Holy Lacrimony

by Michael DeForge

The post-alien abduction trauma memoir we’ve all been waiting for

“Ah, there’s that famous lip quiver!” says Jackie’s abductor and student. Jackie has been determined to be the “saddest living person in the entire world” by a mysterious team of alien abductors. His earthly musical celebrity is nothing compared to his emotional superstar status in the eyes of these curious and peculiar shape-shifters. Jackie is forced to perform his sadness over and over again on command, so his captors can study and master this very puzzling, very human emotion. Until just like that, Jackie is returned to his old life. Trying to comprehend what has happened, he joins a support group. It’s a sea of conspiracy theorists, emotional vampires, and simpatico “real” abductees. As each person tells their story, he realizes he may never know.

Holy Lacrimony is classic DeForge–oscillating between shockingly dirty, casually funny and earnestly engaged in the socio-politics of his fictive worlds. Part abstract shape blending and part hieroglyphic storytelling, each image is a discrete and tightly designed object of beauty that never loses the forward motion of the best personal cartooning. DeForge continues to prove that he’s the single most innovative and empathetic cartoonist in the past twenty years.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Fantasy, Horror

120 pages, Hardcover

First published March 11, 2025

About the author

Michael DeForge lives in Toronto, Ontario. His comics and illustrations have been featured in Jacobin, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Believer, The Walrus and Maisonneuve Magazine. He worked as a designer on Adventure Time for six seasons. His published books include Very Casual, A Body Beneath, Ant Colony, First Year Healthy, Dressing, Big Kids, Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero and A Western World.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy Lacrimony (2025) by Michael DeForge is about a man named Jackie who is abducted by aliens--who call themselves “scholars in the field of human sadness”-- because they want to study him, as they judge him to be the saddest person in the world. Lacrimony is derived from lachrymose, or sad, tearful. And Jackie has much to cry about, to the point of despair. So it’s in a way about our “present moment,” seen both empathetically and amusingly. With characteristic weird fantasy/surreal figures we associate with DeForge. And then there's the post-abduction self-help group where some members dress as aliens.

The publisher writes, “The post-alien abduction trauma memoir we’ve all been waiting for.”

And its raunchy/funny/weird, and unique in the world of comics, as all of his work is.

[Jillian B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jackie is abducted by a group of aliens who are eager to study him. He learns that he is singularly special—he’s the saddest human on earth. He mentors an alien in the art of performing sadness, before being returned home. Alone and confused, he joins a support group for people who’ve survived alien abductions…but finds himself skeptical of his classmates’ stories.

This is a charming but not saccharine book that will be deeply relatable to anyone who’s ever been depressed. The art is quirky, and I like that the artist didn’t resort to a stereotypical depiction of aliens. His aliens are absolutely bizarre looking, like something actually from another world. This is a quick read and well worth your time!

[Drew Canole · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really pleasant short narrative by DeForge, a nice change of pace from reading his daily strip collections. This is about an alien abduction of the "saddest person on the planet". After his abduction he starts a local support group for other alleged abductees. Told with DeForge's usual unusualness.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously I'm super-excited this is out. It's been a long time since DeForge's last book!

The baroque invention of the first half is again impressive. DeForge's take on alien abduction is dark, absurd, funny, and packed with surprising twists. The 2nd half's return to earth is understandably more than a little depressing, dovetailing into that quiet and sad ending.

[3.5 stars, rounded up]

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Deforge’s best work. The longer narrative really benefits his style and lets his typically knotted plots and ideas really stretch out. Most successfully, it stages psychoanalytic transference without ever naming it. Jackie’s encounter with the aliens—who call themselves “scholars in the field of human sadness” functions as a kind of therapeutic mise-en-scène. In classical terms, transference is the unconscious redirection of old, often unresolved feelings onto a new figure—typically a therapist, someone who acts as a blank screen. That’s what the aliens are for Jackie. He performs sorrow for them, projects his need for validation onto them, and tries, futilely, to be understood through them. What at first appears to be absurd or satirical is in fact a really potent metaphor.

