Page 1282…
Hi all!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s pages. So glad I was able to get all 5 pages out this week!
I also want to let any of you in the Nashville area know that I’ll be at MTAC on Saturday from 10-4!
Please come by and say hi!
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Happy Easter. And see you on Monday!
Scott
Fly, you fools!!!
NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Nic: “If I’m going, I’m taking you with me!”
Alex: “Yeah right, I’m gonna wake up now, see you later :P!”
Nic: “Bloomin’ humans!!”
BTW, I’m surprise at Nic’s vitality despite being stabbed through, I’m no expert on dragons (yet), but I wouldn’t think he would be able to grab Alex.
I’m gonna be ripping my hair out until monday 🙁
I’m not sure if it was ever resolved whether or not Alex needs the sword to wake up. Perhaps I’ll have to check through some backlog and see if it’s happened before.
Sorry, but Nastajia looks “bored” in the first panel. Maybe I’m not picking that up right.
No, I catch it too.
Now would be the perfect time for him to wake up, for just a moment, then fall asleep again.
A literal Friday cliffhanger. 😛
I LOVE the third panel!!
So I guess old Nick *literally* has no heart…
Anything can become routine, experienced enough. Saving Alex from certain doom? Been there, done that, here we go again. I know where she’s comin’ from, man.
Or he has multiple hearts or Nastajia missed and hit some other organ.
Moments later we find out Nicodemus’ spark-plug organ was pierced. He goes to breathe fire and Astoria is leveled like it got hit with a Dragon Slave from Lina Inverse.
Drrragon Sraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave!
You guys are right, she does look bored in the first panel. Panic increases with each panel too.
And you all forgot, there is hopefully a mermaid/merman, nearby to save the day if they do happen to fall in the water, but I’m guessing that is not going to happen….
*Tsk* There he goes prophesying again. Somebody fetch me m’ dragon-whippin’ belt.
Check out page 1045.
Not your imagination. I see it too.
Below them is water, right? Then there’s a possibility that the mer-people can save Alex…
Maybe if that panel were removed the effect of the drama would be increased? Or at least there would be no break in the otherwise flawless action?
Actually, the third panel doesn’t look quite right – Nastajia’s chest looks distinctly square on one side… is she packing cardboard as protection to prevent gravel rash while trying to drag Alex over those stone blocks?
Maybe it’s just my overtired eyes playing tricks on me.
I CALLED IT!!!!!!!!
No offense but MY GOD please read this dialog out loud before you put it in the comic! “I shall tread upon them in my anger”? Really? As he’s almost falling to his death? It sounds so AWKWARD.
Not a troll, just a writer who cringes reading these sometimes. 🙁
me too, uh the agony of cliff hangers…. cries in corner
The phrase, “I tread upon them in my anger” is taken from the Doctrine & Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as given by the church’s founder, John Smith, in Section 133, Paragraph 51. This particular section concerns Smith’s prophecy regarding the “Last Days.”
“And I have trampled on them in my fury, and I did tread upon them in my anger, and their blood I have sprinkled on my garments, and stained all my raiment; for this was the day of vengeance which was in my heart.
I don’t think she looks bored. Maybe, tired and exhausted. Like “Finally, let’s go home gang, we’ve had to do things we don’t want to and now I look empty inside”.
I hate it when heavy luggage pulls you down.
I think “baggage” is a little more accurate. 🙂
Tic … tic … tic …
Time spent waiting for Monday!
That is so wrong to say out loud.
Nice way to end the week, thanks Scott!!!
Unlock the wrist watch! Unlock the wrist watch! Or whatever!
“Tasogare yori mo kuraki mono”… Whenever Lina starts chanting that, or – in English – “Dakness beyond twillight”, it’s time to either run or kiss your butt goodbye.
Nic has been pompously declaiming and orating all through this fight. You think he’s going to stop just because light is now shining through the hole in him and he’s (literally) going down?
Unless you’re Dark Schneider.
Now’s the time for Alex to do a Jim Kirk:
“I **STOMP** have had **STOMP** ENOUGH of **STOMP** YOU! **STOMP!**
Cut as he is, the very fact that Nic is hanging onto Alex shows that the stabbing through the back has CUT THE MUSCLES he uses for flying. He can’t fly right now. Otherwise he’d just have opened his wings and glided to safety, or if he was too mad for that, opened his wings and flown back in for a final strafing run.
Is that suppose to be a pun?? 😀
Adrenaline, maybe? Fueled by anger that Alex keeps giving him more scars and Nastajia clearly stated she wants him dead by stabbing him so deeply?
Me too.
Which is basically just Isaiah 63:3, but in the future tense rather than past. Interesting choice, Nic…
Wow poor Alex must be in really bad shape and out of it. Having Staj pulling on his arm like that while Nick is hanging off his legs would be just like being on the wrack. Yet instead of screaming in agony all he can manage is an “uhhhh”. 🙁 I hope he pulls through.
“I shall tread upon them in my anger”??? Wow..somebody has a serious god-complex…
*kick* “Aaand tharr she blows”… ehh..’down you go”…
Definitely the first thing I thought!
Oh, seeing this reference delighted me this morning.
Even understanding the reference, I still find it awkward dialogue :\ Perhaps some direct reference to the fact he’s quoting…
after yesterdays comic I so saw this coming
You don’t live as long as Nic has with humanlike vulnerability.
You just can’t keep a good villain down!
Illusion. It’s a square shadow cast by something. Not sure what it is, or from where, but shadow.
