Issue 3 March 2014 “Unspeakable Tragedy”
(Same “deadly virtue” theme as Issue 1 and Issue 2 (part 3
of a 3-story arc based on the deadly virtue Chastity/vice Lust))
Disclaimer, credits: sons of
god issue 3 march 2014 story and art
patre et filio all images,
characters, and the entire English language are copyright Bathtub Comics (on
facebook: sons of god comic book) any
resemblance between characters or deities living or dead is completely in the
eye of the beholder… don’t you think?
Front Cover: The
Cosmic Salmon! One of my favorite characters is back! (And he’s heading our
way…)
The symbols are mostly from Alchemy, marking the
creator-fishy’s return to our galaxy, his old spawning ground (Sun, Jupiter,
Saturn, Mars, male, female, water, etc) and just for fun, I hid Jojo and John
in alchemical-type letters. The latin sayings are “imaginatio vincit vera,”:
imagination conquers reality (instead of “Vera vincit imaginatio,”); and “Ex
somnium ut animadverto” or “from
dreaming to reality”.
Logo: The new letter on the title logo is alpha (from “s”).
so it’s alpha next to omega now.
Page 1 Back to
our good old favorite stand-by turn of
the century Newspaper, the Chicago Daily Tribune: there’s just something
unsettling about it: like every story they write has eldritch roots… here the
newspaper calls out more attention-grabbing headlines, at the expense of the
innocent (and so do we!) with the issue’s title “Unspeakable Tragedy!”.
We see Dany is crossing back across his old tracks past the
alley (which now has a police-line). Authentic Chicago PD car in background,
(number 666 of course…). Dany is carrying the exceedingly rare 1611 King James
Bible Stan gave him in Issue 2, but now we see the back cover. Not
surprisingly, we see that the old Bible printers also put “blurbs” on the backs
of their books: “1611’s runaway best seller” (because Bibles were the biggest
sellers in the early days of printing). And “Thou shalt… steal this book!” Using
Abby Hoffman’s famous exhortation (Steal this book) to make light of the 8th
(or some say 7th) commandment “Thou shalt not steal”.
Also in Issue 2 Stan gave Dany a candle and told him to read
the bible at night, if he wanted more crazy nightmares.
Story and art patre et fīliō. Still playing around with latin
declensions, trying to find the best case (“of the father and son? By the
father and son?”) that still sound like the good old latin mass (with fond
memories of those hour and a half sweltering rituals in catholic churches
growing up…)
Also I mock copyright statements: so if I claim something,
it belongs to me? Mine?! Well then…
“All images, characters, and the entire English language are
copyright Bathtub Comics”
Back to monthly disclaimers: “any resemblance between
characters or deities living or dead is completely in the eye of the beholder…
don’t you think?” so, if I recite that stupid little phrase before or after a
movie or book, I’m off the hook for any thing I say or do or write… wooHOO!!!
Page 2 this is the first of several times we will
see these people’s 3 different vantage points: watching the news from inside a
bar, from inside an insane asylum (cuckoo’s nest) or from the Gods’ luxury apt
in the sky.
Panel 1 “Joe’s Bar”: of course. So the bottled beer
menu is made of real (but toney) beers available in Chicago bars (Emmet’s
victory pale, where lizards dare, 5 rabbit 5 lizard, Gandy Dancer Honey (mead),
Goose Island Fleur, Daisy Cutter Pale, Half Acre Over Ale, Flying Pig Imperial
IPA, Lucky Monk’s Fallen Angel beer…) but in the background, the beer taps are
fanciful (Miller After Life, Bud Whalen after an old friend of mine who does
not deserve any further mention, “666 beer”, etc. Not sure why JOjo said “Moole
Beer”…) and on the wall we used real liqueur bottles and wine bottles, but
couldn’t resist putting in all hell-related puns and word games (give em hell,
bat hell, hell on wheels, holy water, hell-o, hell’s bells, living hell, hell 2
pay, hell on earth, from hell, hell wid dat (?), what the hell, raise hell, go
to hell, aw hell, see you, in hell, all hell, broke loose, come hell, high
water, and “Woman Scorned”. The bartender’s rag, of course, is raggedy andy.
The TV shows ongoing coverage of deep, scarring, personal tragedy: just the
ticket for big ratings!
Page 2 Panel 2
yes! Duvel Beer commercial rocks! https://youtu.be/svzEjDBQbC0
my favorite beer commercial EVER (where
the Devil himself is trying to get him some beer). So we switched it to Devel of course. This room is of course
the famous communal TV lounge in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. We’ll see
it again as a recurring commentary on the insanity and inequity of society.
Page 2 Panel 3 4 mysterious silhouetted strangers, drinking
some kind of scotch and water from a very fancy apartment… hmm… of course, the
networks are finding ways to use violence to sell ads (for Cialis: sex and
violence are the right and left hand of the devil…) also, the top tv is our old
(but still working 30 yrs later) Motorola, the second is my memory of our old
black and whites, and the bottom is our old Samsung, here changed to Samael.
