1-17 - Ashes
Monday, March 5th, 2007- Commentary -
J.D.: Wow. Not a whole lot you can say about this one that the imagery doesn’t say for itself.
Craig: It was hard to draw this. I took the background from page i and then looked at it and destroyed it in my mind with fire. When I was a child, we had a fire in my garage. It destroyed everything in it. Most of my toys were twisted, molten hunks of plastic. It was very sad. Drawing this page, I was able to draw on my memories of looking at the charred heaps of clothes and toys and books and shelves, and try to render the sense of loss I felt.
J.D.: I actually had a fire happen in my room. I nearly lost a lot of my comic book collection that way, but I was able to put part of it out while I called for help and my dad brought up a fire extinguisher to finish the job before anything really important caught fire apart from our computer.
Craig: Your computer caught fire?
J.D.: Yeah. There was a plastic cover on it to keep the dust off when we weren’t using it, and that kind of melted onto it; combine that with the fire extinguisher foam, and — goodbye, computer. It’s a good thing I had been painting when the fire started. I had just gone to get some fresh water and was able to throw it on the desk part of the blaze.
Craig: I think Tara is one the most interesting characters in the whole story. She hasn’t even had any lines yet, but her… pain… is compelling. Each thing she learns drives her harder to discover what really happened to her grandfather.
J.D.: Let us hope she has the wisdom to discern the appropriate reaction when the time comes.