7.09
I don’t really have anything else to say. Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with a new episode as soon as I can manage.
– Jake
Help me make more Ghost Kiss comics!
I don’t really have anything else to say. Thanks for reading. I’ll be back with a new episode as soon as I can manage.
– Jake
*BIG HUGS*
There are few words for how real this feels.
Kudos for the bravery to tell such a story, and again for doing it justice.
Thanks.
Kudos on the storyline. Too bad that a web comic featuring a black woman is only likely to preach to the converted.
Probably, but who knows.
This story hurts. Pain teaches. Hopefully, someone will learn something from this. Keep doing what you do.
Thanks.
I think that last panel says it all Jake. Well said!
Thanks.
Oh, I was expecting this episode to go longer.
When balding-guy said “You did what?” I was hoping that he was having second thoughts about the situation he was participating in. (Protesting is one thing, but being an accessory to murder?) Unfortunately, he didn’t even stand aside; he actively interfered with someone trying to stop the killer.
I did want it to seem like he was having second thoughts. Not so much about being a bigot but about murdering people. While i think if you’re at a white supremacist rally (or a demonstration for preserving Confederate statues that becomes a white supremacist rally) that you’re almost certainly a white supremacists, or at the very least a bigot that has no problem condoning white supremacy. But not every white supremacist wants to murder people and not every one who does want to murder people actually follows through with it. I’m not saying this as a defense of the people so much as a survey of statistics. There’s a scary number of people assaulted and murdered by white supremacists, but that number isn’t anywhere equal to the number OF white supremacists. So obviously every one of them isn’t going out and murdering someone. They’re just being as awful as they can in other ways.
Thats a long way of saying that I wanted to show that while everyone in the crowd was an awful human being, even awful people often draw the line at murder (or don’t want to be implicated in murder, really). But like a lot of people, his reaction to discovering that his friends were complicit in something awful is to try to cover it up instead of exposing it.
I don’t want to defend these people. I think they’re awful. But I hope that some of them were shocked and horrified at what their rally turned into. Not just the death of Heather Heyer, but the beating of DeAndre Harris and so many other things that were done and said that day. A lot of the responses to this comic were “I hope you know that not everyone at that rally was a white supremacist.” To which I say “Then why were they at a white supremacist rally?” Because thats what it became. Thats what it was advertised as. I’m sure there were a few people who showed up and thought “Shit, this isn’t what we signed up for. This is scary shit!” and turned around and drove home and seriously reconsidered their lives. I hope it was more than a few. I hope it was lots. The people that stayed were either undeniably bigots or too dumb to realize what was going on. And I have trouble believing anyone is that dumb. But I hope now that its over at least some of them can see how awful they were and how wrong they were and how much hurt and pain and destruction they caused.
Jake,
Firstly, I want to throw out a few things. 1) love the comic, it’s beautiful, artful, and touches the heartstrings masterfully. 2) Lots of respect for you, it’s nice to hear someone putting out thoughts on these ideas that don’t amount a bunch of frothy screaming and declarations of evilness, but rather have actual thought put behind them. 3) I’m not a white supremacist, I’m not sympathizing, I don’t know any of them, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t count them among people I value as human beings.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I do want to throw out a few thoughts for you to gnaw on. Firstly, the term “white supremacist” is about as general, nonspecific and potentially stereotypical as the term “black person”. There’s a lot of different flavors of white supremacist, and a lot of them don’t have enough thought behind them to really be valued as an honest opinion, but more of a label that someone wears to feel good about themselves. being a white person, it feels rather nice to say white people are better, because in reality you may not have any other way to say you’re better at something. these people aren’t sincerely thinking poorly of people for the color of their skin, they’re desperately grasping at the only family and community they can identify with. It’s pathetic and pitiful, but it’s on the same level of neurosis as the homeless man who believes there’s a woman controlling a satellite laser and actively sabotaging his life by changing weather patterns (now this person, this one I’ve met). So just to say the term “white supremacist” you’re encompassing a large (sadly) and rather diverse group of people who just so happen to ascribe to the same poorly thought out ideals, for one reason or another. That being said, not everyone at those rallies was a white supremacist. When a crowd starts doing something, it’s very hard not to go with it, especially if that crowd contains a group of people that includes friends, and is made up of people who purport to have the same ideals as you. It’s not a defense of the action, but more of an acknowledgement that it’s very easy to get caught up in the flow. So they may not all have been white supremacists, sure, but they were still terrible people, because no matter the circumstances only a terrible person can go along with the terrible things they do.
