Things without arms and without legs, a comic about creatures who are kind, started in 2012 as part of a fundraising challenge for Clarion Writers Workshop. At the time, Liz saw herself as writer, but not as an artist. When she started this comic her visa meant that she wasn’t allowed to work, so a lot of the traditional paths for cartoonists where you have booths at conventions were closed off to her. It was about five years before she got her green card! It is very nice to be able to work again.
Through the wilderness of not being allowed to work, the various vicissitudes of life, the Things have been a consistent source of joy and connection.
Liz is a multifaceted human being, more of a verb than a noun. You can see more of her work and her Ordinary Madness Manifesto at lizargall.com.
Bio
Liz Argall is a cartoonist, mental health advocate, technical writer and co-founder of Ngombor Community Development Alliance in Uganda. Her work has appeared in multiple outlets, including Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Meanjin, and Antipodes; A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature. She’s contributed to multiple roleplaying games, including Geist 2nd Edition and 13th Age and her webcomic —Thingswithout.com— regularly appears online, where it has created several ripples of joy.
Labels are weird things, they can be expansive or reductive, but some of her labels are ADHD, Autism, Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (all diagnosed late in life) and Psychosis Vulnerability Syndrome (she had three psychotic episodes between 2018 and 2020, thanks to trauma and the wrong medication). Liz lives in Seattle, but her heart misses the big silly birds of Australia.
