Politically obsessed British writer decided to turn back to comics reading to get his attention away from Donald Trump

Here's a writer at the UK Guardian who says he decided it was better to stop "doomscrolling" about all the stuff he didn't like to hear about Donald Trump, and turn to comics reading instead, which he had done in his youth:

I’d been a voracious comic book reader as a youth, growing up in the early 1990s on a diet of the Beano and Dandy, before graduating to The Adventures of Tintin and Asterix. From there, I moved on to my father’s 2000 AD collection – which, to a young teenager, held a rather illicit thrill due to its intensely violent strips. I then devoured anything I could get my hands on. Preacher, The Sandman, Watchmen, Batman – I’d read the lot.

But as an adult in my 30s, I wasn’t the devout reader I once had been. That changed in late 2024, when I finally decided to ditch doomscrolling. Spurred on by the online furores that surrounded the imminent second term of Donald Trump, I realised that I needed to preserve my mental health and make new routines before I became entirely consumed with fear and anger. And who knows more about self-care than your inner child?

Instead of reaching for my phone in the evenings, I picked up a comic instead. Reading them as an adult restored a sense of childlike wonder that transcended my anxieties. I found my quality of sleep started to improve. My dreams were more fanciful and less marked by the banal terrors of day-to-day life.

I began to wake up feeling revitalised, free of the residual negativity from the previous night’s miserable doomscrolling. Inspired by the colourful imagery and ideas I found in comic books, I was able to channel a newfound sense of creativity into my own work as a journalist. I also felt less of an urge to check in on work channels after I left the office, as this had become valuable comic book time.

Wow, isn't that amazing. He wisely took the path of absorbing himself in reading comics, rather than waste time railing against Trump, as appears to be the case. Too bad he wasted time on what I assume is the disgraced Neil Gaiman's oh-so masterful Sandman series, though. I would think the smart reader would set a better example by looking for archives of the Golden Age Sandman, Wesley Dodds, instead. And hopefully, they will eventually be reprinted in DC Finest archives. Simultaneously, the columnist suggests he's unfortunately the kind of reader obsessed with all that's dark, noticing all the USA-published series he cites are darkness-laden, and similar observations can be made about 2000AD. And while it may be impressive if he's willing to avoid obsessing about Trump for now, it's a shame if he's the kind of fan who thinks darkness solves everything. Though such leanings do make it worth wondering if the anti-Trump crowd really is that obsessed with darkness, selectively or otherwise.

Maybe this kind of news could present a good example of what better to do than obsess over what a right-winger supposedly did wrong while excusing all a left-winger did wrong. But the only problem of course, is that the propagandists writing such items have to reevaluate whether it's doing any good to be pushing darkness, and only embracing brightness with political strings attached. Only when they consider that, and why comedy can also make a good pastime, will anything improve.