Annotated 9-24
The original plan for this chapter was to stay with HR’s previous scene to the end, and perhaps we would’ve witnessed the revival of Gravedust and the others through his eyes before coming back to Arkerra at the start of Chapter 10.
This was an improvement, and it feels like Phil’s sense of pacing that got us here. As we would learn, it is challenging to wring too much drama out of a guy staring at a screen and murmuring, “Y IT BORKEN?” so HR’s appearances would be fairly brief until he started really losing his grip.
This would be the penultimate “arguable end of Act I” for the series. It depends on what you consider the important characters, really. HR is clearly more important to the finale than the second wave of Peacemakers will be. But I still think we aren’t quite out of the “introductory” phase yet; I’ll argue why not in a couple more chapters.
As we were finishing this up, Phil hit me with an idea for a Pokemon parody/alien invasion story, tentatively called “Battleslave Fightmonsters Go!”, for maybe a year after Guilded Age was finished. I guess that’d be a couple months from now. Phil and I have clearly changed a lot since then, and our interests have shifted… I’m still happy doing mostly non-comics stuff outside these annotations, for now. But I should ask him about it.
“I’m still happy doing mostly non-comics stuff outside these annotations”
What kinds of other stuff are you writing right now?
Right this minute, I’m working on the Ubercross 125, the largest crossword puzzle ever to follow New York Times standard rules. In the last year, I’ve released a memoir and wordplay collection (and re-released some old work) on Amazon. I’ve also been riding shotgun on Menage a 3, Dangerously Chloe, Sandra on the Rocks, and Sticky Dilly Buns, though the last of those strips is now ended and the other three soon will be.
The Ubercross is scheduled for release in about two weeks at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (and online after that).
I’m still a little undecided about what’s after that. I’ve been kicking around an idea for a century-spanning series of books about superheroes and superhero-adjacent figures, and Gisele Lagace has some ideas that I might be on board for, but after being locked into doing GA for so long, part of me is still enjoying the freedom.
You know I always thought every youtuber ever lived on the same building (‘s basement) after a while. Now thanks to this post I think the same of webcomics. It’s nuts how intertwined most comics I read on the web are.
Want. UBERCROSS!
(Yes, I do the Times puzzle.) And now for the story,
“When Fandoms COLLIDE!”
Doooooo eeeeeett
Comics needs T
Old, yes. Manipulative, at least in this situation, yes. A ham…occasionally, but that doesn’t alleviate the irony of Best calling someone else that as a derogatory term.
Eh, I think Gravy is pretty much the opposite of a ham. So, depending on your perspective, he’s either a snout or a mah.
Does anyone else think that after years of travel and adventure, Best becomes something like Gravedust?
In the end, we all become gravedust.
Unless we’re cremated. Or buried at sea. Or picked apart by vultures. Or…
Or raised by the Night King?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
“Battleslave Fightmonsters Go!”
Is there any difference between Pokemon and cock fighting?
I appreciate the fact that Harky and his savage, non-civilized cronies apparently took the trouble to bury each of the Peacemakers in a separate cave, instead of dumping them all in the same hole or just throw them at the Landsharks.
It’s a good thing they had a set of five caves with opposite facing entrances lying around somewhere, too. What is that you say? Yes, it’s almost if Arkerra was *designed* by a creator!
I always thought it was thoroughly odd that Harky would lure the lot into a death pit, murder the stuffing out of them, and then…bury each of them under a separate giant rocky outcropping artfully arranged near the capital. I’m also curious if bandit was actually buried? Presumably, Gravedust would have looked for her corpse and not found it?
Gravedust covers the reason they were buried where they were in Chapter 10. Bandit’s fate, we’ll discuss when she and Syr’Nj do in Chapter 13.
I remember thinking the first time through, how weird it was that the “Horde” of savage races picked such a ostentatious and historical place of obvious ancient importance and significance… to dump the corpses of a few emissaries of their enemy they killed in an arena.
Isn’t that more the type of garbage you dump into unnamed mass graves like compost, if you bother to bury them at all instead of leaving their bodies to rot?