Annotated 48-41
Gotta be a weird moment for Byron to re-enter this hall. The last time he was here, it was to found the adventurer’s guild. He’s got no regrets: Syr’Nj has certainly told him about how the Altruists betrayed that guild after his death, and even if it hadn’t, Gastonia/Iwatania still has to go down. But still, it’s maybe a little surreal for him.
Jarvis does appear on the next page, but this is his last conscious moment. He’s back to saying (almost) nothing and fighting to the last, as his type of soldier must.
FB:
BYRON: “Knock knock.”
JARVIS: “…”
BYRON: “Okay, guess I’ll do both parts. Who’s there? It’s Byron. It’s Byron who? It’s by running away from my shame for so long that I know there are no easy answers, and that’s why you’ve got to face up to it, man: you’ve created a fundamentally broken societ–“
AURAGU: “IT IS I, AURAGU! AURAUGU WHO?? AURAUGU HYESSS!”
BYRON: “I need to have a talk about brevity in comedy with Gravedust.”
“Could to spare a moment to listen to The Word of Our Lord and Savior, Tectonicus?”
*ahem* “Could you spare…”
I wish there was an edit function.
I screwed up my comment on the previous page. Now, instead of me pointing out the silhouette of Scipio, it looks like I think there’s a character named Silhouette Scipio
Oh dude, SS is my favourite! Total badass. A bit flat though.
First time we see Auraugu, he’s invading Gastonia and the heroes are fighting against him. Now, near the end of his arc, he’s invading Gastonia and the heroes are fighting alongside him.
This is not exactly where I saw this story going.
‘And one for Jenny and the wimp.’
You have much to learn about Tae Kwon Leap, Ed Gruberman.
People voting Iwatani: give them a boot to the head!
To my loyal Grand Marshall, I leave…a boot to the head.
He knocked one of Byron’s axes out of his hand. Who’s Jarvis’ sparring partner Furher King Bradley?
Weirdly, I was already getting a “Central HQ, The Promised Day” vibe from this scene before I saw your comment. I think it’s the blue military uniform that’s setting it off.
One of the scenes where I’m totally fine with comics’ weird relationship to time.
(In other words: Is Auraugu delivering all his text while leaping, and landing on “Hyes”? If not, is he saying most of it after or before the moment depicted in the last panel? If not after, why didn’t Jarvis see and hear him coming?)
Of course it doesn’t quite matter that much because what he says is not part of a discussion or otherwise things that would change the story at all had he not said them, and definitely not anything anyone reacts to in this scene. Which means we could treat it as internal monologue (which can be delivered as fast as you’d like), and all’s fine. People having discussions while airborne is just plain weird, but this instance of jump-chatter took me a minute to even notice.
Jarvis, a skilled swordsman, inflicts a very superficial injury on an apparently unaware opponent and then disarms him. Is he deliberately avoiding killing Byron?