Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 08, 2015

yeah . . . wow, indeed.

Silas Marner?

The sole survivor of a plane wreck.

Shaking with cold and terror, Roma rushed through winter-bare trees in a quest to find shelter and help. The silence was absolute, but still, she feared pursuit. -Only stars illuminated the frozen snow that numbed her sock-clad feet, and only stars were her companions as she stumbled to the door of the lone building in the depth of the wood. Roma stretched out her arm to knock on the door.-Would those inside be friend or foe? She could not know. The cold and her hours of exhausting struggle caught up with her. She slid to her knees, and then fell forward, even as the door opened to reveal …

Wiley, you know, if the ending turns out sappy it’s not going to be fun, and if it’s fun and she dies that I’m going to get committed by the thought police, right? This is kind of a bind…On the other hand, GREAT artwork!Guy: "You know, Julia, when I said it was too early to go swimming, that I wasn’t kidding, right? And when you said, “Live in the moment,” that I told you “That joke’s already been done,” right?"Julia: “Shut up, dude. Just, shut up.”

She just learned the results of the 2014 election and she’s running away to Canada—in the winter.

Great depiction of the little girl who was the sole survivor of a plane crash.

I love the art work.

“Honey, I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you made me VERY angry. And you shouldn’t be out without your coat and boots. Now come on in here by the fire and I’ll make some cocoa for us!”

Finally a house without a television. No more dancing sharks.

I told them not to put the outhouse so far away from the house!

Is Wiley out of ideas?

And now, about 125000 words later I’ve got this novel nobody wants to publish and I’m pretty sure if I self-published, I’m the only one who’d read it. Sheesh

The instruments in the bottom panel are as important as the images in the panels above.

This reminds me of a local news story where a pretty young thing killed another pretty young thing… over a guy.

On a happier note: @sHartline : I love the artwork, too!

Thank you, Wiley! This is truly a gift!

Her grandmother’s boyfriend who was out on parole again found her and debated the consequences of the possible molestation charge, took her inside for pictures before she woke up.

“Danae, where have you been? Where are your pants and boots?”

“I don’t know daddy. All I remember is careening down Deadman’s Hill with Lucy. I awoke in the wreck of our sled but I couldn’t find Lucy anywhere.”

. . . to be continued

Her name is Penelope. She is lost, with no idea where her parents are and is unable to tell anyone since she can’t speak (deaf or from shock, you decide). -The house she’s found herself in has an elderly lady who can’t get around much anymore, sweet caring grandmother type (Hester). One of the inhabitants is a White Rabbit who used to be part of a Magic Show (Presti, short for Prestidigitation). She wears coat and tails and a top hat, talks, walks upright and is a flamboyant showoff. I think having her be able to pull different things out of the hat would he fun.-Another is a talking miniature Spider Monkey (Kong, he claims to be distantly related to King Kong who he swears is real) who is a total gear-head and tinkerer, always making new inventions. His workshop is in the garage and you might find him working on anything there.- The final inhabitant is a former Circus Bear (Tracey) who retired from the Big Top when he got too nearsighted to perform. He’s the gruff, overprotective big brother of the lot and does all the cooking and cleaning (a bit germophobic perhaps?)-They could have all sorts of adventures in the woods, Perhaps there’s a wise old owl who gives advice or a mischievous crow who’s always trying to get them in trouble. Maybe there’s a Wolf den with cubs, the cubs love to play with the Penelope so Mama Wolf is always protecting her from Papa Wolf, when the cubs don’t guilt trip him into leaving her alone.

this is a comic strip people.

she must be the golden retriever from the Budweiser commercials.

… And then mom says: “Ok, Ok, I’ll turn up the heat! Quit being so dramatic!”

Lost and ?

It looks like Jane Eyre

This is similar to what happened to a seven year old girl who was the sole survivor of a plane crash in western Kentucky around the first of the year.The crash killed her family and a cousin. She saw a light in the distance and walked nearly a mile through an area with woods and a ravine, showed up at the door of a house and knocked. She had only summer clothes on and just one sock, No shoes. These scenes are reminicent of what she sent through.

