Oh man! One more page until this chapter is over! Some Fun Facts:
-Blanche’s ringtone is from his favorite movie. It is his favorite movie for exactly the reason you are thinking of. It’s been his favorite movie since he was born.
-Eleanor is basically the Poster Child for Positive Thinking. For what she’s been through in her life she could easily get away with being a sullen angry creature but instead she gives her hardships the finger and is instead the happiest bubbliest eyesore in the Avalon.
-The grocery store behind Blanche is the Ceres Food Market.
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There aren’t a whole lot of sphinx medallions left! I can’t guarantee that they’ll arrive by Christmas at this point, but they generally arrive only a few days after I mail them, so if you still want one before Christmas, there’s a chance it will still arrive in time!
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*1st poster today? YAY*
Poor Blanche, when things could not be worse… I pity him T_T
Oh but I wish I could fast forward to next week so I could see the next page! Also, there is something decidedly …..human…..about Blanche in the 2nd panel. I like it. XD
that’s depressing! I feel so bad for Blanche! His expression in the second panel was done incredibly well! I can pretty much feel his sadness and confusion at Tony’s ‘betrayal’ (of sorts) Anyway, another incredible page!
It’s so sad to see Blanche’s friend react like that after knowing each other for so long. However, it is probably the most human response we’ll see.
Is his ringtone from Bambi???
Yes it is! :) Blanche is a dork.
Aww… Poor, poor Blanche. He makes me want to give him hugs. Lots of hugs. As does Eleanor… If you ever have plushies made, put her at the top of the list. :3 BANDERSNATCH LUFFS!
Ohno haha I get the feeling Madame U tracked Tony down and he isn’t actually human after all :B
Naw. Me thinks the medallion Madam U tested on him first just had a delayed reaction.
Or maybe we are all just over thinking this and Anthony just got lost and is only calling because he can’t remember where the exit is.
A delayed reaction could be the reason. I mean, Michelle took a while to change after she picked up the medallion. Of course, she did have to touch it the second time, so…not sure if that would work or not.
Michelle didn’t start changing until she let go of the medallion. :) After she picked it up the first time she kept it on her until she got to her room and set it down.
Then I still don’t see it working on him since he let go of it a long itme ago, unless the changes are very slow and/or very minute.
That last panel is ominous for their friendship. I’m more worried about that than if the friend is still human.
And, nice touch with the ringtone. :)
I bet I know what Tony is… ;)
(However, out of respect for other readers who may not like spoilers, I won’t spill it here. :P)
Poor Blanche. I hope his friend actually had a delayed reaction, it’d not be nice to lose a friend like that.
~Observer
I myself am probably more pessimistic than most and thinks he had a run-in with Elise and Zech…
Jim did say centaurs kick hard… O.O
1. He’s turned!
2. He’s lost!
3. He’s *trying* to apologize.
4. Some other Critter is bothering him.
5. He’s joined up with a conspiracy of monster hunters, and is giving Blanche a five-minute head start.
On the one hand, I want to think Tony turned. On the other hand, that seems a bit too obvious / right where Kory wants us going. On the other hand… wait, what? What do you mean, I can’t have three hands?
….
…. =(
Depends. What’s on your medallion?
I can see this going in all sorts of directions. Wouldn’t surprise me if someone is simply not letting him leave un-escorted. Perhaps the bugbear that came in with them is giving him a hard time?
Makes me wonder about two things early in the arc, though. In the first page we saw a large sea monster outside the building. There was also a young woman with a medallion that the guard was talking with. I wonder if either might factor into the final panel.
I see Tony hasn’t QUITE accepted Blanche, yet. And yes, the ringtone is Bambi, which I think is just terribly cute. It makes me wonder–Is Blanche perpetually in velvet, or is it just because it’s late summer?
It’s just late summer and his antlers are still growing. He’ll start shedding it sometime in September, and lose them mid-late winter, and they’ll start growing back again around April. :)
I wonder if he has a wall full of mounted shed antlers? Or at least his first rack. :)
That sounds like something Blanche would keep. :)
Ahhh! Before I read the comments, I just thought Tony was going to get a bandwagon of people together to do the whole “Frankenstein” mob thing. After the comments, some it makes sense, but still. I don’t think I can wait a week!!! ::fainting couch::
Oh, I forgot to add…
I think people might be a bit hard on Anthony and his reaction. It’s not like Blanch was simply not telling him something personal about himself. This isn’t him coming out as gay or something (in fact, we saw in the first panels that Anthony was perfectly ok with that, and in fact had long assumed it).
This is your best friend since childhood hiding that there is an entire world out there that he’s an intimate part of, but he didn’t trust you with it. Then, rather than slowly letting you in on things, dumping it all in your lap in a single afternoon. He didn’t sit him down privately and explain all this, let him absorb it, perhaps have a couple other friends help out, and ease him into it, then take him to Avalon. He threw him into the deep end.
