Friday, April 22nd. We’re four months into 2022. Welcome to the latest newsletter.

Some slight rain is predicted here in the Seattle area. It usually doesn’t pour when it rains. It tends to come down in a heavy mist or a light sprinkle. My route has enough apartment buildings and mounted sections that, even when it does down in buckets, I have occasional respites from the deluge. If you have to be out today, hopefully you’ll stay dry.

This week will be a detour from my usual format.

Shots Fired was “A Comics Anthology Helping the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Community Justice Reform Coalition to End Gun Violence in the US”. It was kickstarted and funded back in early 2019. Neither Sarah nor I were invited to contribute when the book was first being put together. We don’t feel any slight about that. Neither of us has been visibly active in the comics industry in decades.

After the book was funded some of the folks who had originally offered to contribute started dropping out and the then editor went looking for replacements. In October of 2019 a mutual friend suggested us to him and we agreed to put together a four page story. Sarah wrote it. I drew it. The editor told us that he would find someone else to color and letter it.

I am kind of gun rights neutral. I’m pro responsibility – both for individuals and from society. Guns are tools. They can be used for good or for evil or just for target practice. Too many idiots want freedom from responsibility – in just about everything. I believe that the forces of greed and irresponsibility should be balanced by organizations that are not motivated by profit. Contributing to this book was a small attempt to balance an unbalanced system.

In mid-February of this year the organizer of the book wrote all the contributors to let us know that the book would not be published. Too many problems had happened in the world, behind the scenes and in his life for him to make it happen. He was offering backers refunds or to contibute their funds directly to the charities the book was intended to benefit. He asked the contributors if they would be willing to have our stories shared with the backers of the book. Sarah and I said yes.

At this point, everyone who backed the book should have seen the story. We have no plans to try to publish elsewhere. So I’m sharing it with y’all. Sort of. As far as I can tell, no one colored or lettered the story. I don’t have it in me to take on either of those tasks so you’re getting the story up to the final black and white inks. Since this is my works-in-progress newsletter I’m sharing the process of creating the story as much as I’m sharing the story – script, thumbnails, rough pencils, inks. Hopefully it’s still readable this way.

Cold, Dead Fingers

Shots Fired anthology

Script: Sarah Byam

Art: David Lee Ingersoll

Colors:

Letters:

 

PAGE 1

 

Panels 1, 2, and 3 fall in a row across the top of the page.

 

Panel 1: Close up of a phone in hand, dial is ringing 911. 

 

1 CAPTION: I know what you are thinking, why didn’t she call for help?

 

2 PHONE (elec): 911, what’s your emergency?

 

Panel 2: Close up of a woman’s lips speaking into the phone

 

3 CAPTION: She called churches, friends, dshs, even the police.

 

4 MOTHER: Please help.

 

5 CAPTION: Help did not arrive.

 

Panel 3: Close up of a fist making contact with her face. Tooth flying if possible.

 

6 CAPTION: Laws favor abused women…

 

7 CAPTION: …but enforcement is not…consistent.

 

Panel 4: Large panel which takes up approximately ¾ of the page, artist decides. A man holding a shotgun on his wife, who has a black eye and bruises, his son age 5 and his daughter age 7, points, indicating they are to climb the stairs to the second level of the house. The mother is shielding the kids as they make their way upstairs. The man is tall and lanky, with a beer pudge. The mother is small and frail. Empty beer and vodka bottles on the floor around the father. 

 

8 FATHER: Don’t you get it, woman? 

 

9 FATHER: You are my skinny-ass cow!

 

10 FATHER: Go! Up–the lot of you, before you are just so much dead meat. 

 

11 MOTHER (whisper): Quick, like a bunny, Ryan, Adrienne.

 

12 MOTHER: Quick, quick.

 

13 TITLE & CREDITS::

Cold Dead Fingers

Credits: Writer Sarah Byam

Art: David Lee Ingersoll

Letters: David Lee Ingersoll

PAGE 2

Panel 1:  The mother and son standing by the bathroom, son in the classic “I gotta pee” stance.

 

Caption: The upstairs bathroom didn’t work By day one it was stenchy. 

 

Panel 2: The daughter coming out of the bathroom. Shoulders hunched over.

 

Caption: Abusers know that shame will keep you down.

 

Dialogue – Daughter: Crap Crap Crap! Son of a grass fed bull!

 

Panel 3 / 4 / 5 ?

 

I want to show the mother trying to soothe the children, the boy is crying.  The girl is sitting with crossed arms, then we circle to a close up of the little girl’s fist. 

 

Caption: My mother’s ashamed, my brother is terrified.

 

Caption: I ‘m tired of shame. 

 

Caption: When he wasn’t drunk –

 

Caption: He called me his good  little girl.

 

Caption: Ha, Nature or Nurture? 

 

PAGE 3

 

Panel 1: The daughter closes the bedroom door on her sleeping mother and brother.

 

Caption: I knew I was going to kill him. 

 

Panel 2: The daughter sneaking downstairs. 

 

SFX: sqk sqk (the stairs creek)

 

Panel 3: The daughter pulls on a couple of dishwashing gloves.

 

Caption: He burned all the soft places out of me.

 

Panel 4: The father has passed out, head resting on the barrel end of the gun.

 

Caption:Now I felt just like he acted.

 

Panel 5: The daughter lifts the butt end.

 

Dialogue – Father: Wha?

 

Panel 6: Blood spattered black out.

 

Dialogue – daughter: Nite nite, jackass.

 

PAGE 4

 

Panel 1 , 2 and 3  rub across the top of the page.

 

Panel 1: Daughter’s hands wrapping father’s fingers around the gun.

 

Caption:  No one would suspect me, a little 8 year old girl.

 

Panel 2: Gloves flipped into the kitchen sink. Water and soap flowing on them

 

Dialogue – daughter: Mom, you can come down now.

 

Dialogue – daughter: You’re safe

 

Panel 3: Mother and son, cringing at the edge of the stairs as they come down.

 

Dialogue – Daughter: From him.  

 

Dialogue – Mother: Oh my god, Adrienne,  what have you done?

 

Panel 4: Large image. The daughter is sitting on the porch stairs, with a  smoking cigarette in one hand, holding the phone with the other.

 

Phone: 911, what’s your emergency?

 

Dialogue – daughter: Yes, I’d like to report a gun accident.

 

Caption: I knew now that I could trust guns more than people. 

 

Caption: And my daddy just left me a whole garage full of new toys.

 

Caption: So you can have my guns when you take them from my cold dead fingers.

 

Caption: Until then, I’ve got some bullies I wanna talk to….

Thank you for reading!

See you next week!