Tuna Dunn's Short Comics About Love and Heartbreak

Archive feature, first published 2017-05-19.

A few panels can be enough for a relationship to change direction. Thai illustrator Tuna Dunn, whose full name is Tunlaya Dunnvatanachit, builds short stories around romance, closeness and heartbreak. The account published with this May 2017 feature said she had begun sharing the comics about three years earlier. It reported roughly 58,000 followers on her Facebook page, with a largely Thai audience and a growing international readership for stories written in English. Those figures describe that early period. The thirty comics collected here preserve a selection of the work as it was presented then, rather than a current account of her audience.

The line that changes the conversation

The brief format puts weight on what a character chooses to say and when the other person responds. A final line can change the meaning of the opening, turning a seemingly ordinary exchange into a disappointment or a small revelation. That gives the strip a reason to be read twice. On the return, an expression that first seemed incidental can become the point around which the whole scene turns.

A longer history between the panels

The pauses matter as well. Leaving part of a conversation unstated allows the reader to sense a history without receiving a complete biography of the couple. The ending can close the comic while leaving the relationship unresolved. That is a useful scale for stories about attachment: a few visible moments suggest more time than the page could possibly contain, and the emotional turn continues after the last panel.

Links from the 2017 feature: Tuna Dunn · Facebook page