Fear, Absurdity and Doubt

I remembered reading a copy of a Fantagraphics magazine (Amazing Heroes) of my sister the editor. It was the issue with the Toren Smith interview with Takahashi Rumiko from 1990. In that issue was a review of a horror comic which depicted a half-skull beheading is such graphic detail that the reviewer cried out in print oh, man, I got to live with other people! or something like that. I found another comic at Von’s (original from the mid-2000's, sequel still ongoing) with the same kind of graphic detail, and for the first time in years I was freaked out.

Which is what a horror comic is supposed to do.

Then I remembered such a world would not last six months. The same kind of apeling, who would pull out all the control rods in a nuclear power plant — oh, and such plants do not explode like A-bombs, they just spew geysers of radiation when the core hits the water table, like what happened at Chernobyl — could also push all the buttons that launch every nuclear-tipped missile in both North America and Eurasia. Technology would cure that plague — and ensure that, without hosts, it would never strike again.

Besides, there are people out there who do not need a plague to be at their most evil. Prisons are full of them. So are some religious sects. So are corporate offices. And so are high offices of some countries — and a certain city-state controlled by a religious sect.