Breathing water

Straight out of Grant Wood and Norman Rockwell comes the sleepy burg of Rising Sun: respectable folk, solid businesses, a reputable weekly newspaper, a diner called the Milky Way that serves up old-fashioned home cooking, a mayor from whom you would buy a used car - it even has a town millionairess, the eccentric dowager Edna Kane. In other words, a town just waiting to be corrupted. When Edna Kane announces that she will donate several million dollars as a memorial to her grandson, Powell Kane - who had been kidnapped a decade earlier as a mere toddler and is now presumed dead - the stage is set. Everyone in Rising Sun has a clear idea of exactly how that money should be spent, from total tax abatement to new sidewalks to a fancy new fountain in the town park. Enter a drifter and heavy-metal cartoonist named Dusseau and a scrawny, asthmatic, twelve-year-old kid called Paul, a dreamer who reads Dostoyevsky and Swamp Thing with equal passion. The two pull in to the Milky Way Cafe for dinner one rainy night in a battered van with Deathwind painted on its side. Chance, in the form of a day-old issue of the Rising Sun Times, entices them to stay. Dusseau knows a golden opportunity when