[336] Goodbye, Ketrak

Tom's note reminded me of the one weakness (fortunately a small one) of the webcomic; periodically, an incidental detail or line will upstage the more important things taking place on that page. Or at least, a lot of the readers pay more attention to that detail or line than to the crucial plot development or character moments on the same page (though, in that case, the weakness lies with the readers rather than with Tom). I hope that Tom's note satirizing this does not distract even more of the readers so that they focus on the two children in the fourth panel and all but ignore Kat's response to Ketrak.

I had suspected that Ketrak, as an insect guide, would most likely look like a giant insect, and I know enough about what insects look like to know that I don't want to see one so grossly magnified. Kat's response to seeing Ketrak made sense to me, therefore; I'd probably have been as unsettled as she was if I'd seen Ketrak. (Which is why I'm grateful to Tom for not showing *us* Ketrak.) Though I am curious as to how Annie was able to arrange for Kat to see him. Is this another of her remarkable abilities? Maybe we'll find out later in this chapter.

Psh, my guess is that Kat seems to be overreacting.
I'm sure that Ketrak looks fantastic!
Also, I would assume that Ketrak just keeps himself invisible, a god would easily be able to do that, I would think.

I'm dissapointed that we didn't get to see Ketkrak, although for the plot is besr left unseen (everyone can have their own-inner Ketkrak). One guess, he is most likely to be small, since in the pannel when Annie is saying goodbye she's looking directly in front of her, and she is sitting. I think something in the lines of a giant beetle.

Definitely less.

In this scene Mort said "you mean you can see the guides just like that? That's pretty rare." That could suggest that being able to see guides itself isn't rare if you know how to look. It could be that simply saying or thinking "I want to see the psychopomp" while standing near a person's body could be enough.

I'm disinclined to think that this is Annie's ability, because the automatic granting of spoken wishes is not in line with anything we know about Annie's abilities.

If Annie is a medium, she can probably grant Kat some sort of second sight, maybe by touching her or something similar. Of course, Ketrak probably knows how to keep himself hidden, too.

I like your drawing, Grey.

That's right.

It could just be that Annie is the sort of person psychopomps tend to like, and tend to want to reveal themselves to. Both non-flashback encounters between her and a psychopomp in the comic so far seem to have been one of the latter saying (to a greater or lesser degree) "Hey, I was in the area and thought I'd say hi. How are you doing?"

Given the nature of the comic, I'd be surprised if any of the, uh, magitechnobabble-ish discussions about the limits of these things become pertinent in the future.

This presumes they can be destroyed. Possible options:

1) The psychopomps are largely a formality or quality control. Whatever happens to things after they die keeps happening, in a slightly less ordered fashion. Somehow it all works out.

2) A new one appears to take the place of the destroyed one.

3) The destruction of an irreplaceable psychopomp introduces a subtle error into the processes that run the world. Over the next several days/weeks/months/years/centuries/millennia/millions of years/iterations of the universe, the error compounds and eventually leads to the retroactive destruction of all things.

4) Kat and Annie have to go on a quest to resurrect it. Cerberus Syndrom infects the Gunnerkrigg Court webcomic and its entire original fanbase is left pining for the days before Tom decided to drop the original genre in favor of an epic three thousand page quest, especially given the odd and controversial philosophical direction he pushes it towards during the latter third. However, this change in direction leads to startling popularity, and Gunnerkrigg Court's new fanbase widely bash the original fanbase as being old fogeys who refuse to get with the times. Tom retires rich.

The comic has not given us enough information to decide which of these options is most likely. I suspect option zero: Irrelevant, because this isn't that sort of comic.