To infinity and beyond

A few words before we start

March is Doubt land issue 2 Month

issue 2 of “Doubt-land” is on sale now for just £1 a copy via eBay to anyone in the world

Just click the link below
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160751571676#ht_574wt_1118

Doubt land is my re-envisaged version of Jim Steranko’s lost / overlooked Outland movie adaptation, which has never been reprinted in English and is very hard to get hold of and is on sale at a bargain price

To infinity and beyond

Is where Woodrow Decker finally manages to go in this weeks next completed page of 2001:-

Infinity has itself already been seen and experienced in the the mind shattering journey through the monolith

Now Woody himself makes the slow journey to beyond in a magnificent 9 panel grid

His mysterious companion disappears after the first panel and Decker is left on the journey alone

with the road getting steeper and higher as Decker himself drastically and radially ages

Finally here we see Decker's tenacity and his actual fight for survival as he refuses to give up and keeps on going until it becomes a complete physical impossibility and his body refuses to react

But Decker's mind remains and at last the monolith looms overhead ready to usher Decker through the next stage of transformation

As with the previous page, it is important to note that the entire experience is a artificial reality created precisely to foster Decker's evolution to the next stage of this process and that in the comic, this is something much more recognizably human or a human experience unlike the 2001 movie which could arguably be said to be cold and distant at best

We never get to see what would be at the end of the road that Decker was traveling down, so the message is clear its not about the designation but the journey taken to get there

The journey in question is the story contained within this issue, which now has only one more page in which to unfold and complete

What will the conclusion be?

If you have been reading regularly there are quite a number of threads I have left hanging the central one being:-

What was the point of the first half of the story - featuring "he who hunts alone" in  relation to the second half featuring Decker here, what is message about evolution

What is the message about mankind his ancestry and his future

In short what was this issue all about

Perhaps by now you will have formed your own opinions

I certainly hope so, One thing I am have definitely been hopeful about is to try to get you all to think a lot more about comics, rather than say just reading n issue in 5 - 10 minutes and then mostly dismissing it (something I have been known to do myself)

My own conclusion will of course come next week following Decker's rebirth…

Of course this weeks blog title is a quote from Toy Story - which was irresistible to use given that Decker is referred to as Woody on the page reproduced!