Created in the first bewildering months of lockdown, Me and My Shadow captures the strange quiet of 2020 with humour, tenderness, and philosophical clarity. Jan Andreas turns the simplest companion — a shadow on the ground — into a guide through solitude, fear, and the odd beauty of being alone. The result is part memoir, part philosophy comic, part cultural collage.
Like David Abram’s Becoming Animal, this book trusts perception: the way light falls, the way a bee crosses a darkened patch of ground, the way a long shadow from a building can reveal the geometry of isolation. Like Lynda Barry and Kate Beaton, Andreas uses deceptively simple drawings to open emotional depth. And in the spirit of Alison Bechdel’s reflective graphic work, he weaves in Plato, Jung, Vera Rubin, and Peter Pan — not as citations, but as companions walking beside him.
What begins as a story of social distancing becomes a meditation on connection: how a shadow can feel flat one day and full of depth the next; how loneliness can tilt into insight; how two people standing in light or shadow can still belong to a single human story. Quiet, wry, and deeply humane, Me and My Shadow is a work of remembrance from a year when the world stopped — and we discovered the shape of our inner lives.
One of the early 5-star reviewers writes:
“I really enjoyed Me and My Shadow by Jan Andreas as a welcome and timely escape during the pandemic. The great quotes, the metaphysical and practical reflections, and the way shadows become more than they appear — born, growing, fading, carrying information. The story playfully explores how, in difficult times, there’s more that unites than divides, confirming the old saying that ‘at night all cats are grey.’ I highly recommend it!”
~ Taylor Wentges
- Read an Excerpt: Introduction
- Read an excerpt: My shadow is a stranger
- Read an Excerpt: “To confront a person with his shadow” ~ Carl Jung
- Read an Excerpt: If my shadow is flat …
Watch an interview with the artist by the 100 Mile Arts Network