one hand and six fingers
writer: Ram V, Dan Waters
artist: Lawrence Campbell, Sumit Kumar
Colorist: Lee Loveridge
Writer: Aditya Bidhikar
Publisher: Image comics
collect: One hand, #1-5, six fingers #1-5
Publication date: December 2024
in the second issue a handDetective Nasser enters an art exhibition hoping to find clues to a serial killer and overhears a conversation between two other guests: “…it can’t be about finding meaning…and is about create it. Assume meaning exists ‘established’ It’s a betrayal of effort… everything is not art. everything It can be art.
This casual remark uttered by some art lovers while debating a classic aesthetic question sums up the entire range of thematic interests on both sides a hand and six fingers. Both books take the idea of what can be art and turn it into a core existential question: is meaning intentional, based on experiences that form patterns we can understand? Or is meaning absurd, the simple act of giving intentionality to random events and itself meaningless? On the one hand, we have a Sartrean detective whose entire job relies on seeing the patterns and meanings the world gives him and stitching them into a narrative about justice. On the other hand, we have the Camusian archaeologist, a discoverer of objects from the past that have become meaningless, a man who is forced to give life to things that were otherwise meaningless.
a hand and six fingers are two separate five-issue mini-series that discuss similar events from different perspectives. The first film, directed by Ram V and Lawrence Campbell, tells the story of detective Ali Nasser on the eve of his retirement. Just before he’s done, he’s drawn to catching a serial killer he’s thought to have caught twice, the “One-Handed Killer.” Gift series Directed by Dan Waters and Sumit Kumar, it tells the story of archeology student Johannes Veer, who slowly loses control of his life and embarks on a path to becoming a one-handed killer. Chapters from the two books alternate and meet at certain turning points, but never fully merge into one another. Ram V and Dan Waters are by no means simply weighing in on writing duties. a hand and six fingers These are two different stories with two very different protagonists, and the artists of each book present their experiences and arcs in different ways. Their connection is more along the lines of mirror reflection, and can never be reduced to a typical comic book crossover, where the end of one issue is the beginning of the next.
Both Nasser and Weir searched for patterns, trying to find frameworks that would allow them to reduce the chaotic and vague whims of the universe into easily digestible, identifiable forms. Violence and murder aside, it’s something we all do. We must transform the randomness of life into forms of meaning, into understandable patterns, simply as a survival mechanism. Our thoughts remain the same about or of Something that reaches out into the world for a purpose, whether it exists or not. The problem, however, is conflating this primitive psychological need and its function with some larger divine order. We form knowledge to explore the world, but nothing can fully establish that the world itself is knowable.
During a confrontation, Veer made it clear to Nassar that the truth needed to be discovered by him, not Nassar. Unlike the traditional cat-and-mouse game of cop and killer, these two do not form opposite poles of a moral dichotomy, but rather tragic parallels in their epistemological nature. Weir’s pursuit of truth should not be confused or conflated with Nassar’s desire to know for his own comfort.
For Nassar, exploring the truth and forming a certain pattern was the driving force of his life. Therefore, Nassar never has access to reality, to some objective truth, because his knowledge is ultimately about function. The truth makes sense within the context of how he thinks the world works: how he builds the case against the criminal, and how he uses it to bring order to New Novena’s hellish future. This principle is so important that various parts of the story begin to reflect the code of the one-handed killer, acknowledging the mystery that defines Nassar’s entire experience with the world.
Nassar’s story is similar blade runner Our neo-noir detective comes to a terrifying existential realization about himself and the world. As a result, Lawrence Campbell and Lee Loveridge’s art is suitably moody, with heavy use of shadows, silhouettes, and neon to clash with the darkness.
As in traditional film noir, the truth is discovered in the darkness, as the day is often made up of fiction, the product of lies and dirty dealings that occur at night. Therefore, every step Nassar takes to understand the world takes him deeper and deeper into darkness, into the dark corners of the world, until he completely steps out of reality. In the final pages of Nassar’s story, order collapses not only in the form of the world he believed it to be, but also in the pages of the comic itself, as the panels collapse and skeletal text takes over. Nassar realizes in these moments that we don’t find The truth is, if we do this, we may end up rejecting reality altogether. Instead, we stitch together perceptions, events, and thoughts into a shape that gives meaning to the chaos because it’s the only way to survive in this world.