Personally, I took the guy saying “You what?” as more of confusion, as though he hadn’t had any thoughts about the whole idea in the first place and was just dumbstruck at what had just happened. And then of course when he tries to defend the murderer, that’s just a natural ignorance response, when someone starts attacking someone you know, you don’t stop to find out if they’re justified before jumping in.
Just wanted to throw another set of eyes on the subject.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t think that everyone who came to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was necessarily a white supremacists. You’re right, there are shades. But that rally was HEAVILY advertised as a white supremacist rally far in advance of the actual event, and there were proud white supremacists loudly spouting their ideas on the ground from the moment the event started. I hope that if there were people who didn’t knwo what they were getting into they turned around and went home as soon as they saw people in Nazi and KKK garb. I think its safe to label anyone who stayed as a white supremacist. Participating in the rally is condoning white supremacy, and if you condone white supremacy you’re a white supremacists. So if they weren’t before, they were after.
Anyway, I don’t think you’re a white supremacist. I do agree that there are shades of racism (none of which are acceptable), and not every racists is a white supremacist. I also agree that there are a lot of motivators for racism that have nothing to do with race. Which is actually a big part of what makes racism so scary to begin with, I think,
You ended your comment with a comma. I’ve been waiting three days, FINISH YOUR SENTENCE ALREADY!
Anyway, that being said: “Participating in the rally is condoning white supremacy, and if you condone white supremacy you’re a white supremacists. So if they weren’t before, they were after.”
You make a good point sir. I’ll hand that to you, you’re perfectly correct. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 🙂
I think I was going to type something else, but didn’t get around to it.
I’m mostly likely going to get alot of hack for this: First off, I’m apolitical and don’t really know the differences, ins and outs etc. of democrats, liberals, republicans and conservatives. Second, I’m not racist or homophobic, I am against bigotry, we are better of without it. I dunno if there were some people who wanted to keep the monuments because they were historical or whatever but are not racist themselves. But if confederate monuments really serve only motivate modern day nazis, racists, etc. them by all means tear them down, the worlds messed up enough as it is. Another thing I should add to the non racist motives for keeping monuments thing; We celebrate George Washington among other people, and he kept slaves, and one of his and everyone else’s motives for the revolution (besides oppression from England ) at the time was the expansion of the American colonies, which meant the invasion, maltreatment, and slaughtering of the natives who already lived there. Last two things, it is NEVER okay to drive, shoot, bomb, etc, peaceful protesters, I know that’s obvious but I just have to point it out, and I don’t care if someone drove into the other crowd or something happened to another bigot or other kind of messed up crowd, it is NEVER okay to seriously attack civilians. Actually just two more things, I know I’ll get hate for this one; that was some nice stuff custodian said about positive conservatism, if most bad people really just use that for an excuse than it should be something real that people stand for. And finally, I’ve heard about this psychology thing where if you tell someone they’re wrong then that just convinces them they’re right, so maybe responding to hate with more hare isn’t the best strategy.
I don’t disagree with most of what you’re saying here. I think the point you bring up about statues is pretty valid and I think the Confederate statue issue is actually a little more complicated than it looks. I think its pretty clear that a lot of those statues exist as monuments to the Confederacy as a racist institution (and MANY of them were erected during the Civil Rights era and in the time leading up to it as a way to intimidate Black Americans and solidify White Americans against them). I do think there’s a difference between glorifying the Confederacy and honoring the dead, and I think that MOSTLY these statues do the former and not the later. I think immediately removing the most egregious of these statues is a good idea. Especially in communities that don’t want them. I think that you can have memorials honoring distant relatives who died 150 years ago without glorifying the Confederacy.
