It’s Iimi! De Profundis

After Gali comes through with something from the synagogue records, the proof for their theory seems sewn up. Viewing the entrance of the suspected Knights of the Restoration hideout appears to simply be the final curiosity to add. But is there any further witness to be had… De Profundis

Pre-Comic Notes: The title comes from the opening of Psalm 130:1 in Latin (“De profundis clamavi ad te Domine”), meaning: “Out of the depths I call to you, Lord.”

If you haven’t already done so, reading Issues 253-256 is essential for the context.

Post-Comic Notes:

The original plan was simpler. Creating Babylon as having a small Catholic population, I needed to explain why. Because of California's Hispanic population, I knew that any explanation would either require Babylon to have a below-average percentage compared to the State as a whole or the majority of the town's Hispanics to have an atypical apostasy from Catholicism. I went with the first option.

I found the book A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan helpful. The discussion of the second rise of the Ku Klux Klan and the anti-Catholic side of their hatred made me see potential, especially when I learned about the influence it had in California. The problem was that the 1915 Klan, in 1898, was an anachronism. So, I began imagining a secret society that would later be attracted to join up with the Klan. So, I created the KOR, which would stand for “Knights of the Reformation” and be founded by an ancestor of the Feday family.

I settled on 1898 as the year of the incident, thinking it was still far enough back that it could plausibly be buried. Plus, I could use anti-Spanish sentiment from the War of 1898. I thought it would be simple enough to have the girls find out that there was a sudden drop in the Hispanic population between the 1890 and 1900 census. They would later discover it was really an anti-Catholic action… with the majority of the targeted victims being Hispanic.

It seemed perfect, but it soon fell apart. Census records online only went back to 1940. Before 1940, archives existed as individuals scanned records. Before 1970, there was no “Hispanic” category for the census. (In 1930, a category was introduced for “Mexican.”) So, the girls couldn’t have gotten this information online. So, I had to flip the story, revealing the link to Catholicism that I wanted to keep hidden until later.

I also began leaning towards “leading family has an ugly secret” as a part of the story. The Loville history in the founding of the town seemed to fit. But I also needed to give them a motive. The Know Nothing party appeared to be a good bridge. Their anti-foreigner sentiment would tie into the KOR and eventually to the Klan. “Knights of the Reformation” became “Knights of the Restoration” to reflect the Nativist origins.

This incident in Hipso Hill was not taken from any specific real-life event. But it was modeled after real anti-Catholic history in America. Between 1840 and 1860, there were numerous anti-Catholic riots led by the Know-Nothing Party. A basic overview can be found [HERE] and [HERE]. There was also an anti-Chinese expulsion in a town perhaps a hundred miles from where I lived. That was the source of the deadline that the KOR gave these inhabitants. Unlike this incident, the Chinese residents had a longer deadline, and they did leave. If there were any deaths, history does not tell us.

Discovering the fatal flaw in my original story idea allowed me to create a more detailed story. It allowed me to expand on rough notes on the history of my town. It also taught me things about the savage history of the United States that tend to be overlooked in modern accounts.

Some readers may wonder about the anti-Asian attitudes in real-life California during that period. I might reply, “Perhaps more history from the town of Babylon waits to be revealed.”

Image Credits

Much gratitude to Dean Spencer for creating the image of the murdered priest for me through his Patreon program.

The Skeletons on pages 16 and 17 are © Dean Spencer, used with permission. All rights reserved.

The Know Nothing flag and the political cartoons are in the public domain.

Some images used in this comic were AI drafted by the author using NightCafe and then edited by the same. No copyrighted artists (living or dead) were used in the prompts or for “AI training.”