Try Everything Once

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071: Liftoff

Ian Jay

on Sept. 4, 2006

Hey there, TEO fans! This week's page will need some explaining.

That thing right there in the center panel is, in fact, a hot-air balloon. Why did I draw it, you ask? Well, most of Dexy's universe is going to be in the desert of what we know of as southwestern America, but with a definite Aztec-y Mesoamerican flavor, as if the conquistadors never made it across the Atlantic. (Why? I don't think the Aztecs get enough credit, that's why. They held a fearsome empire over here, but when most people think of ancient civilizations they think of Egyptians and Romans and Greeks and all those other ridiculously cliché cultures. Aztecs, on the other hand, are a little bit more fresh.) Now, as far as I know (and while I used to be a real history wonk, my knowledge is a little rusty), the Aztecs, as well as all those other pre-Colombian peoples, never actually used the wheel to get around, nor did they have anything in the way of pack animals. (The Inca had llamas, of course, but they would be ridiculously unadapted to the desert.) The hot-air balloon was inspired by the Nazca Lines: a series of gigantic drawings made on the ground with rocks on some plains in Peru. The Lines can only be fully viewed from the air, so one popular, if a bit farfetched, theory is that the people who made these drawings viewed them in their own hot-air suspended flying machines. I thought, heck, this is the Old West (sort of), the Aztecs have probably progressed at this point, why couldn't they have invented the hot-air balloon, too?

…Yeah. It's stupid, isn't it? Just trust me here. This will all eventually make sense.

Other than that, though, this page isn't especially impressive. The four panels on the left are mostly just close-ups because I couldn't think of anything else that would adequately show the process of taking off. But whatever.

SPECIAL NEWS! Recently famed cartoonist K.C. Green hosted a month-long "Guestival" on his sort-of-daily webcomic The Daily Droop. I submitted a very hastily-done comic, and since Droop consists almost exclusively of hastily-done comics, he graciously decided to post it. Read it here.

NOT SO SPECIAL NEWS! I finally got that dang Mountain Goats CD. It is mostly just the one guy strumming his guitar and singing into a cheap microphone, and yet it is so good that it popped the top of my head off the first time I listened to it. Like haiku or PB&Js, the album's true genius lies in its simplicity. I highly recommend you find it and listen to it. NOW.

Next week: We find out what Thirteen does for a living. (By the by, the Aztecs really did name their kids after the day and month they were born on. Or maybe that was the Maya. One of those guys. You people know I don't have time to do research.) Plus: What happened to Lloyd?

Sincerely,

Ian Jay