“It's crazy, right?” Trixie interrupted. “To love someone who's hurt you?”
“It's crazier to think that someone who hurts you loves you,” Janice replied.
Trixie lifted her mug. The tea was cold now. She held it in a way that blocked her face, so that Janice wouldn't be able to look her in
the eye. If she did, surely she'd see the one last secret Trixie had managed to keep: that after That Night, she hated Jason
. . . but she hated herself more. Because even after what had happened, there was a part of Trixie that still wanted him back.
* * *
From the Letters to the Editor page of the Portland Press Herald:
To the Editors:
We would like to express our shock and anger at the allegations leveled against Jason Underhill. Anyone who knows Jason understands that he doesn't have a violent bone in his body. If rape is a crime of violence and dominance over another person, shouldn't there then be signs of violence?
While Jason's life has been brought to a screeching halt, the so-called victim in this case continues to walk around undeterred. While Jason is being redrawn as a monster, this victim is seemingly absent of the symptoms associated with a sexual assault. Might this not be a rape after all... but a case of a young girl's remorse after making a decision she wished she hadn't?
If the town of Bethel was to pass judgment on this case, Jason Underhill would surely be found innocent.
Sincerely,
Thirteen anonymous educators from Bethel H.S and fifty-six additional signatories
* * *
Superheroes were born in the minds of people desperate to be resurrected. The first, and arguably the most legendary, arrived in the 1930s, care of Shuster and Siegel, two unemployed, apprehensive Jewish immigrants who couldn't get work at a newspaper. They
imagined a loser who only had to whip off his glasses and step into a
phone booth to morph into a paragon of manliness, a world where the geek got the girl at the end. The public, reeling from the Depression, embraced Superman, who took them away from a bleak reality.
Daniel's first comic book had been about leaving, too. It had grown from a Yup'ik story about a hunter who stupidly set out alone and speared a walrus. The hunter knew he couldn't haul it in by himself, yet if he didn't let go of the rope it would drag him down and kill him. The hunter decided to release the line, but his hands had frozen into position and he was pulled underwater. Instead of drowning, though, he sank to the bottom of the sea and became a walrus himself.
Daniel started to draw the comic book at recess one day, after he was kept inside because he'd punched a kid who teased him for his blue eyes. He'd absently picked up a pencil and drew a figure that started in the sea - all flippers and tusks - and evolved toward shore to standing position, gradually developing the arms and legs and face of a man. He drew and he drew, watching his hero break away from his village in a way that Daniel couldn't himself. He couldn't seem to escape these days, either. In the wake of Trixie's rape, Daniel had gotten precious little drawing done. At this point, the only way he would make his deadline was if he stayed awake 24/7 and managed to magically add a few hours to each day. He hadn't called Marvel, though, to break the bad news. Explaining why he had been otherwise occupied would somehow make what had happened to Trixie more concrete.
When the phone rang at seven-thirty A.M., Daniel grabbed for it. Trixie was not going to school today, and Daniel wanted her to stay blessedly unconscious for as long as humanly possible. “You got something to tell me?” the voice on the other end demanded. Daniel broke out in a cold sweat. “Paulie,” he said. “What's up?”
Paulie Goldman was Daniel's longtime editor, and a legend. Known for his ever-present cigar and red bow tie, he'd been a crony of all the great men in the business: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko. These days, he'd be just as likely to be found grabbing a Reuben at his favorite corner deli with Alan Moore, Todd McFarlane, or Neil Caiman.
It had been Paulie who'd jumped all over Daniel's idea to bring a graphic novel back to former comic book fans who were now adults, and to let Daniel not only pencil the art but also write a story line that might appeal to them. He'd gotten Marvel on board, although they were leery at first. Like all publishers, trying something that hadn't been done before was considered anathema unless you succeeded, in which case you were called revolutionary. But given the marketing that Marvel had put behind the Wildclaw series, to miss a deadline would be catastrophic.
“Have you happened to read the latest Lying in the Gutters?” Paulie asked.
He was referring to an online trade gossip column by Rich Johnston. The title was a double entendre - gutters were the spaces between panels, the structure that made a comic illustration a comic illustration. Johnston encouraged “gutterati” to send him scoop to post in his articles, and “guttersnipes” to spread the word across the Internet. With the phone crooked against his shoulder, Daniel pulled up the Web page on his computer and scanned the headlines.
A Story That's Not About Marvel Editorial, he read. The DC Purchase of Flying Pig Comics That Isn't Going to Happen.
You Saw It Here Second: In The Weeds, the new title from Crawl
^^ace, will be drawn by Evan Hohman . . . but the pages are already popping up on eBay.
And on the very bottom: Wildclaw Sheathed?
Daniel leaned toward the screen. I understand that Daniel Stone, Kid of the Moment, has drawn . . . count 'em, folks . . . ZERO pages toward his next Tenth Circle deadline. Was the hype really just a hoax? What good's a great series when there's nothing new to read?
“This is bullshit,” Daniel said. “I've been drawing.”
“How much?”
