Your example of a common tragedy is actually exactly what I have planned for one of the strips. It would focus on the lead female character, as a young girl dealing with the moving truck that has arrived at her family home in order to collect her mother’s belongings as the result of a divorce. She would be then take various eccentric steps of varying sophistication to stop the movers from succeeding, each presumably taking one or two panels to show, such as her exhaustively stacking furniture that she couldn’t possibly move by herself, in front of the kitchen door, only to realize that the kitchen has multiple entrances and she has, effectively helped them, and siphoning the gasoline from the truck using a garden hose.

The final three panels would presumably consist of her expressing relief and satisfaction as she watches the truck depart while she stands on the porch, perhaps a plastic bucket like a child would receive at Easter, with a floral pattern of some sort, hanging heavily with gasoline from her left hand. She would assume victory, only to enter her home and find the living room bare.

The fact that her father promised to give her mother, sole, uncontested custody of the daughter and the home in return for the furniture is established within the primary text, as is the fact that at that point, he had been spending most of his time in New York where he had an apartment for work purposes.

Of course, that’s just a rough summation of the idea, it is most likely going to be heavily refined before I ever even come close to writing it.

But your particular example strikes me as uncomfortably extreme. I think that making puns about child molestation could easily rub editors the wrong way. It could come off as a lot more creepy than funny.

“I’ve always been inspired to try to find ways to make every day tragedies hurt the reader more…” Child molestation strikes me as a bit more of an exotic tragedy than an everyday one. An everyday one would be like the parents angrily separating. Moreover, if the purpose is to make the reader feel hurt, why make a joke about it at the end? Let’s say you’ve achieved your goal and the readers are hurt as they approach that line. When they finally read it, what are some ways they might respond that would leave them excited to buy the next book? (This is an especially pressing concern because the line comes right at the end, right?)

My plan for my graphic novel has always been that it would consist essentially of between 6 and 12 issues, ranging between 23 and 36 pages long apiece, much like a standard comic book issue, and between each “issue” would be a few pages of bonus material, similar to the excerpts from the fictional books, and magazines in Watchmen, that helped fill out the universe, but harnessed in a more complete and hopefully less pretentious way.

The idea mentioned above would be essentially a series of long-form comic strips, that explored these incidences in the character’s histories, using out-of-continuity younger cartoon versions, similar in atmosphere and appearance to Baby Looney Tunes, Muppet Babies, or in comic books, Tiny Titans, and Franklin Richards, but the situations would actually be quite adult.

Think like a Superhero Squad Peter Parker getting molested by a local bike shop owner and then making a pun on “pederasty” as the strip ends. I think it would be quite subversive and if handled correctly, enhance the effectiveness of the situations without making the characters feel like Sues, or the book a public service announcement.

Please keep in mind, that is an extreme example, and I understand that touching on some situations would hurt my chances of getting published, but I’ve always been inspired to try to find ways to make every day tragedies hurt the reader more, and I think there is a lot of potential in this idea.

Very interesting that you use Silent Dragon as an example. I just read it and the script for issue #1 yesterday. If anyone is interested, the script for Silent Dragon – Issue #1 can be found on my blog.