[471] what the hell?!

[Yin]

Jack?

Well, that makes two things clear: Gamma doesn't consider Jack one of Annie's friends (which is true, they have just met after all); and Tom knows us well enough to anticipate possible pairings of his characters by scene.

[monkeybucks]

Tom's the man.

[ecomono]

Okay, Jack was probably not wearing eye shadow before the rain started.

What the internet.

EDIT: Although I guess that could just be his trauma face.

[chibisoma]

Told you guys Annie's eyes were getting like Zimmy's. But noooo. "It's just eyeliner/mascara!"

Hmph.

ZxG ftw~

[bellerophon]

Hmm. Wonder what Annie's doing in this one? She's clearly not heading inside in the first panel, and she may have moved off to the left with Kat so we don't see her in the last two, but she should still have heard that exchange, unless she's too busy in her trauma or explaining things to Kat. Still, she may well come to Jack to explain/commiserate/mourn.

Wonder what happened to him in there.

[walkingdust]

So, now we are left wondering if the experience will scare away Jack or serve as a plot point further down the line.

[Mezzaphor]

Zimmy's comment seems to imply that she didn't realize before this page that Jack had been to Evil Birmingham. Gamma knowing and choosing not to share seems a bit meaner than what we've seen of her character so far, but it's not out of the question.

Does this mean that Jack also has some kind of psychic power, like Gamma and Annie?

[Refugee]

Yup, I thought Jack looked a bit shell-shocked.

Although I don't think Zimmy can physically hurt other people in gop-world, she can project emotions, at least of extreme fear and disgust.

Which raises the question: would her learning to control it actually be a good thing? I have a bad feeling that Zimmy is so badly twisted that she is herself dangerously out of control.

So, tell us, Zimmy: you've said you'd kill everybody, then yourself, if Gamma asked you to.

Would you be civilized if she asked you to?

===

And over and over: What the hell does Gamma see in Zimmy?

Did Gamma grow up in gop-world the way Zimmy seems to have?

Did Zimmy bring Gamma into the gop-world?

===

Mezzaphor's question about Jack's abilities is very much on point. Well asked.

[nikita]

Oct 17, 2008 7:05:48 GMT chibisoma said:

Told you guys Annie's eyes were getting like Zimmy's. But noooo. "It's just eyeliner/mascara!"

I think there is still a difference between eye rings and mysterious black matter forming all around and in your eyes.

[sue911]

Good add on to the plot (if this is related to it).And yup,glad this doesn't mean Zimmy x Jack XD Looks like Kat's stuck with two eyebagged traumatized people that need counselling.

[Mezzaphor]

Yeah, I think his eyes look more like Gamma's than Zimmy's.

[inhumandecency]

Oct 17, 2008 7:07:54 GMT Mezzaphor said:

Zimmy's comment seems to imply that she didn't realize before this page that Jack had been to Evil Birmingham. Gamma knowing and choosing not to share seems a bit meaner than what we've seen of her character so far, but it's not out of the question.

I suppose it's possible that he wasn't in the same place as the rest of them, or that he was able to leave on his own. Everyone's powers seem a bit different. Or perhaps he doesn't have any powers, and that actually made it harder for him to get sucked in and easier to leave.

Or, perhaps he was there, but in an unrecognizable form, and a certain medium-in-training blew him up.

Jack's the one who said "your friend over there doesn't look too well." So he was looking at Zimmy when she blipped out, and thinking about her too. He was also standing right next to Annie. That's my actual guess about why whatever happened to him, happened. Why not Kat, then? Perhaps she didn't look. Or she didn't feel any concern about Zimmy, like Annie and Jack did. Or maybe she was Shielded by Skepticism™.

[Mezzaphor]

Looking at this page, I see Zimmy is a bit shorter than Gamma. We've seen before that Gamma and Annie are nearly the same height. So I don't think the height difference between Zimmy and Annie is very conclusive evidence for the theory that Zimmy was reverting to a younger version of herself in that other place.

[inhumandecency]

Okay, I'm now a progressive eye blackness believer (before I thought they might just be fatigue rings; more of an allusion to Zimmy's eyes than the same kind of phenomenon). With Jack we can see they go all the way around the eye, and look a lot like the ones on Martin (the ghost in the hospital).

Note that Annie's eyes looked normal while she was in the other world, so it's not the direct experience of being there -- maybe it's leaving something behind. Part of you is still seeing that world when you try to look at this one. Your eyes literally are diminished. Similarly, Martin's eyes showed the encroaching circles while he was straddling this world and the next, and getting screwed-up versions of both of them. Perhaps they looked normal again when he was all the way on the other side (unless my own eyes deceive me, they do look less shadowed here than here).

If this is the case, why don't we see Zimmy's eyes when she's in Birminghell? We know she still has them: They come back when she's out in the natural storm, at which time she's also able to see the world as it is again (briefly -- we can see the progressive nature of the eye loss shortly after it's over). Maybe she's no more in Birminghell than she is in this world -- she's somewhere even more terrible, or scattered to so many places that she's not really anywhere. That would be consistent with the theory that the city was a relatively real place, but the insects and the nobodies were Zimmy's creations. She's so far gone that she gets the nightmare version of the nightmare world.

Anyway, my money's still on a quick recovery for our heroes.

Oct 17, 2008 7:05:48 GMT chibisoma said:

Told you guys Annie's eyes were getting like Zimmy's. But noooo. "It's just eyeliner/mascara!"

Actually, check out the stuff running down Zimmy's cheeks during the earlier storm. It is eyeliner. It is the eyeliner of the damned.

[tetsamaru]

Or maybe she was Shielded by Skepticism™.

