I did a comic for the second issue of "The Appendix," an online history journal that embraces experimentation and non-convention. The theme for the second issue is "illusions," and my story is about a nineteenth century American boxer, who fought in England. It aims to play with the notion of chronology, and how the order in which we see events changes our understanding of them. Tom Molineaux had a pretty dramatic life, but his life means different things depending on how you view it. His contemporaries viewed his biography one way, and understood it mostly as a cautionary tale of dissipation and waste. Now, we tend to look at his life in another direction, focusing on his triumphant and culturally relevant early years, with his later decline noted more as an epilogue.
Of course, both views are accurate insofar as they go, but they're both limited by a linear approach. The comic doesn't dispute either one, but it tries to find another, different standpoint from which to examine Molineaux's life. It doesn't yield anything by way of facts or chronology, but by looking for a new means of ordering the events, it hopefully creates a new and different way of appreciating Tom Molineaux's brief and complicated life.
The comic can be read, for free, HERE.
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