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I quite agree.

Very cool page.

I like all the curious onlooking shadowfolk/glass-eyed-men.

Next page is going to be super awesome what with Coyote's grand entrance and all. I'm sure it won't disappoint.



I'm pretty sure that's just moonlight filtering through the canopy? Maybe since the forest is further away from the court, that kind of lighting isn't washed out as much...

Sir, you ruin the magic.

Also, i was so amazed...if it were me going from the court to the forest, i would never want to come back.

That is indeed some nice art.

I wonder what those Glass-Eyed Men are thinking of Annie.

I think it's an especially good idea to show the beauty of the forest as well as the menace.

I've mentioned before that the way the story's being built up, Gillitie Wood should have its own side of the story. It can't be just the home of a group of psychopathic science-haters like Ysengrin; it should have its own good qualities and grievances alongside Gunnerkrigg, to show that both sides are partly in the right and partly in the wrong in this conflict. And the beautiful moon-lit clearing is a step in this direction. (We might see even more of that once Coyote arrives and starts telling Annie more about the Wood - assuming that's what he'll tell her about. I've mentioned before that he might focus on other things in his account, such as Reynardine's past before Annie met him.)

This reminds me of one major difference I've noticed between Annie and Harry Potter (although the two of them have been compared in the past). Harry's being prepared simply to be a champion against a straightforward bad guy whom he's to defeat in battle. Annie is being educated to be a diplomat and negotiator between two communities that are at odds with each other, which are both (according to Jones) in the wrong in different ways. Her big feat (if she's to have one) would be, not defeating one side or the other, but helping to establish peace and reconciliation between the Court and the Wood.

Yet again a rather beautiful series of panels by Tom! *BIG thumbs up*


Heh, a Princess Mononoke and a Secret of Mana reference in the comments, LAUGHING ON LINE. Is it weird that I get both of them?

I wonder if those Glass-Eyed men are remembering that Annie's the one who returned one of their own. And the more I think about it, the more it DOES look like Ysengrin is making the trees move. He looks like he's pushing them apart in Panel 4, and those trees make a distinctive arching form in the second last panel. Of course, this could just be because someone in the last thread mentioned that it looked like the trees were moving apart for them, and then closing up behind them. It's fair to think that a forest of this magic has trees that do try to make you feel lost by not giving you a straitforward path, yet the path depicted here is very much a path.

Edit: And why does Eggles have so many more marks on his face than he did before? Looks like he's got some crowsfeet now, and that darn mark going down his left cheek. Curiouser and curiouser.

Do the Shadow-men also remember that Annie took Shadow2 back to Gunnerkrigg with her? Of course, he asked her to bring him with her, but some of them might think that she kidnapped him.

I was looking through The Wordsworth Dictionary of Classical and Literary Allusion this morning, and found this sentence in its entry on Alice (from Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books).

"No matter how bizarre her surroundings or the behavior of the characters she encounters, Alice always manages to maintain her composure and insist upon finding the rational explanation, logical solution and literary meaning of the surreal phenomena of Wonderland."

I thought of Antimony almost at once when I read that.

I too thought 'Mononoke-Hime' as soon as I saw the panel of the glade.