It’s not like any of this is in Anthonys worldview before this. As far as we see, we have no reason to think that he should have known better. Blanch comments at one point that he was surprised Anthony never noticed because of hints he’d dropped. The problem is if you have no frame of reference, your first, second and final thoughts are not that your best friend is creature of mythology.
This comment has made my day! :)
Exactly! It would be like learning to swim in the ocean. Panic and fear override reason.
Basically, Blanche is a douche for dumping it all on him at once. Pretty much.
I wouldn’t say Blanche is a douche, he just got overexcited and wanted to show Anthony everything at once. :)
It seems that neither of them were really in the right. Anthony could have taken it a bit better and tried to be more understanding and NOT run off into an unfamiliar city full of strangers – the latter of which I’m guessing has gotten him into some sort of trouble. On the other hand, he took things astoundingly well up until he did run off, and he should be commended for that.
And Blanche, much like Eirik stated earlier, should have drawn Anthony into this much, much more slowly. He should have let Anthony absorb the whole “I’m a White Stag, and the human you see is just a disguise” thing, introduced him to a few folks who could also change but were of really mild and mellow. Maybe creatures he was familiar with but weren’t so far out of his realm of disbelief. And THEN he could have brought him to the LA… But hey, he got over-excited and wanted to show his best friend his world. That’s happened to plenty of people who want to share a part of themselves with the people they love but have been hiding it.
Both fellows could have handled the situation better, but you know what they say about hindsight being 20/20.
It’s true that both could have handled it better, but I have a seriously hard time finding much fault with Anthony here. Blanche, for lack of a better way to put it, had all the power here. He chose the time, place and method. And I think he made a lot of mistakes.
For example, telling Anthony that he might himself be a creature of myth and, if exposed to the right magic, be transformed, probably should have been gone over before he was standing before a curious blind gorgon. He exposed Anthony to a rather tremendous risk in that shop. Blanche was really blase about the distant possibility that Anthony might be something more, and what it might have done to him had he transformed.
All of these comments make me the happiest of campers, folks. :)
The ringtone made me lol. :D
Go Bambi, and poor Blanche! :( Tony doesn’t need to be a jerk. But I suppose the stress of finding out magical creatures aren’t just fairy tales could be overwhelming.
New reader, I just got through all of it yesterday. The entire story has been really touching, and I felt like I had a strong personal connection to it. I was a bit confused as to why, until I realized that avalons are pretty much hackerspaces for cryptids. I don’t know if the avalon-culture/hacker-culture parallels were intentional, but it was fun to see it from such a different angle.
One more comment before I potter off: I’ve known several people who came out as gay (one of whom had only just realized it), which is why I feel like the whole thing between Blanche and Tony is spot on. They tend to go overboard in wanting to share this new thing with the world, sometimes going overboard, turning political, even adopting an “us vs. them” attitude. All of that focused on one person would be overwhelming. It’s rather different in this case, because Blanche isn’t discovering who he is. He already knows. He already has his world and his support system. But I could definitely see how “coming out” to one person could be every bit as emotionally charged, and I can sympathize with Tony for feeling trapped and feeling like he had to flee. I’d like to think I’d be more mature, or open-minded or whatever it might take to not panic in a situation like that, but you can’t be certain how you’ll react until you’re dropped into it. And if you think you’re going into it with your best mate, and it turns out you’re actually alone (relatively speaking) and surrounded, well… Blanche’s only mistake was not acting as Tony’s best mate and being his shield. He kind of abandonded him in Madame U’s shop. I guess Blanche didn’t see (until too late) that Tony needed protecting. Even now, I think he’s not quite getting it, but Eleanor is a voice of wisdom.
I’m not convinced that Blanche is straight even yet, mind you. “Drip Drip Drip” is about the gayest piece of music in that movie. It’s practically show tunes. ;-)
Don’t sweat the people who think this is a filler segment. Most people are not used to stories with more than one plotline. Personally I’m enjoying the wide overview. It’s very cinematic.
See, I’m still having a little trouble with using “coming out of the closet” as a direct analogy. I suppose that it’s the closest thing we’ve got in our world, but it doesn’t fit for me.
To use the Coming Out parallel, you have to think of a world where, as far as anyone knows, homosexuality simply does not exist, other than perhaps in 2000 year old stories that no one takes seriously anymore, if they’ve read them at all. Then Blanche tells Anthony that not only is he gay, but takes him and immerses him in the culture.
I would think that all but the most open minded person would find that disturbing to the point of tilting over. It would be the same as if Blanche turned out to be a space alien, or revealed that Anthony was simply part of a really advanced computer simulation, but Blanche was real.
That all being said, I went back and started to re-read the coming yesterday. I went back through this chapter and looking at Anthonys reactions I kind of wonder if something else wasn’t happening at the restaurant.
And a note specifically to Kory: Since I haven’t gone back and looked back at the beginning of the strip in a while, I hadn’t noticed that your skills as an artist, which I’ve thought from the first time I found the strip were really top notch, have gotten even better. I was also impressed that you obviously had a lot of the back-story written even then (as seen through some of Jim’s semi-lucid yammerings after his fight with the Momo.) Good show all around!
