Okay, just a quick word before I ollie off the internet and carry on watching Game of Thrones, but I feel like I need to get this off my chest.
Some of you might be wondering why I was making such a big fuss about drawing horses and being sad about it when the Jon’s horse ended up having a happy (and slightly predictable) ending after all.
Well, until yesterday, I didn’t know if it was going to be a happy ending. It was completely fifty-fifty between the ending you have seen, and a very different and very sad one. The fact was that I couldn’t decide. If I chose the sad ending, it was true to the war. The war was not made of happy endings. It was made of trench foot, starvation and fear. You met with death by exposure if you were unlucky and death by shell if you were. There were no victories- there were losses, and people who survived. Conversely this would not have been true to the band, or the message of the band. The message that music cannot be defeated, that hope must and can survive against all odds, and that nothing is impossible.
In the end, I flipped a coin. That is the only reason that the comic has this ending, and not the other. I’m almost glad, but I still feel that I should apologize if it appears that I took the easy road or tried to paint a pretty picture. If I write another story on the wars, I will feel more able to be more honest about it- but it seems that this was not the time for that story.
I suppose the reason this played on my nerves so badly is because I am afraid that we are forgetting. We remember the wars, but we have started to forget why we must remember them.