The Lettuce Kingdom attacks first. Both sides have a missile silo, and both sides fight in the sky. But the real story is about a soldier on the ground named Tom — and what is buried under the Lettuce Kingdom.
Who to watch for
Tom
Yellow scarf, in all five pictures. He keeps the scarf on even over a radiation suit.
The Tomato King
Gold crown, red robe. He is the one who gives the order for the Tomato Bomb.
Ryley, the SWAT diver
Yellow radiation suit and air tank. He came back alive from planet 4546B.
1from drawing 04
Scene One · The Attack Begins
Two Kingdoms, One Sky
The Lettuce Kingdom strikes first, so the Tomato Kingdom sends up its best supersonic jet. The Lettuce Kingdom answers with a helicopter. High above everything, a Tomato drone carries a sniper up and lets him go. There he puts a hole straight through an enemy paratrooper's chute. That soldier is not landing. Below them a Lettuce soldier swings on a rope tied to the helicopter's tail, trading fire with the machine gun on the Tomato roof. And down on the ground, one man keeps shooting at the enemy wall: Tom.
CARTOON VERSION
WILLIAM'S ORIGINAL
From drawing 04 — red silo and red missile on the left, green on the right. The sniper aims down; the man under the torn chute has dropped his rifle and is falling.
The Tomato silo fires. The missile flies the whole way across the field and knocks the Lettuce base over. In the same moment the supersonic jet lets go of its own missile — watch it fly down the line and hit the helicopter. The Lettuce Kingdom still has one card left: their drone drops a soldier straight at the Tomato roof to break the machine gun. And Tom? Tom has not moved. He is still shooting at the wall.
CARTOON VERSION
WILLIAM'S ORIGINAL
From drawing 05 — both missiles now fly their own arcs and land on the thing they are aimed at: the base, and the helicopter.
Find Tom: still on the ground, still shooting right. He has not moved an inch.
3from drawing 06
Scene Three · They Hit Back
The Counterstrike
Now the Lettuce silo fires. Their missile comes screaming back the other way and lands right on the Tomato roof — the machine gun and every weapon up there are smashed to pieces. The Tomato Kingdom does not stop. Paratroopers drop onto the enemy roof to take out the laser guns that are still firing; one of them is already dead metal. And on the ground, Tom keeps doing the exact same thing: shooting at the base. Not at people. Just the base.
CARTOON VERSION
WILLIAM'S ORIGINAL
From drawing 06 — the green missile flies the arc into the roof gun, and one enemy laser gun is already knocked out and crossed off.
Find Tom: same spot, same aim. Nobody has figured out why yet.
4from drawing 03
Scene Four · Two Betrayals
The Tomato Bomb
The Lettuce base is wrecked — and then the ground opens and a whole new set of high-tech weapons rises up out of it, including a second rocket launcher. A Tomato jet fires, and the missile goes straight into the new machines.
Then somebody is hanging upside down at the edge of the picture, roped by the ankles, and it is Tom. He was a Lettuce Kingdom spy the whole time. Years of it. That is why he only ever shot at walls — he was faking every attack. A spy in the family and a nuclear weapon buried next door: the King has heard enough. He sends up the Tomato Kingdom's strongest weapon. The Tomato Bomb comes down between the two kingdoms and goes off like a small sun, and Tom hangs there and shakes.
CARTOON VERSION
WILLIAM'S ORIGINAL
From drawing 03 — there is one Tomato Bomb. It lifts out of the rail, flies the arc, and becomes the red blast in the middle, scribbled the way it is in the original. Tom is roped by the ankles, with no weapon.
Find Tom: hanging upside down on the left, scarf pointing at the ground.
Between Scene Four and Scene Five
Tom's Choice
Hanging there upside down, Tom starts remembering. He came to the Tomato Kingdom when he was very small. He met his best friends here. He got married here. His kids have never lived anywhere else. He was born in the Lettuce Kingdom — but this is the place he actually loves.
And he knows something nobody else does: the nuclear weapon under the Lettuce base is already armed. In two days it goes off, and his home and the whole Tomato Kingdom go with it. He is done watching his friends die for the wrong side of the story.
So Tom switches sides for real, and offers to lead the way in.
5from drawing 02
Scene Five · Two Men Go Down
Shut It Down
Tom teams up with Ryley, the best SWAT operator the Tomato Kingdom has — the one who made it home from planet 4546B and knows how to move in a radiation suit. Both of them suit up. One knows the enemy, the other knows how to survive down there. They rope down the launch silo together.
What they find on level B1 is strange. The guards left behind have all gone wrong from the radiation: one is walking upside down on the ceiling, one is floating in the air with his arms out, and one locked himself in the shielded safe room — no suit, no way out, so he just sits in there playing video games forever. None of them are holding a weapon any more. Only one guard is still together enough to stop them, and he does not stop them for long.
Down on B2 they find the launcher. They do not have the password, so they do it the rough way, and the whole reactor circuit blows out and catches fire. Good thing there is a CO₂ bottle on the wall. They put the fire out — and then point the same bottle at the floor, turn it into a jet, and ride it up the air duct back to the surface.
CARTOON VERSION
WILLIAM'S ORIGINAL
From drawing 02 — both men are suited, the strange guards are unarmed, and the guard who fought back is down with his rifle beside him.
Find Tom: twice. On B1 roping in, and again on B2 by the fire extinguisher — yellow suit, red scarf-belt, scarf over the shoulder.
Tomato Kingdom Wins
Every Lettuce Kingdom base near the Tomato Kingdom is destroyed. Their soldiers are gone. The nuclear launcher is dead, the fire is out, and two men rode a fire extinguisher home through an air duct. One of them was supposed to be the enemy.
