One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.
Titus 1:12
The issue with deciding on the fly that you’re going to write and plan a loose series of issues around the theme of small figures swallowed up by big landscapes and machinations is you decided it on the fly. There’s a difference between something being communicated as a trilogy and being conceived of as a trilogy. I conceived of a trilogy and never really communicated it.
But issues #24, #26, and #27 constitute A Prophet of His Own, the “conceived of” trilogy I mentioned. I did not sit down with graph paper and a pencil and do a story circle for this trilogy. I had a central, pivotal event I wanted to write about and build up to, which is relayed in issue #27. You can consider the issues a never-ending triptych, where any issue can be the center panel.
The central theme of the trilogy is how we deal with the specific alienation in Richmond, Virginia. This is abstract, but we interpret how we view certain cities based on a series of signifiers and features.
Take Las Vegas. Everybody knows “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” When I say Las Vegas to you, you think of gambling, big red dice, and the Strip. We ascribe to Las Vegas secrecy, sexuality, and money changing hands. That’s the city as it’s conceived of. Beyond that, there’s the city as it is, which is how a city functions and the lives of the people there. This may be incongruent to the city as conceived, and probably is most of the time. Not everybody in LA is a movie star. Some people clean bathrooms. But the bathroom cleaner’s alienation in LA is going to be different from the one in Richmond, because of a variety of factors in the makeup of the city, its industry, and otherwise.
The first two issues are are linked here. The third is forthcoming.