Something tells me the Colonel isn’t talking politics anymore by the end of the page. Which is funny, because I think, at the start of the story, Colonel Haulley must have seemed like he was going to be a secondary character. Hmm.
So, we made it this week. I’m still on the front lines here, as far as work goes. Which is to say I have a heck of a lot of it to do these days. But I still chug along with the comic. I’m glad you guys are so patient – it’s so easy to let things like this trail off, as so many really good comics have done. But now that we’re really in the “meat” of the story now, it’s getting more exciting to draw, so much so that I’m actually really looking forward to Chapter 6, since Chapter 5 is almost done. Inspirado comes in waves, naturally, but my enthusiasm is on the upswing at the moment – this project and a few others are making me feel more confident and interested in where I’m going with all this.
So anyway, enough’a my yakkin’. I’ll see you all next week!
That, Colonel Haulley, is a baaaaaad mindset to be in. That kind of mindset is exactly what brings men to the brink of MAD, and will push them beyond it, as I’m sure the good colonel found out. If one believes that it will take the genocidal elimination of an entire cpuntry to ‘win the war’, you’ve already lost.
Unfortunately, it’s a mindset that is coming back into vogue these days. Believe it or not, I wrote this story, and thus scene in particular, back in 2009. Given the state of the world, it’s feeling distressingly prophetic now.
Here’s hoping it’s not a self-fullfilling prophecy.
God save us.
I like what you did there. Those emotions and facial expressions… superb!
I agree, the emotions from Hauley just hit me like a ton of bricks. Excellent page this week!
🙂
I’m always inclined to second-guess myself, so I’m glad it had the desired effect.
Here’s a few Thoughts for the Day.
What if we have two to their one, but they have a gun?
Or if the one they have left is the only smart person?
Or if the two we have both have guns, get into an argument, and kill each other?
“The problem with being the last of anything, by and by there be none left at all.” (cough)reference(cough).
Well, words spoken in anger are rarely rational ones. Actually, he’s paraphrasing Air Force general Thomas Power (CINC Strategic Air Command) who said of a potential nuclear war with Russia “The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there’s two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!” It always spoke to me as a symbol of the kind of crazy death-spiral the Cold War almost became.
Unfortunately, we still seem to have plenty of folks these days who think the same way. Personally, I’d really prefer it if Russian politicians wouldn’t threaten to drop the Bomb on my country, which they’ve been doing with increasing regularity in the last few weeks. I find the entire thing depressing in the extreme. I used to have a lot of friends in the East – mine was the first generation to be educated alongside the citizens of a post-Soviet Russia, and I made a lot of Russian friends in college – scientists, engineers, linguists. My college years were a time of real relief and great optimism. Now all but a handful refuse to speak to me, primarily, I gather, because their government has told them I’m their enemy and they’ve chosen to believe that over fifteen years of friendship. It honestly breaks my heart, and has often made it really difficult to come back to this comic every week, I have to admit.
Ideally a being that it’s reing by it’s rationality should be thought and then action, but there’s a point a point that many see as a trait of strength.
Where a sustained state of inminent danger (or a trauma as you mentioned), an amount of fear so overwhelming that causes strain in the mind, lefts you paranoid, and prone to violence.
The curious thing is that when that berserk (would that be the right term?) state strikes and passes, instead of rejecting it, we take pride on it, if it makes others fear you then you have nothing to fear and, who doesn’t want to get out of the shadow of the fear?
Arturo Graf had got it right, “Violence ain’t but an expression of fear”
(I feel silly just rephrasing things that have already been said, maybe I ramble a tiny bit but it works as a mental excercise for me at least)
Well, you make a good point. Expressions of violence as a result of whatever stimulus feed into the kind of false machismo that can cause people who are seriously mentally deranged to cover up their behavior, or for others to excuse or dismiss it. And it perpetuates the idea that force and violence are acceptable norms, on whatever level of the social structure. Granted, were in a far less violent age now than there has ever been on Earth, but I feel that the progress we’ve made is in danger of slipping away. The last time it did, the result was the Dark Ages, and it lasted six hundred years.
This is genuinely one of the most interesting webcomics I’ve found on the net. I look forward to reading more.
That’s among the highest compliments anyone has ever paid my work. Thank you!