Cartoon is a very unique character. I first wrote the idea down back in the Eighties for a motion picture screenplay. I pitched it to a producer at Paramount, and interestingly enough some few years later, after my screenplay had been rejected, a movie came out that was awfully similar to Cartoon. I later found out that the man who directed it had a reputation for stealing other people's ideas. This was not the first time it had happened to me. But such is life in the creative world.
We all build ideas from the giants before us. I usually take mine from the classics, but some do not. Their choice. My choice.
Cartoon, in my mind, is a metaphor for what is best in all of us. A personality who places honor, love and dignity above all else. She is willing to trade off even her own life to protect her people and to do what is right.
Johnnie, on the other hand, is a teenager bent somewhat by the push and pull of our modern life, where the world wants us all to hurry up and grow up and be part of the factory system that has been created by the military industrial complex led by the huge corporations of today and fronted by our own Congress unfortunately.
Do we blame this mess on them or our own lack of follow through in educating ourselves and doing the right thing?
Cartoon chooses to take the harder path...the one that guarantees she will have a soul at the end of the day, whether she wins or loses, but Johnnie, the hero of our ongoing series is not yet that mature. He is fighting his hormones as most teenagers do, and unfortunately, many adults as well, and thus not thinking straight.
His path is constantly obstructed by his own emotions and hormonal discharges, much as we see in modern day Congress where the needs of the people are often set aside for the needs of the political pundit or party.
Will Johnnie make his masteries in life and become a true child of the universe who recognizes the dignity in all others and cares enough that he is even willing to give up his own goals for the greater good?
Only time will tell.
Happy Reading to all.
John
