 |
The Matrix
"A Sword of a Different Color"
Words and pictures: Troy Nixey
Painting: Dave McCaig
2003 |
A crazy old man is found surviving in
the ruins of the Earth’s surface.
Read the story
at
the Internet Archive
Didja Know?
This comic strip originally appeared on the official Matrix
website in 2003. It was later printed in
The Matrix Comics, Vol. 1 published by
Burlyman
Entertainment, a comic book publisher founded by the Wachowskis.
Characters appearing or mentioned in this story
Leet
Nac
Heater (in flashback only, deceased)
Split (in flashback only, deceased)
old man (in flashback only, presumed deceased)
Didja Notice?
This story has a Don Quixote sort of motif. On page 7, panel 9
of the story, Don Quixote and a couple other
knight-errant style books are seen in the old man's
hideaway: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
and Ivanhoe. These are real world classic novels.
On page 7, panel 10
of the story, Nac describes the crazy old man as "living in
his own world...maybe he was better off for it." The old
man's dementia is a bit like living in his own personal
Matrix, created in his own mind.
The last page of the story reveals that the old man had a
stash of cyclonite. Cyclonite is a real world explosive.
In the last panel of the story, we see that the package the
old man left for Nac was a drawing of himself as a knight
with the word "Freedom" written at the top, and a book called
The Trojan War with a picture of a wooden horse on
the cover. The old man had pieced together an old sentinel as a
Trojan Horse and piloted it to a spot on the surface to
attract a host of real sentinels and blow the whole thing
up, sacrificing himself to take down a number of sentinels.
The Trojan War is a story in Ancient Greek mythology about a
war between the walled city of Troy (possibly located in
modern day Turkey) and the Achaeans (Ancient Greece). In the
legend, the Achaeans, having difficulty breeching the walls
of Troy, built a giant wooden horse as a supposed gift to
the goddess Athena and pretended to sail away. The Trojans
brought the horse inside the wall as a trophy of victory and
Achaean troops hidden inside emerged at night and opened the
gates to let the rest of the Achaean forces into the city.
The city was destroyed and the war ended.
Unanswered Questions
Did the old man survive his plan? The impression given is
that he died inside the Trojan Sentinel when it blew it up,
but we don't see him on panel for the explosion. Possibly,
he could have exited the shell and hidden, though it's probably
unlikely.
Back to The Matrix
Episode Studies