Last Sunday our main character was out in the snow with the horse. Same dark hair. This is our character in reality and perhaps a little more grown up. With that,

she has no home anymore, she has lost everybody and she wonders through the winter cold to stumble upon a warm home that will take her in for the night. A northern lady named Flo who runs a restaurant and has a customer who tells tall tales. ….

And how old is she? She seems to be three different ages. Anyway, Lois Lowry already did “the kid in the snow finds a house” thing well enough.

She wandered alone and died from ebola. Not sure how one can “have fun” with this one. :(

… and in the end, we find out that Darth Vader is really Luke and Leia’s father. Also, the whole horrible sequence was a dream, caused by Bob being hit in the head by an errant golf ball.

I’ll call her Sonja. I met with her early one morning in a coffee shop or deli in New York — or was it Boston — five or six hears ago.

Sonja contacted me because she feared for her life. She worked for a U.S. intelligence agency, and stumbled upon a link between recent terrorist activiity and a supposed Mid-East ally of the United States. Since reporting her findings to her handler, Sonja sensed she was being followed.

Ignoring the risk of getting involved myself, I gave Sonja directions to my lake-side cabin where I told her she could stay while I sorted everything out.

I will report on the shocking conclusion to Sonja’s story when I return to my anchor job on the evening news.

Some older girls took her shoes and bus money and she had to walk home from school in the freezing cold..When she made it to the front door, she collapsed on the doorstep to be found by her mother, who promptly cleaned her up and put her to bed. Nothing sinister, just a normal day in the life of Victimella.

Could this be in Maine with all the snow they’ve had there? Is this character at Danae’s front door? ;)

Maggie knew of her fear of those woods for as long as she’d been capable of knowing what fear felt like. The fear gripped her like a cold mist, even on that day when her reason and curiosity spiked ever so briefly above it, and she ventured in. There was no path. There was no sky. There was only a harsh wind and barren, crackling tree branches.

Maggie quickly lost her way. The terror, held so tenuously at bay at first, rose as a tsunami and engulfed her. The fear multiplied the chill of the wind, and she was suddenly immobilized.

But then: a light? A glint, really: perhaps a trick played by a desperation. But no, realized Maggie: there’s a hut there! Somebody lives there? Her will revived, she forced her feet to move, now leaden with the cold.

Maggie had known love and secure solace in her life, and so imagined she had recovered it now. She mustered an approach and a tapping on the coarse surface of the door. Someone or something flung it open. She fell forward and, in exhaustion and relief, fell limp.

Inside, the wind decayed to only a protesting and frustrated moaning, but it was still strangely cold in there. An equally frigid hand touched her….

Alone,young, unprepared for the cold, ready to collapse. And we are to continue the story and have FUN???? A little too warped, actually a lot warped. Give us back Homer.

It was a dark & stormy night………………..

She remembered killing him. She remembered the knife going deep into his chest. She remembered it more clearly than she wanted to. But she also remembered things that had certainly not happened. She remembered a sailing ship, perhaps a pirate ship, and that couldn’t be true. And she remembered him killing her. It made no sense, none of it made sense. But at the moment she didn’t care. She just wanted to get warm.

“help me. There was this owl and a kangaroo. There was also a piglet, a donkey and a strange bouncing tiger. But worst of all, there was this bear – who kept demanding… honey.”“I barely escaped with my life”

“Are you okay”The girl just sobbed.“They threw me out”, she murmured, “Because I’m different”.“What’s your name, Hon?” asked the gentle voice.“Tara”, she answered.“How are you different, Tara?”“I don’t like to steal or beg like the other kids. Hugh says I have to, ’tho, cause everyone has to help.”“What do you like to do?”“Garden.”“Then garden you will, once the snow has let up. In the meantime there are lots of other chores you can do, and none involve stealing or begging.”Tara lifted her head and looked at the her rescuer. What she saw amazed her.The woman was middle-aged, and had on homespun clothes. But it was her eyes that held Tara, for they seemed both young and old, wild and wise all at the same time.“Who are you?” she asked.The people around here call me ‘Gaea’, but I’ve had many names.

Kind of reminds me of “The Conjurers” by Brian Anderson here at gocomics. It used to be on every Monday, now it is sporadic. But the artwork to me is sort of similar. The Conjurers is “darker” though.