Page 3
went to some trouble to keep the Chicago TV stations more or less accurate. We
used the Three TV’s to show 3 ongoing viewpoints. As we’ve seen earlier in
issue 1 and 2, Carl Bobson is actually the reverend Bob Carlson, from Bangor
(see references from Bangor Daily News Stories). We get a little more of the
story of how he was mostly eaten by the leech-monster nuns, after his heart was
cut out for a weird ritual to bring the Leviathan’s millions of babies to life
(to overrun the world and bring pre-creation level chaos). In panel3 we see
Reverend Bob’s crucifix, clearly the same one Dany was wearing, (laced with LSD
by Bobson’s evil church, for crazy nightmares every night).
In panel 4
we hear more about the infamous “S.C.U.M.” : the Sisters for Cutting Up
Molesters, a secretive fringe religious vigilante group formed by Sister Mary
Todesengel, D.C., K.S.J. D.C. Knights
of St. John (Daughters of Chastity and the Knights of St. John) daughters of
Job and the knights of saint john. From our notes: “They are dedicated to
tracking and hunting down child sex abusers who have hidden from the registered
sex offenders data banks; they are rumored to be under investigation over
several missing sex offenders in the greater Chicagoland area. S.C.U.M. members
are known to use LSD and other hallucinogens in their bizarre sacred rituals
which last all night, and are rumored to involve buckets of blood, drum and
bass, and horrifying dance sequences.”
“todesengel, blutsauger, meerunge heuer: Death
angel, blood sucker, sea monster”
Panel 5
is the actual Registered Sex Offender map for this area of Chicago (not hard
for the Nuns to use to find Bobson).
Panel 6,
if this doesn’t sum up our book for you…: just some nuns partying with buckets
of blood at a laser lightshow. That is all.
Panel 7: ever
wonder where all the bird’s eye views come from in comic books? Who the heck is
there filming these intimate and unpredictable moments? Look on the screen, and
you’ll see the google glass video icon and the time stamp “1:01”: these scenes were
filmed by, who else, Stan himself with his cool Google Glasses (nice how he
risks the boy’s life to take the time to document his cool rescue… for his own
gain and his own obscure purposes…) notice how the time signature going from
1:01, to 1:30, up to 3:11. I believe these numbers were all biblical
references, but I can’t recall which (eg. The first 1:01 is from Genesis In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth., the last 3:11 is from Matthew
3:11New International Version (NIV)
11 “I baptize you with water for repentance. But
after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy
to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”)
Again, Chicagolanders call it “Michigan Ave Bridge”, not the
“DuSable Bridge”
Panel 8 again
with the S.C.U.M.: Sisters for cutting up molesters. This is a take-off on
Valerie Solanas’ SCUM (understood to mean Society
for Cutting Up Men).
Panel 9 this section is all based on the sad story of
“Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker” 1
a young man named Caleb Lawrence McGillvary. Sure as you’re born,
as soon as this hatchet thing happened back in feb 2013, everybody on Facebook
loved it, like tit was the coolest thing they ever saw: Smash, Smash
SSSSmaasssshhh!” and sure as you’re born, I said right off the bat “There’s
something dreadfully wrong with this media blitz, with this whole story, and
obviously with this young guy.” Just look at his eyes. This was where I
officially hung-up on “the media”, when it first became clear they were all just
out to get eyes, clicks, ads, etc. and not just the big TV and newspaper and
magazines: all media was pushing their own agenda (maybe NPR PBS, etc a little
less so…).
Page 4 Panel 1
Homeless Hero: Kai called himself “Home-free”
p.s. john 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have
eternal life.
Panel 2 live-tape-delay shot from the cloudgate (mandatory Chicago
location, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris) This is a reprise of the “If you
repeat something over and over again…” which is a running theme of the book… I
had this little argument I had running in my head for a while: a self-fulfilling
argument about the new bullying tactics of baldly repeating something, loudly,
authoritatively, in public, over and over, till it sounds real to people (and
it’s corollary for the rest of us…) stan likes paradoxes and is of course,
tricky by nature…
Panel 3 this
dialogue is based directly on Caleb’s famously exploited viral video, of his
interview after the hatchet-wielding incident2, 3 . in Caleb/Kai’s
video from the scene, you can see he is wearing a read sweatshirt with “Fox
racing Inc. sports technology” so stan’s red sweatshirt is based on this, but
changed to a Wolf logo (“Wolf Ram and Me” a take-off on Wolf, Ram and Ewe” from
Joss Whedon’s “Angel”). Caleb’s sad little Canadian accent still comes through
with his surfer lingo.
Panel 4
Continuing dialogue based on Caleb’s original viral videos. But here Stan’s
“straight outta H-town”: ie Hell.
He’s so poor, he can’t afford all the letters in his name: and he’d like to buy
the other vowel someday, Pat. Obviously the missing letter is another “A”,
another early clue for readers.
