(DIR) Hitori Dake no Renga - The Literate Anti-Comic
(DIR) Floodgap Gopher Fun and Games
Hitori Dake no Renga - A Plague Diary (42)
Image:
(IMG) panel-42.jpg
"The doctor recalled the plague of Constantinopole which,
according to Procopius, claimed ten thousand victims in one day.
Ten thousand dead equals five times the audience in a large
cinema. That's what you should do. You should get all the people
coming out of five cinemas, take them into a square in the town
and make them die in a heap; then you would grasp it better." --
Albert Camus, The Plague
This panel started as an enlargement from Gray's Anatomy that I
was doing for something else, but misapplied a solarize filter
after colourizing it, yielding the decayed and almost nauseating
look of the lungs. The effect was so striking that I pulled it
into an HDNR panel template, struck the solarized page white and
replaced it with an ethereal cyan fog, and then added the tainted
phlegm dripping from the bronchi with a paintbrush and some dodge
tools.
Plague diaries make morbidly fascinating observations on
humanity, for nothing is more visceral than a dangerous and
contagious disease (I should know, as part of my day job involves
working with active tuberculosis cases) and nothing destroys
human relationships more than knowing that anyone, anyone, could
be the carrier of your doom. The modern media constantly whips
the populace into a frenzy over the next big pandemic, yet in
this modern age we cannot conceive of and will probably never see
again something as impassively genocidal as the Plagues of the
early Renaissance or even the flu pandemic of the early 20th
century. Instead, we have all new reasons to fear our neighbours.
Copyright 2009 Cameron Kaiser except noted. All rights reserved.
(TXT) What on earth is Hitori Dake no Renga? (FAQ)
(HTM) Hitori Dake no Renga Web version
Previous:
(DIR) Hitori Dake no Renga - I Don't Know What I'm Doing (41)
Next:
(DIR) Hitori Dake no Renga - Psalm 156, An Exercise in Perl Poetry (43)