Annotated 28-10
This page did not go over as clearly as I’d hoped it would. It would’ve been a bit of a desperation device, but maybe we should’ve added a flashback panel that showed Don Gobligno’s intent more plainly. Perhaps he could have been laughing over the prank he planned to pull on Harky here.
Because selecting Goblaurence was meant as sabotage. Not quite the sort of open defiance that earned him a busted nose, but as close to it as he could safely get. He sees Goblaurence as a useless non-resource, a poison pill. Goblin crime families place great value on family and social capital, which protects Goblaurence somewhat as a cousin of the Don but also means his insights go unrecognized by most, including the Don.
Harky not only sees Goblaurence’s true value, he’s well aware that Gobligno does not. So he can choose his reaction here. He could have pretended to be less sanguine about the choice, but he knows that nothing will frustrate his rebellious lieutenant quite like courteous thanks.
Oh just wondered if people are still commenting. Looks like it was annotated today. Campbell Kahn and Waltrip working on any thing these days? Any fans reading this?
Campbell mentioned two annotations ago that he’s writing a thing called Shakespeare’s Trump, and somewhere in these annotations I’m pretty sure he mentioned Khan decided to start working on games, though I’m not sure what aspect of them it was. Dunno about Waltrip.
Sorry for taking my time here. The Shakespeare’s Trump project at Medium is my most visible writing project; I’m also at work on an ambitious crossword for release next year, and I do edits and sometimes modest rewrites for Pixie Trix Comix and Seven Seas Entertainment. Phil’s exercising his creativity mostly within the World of Warcraft community. I’m afraid I myself don’t know much about what John or Jason are up to right now, though they pop in here occasionally so maybe they’ll answer.
None of us, it seems, felt the need to move from Guilded Age to another comics project of even remotely similar ambition. I’m not saying never, especially not in my case, but it ended up being very consuming work, and I think once it was done, we were eager to discover who we could be without it, creatively and otherwise.
“This page did not go over as clearly as I’d hoped it would.”
No kidding. There is really no reason given to think that Gobligno ever, even during this page, actually intends to present Goblaurence as the chosen goblin champion. A consistent alternative reading is that since Harky happened to notice Goblaurence accidentally, Gobligno merely explains why the other goblins consider him a joke, fully expecting Harky to find him equally amusing, and is taken completely by surprise when Harky has other ideas.
One of the ways to answer to insult is by accepting it.
“You lazy piece of skit!”
“I sure am.” and just enjoyingly stretch while taking a better pose for relaxing.
Sure it does backfire if you say it to your boss when work is to be done, but between family, nothing shuts up a person faster than “Yes. True dat. You said it. Got that right. Yep. Nailed it. When you’re right, you’re right.” XD
Possibly a minor transition from the last scene to this one would’ve helped, making it so that Harky and Gobligno clearly showed up here on purpose rather than happening to be around. For what it’s worth, I think the way Gobligno speaks here works as something of a light mockery of the whole champions business that does serve as a sort of middle finger to Harky within the boundaries of what he can get away with.
I thought it was pretty clear, for my part. And Don Gobligno’s shock and outrage at Harky being pleased certainly drove the point home that he hadn’t been sincere, if “you great rebel leader” hadn’t been enough.
I agree, I thought the page was pretty clear as well. Don planned this a middle finger to the champions initiative, Harky was able to see that the Don had quite accidentally provided him an essential element for the group he was forming, and by sincerely thanking the Don for a valuable find was also able to demonstrate both his own magnanimity (at being above the Don’s scheming) and put the Don into his place in a manner that the Don could have no feasible counter to.
I concur, too. That was my reading during the first appearance of this page.
Although, note that Harky’s promise to remember the Don’s actions during the dividing of victory spoils is doubled-edged. Harky didn’t say he will limit his judgement to today’s actions. And if Goblaurence turned out as much as a joke as the Don seems to believe… Now Don Gobligno has to hope to be wrong and that his nephew is going to make the goblins look good.
To echo Valdrax below, never try to troll a troll.
Not to mention his, if you’ll pardon the phrase, troll face in that panel.
Always thought this one of the greatest pages. “you great rebel leader, you”. Simply awesome.
I came across people just like that more than once at work. And this page thouroughly inspired me.
Goblaurence is the epitomy of what we in the military call ‘the crusty senior NCO’.
My only problem with this page (which I seem to have missed first time around) is why Gobligno is offering up someone he thinks to be worthless as the Goblin Champion – he’s so status minded that he’d have to realize it would reflect worse on him than Harky if Goblaurance had been the screwup he believed him to be.
I kind of got the impression from what he stated – “mere mechanical aptitude”, as well as his off-hand comment implying that he doesn’t believe that the designs Goblawrence makes are viable – that he intended Harky to put his “useless” cousin into a role that would get him killed. It’s arguable who that would wind up hurting the social standing of more, though perhaps Goblingo thinks Harky will “owe” him, either for the initial champion that the troll “failed” or “lost”, or for the (in the Goblin’s eyes) much better replacement.
He probably didn’t put much weight into Harky’s initiative. He wanted to show his disapproval by volunteering someone inept. If the five that Harky mustered failed spectacularly, then it would make Harky look bad and the Don look good (because he advised against it in the first place).
That was my question as well… after reading through the comments, I see to possible scenarios:
1: Harky saw the scene in the previous page, asked Don about the guy, and Don replies in a clearly sarcastic tone. He intents for Harky to agree that Gob is useless, and either give him a role that will shut him up (perhaps forever) or just go and choose someone else.
2: Don’s intention is to remove Gob from his current position and into some suicide mission. He’s trying his best to make Gob look good with what he knows about him, but then Harky takes the bait so eagerly that Don is left thinking that he might have made a mistake. He hoped Harky would grudgingly agree to pick him but now he’s way happier than he has any right to be, which means Don’s no longer sure what Harky knows that he doesn’t. — if that was the intention then maybe it would have helped to know Don’s intention and expectation beforehand, and reduce the insincerity level of Don’s pitch a bit.
…and actually, I wonder if a more straightforward version could have worked better (for me…): Harky asks about Gob, Don just directly tells him how Gob was a lazy know-it-all with no achievements to his name but getting in people’s faces, interfering with due process and generally not being cooperative, and Harky replies how this guy seems perfectly suited for the job, thank you. (maybe with some remark comparing him favourably to what Harky’s used to from another certain goblin he’s working with)
I understood the basics of what Don and Harky were doing here, but Don’s motivations had completely eluded me.
Same.
I think that my problem is just that there is so much time between episodes where Don shows up that he’s nearly a blank slate at this point (who /is/ that again?) despite being intentionally written as unlikable very recently in this chapter. I get /what/ happened, but Don’s motivation completely escapes me, and that renders what happens here very strange. I think I needed just a little more reminder of who he is to turn that generic distasteful person feeling into the intended “oh right, he’s a tool who thinks he’s using the rebellion. Of course he’s not interested in this initiative succeeding”.
That or being able to see his character sheet and RP notes. That’d probably clear the whole thing up too.
As I read them, I think that Don Gobligno motivation is simply that he believes he would be a better leader of all anti-Gastonian races than Harky.
And thus, being the master of subtlety he is, he barely miss any occasion to antagonize Harky. During their previous confrontation, he seemed to truly believe everybody else will be standing behind him while he was berating Harky for the recent defeat.
Iver also believes that he (that is, Iver) would make a better leader. Only difference, he, he is subtle about it.