BOOK ONE, CHAPTER FOUR
written and illustrated by jimmy riordan
SOWSEAR SOWSEAR A QUARTERLY COLLECTION OF COMICS AND OTHER GRAPHIC NARRATIVES NOW AVAILABLE FROM RABBIT RABBIT PRESS. EMAIL RR.SOWSEAR@GMAIL.COM FOR INFO OR IF YOU WANT TO CONTRIBUTE To FUTURE ISSUES. OR VISIT WWW. RABBITRABBITPRESS.WORDPRESS.COM
SOWSEAR
R R
R
Only a year before his and Will Roger’s death in Alaska Wiley Post had begun exploring the limits of high altitude flight.
His plane, the Winnie Mae, was largely made of plywood and could not be properly pressurized for such heights.
Written and Illustrated by Jimmy Riordan
For this reason Wiley designed a pressurized suit. The first of its kind.
While flying at these altitudes Wiley noticed that at times his ground speed greatly exceeded his air speed. It was as thoug h he was being carried along by a strong current.
This invisible current was later dubbed the Jet Stream.
Second printing November 2013
Wiley made four attempts at high altitude trans conti nenta l flight befor e his death .
All of which ended in failure.
I do n’t understand.
You want me to help get this off?
weez
Thank you.
It was getting koff hot in there.
And I can’t get my helmet off by myself... I really should fix that.
The names Wiley Post.
Anyway, my plane stalled on me.
So I had to make an emergency landing.
--It could’ve been a broken oil line.--
This seemed as good a place as any.
It is a stroke of luck I found you here.
Now if you could help get me back to my house, I... Oh, I see.
You seem to be having some oil trouble of your own.
I can take a look at it if you’d like?
But it should be no problem in my shop.
Oooh... well it’s definitely the rear main seal.
I can’t fix it here. We should make it that far...
...With a little oil.
OK then, how about you help me load Winnie Mae into your truck?
The same year Wiley Post attempted his first transcontinental flight Adolf Hitler declared himself the Fuhrer of Germany.
The crime sprees of John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd came to an end.
The Lochness Monster was photographed and Donald Duck made his debut.
Monopoly and the florescent light were both invented.
The last Model T Ford had been produced 7 years earlier.
The Federal Highway system had been implemented less than 3 years before that.
And it would be almost a decade before the conception of the Interstate.
The population of the United States at the time of Post’s death was barely a third the size it is today.
Is it possible to imagine that world now? To truely understand what it was?
How does one keep straight what had happened and what was yet to occur?
It is really too much to consider, yet without these events there is no time.
Though it is experienced individually, for time to exist as we understand it, it must be shared.
It must be measurable.
Like distance, we agree on a system for ordering time. We travel through it in a single direction.
could time be more complicated than this?
Could the past be occurring along side the fut
ure?
Is how we order events important to how we experience them? And how vital is memory?
Is when something happened more important than when we remember it happening?
So you’re from Alaska. You just picked up your truck in Oklahoma, and your driving east.
You headi ng anyw here part icula r ?
Um... There is this girl, but...
I should
have some peanuts
in my bag.
A girl huh? She must be really something.
Do you have anything to eat in here?
Got it! I don’t really want to talk about it.
Here we go.
Not that you said anything about love.
Huh, oh no...ďż˝ thanks though.
Fair enough. Love can be tricky.
You want some of these?
I have definitely been prone to a bit of infatuation myself.
Mostly with airplanes.
chuckle
I remember the first time I saw an airplane.
It was at the state fair. I didn’t even see it fly..,
I couldn’t have been much older than 15.
...but I knew.� It took ten more years till I got to spend any time in one.
Though my job in the flying circus mostly involved jumping out of them.
It wasn’t till I lost my eye that I could afford one of my own.� �
What with the money I got after the accident.
yawn
Anyway, it’ll only take a day or two to get your truck fixed once we get it into my shop.
But you can stay longer if you’d like.
And it’s just me and my daughter there.
It’s a big place.
She’s about your age.
Take a look. I always carry this picture with me.
