Comic for Monday, November 4th, 2019
EDIT: Post is now working, and should be posted. No idea what happened, but it was scheduled to go up last night, I realized just now it wasn’t showing, so I’m reposting this. Apologies for the inconvenience. Hectic week for work this week, and used buttons wrong.
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…and so soon after resuming Thursday comics, we will have to suspend that program for a bit 😛 Buffer is still fine, but this week looks like trouble and travel is rapidly approaching. Don’t want to over commit and end up missing comics at the end of the month when I’m travelling. Maybe we will have two comics a week again later this month instead.
Speaking Tyler, I do think we might see more of Tyler’s story at the end of this month as well. I’ve said that before, but in general when I’m travelling I have more time for writ
If you missed the Halloween bonus, you can see it here:
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I think Magnolia is a representative of the Rogue families. As such Tyler was concerned that she might try to end him. Amy is his planned Guardian for if Tyler became injured. Because Amy isn’t present Magnolia is reassuring him the Amy is all right. I agree that Magnolia woke him early and that she probably does have some kind of healing capability. I do wonder what Amy skill is because she seems pretty ineffectual in all of the various attacks against Tyler.
I almost wonder if. Magnolia has or developed feelings for Tyler which conflicted with the duty she was given.
Maybe, maybe not. But she’s from Anola, which is plenty of concern right there.
Patrons have a few more hints as to Amy’s abilities, though I will admit even there it appears to be pretty subtle.
Tgape is correct, Magnolia is a foreigner. It’s very unlikely that she has ties to Malsa’s renegade families.
I don’t think Magnolia is harbouring romantic feelings for Tyler. However I agree, I think she is possessed of some level of loyalty or gratitude towards Tyler that we haven’t fully witnessed in the comic yet.
Tyler was the head of the MSB, an organization that once again seems to be important in Malsa, but usually tangential to the Peter storyline. It might be as simple as a tighter bond among the MSB than we’ve understood to exist thus far.
It was my impression that Magnolia was not MSB.
… then again, it’s not as if membership is public knowledge, and Magnolia wouldn’t be your typical field agent in any case …
… hmm …
Magnolia woke Tyler as per sparkles in panel 4.
I think she healed all of Webber’s critical injuries for this battle http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-march-10th-2018 Then she put him back to sleep, so he could finish healing at a more plausible pace.
Now that Amy stepped out she wants to ask Webber to keep her extraordinary healing ability secret. Of course that means the doctors know and are covering for her. Her talent might also explain why Camilla is in such good shape after being trounced by Elizabeth.
That’s an interesting take. Two pages before the one you linked to she mentioned going to the hospital often, and assisting the doctors.
I dunno. She denies doing anything (yeah right), and those sparkles are accompanied by fluttering hair, which is a Tyler thing (our blizzard wizard), but which I don’t recall seeing with Magnolia.
So, my provisional take is that those sparkles were Tyler’s natural-mage tic upon waking up unexpectedly.
Given the whole frost breath appearance thing, I’d say you are right
Another way to look into this. Peter talked with Magnolia before hinting that he knew she was more then she let on, and the way she’s speaking in the last Panel almost makes it sound like she’s reassuring Tyler that she didn’t do anything to Amy “I didn’t do anything … Amy is Fine” So maybe Magnolia is more dangerous then we know?
I agree with this interpretation of Magnolias statement.
Magnolia wanting to conceal extraordinary healing is the nicer interpretation. A not so nice theory is she used some form of mind control in the battle.
Also if a person can do complete magical healing they can probably do all sorts of other nasty things. Sorta the reverse of Peter Parkers rebuke of Rodan “If you can rewrite DNA on the fly(turn people into dinosaurs). You can cure cancer.”
There is a good reason she might want to hide the fact that she can do extraordinary healing with difficulty. She might be swamped with request/demands. Rovac can also do extraordinary healing but nobody is crazy or desperate enough to bother him, except possibly Dr. Martin.
I think your line of reasoning is pretty solid. Peter also finds Magnolia to be very interesting and much more powerful than most around her are aware.
I’d guess the wince Tyler made in panel 3 suggests he still has more healing to do, or at least had, as of panel 3, and it’s possible that Malsa hospitals either don’t do a lot of pain management (at least for certain class of mages), or it’s time for the button. Button! Button! Button! (For what it’s worth, when I was post surgery, I didn’t press the button. Those things make one seriously loopy, and that’s not an effect I enjoy. But I know other people who’ve had injuries not quite as serious as Tyler’s had been being very interested in it.)
I do not, however, rule out the possibility that Magnolia waited until Amy was leaving and did a last couple of ticks of healing so that Tyler would wake up more or less the moment she was out of earshot.
