Chapter 5: Page 12

Land of Confusion: Page 12

NOTES FROM JASON

We continue today with what I call the Council of Ministers. This was an interesting one, namely because it really shows how far this tale has come. See, back in the early days of The Jacket, we didn’t have any ministers. A lot of the dystopian elements of the government didn’t exist. I’m sure there was a reason for that decision, and at the time I’m sure it made perfect sense for us, but it ultimately didn’t result in an interesting comic. So, the dystopian elements were retooled and elaborated. That’s how we got the DOGS, and the three Ministries: Justice, Science, and Information.

But another problem soon reared its head. See, while the setting and world were tweaked, the basic story remained largely the same. That story didn’t really have a place for the other two ministers. Only Logan (who in the original iteration was merely a District Attorney) had any kind of role, and even that was mainly to be kidnapped in the first volume. That didn’t sit right with me, and so I looked for ways to bring in the other two ministers without compromising the story. Enter this Council scene. A scene like that was always in the story, Carnelius destroying Harker’s glasses being the crux of it, but what was just a vague sketch became a lot clearer and allowed the scene to naturally grow.

I can’t say that Ministers Gradenko and Richwine have huge roles in this story, but they certainly have a lot more presence than they did before, which is still an improvement in my book. Originally, Gradenko was going to appear in this chapter’s opening scene in the prison infirmary, but considering this scene was coming later, it seemed more appropriate to introduce her here. Bringing her into the story seemed easier to me, for reasons I’ll elaborate on later. Richwine proved to be a little more difficult to bring into the picture, but having a seemingly rogue reporter on the air helped, since that would fall under his jurisdiction. Like I said, don’t expect them to become major characters in this story, but do expect to see them later down the road.

So, let’s discuss the names. The names were established early on, way before this scene fully came together actually. Minister Gradenko takes her name from a song by The Police, and Randy already mentioned that Richwine is the name of a friend of ours from high school. I think at one point there was a plan to include more high school names, but that ended up not happening. Reason for that was simple: The Jacket was first created during my college years, and as such cannot be separated from that era of my life. So, a lot of characters ended up sharing names with people I knew from college. There are no other similarities between said people and this story’s characters. Only thing they share are the names, specifically surnames. No other resemblances. Hell, some don’t even share the same gender. I doubt any of them will ever know about it, but they are still in here as a nod to that long ago time when The Jacket was born.

So, all that aside, the page itself shows our villains going over the numerous problems that are developing, and what seems to be the start of a response to those problems. That can’t be good. And at the end, we see our old familiar Minister Logan objecting to the machinations unfolding. I could say more, but we might as well wait until next week. Considering what we’ve already seen from Logan in this chapter, what comes next will certainly prove to be quite interesting.