So, for this month's installment, part 2 "rabbit stew again?", I went to a lot of trouble to contact my (imaginary) great great great granddaughter who lives in the year 2115. All I needed to do to achieve this seemingly impossible feat was to bury a time capsule!
Click on the image to see a larger version! Also this is part 2 of three. If you want a recap Part 1 is here. Notice how Kafka recognises that when you are literally 'climbing the wall' perhaps the only things left to comfort or enlighten you are the things that others dismiss as superfluous, namely art and culture. Not just the realm of the bourjois, literature is often perceived as such so that people feel they don't have time or inclination to access to such things. But often its written to communicate the subversive, the crucial challenge, an alternative to just going through life unaware. It's always inescapably a manifestation of some particular political and social context, be it literal or metaphorical, consciously or unconsciously, in an attempt to promote or indeed criticise a world view. Kafka's metamorphosis is a 'highfalutin' classic of literature but look, I have drawn it as a comic so that you might see that the bones of some 'classic' literature is awesome: as weird and wonderful as anything. Once you dip your toe into these things, (anything) you find out it isn't what you thought but often far more interesting. This is pretty much how I got into comics I might add. I hope at least one person might read Kafka's metamorphosis after this, but I suppose I will never know. It's better than Harry Potter anyway.
Click on the image to see a larger version. Updated /vert-no12.html(3 Aug: new and improved for added legibility!)
Click for larger image size. I didn't draw ALL of this today, just the final panel mainly. (updated 26/3)
If you follow my blog you'll have seen the comic before, but if you fancy doing the dot-to-dot you can see the contents
of this week's Vert in detail here. Also, they are paying me now, which is both awesome and only fair. (Truth). I hear tiny cheers from my ant fans weeeeee. Ok so its a colony I have between two sheets of glass, they can still be happy for me. (Lies) AND our book's got an ISBN number now but more on THAT soon. It's all coming together like it should. Wee. This is a cartoon tribute to one of my favourite artists, Quentin Blake (crossword spoiler oops) and all those happy Christmases that included the gift of a book illustrated by him. When I look at all the different illustrated books I read or was read as a child (I kept them all and begrudgingly occasionally share them with my youngest family members) it is no wonder at all that I wanted to be an artist. I think Christmas is a particularly visual time of year; its dark and cold outside but everywhere, thanks to people's amazing respect for tradition, glimmers of light and colour remind you of the potential in things, even apparently gloomy things, like the empty night sky only concealing the moon which will shine again another day. It is a season for warm greetings to remind you of the love, so I hope you are cosying up wherever you are.
For those not in the know here is an article discussing Coleshill's status as friskiest in the land, and this discussion on buried elephants. From my research into this month's comic, I note that we may be a sleepy town but that not everything about us is sleepy.
This is a little ahead of schedule print-wise, but if you are proactive enough to check out my site based on last week's Vert I think you deserve a little reward. Note the answers to the crossword. I am all for social and progressive living (see my blog post about Adair Turner who lectures, to paraphrase "after you have what you need the rest is relative wealth and doesn't increase happiness". I am sure we will move on from Capitalism but let us value peace and quiet, natural places, rural enclaves and not go tearing up the land in such a way it will be spoilt forever. Cities are wonderful and human rich places but one big city would be a nightmare. It looks like HS2 may never happen, which would restore our faith in cost benefit analysis and human collective decision making. Also DEFRA is doing a good job with things like farmers 'subsidies for meadow planting. The EU ban on Neonicotinoids is a logical necessity (we need Bees). So the world may not be in PERIL (for now) and yet we still have to play our part, there is always the next episode.
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