Sea Urchin, like a lot of Retrofit comics, is a humorous look at mental illness. The protagonist and author, Laura Knetzger, begins the story telling a friend that she likes to bite herself and scream. Later, she writes that she thinks she has a sea urchin in her brain. If she's half as disturbed in real life as she is on the page, I have to commend her for being able to draw this comic in the first place. One of the theories about Nietzsche is that he had syphilis, and that it got into his brain later in life; that's why so much of his work (besides The Antichrist) is aphoristic and unorganized.
Being mentally or neurologically ill is like being drunk. You always either exaggerate it or try to hide it. I'm neurologically ill; my left hand shakes. I haven't played the piano in six months, and my scholastic and professional life has deteriorated. I love comics like Sea Urchin because I can relate to their creators so well, only I can't draw comics because my hand shakes. Charles Schultz, the creator of Peanuts, has essential tremor, and you can see it in his work over the past 30 years or more. The reason he got away with being so shaky is that he'd already become beloved.
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