[444]There will be boys.

That would be some kind of unauthorized party, I assume.

With Boys!

Oooo a sudden party!

i wonder what the party is for? and whose set it up? and whether all the clubs will be involved

and what it will have to do with the chapters title!

only thing worse than cooties is cooties at night.

Look's like something's going down

I get the feeling this chapter will be big- even the title page looks ominous, and that combined with the girl's coats and the way the Court is drawn makes it seem as if the comic is moving into darker territory.

On another note, I want a coat like that

Is it my imagination, or do we see the school uniforms less often these days? (Tom might be looking for every opportunity to avoid them now - he described their colors as ugly in a recent interview.)

Something tells me that Annie's likely to be a wallflower at this party (even if nothing goes wrong - and something would almost have to, for there to be a story) - though by choice, since I still can't imagine her being that keen on boys. (She's probably going only to give her best friend moral support.)

You know I would invite both of them to any number of secret midnight meet-ups. Also, I really hope one of the boys will be good ol' Willie Winsbury. It seems kind of inevitable.

Hahaha! Lobster Johnson! Awesome-o!

What kind of unauthorized party requires someone to get the guests past a security system?

Of course, that doesn't at all mean that isn't what's happening. Whatever the heck kind of party it is, Gunnerkrigg is the one place where it's most likely to happen.

I really like the 4th panel 'cause the room is not so neat, like a real room.

I highly suspect them to be really older. Look at the faces here and here, especially Kat panel 3 then 5...

I would buy a trenchcoat like that.

In other news, the hippest dance party in town apparently needs to be hacked into.

I'm looking forward to seeing who the classmates to be interacted with are! Willie, Janet, Sullivan, Paz, other new kids?


EDIT: Also; no discussion and/or speculation about Kat'n'Annie's previous sneak outs?

Annie and Kat didn't seem that older to me. Part of it might come from the trenchcoats, or from Annie's hairstyle appearing different because of the angle at which she's drawn and the trenchcoat hiding part of it (as in the start of Chapter Seventeen, where the panel that apparently made her look older had her hair being pulled back temporarily by the sweater that she was donning). But I wonder if also many of the readers might be led to think that they're older because of the subject of the page.

Up until now, Annie and Kat's adventures generally reflected the conditions of childhood (exploring a big, mysterious place, missing your parents - even the Kat and Alistair romance was based on a childhood situation - what happens when you have to say good-bye to a friend because his parents are moving to another town). In this page, however, they're sneaking out after curfew to attend a party with a group of other kids, with the indication that they're not supposed to be doing this - and there'll be both girls and boys at the party. The concept of the secret, illegal party going on behind the grown-ups' back suggests adolescence rather than childhood, and that could be why many readers think that Annie and Kat look older.