I’ll explain: transference isn’t just repetition, it’s a misrecognition structured through the Other’s desire. Jackie’s sadness becomes legible only through the gaze of the alien—his identity, his trauma, his emotional value are filtered through a logic that isn’t his. In teaching Kara how to cry (and feel sadness) he’s staging his own brokenness in the fantasy that it might make him real. But the aliens don’t want Jackie, they want sadness. They want something abstracted, stylized, and repeatable. He is an object, a case study, and is discarded as such. Even after returning to Earth, Jackie can’t break the loop. The support group he starts—supposedly a space for recognition and mutual aid—is just another performance hall. Everyone’s projecting, no one’s listening. The therapeutic frame has collapsed and healing isn’t taking place.

But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. In the last scene, after witnessing another group member seemingly abducted—a group member who violated his trust and who actually had not had the same abduction experience the others claimed to have—Jackie lies in bed wearing an alien mask muttering to himself the first thing the alien said to him: “Take a few moments to yourself and attempt to get your bearings.” Jackie has unconsciously begun to self-recognize and adopt the psychoanalytic model. He has integrated and is on the path to becoming whole. A hint that the structure that once imprisoned him might now offer a way through. Growth and change are possible in the face of hopelessness and sadness.

Read on a library hardcover borrowed through MA Commonwealth Catalog. Will be purchasing.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meet Jackie - the world's saddest man - if his alien abductors are to be believed. A small time musical talent, Jackie's calling card is his unending ability to be sad which a group of shape-shifting aliens find to be fascinating enough to study the human capacity for sadness, an emotion that is quite foreign to them. After Jackie presents his unique brand of depression to the aliens in a series of bizarre trials, the aliens return him back to his regular existence whereby the disoriented Jackie tries to come to terms with his abduction by joining an emotional support group for other people who profess to have been abducted by aliens themselves. A truly oddball narrative that isn't anything new for Michael DeForge, Holy Lacrimony offers an engaging and quick read that also packs a rather hefty emotional punch. It's a tough line trying to weave the strangeness and humor into a narrative laced with weighty themes, but DeForge manages in a way that is almost effortless. Jackie's melancholy should be subdued, but something about having the sobriquet "world's saddest man" can be quite amusing when done with nuance.



The artwork is as distinctively DeForge as ever - an collective jumble of squiggles - and it works perfectly. The combination of mundane and eclectic moments all look kinetically charged no matter what, adding a level of dynamism that is simply engaging. Despite its brevity, the strangeness of the story and the captivating artwork makes Holy Lacrimony a DeForge book worth revisiting a couple times over.

[Vartika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about Jackie Laurel, the saddest living person in the entire world – at least if his shapeshifting alien abductors are to be believed. Though they are 'scholars in the field of human sadness', the aliens cannot feel sadness or despair for themselves, and so they make Jackie perform his, over and over again, so they can better learn from it (and complete their PhDs).

Once Kara, Jackie's mentee, has mastered the art of aping his despair, he is unceremoniously dropped back home. Disoriented, confused, and unable to go back as much as he longs to, Jackie starts a support group for other alien abductees, only to realise that he struggles to believe their stories.

The humour in Holy Larcimony is second to none. But what I loved the most about it – more, even, than DeForge's inimitable use of colour, space and shape – is that even its most absurdly ridiculous moments are suffused with tenderness; even the most slapstick scenes are wryly political. The 'recreational sadness' of the aliens is just as much a comment on our own societal infrastructure as a commentary on psychotherapy, and the aliens' idea that sexual relations between mentors and apprentices is "standard practice ... on [our] planet's educational and artistic institutions" is only marginally less funny than the sting operation into the-saddest-man-in-the-world's curious absence from his music career. There are also a series of incredible, romantic plot twists towards the end that made me the saddest for just a second and are now making sure I feel the need to tell everyone about this book.

Thanks so much to my colleague for introducing me to DeForge and lending me her copy of Holy Larcimony – here, at last, is the one I'm willing to also spend my own money on.

[Ags · Rating 3 out of 5]

Appropriately gross (especially in the drawing style) and bizarre (very contemporary). Sad but also so bizarre that I didn't feel too sad.

This feels like it's in two parts, which sort of but not entirely came together for me. I appreciated that the first part is all about individual mood disorder and then the second part turns to being more about finding purpose in social conection - but, then, it ends at the individual level again. Hmmm. I was most entertained by reading the first part as a critique of therapy that doesn't target change but, instead, is just listening and probing for descriptives).