Panel 5 More
bad messages for kids listening at home “See kids? It pays to pick up a
hitchhiker…” more pure Stan logic “Of course not: the Chicago River runs
backwards!” It actually DOES run backwards, a marvel of modern engineering
accomplished (see issue 6 for more info) but this is still a non-sequitor…)
Panel 6 yes,
most people assume nuns are all Sisters of Mercy or Sisters of Charity. But
here, of course, they are Sisters of Chastity. This introduces the running
theme of one of the 7 Deadly Virtues
for each issue (approximately). This also speaks to what seems to some as an
unhealthy denial of basic human feelings/emotions/needs/pleasures. It used to
be said a girl was “saving herself for marriage” ie not having sex till on her
honeymoon, and this makes the “Saving themselves for Jesus” metaphor all the
more icky. (just like all the lamb/bride bible imagery: eeewwww…)
Panel 7
Around this time, it was very popular to say God and Religion were somehow
embedded in our DNA. That religion has a pleasure-sensor reaction in our
brains, etc. meanwhile it always seemed to me that if there’s some omnipotent
Creator, after bringing forth vast immense ecosystems and galaxies, God would
not give a shit about what we did or didn’t do. He’d be long gone, moving on
elsewhere, doing his creatorly thing all over the place, all day every day.
He’d be a cold, all-powerful force of all forces, not some medieval
white-bearded emotional head-of-the-household.4
Panel 8 so
stan is messing with this guy’s whole value system, belief hierarchy, etc (and
all the viewers as well, sewing doubt and uncertainty): “So God is a fish?” to
which stan replies “God is NOT a fish?” this is the punchline to the old joke
about the pilgrim arduously crawling up MT Everest, to find the Tibetan master
at the top. And he asks the master “what is the meaning of life?” “Life is a
tree…” “Master, Life is a tree?” and the monk, mystified, replies “Life is NOT a tree?”
I wanted to keep going on the
many bizarre gyrations people go through to tell everyone else how God acts,
how God is, what He wants, what he believes, etc by interpreting the tea-leaves
of vague religious hearsay, oral tradition, religiosity, etc… and much of it
based on a strange ancient novel called the Bible. They take a few vague
generalities or truisms (“Well of course, everyone should behave in a Christian
manner, even to the poor, or the third world people…”) and try to retrofit or
extrapolate (actually to “backfit”)
current society norms by peering through a solar-eclipse cardboard viewer at
the concept of God from old oral and written tradition: like us trying to
interpret a 4 D tesseract passing through our 3 dimensional world. We can maybe
see a vague reflection (or projection) of the 4D entity as it passes through
us, but it’s all just tomographs; none of us can interpret the dots and dashes
that flood past. Basically, Stan is still just messin’ with us, trying to get
everyone to listen to the big Hero’s message (who doesn’t want to be the Hero?)
Panel 9 SO
here’s Stan’s message, over the next pages: the image is how silly we all are,
fighting for our little piece of dirt: square vs triangle vs circle; primal
color vs primal color; ; ancient people (cavemen) with clubs, vs meso American
people (kokopelli with his flute) vs modern people with their atom bombs… but
their all on the same twister board.
Page 5 Panel 1
Global Warming is apparently generally agreed to be called Climate Change now.
Here the thermometer (a deaths head) represents the third and second world
today, with more heating yet to come5 . That’s the famous news photo of a child crouched,
eating crumbs off the ground
Panel 2 The
ongoing war in the middle east. (And yes, I know the black and white tv is now
showing color: it’s a miracle!)
Panel 3 Stan’s manifesto continues: how we hold all the cards and INSIST on much smaller weaker countries following all our rules (all stacked to give us every tactical advantage, with our superior force, military, resources, but now also our superior “outrage” and “righteous anger” when we are sold/persuaded that our country/soldiers/nation has been slighted/attacked/challenged by some foreign foe (all trumped up by the media). And yet… if we turn an objective eye on some of the terrible things America has done/ is doing, (like Abu Ghraib here, or drone bombings, etc.)what mental/moral gymnastics do we have to perform to believe these things are alright or justified?
Panel 3 Stan’s manifesto continues: how we hold all the cards and INSIST on much smaller weaker countries following all our rules (all stacked to give us every tactical advantage, with our superior force, military, resources, but now also our superior “outrage” and “righteous anger” when we are sold/persuaded that our country/soldiers/nation has been slighted/attacked/challenged by some foreign foe (all trumped up by the media). And yet… if we turn an objective eye on some of the terrible things America has done/ is doing, (like Abu Ghraib here, or drone bombings, etc.)what mental/moral gymnastics do we have to perform to believe these things are alright or justified?
Panel 4
This is from my notes for the TV sequence: “War in Afghanistan, and now Syria
is at the flashpoint, Incomprehensible escalating use of drones to destroy
people and sites in the Middle East, many of them innocent men, women and
children… US continues record shattering prosecution of spies, leakers;
prosecuting reporters for refusing to reveal sources…”
Panel 5
This is Chelsea Manning (back when she was Bradley Manning) deploying drones as
if playing video games. (I really like ctr/alt/delete as the command to
annihilate Syria and Afghanistan…) we’ll have to ask jojo about the tiny words
on Manning’s uniform: “pcowh? andnoja?”. That’s our old dell keyboard
Panel 6 Heartbreaking photo of a mother and her dead baby. Just nightmares…
Panel 7 And in
contrast to the carnival of madness, Stan bows out chirping “Well, Goodnight,
everybody!”
