A pencil, ink, and chinese ochre paint comic in grayscale, the only visible color the red-orange of ochre, reserved only for one character and the use of ochre within the narrative. Page 1, panel 1: low angle shot of OP’s character Hopper, a young cavewoman in braids wrapped around the head in layers, fur pelt clothing, bone accessories and a hare foot necklace, her left hand holding a bowl of ochre paint, her right arm raised beyond the panel, a look of concentration on her face. Her entire body is ochre. Text: “I DIDN'T THINK…” Panel 2: back of Hopper, the raised hand revealed as applying paint to a drawing on a cave wall, a hare in motion. Other cave paints, some half-finished, are scattered around it. A cluster of hand prints is on the bottom right, a fire on the left. Text: “I WOULD BE ABLE TO KEEP DOING THIS” Panel 3: Mesopotamia, Assyria, the back of Hopper in a simple shawl, sitting before and working on a gypsum wall panel relief: return from the hunt. Men carry hare, bird, and nests, the hare being painted ochre by Hopper. Panel 4: Song Dynasty, China, Hopper is disguised as a man, sitting before a table with inksticks and inkstone, painting on a long rice paper as she is being instructed by a man in a Futou hat. The painting is likely a copy practice of Magpies and Hare by Cui Bai. The hare has been painted ochre. Panel 5: The back of Hopper sitting before a candle-lit desk, an inkwell and bible before her. She is in the dark drapery of a medieval nun, holding a quill and illustrating for a manuscript, of a small, ochre hare brandishing an axe. Text distributed throughout panels 3 to 5: “FOR ANOTHER/ TWENTY/ THOUSAND YEARS.” Panel 6: Hopper crouched on a white background, hands clutching her head in exhaustion or torment. The next four subsequent figures depict her rapidly abstracting, morphing into a small hare and then hopping away. The ochre color of her gradually fades as she shapeshifts.
Page 2. Panel 1: The small hare sleeps, curled into herself. Panel 2: A hand holding a spray paint bottle labeled “ochre”, sparse paint coming out as it is pressed. Text: “AND YET, AND YET.” Panel 3: view of the interior of an abandoned railway tunnel, the vanishing point a faint glow far back, a broken gate half open in between. Two ragged train tracks run through the tunnel. All over the tunnel walls in ochre and black, are graffiti of various lifeforms of the earth: Bison, mammoth, boar, bat, whale, fish, jellyfish, hares, and more, all in the same style of archaic cave paintings. A lone ochre figure in a hoodie and jacket sits high up on a ladder before the hare section, shaking the bottle of spray paint. A duffel bag of more bottles sits at the foot of the ladder. A light attached to the highest point of the tunnel shines on the figure and wall. Last panel: close-up of the figure’s face, Hopper, unchanged through the eras, hair still in layers of crown braids, expression a concentrated defiance, aiming the spray bottle at the wall, or in this case, the viewer. Text: “I NEVER DID FIND A WAY OUT OF THE CAVE.” End ID]
