Draft 2026-07-26. Hybrid approach: the Dormition on earth rising into the Revelation 12 vision. Sourced against Munificentissimus Deus §44, CCC 966, John Damascene, and Revelation 12. See 01-sources.md.
Theology watch: the Church defined that Mary was assumed, never that she died. Captions use the definition's own neutral wording. She is shown asleep, never dead. No burial, no empty tomb. Flag this page for the priest reviewer.
PANEL 1: The Assumption. Mary rising, but not floating passively upward like a balloon. She is being received — drawn up. Arms open, head tilted back, eyes open and full of light. Not a girl anymore; a woman who has carried everything and is finally being carried.
Below her, small at the bottom of the frame, the apostles on a hillside, faces upturned, one shielding his eyes. Above and around her the light does not come from the sun in the sky. It comes from further up, out of frame.
Composition note: keep her the whole vertical axis of the page. This is the counterpart to the Resurrection splash on page 1 — there, Christ rising by his own power; here, Mary raised by his. The two images should rhyme and never be mistaken for each other.
Style: the "gritty but soft" bar applies. Not a pastel holy card. See ../../../references/style.md.
CAPTION: When the course of her earthly life was finished, she was taken up, body and soul, into heavenly glory.
PANEL 1: Years later. A small house, plain and clean. Mary is old now — lined face, gray hair under a simple veil, hands worn. She is grinding grain or mending, doing something ordinary. Sunlight through a doorway. Draw her age honestly; do not soften her back into a young woman.
CAPTION: The years went by, the way years do.
PANEL 2: The young Church in her house. A handful of believers seated on the floor around her, a child in her lap, John nearby. She is talking, and they are listening the way people listen to the last person alive who was actually there.
BELIEVER: Tell us again. About the angel.
MARY: (smiling) You have heard it a hundred times.
BELIEVER: Tell us anyway.
PANEL 3: Close on Mary's face as she begins. Her eyes go somewhere far off. Behind her, faint and unbordered, the ghost of the Annunciation — a suggestion of wings and light, no more than a watermark.
MARY: I said yes.
MARY: I did not understand any of it. I said yes anyway.
PANEL 4: Exterior, dusk. Roads from several directions. On each one, a traveler — the apostles, older now, weathered from years of missions, converging on the same town. No one sent for them. Each is simply coming.
CAPTION: They came from wherever they had been sent. No one had sent for them.
PANEL 5: The apostles in the doorway of the house, dusty from the road, seeing her. Peter's face. These are men who have grown old preaching, and they look like sons walking into their mother's room.
PETER: Mother.
Note: this is the doctrinally delicate page. She falls asleep. She is not shown dead.
PANEL 1: The room, lamplit, night. Mary lying on a simple bed, the apostles kneeling and standing around her in a loose circle. John at her right hand. The composition should quietly echo the Last Supper — a gathering around one person, everything about to change.
CAPTION: The Church has a word for what happened next, and the word is not "died."
PANEL 2: Mary's face, eyes closing. Utterly peaceful. This is sleep. Warm light on her skin, not pallor. Her hand is in John's.
CAPTION: The Dormition. The falling asleep.
PANEL 3: Her hands folded. The rest of the frame goes soft and out of focus. Very quiet panel — almost no detail. Let the page breathe here.
MARY: (small, barely a whisper) Behold... the handmaid of the Lord.
PANEL 4: The apostles. Nobody moves. Thomas has a hand over his mouth. James is looking at the floor. John has not let go of her hand. Grief, but not despair — these men have seen a tomb come up empty before.
PANEL 5: Wide, from above, looking down on the room. The circle of them around her. The lamp flames all lean the same direction, though there is no wind. First hint that something is coming.
CAPTION: In your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life.
PANEL 1: The light in the room changes. Everyone turns toward the source. Shadows swing hard across the walls. Same room, same night, but the palette is going gold.
PANEL 2: Mary, still asleep, beginning to rise from the bed. Weightless. The apostles scrambling back, John reaching for her.
JOHN: No — wait —
PANEL 3: Her eyes open. And she is not old anymore. Not young either — she is whole, the way the risen Christ was whole on page 2. Same visual logic, deliberately: the risen body. She is fully herself and fully alive.
CAPTION: Body and soul. Not her spirit only. Her.
PANEL 4: Through the roof, the ceiling opening the way the sky opened at the Baptism, or the way the wind came through at Pentecost. Mary rising into it. Below, the apostles on their knees, faces lit gold from above.
CAPTION: It was fitting that she who carried the Creator should not see corruption.
PANEL 5: Exterior, wide. The house from outside, a column of light standing straight up out of it into the night sky. The town asleep and unaware. Only these eleven men know what is happening.
CAPTION: The Church would take nineteen centuries to define it. They watched it happen.
Revelation 12:1-6. Register shift: cosmic. This is the biggest visual swing in the book after the Resurrection splash.
PANEL 1: Hard cut. No transition. We are outside the world now. A woman standing in the sky, clothed with the sun — light pouring off her — the moon beneath her feet, twelve stars circling her head like a crown.
CAPTION: A great sign appeared in heaven.
CAPTION: A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.
PANEL 2: Below and facing her, filling the bottom of the frame, the dragon. Huge, red, seven heads, ten horns, seven diadems. Its tail sweeping stars out of the sky like sparks. Genuinely frightening — but rated TEEN, so: menace and scale, no gore.
CAPTION: And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon.
CAPTION: His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth.
PANEL 3: The dragon coiled and waiting beneath her, mouth open, ready for the child. She is with child, and unafraid.
CAPTION: And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child.
PANEL 4: The child caught up to God and the throne — a streak of light out of the dragon's reach, upward, gone. The dragon's heads all snapping after it and missing.
CAPTION: Her child was caught up to God and to his throne.
PANEL 5: Bottom of the page, small inset, cool palette, the oldest promise: the garden. A heel above a serpent's head. Eve turned away in shadow; the woman in the sky above blazing.
CAPTION: He said it in the garden, at the very beginning. That the woman's offspring would crush the serpent's head.
CAPTION: The dragon has known her name a long time.
PANEL 1: Back on earth. Dawn in the empty room. The bed is empty, the lamp burned out, morning light coming in level through the doorway. The apostles are still there, sitting on the floor where they knelt all night.
CAPTION: They stayed until morning.
PANEL 2: Peter and John in the doorway looking out at the sunrise. Neither of them is grieving. Something has settled in their faces.
JOHN: She is the first.
PETER: The first?
JOHN: The first of us.
PANEL 3: The theological beat, done visually rather than stated. A wide panel: Christ risen on the left edge, Mary assumed on the right edge, and between them a long line of ordinary people — every age, every century, every kind of face, including faces that look like the reader's — rising.
Art note: this is the most important panel on the page. Put people in it who look like the audience. Not robed saints. Kids, grandmothers, teenagers.
CAPTION: Christ rose first, by his own power. Then his mother, by his.
CAPTION: Then everyone who belongs to him.
PANEL 4: Tight on one of those ordinary faces in the line — a teenage girl, present day, looking up. Hold on her for a beat.
CAPTION: What happened to her is not a story about how different she was from you.
PANEL 5: Pull back to the sky above the sunrise. High and small, almost lost in the light, the woman crowned with stars. And beside her, not yet clearly seen, the suggestion of a throne.
CAPTION: It is a promise about what is going to happen to you.
CAPTION: But she was not finished being honored.
The Ultimate Comic Book Rosary · Catholic Comix · generated 2026-07-26 from the working script. Do not edit this page; edit the script and rebuild.