Annotated 37-12
Having had some time to cool off in the cooler, Bandit admits she blames herself, not Byron, for the Cultist massacre. Not that she’s changed her mind about Byron being an unacceptable risk, but the buck stops with her. This is a level of emotional honesty we won’t see Syr’Nj achieve on this topic. Admittedly, Syr’Nj has and will have a lot to distract her, whereas all Bandit’s had to do is stare at the walls, entertain visitors, and plot escape.
“She’s always right” is a solid line. (I may be using a variation of that one again soon.) As before, Bandit is torn. Panel 1 Bandit seems like she sorta kinda agrees with Syr’Nj’s assessment. Panel 2 Bandit is ready to stage a coup against this tyranny of the know-it-all.
E-Merl’s excuse is not the worst he could improvise. But I’d have some trouble believing Rachel was acrophobic after what happened to Yalaria. Or rather, I could believe Rachel had some fear of fixed heights, but I doubt she’d let that fear beat her. Bandit may not know what’s up with E-Merl exactly (“Mebbe he and she’re having another rough patch, like they did at Fightopia?”), but she’s pretty sure he’s lying.
The readers figured out what was up with E-Merl here, though. We’re not leading up to the scene of him getting the news about Rachel. We’ve blown right past it. E-Merl is far from okay, and he’ll get worse before he gets better. But the fact that he can look past his own searing pain to help a friend in need is arguably as heroic as anything else he’s done.
And that’s the other reason Flo and I wanted this scene. I gotta agree with Zalocin’s comment yesterday. While we were publishing the comic, Syr’Nj was my favorite character (and Flo’s too, though Bandit came second for her). But with the hindsight of these annotations, I feel like E-Merl’s claimed the top spot for me. His kind of heroism, buried as it is beneath his self-esteem issues and surface fumbling, is rarely recognized. It’s less praised but no less praiseworthy.
And this’ll be one of the last times he displays it, until the finale. His dark days are just beginning.
“Oh. I guess she ain’t going to Heaven then, hahahaha!
… E-Merl?”
ouch
That little smile in panel 6 when he makes the decision to not make this time with his ailing friend about his own pain. I can almost read his thoughts: “this is what Rachel would do”.
E-Merl has grown on me a lot through this re-read. It’s a good character arc, Bront.
Your commentary that this is “one of the last times” E-Merl shows this kind of heroism struck me, because I never thought of it that way. Even while E-Merl is spiraling, Daniel is stepping up. And while even on the first read-through I understood that they weren’t the same person, in regards to E-Merl’s arc it still felt like his heroism was getting expressed somehow.
Actually, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if what happened with Yalaria *gave* Rachel a fear of heights.
“While we were publishing the comic, Syr’Nj was my favorite character (and Flo’s too, though Bandit came second for her)”
So what was *your* second favorite character then?
(I dunno, given the way she handled falling to her likely death and got right back out of the fishpile, she seemed all right.)
Probably Frigg or Shanna, who both have senses of humor that I don’t get to flex very often and compelling antihero’s journeys.
Regarding Zalocin’s comment from the previous page, I think the better thing to say here for E-Merl would have been to tell that he knows better than Syr’Nj because he was there and she was not. But I suppose that would have been a bit too self-assured for him.
Also, Rachel still wins my “best character” award. Most of the things E-Merl does right here, he does because Rachel taught him. Case in point: I’m pretty sure things would have gone differently if Rachel had actually been present in this scene. Syr’Nj was leading for a long time but would have started to feel like a Mary Sue if she hadn’t turned against Bandit, which is actually surprisingly in character for her.
Bandit’s also near the top of my list. I wish she’d find a way to restore her reputation with the Peacemakers because she’s actually totally up to the job. That none of the others seems to even try to convince Syr’Nj to give Bandit a fair chance (not even later, after Byron’s back) also does not speak for them. (okay, she saw Bandit bury her daggers in her husband’s body, repeatedly, maybe that *does* make it hard not to judge Bandit…)
I think the only one who truly held a grudge against her was Syr’nj–even Byron made it clear that he did not–but they all understood that all the Peacekeepers had to be on the same side of “Should Byron be alive, yes/no?” And if Bandit ever experienced any wavering in her position there, she took pains to keep that wavering hidden from Syr’nj. So what would a fair chance even mean, here? “You are formally readmitted to the Peacekeepers, and immediately discharged again because of your avowed intention to bury your daggers in the back of another Peacekeeper the first time you’re alone with him because he, and I quote, ‘needs killin'”?
Well … up until the point where she saw Byron slaughter his way through that village, Bandit had no plans to kill Byron, and even when she did see it, she tried other methods first.
Her position had never been that Byron should be dead, just that it was dangerous to let him go into battles.
A fair chance would be for Syr’Nj to actually be open to Bandit about the stuff she’d kept secret (resurrection number 1, for starters — if Bandit knew that, her perspective would had been completely different), and also to acknowledge that Bandit has tried what she could — she filled her role as well as anyone could have, but her job was just that bit harder, and there was that much more riding on it for her than Syr’Nj assumes.
A fair chance would mean for Syr’Nj to stop assuming that the scene she witnessed was enough to understand the whole story. As it stands now, Bandit stopped a raging zombie and got expelled for it. Without her, Byron’s zombie would have killed that many more people, and Byron would have been just as dead.
My feeling is that at least those Peacekeepers who were present at the time know this, but none of them dare tell it to Syr’Nj.
“If Bandit ever experienced any wavering in her position there, she took pains to keep that wavering hidden from Syr’Nj” — you mean in the few seconds of their last exchange? Yeah, sure. She just ended an incredibly dangerous situation and got shouted at for it. Nobody seemed to care how *she* was feeling about that. You might have a better chance asking Frigg to apologize for anything.
I mean in the rest of the comic. You do remember the fist-shaking rage with which Bandit greeted the news of Byron’s resurrection, right? You’re acting like the latest annotated comic is actually the latest comic and how they’re going to act in the “future” from _this_ comic is ambiguous.
Posted prematurely, sorry. Appended to my other reply:
And let me–with the understanding that we’re talking about the entire comic, not an abbreviated version that stops here–rephrase my question. What would a fair chance even mean in terms of actions, not thoughts? “Discharge her but don’t also say mean things about her to Gravedust”? “Discharge her but apologetically”? “Pretend she wasn’t explicitly and publicly outraged by Byron’s resurrection”?