This is a joke from “A Mighty Wind” where the boys are
trying to stretch and fill when a performer is missing, with a bloody story of
civil war… till the other performer suddenly appears and they scamper
off-stage: “We have a song we'd Like to do called "The Skeletons of
Quinto." We don't often do encores, and this is why. It has to do with a
time that I often think about...when this time of year rolls around. A time of
conflict and bloodshed. The Spanish Civil War. But our group historian, Mr.
Mark Shubb, knows more about that than I do.
“Thank you very much, Alan. In the Late 1930s of the Last
century, Spain was wracked by civil war.
In the Late summer, early fall of 1938...so the story goes
behind this particular song...in the green hills just outside the city of Barc---Good
night, everybody! -Good night. Thank you very much.”
Panel 8 but then
Stan always has a little more to say… so as an afterthought he condenses his
real message down to a few words (sound bites)
Panel 9 we
decided to try to make sound effects just the way we wanted. Stan puts on his
sunglasses and makes his getaway. My brother used the old Jim Morrison getaway
line once or twice when he was in a jam. More “subtle” clues here about Stan’s
real identity: Of course, these are all names and pseudonyms for Lucifer : “the
morning star, the shining one, the bringer of light”
Page 6 Panel 1
Stan disappears in a blinding supernova of light…
Panel 2 but we
see this is really just from the blinding strobe light/ search lights from the
armada of news helicopters sining on the polished steel surface of the
CloudGate.
Panel 3 “Our top
story…” Stan
Panel 4 “In other
news, war, death, ongoing pre-deluvian/pre-Noah’s Arc behavior of a doomed
world. Good night, Everyone!”
Panel 5 This is
another madhouse version of a sad story: The Death of dental hygienist Miriam
Carey. She was a young mother with postpartum depression and probably more
psychiatric illnesses, who for some reason wound up driving herself and her
baby into restricted areas around the whitehouse, then being chased and driving
recklessly to escape, until she was shot 5 times from behind and killed by
officers (the baby was somehow miraculously missed). While this awful story got very little (and
mostly one-sided) coverage in the news, ridiculous, trivial stories continued
to get enormous, coast to coast coverage… if a celebrity was involved (like
Charlie Sheen), if it would sell papers or get viewers or clicks… this is Miley Cyrus, crawling out of Miriam
Carey’s actual car/license plate.
Page 7 Famous artists Test: now this page came at a
spot where I thought it would be funny (or unsettling) to break the atmosphere,
with a creepy advertisement, like the famous ticking-clock break in “10 Little
Indians”. It came at a page turn (odd numbered page) where you get a surprise
or a scene change when you turn the page: essentially a whole separate story
here. So I originally asked Kablam to put a KaBlam Ad exactly on page 7 (also,
it gives you a break in the cost per issue if you use their ad). But when the
book came back from the printers, they had put their ad someplace else, and
completely undid the separation between the two parts of the story (Stan’s
meeting with the press, and Dany’s story getting the 1611 Bible back to his
home). It ruined the effect, so I stopped trying to put ads in, and instead
made up my own ad a few months later (during a break in making issue 5). I
doubt that more than a handful of the original copies with the Kablam ad exist
anymore (rare! Big bucks! Collectors!)... So I went for one of the old ads I
used to always see in comics and kids magazines: the artists test. And yes, I
automatically went to even more broad social satire here: I guess I was just in
that place still, with Stan’s manifesto… This is of course, the “Famous
Artist’s Test” from the Famous Artists School in Connecticut (founded by Norman
Rockwell and Albert Dorne), and I always wanted to take this test (or the
matchbook cover tests like “Draw Winky the Deer!” or draw the pirate, etc. but
I never even started one or tried to take one… the format here is a pretty
exact parody of the test, except I couldn’t really make out the words from old
magazines and comics very well… “do the same thing in the box provided with the
slim htr. objects…” sorry, I was in that place… I made myself laugh out loud
with these bad transliterations) Now in retrospect, I can probably guess the
words I couldn’t read, but I like the garbled instructions better. Of course I
had to make this page a test of biblical torture and suffering, based on the
plagues of Egypt6 from Exodus (and their varying modern and ancient
interpretations): they are all trials faced by poor, innocent African
populations back in 2014.
