Annotated 36-14
I think we should have spent more of pages 12-13 showing Brother Tom’s emotional transition. It’s a bit of a journey back from “What even is this, how dare something happen that I didn’t predict, who is this squinty-eyed jackass telling me my nihilism is meaningless” to “oh well, Byron’s still a screaming berzombie and about to kill me, I’ve reached my destination, it’s all good, damn do I love dying!” It’s not that I don’t believe such a transition is possible, but skipping over it is a bit of a lurch.
Again, there occasionally seems to be a rogue intelligence in the Berserker’s blank eyes. Axes are certainly quicker ways to kill Tom than strangling, but some echo of the rage Byron bore against him may be why the Berserker does this more personally. Or maybe he doesn’t understand Tom’s giving him the axes, I could be overthinking it.
Tom’s death grin: the worst possible example of “If you keep making that face, it’ll freeze like that.”
Yeah this is probably the creepiest, most disturbing page in the whole story.
Nah, for me Bragga having a quick human face snack was creepier. But this one is disturbing alright.
I’m not sure what’s more disturbing, Tom’s laughing face or Byron’s corpse puking a Berserker into his mouth.
Either way, broken-necked grinning ZerkZombie Tom has nothing on either.
He had a perfectly fine entry wound. No need to be nasty, cover your mouth. So unsanitary.
One of the most non-COVID friendly pages of the series. Who would have thought??
I’m a bit disturbed by myself now because I’m usually pretty much always arguing against violence. But this scene makes me entertain the thought if it wouldn’t have been cool if Berzerker-Byron had just eviscerated Tom before he had a chance to rise as a berzerker. Literally wiped/cut than grin off his face, sliced him into pieces too small for berzerker spirits and denied him any further participation? Sure, Tom has achieved most of what he wanted but I bet he’s looking forward to berzerking a bit on the way out. This way, his last thought would be the realization that he’s not invited to the party he spent his whole life organizing.
Actually, I couldn’t keep myself from reading ahead, and it seems Tom didn’t actually take part that much, and looked quite happy about it. Guess I still don’t understand his motives, and other people’s violent fantasies can’t really spoil his mood in any way…
I’ve also struggled to understand Tom’s motives.
I think we, just like Byron a few pages back, find it nearly impossible to wrap our heads around the fact that Tom just completely adores death.
Practically any other character, be they hero or villain, in any story (or real life) will want to live and often quite strongly.
But Tom? He actually thinks the death of all things would be great.
He is genuinely happy that he is dying and that soon many others will as well, and especially that first part is so insanely contrary to any normal drives and motives that no matter what I just keep feeling that “this can’t be right”.
I think it’s the belief that death is the greatest gift of all, and knowing that his masterpiece will not only bring his demise, but of heaps of others, is enough motivation for Tom.
And from a plot perspective, having Tom become another nasty berserker would diminish Byron’s impact in the chapter; Two S tier bosses might make it a bit too hard to overcome for our adventurers.
I interpreted him as wanting to go down in a blaze of …well, not glory, but something big at any rate. That would explain why he doesn’t just go off and kill himself, but — in some mad twist on what some real-life people do — spends his life preparing not some afterlife, but to make his death as impressive as possible, which means involving the deaths of as many others as he can, in as stark a manner as he can.
He can’t possibly keep up with Byron, so he wouldn’t be a top-level boss, but it would seem to me that he would also want to go down not just as the first victim of the berzerker but also berzerking himself, like many of his fellow cultists (some of whom might not actually *want* this, but haven’t yet realized just how serious Tom is about this). Instead he … doesn’t.
Maybe, compared to his previous mental state, he finds his berzerking existence actually rather relaxing? Maybe he’s so happy and relieved to finally be dead that he’s busy enough just enjoying that? In that case, denying him this post-mortem existence would maybe still have been some sort of punishment. Although it would probably have taken a corruptor beast to properly achieve that.
I think the reason he didn’t just kill himself and be done with it was that he foresaw this particular end and believed it to be the will of the Countless, and also that he didn’t just want death for himself, he wanted death on a massive scale before going out himself.
But I don’t think Tom cares at all for any “going out in a blaze” type of thing. He just wants lots and lots of death.
Tom’s face in pannel 3 always reminded me the creepy Woody meme, from that Toy Story japanese toyline, and I cannot unsee it ever!
Well, you know, being informed that your nihilism is meaningless basically *upgrades* it to Nihilism-squared.
Meta-Nihilism, where even Nihilism is meaningless.
So, I guess looking straight into Homon’s freaky eyes just drove that home to Tom.