"St. Michael's Promise"
Proposal for a Graphic Memoir
By
Mike Hawthorne
Proposal for a Graphic Memoir
By
Mike Hawthorne
INTRODUCTION
"The great mass of Puerto Ricans are as yet passive and plastic...Their ideals are in our hands to create and mold."
Victor S. Clark, President of the Puerto Rico Board of Education - 1899
My father was married. Just not to my mother. Abandoned by him, my mother found herself raising a son alone in New York. If that wasn't difficult enough my mother soon discovered that, for reasons unknown to her, a Santero had placed a curse on me. Old world Santeria was something she thought she had escaped when she left Puerto Rico, only to find it had emigrated with her. She wanted to hide me from the death curse, so I was sent away from New York and into small town Pennsylvania. Running away from the bad, things only got worse.
What seems like a straight forward memoir really serves as an illustration of what it means to be Puerto Rican in America. What it means to be a nationality, with no real nation.
This is the story of a woman trying to be an island unto herself, and a boy floating just off her coast.
SYNOPSIS
St. Michael's Promise
page breakdowns/synopsis
Chapter 1
It’s the early eighties in New York City, when my mother an I find an old leather shoe propped against our apartment door. To the average person, it’s nothing. However my mother, who grew up in a family of Puerto Rican Santeros, knew better. This was an old world curse, one meant to kill me.
Back in Puerto Rico my mother was accustomed to the religious practices of her Grandmother, a “Babaloo” with seemingly supernatural abilities and a cadre of loyal Santeria practitioners and congregants. My mother was taught from a young age to spot curses and to counter them with rituals and counter-spells. She knew to also call on Saints, like St. Michael, to keep her child safe.
And if all else fails, she knew to run.
Chapter 2
Blanca, my mother, understood she had to do something drastic to protect me from the curse. She hatches a plot to gets me out of New York and send me to Amish country, where she’ll leave me with an old friend.
If only the plan had only worked. My mother’s friend and her children have a sadistic streak, and proceed to make me as miserable as they can. This state of being alone, angry and afraid becomes the norm.
Chapter 3.
Several months pass, and my mother leaves New York. We’re reunited in Pennsylvania, where we get our own apartment. All seems right in the world and I’m finally settling into my new surroundings, when my mother gets the itch to move away again.
We move west to a small industrial town that has seen better days; York City, PA. My mother has a half-brother there who has agreed to take us in. I meet him, his four rowdy sons, and Cuchi his peculiar wife.
We move west to a small industrial town that has seen better days; York City, PA. My mother has a half-brother there who has agreed to take us in. I meet him, his four rowdy sons, and Cuchi his peculiar wife.
As we begin our lives in York, my mother becomes more and more physically abusive to me. It begins with simple smacks, grows to beatings, and eventually punches. I’m put in the position of lying for her to teachers when I attend school with black eyes and bruises.
Years of this go by, and I internalize the abuse becoming angrily self destructive, terrorizing the neighborhood, and narrowly avoiding run-ins with the police.
Chapter 4.
My mother was the mistress of a married man, and after getting her pregnant he abandoned her and offered no support to her over the years. She struggled to get by, and we found ourselves living a life of poverty. She was forced to accept public assistance and food handouts. She faced racial discrimination when looking for work, and eventually homelessness. This was difficult for a woman who’d grew up being told she came from a special family, that she was Santeria royalty.
She turns to crime to earn money, and begins selling drugs.
She turns to crime to earn money, and begins selling drugs.
All the while I’m coming of age and beginning to understand what I’m seeing; A woman teetering on the edge.
Chapter 5.
We move into a new neighborhood. As a pre-teen I discover my one true love; art! Graffiti covered walls and comic books, hip hop and breakdancing. I couldn’t get enough.
We still struggled financially, but we had Regan’s government cheese and a little money from my mother’s dealing to get us by.
Chapter 6.
After a long stint in the military, my estranged sister Linda comes to Pennsylvania from New York to visit us. She and my mother were always at odds over my sister’s sexuality and my mother’s abusiveness. My mother had a stubborn prejudice of my sister being gay, and my sister was too head-strong a person to ever give an inch to our mother’s hate. The visit doesn’t go well, and Linda returns to New York. The two are at loggerheads more than ever.
Chapter 7.
We’re on the move, again, this time to an even worse neighborhood. This is the height of the “crack epidemic”, and my mother has moved us across the street from a row of abandoned houses used by drug addicts to get high.
Blanca has stopped selling drugs herself, and has begun taking temporary jobs whenever they’re available. Still, she never has enough, and we slide deeper into poverty. She also begins drinking heavily.