From left, US bombers such as in the Vietnam war with the
bombers and the napalm and the flamethrowers: this is the 7th
plague: the storm of fire (with Munch’s the scream); below this, that is of
course the then-current African plague of Ebola (the words are from REM’s
“E-bow the Letter” : “aluminum, tastes like fear…”) with more madhouse hallucinations:
Koolaid Man crashing the scene again, (I imagined a young artist trying to copy
the ebola drawing but adding their own cartoon touches). Moving to the right, the
first plague (#1) is “Water into Blood”. Ebola causes hemorrhagic (bleeding)
fevers. “Tiny blood vessels burst everywhere and you begin slowly to bleed to
death. The whites of your eyes turn red, your vomit and diarrhoea are now
charged with blood and large blood blisters develop under your skin. You are
now at the peak of infectiousness as Ebola virus particles, ready to find their
next victim, pour out of your body along with your blood.”7
The second biblical plague is “Plague of Frogs”; Here the artist must choose
between Kermit and Keroppi (the irresistibly cute frog from Sanrio, the house
that brought us the irresistibly cute Hello Kittay and countless other
irresistibly cute farking animals…). The next plague is the third plague, lice,
gnats, and fleas. The fourth plague is the plague of flies (with the upside
down fries logo). Next is the fifth plague : diseased livestock. Fruit bats are
the natural hosts of ebola virus, and African nations banned the eating of bat
meat to try to stop the outbreak. The sixth plague is the plague of boils;
children and adults get painful, bloody blisters under their skin (nice going,
all-loving Jehovah!) Plague number 8 was the Plague of locusts (and more scream-guy).
Ninth Plague is the Plague of Darkness: all of “The Dark Continent” suffers
from this plague, forced upon them by the wealthy white continents, right up to
this very day, this very second… “Oh, it’s an ungovernable, uncivilized,
unorganized black hole…” (Nothing to do with black skin color, though…) and the
tenth plague? The plague of firstborns…
(insert picture here of artists test Chicago and issue 3)
The bottom half of the page is of course, the omnipresent
advertising for “Guardians of the Galaxy”. Oh my God, from February 2014 (first
trailers shown on tv, over and over) straight through july 21st, it
was all guardians all the time. It was a nice movie, but why did we need
constant gotg transfusions for month after month? The byline is teasing the
apocalyptic showdown that’s yet to come in October 2014 (we’ll learn more about
the Jehovah’s Witnesses predicted End of Days on October 2, 2014 in upcoming
issues: stay tuned!) but this was just a hidden subliminal message: we tried to
hide these Armageddon references in graffiti, on walls, in messages (The end is
waaaay near; only 6 months to go; only 5 months to go; etc) So theyah. Yessah.
(p.s. we asked people to send in drawings, but we never got one…)
Page 8 panel 1
now the turning page and the ad make more sense: we’ve shifted back to the
beginning of the story: back to the first scene we see in issue 1: the old
slaughter house stockyards in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. We keep
coming back to this spot, and if you look closely, you can notice some
important clues in the footprints. In issue 1, there was only one set of adult
footprints, going from Dany’s house along the tracks into town. Now we see a
set of child’s footprints had followed the adult footsteps into town, and now
came back home from town (and down to an abandoned building below the tracks).
Hmmmm… this will all become more clear at the end of issue 6… I promise…) And
how could there still be cows here, if the stockyards closed back in the 70’s?
In panel 2, we
see Dany trudging back through the snow
with the rare and priceless (and extremely lethal) Bible Stan gave him. The
green sign is “S of G”. (in Sand H Greenstamps fashion). (I like the “crunch
crunch crunch” sound effects swirling forwards and backwards mirrorlike through
the air). The symbol on the walls marks the presence of Danyael in this place:
(Insert image Danyael c of g pictures)
This is of course from one of my favorite movies of all
time: Prophecy 3, the Ascent! (If you look closely, you can see that there is a
condemnation notice on the building, we’ll see it closer in the next issue.)
Panels 2,3,4
Dany’s Uncle. What a shpos8. Poor Dany.
Page 9 Panel 1 The
Uncle’s drinking Mad Dog, eating Heinz Boston Beans, and smoking Fortuna’s, the
poor people’s ciggy (cheap cigarettes and smoke shops disproportionately hurt
the poor and disenfranchised… it’s a crime…)
Panel 2 Jesus
with the loaves and fishes: when Jesus fed the hungry crowd with just a few
loaves and fishes
Panel 3 The
classic old Chicago parent’s warning : “You behave or you’re going to Dunning!”
Also you can see we kept trying new ways to make nice-looking fire.
Panel 4 Jojo’s
favorite comic at the time was Spawn (the old MacFarlane/Capullo ones). All the
comics here represent the theme of Hell: of course, Marvel’s “Son of Satan”
(Daimon Hellstrom); DC’s “Lucifer” (Samael Morningstar); Image’s “Spawn” (Al
Simmons); and Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s “From Hell” (Sir William Gull).
Panel 5 We put a
lot of Jojo’s things in Dany’s home: spawn comics, Caleb the baby doll,
blankets with smooth borders, (“feely things”), the green walls, the door with
no doorknob… it was a way for us to get inside the serious issues of poverty,
child abuse, etc that were in these issues, maybe making them more real and
less scary for him.
Panel 6 That’s
the candle Stan gave Danyael back at the end of issue 2, and those are Stan’s
words.
