No fighter. Not really.
Flashback continues! In a powerful and unintentional echo of Steeple issue 1, I managed leave myself about 1/6 of the page for a critical action sequence. Ideally this would not happen.
COLOURS BY SAMMY BORRAS
Flashback continues! In a powerful and unintentional echo of Steeple issue 1, I managed leave myself about 1/6 of the page for a critical action sequence. Ideally this would not happen.
COLOURS BY SAMMY BORRAS
There’s an old Sufi saying “May God reward him as he deserves.” For the pious and good it is a blessing. For the rest it’s a terrible curse because of the quiet part “With perfect Justice and no Mercy.” Sounds like the Merpeople have chosen Door #2
Hm, interesting juxtaposition with the ending scene of Clotted Crime.
It also echoes the first scene of this segment – “Final Day of Filming” is about falling off a cliff as well. Art imitating Life in Tredregyn?
I thought that was what Mitch was referring to. The television series being filmed is called “Clotted Crime”, so that was the ending scene of Clotted Crime. The four-part story we’ve been reading is also called “Clotted Crime”, but we haven’t seen the ending yet, obviously.
Yeah, Alaric’s right. John A doesn’t know I have hacked into all of his unpublished archives.
Oops why did I type that part
First Bob Warren, now this. Clotted Crime is easily the darkest Steeple story line we’ve seen so far.
I’m loving every single strip. Every last one. This is masterful.
By far the best Steeple storyline thus far. Not just dark, but also emotional charged, poignant, tender and with plenty of comedy and spicy scenes to go around.
Man, this one hits hard. Great staging. I love the rising smoke in the first panel.
I like the “Drop” sound effect.
It puts me in mind of “put.”
The body language in panel 1 is great. Penrose looks ready to fight, but also world-weary.
That seems to be his default combat stance. I’m not sure it’s very plausible, but perhaps John knows a HEMA enthusiast who’ll explain it. Or perhaps it’s a Frazetta reference.
As a long-time SCA heavy fighter… I have no idea what he’s doing.
But to be fair, I can’t really expect John Allison to be amazing at both making comics and knowing how to fight with an axe.
…and there is our big ‘ol eyeball from the cover.
According to the August 30 installment, it’s a “Flovoid Orb Hominid”. https://steeple.church/comic/powerful-lunge/
At least one of these has been seen since Steeple #1, when the Rev and Billie fought it together during her very first night in Tredregyn.
Another was seen directing the raid on the Rectory in Steeple #5 – possibly the same individual, it’s not yet known.
Whatever it is, it is no joke – strong, agile, and often accompanied by a host of lesser merfolk just as it is here.
Strong, agile, often accompanied by a host of lesser merfolk and with an interesting career in avant-garde music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Residents
My god. According to your source here, Flovoid Orb Hominid might just be CAPTAIN BEEFHEART.
Well, they COULD be wearing trout mask replicas
That…is an enormous Wikipedia entry about a prolific band of which I have never heard a thing. There are still wonders in this world, thank you!
There’s a documentary about them called “Theory Of Obscurity” which is very interesting. It did not convince me that their music is listenable but as is so often the case, a good doc is all the contact you ever need with such an act. I felt the same about the recent Rush documentary.
After reading your year-end lists of listenables, I can see that they might not be in your taste range. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as they say, and I always look forward to the list to show me stuff out of my particular musical orbit.)
However, I would suggest a few albums of varying vintage- commercial album, freak show, and the ughs. The ‘hunters’ album is also fantastic. My wife says she likes the Residents until there’s a vocal, and the last two up there basically are sans vocals… but I would say that if you think of the vocals as a David Thomas/Byrne/Lydon instrument, they’re easier to grok.
Regardless, they can be an acquired taste.
I don’t want you to think I didn’t enjoy all the excerpts from the albums, and the wild imagination, but yes the vocals were a bit outside my area too, so to speak.
The Residents are sometimes aggressively not listenable, but they are more often aggressively brilliant.
“Beyond the Valley of a Day in the Life” remains the best mash up/boot mix ever, despite being assembled, musique conctete-style, in 1976. “Not Available” and “Third Reich’n’Roll” are like listening to William S. Burroughs fronting Xiu Xiu while you have a bad fever, BUT IN A GOOD WAY. And “Santa Dog” remains one of the great Christmas songs of all time
That’s the one. That’s the sonuvabitch you kill *first*. Or, alternatively, you find out what the Eye-people are so upset about, because it’s apparently them what’s causing the ruckus.
Apropos the cover, am I the only one who is seeing a peacock-tail composition there, with the light rays and the eyes and the colour scheme? I wonder if it’s a reflection of the storyline to come. Either way, it’s fascinating.
What John Allison can do with 1/6 of a page.
I, ah, hoo.
Yeah.
It is why I,
the current bartender of the apocalypse,
have fought with such abandon to self yet with such skill,
in hopes I shall never have to again.
But for a chance to save a new adept I would in a heart beat even if it should cost mine own life.
Which it never shall, since it once did, and I chose not that path.
Ouch.
My soul.
The only nightmares I ever have are the ones in which I can not save those I NEED to,
A cricket bat, the classic improvised weapon! Penrose was probably worried that Jason would probably cut his own leg off if provided with an axe.
I was going to comment on this – Jason has “Clicky Ba”, the scourge of the Afghan hordes.
If it was good enough for the Wolf of Kabul and his loyal sidekick, Chung, surely Jason could have headed off a few mermen with it.
(In Jason’s defence, from what I remember the “Wolf” also have a couple of razor-sharp knives, and Chung had reinforced “Clicky Ba” with brass. Jason probably didn’t;t have these advantages)
The idea of a misunderstood villain or foe, one with a different perspective, set of norms and morals is popular one of modern times. We don’t like the black and white, the good and evil; so we make or re-imagine them as lost souls, misguided, complicated and even blindly persecuted. It makes us feel safe in our own supposedly more enlightened view on life. There’s hope they can be ‘fixed’, made like us, rather than simply beaten. Redemption and salvation, how warm and fuzzy.
Which is why the enemy that blindly hates you and genuinely wants to kill you in a way that is totally alien is actually far scarier in retrospective, as simplistic as it is in story-telling. I takes our hopes and crushes them, thus inducing fear.
Our society, over time, generally goes back and forth between preferring black and white, evil for the sake of evil villains, and misunderstood, not entirely evil, complex villains, and these changes are always framed as somehow taking the audience out of its comfort zone, and making better stories, regardless of which direction the change is going in.
In my opinion the explanation is much simpler, it’s that when people are on the right side according to a certain ideology, their evils are always gray areas, and those who oppose them are ambiguous. But when they are on the wrong side, the fight is completely black and white against them. As those (or that) ideology has changed over time, so its old heroes have gone from white on black to gray on gray.
The yellow raincoat held up well though
Poor Penrose. the sense of guilt for his friend’s death has tormented him all this time. I don’t think he’s ever looked sadder.
For all the action on the rest of the page, it’s that last panel that’s the real gut-punch. John, if you ever decide to hang up your stylus (Baphomet forbid!) there’s a future in cinematography awaiting you.
No fighter.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” -Mike Tyson
or in Jason’s case gently tugged by the yellow rain coat.