Dinosaur Therapy – @dinosancomics (James Stewart and K Romey)

Dinosaur Therapy by James Stewart, K. Roméy
Published by HarperCollins on August 19, 2021
Genres: Fiction, Graphic Novel
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five-stars

a comic about dinosaurs navigating the complexities of life, together
including exclusive, never-seen-before, bonus comics
a wistful, honest and highly relatable account of modern life.
dinosaur therapy is a book of cartoons for grown-ups from the very successful web comic @dinosandcomics.
in each comic, dinosaur characters grapple with questions around the meaning of life and mental health, trying to make sense of the world and cope with their own place in it.

I wish I could tell you how I stumbled upon @dinosandcomics, but that happy accident has been relegated to the mysteries of time…and the Instagram algorithm. It soon became one of my favorite parts of the IG experience and, almost daily, I would find myself sharing the day’s comic with my wife at some point in our evening. Simple, cute, relatable, incisive…they have become a daily bit of joy on the Internet.

Dinosaur Therapy is as if somebody printed those comics out, enlarged them, arranged them by theme, and put it in my favorite format: a book. Some of the comics I recognized, but many were new. It’s a great blend of familiar content with content exclusive to the book.

The books is broken into seven sections: Growing Up; Depression; Happiness; Relationships; Stress, Overthinking and Anxiety; Work; and Success and Failure. Each section has about 18-30 comics on that theme and almost all of them are relatable. I think the Relationships comics are my favorite. Dinosaur Therapy captures friendship love in a pure and wholesome fashion that makes me want to be a better person.

Dinosaur Therapy is cathartic. It’s evidence that everyone (even dinosaurs) are going through some of the same struggles you are. It’s not a substitute for a therapy, but it’s definitely therapeutic. Therapists, I encourage you to read this book and reference this comic with your patients. No, seriously. Stewart balances the sarcastic and sardonic with the sweet and serious in a way that captures life in all its nuance.

It was interesting to see how personal these comics have been to the author, James Stewart. Stewart writes that he was diagnosed with ADHD in 2019. After struggling with a 9-to-5 grind, he found webcomic writing to be a quick, creative outlet that allowed him to capture his experience, thoughts, and humor in a medium that aligned with his ADHD. He writes “I could write fine—I just had to find the right medium to quickly and clearly capture my thoughts.” He partnered with K Romey for the illustrations and, by the end of 2020, was a full-time webcomic writer.

@dinosandcomics debuted in September 2020. It took less than a year for them to have a published book—a bestseller, at that—and over two million Instagram followers. You may wonder, why purchase a book when you can get much of the same (if not the exact same) content for free? Well, books are tangible. They’re permanent. And also if you enjoy something a creator makes, purchasing something from them is a great way of expressing that. Dinosaur Therapy has given me hours of joy and social connection as I share the comic with friends. It was well worth the cost.

five-stars