This little graphic novel thing is something I am going to take up and continue. I will post more of it when I can, but Chapter 2 is not complete, so I will have to get back to work on it.
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I promise to try and get this lighter in the future. I did not do this piece on gray paper. That’s my light source letting me down.
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In my little town in Iowa there were only two Midwestern churches, a brown brick Methodist church and a beige-brick Congregational church. Midwestern Christianity tends to be very brown or beige. So I was raised believing in God. I was taught that there was God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Three people in one. And, since Methodists, the religion of my parents and grandparents, were basically puritans, we were raised believing sex was dirty and shameful, possibly evil, and we should save up all our sexual energy for the one person in life that we would most love, as long as that person was the opposite sex and also pre-conditioned to believe that sex was evil and we should not enjoy it.
The thing is, deeply ingrained religious beliefs like that, based on faith and the words in the Bible, is almost the exact opposite that highly intelligent people who get turned on to science tend to believe. I had the misfortune to locate myself directly in the middle between these two high-powered magnets that were destined to pull me in two opposite directions at the same time. Why are such things always based on contradictions? Religion depends on faith, which Mark Twain suggests means devoutly believing what you know ain’t so. Science depends on evidence and experience, and rejects anything your heart tells you is true that conflicts with the evidence. Is there no middle ground? Of course there isn’t.
So what do I actually believe? I am a Midwesterner to my very marrow. I believe there is a God. The universe has an intelligence, a spiritual element, and is deeper and wider than my mere five senses can verify. In fact, Carl Sagan said in Cosmos that because we have intelligence and discernment, we ourselves make the universe conscious of itself. This is a profound point. The universe is alive and aware because our existence gives it those qualities. That’s the basic truth at the center of Existentialism. Existence precedes essence. A rock has to exist before its “rock-ness” becomes real. So I am an Existentialist who believes in God.
At this point many of the Christian people I know begin yelling at me. “You can’t be both a Christian and an atheist!” But I am not an atheist. I believe in God. Further, because I believe that love is the most necessary quality in the universe, I choose to be called a Christian because Jesus Christ preached forgiveness, helping the less fortunate, and everything else based on love. I also understand that the other major religions of this world are, at their core, based on love. So I call myself a Christian Existentialist (though I realize I could just as easily be a Buddhist Existentialist, or some other kind of Existentialist). I love people, even the bad ones, the ugly ones, and the ones who disagree with me (meaning practically everyone). I don’t wish to be stupid or blind. I don’t wish to be unfeeling. I think the Truth (with a capital “T”) lies between the poles.
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I have rather regularly been revising and editing old writing. One thing I have discovered is that I am capable of the most gawd-awful convoluted sentences filled with mangled metaphors and ideas that can only be followed while doing mental back-flips or managing miracles of interpretation. That last sentence is a perfect example of purple paisley prose. Paisley, in case you didn’t know this, is a printed pattern on clothing or other cloth that makes an intricate design out of the basic twisted teardrop shape borrowed from Persian art. The basic motif, the teardrop shape, is a leaf or vegetable design often referred to as the Persian pickle. I write like that. You can pick out the Persian pickles in this very paragraph. Alliterations, mangled metaphors, rhyming words, sound patterns, the occasional literary allusion, personification, bungles, jungles, and junk. “How can you actually write like that?” you ask. Easy. I think like that.
To make a point about mangled metaphors, let me visit a couple of recent scenes in novels I have been working on;
From The Bicycle Wheel Genius; page 189
Mike Murphy and Frosty Anderson sat at the kitchen table eating a batch of Orben’s pancakes, the twentieth try at pancakes, and nearly edible. Mike could eat anything with maple syrup on it… well, maybe not dog poop, but these were slightly better than dog poop.
From The Magical Miss Morgan; page 7
Blue looked at Mike and grinned. It was an impish and fully disarming grin. It made Mike do whatever Blue said, even being willing to eat a lump of dog poop if she asked him to, though she would never ask him to.
So, here’s the thing. Why is there a repetition of the dog-poop-eating metaphor? In one case it is Mike Murphy expressing in metaphorical terms his love of maple syrup. In the other, it is Mike Murphy expressing his love of Blueberry Bates’ dimpled grin. He is a somewhat unique character, but why would anybody associate love with eating dog poop? I don’t know. I just wrote the dang things.
I like to take a convoluted plot and complicate it with complex sentences and numerous running gags, with a seasoned-sauce of mangled metaphors poured on top like gravy. I will use sentences like this either to make you laugh, or give you a headache. I’m almost sure it is one of those. So if you have gotten this far in this post without a headache, then I guess it must be funny.
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Let me regale you with a tale of mice and men who’ve had too much ale and all are looking very pale… Okay, enough of that nonsense. Here’s the rest of chapter one;
You see here the end of chapter one. I am still in the process of trying to find all the pages for chapter two. I will post here what I can find, and if there is interest, I may continue this project.
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Here’s the second installment with the left-out page 7…
Okay, there you have pages 1 to 14 in two posts, badly photographed (the art is not that gray and dreary in real life, I promise). I will post the remaining 7 pages of chapter 1 before the week is out. I don’t know how much more of this I can still dig out, but I will try, and I work on this story to get it in a more publishable state.
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In the 1980’s I tried my hand at a graphic novel. It didn’t go very far. I applied to WaRP Graphics (Wendy and Richard Pini) for publications options. They weren’t prepared to take the project on. So, it has been in my portfolio in the closet for 30 plus years. Here is a sample of the beginning;
Okay, that is a sample of the silly saga… something I may post more of in the near future.
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In the 1980’s I tried my hand at a graphic novel. It didn’t go very far. I applied to WaRP Graphics (Wendy and Richard Pini) for publications options. They weren’t prepared to take the project on. So, it has been in my portfolio in the closet for 30 plus years. Here is a sample of the beginning;
Okay, that is a sample of the silly saga… something I may post more of in the near future.
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I think I posted this picture once before and told you it was inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger! That is still true. I wasn’t telling a lie, at least, I don’t believe I was. So the poem goes like this;
Apologies to Bill Watterson for stealing his cartoon for this post. I needed a more dangerous-looking Tyger than the one I had.Filed under Uncategorized
Mister R. Rabbit is a school teacher. He is not the scariest animal in the world, but he is quick and eats carrots, and for thirty-one years he started off the first week of school as the one holding the BIG pencil. He was the one that planned and carried out the lessons. He was the one with the carrot of irony in his pocket and the carrot of good humor tucked away in his desk drawer. For thirty one years he stood in front of the class just as you see him here.
But tonight, he is contemplating the end of the first week of no school. This week, this school year, Mr. Reluctant R. Rabbit has no class. He is now retired. No more F’s and no more A’s. No more students standing on desks to get a different perspective a la The Dead Poet’s Society. No more giant pencils. No more carrots of irony in the pockets.
This bit of a classroom rules poster is from 1982. The old rabbit had it on his classroom wall for most of the first five years that he taught. She didn’t know it at the time, but this girl is a colored pencil portrait of one of the quietest little mice that he ever taught. She didn’t know it was a picture of her, but many others recognized her. When he taught her son twenty two years later, the boy asked because he thought he recognized her. Mr. Rabbit lied and said it was somebody else in the picture.
Mr. R. Rabbit has stopped crying about it now. You can’t plant carrots of wisdom in your garden forever, and sooner or later the carrots of irony get chewed. But he still misses it mightily. He still wonders if he couldn’t have lasted one… more… school… year…
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