Another letter.

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In 1989 Trident Comics published a four-part comic titled St. Swithin’s Day.

St. Swithin’s Day follows an unnamed 19 year old who has decided to assassinate Margaret Thatcher. The comic follows him in the days leading up to the event. He steals, and later decides to throw away, a copy of Catcher in the Rye. He has a conversation with a woman in a cafe who only exists in his head. He sleeps in a maintenance train car. He dances to The La’s “There She Goes” in front of Karl Marx’s grave. He calls his mother, who begs him to come home and interview for a job at a grocery store. The morning of St Swithin’s Day he jumps in front of Margaret Thatcher, appearing as a madman reaching into his jacket pocket, "neurotic boy outsider" written proudly on his forehead. He pulls out nothing. He points his finger at her and simply says “bang” out loud and is promptly tackled by security. He rides home on the train, covered in bruises and less one tooth.

“It was worth it just to see her scared.”

St. Swithin’s Day was written by Grant Morrison, known for the incredibly metatextual first arc of Animal Man, as well as his run of Doom Patrol, The Invisibles, and All-Star Superman. He was part of the all-star lineup behind 52, the comic that got me into comics. It is illustrated by Paul Grist, an artist well-known for the series Kane. At least that’s what Wikipedia is telling me. I did not ever find the time to consume Grists’ other works, let alone study them as closely as I did Morrison’s, before deciding on my method of suicide.

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A brief letter, addressed to the original super-family.

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This was written as my inaugural Letterboxd review. It got a bit out of hand so I have decided to present it here as well.

While Part 3 of my writing on my personal journey into reading comic books continues to bake in my brain (a fancy way of saying I am still brainstorming its final format) (a fancy way of saying I have not yet started writing it) as the list of included comics grows, I wanted to stop for a moment and write about one in particular for selfish reasons.

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Part 1 is not required reading. In fact, I will refrain from even linking it here. Every blog post is someone’s first.

It shouldn’t be embarrassing to admit that I needed to have “comic books” explained to me. Yet I feel ashamed that I allowed the entire medium to exist within a hair’s breadth of my cultural understanding for so long. I’ve already gone over my select few childhood run-ins with comics, as well as the false-start that nearly was my first paper-comic obsession* (*See “My Journey in Understanding Comics” #1! - Ed.), so my story this time will start in November of 2023.

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