Annotated 1-16
It’s not gonna be easy, Syr’Nj.
TBH, I completely forgot the bit about “slaughtering the winter elves’ pine” until this reread, which says to me that we hadn’t even realized how remote the winter elves were at this point. I’m gonna say that it’s called “the winter elves’ pine” because that’s where the winter elves used to live until, with typical foresight, they relocated way, way the hell away from any other sentient life. We’ll see a former point of residence for the sky elves later, so that’d sort of fit.
Even on first reading, this read to me not as ‘the pine where the Winter Elves live’, but ‘the pine the Winter Elves planted, that the Wood Elves now have stewardship over, because the Winter Elves have buggered off to wherever they took their “forgotten lore”‘…mostly because of the ‘forgotten lore’ part. You don’t guard that out in the middle of a forest where other people are living!
Also, the ‘stain’ effect on these pages is a nice touch, though this one falls foul of the dangers of not being careful with it – the one stain in panel 2 lines up with Syr’s mouth in the perfect way to look like she’s drooling tobacco spit. >_>
Out of curiosities sake, why was the choice made to have the humans felling the winter elves pine rather the wood elves pine? Is it because the wood elves are more adept at defending their pine?
My guess would be that when alot of people think pine trees they tend to default to a certain winter celebration
From the humans’ perspective that pine was abandoned a long time ago, because the winter elves left
In addition to the other answers, I’d say that we wanted the wood elves to not have actually suffered significant defeat at the humans’ hands at this point, so it was better to have them view the desecration of someone else’s land (as they would see it, anyway) as a cautionary tale.
The last two panels are still two of my favorite of the who damn comic
Apparently, this was the real world experience of Clara Barton, the founder of Red Cross. She was at the Battle of Antietam when a musket ball pierced her sleeve and killed the patient she was treating on the field.
Amazing what you can learn from “Drunk History” on Comedy Central. ;-)
Well at least he didn’t die because of your medical treatment… and he wasn’t the best example of humanity anyway.
…. so the winter elves had more foresight than the authors?
Naturally! Weo and his associates are probably rolling their eyes and saying, “You only THINK you’re retconning this.”
“Oh COME ON! You knotting knotholes! I just wrapped him up! Now I’ll have to start all over again!”
This! THIS is why you don’t medic in a pub match!