Hysteron Proteron: A Fantafascist Comic: November 2007

Project Synopsis

Hysteron Proteron by Kate R. Thomas and James Wood

hysteron proteron n. inversion of natural order or sense, especially of words or a figure of speech in which an idea is placed first when it actually occurs last in time…

Synopsis of Issue #1. (there will be four installments)

Each issue is made up of two sections. The first deals with Rita, Janine, Danny, Tom, Violet and Ernest Hemingway. The second deals with a narrator telling a story on footage with the London setting shown on CCTV stills. Both revolve around humanity harnessing the Other energy. There is a reason the sections are collated together, but this reason is not given until the last page of the last issue.

We begin with a young woman, Janine, staring up at the ceiling. Frustrated by a water spot she sees there, she seeks out her housemate, Rita, who informs her that nothing can be done and to basically deal with it. They irritate each other. They make up and Janine makes fun of Rita dancing to David Bowie, while Rita returns the favor by mocking Janine’s lack of decent clothing.

Then a church bell rings, and we fly through the sky by unknown means until we reach Danny the bell-ringing monk. He is soon met by his lover Tom. They are soon met by a PopeMobile. Tom flees and Danny is taken by the PopeMobile (a small flying vehicle) for gender re-assignment. Screams are heard across the road and we fly back to Rita and Janine.

Rita has screamed because a ghost has come to get her. Janine comes in, running after the apparition and swatting at it with the book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Hemingway. The PopeMobile arrives and Janine drops the book. It turns out that the ghost is named Violet and has been given a permit to haunt Rita to aid in her recent gender re-assignment three days previously. She had been named Ricardo, but neither Rita/Ricardo nor Janine remember any of this. Janine makes fun of ‘Ritardo’, as usual. At this point Ernest Hemingway’s ghost pops out of his book and…Tom comes rushing in, having followed the PopeMobile. He has run because he is the head of the local chapter of GO!, Gay is Okay!, and not a garbage man like he has led Danny to believe. He takes Janine hostage and runs outside to shoot at the PopeMobile from underneath. It crashes. There are various more happenings including the eating of fish fingers and the revelation that Hemingway is only the ghost of that particular book, and all his cryptic instructions have been sentences from said book.

The characters repeatedly swat at a small flying object flittering around them as they run around in panties and fight PopeMobiles. The reader doesn’t know what this object is, but somehow the characters are being followed and filmed.

A heady mixture of religion in politics may have worked out ok for some Monarchies in the middle ages and the occasional republican but many of the worlds problems seem to be caused by arguments between church and legislature over who is responsible for keeping the weeds in check along the border in their respective gardens. Horticultural analogies aside both sections of Hysteron Proteron imagine a society where religion and politics are not only both weeding the garden, they are salting the earth afterwards.

The second part of the story uses footage from mounted CCTV cameras, archives, and photos. It begins with our narrator telling the story of the day everything changed. It is the day of the second coming. The narrator goes back to lead us up to this day and beyond. It is a dark path, full of scratchy paranoia. TV has been replaced by the internet which is now heavily regulated and censored according to taste. A person who buys Catholic Broadband will hear nothing of Jesus’ children. Our Narrator works for an Internet Regulator. He sifts through articles and deletes, corrects, or adds where necessary according to requirements.

He is drawn into a series of interconnecting events leading up to and past the second coming and the potential end of Mankind.

The two stories exist in two very different worlds and two very different styles but they essentially deal with an exaggerated vision of our reality. As the plot is revealed the two stories become closer without touching. Like staring along railway tracks.

Hysteron Proteron: A Fantafascist Comic

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Hysteron Proteron, Issue 1

Project Synopsis

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