The neighborhood around us seems to worsen every day, and the stress of living there serves as a trigger for her anguish and desperation.
As an early teen, I’m seeing all of this happen. Friends arrested for drug dealing, the police singling out Latinos for harassment, robbings, rapes, all occurring around me and I internalize it all.
I also begin to realize how disconnected we really are from the family in New York and Puerto Rico. During this time my mother discovers her father has passed, but no one in the family told her till long after his funeral. She also loses her brother, and at the funeral is disowned by her mother for no apparent reason.
Then my mother tells me the worst news of all. I learn that my sister is sick, perhaps dying.
The curse lives on.
Chapter 8.
It’s the nineties, and I’m a teenager. I’ve turned to weightlifting, art, BMX, anything to exorcize anger and get away from my mother. I look for every reason I can to avoid her because she’s as mean as ever.
During one particularly intense fit she threatens to kill me with a large pair of scissors. For the first time in my life I don’t cry and cower in fear, but face her. She rages, but after a time she uncharacteristically backs down.
During one particularly intense fit she threatens to kill me with a large pair of scissors. For the first time in my life I don’t cry and cower in fear, but face her. She rages, but after a time she uncharacteristically backs down.
We drift farther apart from each other as I focus more on school and art and she goes deeper into loneliness and depression.
Chapter 9.
My mother settles into a steady job at a factory, and I’m hard at work trying to get into art school. Blanca manages to buy a very modest house, which she proceeds to lock herself in every hour that she’s not at work. No more friends, no family, just her and her phantoms.
I move away to Philadelphia, attend art school, get serious about my girl friend, graduate form college, and move back home, all in short order.
All the while my mother is alone, never quite giving up on the idea that my father would come to “save her”. Despite the abandonment, she still loves him and grows older saving herself for him.
All the while my mother is alone, never quite giving up on the idea that my father would come to “save her”. Despite the abandonment, she still loves him and grows older saving herself for him.
Then she dies.
The family gathers for her funeral, and afterwards we all share stories about my mother Blanca. However, we begin to find that none of the stories quite match up. I discover that my mother’s life was a collection of half truths and outright lies. Some intensely ugly, like the lie that my sister was dying, and some ridiculous, like a fictional birthday.
Her financial life was built on sand too, and I lose her house to the debt she had secretly built up.
In the end I’m left with nothing solid from my mother, no way of knowing what was history and what was fantasy.
I can’t shake the feeling that perhaps the cursed shoe, from all those years back, belonged to my mother.
Chapter 10.
Years later, I move on. I marry, start a family, begin a career as an illustrator. Each year I seem to grow farther away from my family, inheriting the relationship my mother had with them.
My mother wanted to keep us on an island unto ourselves. It worked.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 11.
More times pass, and I’m researching this very book. I meet with my sister and we discuss our mother, comparing notes. We share stories of her abuse, and I confess that I believe my mother secretly wanted to push me to the brink to see if I could be brought to hurt her. Maybe kill her.
My sister shares a story of our mother coming close to killing her, much like she’d done to me. Blanca and Linda had been fighting and my mother had overpowered her and began strangling Linda. Linda just stared in Blanca’s eyes as she did it. Our mother’s fury had fizzled, much like it had done with me during the insistent with the scissors.
My sister shares a story of our mother coming close to killing her, much like she’d done to me. Blanca and Linda had been fighting and my mother had overpowered her and began strangling Linda. Linda just stared in Blanca’s eyes as she did it. Our mother’s fury had fizzled, much like it had done with me during the insistent with the scissors.
My sister and I part knowing that we both survived living with this flawed, volatile woman who we both, down deep, missed terribly.
Life goes on. My little family grows, and we’re all very happy. To be sure, there are bad times when I believe the curse has yet to be broken, but on the whole life is better then I think I deserve.
We end with my children and I drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. We’re drawing a little tropical island all alone in a tumultuous ocean.
The end.
THE AUTHOR
My name is Mike Hawthorne and I'm a cartoonist and illustrator who has worked in comics and film. I've worked for Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Vertigo, Dark Horse, Oni Press, to name a few. I've also worked in film for Universal Studios, Illumination Entertainment, Mass Animation, and FOX.
I've been nominated for both an Eisner and a Harvey Award.
Currently I'm illustrating the New York Times best selling "Deadpool" for Marvel comics.
In addition to that I'm illustrating a series of "bande dessinée" based on Stefan Wul's science fiction novel "Oms en Série" for French Publisher Ankama. Wul's novel is best known in the US for having inspired the 1973 film "Fantastic Planet".
I live in Central Pennsylvania with my wife, three children, and two dogs.
