One! Hundred! Demons! is a semi-autobiographical genre-defying graphic novel by American cartoonist and pedagogue, Lynda Barry. Over the course of her career as a prominent cartoonist with nationally syndicated comic strips, published collections, and illustrated novels, Barry has received many national and state-wide awards for her work, including two Eisner awards and MacArthur Genius Grant.

Originally published serially in Salon magazine, the collected cartoon chapters were collected and published by Sasquatch Books in 2002, and later reprinted by Drawn and Quarterly in 2017 and 2019.

One! Hundred! Demons! takes inspiration from a 16th-century Zen painting practice dedicated to drawing one’s demons. Barry structures each chapter around a metaphorical “demon” from her life, exploring people, memories, and experiences from her adolescence that have haunted her and shaped her identity.

This study guide uses the 2019 printing of the book as published by Drawn and Quarterly.

Content Warning: The book uses offensive and ableist language. The book also alludes to a traumatic childhood sexual assault and depicts Barry encountering racism.

Plot Summary

Barry introduces the central conceit of the book—the “100 Demons” exercise—and meditates on the difference between autobiography and fiction. She organizes the book into 17 sections: Each is a distinct comic essay dedicated to a person, a concept, or a specific experience.

In “Head Lice and My Worst Boyfriend,” Barry explores the connection between a childhood visit to her mother’s homeland of the Philippines and a toxic relationship she experiences as an adult. Barry realizes that the toxic boyfriend reminds her of her mother. In “Lost Worlds,” Barry recalls the freewheeling games of kickball she played with her neighborhood friends and meditates on the nature of forgetting. “Dancing” is about Barry losing confidence in her ability to dance and experiencing body shame and self-consciousness for the first time.

In “Common Scents,” Barry imagines what the smells of other families’ houses reveal. In her childhood, she was surprised to discover that a white neighbor racially othered her family, considering the smell of their Filipino cooking unpleasant. In “Resilience,” Barry deconstructs misconceptions about childhood resilience and the tendency of adults to oversimplify the inner lives of children. She alludes to a traumatizing event from her early childhood; experiences like this one fracture identity and teach children how to repress memories. “Hate” describes run-ins with a neighborhood bully, the hypocrisy of openly hateful adults lecturing Barry to never use the word “hate,” and the validation of a kind substitute who teaches Barry about different kinds of hate. “The Aswang” recounts a legend Barry’s grandmother told her about a half-woman, half-dog vampire. Barry observes the parallels between her difficult relationship with her mother, and her mother’s difficult relationship with her own mother.

In “Magic,” Barry considers her transitional teen years and remembers ditching a beloved friend who was two years younger. Adult Barry feels guilt over the abandonment and directly addresses the friend, breaking the fourth wall. In “The Visitor,” Barry takes acid with a boy and explores Chinatown while tripping. She admits her feelings for him, but he rejects her. In “San Francisco,” a teenage Barry abandons another younger friend to chase after a group of hippies that represent freedom and coolness. Her fantasy is punctured when she discovers the hippies drugged out in a halfway house. “My First Job” further dismantles Barry’s illusions when she works for two hippies who take advantage of her and never pay her.

In “Magic Lanterns,” Barry thinks about beloved childhood objects like stuffed animals and blankets, and imagines a narrative around a lost panda she finds at the airport. “Cicadas” explores the troubling numbness Barry feels after two friends die by suicide. In “Dog,” Barry recognizes how much her traumatized and poorly behaved dog Ooola reminds her of herself. Barry tries to discipline Ooola using fear and submission, but learns to let Ooola reinvent herself with a clean slate. Barry connects her new dog-training approach to the memory of a kind teacher who allowed her to explore her art.

In “Girlness,” Barry notices a relationship between gender and class; she and her less-resourced neighbors lacked access to trappings of girlhood like pretty clothes and dolls. Through this lens, Barry considers how growing up in the Philippines during a war led to her mother’s trauma. In “The Election,” Barry becomes obsessed with a close presidential election, using the experience to examine the connection between hope and storytelling. In “Lost and Found,” Barry traces her imaginative nature, which includes inventing stories based on classified ads.

In the “Outro,” Barry teaches the reader her drawing methods and encourages the reader to try the “100 Demons” exercise.