How did I ever get this page done?  It mystifies me, I have to admit.  I was basically working solid until Saturday morning, then out all Saturday afternoon and evening… somehow, it got done!  Weird.

So, anyhow, yes!  Here we are.  With the tension breaking in both of the parallel scenes.  You can probably see now why I have been intercutting the two – astute observers will notice that this page and the last one make up a single spread, so the big “moment” is happening at the same time.  Well, anyway, I thought it was clever. But what the hell do I know?

It’s a bit odd to be writing a comic about nuclear war when we seem to be on the verge of one right now, if the media/propaganda machines worldwide are to be believed.  The North Koreans are currently threatening to use the Bomb against us Americans, though Christ alone knows what we did to them THIS time, aside from asking them not to do that.  And, yes, the sanctions thing, but I mean, come on.  The North Koreans have been imposing sanctions on their own people for sixty years, now, so I mean, what the hell?  My rational side tells me that this is all just the outward signs of a bizarre internal political dance that always happens in totalitarian dictatorships when there’s a change in power, but good God, guys, can you solve your problems without threatening us with the Bomb?  Seriously.

It only really came to my mind because I happen also this week to have watched a documentary (while I was working, actually – a rare multitasking moment) on the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, which is basically as close as we’ve come to knowing what the aftermath of a widespread modern nuclear war would be like: a total ecological and human catastrophe. Which is, of course, to say nothing of the disastrous way that World War II was brought to an end in Japan.  So to think that threatening that kind of destruction is such an offhanded thing, as some kind of internal political ploy, really makes me sick at heart.

But anyway, enough rambling.  War or no war, life goes on, and I have a job to get to in the morning.  See you next week, folks!