What The Powder Took
What The Powder Took
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Title the strip: WHAT THE POWDER TOOK
Adapt the following sequence into 9–12 sequential panels with sparse, hard-boiled dialogue. Focus on the most devastating, cinematic moments—loss, guilt, and the cold weight of survival:
The second powder wagon explodes before Bear reaches the rocks. The blast lifts him off his feet. Stone, timber, iron, and fire cross Red Wash. The sound erases everything. Bear hits the ground. For several seconds he sees nothing. Hearing returns as a high whine. He pushes himself up. The place where Micah had been is gone—a crater burns beneath falling dust.
Bear crawls toward it. Amos catches him. “No.” Bear strikes him. Amos seizes his belt. “There is nothing.” Bear digs through hot dirt with bleeding hands. He finds a boot buckle, a piece of bridle, and part of Micah’s shirt burned into the earth. Each object becomes proof that something remains.
Amos kneels beside him in the ash. “Thomas.” Bear stops. “I could’ve carried him.” “No.” “I carried cannon wheels.” “He chose.” “I left.” Amos tells him about his own wife dying while he fetched water. Grief changes its accusation. “What stops it?” “Nothing.” “That all?” “You learn its voice.” Amos places the recovered buckle in Bear’s hand. “This is not him.” “No.” “It is what you carry home.”
Bear stands. Micah told him to help the living. Obedience hurts more after death. He goes to a wounded enemy anyway.
Leroy wakes beneath part of the wagon bed. One ear hears nothing. Ribs feel broken. Bell lies ten feet away, a length of wood in his thigh, still alive. Leroy crawls to him. Bell reaches for a hidden knife. Leroy catches his wrist. “You never change.” “Neither do you.” Leroy pulls the timber out. Bell screams until no sound remains. Leroy bandages the leg.
Donovan appears, blood covering one side of his face, revolver raised at Bell. “He killed Micah.” “Alive.” “Why?” “Because I said.” Donovan’s finger tightens. Bell laughs weakly: “There he is. The black flag boy giving orders.” Leroy stands between them despite the pain. “Put it down.” “You protect him?” “I protect what I choose.” Donovan lowers the gun. “Someday your goodness will kill someone better.” Leroy looks toward the crater. “It already has.”
They bury Finch beneath a cedar. The marker reads: FINCH / HE EVENTUALLY MOVED. Bear laughs once through tears. “Accurate.”
They return to Perdition. Grace sees the bent rifle in Bear’s hands. “He died?” Bear nods. “Quick?” Leroy answers: “No.” The truth strikes everyone. Bear breaks completely—huge, wounded, sobbing in the street because he left an old man beside burning powder. Grace steps forward and holds him. “He chose,” Leroy says. Bear shakes his head. “I left.” Across the street, Micah’s fence remains standing for the first time anyone can remember.
Include these exact lines where they cut deepest:
• “There is nothing.”
• “I could’ve carried him.”
• “He chose.”
• “I left.”
• “What stops it?” / “Nothing.” / “You learn its voice.”
• “This is not him.” / “It is what you carry home.”
• “You never change.” / “Neither do you.”
• “Someday your goodness will kill someone better.” / “It already has.”
• “Quick?” / “No.”
• “I left.”
Panel composition must feel heavy and merciless: extreme close-ups on bleeding hands digging ash, silhouettes against the crater’s glow, faces half-swallowed by shadow, the bent rifle held out like an accusation, Bear’s massive frame collapsing into grief. End on the standing fence and the empty space where Micah should have been.