For a downloadable PDF of the first 20 lettered pages, click here.
CONTACT
Mike Hawthorne
mhawthorne@thinktankcomics.com
SAMPLE ART
SAMPLE SCRIPT
Chapter One
PG. 1
1.1 Late 90's - Summer. Outside a funeral home, but it's not obvious in this sequence. I'm standing in the parking lot looking up at the door (off panel). My eyes look bloodshot, and I'm dressed in a freshly pressed shirt, slacks and tie.
narrator
Doctors will tell you that children won't retain any memories of their life before the age of four.
Even after the age of four, their memory is spotty at best.
1.2 Big panel. I walk towards a set of double doors. There is a car port over head, just in front of the door. We still don't see what the building is, but to the side of the building we see a hearse parked. Just a hint at what we're in for.
narrator
I suppose that's God's way of balancing out the fact that we're so damned vulnerable as kids.
PG. 2
* Note - This shot with the elevated train tracks will mimic the previous shot with the overhead car port.
2.1 Early 1980's - Fall. Establishing shot of a Manhattan neighborhood ( Inwood, actually. The first shot is of 218th and Broadway). It's a beautiful early fall day, cold enough for a coat, but not enough to be too bitter about it.
CAPTION: The early 1980s. Sometime in the fall. New York.
Narrator: Fact is, I may not have ever remembered this day at all…
At street level, just passing under some elevated train tracks, we see my mother and I walking hand in hand beneath the the platform. My mother is in her early thirties, and looking great. Her hair and nails are done, and she's dressed nicely. I'm only about six here, and dressed with a hat and a coat that is a little more then needed for the nice weather - a sign of her protectiveness.
2.2 We're now walking up hill a bit to our apartment building, the elevated tracks just behind us at the bottom of the hill. There is a bit of graffiti on the wall, but nothing too over done.
2.3 We arrive at our floor from the stairwell, and my mother is digging her keys out of her purse. I'm looking towards our apartment door but we can't quite see the entire door from this angle.
2.4 I'm pointing my mitten-covered hand towards the door (which is off panel here) as my mother looks up from her purse. All the blood has drained from her body, as if she's just laid eyes on a corpse.
Me
Mamí, was' dat?
(lettering note - Mamí should always have the accent mark over the "i")
PG. 3
3.1 A big shot of us facing the door of our apartment. An old, ragged, leather shoe is carefully propped up against the door jam. From it's positioning it's clear that it wasn't casually tossed there
My mother grabs my arm and is rushing me away from the door. For my part, I'm just kind of dumbfounded. I don't understand a bit of what's going on, or why my mother is so frightened.
3.2 Much closer on the shoe. I want to show this thing in all it's ugly glory, but also show how harmless it is.
narrator
if it weren't for this shoe.
This old shoe, nothing but leather and dust, scared the shit out of my mother - Blanca the Unflappable.
You have to understand, this was no small feat. My mother's courage was known by all of us in the Otero clan.
PG. 4
4.1 The Bronx 1960's - Interior of an apartment building. My mother pushing a young man into her apartment, a stern look on her face. His face is horribly burned, flesh bubbling, and he's screaming in agony.
narrator
I grew up hearing the legends. Like the one about her coming to the aid of a boy who's face had been burned with battery acid in a street fight by throwing him in a cold bath then caring for his burns.
4.2 The Bronx, 1970's - (Spring?) Outside an electronics store. My mother and another anonymous woman (both in their twenties) carrying a tv out of a store with a broken window. Ducking as they hear gun shots.
narrator
Or how she went out looting during the New York blackout of 77, bullets screaming over head.
4.3 York City, mid 1980's - Winter, on a city street. My mother holding a man up off of the street as he has a seizure, practically foaming at the mouth and his eyes are rolling back in his head. She's yelling at me to get a police officer. I'm half in shock at the sight! I'm about 10 years old here.
narrator
I myself witnessed her helping a guy who was having a seizure on the street. He was laying there, half off the curb, stiff as goddamned nun's collar, and shaking violently!
If you'll pardon the clichés: I was frozen in terror, she was cool as a cucumber.
Blanca
¡Vaya y consigueme un policía!
¡Avansa!
4.4 Small shot of the shoe.
narrator
This shoe was a different business entirely.
This was a curse.
PG. 5
5.1 Puerto Rico - 1950's Blanca as a young girl hanging laundry on clothes lines with her Grandmother (my great grandmother)
narrator
You see, Blanca grew up in Puerto Rico where Santeria is as real as the palm trees and sunburned tourists.