Thank you for the kind comments about the art! :)
Poor, poor Blanchey, he seems so sad. I understand Tony though, Blanche turned his whole world upside down in a day so it’s only natural that he freaked out; but I understand Blanche as well, he wants to share his world with his best friend and he just went overboard.
Poor little boys, and now I’m sure Tony just turned, poor, poor Tony
Quid nunc!? I’m gonna be on my toes until the next page comes around! D:
I still can’t get over how similar Blanche is to a friend of mine- might as well be the same guy, what with the clothes, the attitude. Granted, my friend can’t shift into a big ol’ white deer, but rather! Blanche wouldn’t be a killer bassit and a closet Star Wars ultra-nerd by any chance, would he?
No, but he is a drummer and also a giant nerd! Close enough? :)
Ha, yeah! Close enough! ;D
This arc has been all about characters, now that I look back at it–going through the names, faces, and lives of a whole variety of blokes and janes in the Avalon. I’m impressed by how many unique characters have come out, sometimes multiple per page, and yet they’re all unique, interesting, and well-developed. Writer to writer, that’s a talent and a half, I must say.
Excellent detail work in this last strip, too. I love the work on Eleanor, who carries herself with a believable, human-like posture and speech despite being a bandersnatch and as far detached from a “human being” as anything short of the Momo. Blanche is impressive here as well–lovely facial work on him through the mid and lower panels.
As for Tony, well. There’s a number of things we could see happen, but I’d rather not speculate and taint the surprise. Poor lad; not all of us are quite capable of absorbing so much damage to our perceptions as others, eh? I know I for one would kind of revel in the whole thing, probably to a dangerous or embarrassing degree. I find our Tony lucky, but I’m weird that way, I suppose!
Thank you! :) Writing about characters is my favorite, so I’m glad people aren’t hating on me too much for not having a lot of “action” in this arc.
Meh, action is over-rated in comics like this. It’s not like you created the Mythological Ranger Squad, where you expect them to get into bizarre scrapes all the time. You created a pretty rich setting, but our focus has been, primarily, on college students.
If every story arc developed into a bare-knuckle brawl to the death, it would probably get old in a hurry. Or worse, that’s all that you’d be able to write.
Look at a strip like “The Wotch”, where every arc eventually ends up in some kind of magical battle. It works in that setting, but I don’t think they could have an arc like this one here without it being boring to the point of tediousness. Same goes for a comic like “Girl Genius”, where the focus seems to be on kinetic movement at all times. I’m not sure you could have five pages of people talking there without something mechanical going off in the background, at least.
One thing I love with your comic, and your ability to tell a story, is that you can have many pages where, on the surface, it looks like little is happening but in reality a great deal is going on. Then you can transition to a great action sequence without it seeming forced.
I second that, I’ve never cared much for action, I prefer interesting characters
I find Miss Kory has a fine balance between the every day life of mythological creatures and action. I love character development and dialogue and learning the backgrounds and exposition on the world of the story – I write (when I don’t have my brain clogged ^-^”), and working on those parts are the most frustrating yet satisfying aspects of the work. But, like in real life, every day, we have spats of drama and chaos to varying degrees, and I think Kory gives us a great deal of that in this particular chapter.
Orientations did have a lot more action, or it seemed to, because Michelle went from ‘normal’ human to endangered mythological creature in an afternoon, and had to go through the trials to adjusting to that transition of having a major shift in her identity and her view of the people around her. And that’s not counting the demons and Momo and dragon. The change necessitated something of a crash course in a new world and life she never knew was out there. Of course it seemed like things were going faster.
With this chapter, I have to say that it may have seemed slower, but the multiple plot lines and learning backgrounds on an old favorite character and so many new folks was just fabulous. How could anyone feel that this was filler? I love the semi-omnipresent feel this chapter has – we learn so many sides of several different yet connected stories, and it’s kept me twitching in anticipation for the next update to come for weeks and weeks and weeks! I commend Miss Kory, and hope I can get to a computer Tuesday to see the last page of this chapter – going out of town tomorrow for the holidays to visit family and my internet access will be most limited. ;_; I dun wanna wait for the last page! Waiting is eeeeeeviiiiiiil. >.>
…Anyway! Keep up the fabulous work, Miss Kory. We’ll read, enjoy, and make desperate grabby hands for the next thing you’re coming with. XD Later.
Aww, why thank you very much! Your comment has made my day! :)
Thanks for reading!
Love the Ringtone, though I’m partial to “Song of the Wind” myself. I always thought Bambi had one of better soundtracks for Disney films of that era, though I always thought it would have sounded better if anyone besides that damn glee club was singing.
That ringtone’s from Bambi?? I need to know my disney better.
I love the characters n this comic. And the art style is fabulous; it’s unique, and I dig the noses.
Tony needs to calm his patootie down, and take some deeeeeep breaths. Also poor Blanche. Also I love his hair. Blanche’s.