I’m pretty sure that, in drawing Jung’s UrArchetype Armor, the 80s electric guitar came in as an homage to a guitar weaponed mecha in Gekiganger, the mock anime you see from time to time in Martian Successor Nadesico. But now I’ve convinced myself that there was no such mecha, that part of my soul just wished for there to be one so that I could pay tribute to it, and that wish was strong enough to become memory. If anybody knows for sure whether such a creature is in the show, drop me a note at TheCount@ftg-comic.com or post up on our Facebook so that my mind can be finally and definitively at rest.
In other news, we’ve sent in our application for APE 2011, to be held October 1-2 in San Francisco, so mark your calendars, as it’s likely the next show we’ll be at after that won’t be until March 2012!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
We spoke a little before about the “Kreuzlingen Gesture”, but it’s so characteristic of Jung it’s worth a closer look. Jung had been, for some time, trying to find an excuse to break from Freud that would make him look like the aggrieved party and Freud the heel. In 1912, Freud was paying a visit to a dying friend in Kreuzlingen, which is close to Zurich, where Jung was. Freud wrote ahead asking Jung about when he might pay a visit. We know Jung got the letter, but he didn’t write back. So, Freud figured okay, maybe he doesn’t want me to come, spent his time with his dying friend, and then headed back home. Shortly thereafter, Jung howled, positively HOWLED, that Freud had outrageously and intentionally insulted him by not paying him a visit. After that, he felt much better in trashing Freud whenever he could fit it in edgewise.
As I’ve said before, I think that the ideas brought to the table by Jung are almost unilaterally regressions, from his attack on the importance of libido to his double-faced treatment of Judaism and Christianity (I don’t think it’s entirely unfair to mention that he was an ardent supporter of Nazism as it gave him a platform to strike against Freud’s circle, who were mostly Jewish – he wrote a whole article on how Jews couldn’t be good psychoanalysts for Christians) to the development of the collective unconscious as a means of avoiding probing self-analysis. But once, once he was a youth of tremendous promise who venerated the revolutionary daring of Freud, and so perhaps the truce for the greater good in today’s comic isn’t so far off after all.
Okay, I’ve got all the Jung criticism out of my system now, I promise.
– Count Dolby von Luckner
Before talking about Guernica, I want to point you all in the direction of something entirely awesome. Our good friend, the ever gentlemanly Trevor Kellogg of Knights of Nine to Five, is in the process of creating a special print to raise more money for Japan. I’m getting one for myself, because it’s way cool looking, and I heartily recommend everybody out there to do the same!
On to today’s comic! This is probably the coolest thing Geoff has ever asked me to draw in a script. The panel description was basically “Picasso has rendered the abyss as a gigantic Guernica, and it is attacking Joseph Campbell with tentacles, and he is light sabering a path through them” which is just enchanting on so many levels. Like we said back in the day, Picasso phoned A Lot of shit in, but every once in a while, when he could ground his artistic instincts in an idea beyond a dick joke, he could pull off some monumental stuff, and Guernica is one such stuff. Here’s the original, which features less tentacles and fifth dimension infused eyes:
That there’s a painting, with form and meaning meeting each other squarely on even ground, and amplifying each other mightily in the process.
– Count Dolby von Luckner