Sunday Comic #39 (Everybody at once again)

Here’s a bunch of comics, including a My Birthday Vermice Comic by Conor, two “Mundane Fantasy”   comics by Tom and Dad, and a last-weeks-theme Randy comic by Donald.

I recommend right clicking and opening in new tabs. I’m tired so I ain’t doin’ links to that typa thang.

Barry’s workin’ on something. Let’s see if he gets it done.
It’s got gray and yellow, there’s a building on it.

Sunday Comics # 38 (Everybody in one post)

This week Dad was making some overly general comics with overly general feelings in them, and so I was all like, “You got to be specific, dad. You know, like, ‘Once there was a dude named Randy with one left foot.'” Then Laura says, “One left foot doesn’t sound very specific to me…” (all smart-alecky) and so I clarify, ” and no right foot.” At this point humor has been created and we all yuck it up and decide that we will all write comics with the following opening panels:
1. Once there was a dude named Randy, with one left foot
2. And no right foot

Behold, nonexistent audience, the fruits of our “labors” :

*Donald made one too, I’ll add it when I find it.

The Furious Story. Part Seven: "Awakening"

For some time, the schoolteacher just sat in the darkness and drank his whiskey. Not a sound could be heard in the cottage – even the usual chirping of crickets and tree frogs was absent. It was as though the story had absorbed all sound and light in his anger. 
The schoolteacher felt the story’s rage through the silence and his mind began to burn with a fever sparked by fear and fueled by alcohol.
The teacher decided to break the silence and end his torment. He reached for the candle and matches, intending to burn the journal and purge the story from his life. But in the darkness, he knocked the candle dish off the table and it crashed to the floor, shattering.  As he bent down to pick it up, the teacher struck his head on the table and fell to the floor in a drunken stupor, cutting his arm on the broken candle dish. As he laid motionless in the darkness, he could feel the warm blood trickle down his shirt. And now, though his eyes remained open, he fell out of consciousness into a delirious hypnotic state.
The schoolteacher began to see the stories of his life, as if projected on the walls of the darkened room. He heard voices of friends and foe, strangers and loved ones.
The teacher trembled recalling the cruelties of childhood – malicious name-calling and schoolyard fights. He felt the pain of humiliation and betrayal and could see the faces of his attackers – images that had long since been locked away. 
Along with painful moments, the schoolteacher experienced the unexpected joys of his past. The kind words of a stranger. The soft touch of his mother’s hand. The warmth of friends and encouragement of family. The teacher lay suspended between sleep and wakefulness all night, as his hallucinations raged on filled with both pain and pleasure.
As the first light of dawn finally began to pierce the oppressive darkness, the schoolteacher began to wake from his trance. Wiping off cold sweat and dried blood, he rolled over on the floor. 
The schoolteacher was weak and sick to his stomach from fever and drink, but he pulled himself up and sat at the table. Still feeling the echoes of the stories of his life, he was overcome with emotion and tears streamed down his cheeks. He reached for his pen and slowly opened the journal, fearful of what he might find inside. 
As he opened to the blackened page, the characters that filled the sheet began to fade away, one-by-one, until the page was clean and white. By now the sun had risen over the horizon giving the paper a warm glow. The teacher took his pen and began to write:
Once, at a very special moment in time, in a magical land, lived a remarkable person, and he was a…
…schoolteacher.
There was no interruption, no response at all from the story, so the schoolteacher continued:
And the magical land he lived in was a beautiful forest, filled with flowers and plants, birds and beasts. And the very special moment in time was now. 
Again there was no response from the story, but the schoolteacher had a feeling of confidence and purpose, so he continued to write, and he did so every day, until he finished the story, and the next one, and the next one.
And the stories, like the pages of his journal, were filled with more light than dark.
The end.

The Furious Story. Part Six: "Darkness"

The schoolteacher carefully buried the bird beneath the rock and stomped back into the house, flinging open the journal and tightly clenching his pen. “You want me to write what I know?” Said the schoolteacher to the story. “Then you shall have it!” And with this he began to write:

