V
Full Member
I just think it's a pity that she never wore these again.
Posts: 168
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Post by V on May 10, 2021 16:08:17 GMT
It was earlier this year that I became a fan and follower of Gunnerkrigg Court. It was not always so. I knew about the comic's existence before, I had visited two or three times over the course of a couple years, but never opened more than a few pages. Retrospectively, I'm sad for those missed chances as this world has really grown on me and I wish I knew it longer. This post is based on the premise that more people may be in my earlier situation.
It's becoming harder for a new fan to jump on board as the number of chapters is quite intimidating. It does not help much how it feels it's not an isolated opinion that in the very beginnings the visual style was probably not such a lucky choice. In the Archives, one could try picking a random chapter (say, the last one) and try to guess what's happening, but often the Cast page helps in that a lot and let's face the facts, that's not very user friendly either (not to mention the fact that, looking at the beginning of Mind Cage, Cvet, Tony or Idra are not in the list, and for Jones and Paz their first appearances, to which that links, don't really tell anything useful about them and are also the last ones for some time).
Imagine someone stumbling upon gunnerkrigg.com and deciding, "do I want to read this?" With the current total of ~2500 pages, one needs a very strong initial impulse to dive in. Some other webcomics have a section "New readers: click here" or something alike. What would be some good entries in there? Or you wanted to get a friend interested by more than just "trust me, give it a chance, you'll love it in 100 pages or so and the art gets completely different eventually, too".
My idea would probably be to suggest for a "teaser" an interesting chapter or two that has a nice combination of drama, current-style art, and peeks into the main characters' minds, and does not hinge too much on prior knowledge apart from the basic facts. One that would make the reader eager for more, curious rather that confused. Better main plot line than tangential. Certainly before The Tree, to evade a massive spoiler. Something like Microsat 5, perhaps, or Faraway Morning? From not-so-main-plotline ones, maybe A Week for Kat sounds like a nice choice. What do you think?
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Post by DonDueed on May 10, 2021 17:20:55 GMT
"A Handful of Dirt" is a great choice, although still pretty early in art style.
"Sky Watcher and the Angel" is another good one, and quite relevant to the main plot without being too spoilery.
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Post by 0o0f on May 10, 2021 17:50:11 GMT
I would think having a larger archive binge makes it better. Especially with a story like Gunnerkrigg Court, where it can take years to unravel a mystery...
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Post by mturtle7 on May 10, 2021 18:50:25 GMT
Ooooooo that's a tall order, if you ask me. The Gunnerkrigg chapters are very nicely separated and easy to read by themselves, but they also tend to build up the main plot at a very steady consistent pace, so reading them in order is actually SUPER important if you want the full experience. It's not like, say Dr. Mcninja, where the main plot is mostly secondary to the individual Wacky Adventures; there's also not a lot of "recap" points, where you can just get a working knowledge of the plot just enough to understand the current adventure, and then go back and read the actual story behind all that plot later. And beyond the first volume, it's pretty hard to find a chapter which DOESN'T advance the main plot in one way or another, so finding a "teaser" chapter to read by itself just before the actual start of the comic is...rather difficult.
Personally, I'd suggest some chapters that put the focus slightly away from the main characters (Annie and Kat, that is), because that can help give you a sort of "outsider's view" into the main plot which circulates around them. So like you said, Faraway Morning might be a good one, since we both get the other students' view and touch on both the magical and technological elements of the comic, without too many big spoilers for the main plot; Residential is good for mostly the same reasons. The one problem is that Faraway Morning requires certain bits of knowledge about Lindsey and Zimmy, knowledge which would spoil a couple of really cool mystery plotlines earlier in the comic; namely, From the Forest She Came and Spring Heeled. Residential is better as far as that goes, but some of the ether projection scenes might be kind of confusing for new readers, and it does touch on the Jack plotline a little.
I think one of the best "teaser" options would almost certainly be Ties, especially because you can sell it as a "prequel" to the rest of the comic. It teases a little of the "Court vs. Forest" plotline without really spoiling anything about it, shows both robots and magic in a really "introductory" kind of way, and just works really well as a stand-alone story, plus the art is good, or at least good enough. There's just two very small hitches: it spoils the main mystery that makes Chapter 3 cool for new readers, and it really requires you to know a little about the houses of GC beforehand. I'm pretty sure most new readers are really not going to care about that first part, though, and you can just tell them that this is a boarding school where two of the houses are named Queslett and Chester before you lead them to the chapter.
I think most of the side comics (except Annie in the Forest) are pretty good too, if all you want is to showcase what a good creator Tom is without spoiling any of the main plot of GC.But given your post, it sounds like you don't want to avoid the main plot entirely, so that's probably a no-go.
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yinglung
Full Member
It's only a tatter of mime.
Posts: 190
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Post by yinglung on May 10, 2021 18:55:28 GMT
I would say starting here is the best place for a new reader. It's still a little rough, stylistically, but it is where the main plot begins and it's where I really got hooked on the humor and ambience of the comic.
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V
Full Member
I just think it's a pity that she never wore these again.