Vale’s story, on the other hand, is more like The Hack. Also colored by Lee Loughridge, but this time drawn by Sumit Kumar, page six fingers Be more open to readers. The sun is present, the colors muted but present. Before Vale plunges into darkness, we can see the world before us with some degree of clarity. Despite these more vivid external elements, Vere cannot accept the simple answers he is given about himself or his past. The universe seemed to give him everything a man could want: a job, a graduate research project, and a girlfriend. But Weir is not satisfied with these approximate satisfactions. He longs to find the truth in the gaps. He was studying archeology after all, and in the process he ended up digging too deep.
Waters directly references Weir’s connection to the myth of Sisyphus, which is particularly meaningful for the early concepts of meaning and pattern in the series that parallel those in the philosophy of Albert Camus. Vale tries to escape the punishment of this cyclical world, but the Sisyphus/Vale quest for “natural” order can only end in tragedy, because who can destroy the accepted ontology of the world without abandoning themselves in the process? ?
“Archaeology” is an interesting choice here because the term deals with questions of reality and truth, similar to the early work of Michel Foucault. This archeology involves knowledge and discourse, and the systems of meaning and exclusion in which ideas are embedded. Similar to Foucault, Weir finds meaning in his writing, whether in the diaries he reads throughout the series or in the form of codes left behind by one-handed killers. The cipher is not just a message but a structure that organizes the events of the comic, designed in a way that mimics panel layouts and sometimes even completely replaces those traditional layouts. The structure of the cipher is ubiquitous in comics, and this need to escape the literal confines of the word of truth becomes Weir’s overarching goal.
In his inaugural address at the Collège de France, collected archeology of knowledge”, Foucault pointed out that “it is always possible for one to tell the truth in emptiness; however, this can only be true if one obeys the rules of a certain discourse “policy”. But “truth” is only possible when truth is useful, when truth enters into our functioning and into our patterns of discourse, as in being part of society and having truth as the organizing principle of people. Vale’s journey is to break through the discourse system and find truth in the void that is incompatible with the world order. Whether this is possible or desirable remains an open question.
The series was also inspired by Cormac McCarthy and his plays, sunset co., ltd.. This typically unconventional play follows just two characters: White and Black, as they discuss the meaning of existence, life, and God. Although the play was later adapted into a film, it reads more like a novel, in the same vein as McCarthy’s final work, Stella Maris. In both cases, McCarthy is less interested in retelling the history of philosophical debate than in the material reality of grief, the search for purpose, and how our identities are mutually constituted in discourse. Both texts are riddled with contradictions, showing the reader that arguments are won not by the validity of their structures or their correspondence with reality, but by the faith of the argument, by the desire to fight for the pieces. Says more about ourselves than the boring universe around us.
therefore in the world a hand and six fingersreality is a choice we must make. Either we argue for our purpose, what defines us, what makes us feel like we have some sense of control. Or we succumb to a lack of meaning, deny reality and ourselves, and succumb to our own nothingness. Or as McCarthy writes in the book all beautiful horses: “If there’s a pattern there, it’s not going to shape itself into anything that these eyes can recognize. Because for me the question is always whether the kind of shapes we see in life were there from the beginning, or Are these random events just called patterns after the fact because otherwise we are nothing.
When looking at these two books together, there’s also the element that they deny us the satisfaction of being a concise call-and-response piece. a hand It’s a story in itself six fingers Yes, and the desire to try and piece them together to see if one question has a more definite answer to the question posed by the other is largely futile. Maybe you can figure it all out, maybe you can’t. But comics ask us to do what they say is absurd to begin with: try to find patterns, assuming meaning other than individual intentionality injected into the randomness before us.
Indeed, this embodiment of their themes also goes a long way toward reconciling existential questions with the aesthetic questions we raised at the outset. What does the saying “Everything can be art” mean? Ultimately, it’s all a matter of perspective. Art, like Weir and Nassar, or like a hand and six fingersare co-constructed. The audience and the art, or the art and the artist, depending on which side you are on, work together to create the meaning behind the art. How we see, what questions we choose to ask, and how the work inspires us to ask specific questions are all ways we understand what art is. This aesthetic characterization, the practice of how we experience art, is a training ground for how we grapple with the larger existential, ethical, and epistemological questions around us. If art is co-constructed, why not meaning? Why isn’t it reality? Why not the whole world? If so, who or what has the power to create while others can only observe? What are our creative responsibilities when others will inevitably see our work?
a hand and six fingers is a vast existential meditation that reflects two different searches for meaning that inevitably come into conflict. While their inspirations in philosophy and other media are clear throughout, their execution is remarkable and will likely keep you up at night asking some very real questions: Do I exist? What’s the point of it all?
One Hand and Six Fingers are now available
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