I think Custodian’s statements were ridiculously disingenuous.
Huh – I see what this short was trying to tell. Unfortunately I was completely sidetracked by the drawings of the competing protests. Specifically on the fact that the REAL protests never looked like that. (Either sides) Weird that the minor details being “wrong” would throw me out of the story so badly tho.
Can you tell me what you thought was wrong? I based this on my own experience at protests, and every character that appears in the comic is based on photos from the events in Charolettesville.
You know, I don’t like watching the news anymore, or even hearing what people have to say on things. I can’t even watch a break-down of the Thor Ragnarok movie because, as much as I loved it, I feel like they turn it into something it’s not. I feel like everyone is always trying to turn something into something else- some kind of icon for feminism or ideals mattering over other ideals and… it just breaks me. And I know- I’m bias. I’m as bias as anyone, and I also know very well that past me probably wouldn’t like present me very much. Past me was one of them, past me was always trying to stand up for things that didn’t need standing up for. Past me was wrong, young, and stupid.
This story though… This story needs to be told. Because it’s not just “black hero gets beat up because she’s black”, though let’s be honest here… that happened. That completely happened. And thank God that she’s got a hero license under that “skin”, or else she might have been killed by the police because… that happens too. It also happens that maybe she still would have, if one of her friends wasn’t white and on the scene, and well-respected. But I feel like this is more than that. What this says to me is, this is life. And it’s not pretty. And it’s not fair. And it is what we make it, but some people make it a lot harder and worse for people than they need to. It’s the feeling of useless that you feel when you’ve done your best and still find out someone died, and if only you could have done more, but you can’t and that’s because someone else took your choice away.
I’m no cop. I’m no cancer survivor. I’m a humble auditor, and a very small church-going girl who’s getting scared- scared of what other people of her skin tone are doing, scared of what other people who should know better are saying, but I’ve also seen some serious pain. Pain… pain never goes away. It gets buried, or you get strong enough to carry it on your back, or maybe someone else takes the load for you if they can, but it doesn’t go away. Pain needs to be prevented, cared about, considered. That’s why this needs to be told. This needs to be told and rubbed in faces, even if those faces think it’s fake, even of those faces don’t understand. There’s something about comics, pictures and text, that stay with us. They get in our minds and stick like a burr. Maybe you’re right- maybe you’re only really preaching to the converted, but I believe that there’s going to be someone, somewhere, who sees this and disagrees with it, but it doesn’t let them go. I believe that this has a chance of changing a mind, and then a life, and then who knows what that person may go on to do?
I’m really not good at closing things when I get personal like this. I just want to say that I know a little of how it feels to put something like this out there, how it shakes you even if you feel like it’s the right thing to do, and I’m proud of you, and what you’ve done here. Thank you.
Thanks for saying all of that.
I’ve got to applaud you, Jake. for doing this.
I know if I were on the sidelines there, I’d have been far less kind than Mya.
Though I’ve had my ass kicked by police (mostly for being and appearing poor in the wrong neighborhoods) I’m still a white male, and don’t look like a tweaker, so I’m far less likely to be shot by the cops (though apparently not less likely to be harassed) than others.
I have been through a lot fo violent times, and have survived a lot. I know violence shouldn’t be the first resort, but I am absolutely of the opinion that whomever believes violence is only a last resort always turns to it far too late… and I like turning to swift and blinding violence when I feel it’s justified.
In the case of the events told herein… I want to think that violence should not have been resorted to, but I absolutely know that I would have resorted to it probably sooner than necessary.
I don’t really want to think about it much more now, because as patriotic as I have been in the past, I’ve been feeling more and more ashamed of being an American of late, specifically because it groups me in with a-holes like those depicted, and I would be one of the a-holes fighting on the side of justice and yet still an a-hole.
=(
Good on you, regardless.