[Cail Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really solid DeForge. The alien body morphing is genius design, he makes me want to draw.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nobody creates weird depressed microverses like Michael DeForge does.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant! I love this so much. It's strangely relatable... Although, to be clear, I have NOT been abducted by aliens

[r. fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

SCREAM 4 MENTIONED!!! 🖤🖤🖤🖤

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vibes of a fucked up existential cartoon that you were too young to watch but spotted late at night on YTV, then totally forgot about until it popped up 15 years later on early YouTube.

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Heady stuff. A fantastic exploration of sadness from Michael DeForge. I'm usually an art snob when it comes to comics and the art in here would have turned me off before but I heard this was good so I picked it up and I'm very glad I did. What a trippy and strange dive into alien abduction and depression. The world's saddest man is abducted by aliens who are fascinated by this emotion that they don't have. The aliens are wonderfully alien and unknowable. This will stick with me.

[Jack-Henry Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite artwork from DeForge so far. A master of shapes and colors. The narrative didn’t resonate with me as strongly as some of his other work, but I still found it touching/engaging/interesting/personal. Inspirational to me, visually, thematically.

[Maya Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this art style I just wish the story was longer! I wanted more musings from Jackie! Potentially slightly more context about his past? Definitely more of his feelings about Kara & the gang. Just! More!

[Sole]

Excelente, otra vez.

[Bryan Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the art in this but why were there so many typos?

[Chris Brook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another thoroughly weird Michael DeForge book - my fifth if I'm counting correctly? - maybe his weirdest yet?

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sehr sonderbares Buch über eine Entführung durch Aliens, und wie die Person nach ihrer Rückkehr auf die Erde einer Support Group beitritt und wen sie dort trifft.

[tinaathena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like it when aliens are interpreted in a unique way. Surprisingly tender given how silly it was. I am a Deforge fan though and think the wiggly style does it for me.

[Jeroen Swinnen · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤️‍🩹

[KileyV · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope you make so many more books <3

[Lake Scherr · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded down—this book is weird and I mean it in a good way. From the drawings to the plot, Holy Lacrimoney is a really weird story about a person named Jackie who entangles with an alien species that does not know what sadness is like. Of course, Jackie, the saddest person in the world, cannot fathom what it is like to feel no depression.

Overall, the book ended too early and I there was not enough content with the aliens. Half the book is about what Jackie’s abduction is like and then the second half is about what happened afterwards. The scene where the alien talks about its father’s suicide is incredibly powerful and I wish there was more development between the aliens and Jackie, which is why this graphic novel is only getting 3 stars.

[Justine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now i gotta watch scream 4!

[Sam Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been sitting with this one for awhile because it was so all over the place with its themes. Starting off as one’s bird eye view into the the inner workings of depression and how an alien race understands its dynamics, is then catapulted into a alien abduction tell-all group/borderline cult looking to reason with their sudden exit and return from and to planet Earth.

I read this one digitally, but would love to further break it down in physical formatting, so I can better understand it.

Thank you to Drawn and Quarterly for the advanced access before this one hits shelves on March 11, 2025.

[Tim Rooney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t work for me on any level. At least it was trying something so I can’t write it off completely

[Alanna Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh wow the take on sadness that this is and the focus on mouths as places of despair really got me. Also what a great sex scene 🤩

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous, immersive, and thought provoking.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐

Picture this: I am standing at LAPL looking at the graphic novels and I pick this one up. I open to a random page, see a drawing of a skinny man with a skinny boner and think, “Heh. Gonna check this one out for my boyfriend.” And then, you know…eventually, I also read it!

Holy Lacrimony is the tale of a musician named Jackie who is abducted by aliens that wish to study the saddest living person in the entire world. Hesitant at first, Jackie forms a bond with one of the entities. After this experience, unable to reconcile what had happened, he joins a support group for abductees.

The first half of this story is excellent. I love the strange illustrations, the emotions, and the odd little twists and turns it makes. Really masterful job at worldbuilding despite never really showing the reader a tangible world. In the second half, however, I kind of felt like I was in a dramatization of those Fight Club support group scenes, but with all new characters. It didn’t hit quite as hard, and left me feeling like I might become the saddest living person in the entire world. But it did come back around a little at the end.

This story has a lot of heart, and is a beautiful exploration of empathy but also the way others playact empathy for attention.

Come find me on thestorygraph, pagebound, instagram and fable!