Direct reference?! Is he supposed to go, ahem, and quoth I…?
No, no! He’ll have to take off the bracelet that was a gift in the first part of the movie…
…actually, Alan Rickman would make a great voice actor for Nick..
Aren’t alligator handbags illegal nowadays anyway?
…at least, not until the final scene.
Alex will definitely feel this for the next few days, my guess is that Nic is PRETTY heavy.
Indeeed…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2zls8EEPds&feature=related
I think he’s surviving on pure meaness…
Oops! Maybe Staj’s parents are alive after all.
Not good for them if so, with a vengeful dragon.
But somewhat better than the alternative!
Nic is like the Duracell Bunny- “just keeps going and going and Going…”
Somebody needs to decapitate him- or have Paddington plug Nic’s jaw with his fist when the fire starts coming out. Ka-Boom!
Makes me wonder- who has dibs on the Nic-Kill in the end?
Seems like a bit of a nonsequitur, to be sure. “Who is ‘them’?” I asked myself, “and what does this have to do with anything that’s been said up to this point?”
I’d call it “sad”.
Why are evil villains always so invincible?
Something that bothers me is Nastajia’s face in the first panel. She seems rather… bored? Doesn’t seem much at all like her face in the last panel of the last comic or the second panel here. Like she just momentarily spaces out.
Why does the good guy still win? i.e. hand gun vs repeaters/machine guns, or how about the one sword versus the score of enemy blades, etc.
I think he’s surviving on the power of plot.
dude alex should drop. nick is to injured to fly once they start to fall nic will let go to try and fly, and that alex just flys off. also awesome just awesome. as soon as the ledge clapsed i knew this was coming
hah my first thought too.
“oh noes superman fell over the edge!”
“superman can fly”
“oh right”
haha! i knew nick was not dead yet.
what a cliffhanger…. literally! lol
That was highly reminiscent of Isaiah 63:3!
Woah!!!!!!
I expect the emotion Scott was going for is “relieved,” but obviously that did not come across. If she had had her mouth open in fear, there would no contrast with the next panel, where that is the emotion.
Ummmm……wings, guys? Nick won’t fall to his death.
He might be mortally wounded and he might just as likely declare “‘Tis but a scratch!!!” 🙂
Not necessarily. Nick could be too weak to perform strenuous aerial maneuvers but gliding takes almost no muscle strength. If he “fell” to his death right now, I would be disappointed because it has not been established that he CAN’T fly. If Scott wanted that to be the end of this confrontation, he would have had Alex cut Nic’s wings off.
But he’s way too big to make boots….
She doesn’t look very concerned in the first square.
nick’s just too mean to give anyone the satisfaction of having killed him
There’s actually several things wrong with the last panel. Given the angle of the shot, Nick’s wings should be hanging downward rather than flexed and spread behind him. Also, Nick is holding onto Alex’s feet/legs from below the knee and Alex is wearing boots/sabatons; with Nick’s weight, it’s more than likely those boots would slide off (I suppose that the armor could have some sort of magical cohesion towards itself but that’s a bit of a stretch, in my opinion). And of course the obvious….Nastajia may be strong, but strong enough to hold one-handed to a semi-conscious person (who’s not gripping back) with the weight of an entire dragon dangling from Alex while she has no leverage point? I don’t think so. Unless, of course, Nick is actually flying. Kind of hard to tell from that angle.
Take into consideration Nick’s size compared to the sword as well. Being simply stabbed through like that would be equivalent to being shot through small tissue with a bullet designed to make the same size exit wound as the entry. He’s hurting, and hurting bad, but is in no way out of the fight yet. Nastajia should have tried pulling the sword out in a slicing motion instead of straight back again.
*soft tissue
It’s a look that Nastajia has had many times in the comic and not out of boredom. It’s her “I’m worried/concerned” face.
Nah, look a few comics back again. The area he got stabbed through would be just under the sternum/ribcage area on a human, so it’s likely it went near or through his stomach.
not really it jus worked out that way
It was Joseph Smith, not John Smith.
I think the website needs to be redesigned to fit the destruction of the dock now.
Thanks for that. Never caught that in the backlog, and it’s precisely the scene I was looking for to check.
I was thinking more like even just adding quotation marks.
“I shall tread upon them in my anger” as opposed to I shall tread…my anger ?
So, if he tries to breathe fire, he’ll end up either belching, vomiting, or burning himself on the inside?
My mind strays.
I’m currently imagining Nic beaten and bloodied (though with a hole right through him instead of just a few minor scratches) going back to the Nightmare Realm, to some higher authority, and then being sentenced to death because of his failure.
This.
I’m personally getting tired of the colour scheme of the site, or is it the background? I think a darker, more accurate background would work a lot better.
That being said, the background doesn’t really distract from the comic, nor make it less enjoyable. Just doesn’t seem to suit it much, especially when reading the comments…
Very well drawn, these and the full-page one coming up. Just awesome work, and getting better and better.
I was reminded of Jules in Pulp Fiction:
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.
Dragons are legendarily tough, but assuming that the anatomy of dragons is otherwise similar to humans (not a safe assumption), I would say Big Nic is quite likely paraplegic now. So, he could be fairly well crippled but still able to grasp Alex with his hand.
would now be a good time for alex to wake up?
Nicodemus: “I’m taking you down with me!”
Alexander has disconnected from the server.
Nicodemus: “OMG HAX!!!”
If you want a darker background, read the comic during night hours (US Central Time).