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This is a five-page comic, with a cover page beforehand. On it are the title and author in bold font, "The Father Is Present by Kaye Weatherly." There is a blank background with an old man sitting in a chair, facing away from viewer. / On page one, we see the old man from the front and his eyes are cast over with shadow. The text boxes are a voiceover from someone not yet seen, and it reads, "He was sentimental. He was wicked and sentimental. I must have been thirteen when I found out the truth..." The man is visibly conversing with someone, smiling initially, and then frowning in the third panel as the camera slowly zooms in on him. The panels become shorter when he gets up to point a gun at a man's face. The last text box reads, "I couldn't live like this anymore." In the last, shortest panel, the younger man is seen sweating as the gun reaches his forehead. / On page two, we are introduced to the speaker of the prior text boxes—a young girl with light-colored hair and a beret is speaking to another girl at a diner. She says to her, "It's like... a social murder. I've been dead my whole life. He refused to have me aborted, yet raised me in a cage." In the next panel, she says, "It frightens me to wonder what happened to mother—" and she is cut off by a director yelling "CUT!" The panel shows a film crew in the foreground of the diner, all of whom are in the dark. In the third panel, the director says, "Scarlet! There's a call for you." She replies, "Okay, coming!" In the next panel he says "Oh, and uh—don't veer too far off the script, alright?" As she walks away she replies "Right, got it..." The last three panels, which are all equal in size, show her gradually running off to the payphone in the corridor. / Page three. On the phone, Scarlet says, “They what? They found him?” There are three people from her film crew standing off in the distance, watching her. Her speech bubble wraps around to the second panel, where she says, “Oh, for Christ’s sake—call later, I don’t have time for this!” Here there is a closer shot of the three individuals making faces at one another while they listen in on their actress’s call. In the third panel, we see Scarlet again, visibly huddling closer to the mic when she says, “Alright, fine—but make it quick! I’m wasting everyone’s time and money.” The panel has a zigzag transition line into a shot of a man with a ten gallon hat and eye mask on the other end of the line. There is a man with a full face mask sitting at a table behind him with one bright light shining down on him. The hatted man on the phone says, “Not much time left until we move on in. Any last words for the old man?” In the next panel we see the fully masked man up close, where he is handed the magazine of a pistol by someone else, and he is about to load it into a pistol from the stack of guns he is preparing. He wears a black suit and tie. In overhearing the call, he says, “Tell her we won’t be there to hear his. Our mole got him cornered and his guys—however many are left—are scrambling away.” The next few diagonal panels are quick shots of him loading the next gun, and in the last, he is pointing it directly outward. He says, “The clock is ticking.” / Page four. There is a close up of the lower half of Scarlet’s face and the phone she’s holding. On the other end of the line the man continues, “I wonder… Will you carry on his legacy, or cower away ’til they find and kill you… Sinovia Kazimirovna?” With a sharp “clang!” she slams the phone back onto the handles. In the next panel she is startled that two of the three crew members are up close now: the man on the left dons headphones and is holding a boom mic stand. The woman on the right has frizzy hair and librarian glasses. She says to Scarlet, “Scarlet, honey? Don’t tell me, was it the one exec?” The man says in response to this, “Tell him lighting department wants to kick his ass.” The next panel, which lacks borders, has Scarlet in an isolated white background as she replies “Oh, no, those were just… my dad’s colleagues.” In the next shot we see her walking back with the woman’s arm around her shoulders, saying to her “Oh, okay, well come on back over! We don’t got all day. Donna’s been dying to go to that new salon with you after work.” In the next panel we get closer to Scarlet once again, where we shift to her inner thoughts: here she thinks to herself, “Can I lead a normal life like this?” In the bottom panel we cut to a close-up of her bloodied palms from a previous incident. Debilitating over this, she continues, “I recently killed in self-defense. He had it out for me because my father murdered his brother. He couldn’t pay off his debt.” The last, smaller thought box reads, “An eye for an eye. The cycle continues out of self-preservation.” / Page five. We see a montage of a few memories. In the first panel she is dying her darker colored hair and her inner thoughts continue, “I’m trying to reclaim my life.” In the second panel, she is on a theater stage auditioning for three individuals in the front seats. The thought box here reads, “I dyed my hair. Started wearing makeup. I auditioned under a new name.” The next panel, which is slimmer in height, shows her back in her original seat at the diner, laughing along to whatever conversation has been had with her crew. The thought box reads, “But… he is a part of me so long as he lives.” The next panel, slightly zoomed out and expanded in size, shows her casting her gaze elsewhere and looking a bit more concerned. The last box reads, “Until he sheds blood, I cannot shed this mold.” In the final panel she is looking out towards the camera, distraught, while a boom mic hovers above her, a film camera is aimed at her, and her co-star is laughing in a conversation with other film crew members. The size of this panel is the biggest of the three. This composition is an inverted callback to the panel size order in the beginning of the comic, in which the shots of her father gradually shrink in size. The last text box at the bottom right of the panel reads in italicized text, “End.”

The Father Is Present

Kaye Weatherly

Ink on Bristol Paper

"The Father Is Present" is an excerpt from a larger story of mine, but operates as a standalone comic. In this, I explore identity and the confinements of one's family. Parental figures hold much weight in our lives. How does one escape that weight when it becomes too burdensome? This comic is about self-transformation, whether one grows from it or not; in the end, one must reckon with the sins of their father.