There was a Ninja, some woman with green hair named Gertrude, probably my sister Vengeance, and Lord Skywalker. You know. The one that likes to snorkle.) colabed on a story! Let’s meet the fun-dysfunctional gang! Again! Patreon reward for Nova Quill/Firimil · 4:08am Oct 17th, 2018
Hey, readers!
Well, disease has reared it’s ugly head and I found myself home confined with a fever that “more cowbell” won’t fix. That being said, I was on a pretty good cadence with my reward blogs and want to keep on keeping on. My initial plan was to tackle one of the two freebies I have banked, but given my current state, I’ve decided to move onto a post I’ve been thinking about since my last blog on this topic.
So, curtesy of Nova Quill/Firimil, I bring you the 3rd chapter of Daughter of the Lilies! Again, spoilers a-hoy.
The chapter itself is easy enough to sum up. Thistle meets the gang for the first time, she’s told their job is to babysit some mages at an academy who are summoning Drackthmal. Thistle hears this and flat out refuses the job as nothing good can come of association with the Drack. She and the group part ways, and then everything goes sideways when one of the people who were chasing down Thistle in chapter two find her in town. Oh, also a Drack summoning goes bad and ends in someone getting possessed.
So, starting at the beginning we’re treated to some panels of the city and… just…
Just…Look.At.That
In addition to all the pretty colors, look at that first panel! Those fun doodads aren’t just a bunch of references, that’s a very subtle indication that this world is post-apocalyptic. There are other subtle hints in the art in other pages that support this, and yet there’s nary a mention anywhere by the characters. I thought this showed a great deal of restraint on the author and artist who simply let the background detail inform this part of the setting that’s interesting, but ultimately unimportant to the story at hand.
There’s also a very nice scene with Thistle looking at the list of aliases she’s had to abandon to get to this point, yet another case of so much being told with just a little visual.
Next, we have the tavern scene where we have or “first” meet up with all four characters. There’s no ‘single’ great page here, so I’ll just say that the exchanges here are one of the main reasons I questioned bothering with the “future” bits in the first and second chapter. Aside from Thistle, who we know is going to be new to the group anyway, this scene covers the different interactions between Brent, Lyra, and Origg. Even with her limited interactions, Thistle feels on point and her anxiousness is palpable.
Moving on to the realm of the Drack, I highly recommend everyone give all these pages a good look over.
If bleak was a comic-book page
I don’t know if I can express how impressed I am with this brief glimpse at the Drack realm and one of them being ‘summoned’. The art so perfectly encapsulates despair and the contrast with the golden thread is just such a unique and wonderful way to depict ‘evil spirits’ and summon.
As much as it pains me to gloss over all the additional details about this world hidden in the pages where Thistle is running around from her pursuer, there’s a delicious bit of subtlety back in Drack-hall central. Technically, quite a few delicious subtleties as the two plots swap back in forth to mirror one another with many things the frog-drack is saying having relevance to the anxiety Thistle feels. However, there was one page specifically that stood out to me.
Subtlety! Also, everyone is fine with orcs running around but the idea of someone not wanting to take a wife is a big deal?! Man, I’d hope with all these different races running around everyone would be completely accepting and understand that such generalizations are hurtful and wrong. Friggin’ elves, amirite?!
Anyhow, Mr. Elf up there steps on the frog and then things get a lot worse in the form of a giant frog demon that looks like everyone gets to fight!
So, couple of general notes on this chapter. First off, now that we’re out of the cave and dim forest everything is so much brighter and colorful and fun to look at. Even though it’s clear the artists are the same, everything just looks so much better. Second off, the scenes move and transition so wonderfully and are chock full of so much information in just a handful of pages dedicated to each scene in the chapter. Again, the art really helps here, as even pages where technically not a lot happens are chock full of little visuals that tell their own little stories. The setup for the true threats is fantastic as well, you can really sense that things are about to “go down” in a big way from that last page.
Emphasis on ‘big’.
If it seems I don’t have enough good things to say about this chapter, it’s because I don’t believe I do. From an artistic and story-telling perspective, this chapter might be pretty close to perfection. Again, my only complaint is it brings into question time spent on the ‘future setup’, but hopefully that helped everyone get their legs under them for this chapter.
One might fault the lack of real action in this chapter, but that feels like splitting hairs when there’s plenty of tense moments even if doesn’t seem like anyone’s in real danger until the last few pages. I suppose that means the story failed to make me believe Thistle was any real danger (tells being that if the man pursuing her thought she really was a dangerous monster, he’s being pretty mum to the people around him), but that’s so incredible nit-picky amongst all the good, I’m only pointing it out for the sake of completion.
Hopefully, the creators look back on this chapter with pride, it really is exceptionally done.
Again, thanks to Nova Quill/Firimil for the rec. I look forward to reading exploring the story in more depth in my future reward posts.
Chapter three was a setup chapter, and a pretty masterfully done one at that.
Thanks for continuing. :)