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Not Approved by the Comics Code Authority
- University of Georgia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
he adventure actually had the effect we'd intended, though Tim's death crushed any possibility of satisfaction. We did not return to school after the accident, Kavanagh never again mentioned our comic-book obscenity, and Blessed Heart graduated us, though I didn't attend the ceremony. Our gang became legendary. The local TV stations sent crews to Marshland Island and interviewed Paul Steatham. There were wobbly close-ups of a stain on the wood of the observation platform, supposedly from Tim, and ominous shots of the empty bobcat pen. The cats had all been destroyed by the police. A group of citizens got very angry about that, and I agreed with them. It was our fault, not the bobcats'. I spent so much lonely time in my room that summer that I became very good at drawing. That and Margie Flynn sustained me through the miseries of high school, after most of my friends had moved away. A couple of years ago I stopped in Tennessee to visit Rusty Scalisi, who was working for his father, running a contracting company. We got very drunk at a hamburger bar, and I suggested that if Tim was alive he'd either be some kind of folk-hero artist or a radical crusader. Rusty said, "He wouldn't be alive now, even if he hadn't gotten killed when he did. People 185 Hof Appvove