3 artists made a bilingual comic to show how complicated immigration really is.
Liddy heard a scream one night from the backyard of her home in the border town of Pharr, Texas.
She was having trouble with undocumented immigrants passing through her property. She'd been especially worried ever since she found one of her horses killed and skinned, which she took as a warning sign from a Mexican drug cartel.
When she went out to her backyard to investigate the sound, she was disoriented by what she found. But not half as much as I was.
All images by Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente/Panel Syndicate, with words by Brian K. Vaughan. Used with permission.
That's the basic setup to a cool new web comic called "Barrier."
Written by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Marcos Martin and Muntsa Vicente, "Barrier" is a digital-only comic about immigration and aliens — legal, illegal, and extraterrestrial. The self-published series is available online, with the purchaser setting their own price, and the horizontal pages are optimized to fit your screen or tablet.
But here's the interesting part: The comic is bilingual. Which means I can't understand all of it.
Aside from a few years of high school Spanish that I can't remember and some random Irish phrases that I never use, I'm ashamed to say that English is my only language. But half of "Barrier" follows a Honduran immigrant en route to the United States, and there's no translation guide.
It's annoying and confusing — but, well, that's kind of the point.
"We wanted to try something different, presenting a story with no translations, so that readers in various parts of the world would each have completely unique experiences," explained Vaughan — who, like me, only speaks English.
Vaughan's artistic collaborators, Martin and Vicente, are both from Barcelona.
Unlike Vaughan, they speak Spanish. But their Spanish (and Catalan) is different from Honduran Spanish, or Mexican Spanish, so while they were making the comic, they ran the translated dialogue past the Honduran consulate in Barcelona too, just to be safe.
But again: That was kind of the point.
"It’s vital to the story that readers experience the same feeling of being lost and confused that people face when finding themselves in a different country," said Martin. "And judging by the both positive and angry responses we’ve received, we’ve apparently succeeded."
"We wanted to find an entertaining, unconventional and, most importantly, visual way to explore a complicated issue [like immigration]," Vaughan said.
Before "Barrier," the trio worked on a similarly experimental webcomic about internet privacy called "The Private Eye," a digital-only story that was pay-what-you-want and free of any copyright locks or encryption. This time around, Vaughan says they wanted to tackle what might be the most important topic of conversation for the next five years.
"We didn’t exactly need a crystal ball to guess that it might be immigration," he said, although he admitted that none of them realized just how big of an issue it would be.
From a reader's perspective, the lack of translation in "Barrier" really does make the story that much more effective.
You can still figure out what's happening, for the most part; not every language uses words, and the artwork in the comic speaks for itself.
I might not be able to interpret the dialogue during Carlos' trek through South America and Mexico, for example. But thanks to Martin's and Vicente's incredible artwork, I can at least understand that he's feeling anxious, lost, and confused — because, after all, so am I.
"I’m always humbled and fascinated by the way that language both unites and separates us all," said Vaughan. "As a visual medium, comics can often smash through that language barrier, which was a phenomenon I always wanted to investigate more deeply."
And just to drive the point home even further, there are sequences without any words at all, but they still tell a powerful story. You can see it in the pages below, or in the upcoming third installment of the series, which ... well, let's just say it takes the idea of feeling alien to differently literal level.
A series of consecutive, silent pages portraying the characters' parallel lives.
The disorientation of not knowing what's happening brings clarity to the issue of immigration in an incredible way.
"Languages are not only about communication, but they also model the way we perceive, understand, and experience the reality and the world around us," Martin said.
The artists know some people will miss out on certain subtleties and nuances in the story because they don't speak the language. Some people will likely understand a different point of view entirely. Others might follow their instincts and block out the half of the story they can't understand, even if they could still infer the story from the images and moments.
But, come to think of it, that sounds a lot like the larger debate around immigration.
When it comes to a complex topic like immigration, sometimes it's hard to find the right words. But that's exactly why "Barrier" is worth checking out.
Stories bring us together, and when a story like this is accessible to anyone, it makes it easier for people to have important conversations about things like immigration and surveillance — regardless of their native tongue.
American portion sizes are colossal.
Tax shouldn't be a not-so-fun surprise at the end of your shopping trip. 
A trip to the doctor shouldn't break the bank.
