote for the LA Times in 2022).

Two points that I’d like to recommend as belated additions to this essay:

• The climate crisis isn’t an abstract, far-away thing: It’s impacting people today.

• The climate crisis isn’t inevitable. Climate solutions exist, they’re affordable, and they’re genuinely wonderful—they just require political will. (Suggested reading: Wakanda Doesn’t Have Suburbs by Kendra Pierre-Louis from All We Can Save. It’s one of my favorite essays in the book.)