SR 1 PAGE EIGHTY-THREE

Hey Uncle Sam, put your name at the top of his list

And the Statue of Liberty started shakin’ her fist

And the eagle will fly man, it’s gonna be hell

When you hear mother freedom start ringin’ her bell

And it feels like the whole wide world is raining down on you

Brought to you courtesy of the red white and blue

– Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American), Toby Keith, 2002.

I defy you not to tear up when Toby croons about a giant statue shaking her fist like Gargamel raging at Smurfs. This is poetry.

I wrote this page in 2004, but two years and change after 9/11 there were still plenty of veiny hot dog man songs like this floating around. There probably still are, but I don’t know where I’d hear them in 2023. Back in those days they played this stuff at the mall. You’d be waiting in line at Cinnabon and suddenly start feeling sad about humanity’s unbreakable cycle of violence. It made enjoying your mildly-cooked stick of butter buried in sugar somewhat difficult. Somewhat.

9/11 is a fun topic, right? Let’s keep talking about that!

September 11 was supposed to be just a typical Invader ZIM workday. I never watched the news in the morning, so I had no idea anything was wrong until I pulled up to Nickelodeon. Back then the parking gate was manned by a smiling old security guard named Don Newhouse. Everybody loved Don. You’d roll up to the badge scanner, smile, and say hi to Don. He’d smile back, say “Beautiful day!” and in you’d go. Every day was a beautiful day.

“Terrible day,” Don said as I lowered my window. No smile, just staring off into the distance.

My blood went cold. Never seen this Don before. I asked him what was wrong and he muttered something about planes crashing.

Inside, a few of us ZIM folks gathered around the lounge TV to watch news coming in. Lots of confusion, conflicting reports, etc. I remember the first report of United 93 crashing in Pennsylvania. One ZIM person wondered if maybe our own government shot the plane down before it could be used as a missile, and a board artist snapped, “Our government would TELL us if they did that!” He turned out to be right, but something about his voice sounded like he was trying to convince himself in that moment. Like just for today he needed to believe our government was perfectly honest and would never lie to us.

Before long, somebody came by and told us they were evacuating the building. Nobody knew if the attacks were over or what kind of targets might still be on the list, so it kind of made sense. I didn’t think our cartoon factory was in much danger, but there also wasn’t much reason to stick around and find out.

After 9/11 a lot of Americans felt like shaking fists and unleashing eagles, but it never quite hit me that way. All I remember is an overwhelming numbness. Like the world was definitely worse now, and it wouldn’t be getting better for a long, long time. Still not sure it has.

SR 1 PAGE EIGHTY-FOUR

Changing gear a bit… 

“Fat doobie stick?”

I think Tess is using outdated hippie slang to signal she’s definitely not a marijuana person. She and Sera probably both do that. Sera also uses the phrase “smut peddler” on the previous page. We got a couple of 20-something grannies here! 

But there’s actually a bit of dialogue on this page jumping out at me even more than the granny-isms:

“MUGGLES.”

Holy shit! Harry Potter exists in this world?? How is that possible?? This is a world where witches unquestionably exist, but the author J.K. Rowling still goes ahead and makes up her own silly nonsense version of how these fellow human beings live their lives? How could–

Actually never mind, that’s exactly what J.K. Rowling would do in Sera’s universe.

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

HEY! Who wants to see SHOCK CITY preview pages?? (You, hopefully! Might distract you from the sad disaster discussion from earlier!)

Been cleared to post nine pages from early in the book, but in the interest of not loading this newsletter down TOO much, I’ll just post a couple here and you can check out the rest at my social media links:

Pretty nice, ain’t it? To see the other six pages, pop over to one of my various social media hangouts:

INSTAGRAM

BLUESKY

THREADS

TWITTER IS DEAD, NO LINK HERE.

FACEBOOK (Wow, really? Yes, really!)

NEXT WEEK: THIS PLACE… IS GOD.