Panel 7 a lot of
the bible pages in these issues are straight from the original 1611 King James
Bibles (scanned by rare book collections in universities and museums). The one
page here was altered from “Booke of Psalmes” to “Booke of Rape and Death” (a
much more apt title for another disgusting, sickening Bible story)9
Page 10 panel 1
When you realize Dany was being abused by religious people, it hardly seems
very nice for Stan to give him this cursed old King James Bible to distract
himself at night…
Panel 2 The front
page blurb “From God’s mouth to your ears!”. The back cover blurbs are now “90
bazillion people can’t be wrong… (can they?)”, and “Thos shalt Steal this
Book!” Yes, I’m aware these are a little different from the back cover on page
1… it’s kind of like they’re alive, like an ongoing bulletin board, being
constantly rewritten by the Bible’s PR department… still trying to sell this
wonderful, insightful, meaningful booke for all the world to base their lives
and laws and morals on: hooray!
Panel 4 The
Bible, after this indefensible piece of garbage parable, tells us
readers,“Consider of it, take advice, and speak your minds”… ironic, as it
seems they are warning Bible readers NOT to read nor tke to heart this kind of
crap…
Page 11 back to
the good olde vintage Chicago Daily Tribune again. Back with the heavy sarcasm
mocking the media’s exploitation of victims, and even more alliteration. “Blood
on the Bridge: Valentine’s Massacre 2”, “homefree hitchhiker hatchet hero helps
half-pint”; “How could so much killing and maiming happen in such a nice city
as Chicago? On Valentine’s Day?” (eg on feb 14th 1929…)
Of course, we’re also making fun of ourselves for swooning
so hard for viral internet sensations, memes, heroes-du-jour, etc. sickening
things like “The Knockout Game” or “The Syrian War Cannibal”.
“Said internet fame expert Caleb McGillivary…” aka Kai the
hitchhiker himself
“Real wrath of God type stuff: Human sacrifice; dogs and
cats living together; mass hysteria” This line is, of course, from ghostbusters.
And of course we also mock how politicians jump on brief
hero-fame/worship/adulation for their own ill-considered benefit (like
Chicago’s own Barak Obama and Rahm Emmanuel)
See more ghostbuster quotes at the bottom: “40 years of
darkness the traveler has come choose and perish…”
On the side, the partially hidden “teaser” text says :
“Satanic
sex, blood
convicted
child rap
Rev. Carl
blood smea
cult Sisters
Molesteryos
young child
heart remove
sacrifice
alley on
S.C.U.M.
homicidal
predator
grisly rem
pedophile
skinned
Michigan
Bridge a
throw the
child into
the icy water
waters belowS
Sister Mary
Todesengle
wandering
hitchiker
“Stan” as
courageously
risked his own
life to save
the young boy
boy fromcertai
certain death
death at
hands of
LSD, and
buckets
blood at
their bizarre
ceremonie”
And just below this, the words of the beautiful little song
“Jesus blood never faied me yet”10!
Page 12 an
interior page with graphics based on our paper “The Bangor Daily News” (putting
their pretend straw votes in the paper is just panem et circus to make people
read the page: “Not a scientific survey”, and you can see it adds up to 101%...
then we see the teaser once again “Unspeakable Tragedy”, but this image is
covered by the front page: we’ll see the whole image and it will explain the
real meaning of “Unspeakable Tragedy” in the next issue… let’s just say this
real-life story is buried on page 5, because nobody famous or sexy was
involved…
“Chicago Street Tribunal” there is no such section of
man-on-the-street interviews and opinions, but there should be… the passers-by interviewd for the paper are all caught
up in the sensational story: (As always, I love these people, but I make
merciless fun of them nonrtheless. Everyone is fair game for scrutiny.
1) Oprah; 2) Mr. A (Steve Ditko’s vigilante hero, where
Ditko went right to the heart of the whole hero-worship/political correctness
debate, and in so doing also jumped straight off the deep end, paving the way
for… 3) Frank Miller, back with his epic rant about the Occupy Wallstreet
people living in their parents’ basements11… 4) Anton LaVey (also
paradoxically attacking himself “Don’t follow any real messaiahs: this guys is
an anti-messiah; ergo I will follow him”) 5)Alan Moore: somehow, we had to cut
off most of Alan’s self-implicating rant as well here: Alan Moore (the other
hand of DC’s 1980’s double-header of Watchmen and Dark Knight, got all over
Frank Miller after Frank’s bizarre rant. But I like to point out how all sides
are equally pathetic and preachy and self-serving (myself certainly included).
Here is Alan Moore’s interview 12:
TRIBUNAL: Polls show
the viral vigilante is more
popular than Jesus. For or against?
I’m a little skeptical about how overboard everyone is going
on this guy. A comic book vigilante running around axing bad guys? Of course
Frank M. and his lot are in favour of it! Am I the only one who’s concerned
about the mental stability of a vigilante with a weapon, meting out justice on
the streets? Maybe I’m alone on this, but what’s say we let police carry the
weapons… This guy’s obviously got some serious medical issues, and TV, the
News, the Press, you’re all exploiting his mental illness to get more ratings,
more views, more hits.
