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Moose River Gaiden – 2 – Tobacco

Here’s another new comic page for you, and right on time to boot. And in case you missed it, I posted a sketch yesterday.

I’ll share more of my thoughts on this page later. Right now it’s bed time.

Oh Betty, ever the Realist.

As mentioned before, this is the second of four comics I made around 2013 which I never actually completed and released until now. The whole idea was for them to be sort of one-shot pages, partially because they were jokes that I didn’t think I could incorporate into the main story, as well as just as a way for me to get back into making comics again. I fortunately rediscovered them while I’ve been so gung-ho about doing Moose River again, so I’m sharing them with you guys.

This comic is based on a real experience I had during Anti-Drug Week during Elementary School… the full details are below. If I had to redo it… I’m not sure if I would change much. I really don’t have much to say about the art, apart from what I’ve already mentioned; in particular, I’ve stopped the practice of adding a thick outline to everyone, as I was convinced that that was more distracting that it was worth.

OH! Concerning Shea’s drawing of the horsey… I didn’t draw that myself. It was given to me by a friend of mine a long time ago… I had rediscovered it back when I originally drew this page, and it inspired the page.

Oh well, it is what it is. The next one will appear on Thursday, while tomorrow will be another sketch. See you then!

AND NOW A WORD ABOUT DRUG EDUCATION:
I’m not sure what the drug policy is for Elementary School kids today… but back when I was in Elementary School, it was the middle of the Reagan-era “Just Say No!” campaign, and they raised us all to think that some EEEEVIL drug dealers were camping out at schools nation-wide and trying to push drugs on us, and that the only solution to all of our drug problems was to just say “no”. Simple as that, huh? Little did my generation realize was that there was no evil drug dealers hiding around every corner. The drug dealer was in our own homes; Grandma’s medicine cabinet, left over pills from the doctors, Dad’s booze drawer… they didn’t teach us that shit, nor did they teach us that you can’t exactly say “No” to the medicine cabinet.

There’s definitely more going on than just this, but I feel that this warped attitude of drugs back in the 1980s and early 90’s is a major cause of our modern drug epidemic. The powers-that-be failed to give my generation the proper tools to handle the reality of drugs… and instead focusing on pointless activities which lacked any real-world benefit.

Shea’s poster contest is based on a real poster contest which my brother won back in like 4th grade or something; I think he won 2nd Place, despite coloring the cocaine green. Now I didn’t think about it at the time, but looking back upon it now, that just underlines the kind of ignorance that the powers-that-be were willing to let slip by. Like, just as long as we jumped through the hoops, shouted “SAY NO TO DRUGS!” at the top of our lungs, wore our little red ribbons saying “I’ll never use drugs!”, and colored cocaine green in our “SAY NO! COLORING BOOKS”, then they didn’t actually give a shit if we understood any of it. It was like a quota the powers-that-be had to fulfill, as if distributing >90% of the coloring books they received meant that we actually understood any of it.

I therefore wanted Shea’s poster to represent this similar pointlessness of the activities… she simply wanted to draw her riding a horse, and then hastily drew in a box with “drugs” written on it in order to make it appropriate for the contest. But what kind of drugs were they? And they in a box with “drugs” written on it? Who cares? She showed her “SAY NO TO DRUGS!” spirit, and that was all that mattered.

And again, just look at where that attitude brought us. Drug use has skyrocketed, cocaine and heroin is as cheap as its ever been, and more people from my age group (25-40) are dying because of it. But hey, we all said “NO!”; that was good enough, right? …. I just hope that the current generation of children are taught much better lessons about what drugs are and the kinds of problems that come with using them.

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Moose River
by Philippe Van Lieu
—Fully Charged - June 27th, 2019—

From the bottom of my heart (and the bottom of this page): thank you very much for reading my comics.

Nick15, all related subjects, and all text are ©1996-2019 Philippe Van Lieu
All else are copyright of their respective owners. Used without permission. Dang.