Life is Fine!

By Dakota Parks for Inweekly

Often, words alone can’t capture every feeling. That’s when artist and illustrator Adrian Sparrow turns to their sketchbook—pages filled with hot sauce tears, ghost cats and the manifestation of death. A lifelong lover of comics, Sparrow has always found comfort in combining art and storytelling. But it wasn’t until both of their parents passed away that drawing became a lifeline and an outlet to remember, connect and process grief.

A graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute with a degree in illustration, Sparrow initially wanted to pursue comics as a narrative art form.

“I have always loved comics. I really wanted to pursue them in college as a storytelling medium. I love the combination of art and storytelling together. Using writing and art to convey a narrative makes stories a little more accessible. Seeing a giant wall of text can be really difficult sometimes,” they explained.

Sparrow’s work today is intentionally loose and immediate, mostly sketchbook comics drawn in black and white, full of quiet moments and small gestures that carry enormous emotional weight.

“They’re slice-of-life journal comics. I don’t want them to be perfect. They don’t need to be,” Sparrow said. “I want them to be clean and legible, but as long as they convey the narrative and get the thought across, that’s what’s most important.”

Sparrow has now released more than 75 autobiographical comics, each one a brief snapshot of living with grief—from lugging boxes out of their childhood home to ordering tombstones, ugly crying or sitting with death in the rain.

“Making the grief comics started after my dad passed away. I started making these short little slice-of-life comics to get the feelings out of my head,” they said. “The thoughts would just stick and replay over and over again. When I drew them, they would get out of my head and onto paper, and they wouldn’t be taking up so much brain space anymore. It helped me process those feelings. My dad passed away in 2021, and then my mom passed away in 2023, so I definitely kept going after that.”

As Sparrow continued to draw, their understanding of grief and their own art started to evolve.

“I think my relationship with grief has gotten a little bit healthier, a little more self-aware. I’ll have really strong feelings one day and feel numb the next,” Sparrow said. “Cleaning out the estate after my mom passed brought up a lot of memories and emotions. The comics have helped everything feel more coherent, a little less disjointed and more part of a whole. It’s funny, it’s like a body of work, and I am a body of work too.”

The grief comic strips are minimal: Sparrow, three cats, an empty house and death. The simplicity is intentional. The clean black-and-white drawings allow readers to project themselves into the story and step into Sparrow’s shoes.

“Grief is such a universal experience, but it’s also incredibly unique. The comics are very personal, but I also want to encourage other people to make comics about their own experiences and to show that if I can simplify this, so can you,” they shared.

Sparrow’s comics connect with others who have also experienced complicated relationships with parents or the tangled emotions that come after loss.

“You don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but at the same time, you have to acknowledge how these things have affected us,” they said. “The hoarding, the PTSD—these things are part of my life whether I like it or not.”

Through drawing, Sparrow has learned to preserve both the pain and the joy.

“Once they’ve been drawn out, I can look back at them and the parts of the memory I want to remember come back more quickly. I can remember the parts I want like celebrating my dad’s birthday. I wear his class ring all the time, and mowing the lawn makes me feel closer to him because he taught me how. My mom’s craftiness inspired me to become an artist, and that comes through too.”

At its core, Sparrow’s work is about transforming loss into empathy and helping others find solace in their own grief.

“People have told me, ‘Hey, your comics really help.’ It’s not always beautiful or kind; sometimes it’s hard,” they said. “But how do you process the difficult emotions, the jagged edges, as well as the simplicity of grief, of just missing your parents when you’re sick?”

Death itself has become a recurring character in Sparrow’s comics—sometimes a haunting figure, sometimes a companion.

“I never want death to be a villain. I see death as another side of life,” Sparrow said. “Death shows up as a bit of an anxiety demon but also a conscience. I’ve always been afraid of death, especially of losing my parents when I was young. Personifying it in this way has helped me come to terms with it a little more. Maybe we don’t talk about it enough, and maybe I can help people feel a little less afraid, like death is just hanging around for the day.”

Sparrow’s work also covers mundane tasks and practical insights about navigating estates, probate and all the logistics that come with death.

“Sometimes I wish I had a comic like this when I was going through it,” they said. “There’s so little information when you’re in the shock of losing someone. You don’t know what to do. I didn’t know if tombstones were covered by life insurance or the estate—it turns out they’re paid for by the family. I just didn’t know that ahead of time. So it’s important to try and prepare others for how difficult the process really is.”

To collect this ongoing body of work, Sparrow released a zine titled “Life is Fine!” with plans for a full book in the future. Alongside their grief comics, they’ve also begun a series of cat comics as a way to honor their pets before it’s too late, inspired by the loss of their last family cat, Dusty.

“It’s also almost kind of healing for me to be able to put these things to rest. It’s not something I would wish on another person, and I would not like to do this again, but it feels cleansing to be able to clean this up and put my parents to rest, so to speak,” Sparrow said.

Adrian Sparrow

adrian-sparrow.com, @eggyartist