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Devolution the Column
Introduction to Issue 3
By Matt Yocum
Published: 2008-05-12
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Since I last wrote, I have seen the
face of horror. This horror has reached out and affected many lives,
including my own.
Not too many weeks ago, my partner at
work and I were going through a normal day at the office – as
Air Force officers stationed at a US Embassy abroad, we covered issues
related to our service, going over upcoming projects and incoming Air
Force visitors. We separated to our offices to dive back into the
dozens of emails that flow our way each hour. That’s when my
boss popped in and asked if I’d seen my co-worker; his wife was
in a car wreck and not expected to live.
I caught up with him that night at the
hospital, a broken man watching his broken wife fight for her life.
Her car and a bus collided, and the results are what you would expect.
In emergency surgery they removed her spleen, did what they could to
stop the internal bleeding, eased swelling on her brain.
My wife and I stared at her broken
body late that night hooked up to machines and tubes. She’d
shattered both hips, both clavicles, a leg, all her ribs, and broke
her neck. No one knew if, or when, she’d wake up. Her body shook
with each whir of the respirator, connected to her throat through a
tracheotomy tube.
My co-worker, a normally
calm-through-all-storms kind of guy, broke down when he saw us. He
didn’t know if soon he would be a single father when the dawn
broke, having to care for two girls alone, or if he’d be a
caring for two girls and his comatose wife if she made it through the
night.
On the ride home that night, I began
to wonder if there’s a place for horror in our fiction when real
horror exists. When real evil exists. There really are men out there
who keep their daughters in cellars, raping them and fathering
children by them. There really are men out there that lure little
girls into their apartments, sexually assault them, then kill and eat
them. These are real events I’ve seen over the last few months
on the news. So is there any place for made-up horror when we see
these types of stories on CNN?
Not always, but there can be. I know
for me, I write horror as catharsis. Although they are horrific, the stories
come from a place in me that has dealt with something similar –
with death, with fear, with disappointment in someone.
Devolution may be just that, another form of catharsis as I
deal with a past horror in my own life.
My co-worker’s wife lived
through that long night. She has yet to wake up after three months,
but she made it through. My friend’s journey continues as he
cares for his wife and the girls.
In Devolution, Kristy and Rick
yet live. Their journey continues as they fight to stay alive in what
seems to be an impossible situation. It still remains to be seen if
they will make it through the night.
Our penciler Jake Bilbao is getting new exposure outside
Devolution. Check out his work on BloodRayne: Prime Cuts
from DigitalWebbing. And Jake and I are joined by new inker Christian
N. St. Pierre, whose work is seen in the comic Grafenveer.
I hope you enjoy issue 3, and feel free to comment at DevolutionComic@gmail.com.
To learn more about how Devolution is put together, go to www.MattYocumComics.com
where you’ll find a column on the making of the comic.
—CCdC— Read all of ComicCritique.Com’s columns, old and new,
at our columns archive!
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