"The Deal" written by Gerardo Preciado and drawn by Daniel Bayliss in a fanfiction based on DC's Batman and if you know anything about the Batman legacy, it will have you balling within the first few panels.
No spoilers but this particular panel makes a stitch in my chest.
For me, as I'm sure with many others, Batman was my introduction to comics. I distinctly remember my brother giving me a copy of a collection of the first Bob Cane issues of Batman. It ran from the very first issues all the way to the 1980s.
Those panels are more vivid in my mind then most memories. I remember one issue where Batman and Robin were captured by Catwoman and taken to her secret island hideout, full of tropical flora and genetically modified big cats, all of them at Catwoman's beck and call.
I guess it stood out to me too because she had stripped them of everything but their masks (awfully nice // convenient of her) leaving them to run around her pesduo-jungle in loin clothes. And you know, this being the early 90's, before smartphones and rampant internet, this was the closest I got to porn, I guess.
Hormones aside, I loved these stories. They are a huge part of my childhood, and helped shape who I am today. Without them I wouldn't have continued my interest, moved on to Sam Keith's The Maxx
I love you Maxx
Or Jhonen Vasquez's spooky creations, JTHM, SQUEE, I feel Sick, and most recently Invader Zim.
If you look into these stories, you could probably figure out a few things about me. Psycho analysis aside though, I gravitated to these writings // characters, to these stories because they gave me something. And now I'm not even sure what that was.
I feel like they showed us this unrelenting darkness that does exist. For the first time, someone was talking to me like an adult, someone spoke to me without flinching at the "not so pretty" details of life. It was honesty and I clung to it.
Life hurts. None of these writings denied that, rather to opposite it exclaimed it. Illustrated all the ways one can hurt and could hurt. These works are like watching an exorcism, and after the smoke cleared, the blood was washed away, and the sun rose once more, I felt clean.
Why am I telling you all this?
So you realize how important these stories are to me // lots of us. They're a part of my childhood, the part that helped me deal with a scary world, the part that helped me grow up and not be scared ( at least some of the time )
"The Deal" is a schizophrenic, blood-stained love letter.
Using violence and graphic images to shock us with so much hurt and ugliness we come out the other side into nothing but beauty and love.
But that's what life does to us too.
We go through this meat grinder of bills, worry, taxes, death and struggle. Building up the drama and tearing down resolve. Until life breaks us down to the point where we can't fight anymore and have nothing left but wonderfully still acceptance.
A blissfully soft understanding that nothing matters, and that everything matters.
"And we can explore space together, both inner and outer...forever."
- Bill Hicks
[shea]
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