Fluctuation!

The Crab eats its way out of its shell

I found myself wandering along the coastline of Montana de Oro in the Year of Last. This happened during my first trip to California. Whilst on the beaches, I had a vision of finding a talking Crab who prophesied that I should "take it to the Mountain". Once up there, I would come across a grove of singing eucalyptus trees that would give me further instruction. It stopped there...and I was obviously not going to investigate the preposterous and utterly fantastic ramblings of my brain. I recognize imagination when I see it. I am usually neck deep in it.
So I took that basic premise and decided to turn it into a short comic. Four pages max. Well, it's funny how some of my comics seem to grow in size rather rapidly. Before long, two simple ideas expanded into ten and so on. Now, it will be a graphic novel. The story is practically written...in my mind. It's all there: beginning, middle, end, characters, new title, places, and scene studies. Everything except for words. No notes to speak of.
The page you see in this post is the very first, and quickly rejected, page out of this conceptual graphic novel. Some of you have seen the more proper test panel, which I will not post here because of content (it's an orgy)...and also because too many people have seen it. The showing was premature, but the reception has been excellent. I fear its approval has damaged me. Regardless, I give you the first and only panel of The Crab, as it was originally intended.

- Chew

I cut my flesh on the Maggot Farm

Oh yeah. This reflected my state of mind at the time. I would put its inception past the turn of the century. It was a dark time for many of us in those days. Specifics need not be addressed. Individual phrases within the page summon the moods and themes of it all: I Eat My Flesh, Sac of Organs, The Flayed One, The Black Spectre, Maggot Mouth...and, of course, the two phrases that make up the title of this post. Bleak, bleak, bleak! This is THE most dismal page out of the whole sketchbook.

One interesting note....the Black Spectre in the lower right hand corner of the page is a figure that kept showing up in various people's lives in the 1990's.
Several of my relatives have seen some in their house in Ohio. A former tenant of this same house moved to Oklahoma to escape it. One day she walked into her kitchen and saw it standing there. I once dated a girl who saw one with three friends on Pine Mountain one stormy night. She said it was blacker than black. Darker than the night. A deep pitch where absolutely no light was able to penetrate. I, myself, saw one with my best friend outside his neighbor's apartment back in the day. It saw us and quickly jumped behind a beam. We looked for it, but it had vanished.
What was it? Some people have said it was a ghost. Others, imagination. The research that I have done points to these things being called "Shadow People". They seem to exist in a little known group all unto itself. What they are, might be, and if they really exist is open to speculation (except for skeptics).
The most interesting thing about them to me, besides how weird the whole thing is, is that they have been seen by several people at the same time....multiple witnesses...

- Chew