It’s never all “black and white”. We have to see the nuance
in every moral position. Behind our beliefs are ideas, and ideas are
bullet-proof. I would rather die than choose the death of my principles: we
can’t have it both ways. Alan M.
TRIBUNAL: So, he should have left the child
to
be sacrificed by the nuns?
Wait, maybe I do want it both ways… Alan M.
TRIBUNAL: People everywhere have taken Stan’s
“message for America” to heart...
I’m afraid if they listen to this guy, somebody innocent is
going to get burned… Alan M. (foreshadowing…)
Back inner sleeve
here is the WIP sketch by Jojo for the upcoming cover to issue 4
Back Cover: More
subtle parody. We really do love the creators we skewer on the back covers, but
also like to shoot down their unassailable status, take them to task. Never
take anyone’s work or words as gospel… especially the gospels… Alan Moore in
full curmudgeon mode back in the early 2000-teens, shooting down other peoples’
work… these Watchtower back covers are of course parodies of the Watchmen
covers, even trying to keep with the original color schemes when possible, if
it matched with our color-scheme theme (the colors of the virtues and
vices). It is based on the classic
watchtower formats, and this issue goes on a typical JW rant against the whore
of Babylon, and not mixing religions, (or stories or genres or cultures here,
etc.) Alan Moore loudly protested the
use of Watchmen in movies, prequels, etc. back at the time: any other format
that wanted to use his stories or “his” characters. Meanwhile, Alice Liddell (Alice
in wonderland) and Dorothy Gale (the wizard of Oz’s Dorothy) were of course
famously used and abused by Alan, as well as by many others (to say nothing of
“the Extraordinary Gentlemen”…)
You can see the running count of souls who have made it up
to heaven so far to rule with Jesus is at 143,990. This ticks down each month
until the “little flock” reaches 144,000 (in October 2014…!)
E:\2Pictures dell420xps\children of god pictures\watchmen
covers\2006_1_19e
E:\2Pictures dell420xps\children of god pictures\watchmen
covers\ f0093645_4d4b68d6a51fb
Similarly, recreating the JW’s tone and Alan Moore’s tone,
to deflate their self-importance, we also mock ourselves stuck here in the
other flock: what the flock?
(This is also a little nod to the movie “2010”: “Something
is going to happen… something wonderful”)
KAI: I’m one of the heroes.
JR: Can we talk to you? Do you mind?
KAI: What do you want to talk about?
JR: What happened today.
KAI: Wuu, went straight out of dogtown. Skateboarding, surfin’ it up. Before I say anything else, I want to say no matter what you done, you deserve respect. Even if you make mistakes, you loveable, and it doesn’t matter your looks, skills, your age, your size, or anything, you’re worthwhile. No one can ever take that away from you.
Now, this stuff right here, I was driving and I uh bfff – I was in the passenger side of this fucker’s car, and he comes over on there. He was over by the recycling center. He says, “Oh, when I was in the Virgin Islands, thirty years old on a business trip, I I uh I fucked this fourteen year old.”
I was like, “You what?”
He’s like, “I raped this fourteen year old.” He starts crying, gives me a big hug.
He’s like this fuckin’ three hundred pound guy. I’m like, “Holy Shit! He must be fuckered, man. Like, what’s he talking about?” I didn’t take him seriously at first.
He comes driving down this way, he’s like, “You know what? I’ve come to realize, I’m Jesus Christ, and I can do anything I fucking want to, and watch thi . . .” Bam! And he smashed into this fuckin’ guy right there, pinned him in between that fuckin’ truck, and so I fuckin’, I hop out, I look over, the guy’s pinned there.
I mean, like, freight train riders know this, like, if you get pinned between something, do not fuckin’ move that shit, otherwise you bleed out. Like, motherfuckin’ I ran in, I grabbed the keys. He’s fuckin’ sitting there like nothing even happened, and, like, fuckin’, like that.
If he had started driving that car around again, man, there would have been a hell of a lot of bodies around here.
Fuckin’ I hop on out, and so, I grab the bag. I threw it over by that pole right there, and then fuckin’ buddy gets out and there’s these two women are trying to help him. He runs up and he grabs one of them, man. Like a guy that big can snap a woman’s neck like a pencil stick.
So I fuckin’ ran up behind him with a hatchet. Smash. Smash. SU-MASH! Ye . . .
JR: The lady said you saved her life.
KAI: She was the one who got grabbed by that fucker. And you know what? Fuck is cool. That guy ain’t. Shii . . .
JR: How’d you, how’d you get in his car? How are, how did you . . .
KAI: I was hitchhiking. I was, well, good thing I was hitchhiking. Yeah, people say “Don’t hitchhike. Well, this is what happens.” Well, yeah, well, at least I was here.
JR: So he did this on purpose.
