Lady of the Moon

Lady of the Moon

Lady of the Moon is where I'll try and prove out the 4koma idea that I had. So instead of fleshing out a ton of stuff for the next story which I barely have, I can work with what I got.

One of the stories that I never told was how Kamiko and Chang'e met, so this is that story, or the start of it.

Here's a scary thing, on my behalf...

I have no script or outline for this one... just some vague notions. I'm going to pants this one which could spell disaster. I don't know how many of these 4koma pages it will be either. We'll just roll with it.

It'll go between telling that story and some 4koma style gags.

The dialogue in this comic page are not my own.

They belong to Ronald Evans of the Apollo 11 mission (CAPCOM). You can read it in the actual Apollo 11 transcript. Evans recounts the Chinese myth about the Lady of the Moon, which goes like this:

Roger. Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, there's one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.

If you remember from the Rabbit and the Moon, I tell the same story, so there's some cool historical context added to the Chinese folktale.

Evans calls her "Chang'o". The modern spelling is Chang'e, which is what I use in The Rabbit and the Moon. I changed it in the comic, and I know it's not historically accurate, but I want it inline with my story. This way you're not confused as to which character is being referred too.

Evans asks the Apollo crew to keep an eye out for them when they touch down on the lunar surface.

BTW, if you look at this page from the chapter "Wolf and Rabbit", you'll notice the US flag planted there.

So yes, I've been planning the idea for a really long time! I did that page in 2013. I didn't know how I'd tell it. If my thinking stayed the same from 2013, these would be full graphic novel pages. Now, I'm taking in the production reality and other aspects like share-ability online via social media, it's much different.

So, this begins the next great experiment in visual storytelling...