Drawing Out The Pain
Art from Agrippa (Young Agrippa)
When I become too far off in the grips of emotional turmoil, I experience a strange form of writer’s block where it’s not impossible to write – just painful to do so – and I mean in a “I feel stomach acid erupting like a tiny volcano or geyser of batter fluid in my chest, and it feels like that creature from aliens is about to launch out of the middle of my chest” kind of literal, physical pain.
Fortunately, when I get upset like that – erm, and by that, I mean “this” – I am able to draw quite easily. Drawing and painting are, in fact, a sort of calming, meditative exercises at times like this. Which is good news for fans of the “Agrippa” comic strip.. because I am in fact currently drawing my chubby little ass off.
It’s looking like another 5 or 6 pages of the comic, which is adapted from a short story of the same name from my book “Things That Go Bump In My Head”, will be posted sometime tonight or tomorrow.
““Agrippa” is a dystopic near-future tale that takes place in an unnamed industrialized nation very much like the United States. When foreign creditors demand that the nation repay its considerable international debt or face war it enacts the Dulcetta Reforms, ultra-restrictive laws establishing debtor’s prison, and causing a large number of people – many of them seniors – to go to jail or even face execution if not continuously working to pay off their personal debts to the government. Dr. Tine, an expert in geriatric medicine, is desperately searching for employment at the beginning of our tale, having lost her useful functioning in society as the elders she once treated were rounded up and hauled off to the prison camps. Things were so bad she didn’t think they could possibly get any worse. How very wrong she was.”
You can follow Agrippa on Drunk Duck, here…
Sumiko Saulson 