Tehura Tries Comics
1994, by Chris Wayan; a dream-inspired comic drawn in pencil & tinted digitally
I dreamed that a sphinx artist visited humanity and drew the crazy natives. I saw her sketchbook, which was round--she used circles where we use boxes!
When I woke, I copied and translated her sketchbook, as well as I could remember it.
This is one sample page from the resulting comic book.
Here Tehura plays with our absurd idea of linear time, as epitomized by our comic strips. Panel by panel, she teases us, half in English, half in her native glyphs (translation below image):
"...our sacred flow of time/life, into cramped rows of boxed scenes creeping left to the right--only to snap back like a nagging cough!" (Here Tehura's own line of panels snaps back for the first time. She apparently finds this grid of squarish panels so unnatural she needs to explain it to Sphinxian readers)
"Human time*'s a line or a silly grid--never ANY of time*'s other stances:" (and suddenly Tehura starts acting out her examples)
"A sine to follow" (with this lame pun, she kinks her tail into a sine wave and stares at it cross-eyed)
"Some times* time* flies" (as she spreads her wings)
"Time* seems like a playful friend" (as a kitten paws at her hair)
"A parabolic pounce, like the leap and fall of human empires" (and she can't resist acting out the pounce)
"A come-hither catenary curve" (and she concaves her back as if she's a suspension bridge... or in heat)
"Or time* stands still" (as one hind paw stays in the old panel)
"Or time* trails away" (as her tail coils round the panel-borders, infiltrating three timezones)
"Or life*'s a spiral, uncoiling" (as Tehura curls and stretches sexily on her back, turning herself into a logarithmic spiral)
"I'm getting TIRED of all these WALLS!"
But then, really... aren't we all?
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