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The Matrix
"Hunters and Collectors"
Matrix Comics Vol. 1
Story and art by Greg Ruth
2003 |
The deaths of his shipmates on the
Pequod turns an archaeologist from a collector to a hunter.
Read the story at
gregthings.com
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
Ahab/Flint
Twist
Nova
Didja Notice?
The character of Flint also goes by the name Ahab. This is a
reference to Captain Ahab from Herman Melville's classic
1851 novel Moby Dick, who was obsessed with killing
the white whale Moby Dick, just as Flint seems to be
obsessed with taking down the Sentinel that destroyed the
Pequod in
"There Are No Flowers in the Real World".
"Pequod" was also the name of
the whaling ship in the novel.
Nova comments that Ahab/Flint lost the Pequod in a
confrontation with a Sentinel. Ahab is now a member of the
hovership Polaris. The Pequod was
previously mentioned in
"There Are No Flowers in the Real World".
On page 4 of the story, Flint--who was an archaeologist in
his life in the Matrix before awakening and joining the
resistance--remarks, "I was just a battery that dreamed it
was an archaeologist." This is a play on
the plot of "The Butterfly Dream" from the ancient Chinese
philosophical book
Zhuangzi
(3rd Century BC), about a man who dreams he was a butterfly
and then wakes up wondering if he's a man who had dreamt he
was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was a man.
On page 11, Nova
mentions her lack of an APU or a lightning gun in going up
against the Sentinel. An APU is an Armored Personnel Unit, a
mechanized walker used by the resistance forces in Zion (as
seen in "The Second
Renaissance", The Matrix Reloaded, and
The
Matrix Revolutions). A lightning gun (usually called a
lightning rifle due to its size and need to be wielded with
two hands) is a directed energy weapon used by the
resistance. Most notably, Cypher used a lightning gun against Tank and
Dozer aboard the Nebuchadnezzar in
The Matrix.
Among the books salvaged by Nova from the
wreckage of the Pequod, seen in panel 4 of page 13
of the story, are Moby Dick and Neuromancer.
The page Nova leaves on Flint's grave marker is from Moby
Dick. Neuromancer is a 1984 cyberpunk novel by
William Gibson; it was one of the inspirations for the
concepts behind the Matrix franchise.
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