Although Epileptic comes across as ‘fantasy’ or ‘dream’ like, I feel that I’ve read few things this real.  In the piece on Guston’s paintings in McSweeney’s, Ware says, “[Guston's] painting are not what it looks like to see a human being, but what it feels like to inhabit one” (p.89).  David B.’s work elaborates on this idea.  He not only tells his story, he visually recreates how he conceives of it in his mind.  As Wolk in Reading Comics writes,

    What he’s actually doing is guiding readers who are used to reality as it can be captured by photographs into the profoundly different way he perceives the world, partly by relating the specific experiences that led him there and partly by representing everything not as his eye apprehends it but as his consciousness alters it. (p.141)

David B.’s images recreate his mentality, allow us the readers (and viewers) to “inhabit” his story, not just hear about it.

One method of this is through the creation of visual leitmotifs for characters and concepts.  One obvious example is the creature that represents Jean-Christophe’s epilepsy.  On page 77 the long, snake/lizard like creature wraps itself around Jean while he convulses, on 79 it dines with the family, representing the continuous presence of epilepsy in all of their lives.  Although  in reality, one does not see a monster sitting at the dinner table next to an epileptic, but David B.’s feels it, and conceives it with his mind.  Other general examples include Master N. drawn as a cat, and David B.’s dead grandfather as a “goony-looking bird” (p.76)

But the visual constants throughout the piece aren’t the only ways we inhabit David B.’s mind.  The feeling incited by his startling visuals guide us as well.  His battle scenes make us feel chaotic and overwhelmed, in the way that his rage over his brother’s seizures (p.20) make us feel.  On the spread between the pages 336-339, we not only watch Jean-Christophe transform though David B.’s eyes, we feel the fear of Jean’s hysteria, felt by David and his parents. 

Overall, the book is immensely powerful because I feel like he captures the distorted reality we all think in.  Consciousness isn’t always clear or linear or realistic.  It is what it is, and David B. wonderfully recreates it in Epileptic.