The Spanish, while trying to put the world on lock, brought African slaves to Puerto Rico. They needed to supplement the native Taino they were literally working to death.
The slaves brought the one thing they didn't have to carry - their beliefs.
5.2 They both look up as a small rain shower approaches, but the sun is still out. This perplexes young Blanca.
Blanca
Abuela,... it's raining but the sun is still out.
narrator
The Spanish tried to force the slaves to worship Catholic saints. Native gods were forbidden - locked into whatever imaginary prison dictators send people's Deities to.
But the Tainos and Africans came up with a clandestine way to identify their deities with the saints of the Roman Catholic Church.
5.3 Great Grandma starts gathering the clothing again, and with a gesture directs Blanca to do the same. She explains as they work.
Great Grandma
Yes, mí amor. This is a sign.
Narrator
They’d openly pray to a Saint who was just a stand in for one of their orishas, and would mix their rites with those of the Catholic Church.
All right under their captors’ big Spanish noses.
5.4 The two enter the small house as the rain continues to approach. Blanca looks back at the rain one last time. She looks a little frightened.
Great Grandma
This happens on a day when a bruja* is to wed.
* witch
narrator
Today, it's not uncommon to find Puerto Ricans who light candles to the Virgin Mary, then go to a Santero to have their shells read. They pray to Jesus for salvation, but go to a Santero for a spell to improve their luck or love life.
See, God's nice -- but it's the Orishas you go to in a pinch.
PG. 6
6.1 Introducing my sister as a young teen girl. She's standing with my mother for this panel which will look like a photograph. (The picture motif will appear again later in the story) She's a teen here. (It's a nice middle ground between seeing her as a younger girl on this page, and an adult next time she appears in the story)
narrator
Before I get too far ahead of myself, I should mention that I have a half-sister, Linda.
6.2 A tattered old photo of my great grandmother - an old, large black woman wearing a scarf on her head and leaning on a building.
Narrator
Linda is about 15 years older then me, and had a different father. Because of our age difference, she got to meet much of our family that I missed out on. Like the woman who raised our own mother. Our great-grandmother, Abuela Baptista.
6.3 Puerto Rico - 1960's Linda as a young girl, maybe around ten or eleven years old. She has the same wooly, dirty blonde hair and light eyes. She's peering out of a car window, looking a little frightened.
narrator
Legend has it Abuela Baptista's father was an African whose Spanish boss entrusted with the job of keeping the other slaves in line - A.K.A. whipping their asses if they acted up.
6.4 My mother and aunt as they are driving up a narrow mountain side road. The mountains are lush with vegetation, which gives the place a primordial feel.
narrator
My great grandmother and her husband had clout as Babaloos. People came to them from all over for blessings, healings, and spiritual help.
Their help was so sought-after that they were even brought to New York as a little Santeria house calling for the NewyorRicans braving their cold new world.
PG. 7
7.1 Linda is brought into a gathering of Santeria followers attending mass. People of all kinds, poor and wealthy. She looks a little overwhelmed. The church is a no frills meeting hall.
narrator
Abuela Baptista inspired people who believed wholeheartedly that she could save them.
7.2 Big panel - Our family members, dressed in white robes with colored beads, hold court and serve as the "alter". the followers pray, and approach my great grandmother for blessings.
PG. 8
8.1 My sister is sitting in the middle of this crowd, legs crossed ( something not allowed during mass), with our aunt and mother. My mother and aunt are not really taking notice. Linda is basically out of sight while in the midst of these throngs of followers.
8.2 My great grandmother, now much older and almost blind from glaucoma, manages to "see" my sister doing this. She seems to just know it's happening. Apparently one of her supernatural abilities.
Just to drive it home, I want to draw her eyes as if they were cloudy - almost white - to illustrate her blindness.
narrator
She was half-blind from glaucoma, but Abulea could see things other people couldn't.
No one questioned this.
It was accepted that my great-grandmother had special gifts.
Great-grandmother
A young lady here believes it is acceptable to cross one's legs!
8.3 Poor linda, the world turns to look at the child who still doesn't know she is the young lady our great-grandmother is talking about ! ( just a suggestion to make it extra-clear… I was confused for a second when I read this sentence at first)
8.4 Linda, practically jumping out of her skin as she realizes!
8. 5 Linda quickly straightens her legs out.
narrator
Growing up with Abuela gave my mother a sense of untouchable pedigree and an intense belief that anything could be achieved, with a little help
Either from Jesus, or Chango. Santeria, or Catholicism.
Take your pick.
NOTE ON PRODUCTION
The book is approximately 128 black and white pages.
Letters by Clem Robbins.
First 20 lettered pages available here.
