This is a question many people have asked. The more pious ones will reply that it is all but a part of God’s will and/or that god works in mysterious ways. The more cynical ones will tell you that there is no reason, God is dead (and we have killed him), and that to believe anything else is sheer utter naivety. Ask a Buddhist and you’ll hear of one of the Buddha’s more famous teachings, one that goes something along the lines of ‘Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.’ There are as many different answers to that question as there are stars in the sky, I have listed but some of the more common ones I have heard.
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Praying for Gabrielle Gifford: The Insanity of Jared Lee Loughner
Earlier today, Deomcractic Arizona Representative Gabrielle Gifford during her Congress on Your Corner in a local Safeway was shot point blank in the head by gunman Jared Lee Loughner. Luckily for her, the bullet went straight through her head, instead of bouncing around, so brain damage should be minimal and reversible. He shot 11 others, and upon having used up his entire clip, tried to flee the store. He was apprehended by a bystander and later arrested when the police arrived upon the scene. Gifford is currently no longer in intensive care, and is now playing the waiting game as the anasthetic wears off – but doctors are enthusiastic about her survival. As to the others, however, 7 are currently in intensive care. Alas, one of her political aides, Judge John Roll, a 9 year old boy, and an undisclosed other were not so fortunate and are no longer among the living, may they Rest In Peace.
Seeing as shooting a federal employee is a felony of the highest or second-highest order, this man is going to hang (inject?). The insanity defense is no longer a legal defense for federal cases after Hinckley’s acquittal.
If you click this link, you can watch the 3 youtube videos he uploaded to the internet. You can also go here and here for more information.
Sarah Palin may end up getting some flak because of this, and her usage of gun cross-hairs as icons on several states, including Arizona, the home of the recently shot-by-a-gun representative.
IHM, VoR, and DvP – The time before SED
Okay, so back before SED, there was another comic that The Colorist (Mitch) and I tried to get started. The name of that comic was I Hate Mondays.
Meet Barry.
What was it about? Well, it was this kinda mind bending fantasy about a guy named Barry Gibbler who works in an office… And he’s so bored with his life that he starts drifting off into his own little fantasies. Like, a simple trip to the copy room with a profit-expenditure report becomes him wandering the forest, dodging ninjas, to find an old sage who can copy a mystic tome.
Eventually, Barry gets a little too wrapped up in his own fantasies, and weird shit starts happening in the office, that was supposed to have only happened in his head. Like he finds shuriken (ninja stars) stuck in the wall outside the copy room or a janitor claims to have been assaulted by ninjas at 2:30 in the morning, while cleaning the copy room.
This all leads to Barry getting stuck in his own head, while an Evil Barry takes over his life, and Barry has to go on an epic adventure through all his old fantasies, etc etc.
It was a solid idea, and it gave me a lot of opportunities to use my widely varying style and short attention span. (Because I could use one style for one week, then switch to another for the next week.) Only problem? It was a bit too complicated to draw on a daily basis. Especially with color. I didn’t even get the first page done before I realized the problems with the idea.
Okay, so scrap IHM.
But, the colorist and I really liked some of the characters, and some of the setting, so we started twisting it around another idea: Make a website about video games.
Enter DvP and VoR
Imagine an AltReality experiment. Where there’s two websites that seem to be off in their own little world, talking about video games and entertainment, some of which don’t really exist. One is the blog of a Game Development company, and the other is an online video game magazine.
The blog is called ‘Developer versus Player’ (DvP), and the magazine is called ‘Voice of Reason’ (VoR).
All the people working on the two sites are fake. Some of the thing reviewed are fake. But either way, it’s a focus for the ongoing war between gamers and the developers and their financiers.
Basically, the whole idea was combine my art skills, passion for storytelling, and knowledge of the video game industry with Mitch’s writing skills, programming, and video game addiction.
It bombed.
There was wayyy too much writing that needed to be done, with too many voices. But in the mean time, we ended up with a bunch of writing. I figure I’ll put a bit of it up here just to act as conversation fodder.