Once, at a very special moment in time, in a magical land, lived a remarkable animal, a noble bird that fought for his freedom and died in the battle. 
Then he drew a picture of the bird, an accurate portrayal, only more regal in stature with a purposeful gaze. 
But as he finished the drawing, he saw the story’s words again appear on the page, only this time the characters formed softly, in a shade of grey, not black. The schoolteacher sensed more disappointment than anger as he read the words: “This is not a story about a bird.”
“Oh yes it is!” Said the schoolteacher. “This bird’s life inspires me.”
“What do you know of the bird’s life?” Wrote the story. 
“I know it well,” said the teacher, “he sought comfort and warmth in the shelter of this house, but found only confinement.” And now the bird in the drawing lowered his head in sadness as the schoolteacher continued.”
“He fought for his freedom, but he was blind to the only means of achieving it. He chose death above imprisonment.” And with this, the bird in the drawing lay down and closed his eyes.
“Interesting.” Wrote the story. “Perhaps a fitting analogy, but this is NOT your story. It is a handful of sentences at most, representing a few moments in time, a fragment of a day, not an entire life.” Wrote the story. 
“Do you suggest you know what motivated that bird to enter the house?” Wrote the story more angrily.
“Perhaps it was the search for food that drove him, not comfort. Perhaps he did not seek escape, because he had not yet found what he came for; a few morsels of bread to take back to his offspring, now starving in the hollow of a tree!” The story continued in a furious tone as a drawing of baby birds in a nest appeared on the page. 
“Perhaps it was duty, not freedom that took his life. How do you know you haven’t trivialized his labors – cheapened his life – by suggesting he sought only comfort and freedom! Do you think him so shallow that his only motivation was to serve himself?” The story angrily continued.
“And why do you see the beasts of burden you muse about as slaves and not heroes.” Continued the story, now changing the subject from the bird, whose image faded from the page. “Do they not willingly accept the yoke? Their labor is not without purpose – they plow the earth so that we may make bread!”
“STOP this torment!” Said the schoolteacher, taking a long drink from the dark bottle. The room had now darkened with nightfall, illuminated only by a single candle that cast the pages of the journal in a warm brown. 
“I am weary of your harassment.” The schoolteacher slurred. “This is MY story, NOT yours!”
As he looked at the book, the schoolteacher saw his own words form on the page. “This is MY story!” The story wrote in large, angry letters. And then letters of all sizes formed on every part of the page. They glided across the parchment in chaos. Letters. Numbers. Punctuation too. Periods and semicolons blasted through the letters like shrapnel as the page continued to darken with an angry, swirling mass of characters and symbols. The candle flickered as a dreadful gloom filled the room. And soon the letters filled every empty space. And the page was black.
And then the journal slammed shut so hard that the blast of air blew out the candle, leaving the schoolteacher alone in the darkness.

The Furious Story. Part Five: "He was Gone"

Things had become very difficult for the schoolteacher. 
He left his job at the school and came to this refuge in the woods to be free. 
He loved teaching, but as the years wore on his shoulders slumped from the constant pressures of working to serve too many masters and conforming to the expectations of those he worked for and with. He felt like a beast of burden, restrained by an invisible bridle made not of leather but of words – commands and criticisms.
In this hidden place, he hoped to be his own master, but now it appeared he was again enslaved. The story had become his master, with its own set of commands and criticisms. Only these demands were more burdensome, because he could find no argument against them. The critiques, he felt, were pushing him toward some unseen end – a destination he both welcomed and feared.
And so, when the story angrily shut him off, he turned to the same comfort sought by many writers and artists before him; a bottle of amber liquid – a fifth of a gallon, eighty proof.
The schoolteacher drank until he could no longer hear his own thoughts and then he slept deeply and late into the afternoon. When he awoke, he was greeted by the sound of hammering. He turned his head slowly to the noise and witnessed a most unusual sight. A large bird, mostly white and black with a flaming red crest, clung to the side of a kitchen shelf and hammered on the nearby window. And though his pecking was forceful and loud, he could not break the glass. 
“What brings you here?” The schoolteacher asked. “And how did you get in?” As far as the schoolteacher could tell, all the doors and windows were closed and had been so through the night.
Of course the bird did not answer, he just continued his work and paid no notice the man who sat just a few feet away. 
“So you seek your freedom?” Said the schoolteacher. “Then you shall have it.” And with that, the schoolteacher reached past the bird and threw open the window. But the sudden movement alarmed the bird and he flew off into the next room. When he came to rest, he began hammering on a bookcase with the same persistence he applied to the window, but with seemingly no purpose, since the bookcase was situated near the center of the room and penetrating it would not aid the bird’s escape. 
Observing this, the schoolteacher felt a wave of sorrow come over him and he determined to set the bird free. He began chasing it around the house in the hopes of guiding him toward the open window, but, instead of calmly surveying the situation and pursuing the path to escape that was set before him, the bird became frantic in his behavior, pounding harder and faster on whatever piece of furniture he happened upon, until finally, the trauma of his own panicked labors overcame him and he dropped to the floor. 
The schoolteacher ran to the bird, cradled his body and rushed him outside where he laid him on a stone, free to fly away. But the bird did not fly, or open his eyes, or move a muscle. He was gone. And now the schoolteacher sat and sobbed. His head pounding from last night’s drink, and his thoughts, dark and stormy.