Well, depends on how magic works in the Gunn world. popular ones are

1.You have to see and hear magic for it to work on you.
2.number 1 doesnt matter and it works regardless.
3.You must be a believer.
4.Some people were born Immune to magic, the downside is that they themselves cant ever learn it.
5."My magic better than your magic". Which translates to, this is the Gunnerkrigg world. We wait and see. "word of god" to put it another way. Im not evil enough to put up a tvtrope link.

[walkingdust]

Funny. My comrades want to see more of Jack, specially after this, but would prefer if Matt "died on the way back to his home planet and never came back."

[Count Casimir]

Poor kid. Mind; broken?

[inhumandecency]

Okay, now I'm going through the archive looking for other places where there's been spooky stuff going on. Check out Annie's eyes in the latter half of chapter 8, when she's hanging out in Gillitie Wood with the faeries. They're clearly shadowed. That might just indicate fatigue, but it seems like the shadows show up after her conversation with Muut, not after she's awakened, and they peak while she's getting cut up by Jeanne. They recede after that but don't go away until the next chapter, which doesn't help tease apart the spookiness explanation from the fatigue explanation.

What do y'all think? Potentially important correlation, or a sign that I'm up past my bedtime?

[Rasselas]

Related to inhumandecency's post; I love the eye-darkening thing and how it is parallel to real-world phenomena. Namely, there's a certain type of dreams that will give you the same thing. They leave a residue of another reality with a slight headache, a "WTF?" feeling and you can't shake them off all day. Also, black bags under your eyes. Strangely, then I wonder why my eyesight is slightly bad.

What you posted are, I feel, some very good observations.

[mudmaniac]

Thats was a remarkable turn of events.

[p13volution]

Oct 17, 2008 7:07:54 GMT Mezzaphor said:

Gamma knowing and choosing not to share seems a bit meaner than what we've seen of her character so far, but it's not out of the question.

Or maybe Gamma isn't as omnipotent in Nobodyham as people seem to believe. Didn't Zimmy say that Gamma was "pretty sure" than none of the others were there? Well "friends" anyway, but I'm pretty sure she would've mentioned Jack if she had known he was there.

Gamma's not God, she's a young girl for chrissakes'. I don't see why everyone is trying to demonize her because she hangs out with a girl who killed a dog with a coathanger. Well... besides for that

[nikita]

Maybe he hasn't been there at all. Maybe he saw something else?

Something different: "Why not Kat, then?"
Kat was there. Not our Kat maybe - but A Kat.

[jokerjester]

For some reason, I couldn't help but laugh when I saw Z's reaction to Jack's inquiry. He is clearly in a state of complete WTF and she just shrugs him off "Sorry yo, sucks to be you." Classic.

[todd]

Oct 17, 2008 7:41:38 GMT tetsamaru said:

1.You have to see and hear magic for it to work on you.

Sounds like "Gargoyles" (they had the same rule there).

I don't think that Annie's eyes will be like that permanently (or get even worse and more Zimmy-like) - for one thing, it would be inconvenient and distracting in future chapters that don't feature Zimmy and Gamma. I think that the dark circles around her eyes - and Jack's - are just signs of the normal strain of having been to some nightmarish world, and not the beginnings of a metamorphosis. Remember, also, that they were not there in their physical bodies - we saw Annie on the previous page in a "blanked out" moment - so that could be the natural result of a temporary absence of consciousness.

But Jack's involvement *did* surprise me, and makes me wonder all the more if he's on his way to becoming a regular or semi-regular.

[inhumandecency]

Oct 17, 2008 9:31:51 GMT nikita said:

Something different: "Why not Kat, then?"
Kat was there. Not our Kat maybe - but A Kat.

You just made me realize -- we don't actually know Kat wasn't there. Maybe what she meant in Wednesday's strip was "Annie, are you okay? I didn't see anything that happened after we got into that abandoned store and Gamma blew me up. You look like something really scared you!"

Not very likely, but it made me grin.

[Klex]

Yes... Everyone involved with this experience, Kat included, seems to have a white dot under each eye. I don't know what to think of that yet.

[Freederick]

Oct 17, 2008 13:26:06 GMT Klex said:

Yes... Everyone involved with this experience, Kat included, seems to have a white dot under each eye. I don't know what to think of that yet.

1. Everyone seen in closeup on the roof in the last two strips has a white dot or two on the cheeks. Could be just specular reflection, signifying that their faces are wet.

2. OTOH, there is the white disk sewn onto Zimmy's clothes both in reality and in the Astral plane / Bummingham. So maybe you're onto something.

I'm leaning toward explanation 1. The only thing that keeps me from being sure is Tom's reputation for sneakiness and hints so subtle everybody dismisses them--until it's too late.

[penguinfactory]

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS.

I really like this chapter.

The obvious questions raised are: Why did Jack go into the Zimmyverse with Annie? What did he see there? Is Jack going to be a recurring character now, because that would be totally awesome and kick ass?

As usual, Tom gives gives us a bit more information and then multiplies the mysteries.

[Freederick]

Note that Jack rushes up to Zimmy and grabs her--then confusedly lets go. Isn't this just like what Gamma did in GC 453? Did he expect Zimmy to GOP when grabbed, like the other creeps he saw in Astral Bummingham?

BTW, I don't see why Jack is so bummed. An old hand at UrbEx like him (see GC 451) should be overjoyed to find a rundown place like Birminghell to explore. So what if it's full of weirdos--so are the subway tunnels.

[Tom Siddell]

Oct 17, 2008 13:52:33 GMT Freederick said:

2. OTOH, there is the white disk sewn onto Zimmy's clothes both in reality and in the Astral plane / Bummingham. So maybe you're onto something.

Their faces are wet, it is a shine. I'll edit them out if it's going to make people confused.

Edit: more confused.