Comic for Monday September 8th, 2003

I don't know what I was thinking really. I hope this makes up for last week's lack of real comics, but I think I went a little overboard with this one. I was hoping to make Spirit 50 the big one, but it might be cut short due to the time it took me to make 49. Ah well such is the way with life I suppose. Maybe it won't be as bad considering I got all those annoying words used up in this one. Don't you love those comics that web cartoonists throw up that contain almost double the amount of words in a "here's the big explanation comic"?

Anyway nothing really happened over the course of the last few days. At least nothing worth mentioning here. I have been playing the new Madden a lot. I've decided on using the Cincinnati Bengals and am currently 5-4 with them. Not too bad I say.

Speaking of football, I got my ass handed to me in Fantasy Football this week. I've won my last two season openers and to lose in such a fashion this year does not bode well. It was a train wreck. None of my players scored a touchdown and Tom F'in Brady came in with a spectacular -4 point performance. I so hate that guy. That ring shoulda been Bledsoe's. I'm hoping this week was a fluke. I think I cursed myself by passing on Tommy Maddox and selecting Jake Plummer. I've told everyone I know about my misgivings and it's proven to come true in nightmarish fashion.

How about those Texans? F the Dolphins. If they couldn't win the Super Bowl when Mr. Marino was taking the snaps, then they will never win one.

So back to Spirit 49. Lots of things going on here. J Elvis has a name and it is Vase Holystar. It continues my tradition of just picking random household items or words to use as names. Some people have raised the question as to why Vase's hair is blond if he is Japanese. it all goes back to the tradition of the youth of Japan dyeing their hair. When the whole country is filled with people with dark brown or black hair, people go to drastic measures to be different. vase is simply following the time honored traditions of the disgruntles J Youth.

The second point being made here is the whole condensed version of what the cosmos is like in the whole Ninja Spirit world. It allows for all religions to remain intact, but sums it all up nicely in one of the main themes I want for this story and that is that all people regardless of religion are still a part of humankind. or you can look at it as being that humans are so damn stubborn and headstrong to cling to their beliefs, that those beliefs follow them into the afterlife.

Either way you can see that all good souls travel to this pseudo Heaven where they join the greater force of "good" or creation. The bad souls all travel to this pseudo Hell where Amatsu Mikaboshi commands over them to continue the greater machine of atrophy. Souls retain their self, but their energy is absorbed back into the general cosmos.

I believe in such things personally and while I have simplified and modified my beliefs of the afterlife for the sake of artistic merit, I will not bog down the plot with further incantations of my ideals.

I think Vase does make another point in saying that it is humans who are disrupting the balance since humans alone make up the realm of "hell". Evil and destruction are not really a part of any other natural life form excepting fungi and other decomposers. So conversely heaven is filled with all the animals and plants after they die. A lovely thought.

Of course 49 ends with a bit of a cliffhanger since what is supposed to be a vision suddenly becomes rather real to Joe. Is he feeling the flames of hell? Did Vase trick him? And what the hell is "the spiral"? I swear that while 50 may not be as big, it will be filled with a hell of a lot resolution of questions as well as a return to action!!

River working like a JRT.