Posts: 168
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Post by V on May 10, 2021 19:31:43 GMT
I think one of the best "teaser" options would almost certainly be Ties, especially because you can sell it as a "prequel" to the rest of the comic. It teases a little of the "Court vs. Forest" plotline without really spoiling anything about it, shows both robots and magic in a really "introductory" kind of way, and just works really well as a stand-alone story, plus the art is good, or at least good enough. There's just two very small hitches: it spoils the main mystery that makes Chapter 3 cool for new readers, and it really requires you to know a little about the houses of GC beforehand. I'm pretty sure most new readers are really not going to care about that first part, though, and you can just tell them that this is a boarding school where two of the houses are named Queslett and Chester before you lead them to the chapter. Wow, great choice! I think most of the side comics (except Annie in the Forest) are pretty good too, if all you want is to showcase what a good creator Tom is without spoiling any of the main plot of GC.But given your post, it sounds like you don't want to avoid the main plot entirely, so that's probably a no-go. I wouldn't worry too much about that. I just wrote that what I would do would be suggest a selected story chapter as an intro, but that was just an example of one possibility for discussion. I'm also open to other ways of introducing the comic that would tell people it's more than worth the few days they spend catching up all those years. Or convince them to go ahead and really read it when they come to the website. Maybe a more updated intro into the setting and who's who could do the trick? Or a showcase of some cool scenes? Or a link to some online reviews ("They wrote about us...")? One reason why I brought this up was that I was at one point considering starting a fan translation and the idea occurred to me that it could be good to have one of the later chapters for advertising (I don't really consider that anymore though). Also, I think it would be cool if I had some people around me who knew this, but I mostly keep my interests within myself just because I don't know how to make them look cool enough for others.
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Post by pyradonis on May 10, 2021 22:29:15 GMT
In all seriousness, I would recommend doing what I did - take a look at Margo's and John's story in Faraway morning to prove the art gets better, and then read the first three chapters. That was enough to get me hooked, at least. The side comics didn't exist yet back then, but each of those without Annie are good ideas as well.
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Post by nobodyforever123 on May 11, 2021 9:59:31 GMT
Agree with your points! I think Tom could make a new reader introduction page giving a brief explanation of the main characters. As well as informing of the change in arty style over time. Bittersweetcandybowl (great drama comic btw) did a page like this and I think it works pretty well.
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Post by arf on May 11, 2021 13:51:12 GMT
Personally, I don't think it takes much persistence to get into the story. While the first couple of chapters are about establishing (and eliminating!) characters, a sense of story starts to appear at the end of Chapter 3, as yinglung says. Still, if you want a teaser, my choice would be Chapter 4: Not Very Scary. It is short, separate from the main storyline, manages to introduce Mort and Paz (and Janet, if you count the epilogue), and exhibits Tom's slightly off sense of humour. As for artwork... well, I've decided its evolution is one of the pleasures of the read, and it certainly develops rapidly to begin with. I think all of this could be conveyed in a few words.
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Post by todd on Jun 3, 2021 13:46:22 GMT
Just for the fun of it, I wrote up some descriptions of many of the early characters for "Gunnerkrigg Court" as a sort of "How I'd introduce the comic to someone whom I was telling about it". It's not complete, and since I wanted to avoid spoilers, I had to say very little about some of the cast (especially Reynardine). I've restricted myself to only those who were introduced in the early chapters, to further safeguard against spoilers (hence, there are no entries for Coyote, Ysengrin, Jones, etc.). I'd welcome comments and helpful suggestions for improving it.
ANTIMONY “ANNIE” CARVER: Antimony is the main character in the webcomic. She’s a new student at Gunnerkrigg Court, a mysterious boarding school, and is twelve years old at the start (though she gets older in the course of the story).
Antimony at the start is serious and formal – much more serious and formal than you’d expect for a girl that age. A lot of this is thanks to her upbringing; her mother Surma was hospitalized immediately after giving birth to her, and Annie stayed with her in the hospital, where her mother taught her. Surma finally died shortly before the story’s opening, and at her request, Annie went to school at Gunnerkrigg, where Surma had attended classes; so had Annie’s father, Anthony, who worked at the hospital as a surgeon. Anthony seems to have contributed in his own way to Annie’s peculiarities, being a remote figure – he left the hospital shortly after Surma’s death, and nobody knows what’s become of him. Annie has never been around children her own age before, so she finds socializing with her new classmates something of a challenge – far more of a challenge, in fact, than handling the strange events at the Court, like sprouting an extra shadow….
Annie narrates the story in the opening chapters; this element drops out after a while (to very occasionally return).
KATARINA “KAT” DONLAN: Annie’s best friend, introduced in Chapter Two. Annie and Kat’s friendship is a striking case of “Opposites attract”. Annie is formal and reserved; Kat is outgoing and filled with enthusiasm. Annie, thanks to the upbringing she’s had in the hospital, is familiar with such things as world mythology and classic literature, but knows almost nothing about pop culture; Kat’s keen on pop culture (and occasionally the story will pause between chapters to do a couple of pages’ tribute to one of Kat’s favorite video games or animes). Kat is also very good at science and technology (she even develops an anti-gravity device – at age twelve – for a science fair experiment on proteins – and is exasperated to find that everyone else is far more interested in the anti-gravity device than in the proteins), while Annie feels out of her depth with those subjects. (Which gives her additional problems, since Gunnerkrigg’s curriculum focuses heavily on science and technology. This leads to fateful consequences….)
