Frampton Jones was one of the first characters I added to the Hopeless, Maine cast list. He’s the island’s journalist. Back before there was even a webcomic, The Hopeless Vendetta existed as the island’s newspaper, getting Hopeless in front of people. When the comics started appearing as a webcomic, The Vendetta went out in parallel, adding extra dimensions to the tale.
Frampton soon started having his own tales and adventures alongside reporting what was going on. He was the person who first identified the existence of spoonwalkers. It’s hard to imagine now that there was time when islanders had no idea where all their spoons had gone.
He’s a high profile islander, with neatly starched collars that make Mrs Beaten weak at the knees. Frampton considers himself to be a serious journalist, dedicated to the truth. Other people have called him delusional, a rumour-monger, and have suggested that he often has no idea what’s really going on. Given how weird and complicated Hopeless is, and how rarely anyone can agree on what it was that emerged from the clouds, or the sea, or the ground, his is hardly an easy task.
To produce a newspaper, Frampton is obliged to recycle paper on a regular basis. He’s strident about people not using his newspaper for lavatorial purposes. He also has a big blackboard outside his home that islanders can use as a message board or to give feedback. By this means, what happens on the internet can also be fitted in to island life. I have spent a lot of time trying to make all of this make some kind of sense.
Semblance of Truth tells the tale of Frampton’s descent into madness. (Raise your hand if you’ve read too much H.P. Lovecraft.) Frampton owns a camera, and by clever means is able to develop film – this is how The Vendetta gets its pictures. This is one of those times when I have to ask that you please suspend your disbelief for the steampunk elements in the plot.
Frampton finds that what the camera sees is not what he sees, and this rapidly becomes complicated. I do usually try and explain or justify how things work on the island – for my own sanity at the very least. Sometimes we have to just accept that weird items wash in on these peculiar shores, and that said items may be possessed by entities too terrible to describe. The great thing about entities too terrible to describe is the way they let a beleaguered author off the hook in matters of feeling obliged to try and describe them or explain beyond their innate terribleness, how they actually get anything done.
So, it’s a terrible, possessed camera – clearly too terrible to describe, too eldritch to explain etc etc.
You can get Semblance of Truth now, via the kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hopelessmaine/hopeless-maine-1-3-sinners-a-graphic-novel-series
Or you can pre-order it from Amazon ahead of the December release – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hopeless-Maine-Semblance-Nimue-Brown/dp/1954255985
(text and image by Nimue)
