Man, I love the first day or two of the month, when, for a brief, shining moment, 6-Commando is in the top 100. Then the floods of votes come in for the usual top ten, and things normalize. But just so’s you know, there’s another new voting incentive up, now. So keep on voting, folks!
Finally she wakes up. I bet you were just WAITING for this.
There’s an interesting story behind this page, and why I wrote it into the comic. About three years ago, I contracted pneumonia. Although the sickness itself wasn’t critical, its side effects were – I was coughing so violently, mostly in my sleep, that I hemorrhaged – tore open the right side of my abdominal cavity. Imagine a really horrible hernia – it was like that, only higher, larger and much more painful. My surgeon called it one of the worst he’d ever seen.
After a month of increasing pain, which finally got so bad I couldn’t walk properly, I underwent abdominal surgery to get put back together. All in all, in the greater scheme of things, it was a quick fix: laproscopic surgery is the best. But to do it, they had to basically paralyze my entire chest temporarily, and put me on a breathing machine. It was all over in a few hours, and I only remember the last couple of minutes, when I was just coming out of the anesthesia. But one thing I had a distinct memory of was the doctors removing the breathing tube they put in my throat, and having the distinct impression, only for a moment, that someone was strangling me.
Which is pretty much what Sarah is experiencing here. Having a tube in your throat controlling your breathing is not pleasant, and if you start struggling against it, your throat muscles clutch the tube, and it feels a lot like being strangled. And so this page caws one that I had in mind very much from the start – I’m glad I finally got to it. It’s one of the most visceral I’ve attempted so far.
And now a little “housekeeping.” At reader suggestion, I have added a much more visible RSS link to the site – check the top right, and by all means, subscribe, if that’s how you prefer to receive your updates. It’s all there. The feed’s been going right along, it’s just a littl
e easier to get to now. Second, many super-duper special thanks to Jason Brubaker of reMIND, who was kind enough to plug my comic on his site remindblog.com. I have been recommending reMIND right along, and am a big fan of his work – he was really kind in returning the favor so generously. And to all the reMIND readers checking out 6-Commando, thanks for stopping by! It’s a very different kind of comic, but of a kindred artistic spirit, I like to think.
And lastly, there’s a new voting incentive now! Vote at topwebcomics.com by clicking on the banner above or at the right. And I have more and so will be updating the incentive at irregular intervals over the next few weeks. When? Well, keep voting, because you never know when a neat little extra will come up! One might even be a full-color desktop background for you to put on your computer! So vote away, folks, and thanks for the support!
And until next week, be well, everyone.
A good page. 🙂
True – dreams temd to reflect what happens in reality in a wierd way sometimes… and dreaming of being strangled when a tube is being pushed to your throat is “normal” in that case…
Also it happens to become my tradition to point out some minor flaws… and it strikes again. 🙂
The medical techs shown on the last panel look good by US standarts.. but are somewhat unrealistic in Russia. For the most bart – the patches are applied by short straps here.. but in Russia they would likely be bandaged, leaving Maj. look like a mummy… 🙂 That is because bandages are more reliable – they will not fall off if applied over wet, greesy on dirty skin. Plus to some extend you can boil and re-use the bandages…
The hair… That might be more of artistic thing not to show… but in RL Maj. would be shaven bold. That is firstly because medics rarely have fancy equipment that can show traumas on the head… and so they have to look for them with bare yeys… and hair tend to get in the way. And secondly (to be honest) sanitation is relatively low here… and having patients bold really decrease chanse of them having fleas… and it is easyer to care for them… And lastly – it’s not like she is going to have a lot hair left after having the radiodiation dose she got. *evil grin*
Also I sense some russian dialogues nearby… 🙂
Eyebrowless Sara too? I like it.
The bandage types is a great bit of detail.
Regarding dreams vs. Reality, once I was on a ski trip. I dreamed that I was skiing down a run with a lot of bumps, and that I fell. When I braced for impact I threw myself clear out of bed. Just an amusing story.
Yes, in truth, they’d bandage her the same way in the States, given that she’s burned. Under the gauze, there’d be packs of water-based antibiotic gel to keep the wounds cool, and prevent infection and necrosis. Once her overall physical condition was under control they’d clean the wounds and try to keep them dr and free of any infectious particles, but would still probably keep her heavily bandaged. At least, that’s my (admittedly limited) understanding. Unfortunately, all that bandaging would have made her unrecognizable, so I had to kind of go halfway. About her hair, I don’t really know what they’d do in a US hospital in this case – likely they’d remove whatever was obstructing the bandages, but leave the rest. But for sure they’d have wrapped it up in something – I left it loose because it made her look much more messy and desperate.
As to dreams, asdfasdf – I’ve had oddly violent dreams like that myself, and they can be pretty disturbing. THere’s that couple of seconds when you are still disoriented that are just the worst!
–M
Like I thought – those things were left out for artistic purposes…
(I do think that having two parallel panes with Sara screaming in drean and in reality would fix the recognition problem, but after that you’d have to drammatically change her appearance. And that would be like making her into another character… and that is hard for the author. I admitt.)
The last panel of this page is amazing, my favorite 6-Commando image yet.
Hey, I wasn’t finished! Her eye is what really does it for me, there is so much terror in it. You should makes that into an ad.
Thanks, Chris! Actually, the eye was the first thing I drew on the page. Even before I sketched in the rest of the shapes, actually. I wish I’d saved all the steps of this page because it was kind of cool that it all circulated around that one element. I’m really glad it worked for you!
And yes, that panel was drawn with an advert in mind… 😉
–M
I agree with Chris, that last panel is amazing!
You have been slowly working towards this page with us readers just wandering what will hapen when she wakes up. And then on these last two pages it all turns darker by the panel and you top it of with this last panel with an eye in terror, bloody cloth on her other eye, the out stretched hand and a tube in her throat.
I feeling so sorry for Sarah.
And I do not (feel sorry I mean).
She is alive. Her wounds are treted. And it’s not like she is about to be tortured? interrogated or thrown into a prison cell… Within the next few days that is. *evil grin*
Hey! Just wanted to say, I somehow have a problem getting to the next page. It tells me that I don’t have permission to access that page. Error 403. Do you know what’s wrong?
Thank you!
I’m ironing out a lot of problems at the moment, and this may be one of them. I had a database crash about a week ago, and so I’m not 100% sure everything is quite right yet. I checked it though, and it seems okay to me.
Glad you’re taking the time to read back this far – comic’s come a long way since then!
–M
This imagery is so poweful, I trully am living.