Glad you liked it. I agree with you about both violence and being embarrassed about being an American right now. I don’t WANT to feel that way. I don’t want these people to dictate what being an American is. But more and mroe I feel divorced from my country. It just doesn’t matter as much to me. I just want people not to be awful to each other, and i don’t really care where they’re from.
Can’t Admin just find them all and destroy them like she did that fellow from Florida? I mean he will never get a job as anything more that a broom-pusher and not even that if it requires a log in. She could do the same to anyone she doesn’t like. I kind of wonder at seeing her with a sign. Why bother to protest when you can just make it happen? She can shut down anyone and anything from anywhere. She can create a whole generation of citizens doomed to third-class status in a way that no one can undo and at least one person is carrying toting that yoke with Maya’s happy complicity.
She can, and thats a really good point. But like Mya and Greg she also works for the NSA and is monitored closely and probably wouldn’t be allowed to do something like that. Maybe she could do it anyway and just face the consequences?
I really like this comic, and hope you come back with a new strip soon! So awesome and it really draws you in.
Thanks Heather! Right now i’m doing a new story about every three months. I’m hoping to be a little faster this coming year. But expect a new short story for Christmas.
Awesomesauce. You really made something neat here; hell, I like it a heck of a lot more than a lot of mainstream comics.
Thanks so much!
I can’t wait!
Aw. 🙁
Tears at work… dangit…
I hate how I feel desensitized to this. Unfortunately, it’s frequent enough that this is a somewhat common occurrence.
Uh huh.
Well done. It’s neither too self-righteous nor too defeatist.
Thanks.
This was very impressive and and I agree with a lot of what you are saying especially since I am a white man who lives on a native American reservation and the school right outside of it is heavy with racism and I feel sorry for all those students that transferred from the rezes school to that one partly because the parents don’t realize what’s going on and it makes me sad 🙁
On another note I don’t know if you remember me or not but I am the kid you met at Cullum bay comicon and I have been working on some fan art a was hoping you could see it when it was done
I do remember you! Will you be at the show again this year?
By show do your mean Cullum bay comicon then no because my mom did not make any money and the only booth that was any good was yours but I will be at emerald city comicon ( yea I get to meet the tenth doctor 😀 )
Oh, thats too bad. I was invited back this year and decided to go since I did have fun last year. Unfortunately I won’t get to go to ECCC this year. Hope you have fun.
Wait making an emoji manually creates a real one 😮
Wereally is the Xmas comic 🙁
I meant were
I didn’t finish it on time, and now its fallen low on my list of things to get done. I’;m HOPING that I’ll have both it and GK 8 done in March.
Well, that obviously didn’t happen either. New goal is late July.
It is deeply unfortunate that someone died at Charlottesville but it should be pointed out that the car was attacked prior to the collision and the driver was simply trying to escape. This is the danger of associating with Black Bloc as well as other thugs simply because of convergent political beliefs and an innocent non-violent protester paid with their life for it.
I’ve searched extensively and been able to find zero evidence that the car and driver was attacked by anyone or was fleeing anyone. I don’t think thats true at all. On the other hand, the tactic of driving a car into protesters with the purpose of disrupting their protests, injuring and possibly killing them was widely discussed on alt-right forums where this event was planned. Based on the videos and photos I’ve seen and the accounts of the people that were there it seems clear to me that the driver purposely drove into that crowd with the intent of causing harm. The danger here was not imagined “black bloc”. It was real alt-right white supremacists and nazis.
It just seems strange that, for an attack, the driver was braking until the protester with a club disguised as a flag lunged towards the car and that braking noises can be heard earlier in a video of the event, after the car hits a speed bump.
I enjoy your webcomic but creating a close parody of real world events that pushes a very specific and clear narrative when the reality of the actual situation is anything but seems irresponsible at best.
I appreciate that you enjoy my comic. I don’t agree with your interpretation of events. There are MANY eye witness accounts that describe in detail what happened that day, and none of them that I’ve seen mention the driver being attacked or perused at all. The only place I’ve seen that are on conservative and alt-right sites. People who were there and saw what happened have refuted that narrative.
