Big reveal here, I suppose. Doing my best telling this story. Thanks for taking the time to read!
DWJ
Space-Mullet
A Sci-Fi Webcomic by Daniel Warren Johnson
Big reveal here, I suppose. Doing my best telling this story. Thanks for taking the time to read!
DWJ
Interesting.. I thought he played an instrumental part in the massacre.
Yeah, I really wanted to turn things on their heads with this.
Daniel, I say it on IG—you are awesome. This is a great page.
Thank you, my man!
During WW II, the waffen ss einsatzgruppen had a big problem with suicides…Japs are still in denial, but on Okinawa, a lot of the population just jumped off cliffs…
Huh, that’s super interesting.
…damn. I can’t even imagine.
Seriously.
Well, N O W W E K N O W what happened. He’s punishing himself for not stopping the slaughter- what could he do to stop it? He was simply one less lethal weapon aimed at innocent people. That’s a good thing…
He could have shot the lieutenant.
Actually, just ask him, he’s probably got a huge list of things in his head that he could have done. Not that he or anyone would have been ready to do that at that time. But in hindsight there will have been thousands of possibilities that have occurred to him since. Maybe tried to talk some of the more sane people on the team into stopping and then helping fight or whatever.
If he would have shot the Lieutenant, who was only another one of the shooters by that point, he would have been shot. The kind of situation where violence erupts due to emotions isn’t possible to control except in a massive way (like stunning the entire platoon somehow and stopping all actions.) Undoubtedly, that’s why he has second and third thoughts on what he could have done. If you view the situation from an impartial distance those colonists did the worst possible thing and the worst possible time.
-at the worst possible time.
Glennster and Msouth, Totally true to both of you, on all counts. Its so cool to see your guys’ interpretation of events, some of which I didn’t even think of. But I was definitely counting on the fact that in a situation as such, confusion, fear, and violence would crush any sense of reasoning. Who knows, though. That’s the thing about comics/stories, it could go so many ways. Gotta pick one, and then(like Jonah) mull over it again and again and again and try to figure out if the decision was a right one.
Also, Glennster, I was counting on the fact that the shame of doing nothing would outweigh the the fact that he didn’t take part in it. I felt that a lot of sci-fi heroes that I had read in comics, saw in video games, in movies, and read in books either were heroes, or total mess ups gone good. I wanted to try and create a character where his past was filled with shame. Shame of the cowardice of what a character could have done, but didn’t.
Daniel, without that internal conflict Jonah wouldn’t have much of a story to tell, so we can’t pick it apart too much- just acknowledge that’s what happened and is.
Great story and art, thankyou!
this is crazy, i forgot i was reading this at work for a second. love the style choice with Jonah in the chair w/ mind unfolding “around him”
Forgot you were reading it at work?? Yess! Thanks, Dave.
Your best is plenty good. The story is unfolding along with the panels and the feeling of it is coming across. You have a few loose ends and I can barely wait for you to tie them off. I know you will.
Amen to that. You are doing this like an old pro, in my opinion.
Thank you both very much guys! your comments are always thoughtful and bring to light new ways to look at the story! Way to be!
wow… what a nice page… a good mile stone in the development of our mullet headed leading man… a culmination of all the bread crumbs you’ve strewn in the previous pages… all that guilt and shame and angst… and that truckload of fear… finally landing with a thud in the sickbay… next to the crumbled body of the person closest to him… it is very touching and wrenching…
as always… kudos and well done!
Thank you for your kind words, Vonbek!
Dan, great page! The way you show him staring at himself at the bottom really got me. Keep it up!
Thank you, Nick! I think thats my fave part of this page.
I just realized, it almost looks like he’s looking at his past self. Adds to te really cool introspective effect.