The Value of Friendship: A Senior Comic Strip by Jackson Bartlett (2013)

This assignment stemmed from a 1-2 page story we developed in English focusing on some aspect of a Narrative. My narrative followed the story of a man unaccustomed to emotions, as he had been a long-standing emissary of justice and servitude to a cause. Through his travels with a band of friends from another world (our modern, art-driven society), he learns lessons and grows as an individual. Ultimately, he is faced with the choice of sacrificing the lives of the friends he comes to call family and save the system he serves, or die alongside them and preserve both his personal, and the collective humanity. This scene depicts the tender kindnesses shown to him by his loving companions, and in the end he gives into the emotions battling within him and makes the decision to die as a human with his friends, and not as a slave to duty. The universally overarching message here is that human compassion, caring, and kinship take president before the material in this world, and in the end that is all you really have, and nothing holds greater worth.