Amber had no idea how far or for how long she had walked. She knew she had to get out of that barn, and fast. She didn’t even have time to grab her sneakers. She recognized this house from the long drive in. Stories said that an angry old woman lived there who hadn’t been outside for years. But she had no choice. She was lost and cold and afraid. Once she got in the door, crying, she fell to the floor exhausted. Who would believe her story of what went on back on that farm. She had no choice but to trust this old woman.

“I’ve got to get a handle on this sleep-walking stuff…….…..uuggg….. hope I didn’t lock the door behind me…gads it’s cold out here …… please please please be unlocked….brrrr … have got to get some fuzzy slippers ….. and maybe some earmuffs to wear to bed….”

Doggone you, Wiley. You ruined my Sunday afternoon by putting a picture in my head that I can’t shut off and making me think. I was on my way to an afternoon of fun and escapism. Pfui!.

Her story seems to end better than that of ‘The Little Match Girl’…

“..But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall—frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. “She wanted to warm herself,” people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year."

I won’t go into detail, but de tale has a happy ending….Mom got her a new phone, although her dad can be heard muttering to himself………And I love the freakin’ artwork! YES!

Having been thrown from the explosive wreckage of her family car, Sara Marie vaguely recalls cruising thru the wilds of the Northern Cape of Florence Maine. She awakens to find herself enveloped by foreign limbs, in a foreign forest shaken beyond belief; each molecule in her body screaming for comfort.. if she had a voice it would pierce the eerie silence of this frozen dream.’ Scream Sara, Scream!’ a repetitious mantra circles ’round her.. but only the feeling of another presence in these lonely trees.. something as old as time itself.

Spurned by the elements, sequestered by all that was holy, something from deep within drew her forth; down the savior tree to an oddly familiar illuminated cabin, just ahead on the next ridge.

Shoeless feet slowly plod thru the crystalline snowpack, frozen hard with deep winters’ breath. Sara steps steadfastly towards the light from distant windows in this foreign wooded land, losing strength, but not the sight of what holds promise…“.one step more….one step more…… one step more…”

darkness….

“Sara?” , “O”, “O my God, Sara?!!”

We’re supposed to write this ourselves? How lazy! Where is the joke? Maybe she’s about to be taken prisoner and abused. ugh.

I’m late on the scene, as is usual with Sundays. Just read everyone’s comment – wow. Anyhow, no one mentioned the girl involved with Homer, the Reluctant Soul, who had many harrowing adventures, the last of which was birthing a new incarnation of Homer. Today’s girl reminds me of her; I hope she has smoother going.

All of this has happened before.All of this will happen again.

rich240, have you looked at my post? There’s a joke right there!. If you don’t like my joke, or the other responses, just say so…Wiley challenged us, and he didn’t even say our response had to be funny. The man issued a challenge to the people who read, enjoy, and yes, those of us who comment on his work. We spout off around here a lot. I can’t believe what I see here sometimes. Yet Wiley, has just invited us in….even the trolls….They know who they are……Wiley gave us something to have fun with….Cheese and Crackers, lighten up…..OK, fine then. How about this? If it wasn’t for the magic purple socks, her toes would have frozen and she knew it!…And guess what? Miller didn’t write that either…..But I think we can all agree that he caused it….

I’ve been trying to learn how to do this, so a little shirt tailing is fun.9 sub panes overlay one master pane.

New: Master pane, ie background, There were hands reaching down to the waif, so, the next major background should be (?) somewhere near the house, but dry. Ah, she has made it to the place beside the house where the old oil drum sits on pipe stilts. This is next to the back porch. The hands reaching down for her have just dropped a bucket of garbage.

Top left sub pane = #1. They are the hands of a dwarf woman, dressed in tattered clothes.

Top mid #2: The dwarf grabs the girl by the hair and drags her into the house.

Top rt #3: The girl awakens, crouched by the cook stove, wide eyed, terror struck

Mid #4: there are a whole colony of dwarves, ugly, scraggly, dressed in rags, with wide eyes

Lower mid #5: The girl points, gasps,

Panels #6, #7, #8: behind the dwarves a dark shape, in a doorway; then clearly an ogre; then a huge ugly hand reaching down toward the girl.

