Oh no! More political allegory!

I blame this particular piece on an unusual confluence of events: reading Will Eisner's brilliant A Contract with God for the first time, then traveling to the Boston WorldCon while the Republican National Convention was going on. Airports, in case you didn't know, tend to show CNN, which means that on the night we took our 1 am flight out of SeaTac, I was trying to take a nap while some angry Republican yelled at me from the television set.

(Digression: I have since figured out that the angry Republican was probably actually angry nominal Democrat Zell Miller, which means the speech wasn't live unless he was giving it at 4 in the morning New York Time. One thing I don't get about Republicans is why they are so angry all the time. I mean, Zell is probably angry because he's old, but the others? e Inexplicable. "I'm a wealthy white male! I have lots of money and my own talk show! That really pisses me off!" Yeah, okay. I bet you hate kittens and ice cream, too.

I an reminded of a cartoon drawn by David Lynch that I saw a couple of times, The Angriest Dog in the World. He's so angry he can't even move, just strains at the end of his leash growling for all eternity...)

(Another digression: Thanks to the brilliant economic insights of relentlessly cheery but at least not so weirdly angry Republican Arnold Shwarzennager, I know that I am no longer unemployed. I am an "economic girlie-man." Gee, thanks for the tip Arnie. Can I cash that check for rent?)

So, after a few days of the science fiction convention and tidbits of the Republican convention and weird sleep patterns, I had a dream in which the last four years played out like one of the stories from A Contract with God, with tenements and everything, where a beautiful socialite named Mary was romanced by a guy named George (he's a bum, I tell ya!).

(Sometimes I have remarkably specific dreams.)

I started trying to sketch it out, and it seemed to work, so here is the first part.

I hope to conclude it before the election, which just so happens to be on the Day of the Dead, November 2, this year.