Hart, Tom – The Ditch The River The Sea The Snake

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The Ditch The River The Sea The Snake

The cavalcade of reviews for ancient (at least you could call it ancient in a culture with no attention span) mini comics continues, as I was appalled to notice that there were no minis at all from Tom on this site, just graphic novels.  And it looks like the man never did put all of these into one collection, because he very clearly hates the people who enjoy his work.  That’s my theory, anyway.  Another one is that as most mini comics folks seem to hate their older work, maybe he just doesn’t want any of this older stuff seeing the light of day.  Well, too bad!  This particular issue is a 24 hour comic (if memory serves, and the fact that there’s only a single date on the back cover (5/5/96)seems to back me up) and, well, it doesn’t look all that great.  Hey, that’s what 24 hour comics are!  The story is fairly simple: there’s an old man who digs a ditch for his town, as they need water.  He goes off to complete a ritual that will allow him to fill this ditch with water, but when he leaves his brother takes over the town and starts making demands.  When the old man comes back with an immensely bloated snake (as he’s full of the sea), his brother and the hungry townspeople see a giant pile of food instead and attack.  Tom manages to put a pretty decent moral at the end of the story, as one of his main skills was being able to make the reader think about any number of things.  I doubt if you can find this anywhere (my copy is from Spit and a Half, John Porcellino’s old distro), but all of his old books are worth picking up if you do see them.  $1.50