Annotated 9-7
Even I’m shocked to go back to this early page and see just how sassy Carol is with HR here. She clearly did not become HR’s trusted confidante by misreading his overall needs. So… he must like things between them to be like this, more or less.
So, at this stage, his need for companionship, for something that at least feels like a relationship of equals, is strong enough that he’ll permit her to pierce his ego. Maybe he even likes a little ego-piercing at this point.
And maybe you can see echoes of the father-daughter relationship I mentioned earlier. Had Guilded Age only lasted 24 chapters as planned, Carol probably would have served chiefly as a barometer for HR’s humanity without an arc of her own, and she wouldn’t really have had to come to grips with the monster that our heroes would meet. Unfortunately for her, circumstances led to a lot more character development than we expected.
I remember liking this about HR and Carol. The fact that he was okay with her giving him sass, since that’s a way people connect to each other, and that he was okay with some ego-puncturing. I liked that he clearly didn’t start out as a monster… though, given later revelations, it’s obvious he wasn’t exactly the most moral of individuals at this point.
snake-man, indeed
One of the trickier kinds of exploiter / cult leader is the one that can convince followers intellectually that the work they are doing is So Utterly Important to Humanity. Then the leader can position themselves as a fallible human being like anybody else, be self-critical and self-effacing, putting people at ease while still demanding and getting absolute loyalty.
This was how I always read this relationship as being portrayed.
I know I just corrected you yesterday, but is he correcting her on something? He repeats Cyberia when she says it.
I think it’s supposed to be in a pretty scathing tone – like she’s bringing up something totally irrelevant.
My interpretation is that he’s just repeating what she said skeptically, as if to imply “Why are we talking about Cyberia?”
The repetition (to me, at least) is obviously said in a scathing, sarcastic, “Why should I worry about Cyberia of all things?” tone.
He’s annoyed that she keeps talking about red-headed-stepchild-project when they’re alone, and about to go see his OMG-OMG-OMG project.
That reprimand keeps sequeing into the last two panels.