Aloysius discovers a mess.

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Progress in Research: Chapter Three, Page Six written and commissioned by Dr. Faustus of EroticMadScience.com and drawn by Lon Ryden is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

There are always thugs more than happy to make a mess of things in the sacred name of National Security, and strangely they don’t seem to differ all that much from regime to regime.

George Grosz (1893-1959), A Writer Is He? 1934 (or 1944)

Image found here.

It is now Aloysius’s turn to go investigating.

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Progress in Research: Chapter Three, Page Five written and commissioned by Dr. Faustus of EroticMadScience.com and drawn by Lon Ryden is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

“I’m not easy but I hope you’re hard” is a slogan Lon improvised for the panel. I rather like it. If there’s ever a Gnosis College store, I hope that we sell a t-shirt with it.

Aloysius’s interlocutor and her demeanor remind me for some reason of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s (1828-1882) Lady Lilith (1867) for some reason.

Perhaps we could have a shirt with both the slogan and Lady Lilith!,

Time passes slowly for Aloysius.

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Progress in Research: Chapter Three, Page Three written and commissioned by Dr. Faustus of EroticMadScience.com and drawn by Lon Ryden is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

The presence of a moving clock indicates the passing of time, here just in the narrative. But it’s worth remembering that timepieces are also artistic reminders of mortality, which seems especially appropriate here. Hourglasses are common in memento mori, and candles burning down can also serve that allegorical function.

Georges de la Tour (1593-1652), The Penitent Magdalene (1625-1650)

The themes all swirl around, they do.

Aloysius doesn’t understand the meaning of this news at first.

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Progress in Research: Chapter Three, Page One written and commissioned by Dr. Faustus of EroticMadScience.com and drawn by Lon Ryden is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

I guess I sort of miss the newspaper, together with the plot-moving device of the headline, however much of a cliché it might have been Remember?

And you can always find many fine examples of the trope:

Found here. I am nostalgic.

Aloysius is our cover boy for this chapter.

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Progress in Research: Chapter Three, Page written and commissioned by Dr. Faustus of EroticMadScience.com and drawn by Lon Ryden is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.)

Although the theme here is mad science, the visual inspiration comes from a far more ancient source.

Andrea Mantegna (1431?-1506), St. Sebastian c. 1480

There is always an appeal from the ancient source.