Title’s one of mine, aimed at how the three villains of the story are each “emulating” the picture of success as embodied by the Heads of Houses and humanity more generally. I do wish we’d spelled that out a little more, but that’s what annotations are for.

Our series of tracking shots continues, but as the title drops, we clarify who is going to be the focus of the series. Last page was mine, this one is Phil’s, transition is smooth.

And John’s rendition of the true Gnometown is lively and lovely. Reminds me of a lot of architecture I saw when I was in Europe: they didn’t take wide open spaces for granted the way early American architects did, and most buildings there were established before the skyscraper era.

I don’t think there’s a TV Trope for this, but one common feature of ensemble series (TV or comics) is the story where everyone else gets pulled into one character’s world, often due to some sort of unfinished business the one character left behind before joining the ensemble. Call it a “spotlight episode,” maybe. We did it with Frigg in Chapters 5 and 6, will do it with Syr’Nj in a few more chapters, and Rachel will get her turn in Chapter 26. Curiously, the guys won’t get as much attention in this area, for various reasons, though Gravedust and Byron sort of split a spotlight episode late in the series.