COMIC BOOK

Triggered

Oh… Triggered. This book was great in theory, but maybe poorly timed in its execution. To summarize the essential framework of the story, Triggered imagines what it would look like if a rural, heavily armed, ultra-right-wing community declared itself a sovereign nation from the United States and, for lack of a better term, went nuclear on the regional powers-that-be in an all-out war (basically a micro civil war).

The thing to know about the timing of this book is that my illustration partner, Vincent Jolas Dubourg, and I began shopping it to publishers in the winter of 2017. To remind you what was happening at that time in America, well… things were, let’s call them, hectic. The country was experiencing a chaotic political divide (arguably the worst since the 1800s), and, for example, nutjobs were walking into newspapers and shooting journalists for printing ‘fake news’. So, to my point, shopping a comic that posited what an extreme militia rebellion might look like, well… publishers didn’t want any part of it (with several telling me so in person).

Vincent did an awesome job with the art, which we did in a red, white, and blue color palette (which I still think is a rad idea and a technique I’d like to revisit one day). Who knows? Maybe one day we can all be adults again (and have disagreements where violence isn’t an option) and Triggered could see the light of day.  

words: JC Lacek

illustration, coloring, letters & cover: Vincent Jolas Dubourg

publisher: Unpublished

Read Triggered below