Annotated 22-13
Phil and I worked together well on this one: his first draft was most of what you see here, but Tom, as mentioned, needed to be a bit more “clairvoyant” in this moment. I redid the third panel from a non-rhyming version, and Phil then revised the lines leading into it. They originally ended with Iwatani saying “I offer protection!” which would’ve made Tom’s “guess” in panel 3 savvy, but not demonstrably superhuman.
I wasn’t as strict about the meter of Tom’s rhymes as I thought I was– or possibly Phil tweaked them without an eye for meter, but I don’t remember, and looking it up feels petty. The general scheme is two little rhyme-lines building to a bigger third one: “Da da da da ection da da da da ection da da da da da da da da da da ection.” It’s a nice idea that sets him apart from other rhyming narrative in the book, like Bandit and Scipio’s Axemas tales.
Also, I’ve been meaning to say: that’s a really nice fusion of Countless Ones iconography and stylized art in the backgrounds. Looks vaguely Native American-inspired to me, but you might have to ask John.
I can’t for the life of me figure out what you thought was wrong with the meter here. It seems flawless to me.
It seems like it follows his method doesn’t it? I must confess a weakness when it comes to meter, I’m often at a loss when it comes to keeping it consistent for any length of time.
According to my research on Wikipedia, it’d be classified as amphibrachic tetrameter. Amphibrachic means it goes “da DUM da” — not a very common meter, except in limericks (“There ONCE was/a GIRL from/nanTUCKet”). Tetrameter means it repeats four times in each line. Thus:
“You OFFer / proTECtion / for OUR in/surRECTtion
so LONG as / our CHAos / o-BEYS your / diRECtion.”
As you can see, it follows the pattern perfectly.
Ooh you did your homework. Nice. I wonder if he’s just being overly self critical, or if the meter struggles later.
It occurs to me that Taro winds up as a sacrifice to the Countless anyway.
I have to say, if I haven’t before, The Countless is a great name for a faceless cult. It suggests so many things about them, and the imagery a name like that brings to mind is suitably horrible. Nice one!
In retrospect, we can see here the depth of Iwatani arrogance.
He believed himself smart enough and powerful enough to manipulate/control simultaneously the human council, the Peacekeeper forces, his own son, AND a well-implanted chaotic doomsday cult bend on civilization destruction.
With the latter, it should be obvious that their objectives are quickly going to be antithetic to his own. He just believed he can disengage and thwart a chaotic bunch of zealots any time.
The joke with the leopard-eating face party comes to mind.
It’s now no wonder that Taro’s attack on him blindsided him so completely.