Annotated 24-30
The conditions stated here might read as foreshadowing: what if something happens to threaten these gains? And, well, some things will, but I think that’s a bit of a misdirect. The last panel is the really important one. Byron’s acceptance of this responsibility, with everything that he is, means that he’s well on his way to transforming from rogue freelancer to statesman. He will have setbacks, but this is our first glimpse of his final form.
I think this moment was the midpoint of Guilded Age Act II, and a bit of a turning point for me and Phil as well. That’s better news for us than it was for our characters. Spoiler warning: for Byron, the other heroes in general, and this newfound Adventurer’s Guild, today is going to be about as good as things get until Chapter 49 or 50. The alliance between Gastonia’s government and its adventurers will seem stable for a while, but it’s all downhill from here.
But for Phil and me, things would start getting better. We’d have setbacks too (so, so many setbacks), but the success of the Kickstarter and the clean slate this chapter created let us move forward, the chaos in our personal lives receded, and the work started getting kinda fun again. After delays and struggles with the last two chapters, we hurtled right into Chapter 25 without a moment’s pause.
NEXT: A moment’s pause! Well, I had to put the annotations for the Kickstarter promos SOMEWHERE.
Panel two, that’s… actually a rude gesture, in some places.
Was that a subtle hint as to Admiral Annunziata’s annoyance at the adventurers’ audacity?
Yeah, as a Brit, I thought the admiral had an underlying tone of ‘yeah, you’d better know who’s in charge here…’ thanks to that two-fingered gesture…
Aren’t all gestures rude in some places? ;)
In the original run, I believe Phil mentioned in the comments that it was an intentional easter egg for those from the parts of the world who would get it.
Oh, you done did it now, boyo. You didn’t read the fine print…
Byron is channeling big Aragorn energy in that last panel.
Re-reading this, it’s a bit odd. It helps spell things out for us, the reader, but conditions One and Three aren’t really conditions. They’re just basic “this is what being a Guild, that thing you said you wanted, means”. Looking at it again, I think the gravitas of Byron accepting this position would have been better transmitted if the panels had been rearranged to give him more visual real estate on the page. It probably would have required some unconventional placement, which is less the style of Guilded Age, though the look on his face before placing his hand is a real good one.