MARG It was only a day after printing the first edition of this issue that I realized that I would have to do a second printing. I rushed to get it done before leaving Anchorage and I felt it showed. Worst of all, the cover was labeled issue #3 instead of #4. Not a good start. What you are holding now is a fixed up version of the last issue. Some sections have been shortened and some expanded. I can still see places that need work, but I will wait until I put together the complete first volume early next year. If you purchased a copy of the first printing of issue # 4 and do not want it please let me know and I will figure out a way to get your money back to you. *** The night that followed the storm was serene. The rainfall had all but completely evaporated, no longer present on the field where Hare and his mate had met, except in the form of balls of clumped-up mist, like the cotton plants of paradise, their pods bursting beneath the flooding moonlight. On the banks of the river stood the thickets, heavy with rain like pilgrims bent under the weight of their rucksacks and goatskin bottles. Peace reigned. An angel supported her head in her hands. The bent blades of grass prayed for the dawn, shivered and shook, awaiting daybreak. Then Hare, sitting in the middle of the meadow, witnessed the approach of a man, and he wasn’t the least bit afraid of him. For the first time in ages, since men first began setting snares and traps and using bows, the instinct of flight had abandoned Hare’s soul. - LRdL Chapters 1 through 3 developed Hare’s character. Giving us some insight into him and context to the story. It is in Chapter 4 of Le Roman du Lievre that things really get started. We meet Saint Francis and the other animals. It is Hare’s interaction with
Francis that sets the story into motion. Also, elements introduced into this chapter continue to appear throughout the rest of the story. Thus far this has not really been the case, leaving me open to play around with ideas and imagery that I may not want to spend the next few years with. For this reason it was very important to choose the right character to replace Francis and to represent his animal followers. It was a choice that would affect the rest of the book. By the time I finished issue 3 it had become obvious to me that Wiley Post had grown into Francis’ role. This is why so much of this issue revolves around Post, instead of referencing the Le Roman du Lievre Project or Marginalia (more details will follow in the notes). The Animals were a harder choice. At first I intended to create different characters for each one. But there are as many as 11 animal characters, or at least 5 if they are divided by type. This would mean that at least 6 new characters would be introduced in 1 issue. As I have purposely kept the pacing of this comic very slow, it seemed almost impossible to introduce so many characters in one issue without changing the speed and mood of the book. This is why I chose to combine them all into Post’s daughter. It seemed a simple solution that allows me to turn what would have been a number of different characters and interactions into different episodes and elements of a single individual. NOTES: 01. The text on this page is a variation of the opening sentence to the corresponding chapter in LRdL (see above). 05. Wiley Post is credited with contributing to the discovery, or at least the understanding of the jet stream. Also, his invention of the pressurized suit directly led to the space suit. It is interesting to consider how much Wiley post accomplished in such a
short amount of time. It was not until he was in his late 20s that Post began flying. Between then and his death at age 37 he broke many world records, flew around the world twice, invented the pressurized suit, and helped discover the jet stream. In fact almost all of this happened over the course of less than 5 years. All this from a man who had battled depression, been in jail and who had lost an eye to an oilrig explosion. Today a 1-eyed man wouldn’t even be allowed to get a pilot’s license. 06 – 10. Wiley’s arrival is based on the true story of his first attempt at a transcontinental flight as presented in From Oklahoma to Eternity.
This seamed as dramatic an entrance as any and served as a smoke screen for his time travel, something shared by Wiley in this issue and Saint Francis in the original text. It was later discovered that sabotage might have played a role in the crash.
11. While driving across the country during the Return to Me Tour the truck began to leak oil. With the help of one of the artists’ (Krista Peters) close friends the problem was pinpointed as a leak in the rear main seal. This leak persisted until the truck broke down in Oklahoma. 12-15. In preparation for this issue I did some research into the concept of time. Partially a justification for Wiley’s time travel and partially an explanation for the jumbling of events in the story so far. I will post a video and possibly some links on the site to some of my inspirations for this section, though it is not drawn from any single source. One thing I found extremely interesting in my research was the theory that our modern conception of time is directly related to advances in transportation, specifically the train. Humans didn’t really have to agree on how to measure time until they were able to travel great distances quickly. 19,20. Wiley was born in 1898 and saw his first plane at a fair in Oklahoma in 1913. After WWI, while working on the Oklahoma oil fields he joined Tubb’s Flying Circus as a parachuter. This is where Wiley learned to fly. Soon after that he lost his eye in an oilrig explosion. 22. As mentioned before, Wiley’s daughter represents the other animals from the text. Each of these animals is represented in the photograph. A larger version of this image will be posted on the website with more details about each of these symbols. In the final few sentences of LRdL chapter 4 Hare is won over by Francis when he offers Hare some grass to eat. The handing over of the photograph represents this offer, symbolic of Wiley’s good nature, offer of shelter and repair of the truck. If you have any questions or would like to order copies of this or any other issues of Held Up please feel free to contact me via email at riordanjimmy@gmail. com or visit our new Rabbit Rabbit Press website (www.rabbitrabbitpress.wordpress.com). - Jimmy
Next Issue:
This is how a watermelon can be both a fruit and a vegetable.
THE CONCLUSION OF BOOK ONE
$4.50 US / MORE IN CA
RR
Copyright Rabbit Rabbit Press, September 2013 www.leromandulievre.com