This totally isn't weird at all. Right?
It's a choice. 
America loves extra sugar in savory foods.
Princess Odette Girl GIF by The Swan Princess 
Rose GIF 
sailor moon GIF 
river phoenix 80s GIF 
All of this will be ours one day. Yay. 
Elderly woman with white hair on phone, sharing a story about a dead person her child has never met. 
Surprised elderly man in blue shirt against a yellow background.
Elderly woman in pink shirt using a smartphone on a garden swing.
TV for waking. TV for sleep. 
Elderly man using a magnifying glass to read a piece of mail
Mom is totally humiliated after her kindergartner tells the teacher what she does for work
She was clearly mortified.
A mom is embarrassed by her child.
One of the great joys and stresses of parenting is that you never know what will come out of your child’s mouth. When you have young, inquisitive kids, they can say really inappropriate things to people without realizing they were being rude or possibly offensive. TikTok influencer Aurora McCausland (@auroramccausland), known for her DIY cleaning tips, recently told a funny story on the platform about how her son believes she makes a living. The problem was that she heard about it from her child's teacher.
Mom is embarrassed by her child
“The other day, I went and picked my five year old up from school and when I get to his classroom his teacher pulls me inside and says, ‘Hey, today he wanted to tell us about what Mommy does for work and said that Mommy makes videos in her bedroom but only when I'm [he’s] not at home,” McCausland recalled.
Given her body language while telling the story, McCausland was clearly mortified after hearing what her child said to his teacher. It makes it look like she may be posting videos to adult sites while her child is at school, which most people wouldn’t want their son’s teacher to know about.
The good news is that another teacher was there to clarify the young boy's comments by adding, “I think she makes TikTok videos.” The uncomfortable situation was a great invitation to chat with her son about what she does for a living. “So I have to have a conversation with my son about how he tells people what I do for work,” she finished her video.
The funny video went viral, earning over 1.7 million views on TikTok, and inspired many people to share the times when their children had funny ways of explaining their careers. The commenters were a great reminder to parents everywhere that if your child says something embarrassing, it's ok, just about everyone has been through it.
Moms share their most embarrassing moments
A lot of parents spoke up in the comments to show McCausland that she's not the only one to feel embarrassed in front of her child's teacher.
"My son told everyone that we were homeless (because we don’t own our home, we rent)," KBR wrote.
"I work in ortho.. my daughter told her teacher I steal people's knees bc she heard me talking to my husband about a knee replacement," Aingeal wrote.
"My son told a teacher we were living in our car over the summer. Camping. We went camping," Kera wrote.
"In kinder, my son thought Red Bull was alcohol and told his teacher I liked to have beer on the way to school," Ashley wrote.
My niece told her teacher her mom and dad work at the wh*re house. They work at the courthouse," Ellis wrote.
"My husband works as a table games dealer at a casino. Kindergartener, 'Daddy's a Dealer!' We now start every school year clearly stating he works at the casino," CMAC
"My son said we lived in a crack house…There’s a tiny chip in the wall from the doorknob," KNWerner wrote.
"My dad is a hospice chaplain and officiates a lot of funerals. My son and nephew were asked by their preschool teacher if their papa was retired or had a job. They told her his job was to kill people," Tiffyd wrote.
"My son said "my dad left me and I'm all alone" to a random person at the zoo. My husband was just at work," Shelby.
"I am now in my 70s. In my gradeschool, during the McCarthy era, I told my teacher my dad was a communist. He was an economist," Crackerbelly wrote.
"In Kindergarten, my daughter told her teacher that mommy drinks and drives all the time. Coffee. From Starbucks," Jessica wrote.
"Well I once told my kindergarden teacher a man climbs over our fence to visit my mom when her husband is not home... It was a handy man who came to fix gates when they were stuck," Annie wrote.
Ultimately, McCausland’s story is a fun reminder of how children see things through their own unique lens and, with total innocence, can say some of the funniest things. It’s also a great warning to parents everywhere: if you aren’t clear with your kids about what you do for a living, you may be setting yourself up for a very embarrassing misunderstanding. So, even if you think they know what you do ask them as see what they say, you could save yourself from a lot of embarrassment.
This article originally appeared last year and has been updated.