I am not good with dreams but I am sure it has meaning.

It is dark but an interesting story. You have many talents.

I hate having dreams like that....

Well, except for one. <Private dream>

those dreams are starnge
they give you something to tell

But there's nothing you could've done for him. If you had tried, you would have risked getting the prisoners caught and killed. Could he have been hurt bad enough that he didn't grasp the gravity of the situation, maybe?

The implication seems to be that by liberating the camp from the enemy guards he'd also inadvertently 'liberated' it from the medical treatment that was keeping the wounded man alive. It sounded like there really was no hope for him now in any way, shape, or form. He couldn't be moved, trying to defend himself against an entire army with a machine-pistol was suicide, and apparently there was no hope of the enemy being able to move-in new medical specialists and equipment to save him in time if he were to just stay there and surrender.

I have had a lot of dreams like that. Normally I really get a kick out of them. I can usually take control of any situation in a dream because I KNOW it's a dream. But when someone I love was hurt or in danger... it was a totally different story...

Probably because in trying to improve his situation and what he thought was improving the situation of everyone in the prison camp,what would seem like a good thing,he doomed that one guy,which is bad.

In other words,he screwed someone over to improve his own lot in life. And the simple fact of the matter is you can't really avoid doing it. You simply can't consider all the angles in life and make sure everyone gets through ok.

The soldier's conundrum. There is sometimes a perceived need for death. There are people who would sooner die than move, physiclaly or in ideology (the wounded man). The guards were not focused on because you felt good disposing of them, being that they symbolized the oppression of the prisoners inside. But the one wounded man, with his hard, ghostly stare, was the rub of your heroics. The fact that nomatter how many dark souls you extinguish, they are still souls, and still will weigh on yours.

Because you're obsessed with guns and killing people, maybe it was your subconscious showing you implications of your actions.

R.

Perhaps it was a past life experiance? I've got to say, I've never dreamed of one, but I sometimes get the feeling 'hey wait, I've done this before' while doing something completely new. It disturbs me as to how many times I get it right in these instances.

This page totally made me thinkt hat you're better at this than Scott McCloud. :o

I find that your analysis of the situation in the third panel (middle left) actually explained something to me I didn't realize-- kudos to that sort of analysis of the dream.. :o

I don't think you're that much to blame... If you helped one thousand people, there'd still be one who didn't want the help.. If you offered medicare to everybody, there'd still be two who had it better before you gave them some free... etcetera.

Sure, in the dream you were leaving 'the wounded' to die. Of which there was one powerful voice-- not the whole camp.

What more do you think you could have done? Defended the camp while he recuperated for.. hm. months? :s

Bingo! You have got it. In RL, you can't always save everyone from terrible consequences. You had better accept the fact that the best solution to a real problem is very unlikely to be a perfect solution...

Imploding the Soviet Union with the economic warfare of SDI induced the Soviet government to withdraw so many resources from the civilian economy that they killed millions of their own civilians with malnutrition before they collapsed. But it ended World War Three in a very different way than the Soviets were working toward - a massive thermonuclear strike against us. They were about half way there when they were checkmated. The Soviets were building thousands of missiles whose technical characteristics made them useful for only one purpose - a multi gigaton first strike against US civilians. A bad solution is better than a worse solution. You have to learn to live with it.
Ye Olde Aerospace Weapons Physicist

Yes, do more like this.

That's fantastic. I experienced something similar myself once too - I now wish I had taken down a record of it but kudos to you for doing so, and sharing it with us. Well done.

0..0 Wow Karno, that is pretty vivid 0..0

Crazy. At least your dreams make sense.

Wow. Nice series of comics. Sometimes choices aren't as straightforward is one would think they are.

Ah I dislike dreams where you wake up and forget where you are...or think you're somewhere else. More commonly I'll wake up and wonder why I'm upside down and then realise I'm right side up. o.o;

The last time I had a dream that vivid I was suffering from a mild case of food poisoning, so not only was it vivid but it was nonsensical too.

When I was younger I'd have a lot of vivid dreams but I'd usually ease back into waking up but then look forward to 'going back to visit' once I went to bed again...it was a rare treat to continue on a previous dream and it got me to go to bed on time.

That's cool

I love dreams like that, dreams that you can think about.


I would like to see more :P

I had one in which I worked at an auto repair shop. I had murdered a woman (last name "Tiffey" - I don't know anyone by that name) who drove a yellow Plymouth Prowler (vivid images of the car, parked on the lot, with beads of rain on it.) I woke up and laid in bed for a full 30 minutes, my mind racing because I was convinced I was a murderer.

I had to get rid of the car .. when they start looking for her, that's the first thing they will find, and it will lead them straight to me. I figured I had some time, since nobody knew she was missing yet. Then I would have to get rid of the body ... and as I thought about it, I realized that I did not know where I had put the body, and then I realized that I didn't remember how I had killed her, I didn't know who she was or what she looked like, and then I realized - with great relief - that it had all been a dream.

And that's the only time I have believed a dream so long after awakening.

That's what I like about your work,Karno. Everything can be done into good comics. This one is very personal. Personally, I'll agree with the prisoner! " An honorable death is still death!"

I used to keep extensive dream diaries (been meaning to restart the habit, in fact). I have one from college that's two hundred pages long. There are definitely some very troubling dreams in there!

One was about a horror film called "Meat" starring Cameron Diaz. She played a woman who never left her home. The movie was just kinda sad and depressing until a bunch of meat she bought from a butcher's shop suddenly came to life in the kitchen. A raw, decapitated turkey crawled out of the refrigerator and cut a hole in its groin with a boning knife. Then a living sausage wriggled into the hole - a makeshift phallus. That's when I realized that the meat was going to rape and kill this woman. (TOTALLY creeped me out.) Worse, the film never actually showed it happening - it was all implied. The camera stayed on a shot of the woman's bedroom door, and I heard her screaming and screaming. Then the meat started screaming too, a godawful weird sound.

After I woke up it really bothered me, not just because it had scared me but because I was thinking "Why is this in my head?" Even though I didn't take an active role in the plot, as in your dream, I still felt complicit because it came from my own mind.

"Sometimes - a dream is just a dream."
-Sigmund Freud

Why can't vivid dreams be of Lottery numbers or something, huh??
In my experience, no matter how tough the person is until they are faced with death, you'll never see someone cling to something tighter than life. Every breath means so much more than it did before, every second is precoius and deep down you know it has to end, and it just angers people sp much more to know there's nothing anyone can do about it but to shorten it for their own gain.
There's several dozens of dream analyzer websites who'd be more than willing to share their two cents about this gem but I kinda have to ask, are you the man offering the gun or the man mortally wounded??

Ah, I do love your comics and your stories! It's as if R. Crumb had more talent at continuous narrative! :)

I really want to buy that Karno's Bestial booklet, but I'm assuming it'll come to my mailbox in a big box with giant wolf cocks drawn all over it. Not that I would mind, per se - it's just that I don't like to share with the mailman!

I'm all out of Karno's Bestial Gay Porn, but Second Ed Mailorder might still have a copy. And they mail em in a perfectly respectable light brown envelope.

I've have many weird dreams in my 28 years of life . . . some of them so vivid that it's impossible to tell where reality ended and the dream began . . . and most of them leaving my body feeling more tired and sore than when I first went to sleep.

I've stopped trying to make any real sense out of them . . . because most of the time I don't think I want to know what they might mean

Keep up the great work.