Annotated 28-27
FIRED = HIRED
This page likewise is not very surprising, and I considered compressing it into the next. Glad I didn’t, especially given how important Penk ended up becoming. This moment may have been one that you could guess would happen, but it needed to be felt.
(I also appreciate how, in the scenes of spiritual communion, Tectonicus generally takes over the alt text. It’s a subtle thing, but it makes his presence feel more spiritually pervasive. Even Frigg’s scenes with the wolf don’t function on quite the same level, because she will never submit to her god’s will as Penk and Harky do.)
I was, and continue to be, struck by how massive Tectonicus is. Good scene.
I recall the gods of this universe were supposed to be based on Internet memes. I can’t figure out what meme this guy is supposed to represent though. Is it just because he was around before the influence of the real world? Or maybe he’s Surtur from Thor Ragnarok, that’s like, kind of a meme, right?
We constructed a meme-Pantheon for Courage/Insanity Wolf to belong to eventually, but Tectonicus comes from a different system, an older system, like the sun god Ra intruding on the doings of the Olympians. (Or, if you prefer, we hadn’t really thought of the meme-to-god idea when we introduced Tectonicus on chapter 1’s page 1 and felt it would diminish him to try to shoehorn him into it.)
Tectonicus is native to Original Arkherra, the MemeGods are native to this one?
Yeah this is a great page. And let’s take a moment to appreciate how great a name Tectonicus is for a volcano god.
T, I think you commented when Penk was introduced that his eventual storyline deviated wildly from your initial intentions for the character. I wonder when that changed, and why. Also, did you imagine on page 1 how important Tectonicus himself would end up being?
Answering the Tectonicus question is easier. In the very beginning, he was definitely a throwaway challenge that we approached with all the forethought of Jackson Pollock splatting some paint onto a canvas from ten feet away. We had some rough notes on the races’ cultures but no mention of him in them, let alone any idea that gods other than HR would make their presences felt in Arkerra. We only started tying Tectonicus’ mythology to Harky’s when it was time to flesh Harky out, in preparation for Chapter 8.
For comparison, see the beginning of Chapter 3, which was only referenced one more time (in which we pointedly refused to put it in any context). We needed to establish our heroes and their adventuring careers in broad strokes, and that’s largely all the first few flash-forwards were about. (Though the Cultists’ connection to Byron’s condition came up in our talks fairly shortly after we introduced them in Chapter 2.)
Discovering Penk’s final role in the series was a process. As I said earlier, he was conceived as a sort of grunt’s-eye-view character, someone who’d experience the war from the perspective of the led, not the leaders. Had we followed our original plan, Penk would never have become superpowered or gained any authority, and it would’ve been Frigg, not he, who defeated Harky and therefore usurped leadership of the trolls. (Surely Frigg was born to be a troll queen?) Penk, in that scenario, would give voice to the troll traditions involved, balancing his grief with loyalty to the new regime.
At this point, we were still thinking we’d hew to that basic plan, with the Peacemakers ultimately fighting their way past the Champions so that Frigg could get to Harky. But it should’ve been clear to us even here that that was no longer the arc we were writing, and the more time we spent with Penk, the more obvious it became that he had bigger things in his future.
Alternate universe Troll Queen Frigg is something I’d dig. An interesting destiny for someone like her.
Jason was always good on this comic, but on certain pages, such as this one, he pulled out all the stops and really killed it.
Damn, looking at how burned up Penk is here is harrowing.
Clearly the Tectonicus superpowers didn’t just kick in the moment he was in the lava, but instead only took effect after he had been burning up for a while that, I assume, is just agonizingly prolonged by his troll healing.
I like Tectonicus as a primal power, everything about him is just “Keep the fire burning, keep Trolls alive.” He doesn’t have some grand goal, he doesn’t have some complex laws, he respects strength, because without it you will never find him. He’s very like Crom, though perhaps more benevolent, surprising for a giant being of living magma.