Comic for Tuesday, June 11th, 2019
71 comments people? I’m not sure if I should be impressed or feel bad that I clearly kept you waiting too long for a new comic.
I really suspect that probably neither Kally or Sophie should have as much power as they do, at least for the peace of mind of the rest of the world. Kally is probably more of aware of that. It’s hard to say if a person can be normal while having enough power to wreck a city block, because pretty much none of the people that do have lived a normal enough life to serve as the control group.
We met David before. He was one that got blamed (due to being at fault) for the monster hunters getting in a fight with Kally and Naomi. David is not technically a monster hunter himself, though he has served with them before. Technically monster hunters are just a group of the agent branch of Situation Containment that deal with the bigger badder incidents, but they are by far the most visible/notable branch of Situation Containment, and most people that would wear that armor have served with them before, but they also provide limited duty as bodyguards, extraction operations, and various other sorts of things, as they are typically the hammer of the IDS for what the IDS might need to apply a hammer to. The rest of the people with him look Orish – we have seen those Orish operatives that look a lot like those before, though I would suspect they are somehow free agents, mercenaries, or otherwise somehow one implausible deniability removed.
Anyway, I better post this now before it gets even later.
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My money is that the consul is not even on the dropship, and it’s a ruse.
Peter said he has no intention of letting Arron leave with the consul.
He said he had no intention of letting Arron kidnap the consul. That isn’t precisely the same thing (I mean, the dropship might still be a distraction, but it doesn’t have to be).
@PastUtopia Also there was discussion about update schedule stuff the last few updates. It would have been good if I could word this up then, but here is my take on it.
TLDR: Don’t berate yourslf over update delays.
You have let us know that updates would be irregular a month ago because of work things. Those types of things are usually people related in my experience, and often take longer than a month to deal with no matter how much we would want them to go faster.
You seem to undervalue what you are producing. You should stop that.
All of the comics i read fall into 3 main categories:
1) Strips by full time artists who do daily updates in the 1×4 or 1×3 format, though one manages 4 days with larger pages and occasional 2 week breaks. I’m not including the ones who primarily are republishing print work on web for new readers.
2) You provide 2 Sunday comic sized updates twice a week and are over the last several years quite dependable.
3) every other struggling artist provide either 1×3/4 2-3 days a week or a large color page once a week.
There actually is a 4th category, but I don’t want to see you there. Those comics that are no longer being published because something uncontrollable happened in the artists’ life. In one case, a severe wrist injury prevents them from drawing. There have been several others where the artist said short break and then just vanished, or a blog that just went stale.
My point here is take care of yourself and keep us updated, but never get stressed/depressed about the speed of updates.
PastUtopia schedule is crazy to me, in fact. These “half page” updates are still basically 2 one-by-three or one-by-four panels stacked on top of each other. Especially with a page like this it is pretty clearly two updates just combined.
Combine the with the art is fairly detailed, includes backgrounds, and there is a lot of text?
I was struggling to understand how he does that with a full time job, and then I learned from the comments last page PastUtopia also has another patreon for D&D content?? Does PastUtopia just not sleep or what?
A few updates ago Past stated that he was late because he’d pushed through and made a full update, forgetting how long it took. But that’s okay, he says, because I posted half and the other half is the next buffered comic.
Except it was clear that he had screwed up. He accidentally posted the full comic.
Later I got an email saying patreon had been updated. Behold! He really did post only half. His idea of half and full are just…. Evolving?
Don’t tell him this. I’m thinking by this time next year we’ll be down to 1 update per week, but it will be a full size manga style comic book every week. At that time I plan to heckle him and demand to know why we don’t have 3 updates a week.
1. You’re evil. I realize you and I both knew that already. I’m just saying.
2. No, it won’t be manga style, the artwork will be better than that. The artwork is already better than that. I hope he doesn’t figure out how to do backward page binding online. Or worse, figure out how to simulate binding the books so tightly it’s difficult to actually read them, without putting extra margin in to compensate for that. That’s the things I find least accessible about manga. But otherwise, yes, this is the expectation.
That having been said, I hope when he gets to that point, he’ll at least be giving directions on the panel order like he tends to, when the panels are in some order that is otherwise indecipherable, because I think he’ll be back to that again. It seems like a common thing to happen when he increases the size of his output.
1. Yeah. I was hoping it wasn’t too obvious yet.
2. This is the part where I admit that I’m not super clear on what manga is.
Some sort of comic book style that originated in Japan. I think there are Chibis involved somewhere. Those are the smallest angels, right? Those of us who are evil tend not to get too close to anything that sounds angelic, not even the small ones.