Magnolia is on my short list of top-tier mages. It’s possible that she is on par with Nathan with the fanciest stick out… without having a fancy stick herself. In my mind, that puts her up there with Mium and Ila, though in a very different way. That said, this comic doesn’t seem to have a lot of duplication of top tier power suits.
IMHO, Rovak is not on this tier, because like most people with nigh invincibility due to super-regeneration, he’s sloppy. It’s also possible that he doesn’t have quite the talent to be there, but I think he’s been around long enough to compensate for that, if he really wanted to. But like nigh everyone, he’s lazy.
Nathan might be able to work at that tier, but it’s not really clear if he could do it without his very fancy stick.
Naomi may have the potential, but she’s way too lazy, unless she manages to find some motivation somewhere. She can get by pretty well just using more power, so she does that rather than put in the mental effort to do stuff.
I don’t know enough about Eliana to say for certain she’s not on this tier, but it feels to me like she isn’t.
I think Kally may be able to get there, but I feel like she’s probably not going to until such time as she needs to go up against Dragon. At this point in time, there is no hint that she will ever need to go up against Dragon.
Tyler probably can’t get there. As an innate mage who is also a very powerful natural mage, he’s all kinds of more powerful than he really should be, by normal rules. I think in his area of innate magic, he can probably compete with those who are in the top tier. But they would be competing with their general skills against his specialty; outside of that specialty, he can’t do what they can, despite being really amazing.
I don’t know about Sophie. She hasn’t demonstrated truly mind-boggling power, but she has demonstrated more finesse than most of the cast. I think she’s had the time to hone her skill, much like Rovak, and she hasn’t been hampered by having i-code. But I think it’s more likely that she’s had the time to hone her abilities to more or less her limit, and that’s not enough to be able to disregard Nathan, despite him being far younger than she is. She was excited by the prospect of fighting Kally in a real fight. My guess therefore is that she just barely falls short of this tier.
Camilla has very clearly not been graded as tactical class. Malsa has *a* tactical class mage, and that’s Eliana. Unlike Naomi, I don’t feel like summarizing her abilities anyway. I’ll probably change my mind if she ever goes head to head against a Kor’s World soldier without support and survives without injury. I do expect that after her experience with Elizabeth, she will at least try harder, so she might get there.
I feel like Elizabeth was probably pretty fairly matched for Camilla, she just handled her surprise at the other’s resistance better. She responded to her first blast not having an apparent affect on Camilla by pushing much harder, possibly to her limit. I don’t think we had an indication of whether Camilla took Elizabeth seriously enough to push her defenses to near her limit, much like she also didn’t bother with a second attack. It’s possible that’s because Camilla’s casting speed is slow, it just seems fast because she casts before the battle starts.
Rereading the comic due to free time and lack of updates and ran across the comment after having just read through the comic.
I think this list is largely correct, though I think Kally is unquestionable in the top tier herself. She creates the Dragon, and the Dragon is a tactical weapon of the pretty much the highest class. We just saw that that Kally with her Dragon can curb stomp two high level threats (a Kor’s World mage and Atter) at the same time. Remember that even Mium wasn’t that confident he could beat Atter (though it was implied that if Peter removed all his restrictions, he could do it easily, the consequences for that seem likely dire). The Kor’s World soldiers seem like a fairly massive threat on their own. And Kally beat Atter and a Kor’s World solider at the same time.
Kally is probably one of the strongest mages on the planet when it comes to sheer combat potential.
I think there’s a difference between power and finesse though, and finesse here also includes special talents. I’d bet on Nathan being able to take out Kally if he had to for some reason (he implies as much at the same time implying he wouldn’t do it) despite the fact that Kally is probably a stronger mage because Nathan is a more versatile and talented mage (and I doubt we’ve seen the full power of the Fanciest Stick).
Magnolia is clearly special, but I doubt from what we have seen so far she would stack up in raw combat power. I get the feeling she’s more of a “special” case. Her magic seems to operate in ways that breaks the “rules”, but is likely not as flashy or landscape destroying as Kally.
Sophie is clearly powerful, but I don’t think we’ve seen her full power. I think it’s comparable to Kally though. My top tier would be Kally, Sophie, and Nathan. Naomi has power but not control. Magnolia has something going on, but we haven’t seen anything to suggest she has the power of someone like Kally.
Elliana I think from we’ve seen is powerful, but not on Kally’s level, though it’s possible there’s more to that. Elizabeth is clearly a tier below Sophie and Kally to me. I would say Camilla is above the average Warmages, but likely only equal to or weaker than Rovak. Rovak, Elizabeth and Camilla all seem on the same general tier to me, with Tyler likely at the same tier.