My comic does push a very specific and clear narrative though. Racists are shit. White supremacists are shit. Nazi’s are shit. The alt-right is shit. People who support them and excuse them are shit. If later we find out that (despite all evidence to the contrary) the driver of that car was actually some kind of helpless victim who as being chased by evil liberal protesters and couldn’t figure out how to stop his car before killing and injuring innocent civilians that won’t change my clear and specific narrative.
I in no way disagree with your narrative regarding those who judge others based on race or background (more of a [commendable] stance). I was referring to your interpretation of a specific sequence of events.
Here’s a gallery with a photo and a couple of frame grabs which show what I was describing (warning:the linked pictures are of a car accident):
https://imgur.com/a/5NnGq
My issue with your narrative is that it is unhelpful to your professed cause, the driver’s trial is set for November, the truth will come out and when it does, the narrative that was pushed will prove destructive to the sympathies of the public. As righteous a feeling as it currently inspires, pushing the centrists towards the Nazis will hurt in the long run. Patience, self control and a cool head are required to beat them.
I don’t think you can push a centrist toward Nazis. If you can be pushed in that direction enough that you are sympathetic to Nazis than you were never a centrist to begin with.
I do hope the trial gives us the full story. if it turns out that the driver was an innocent victim I don’t think that invalidates my story, and I don’t think a reasonable person could read it and have a problem with it.
Thanks for the link to the photo gallery. I’d seen all of these photos before, often along with more photos. The way these photos are presented here makes it look like the driver accidentally ran into people after being chased by men with clubs. That may be the case, but it doesn’t match with several eye witness accounts. Hopefully the trial will really give us the full story.
Thank you for your reply. I (in a way) look forward to the trial too.
Regarding pushing centrists towards the right wing. If you believe that then you are of course free and welcome to do what you believe is right (I do not mean to suggest that you require my permission or approval). It is my belief that the alt-right in particular are very good at exploiting bad optics on the part of the left to reel in centrists but that is only my opinion.
I tend to think that people who are duped in that way were never centrists to begin with. But thats probably too broad of a generalization and not completely realistic.
I know this is unrelated but I have been thinking of something about ghost kiss and it’s been driving me crazy so I had to put it down if ghost kiss can make people forget by having them touch something she kissed than why not give her a retractable boa staff that she kissed the ends of or maybe a bb gun that has a packet of bbs that she put into her mouth and spit back into the cantaner because then she would be at least a b rank hero like I imagine green arrow or Hawkeye being just a thought
Thats a really good idea. I have a story planned that explore more of her power’s limitations. You’ll see tahts he tried a lot of different things, and how some of them actually worked and some didn’t. So we will get to that soon. Soonish.
I have one last comment and that is that I feel sorry for the girl who died because ghat almost happened to my dad he was going down the road in his truck and a drunk bartender hit him with her car and he almost died and for the rest of his life he is going to be walking on a cain and the bartender almost got my dad sued for hitting her when he was at a stop sign and she was driving at 70 miles an hour in an area that has a speed limit of 20 but the best part is that my dad was the better man and did not press charges because he knew that she had already been punished enough
That is a tragedy.
Michael Peterson, if you look at video of the event, and there’s more than the scattered photos you show, you will see clearly that the driver of the car sped through the area and was NOT being chased until after it was clear he was going far too fast around too many pedestrians.
Indeed, the man you claim was going after him with a baseball bat and helmet was NO WHERE NEAR HIS CAR when the driver started his run at the pedestrians and stopped cars, and if baseball bat boy had been, he would literally have to have been the Flash to catch up to the driver after he started his attack. He was attacked after he murdered that woman, not before.
There is a long stretch of road the driver went down, speeding up as he went even though the road was clearly blocked. If he’d been trying to escape, he would have gone the other way – like he did after he murdered. In fact, video shows him gleefully backing up through the crowds for a couple of blocks, hitting anyone who tries to stop him.