REYNARDINE: A major character as well, but the manner of his introduction involves so many twists and turns that I dare not say more, for fear of spoilers. All that I can say is that the similarity of his name to that of Renard the Fox from medieval beast-fable is no coincidence….
SHADOW2: A sort of living shadow, whom Annie encounters very early in her time at Gunnerkrigg. It tells us a lot about Annie that her response to discovering she’s sprouted a second shadow is to communicate with it and ask it what it wants – which leads to her first adventure….
ROBOTS: Robots are almost everywhere in the Court, doing a lot of the everyday maintenance work. They’re good-natured (mostly) but, to put it gently, somewhat scatterbrained. (At times, they almost evoke the saying “The trouble with artificial intelligence is that it’s artificial.”) To give you some idea, when a group of robots called Seraphs (so named because of the wings attached to their heads) establishes a secret headquarters, their way of concealing it is to put a big sign outside saying that it is NOT a secret base and there are NO robots inside.
Annie becomes involved with the robots early on, when she seeks one particular robot’s help in solving a problem brought up by her meeting with Shadow2. This unlocks a chain of events that will draw Kat in – and give her the biggest project of her life.
JAMES EGLAMORE: The Court’s PE teacher. He also has a secret position, connected to the hidden goings-on at Gunnerkrigg. And he was a classmate to Annie’s parents when they attended Gunnerkrigg. Kat has a crush on him.
MORT: A shy young ghost haunting Gunnerkrigg; to his dismay, he’s not very good at haunting it. Annie, when she meets him, tactfully points out that part of the problem is that he’s relying too much on the clichés of haunting, such as looking like a bedsheet with holes, and offers him some tips on more original haunting methods.
ZIMMY AND GAMMA: These two girls are always found together; Annie periodically runs into them. Zimmy stands out thanks to her (usually) lacking eyes and having fang-like teeth; she’s also abrasive (to put it mildly) to everyone except Gamma. Gamma is a bit older than Zimmy, and the one person whom she’s at ease with. (Zimmy’s the only person whom Gamma spends much time with, in turn; part of that is thanks to Gamma speaking only Polish, not English – and the only other person in Gunnerkrigg who speaks Polish is Annie. Zimmy doesn’t know Polish, but she doesn’t need to, in order to speak with Gamma; they converse telepathically.) They have many secrets….
Zimmy and Gamma have their own complex story, though it ties with events at the Court from time to time. (Tom Siddell, the creator of “Gunnerkrigg Court”, originally came up with them independently, before he imagined Antimony and Gunnerkrigg. He’s even given them a spin-off, set before they came to the Court.)
MUUT: One of the Guides, death-gods whom Annie met and made friends with at the hospital during her childhood there. (Her acquaintance with them is another reason for her oddness.) Muut looks like a man with an owl’s head. Annie is no longer on good terms with him and the other Guides (to say why would be to give away too much of the story).
Muut is based on an actual Native American death-god. (Almost all the other Guides in “Gunnerkrigg Court”, whenever they appear, are also based on “real” mythological figures – except for Ketrak, who is the Guide for insects. Annie showed him to Kat once; Kat immediately regretted it.)
WILLIAM WINSBURY: One of Annie and Kat’s classmates. He starts off as something of a bully, picking on Annie and Kat, until Annie judo-flips him in PE class for stealing Kat’s ball. After that, he learned to leave them alone.
JANET: Another of Annie and Kat’s classmates, the daughter of the Headmaster. You do not want to make an enemy of her (and I’m not saying that just because of who her father is). Janet and Winsbury spend a lot of time quarreling with each other in public. It’s all for show, though; they’re secretly a couple, and don’t want anyone else knowing about it.
PAZ: Yet another of Annie and Kat’s classmates. She’s from Spain, and has the gift of speaking with animals.
MR. AND MRS. DONLAN: Kat’s parents; both teach at Gunnerkrigg. (Anya, Kat’s mother, is even Annie and Kat’s home-room teacher at the start of the comic.) Like Eglamore, they were classmates of Annie’s parents during their school days at Gunnerkrigg. They’re also involved in the “beneath-the-surface” goings-on at the Court.
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Post by warrl on Jun 3, 2021 17:03:24 GMT
The spinoff comic for Zimmy and Gamma is out. Link is currently at the bottom of the "Extra Comics" page. (On the comic page, scroll down to the top of the chapter list; there's a button to the left labeled "Extra Comics".)
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Post by pyradonis on Jun 4, 2021 10:37:33 GMT
The spinoff comic for Zimmy and Gamma is out. Link is currently at the bottom of the "Extra Comics" page. (On the comic page, scroll down to the top of the chapter list; there's a button to the left labeled "Extra Comics".) If you mean "Zim Grim", that's been online for months.
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