Name's Not Down (comic story)
Name's Not Down was a standalone Jenny Everywhere comic story written by Joe Macaré and drawn by Nelson Evergreen. It is believed to have been the first of the original Barbelith Jenny Everywhere stories to be released, although My Bloody Valentine was begun first, and Jenny made a cameo in Late Night Queueing, a slightly earlier comic also drawn by Nelson Evergreen, in addition to having starred in Cars, an earlier story which was penciled but never inked.
In an effort to establish a potential setting and status-quo for the Shifter, the story also introduced Jenny's friends Clea, Lex and Bradley and the town of Right-On By The Sea, which would recur in other stories. The characters would eventually be officially released as open-source in 2023.
Contents
Plot
Jenny Everywhere and her friends Clea, Lex and Bradley, who, together, form the band of Right-On By The Sea's most notorious chaotic troublemakers, try to get into an exclusive concert, but the bouncer insists that their name's not on the list — even though Jenny was pretty sure she had tricked Nathan, the promoter, into letting her come. The bouncer ends up touching the limits of Jenny's patience…
Worldbuilding
Jenny Everywhere
- Jenny Everywhere, appearing in an incarnation who would recur in later works is known to her friends in Right-On By The Sea as “the Shifter”.
- She displays an ability for physical combat.
Universes
- This story entirely takes place in one universe, home to the coastal city of Right-On By The Sea.
Other
- The concert Jenny and her friends are intent on attending is a night of “queer hip-hop post-glitch electronica and glum'n'bass” at Club Twart.
Continuity
- Nelson Evergreen had previously drawn COMIC: Late Night Queueing, a largely-standalone story featuring a different Jenny Everywhere. Background characters in this comic included an unnamed tentacular abomination inexplicably queueing along in the middle of the human shoppers, who involuntarily startled a human shopper. The two characters reappeared in Name's Not Down, again queueing together, but now holding affectionately onto each other as they waited in-line outside Club Twart. Evergreen, who included the characters on his own iniative, would later explicate his intent on Discord on June 27, 2023:
| Enjoyed drawing them, so shoved them in here too. (…) I do remember thinking wouldn’t it be sweet if, after an awkward start, the two of them got together and went on to spend all their time in queues because it reminded them of how they first met. |
| —Nelson Evergreen |
- Jenny, Lex, Clea and Bradley's adventures were continued with the same writer-artist team in COMIC: Damn Fine Hostile Takeover.
- This story's main Jenny, as seen on the title page, was one of the incarnations glimpsed by the Nommo in COMIC: Say The Word.
- Right-On By The Sea would make unnamed cameos, paying tribute to this story as one of the first Jenny tales, in the prose stories The Disappearance of Jenny Everywhere and Paying It Forward.
- The universe of this story would later be referenced in COMIC: Peter's Pursuit, with another Jenny Everywhere considering going to "the [universe] where another of me did graffiti".
Behind the scenes
Joe Macaré first mentioned the then-unfinished story on February 12th, 2002, describing it as follows:[1]
| I can tell you my plan at the moment if you like - I'm writing a story that might be 4, more likely be 6 pages, revolving primarily around the character of Jen aka Shifter (Shifter is her 'tag' name in this universe...), she'll have all of the visual signifiers and the innate sense of mischief and fun I perceive in the original sense, but mine might be a bit more prone to senseless violence... |
| —Joe Macaré |
Read online
Name's Not Down was originally available on Nelson Evergreen's personal website, but this page is no longer available. The seven pages of the story are reproduced here.
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