Annotated Chapter 1 Cover
Welcome to the annotated edition of Guilded Age, running seven days a week from now until it’s done. (Yes, there have been some annotations in Guilded Age Plus as well, but these are new and with the added benefit of hindsight.)
I’m your primary host, T Campbell, ’cause annotations are kind of more my thing and Phil’s got a lot going on right now. Phil or others may chime in at some point and we’ll use some type trick like boldface to set our comments apart, but we’ll worry about that when or if it happens.
So.
If you didn’t just join us today, you know that this cover ended up being a little bit of a fib, as these six characters will never all appear together in the same place. Five of them, and then another five of them, but never all six at once. We did have some early ideas, though, that they might all stand united when it came time for the final battle against their final opponent, whose nature we didn’t even want to hint at here, so he/she/it/they are just facing them off to the right somewhere.
So this image may have been foreshadowing that never came to pass, but when we adjusted our plans, we were happy to treat it as a kind of broad symbolism that never quite became reality.
The use of the tree as a symbolic counterpoint next to Syr’Nj and a way to keep Bandit from getting her face lost in the chapter heading was one of many sound choices by Erica. There’s a lot more to unpack here, but I’d rather give the characters’ early concepts and designs more attention when we get to their solo segments, and this chapter is full of those!
Ooh! New stuff!
I dunno, somehow this page looks familiar to me… The art looks different though, so I could be wrong.
this is the original art style.
/woosh
Alright.
New Game+, Commentary Enabled.
This time they’re going to tell Magus to FUCK OFF.
Ooh, rerun with commentary!
*Grabs the popcorn*
While I’m sure you’re joking, I just want to clarify that I’m referring to the stuff below the comic.
Yes, I was being deliberately obtuse, twice over.
Will we be seeing the original Cast Page? I loved the art of the original page!
There was another cast page than the one we have now?? I was late at the party, so I missed it.
By the original artist, the comic’s tone was a little different.
YAY we get to start all over again! Let’s see who’s still along for the ride on March 30, 2027…
Should actually only take something like 5 years running seven days a week and leaving out some of the filler pages. Maybe less but I’m not about to go through the archive counting chapter pages.
It’s easy to approximate – (3*52*6.5)+(5*52). That doesn’t account for filler, breaks, or missed pages, and is only a vague approximation of how long it actually ran, but, still, it saves the trouble of counting the pages. Comes out to about 3.4 years. (So my previous calculation was wrong twice. 2021.)
2023, not 2027 – 7 days a week really shortens the runtime.
Wait, no…2022…screwed up the calculation.
according to comicrocket, the last page was numbered 1627. That includes fillers. With a page a day that’s 4.57 years. so it will be done at some point in early 2023.
Where the hell did I get 3200 from, then?! I are teh confused.
Come Mr. DJ song pon de replay
Come Mr. DJ won’t you turn the annotations up
Ooh! I get to see the alt-text from the beginning!
is there a way to display the alt-text on an iPad?
no mouse = no mouse over, tap & hold doesn’t work.
On my iPhone tap and hold till the copy image box comes up works for me. iPad should be the same.
Lol! When I first saw I kept wondering what was wrong with my browser. “Why am I on the first page of the comic?” Took me a few moments to realize this was an annotated version.
Oh. Bandit’s separated from the five. Like, by both distance and altitude. I know the annotation just said that tit was to keep her face from getting lost in the shuffle, but that’s still actually really great visual foreshadowing.
Looking forward to the annotated rapid fire reruns. It will be nice to come back everyday and enjoy the comic all over again.
I may have stared at Erica’s lovely artwork too long because I finally noticed that Gravedust’s hand is in front of his bow instead of around it and now I cannot unsee it.
Why did you do this to me.
Not gonna look, not gonna look, not gonna look…
Gravy doesn’t want to risk dropping the bow, so he’s taped it to his hand
Yeah – all the archers do that!
What the hell is this? A new artist, just like that, without warning? And it’s a WOMAN? Something something forced diversity argle bargle!
Seriously, though, this is really going to help stave off the withdrawal symptoms. ^_^
does this mean everyone is going to go bonkers when erica leaves again? i used to post a lot more before that whole nonsense soured my taste for the comments.
no, but everyone’ll go bonkers when HR shows up again
I love the new trend of webcomic reruns, and I look forward to the hindsight-informed commentary. Have you considered putting some of it behind some sort of click-to-reveal for new readers, though? I’m trying to get my wife into this one and daily updates are a good way to let her enjoy it slowly. I imagine there could be other fresh eyes on it who don’t want to just binge the archives.
We will look into this for you!
Hey, gang! I am, indeed, “letting” T manage the annotations all own his own for the exact reasons he stated.
My contributions will mostly likely take form here in the comments should I feel the need to add anything or answer questions!