There is so much video evidence of the man’s intent to harm, that you defending him is disturbing at the least and disgusting at the worst.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7FPmojhEeE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFR-iHmTWVo
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/08/driver-acting-self-defense/
You can see in the first video that as he passes the camera, he’s braking and hear the engine rise only after an object is thrown at the rear of the car. He isn’t being chased at the start but he is fleeing.
It also shows how he is proceeding straight ahead. There’s plenty of people on the sidewalk, isn’t it strange that someone on an ‘attack’ wouldn’t swerve into all those targets? The final link is a bit misleading, the driver has been charged but hasn’t been tried yet (ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat).
Is this comic dead? I hope not cus’ I like it.
Its not. I’m working on a new episode now, and I have many, many more planned. But I’m also wrapped up in another project, and finishing it up is taking all of my effort and attention right now. I’m hoping to be able resume work on Ghost Kiss in late March, and have regular episodes this Spring and Summer. Sorry for keeping you waiting. I wish I had about 10 more hours to work every day.
As a side note: I had a Christmas story I was planning to post, but I couldn’t finish it on time. I re-wrote it as a Valentines Day story, but I still couldn’t finish it! I’ve been trying hard to finish it up in my spare time, but spare time has become scarce.
Okay, first of all, Jake, I’m a huge fan of your’s. And I am a transgender boy who is often similarly affected by events such as this. And I read this and cried. To see someone with such empathy, finally cry as I did at this, at the shooting in Orlando, all these demonstrations of hate and death, it hurts my heart. Seeing a super hero, going through the same thing, it makes me feel, like maybe its not foolish to cry over people I’ve never met, as others try to make me feel. So thank you, thank you for standing with those who are different, thank you for diversity, thank you for Ghost Kiss. Keep up the excellent work.
Sincerely,
Beau, an avid reader of Modest Medusa for years and a new but devoted fan of Ghost Kiss
Thanks for reading. I’m glad you liked it.
where is the new episode and special the month is almost over
I’m running behind. I’m trying really hard to finish up my commitment to another project, and thats keeping me from working on anything else. I have two Ghost Kiss stories written and partially laid out, so I;m hoping to spend much of next month working on them. But that means I probably won’t have anything to show till late April anyway. I’m sorry to keep you all waiting.
The statas of this comic is so close to dead it is a GHOST:)
Yeah, sorry. I want to be producing more Ghost Kiss (and have two separate stories partially done), but other work is keeping me too busy. I’ll be back to Ghost Kiss as soon as I can manage.
I have a question I tried looking online google everything. and I can find no info on just what happened to the dirtbag that ran over the people and killed that girl. do you know jake? if so I would really like to know.
I don’t know either. Wiki says “On 14 December 2017, Fields was charged with first-degree murder[12] and was indicted by a grand jury in Charlottesville on 18 December 2017. Fields’ trial is scheduled to begin on 26 November 2018 and is expected to last three weeks”
I did see that one of the men who beat Deandre Harris was recently convicted of Malicious Wounding and could face up to 20 years in prison. Link.
Here’s an update.
Apparently Fields (the driver of the car) was indicted this week (6/27/18) on 29 counts of Federal hate crimes, including first degree murder.
Another update. The driver was convicted for murder.
“Fields, 21, was convicted on all counts, including first-degree murder in connection to Heyer’s death and five counts of aggravated malicious wounding, three counts of malicious wounding and one hit and run count for injuring dozens of others with his vehicle.”
Here’s the link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/james-alex-fields-found-guilty-killing-heather-heyer-during-violent-n945186?cid=ed_npd_bn_fb_bn&fbclid=IwAR2pM8VFO7zqIEwGSNDlxOYZaT7klBzWwCgy6kzxR4v-wLxlCe-PtMnGvBo
I don’t like this episode.
I get what you were going for. I do. And, you’re allowed to do anything you want with your comic, your characters, and all. But, for me? This was just too “real” for me to appreciate. I watch movies and cartoons, read comics, and write stories to get away from this garbage. All this was… was a reminder, to me, that the world is trash and the people in it are garbage.
Again… not my thing, but you’re as welcome to share your views as I or anyone else.