Strip Comics Issue 1

comics + art + culture

THE

DEBUT

ISSUE

Issue 1 Volume 1

Sep/Oct 2009

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5. A Fisherman’s Tale

Denver Jackson & Marc Junker

10. The Pitch of Battle

Kwasu Tembo & Denver Jackson

12. An Air Tale

Marc Junker & Denver Jackson

13. The Leopard Prince

Zack Simon & Kai-Lee MacBain

16. Holy Hoodlums!

Zack Simon & Kai-Lee MacBain

Strip Comics is a project dedicated to showcasing the work of comic artists and story-tellers from Vancouver Island and abroad. With an emphasis on sequential art, Strip seeks to promote the culture of story-telling in Victoria, BC by providing a bi-monthly publication for artists to exhibit their original cartoons, comics, and writing. Please visit stripcomics.ca for information regarding advertising and submissions.

ISSN 1918-7947

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THE PITCH OF BATTLE

BY K WA S U T E M B O

DRAWING BY DENVER JACKSON

I am a liar. We all are. I nearly died because of a lie. Sometimes, love dies when lovers lie. Sometimes history can forget an entire generation when its leaders lie.

But bullets never lie. They don’t have the disingenuous faculty, you see. They are music, little lead notes wearing copper jackets, so fashionably dressed for the overture of the massacre or genocide. The riflemen are the armyorchestra string section. Their intermittent baritone barrage embellish the field of battle, the artillery the percussion – watch how the flag dances.

War is music. The colliding armies are battling orchestras.

The contest of the song, whose is louder, whose can create the more beautiful dissonance of human decay. There is something true about the trajectory of a bullet.

It’s a like a musical scale. It is efficient, logical. And the spasmodic movements of performer and listener alike supply the emotion.

War is a symphony of contentious musicians – those who die can not find the rhythm in the tumultuous music hall of the battlefield. They strike up the clamour so very hard. They are maddened by the burning bricolage of the artillery barrage. And one by one the musicians fall.

The sound is dimmed as it fades, the notes strike the heart chord – the root note. Its power causes death, and the music is no more.

Only silence salutes unseen.

Only the crows attend the soldiers’ wake.

They said it wouldn’t happen again, but it did. There were

two more world wars, two more “wars-to-end-all-wars.” You see?

We are all liars. And it was their sweet lie of crown, queen, and country that made me a liar too.

I was too young, but I’m a good liar. I lied well enough to procure a position in the line of duty and death. They told that glory would be ours on battlegrounds afar.

They lied. They didn’t tell us about the muck, grime, and the screams keeping time with the chord progression of exploding land mines. They didn’t tell us about the fusion of lead and flesh and thecontusions they make, what an illusion they made and now? Now, only the crows attend the soldier’s wake.

I was filled with the lie. My father had died because of the lie. I was 14 when the message arrived. My mother pressed play and I heard it say that my father had been killed in action on some forlorn beach in what is left of the Maldives.

It’s almost as if history is a lie; we look back before the wars and see images of people on those very same beaches enjoying their middle age, with sun hats and browned skin, pretty drinks and pretty women wearing pretty clothes.

Now, the Maldives no longer exists. All that’s left is one quarter of the land mass that was Australia. India dislodged from Asia proper when its nuclear silo protocol failed and launched 40 intercontinental ballistic warheads striking Sweden, England, Egypt, Siberia, Alaska, Mexico,

Venezuela, and various other places. There’s not much left now.

The sand makes the Geiger needle dance, and it’s always hot.

My first kiss was a dry affair. Her name was Saskia; she died when a small rag-tag militia burned her settlement to the ground 61 days, 8 hours, and 43 seconds ago this very moment. I can’t help but wonder whether the one who pulled the trigger was a liar like me. Did he lie successfully enough to wear the colours, follow the creed, and wield the weaponry? Did he truly believe his lie enough to not flinch when he fired the note that killed sweet Saskia? Perhaps.

She was beautiful and awkward.

The radiation had caused her hair to fall out. She would show old

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photos of her great great grandmother who had beautiful auburn hair, standing with her great great grandfather in a place once called Times Square in the year 2010.

She said they looked happy. She said she would have had her hair.

I wonder whether she believed that or knew that it was nothing but a comforting lie. We are all liars. Even sweet Saskia.

I joined the string section of my army the moment they gave me a riffle. We received 6 months of training. They lied to us. They said that training would keep us alive, like earplugs keeping out the pervasiveness of the music. The music bleed through as people I once knew bled out on the radiated rubble of the skeletons of dead cites.

I was 16 when I stopped being a liar. I was eaten alive by the truth.

I had stepped over the line of killer and killed. I became a beast again, a predator, a victimizer.

The name sown into his Kevlar armour read Vladislav Draganov. I put a bullet through his visor and into his brain, killing him.

I put a single note into his mind, its sound too terrible to take. My music ended him.

I was 15 when I joined and I wondered why, when signing the dotted line that permitted another man, woman, or child to kill me, we still had armies after what armies had done to the earth.

The philosophers, priests, and mystics were all liars. It seems there are no morals, no good will, no honour, no God. All there is

is the truth of the music and the certainty that, when heard, it will bring about the listeners end.

There is no higher authority than the sound of music.

When it rings out, the very night shakes, the sinews and tendons that it moves shatter and sway.

It is indifferent to judgement, its technique: perfect. The curvature of the notes caresses the soul and guides the crow-mourned soldiers home. It is the sound of battle that makes mothers and brothers weep. It is the sound of battle that makes silent the city streets. It is the sound of battle that accompanies the passing souls, whether in victory or defeat. War is music, and music is eternal, so rest now... before it becomes too loud to sleep.

AN AIR TALE

16 Holy Hoodlums!

By Zack Simon and Kai-Lee MacBain

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