This comic was a novel ten years ago, more or less. More or less a novel too, and it lay fallow after the death of my mother, with whom I shared the story as it developed. When she left us, I put it aside.
So when I took it up again, two years ago next month, I decided that despite my interest in wordcraft, I was first and foremost a visual artist, since the age of six. The two could be joined, which I did when I was young. I abandoned that world in the mid 1970s. It was a lousy time to do comics, unless you were doing mainstream, Marvel and Dc, and I was an undergound comix guy. I had no interest in the world of Clark Kent and Reed Richards. I loved those comics when I was a kid, but in the 70s, they just didn’t do anything for me.
Now, I was a sophomoric storyteller when I was young, during my underground days. The whole thing went into the toilet just as I was getting some traction, so I didn’t get much of a chance to turn into something better before Rembrandt and etching got under my skin. But in grad school, I had a friendship with Rolf Fjelde, who inspired me to eventually take up pen again, and so the nascent novel. I probably would not have done even that without going into teaching. Something about teaching led me into writing again. Maybe it was doing all those college recommendation letters. Some of them were pretty flowery, and I remember I created the best poetry of my life when courting my future wife.
That’s what the comic book medium is to me. It’s poetry, because you have to pick and choose your words. You can’t go on forever setting up a scene. It’s there, in a few panels or pages, and it has to say it in such a way that it takes the place of a thousand words. Really.
When I was thinking of a title for this post, I thought of what I think when I think. But that really can’t be put into words, for I don’t think of words when I think. I do not think, therefore I am nonsense. I think along the banks of a roaring river, a stream that flows out of eternity.
Doesn’t everyone?