find the illustrated version here

How To Talk To White People

comic by Aries Gacutan

The comic is read in a continuous scroll. The drawing style is bold and cartoonish, yet characters are pictured with minimalistic features. The work is coloured in a limited palette which predominately consists of blues, oranges, reds and pinks.

Page 1. Aries, a person with a light orange complexion, rounded glasses, and short but wispy auburn hair is walking home in the rain. A car passes them by, with three mocking figures inside, depicted as distant red figures with gaping mouths. The narration reads,­ “walking home in the rain I am harassed from the open window of a speeding Jeep.” There are three panels, each with close-ups of the same hairstyle. The narration reads, “three white guys with identical haircuts”.

Page 2. The narration continues from page one, reading, “shout at me to”—from off the page, the three men in the car shout, “go back to where you came from!” The speech bubble is large, spiky and red-orange. Aries walks by, visibly irritated. Thought bubbles emerge from their direction: “Derivative!” and “Pedestrian!” they read.

Page 3. Narration reads, “These boys are a tangle of mirrors, reflecting each others’ cavernous maws in the shine of their keys.” In the top-right there is a looming close-up of a dark-blue person with a large, off-putting red-orange smile. On the left is a series of similar smiles, getting bigger as they spread towards the end of the page. On the bottom-right is a close-up of a house key, with the smiles on the left reflected in its surface.

Page 4. A single panel sits at the top of the page. Aries makes an annoyed, baffled face and says to themself, “and anyway, can they not see that I am on my way right now?” Under the panel, the narration says, “they want to know what are you? It is absurd.” The rest of the page is taken up by a pink silhouette of Aries, laced with blue, yellow and red lines. The narration reads, “brown body – citizen of the ‘somewhere else’ across the sea, expat of yet another palace slash airport slash dumping ground. And they, black chrome, untouchable, power line veins and refinery hearts, are everywhere and everywhere and everywhere.”

Page 5. In the top-left there is a large pink lens flare. Beneath this, someone reaches up with a dramatically foreshortened hand, blocking out the light. In the top-right there is a panel of three faceless people collared and chained to each other. The narration reads, “ah, the interrogation! That tried-and-true strategy of the police state, shining jewel that winks in the light at the apex of the baton swing.”

Page 6. Aries is sitting at a table. An arm, much larger than Aries, is holding a flashlight that is blaring red-pink light directly at them. Aries blocks out the light with one arm. The narration reads, “I am sitting at the breakfast table and my partner’s father shines a light in my eyes.” The narration continues, “he wants to know about” and is finished by the father saying “the Marcos regime.” The narration says, “I tell him:” and Aries responds with smaller text, “I didn’t do it.”

Page 7. An upended blue cereal bowl is at the top-right of the screen. The milk has spilled out to fill the entire page and is stylised pink. Bright red shards of glass are scattered through the milk. There is a reflection of a window in the bottom-right. The narration starts at the bowl and winds around the glass shards. It reads, “(meanwhile, he is very interested in politics.) He throws my cereal bowl to the floor and the shatter scares the kookaburras away from the windows. ‘I’ll be out of your hair soon, I just wanted to know, I just have some questions.” At the bottom of the page, narration reads, “I am welcome to leave at any time.”

Page 8. Brightly coloured blue, pink, red and yellow clouds span the top of the page. Three panels show two stick figures talking at a table. A third blue figure sits with them, then gets up and leaves the conversation. The narration reads, “Once, my friend’s grandfather said something disgustingly racist and in response my friend got up and walked away.”

Page 9. The two stick figures are still seated at the table. One of them says, “look what you’ve done! You’ve upset her now.” Underneath, the narration reads, “…their aunt said later.” Through the front windscreen of a car, Aries can be seen sitting in the passenger seat as the same blue figure drives them around. The narration reads, “They told this story to me while driving around, stuck at a traffic light in the middle of nowhere.” Two panels follow of Aries, bold against a drab, dark background. They turn their face up, looking to the sky. The narration reads, “I was struck.”

Page 10. The page is broken into twelve panels. When read together, they form the picture of an empty red road, with a pale-yellow sky and heavy blue clouds hanging overhead. The narration reads, “by how the sky stretched all the way around the earth, stained violet by the early winter, and how the roads yawned long and empty.”

Page 11. The scene from Page 10 now encompasses the entire page. Aries’ friend’s car is small at the bottom of the page, waiting at the traffic light. The sky is pale, and a vast blue cloud takes up most of the sky, with wisps of smaller clouds across its surface. The narration is written across the sky and clouds, and reads, “maybe my friend thought that this silence was a triumph too. Maybe later, my friend would recount, with as much enthusiasm or more, the way the roads waited mulishly for cars and the sky remained empty of birdsong.”