mr Sandman

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Page 52

Abt_Nihil

on Jan. 9, 2008

(The following comic has been written some time ago, when I first uploaded this comic on the 'net.)

It took me some time to think of a comment that would fit this page and not be redundant… I came up with this:

What I've been doing during this re-release of a 6-year-old comic, among removing dust and such, is adjusting the dialogue, etching out some mistakes in some places, streamlining it a bit in others, making it easier to understand in general while trying to stay as true to the original as possible.

On this page I left the dialogue basically as it had been written six years ago, only removing one sentence (Kat asking "Have I ever done anything wrong?", which I think does not fit in very well…). Because I came to the conclusion that, were I to write something to the effect of this here now, I would probably do it the exact same way. I am not really feeling the same motivation I did when I wrote this… which must have been both a certain anger at the world as well as a fundamental faith in the power of reason and rational understanding. Both have eroded over the past years.

I think what's worth noting here is how the angel is only amplifying what's already inside Kat. He starts with something beyond rationality, beyond language: just a certain tone (the empty speech bubble ), then Kat bursts out - injecting semantic content into the situation -, the angel can amplify this quite precisely, and Kat's emotion turns from vulnerabilty to anger. I'm well aware this could also be read as some sort of personal growth on Kat's part, but I'm tempted not to interpret it as just that. Kat going from passive/seclusive to vulnerable to angry - it should mostly be interpreted in light of the adversaries - the angels - she's facing. Venus and Mercury may be empathic or sympathetic towards her, but they leave Kat with some sort of advice which seems too trivial to be helpful: "Do what you think is right" (Although this specific sentence can theoretically be negated - so it's not quite trivial -, the negation requires a certain context to make sense). In that situation she can afford to be vulnerable and question herself: "maybe I'm responsible for their deaths…?" In this case right here, where she's confronted by an angel head-on, she cannot afford to be as vulnerable.

These are just my personal thoughts on the matter. It's important to add that I wrote this from the gut. I didn't lay out the symbols to MEAN something. I wrote the dialogue to be as precise as I could at the time, but the overall meaning is still coming together without much prior planning on my part.

Let's just see how this plays out.

EDIT:

Midge: Good to know my rambling is of some help ;-) As for the text, in a way it's meant to be out of (visual) context. The middle part of this page is basically a collage of flashbacks and mental images… the words are not being said by anyone, they simply comment on her state of mind. Back then I was heavily influenced by Evangelion and its use of on-screen text (the origin of which can't be explained in the story's context either).
DAJB: Thanks! Though sometimes I wish I had Kubrick's strength not to interpret myself publicly :-)