Yep. His half pages are slowly getting larger. Poor Past just can’t stop himself. We may need to strap him down, for his own good.
That wrist injury stuff is pure baloney. That particular artist is just lazy.
Past had a significant wrist injury a few years ago. We gave him one update off (he was doing 3 smaller updates per week at the time) and told him to walk it off. As far as I know he still only has partial use of his right hand.
hey look, crazy sword lady is with Rovak that means she survived the Avon gig.
And she survived the fight in Webers hospital room. Her confiscated equipment and bail bill has got to be rather extraordinary.
I feel I should probably note that they are not the same person, though there is no real way you could tell that from the art here. They are just people that look similar. There is probably half a dozen people in that general area currently that would look at least moderately similar as well.
The sword and general outfit is fairly common among certain Orish… mercenaries, though not ubiquitous (probably less than half of the black-sword thing).
Sounds about right. I can’t imagine Ila leaving an assassin in one piece if it is a threat to her supply of tasty food.
If Ila ever learns about the miracle of barbeque, you won’t even find a trace of anyone or anything that comes between her and tasty food.
Well, maybe Ila and Fluffy could share a bone pit, for disposing of the bits that aren’t tasty.
I suppose even crazy people can make sense. I also would rather fight dragons instead of politicians.
I think Peter is being sneaky again…
Will leave my speculation at that.
In other news, water wet, gravity acts downwards (except when mages are involved) and you don’t want to know about bears and woods… 🙂
Peter is NOT being sneaky again!
He’d first have to stop being sneaky in order to be sneaky again.
Wait, wait. Amaranth if you stop posting your speculation in full, how am I supposed to keep up with this comic? Without reading your comments I am way too dumb to figure out what the layers of subtext and scheming plots unfolding in front of me.
Maybe the rest of us all need to pick up the slack. I’m not sure any of us can necessarily match her quality, so I guess we’ll just have to supply more quantity.
I’m going to start this off by speculating that Amaranth is right, and Peter, for a moment, ceased his sneakiness. The obvious possibility for this is that he explained to Arron mostly what’s going on, at least in brief, and Arron knows the Consul isn’t on the ship behind him; his soldiers know this, too.
But that’s too obvious. So I’ll guess that Peter’s explained to Arron that Miko’s probably killed Mium, and has taken his place as the God-SMAI of Palindra. Expect anyone who looks like Mium to have developed a severe case of misanthrope. It’s probably a really bad idea to suggest around any of them that surgically weaponizing ones kids could be a good plan.
Well, David, was it? Arron needed some stalling to wait for clearer skies: perfect timing! I mean, I don’t expect to you to see the Consul in the flesh, as he’s probably worried you’d shoot her, but, ya’know. You make a good excuse to wait a few more minutes.
I like Sophie’s expression as she talks about Ricci attacking a Korish with a shovel. I’m not sure if she looks impressed, amusing, worried, or whatever combination of that, but I kinda like it. (Null Caster’s response of “Uh” seems about as correct as someone is likely to get, too…)
(That said, Kally gets in some wonderful shots, without even applying Dragon to anything. Especially that first line. Not sure if she’s also implying Sohpie is old there or not, but certainly that she’ll never be young enough to see it happen.)
The feeling I get with Sophie is she is immortal or semi-immortal like Rovak. Everyone else that seems to be in her “peer group” is considerably older looking. Probably for a different reason as I imagine that Sophie is not a war mage, but basically everything seems to imply she is a pre-incursion mage, which by my very rough understanding of the timeline should make her much older than she looks.
My take is that Sophie is closer to Kally’s age, possibly younger than Kally, even. She has the position she has because she did something amazing that controlled the hell out of a situation. It may not have been the best way to go about it, but it worked, at least as far as the IDS was concerned.
She is the way she is because she got power before people taught her what ‘no’ means. It’s possible the same happened to Kally, but Kally was at least able to connect with other people enough to understand consequences. Maybe not for her, but for people she cares about.
Pretty sure it was said somewhere that Sophie trained and/or otherwise mentored Kally. And then later did much the same for Elizabeth.
I’ve trained/mentored people older than me. It happens when either the mentor was precocious or the person being trained/mentored got a late start, possibly from having changed careers.