KAI: Dude! That guy was fuckin’ kooked out, man. Like, he’s beyond howlin, like, I don’t even see any breath in him. You know what I’m saying?
JR: Can, can I get your name? And where you’re from, if you don’t mind.
KAI: I’m Kai. Straight outta dog town.
JR: Can I get the spelling . . .
KAI: K A I
JR: Do you have a last name?
KAI: No, bro. I don’t have anything.
JR: Where are you from originally? Are you from Fresno area?
KAI: Sophia, West Virginia.
JR: No kidding. How old are you?
KAI: I can’t call it.
JR: Can we talk to you? Do you mind?
KAI: What do you want to talk about?
JR: What happened today.
KAI: Wuu, went straight out of dogtown. Skateboarding, surfin’ it up. Before I say anything else, I want to say no matter what you done, you deserve respect. Even if you make mistakes, you loveable, and it doesn’t matter your looks, skills, your age, your size, or anything, you’re worthwhile. No one can ever take that away from you.
Now, this stuff right here, I was driving and I uh bfff – I was in the passenger side of this fucker’s car, and he comes over on there. He was over by the recycling center. He says, “Oh, when I was in the Virgin Islands, thirty years old on a business trip, I I uh I fucked this fourteen year old.”
I was like, “You what?”
He’s like, “I raped this fourteen year old.” He starts crying, gives me a big hug.
He’s like this fuckin’ three hundred pound guy. I’m like, “Holy Shit! He must be fuckered, man. Like, what’s he talking about?” I didn’t take him seriously at first.
He comes driving down this way, he’s like, “You know what? I’ve come to realize, I’m Jesus Christ, and I can do anything I fucking want to, and watch thi . . .” Bam! And he smashed into this fuckin’ guy right there, pinned him in between that fuckin’ truck, and so I fuckin’, I hop out, I look over, the guy’s pinned there.
I mean, like, freight train riders know this, like, if you get pinned between something, do not fuckin’ move that shit, otherwise you bleed out. Like, motherfuckin’ I ran in, I grabbed the keys. He’s fuckin’ sitting there like nothing even happened, and, like, fuckin’, like that.
If he had started driving that car around again, man, there would have been a hell of a lot of bodies around here.
Fuckin’ I hop on out, and so, I grab the bag. I threw it over by that pole right there, and then fuckin’ buddy gets out and there’s these two women are trying to help him. He runs up and he grabs one of them, man. Like a guy that big can snap a woman’s neck like a pencil stick.
So I fuckin’ ran up behind him with a hatchet. Smash. Smash. SU-MASH! Ye . . .
JR: The lady said you saved her life.
KAI: She was the one who got grabbed by that fucker. And you know what? Fuck is cool. That guy ain’t. Shii . . .
JR: How’d you, how’d you get in his car? How are, how did you . . .
KAI: I was hitchhiking. I was, well, good thing I was hitchhiking. Yeah, people say “Don’t hitchhike. Well, this is what happens.” Well, yeah, well, at least I was here.
JR: So he did this on purpose.
KAI: Dude! That guy was fuckin’ kooked out, man. Like, he’s beyond howlin, like, I don’t even see any breath in him. You know what I’m saying?
JR: Can, can I get your name? And where you’re from, if you don’t mind.
KAI: I’m Kai. Straight outta dog town.
JR: Can I get the spelling . . .
KAI: K A I
JR: Do you have a last name?
KAI: No, bro. I don’t have anything.
JR: Where are you from originally? Are you from Fresno area?
KAI: Sophia, West Virginia.
JR: No kidding. How old are you?
KAI: I can’t call it.
“But his darkest point was that climate scientists, being
scientists, must confine themselves to making claims that have a high degree of
statistical probability. When they model future climate scenarios and predict
the rise in global temperature, they have to pick a lowball temperature, one
reached in ninety-plus per cent of all cases, rather than the temperature
that’s reached in the average scenario. Thus, the scientist who confidently
predicts a five-degree (Celsius) warming by the end of the century might tell
you in private, over beers, that she really expects it to be nine degrees.
“Thinking in Fahrenheit—sixteen degrees—I felt very sad for
the penguins. But then, as so often happens in climate-change discussions when
the talk turns from diagnosis to remedies, the darkness became the blackness of
black comedy. Sitting in the lounge of a ship burning three and a half gallons
of fuel per minute, we listened to Adam extoll the benefits of shopping at
farmers’ markets and changing our incandescent bulbs to L.E.D. bulbs. He also
suggested that universal education for women would lower the global birth rate,
and that ridding the world of war would free up enough money to convert the
global economy to renewable energy.”
7) What happens to your body if you get Ebola? June 17,
2014 6.04am EDT http://theconversation.com/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you-get-ebola-28116
8) SHPOS something we used to say up in New York: subhuman
piece of shit
9) the levite’s wife aka the levite’s concubine
9) the levite’s wife aka the levite’s concubine
Disclaimer: I am fully
aware of just how Zimsky this is: writing down all these sources and
inspirations and references for… well, for posterity. Theyah!
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