Cartoonshow – SEE SAW Comics, Webcomics from the Sequential Artists Workshop

This comic deviates from the others in this collection in that there are six panels on the page rather than three, and they are colored in various shades of yellow and orange. It is titled in block letters, “Nunc Stans.” 1. Derek sits in his beat up armchair, looking ahead at the reader. He rests one ankle over his knee, and holds both hands together under his chin. He is wearing his regular outfit: his number 1 t-shirt, jeans, and heeled boots. There is a large pencil tucked behind his ear. He has a serious expression on his face as he begins his monologue, “Frustratin’ to be stuck in this in-between time, ain’t it? One foot stuck in the mud of how it was. The other with toes outstretched toward the future. No foothold. But temporal escape ain’t real. 2. Derek is drawn twice in this panel. In the first, he is running dramatically, facing the right of the page. He is now gripping the pencil in his left hand as he charges forward, one leg kicked back as high as his waist. He says, “Those are the receipts of hope and nostalgia. They’re unreliable.” We then zoom in a bit closer on Derek, so we just see him from the elbows up. His brows are furrowed now as he continues, “Escapisms that sever you from the now.” 3. Now from slightly behind, we see Derek running still charging forward, now aiming his pencil for a sheet of paper nailed to a post in front of him. His mouth is open wider now, as if he’s talking louder. In the background are lines of smoke and the sounds of explosions: “BAM! POW! BLAM!” Derek continues, “In the time we’re livin’ in, more precise tools are needed: Experience. Faith in your abilities. The synthesis of speed, line, and intention is attainable!” 4. Derek stops running, now standing with his weight leaning backwards, as if stopped suddenly and standing back in fear of something ahead of him. He is leaning against large block letters, stacked vertically the same height as Derek: “BANG! CRASH!” He is looking up, eyes wide and mouth agape. He sweats and lets out a “whoa.” then continues his monologue, “Accept that we won’t win, in the most conventional sense. We have no desire to play the game anyways. Sing, dance, draw, laugh while they fixate on the annihilation of transience.” 5. Derek now leans his weight forward, bending over slightly and huffing out in exhaustion, “Oof.” He grips his pencil in his left hand at his side; his right hand is on his hip. Behind him, loud noises continue: “BAKKA BRAKKA! PYOOM” A line of smoke stretches out diagonally behind him. He says, “Consider sublimation. Less flowers on the brocade. More like handin’ out ice cold water on a hot day to get folks across the finish line. We’re here now. Together. We got this.” 6. From behind, we see Derek standing in front of an easel-like structure, with a paper clipped upright to a clipboard, and two sheets of paper taped below it on a wooden base. He turns his head to the side, looking slightly behind him. Smiling, he says, “The onslaught of normalized passive cruelty will only make us love harder, jerks. LOL! The world is stupid but life can be good. Please keep on makin’ stuff.” In the background is a lone “POW!”

The back cover of the book, rendered in full color: Derek, in a highly exaggerated gesture, runs away from two bullets that are just a couple feet away from his head. He looks back at them nervously, clenching his teeth and gulping. His right arm hangs behind him and he holds a block of Swiss cheese in his hand. His left arm swings in front of him as he holds a sack with a hole ripped at the bottom. He is wearing a variation of his number 1 t-shirt, which is white with green hems around the neck and arms, and a yellow circle in the top left of the shirt with a green number 1 in its center. He wears brown pants and dark gray heeled boots. In the background behind him (to the left of the page) are palm trees with saw palmettos at the base, and a cinder-block building with smoke coming out of its chimney. Above this little scene, in huge yellow block letters, are the words “POW POW!” Below him on the ground are little sparks that skip beneath his feet. Ahead of him (to the right of the panel) is a fence made of two wooden posts and three rows of barbed wire. A piece of bread is suspended in the air above his left arm. Filling the rest of the background are words drawn in red and blue block letters: “FREEZE. POP. KRKKKK! DAD? CLOP” The bottom of the page, in gray text, reads, “Presented by the Sequential Artists Workshop.”

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