Annotated 36-29
Notes from Flo to John: OK, man, this is it. We’re ratcheting up the “brutalitometer” to 10, here. In a few pages… it will be 11.
Also, from one panel description: Byron…. kills and berserkerfies someone the audience likes (only people off-limits are main characters and Isidro). That should tell you as much as anything about the meat grinder this chapter was in our minds, but I don’t think I recognize any of the people he slices through here. One looks like he might be Colonnus, but he can’t be, because of a scene in three more pages. I think most named characters’ deaths are covered in other panels, but there’s one who wasn’t: we could’ve fit Pyre in here and set Byron’s body on fire once more, for old time’s sake. Wouldn’t have changed anything.
Good on Bandit, relying on stealth while everyone else is trying to outfight the unoutfightable. If her military intelligence had been up to date, this would’ve worked.
(New alt text, similar in spirit to a comment by Alice Macher.)
That was kind of a vague panel description. I think Waltrip has enough work on his hands to remember who people also like, but not enough to break sequences to then– Naaaah.
Also gotta admire Byron’s hair looking so good even after all that hacking and slashing. I wonder if fab hair was one of his tubing background wishes.
When I was reading ahead and saw Alice’s comment, I was expecting it to get quoted in the commentary, due to the ‘holy shit, way more topical’ aspect, so I’m claiming a partial prediction win, here. >_>
It’s definitely flattering to see my comment remembered and referenced. And yeah, scary-topical now. O_o
I completely forgot that Bandit tried using the antidote and failed.
That *really* makes her later reaction make a lot more sense
It’s a little tragic. Bandit truly had made up her mind at this point and was prepared to accept all the consequences of this, understanding the rage is an affliction and prepared to do what she needs to as a leader to stop him from hurting others and himself in the process. And then the Antidote that she has always been told is the reason that we can ultimately trust Byron, the key in place to ensure that his own personal issues never become something they can’t all handle together, totally fails.
It only gets worse from here, and despite the fact Byron is technically dead and possessed which are different than his inherent berserker rage it will not be a moment Bandit is able to ever forget. Unfortunately this puts her at ends with everyone else in a big way. However that’s a big part of what steered her towards focusing on improving her people’s culture and working for them. This was always a really big moment for me on this page, and it has some major repercussions for the rest of the comic.
I’m guessing she went for the anti-zerker serum here because she had just seen it work on Tom.
I wonder if it’s the sheer number of spirits inhabiting Byron’s corpse that renders it useless on him, or if Homon’s anti-anti-drug is still in effect.
But from Bandit’s perspective it really should have worked, and it would have been the smart move since what-used-to-be-Byron is clearly not something one should fight straight up.
What a horrible scene to witness.
Can we take a moment to appreciate Byron’s hair though?
The person Byron is striking in panel 3 looks a LOT like Astoria Troy (red boots, blue pants, spiky upbangs, gloves). Of course that has the same problem as Colonnus as she appears to be infected on page 32 instead.
yep, that’s almost definitely her. But it’s not clear if Byron actually lands a hit here or gets distracted by Bandit before that happens.
»If her military intelligence had been up to date, this would’ve worked.«
Really? What could she have done differently? She’s already sent E-Merl to get Syr’Nj, to get more … Syringes, and the one she’s wielding is not nearly enough to stop Byron in his current state.
I suppose if she had known better, a few hours earlier, she wouldn’t have let Byron enter the forest, or she might have sent for Syr’Nj(-es) earlier, but from the moment Byron went berzerking, I don’t see how she could have done any better than what she’s doing now.
Argh — that took me a while. You mean of course it would have worked if the information she had had been accurate, which if of course wasn’t… I read it the other way round.
Unrelated but as someone who does archery, shooting with the bow horizontal is much harder than doing it normally, and makes aiming much more difficult. good work on everything else though