A War Child's Portfolio

When I was child we had a war. It was very far away and nobody seemed to understand what it was about. We heard about it every day because of the daily, detailed body counts, enemy and friendly ; this helped teach us the idea that some lives are worth more than others.

Between 'Nam bodycounts and Apollo Missions, I watched Planet of the Apes and Godzilla movies, so it was only natural that I'd write comic books featuring war between Apes and Dinosaurs, wars often fought in outer space.

My mother somehow managed to save some of them- she was literally homeless for months at a time, yet she held onto these. She's been dead nearly ten years and I am just now finding the strength to sort through the few possessions she left behind, but it's something I need to do.

Often, I find myself paralyzed with memory.

It's hard to deal with, but I want to share something that is important- to me anyway. It's a little lesson about how kids see war.
Let's start with one of my kiddie comics:


No big deal , right? Kids like war movies and monster movies- and by the time ( 1973?) I drew this , I already had a good idea of the difference between fake war and real war.

In real wars, you never got to see the grown-ups that you liked again- or if you did, they were never as much fun to be around after they were done with their war as they were before they went.

In fake wars, you got to see the adults later, in other movies, and they never stayed dead very long.

In my fake wars, dead was dead. When we played 'war' in the schoolyard I would argue that you don't stand up after you get 'shot'- you die and you stay that way.
In my comics, nobody won the wars, the only result was a dry recitation of casualties. Just numbers, really. I even blew up a planet in one story, which was years before Star Wars...

Apes and dinosaurs. Surely that's just a young child's fanciful imagination, right?

See for yourself:

In the circle in the bottom right hand corner it says "Make War No More. Peace". Even as a kid, I knew right from wrong, and war is almost always wrong.

Those bodycounts are among the most vivid memories I have of childhood- when I picture our old black and white Zenith console, I see a collage of Cronkite, NASA and 'Nam...countdown to lift-off, backwards to Zero; count forward to death, tick, tick, it's OK because more of them died than of us; who's playing? Kent State vs. Khe Sanh? March into madness...

Anyway, I was looking at those old scribblings as I was watching a cable news show called "This Week in War"- like it was a Sports show or something- and sure enough, there were the same old bodycounts...this time they move and blink and come with fancy animations, but it's still the same old death-as-numbers...and the more death we see the number we become.

That numbness may be the only thing saving us from madness.From noticing the madness, anyway.

In my mother's things I found another drawing. It's from a few years later and it scares the hell out of me because it's mine and I don't want anything to do with it.
There are parts of my life that I just cannot remember at all and this picture is part of that.

That blood disturbs me- thirty years after this drawing, I had boozed my insides into leaky, blood-soaked Swiss Cheese, and a fair amount of it came up through my mouth, nose and even my ears.
My hospital gown was the same color as that of the figure in drawing.

My question to parents: What would you do if your 10-year old drew a picture like the one above?
My mom took off, re-married and stayed away for years - she took this picture with her.

Was she hiding it?

To protect me?
To protect her?
Who? Why?

I'll never know.

I feel helpless.