I don’t remember seeing anything that indicated whether Elizabeth was a later student than Kally. I kind of recall having the impression that Kally knew Elizabeth from when she was in SC. Elizabeth has certainly received more recent mentoring from Sophie, but I think that’s just because Kally left and Elizabeth didn’t.
There was a comment by Tom, with respect to what Atter could do after tagging Arron, that he had had a *long* time to build up a library of tricks; that might be a long time by demon standards, but I’m guessing he means a long time by human standards. Given that he seems to be Sophie’s minion, that presumably means she’s older than he is and is probably the oldest person in the comic.
True, but it is also possible that Sophie inherited Atter rather than created him. Atter might well predate any or all of the characters.
Or if the theory regarding SMAI and demons being similar holds?
Oh, another reference while trolling the archives. http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-thursday-january-3rd-2019/ someone apparently named Minerva refers to her as ‘ancient demon summoning sorceress’, though I guess it could also be that she’s summoning ancient demons.
I’ve been thinking about this one this morning.
On the one hand those who summon ancient demons probably are not long lived themselves, not in the average case anyway.
On the other hand if she is ancient, then presumably she has access to anti-agathic magic as well as demon summoning. Maybe demons are good at life extension, but that seems like the opposite of what they like to do.
It’s possible that she is ancient AND she summons ancient demons.
No, I’m going to go with ancient sorceress who summons regular demons. At least until evidence to the contrary is presented.
Well, I am sure she IS a sorceress who summons ancient demons… but possibly they are like the Fanciest Stick (and possibly Fluffy), have a long established data pattern, but need to be anchored in the real world. If that were true, then the basic pattern for Atter could have been created thousands of years ago, and each time he is re-summoned, more abilities and power added by his new master….
Given Kally’s comment, “even you would die of old age”, I’m going to go with, she’s an ancient sorceress who summons demons.
Sounds like the logical compromise is that she’s an ancient sorceress who summons ancient demons.
An ancient demon summoning ancient sorceress? Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, but it sure sounds like someone you don’t want to tussle with. Unless you have a dragon.
Dude? Do you even dragon???
So … is Arron following Peter’s plan? Is he following Peter’s instructions?
What happened to Biana’s people at the Consul’s? Major threat, and I see no clue to how it was resolved or circumvented.
Is David leading another crew of Biana’s? If so, why did they arrive separately, and why the different MO? If not, what on Palindra is he doing?
… this kinda reminds me how I still have no idea how Peter, Naomi, and Mium (with an unconscious Ila) escaped the Kor’s soldier who just buried Naomi in rubble …
The beauty of many of Peter’s plans is that going along with them tends to be the best option for most people. For example, Ryn snagged some major tech by saying that Avon made the gate detector.
Arron also isn’t an idiot, and probably has his own twist on everything. They’re both able to change what they’re doing on the fly. So, the only thing I can say for sure is being on the wrong side of those two is a bad idea.
The people Peter got in the middle of before were the Consul’s people and Arron’s people. Biana’s people were closing in, but were not there yet.
How did Peter get the Consul’s people to agree to let Arron escort the Consul? I suspect that is intentionally left blank if I am right about what is going on, but given that the Consul does trust Peter to an extent and he is theoretically the head of the MSB, that is not particularly strange that he would have enough sway to get them and her to cooperate in that case, particularly with many high armed and dangerous foreigners closing in.
David is almost certainly leading Biana’s people, given that Sophie says she gave Biana some people, and David was one of Sophie’s people most inclined to bad ideas.
I don’t think David has a different MO. Not sure what you mean.
As for Peter, Naomi, and Mium escaping the Kor’s World Soldier, I think Mium stopped playing dead once Peter and Naomi were in danger. The Kor’s World Soldier was trying to confirm that Mium was dead, not fight him, as they are borderline terrified of him.
Ooh, thank you – I’d misread that scene as IDS vs Central military teams facing off. Probably because last we saw Arron, he was planning on getting the “I.D.S. forces out of the way” …
(What, didn’t he find them? did he change his plans? or if he did get the IDS forces out of the way, why was he still expecting this strike force? Ah, but I probably read too much into it: No plan survives etc …)
And yes, re-reading that face-off, I’m pretty sure you’re right. Certainly that green-haired, suit-wearing fellow who recognized “Peter Kepler” comes across as one of the Consul’s people. 🙂
Oh, and that bit about different MO was from my misreading of the stand-off: What I thought was “Biana’s strike force” was pointing weapons at Arron and his military buddies, while Peter spoke of the case “if the consul dies” … I thought they were there for an assassination, with weapons drawn and not denying anything – while David comes to “talk”, “negotiate with”, “see” the Consul, holding their weapons ready, but not pointing them at anyone. Yet.
