It feels like archaeology, this excavation, sifting through silicon tablets inscribed with the chronicles of a fallen civilisation. Here we find evidence of its rituals and celebrations, its values and cuisine, its talismans and taboos. We see this was once a vibrant, living culture of two: one that told stories and wrote songs, and made art and made war and made love.

There are none today who can say what it meant to live it. The scattered survivors of that far-off catastrophe no longer answer to their secret names, their private language now a dead tongue. There is no one left qualified to decipher these signs and sigils; none who could limn the artefacts of a bygone age.

Yet still I dig, picking through the ruins, examining each fragment like a shard of precious pottery. Here, then, is the proof. Here is the record of an ancient people at the height of their power and glory. Here is the history of

We're in an America based on tabloid news, underground comix, 1970s trash culture, Jack Chick Tracts, Mad magazine, and what Fox News viewers likely think kids these days are up to. The geist is very 70s, blended with present-day and 1990s elements. In short it's a story that could only take place in a comic book, and one NOT intended for children. It features a small army of small town characters, including writer/artist Rick Altergott's most notorious

trees are naked spirits
baring all their wounds
the bends and kinks of trunk and branch
tracing a lifepath, visible all at once

a piece of a tree
can grow into a complete new tree
an entire soul in a slender green sprig

patient, they breathe with the seasons
expanding when it is warm
and contracting when it is cold

in timelapse, plants follow the sun
in little circles,