Bottom panel #9, A large finger at the girl’s throat, on it sits a small charm on a chain draped around the girls neck.

Yeah, that’s about it. Fun to contemplate why the girl is out and what could happen.

Lazarus, yeah, these thinking guys wear me out. Hard to keep up.

1) White enough to pass, she could only do so if she got away from where she was known to be a slave. Her master was starting to look at her with those eyes her older sister knew so well. Yes, she knew to follow the Drinking Gourd, but how could she find the Underground Railroad? What if she asked the wrong person? Her Massa, bad and mean as he was, wasn’t at all the worst she had heard tell of.

A house! But could she even get to it, and would she want to? Never mind. Not her choice, now.

2) With the yellow star torn off her clothing, she didn’t look obviously Jewish. Her parents and brother were going to die in whatever camp they were marching to, through the snow with no winter coats, with their shoes falling apart, and with next to no food. Or more likely they would die before they could even get there. Neither her family nor the guards had noticed her fall down from weakness, but after the stumbling column disappeared through the trees, and she managed to get up, which way should she go?

A house! But could she even get to it, and would she want to? Never mind. Not her choice, now.

3+) Actually, I know enough history to go on in this vein all day. Tweak the artwork and keep the girl, and it could be any ancient imperial war (see Euripides, The Trojan Women, for example), or Syria with ISIS or Northern Nigeria with Boko Haram or Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge or North Korea with the Kim Dynasty or Haiti for two centuries and more or a hundred other places over thousands of years.

Thanks, Wiley…

This is vol. 2? Did we miss vol. 1?

Its Danea in her teens. Katie the Vegan wouldnt boil a lobstah from the captain. It turns out to be rabid and bit Fuzzbut.. Thats why she is in her socks because, horses need more shoes.

Cool @ Wiley.

I for one enjoyed the challenge. And might it also inspire an older mind as well?

Life is strange

Wow is right. Long story short do you know Jesus?

She looks like an older Danae.

That little girl who survived the plane crash that killed her parents. She wandered through the woods on a very cold night and found a house. Hard to make something funny out of this situation. Maybe this is the house where Wiley’s version of the Adams family lives?

love the art work. – she had been running for what feels like days. The cold has been with her so long, it seems part of her now The shivers are more of reaction to the memory. Why she ran. Why she had to run.But now, there. Nestled in this wood of bare limbed trees, a cabin. Must get inside. If even for just the night. A chance to rest. Perhaps, sleep. ….

“Dang, I shouldn’t have signed up for that reality TV show!”

In the last frame, her socks are dry.*Therefore, she could not have been walking through the snow. It must have been a dream sequence.

“Would the one who had retrieved her from the cold appear, or would it be…”*Argy, "And papa bear said, “somebody’s been sleeping on my floor”. And mama bear said “somebody’s been sleeping on my floor”. And baby bear said,…

I read vol. 2 of your story and have some ideas regarding plot. I was thinking that the female was trying to find her brother who chased a mysterious doe into the woods. It turns out that the deer was of old age and had to pass down it’s powers to another creature, but the reader doesn’t find this out til later. The girl slowly discovers this as she see’s the light of him through the hazy fog out of her window. I think the inclination of the story should be rather slow so a new reader could get some idea as to what is happening, but when they look at the story as the whole it reveals something more beautiful.

~It’s just an idea :)

I am mostly interested in you art as I love inking and you carry the medium well.

Anyways, I apologize if I have created any plot wholes as I couldn’t find volume 1, so it would be great if you could send me a link to that. I can’t wait to see more, keep up the good work!

I think she is older and looking back at a very traumatic time. She looks so cold. The snow sticking to her socks, it’s like I cn feel it.Someone seems to be rescuing her so she doesn’t freeze to death.

Danae, after losing her horse through the ice on the river.

She nearly froze to death to escape the cannibals. Inside, glad to be safe & warm, she falls asleep on the couch. When she wakes, she is horrified to see a man roasting on a spit in the fireplace…

Schrödinger’s cat.