Mea culpa.
How he got the Consul’s people to agree is pretty trivial.
“Consul, these are the contractors I hired. They will form a perimeter around your guards to shield them as your guards are shielding you.”
This is why Arron and his forces aren’t on the ship that the Consul’s on.
I think the Kor’s World soldier didn’t even recognize unpowered F5 as virus person, and just assumed he was a dead human. “It looks like some of their own people were caught in this. No sign of life in this one at all.”
That was chapter 13, page 38. Peter didn’t revive Mium until chapter 14, page 6. Mium’s been depicted twice since then, page 7 and page 28. Neither F5 nor F8 were on any of those three pages. So we’ve no clue what they’re up to. They’re probably doing something, but it’s hard to say what. At least, assuming that page 28 was not a critical part of Mium. Though, that having been said, if it was a critical part of Mium, the question becomes what Miko-F5 and Miko-F8 have been up to. I mean, it’s not likely going to be what VI-Mium-F5 and VI-Mium-F8 have been up to, because Query wouldn’t put up with that before, and there’s no reason to expect he would now, so Miko’s lab visit couldn’t have just been an intensive way to do what VI-Mium could have just done on his own with no effort, due to it being effectively status quo already.
I’d personally guess we’re not going to get any answer on what’s going on with either F5 or F8 until chapter 15, at the earliest.
… Miko probably does not have the same limitations regarding the use of the AA system that Mium had. They will certainly have *some* limitations of some sort, but they’ll be Miko’s limitations, not Mium’s. I don’t think there’s really any telling whether those limitations will be more, less, or just different.
Everybody follows Peter’s plan most days. Peter never has just one plan and most of the time, in Peter’s world, you’re following one of them.
I am assuming a certain amount of convergence.
Although Ila still needs more tasty food, her conveyance should arrive soon, complete with family mages. Kally will probably now go looking for Arron, and I have no idea where Nathan has got to, but I am guessing he will coincidentally be heading this way too, Because Peter.
So, David has rather a lot of Special High Intensity Training heading his way…
Arron’s primary goal seems to have been making sure the consul was safe. Peter looks to agree on that goal, but has an additional goal of making sure that she’s safe by virtue of Malsan forces rather than IDS, which is presumably why he wanted the forces that had been engaged with Atter back at the capital (not sure of the capabilities of the others, but Eliana and Camilla are certainly both powerful and unquestionably Malsan). Assuming Peter could sell his plan as being likely to work, there’s no real reason for them not to cooperate.
It’s a trap! I mean Aaron and his forces here “loading the Consul”. Perfect bait for David and his Orish mercs (hey look, one looks a little bit like Kardus (who we are pretty sure if dead) and the other looks a little like crazy sword lady #1 (at the Avon facility) and sword lazy #2 (attack on Tyler at hospital)… I’m going to assume all 3 are different (I am unclear as to if Past was indicating #1 & #2 were not the same, or #1 & #3… or simply all 3 (the referencing pronoun was “they”… so all 3 are different people? would make sense to me: #1 went after Jayce Myer, #2 had Ila plus some in her way, so #3 surely is someone else)).
Peter did say the IDS needed to come out looking quite bad AND no kidnapping foreign heads of state… so a reasonable narrative would be to have Aaron escort the Consul out, only to lose her, requiring Malsan led forces to miraculously save her… but of course to maintain “control” of the narrative, you would never actually put the Consul in harms way: Peter is clearly good at making decoys of himself… and he likes to plan ahead… so no reason for him not to have a decoy of the Consul prepared & ready to go.
I like it.
My first thought on reading this comic was, “no way is the consul really in that vehicle”. But I got nothing to back that up.
And Peter? Aaron just let him disappear again?
Maybe Peter and Consul both really are in the plane, and Aaron just thinks Peter isn’t crazy enough to take off into hostile air space without being cleared?
Did Aaron get his arm reattached off screen?
…?
His arm is still missing on this page.
No, the torso and leg of the solider behind him makes that one shot read a lot like he has an arm. The stub is still there, though, and the next shot has no confusing.
I didn’t think it was confusing: the stub is obvious because of the two dots on it.
I assumed the two dots are like locking ports where a robotic/magic prosthesis could be attached to the armor… but Arron being old-school chooses not to have one.