Cars (comic story): Difference between revisions

|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051123161710/http://www.barbelith.com/topic/5491/from/35#post86089

|title=Barbelith Forums - Collective Comics Thread. page 2 (archived)

|accessdate=3 May 2024

}}'''''Cars''''' was a standalone Jenny Everywhere comic story created in 2002. It is unclear whether the story is complete in its current form (having been intentionally hastily-created as part of a twenty-four hour comics challenge‎<ref name="carsbarbelith"></ref>) or if more pages and/or inking of the existing pages was planned. The comic is notable as one of the only two Jenny stories ever created by [[Steven Wintle]], Jenny's principal creator; as such, the version of Jenny used is almost exactly the one in the original public-domain sketch created by Wintle.

[[Jenny Everywhere (Cars)|Jenny Everywhere]] is performing at [[Flat Earth|a bar]] when she spots [[Jenny Everywhere's friend (Cars)|someone]] in the audience and begins flirtatiously singing to them. She invites them for a walk, and, while walking hand in hand, begins telling them that she liked them 'the second [she] saw [them]' in the audience, which causes the person to realise that Jenny doesn't remember them.

Steven Wintle created the story as part of a twenty-four hour comics challenge.‎<ref name="carsbarbelith"></ref> He would later attempt another Jenny comic for the same challenge in 2003, but fail to complete it within the time limit; consequently, the story was never posted.<ref name="flatearth">{{cite web

|accessdate=3 May 2024

}}</ref> He would go on to participate in the challenge again in 2005, producing [[COMIC]]: ''[[Tribute (comic story)|Tribute]]''.

The image file of the fifth and final known page of the story, as released on Geocities, is actually Page6.jpg; there is no actual Page 5. It is unclear if this was a typo or if a missing Page 5 was never completed - the twenty-four hour comic format making it entirely possible that a fifth page was planned, skipped with the intention of being completed later, and never reached before the time limit was up.<ref>{{cite web

 

 

 

 

 

The Shifter Archive's commentary must be taken only as speculation, as it does not appear that the Archive had access to any further information about the story than what can be gleaned from the original Barbelith posting. The uninked artwork, seemingly-unresolved and (without context) somewhat obscure plot, and the aforementioned file name would likely have caused the Archive to assume that the story was unfinished, but the context in which the story was created gives rise to the possibility that the sketchy quality of the art was intentional and that, rather than being the orphaned beginning of a longer story, it was only intended as a plotless vignette focusing on Wintle's Jenny's difficulty connecting with ordinary human life despite her desire to do so, a theme revisited in Wintle's second released Jenny story, [[COMIC]]: ''[[Tribute (comic story)|Tribute]]'', the knowledge of which makes ''Cars'' much easier to interpret as it stands.

 

 

}}</ref> Although Wintle never specifically mentioned this page goal when working on his 2003 comic, he did link to McCloud's webpage<ref name="flatearth"></ref>, and it is notable that [[COMIC]]: ''[[Tribute (comic story)|Tribute]]'', Wintle's unambiguously-finished 2005 twenty-four hour comic, is in fact twenty-four pages (not counting the cover). This would seem to indicate that ''Cars'''s status as a five-page comic makes it very likely that it is not in fact a completed work, despite the lack of notes to this effect on the occasion of the comic's posting - also raising the possibility that this lack of specific clarifications about the comic's status (and the Shifter Archive's later assertion) was simply because it would have been obvious to those familiar with the rules of the challenge that the comic was unfinished due to its page count.

 

Without further evidence, however, it is impossible to be completely certain about the comic's status.