Bang Bang Bang
From the June 6, 2012 commentary:
When I wrote this scene, many months ago, I was not specific about what Luis dropped. It varied between being a utensil, a jar of peanut butter, and other items. But it ended up being a pan he knocked over. Not that the object was important, of course. I just wanted him to find himself in a situation where his condition is an obvious — and frustrating — handicap, to both sort-of justify his crankiness and open him up to a meaningful discussion with his brother.
Not that I’ve ever been laid up in a wheelchair for an extended period, but I did have an appendectomy a few months ago, and it left me feeling as physically helpless/useless as I ever have in my life. I’m a very active and agile person, and have been since I was a kid. So for me to be unable to even do basic things like sit up or use the bathroom normally was immensely frustrating. So, in retrospect, I definitely was projecting some of my own expected frustrations onto Luis, both in this particular strip, and in his characterization in general. He’s a kid who was a promising basketball player whose ability to play the game (in his eyes) was stolen from him. That has to make this new reality for him doubly frustrating.
That feeling when you loved dancing…and then you do something to your back and/or hips that makes just walking at the grocery store painful, and you have to cut back on your dancing because it just hurts too damned much…and then your body deteriorates over several years due to a confluence of events that makes you have to live out of your vehicle for a year and a half, during which time you can’t go dancing…and then you get into a wreck that shakes your body up to the point where you’re now stuck using a cane just to be able to walk around. That feeling when you see a fictional character have to deal with the kinds of things that are part of the adjustment process for learning how to exist independently in the face of adversity. I can definitely understand his desire for independence.
I’m sorry for your temporary disability from your appendectomy, and I was watching your twitter where you vented some (very small) portion of your frustration from the disability presented. I am very glad that it was only temporary.
That *BANG BANG BANG* in the last panel was probably very painful, if it was shaking him and his chair that badly. I like the red-shadowed speech balloon.
(Luis might possibly have picked it up more easily if he turned his wheelchair to it head-on, leaned forward, grabbed it, and then levered himself back up to a sitting position with the arm that didn’t have hold of the pan… but then again, depending on how little he could rely on his legs or if he had a seat belt in his chair, he also might not have been able to.)
What exactly was Luis’s injury? What were the long-term effects? Is he fully paraplegic, or does he still have some control of his legs but not enough to walk?
Thanks for your insightful comment and for sharing what I assume is your very personal story, Kyle. I’m sorry you’ve had to endure such challenges, but I’m also glad you can find a connection to a character like Luis. It’s why I thought it was important for him to exist in the first place.
The cause and effect of Luis’ condition is purposely being obscured right now, although you will definitely find some clues in the first volume of The Utopian.
I’m seeing (during James’s fugue of possibly-not-affecting-the-real-world) Luis being put into the hospital for methamphetamine overdose, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how that could lead to paraplegia. That’s why I’m asking. 🙂
That’s the mystery! Just like someone with AIDS might die from, say, pneumonia, maybe it’s not the overdose directly that put Luis into a wheelchair… #hmmm