Annotated 10-1
Phil and I had some back-and-forth about whether it was the asphyxiation that killed Frigg or whether one arrow to the neck might’ve finished her off after that smash cut to black at the end of Chapter 8, but ultimately, the simpler explanation is better, I think.
The script went into a lot more macabre detail than the angle and camera distance from the corpses was ever going to show: “They’ve been left in nothing but their bloodied clothes. All armor, gear and weapons have been stripped from them. No attempt, though, has been made to embalm them or otherwise protect their bodies, and they’ve had about two weeks to go. Syr’Nj’s corpse is in the early stages of transforming to more primitive vegetable matter (she’ll look deflated and wrinkled, like some rotting vegetable, roots may even be showing some exposure like potato eyes; left alone in a sunny environment, it may have become a shrub). Byron’s decomposing quickly, given how much damage his body took before it lost its life. Frigg, who died of asphyxiation, is now the least damaged: pale and stiff but almost normal otherwise.”
I may have been the go-to guy for rhymes, but Phil gave Gravedust some nifty spoken-word poetry.
Gotta say, I never pictured Frigg as having died from Byron’s attack. I suppose it’s irrelevant, but I pictured all of them (aside from Gravedust, probably) being turned into pincushions by that swarm or arrows. Maybe that happened anyway, just she’d already died? Eh, like I said, irrelevant.
I have to wonder why Harky even buried them. If he was so terrified of the madness I would think he’d have their corpses burned on the spot. Did HR somehow influence his decision making so they could be resurrected?
Yeah I also wonder why they got these huge burial mounds like they were kings or heroes. I figured Harky would throw them to the sharks (and burn Byron).
I doubt HR was angling to preserve the bodies. If I recall correctly, he becomes perturbed when he realizes that they’ve been resurrected.
Perhaps Harky thought the plague would spread much like spores from certain types of pyrophytic plants. Better to let them rot in the ground then risk letting a stiff breeze infect everyone.
The first time around, I assumed the burial was a way to contain “The Madness”, spiritually and hygienically
I thought Gravedust was being sarcastic in the first panel, but no.