[2540] Annie did indeed turn out to be... okay

[justhalf]

Reunion!

(also, I thought the update will be one hour later due to daylight savings time, apparently not)

[Eversist]

The author comment got a wry smile from me. Has he made this joke before?

(DST is next weekend!)

[imaginaryfriend]

Anthony was so happy to see her that he almost gave her a hug as he pulled her up. Almost.

[flowsthead]

He's really emotive in both panels. That's unusual.

[madjack]

This is so wholesome I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop.

[maxptc]

I always knew Tony just needed to dig deep to connect with Annie.

[Eversist]

Nov 1, 2021 7:19:03 GMT madjack said:

This is so wholesome I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop.

...No I don't think I'm paranoid, why do you ask?

Yeah, him "hiding in the court" doesn't bode well, hah.

[Fishy]

This is lovely and all but I'd like Renard to get some special attention here with his "Overly excited dog about to play fetch" pose. What's that boy? Annie's trapped down a well? That or he's mid-bounding towards her and Annie is about to get bodied, which would be equally entertaining.

[arf]

Can't put my finger on it, but I feel something significant just happened...

Meanwhile, Rey's here and Loup wants his eye magic back. Shades of Bishop meeting the Alien Queen in the docking bay.

[AluK]

Prospect of losing yet another Annie just broke Tony out of his funk.

[blahzor]

who's the guy in panel 2?

[speedwell]

He did, of course, grab her hand with his artificial one. That's sort of poetic.

[gpvos]

Nov 1, 2021 7:01:28 GMT justhalf said:

(also, I thought the update will be one hour later due to daylight savings time, apparently not)

Gunnerkrigg follows U.S. time (to be precise, it is usually published at midnight Pacific time). I didn't think of it this morning, but it should appear one hour earlier for Europeans this week.

[gpvos]

Nov 1, 2021 7:03:29 GMT Eversist said:

The author comment got a wry smile from me. Has he made this joke before?

I don't think he has.

Nov 1, 2021 11:05:53 GMT arf said:

Can't put my finger on it, but I feel something significant just happened...

Yes, it seems that either touching/holding his daughter, or maybe the anguish he felt at possibly losing her, may have caused an emotional breakthrough. Let's hope.

[najmniejszy]

Is that just me, or did Tony de-age back to his Brazilian jungle time?

[speedwell]

Nov 1, 2021 12:14:00 GMT najmniejszy said:

Is that just me, or did Tony de-age back to his Brazilian jungle time?

Artistic license. We are now seeing "happy Anthony face".

Renard has the eyes of Little Orphan Annie's dog Sandy, haha.

[pyradonis]

Nov 1, 2021 7:19:03 GMT madjack said:

This is so wholesome I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop.

Tony goes out without shoes to prevent any other shoe from dropping.

[ctso74]

Yeesh, Tony. Stop being so clingy. Take it down a notch.
So... Loup?

[Gemminie]

So Tony lifts Annie out of the tunnel she's in and up into ... another tunnel. Joyful father-daughter reunion ensues. Tony looks as if his face is actually expressing emotion, which given what we've seen is an indication that what he's feeling inside must be intense indeed, for some vestige of it to make its way out.

Then we see a larger overview of the scene. Evidently it's daylight. We see one piece of earthmoving equipment (it seems likely that there is more around, off-frame), and a lot of people with shovels. I don't see a huge crater, so perhaps they used some sort of detection equipment to find out where to dig in order to reach Annie and the others. It seems Kat and Renard are there, and they come running. From what we see in the distance, what crashed over the Court was in fact a wave of both dirt and wood – there are tree branches/roots that actually reached up into some of the higher windows. Yet there must be some dirt here, because it can be shifted with shovels, and we saw Annie digging with her hands earlier.

And in the final frame we have more joyful reunion, Kat and Renard having arrived. There's still happiness on Tony's face, despite adding more people to the scene. Presumably the Forest creatures will be able to make their way out now, though they may have to enlarge the tunnel for some of them.

[echo]

Nov 1, 2021 12:14:00 GMT najmniejszy said:

Is that just me, or did Tony de-age back to his Brazilian jungle time?

Yeah, he looks younger. But this is an illustrated comic. Come to think about it though, Michelle/Shell looked different from how she first appeared, at least going by the comic's order.

[mturtle7]

Nov 1, 2021 7:25:32 GMT Eversist said:

Nov 1, 2021 7:19:03 GMT madjack said:

This is so wholesome I'm just waiting for the shoe to drop.

...No I don't think I'm paranoid, why do you ask?

Yeah, him "hiding in the court" doesn't bode well, hah.

For crying out loud, people, Loup just failed to get his powers under control, went berserk and tried to kill a bunch of people (very nearly succeeding in one case), and then inundated the already-devastated Court with an incredibly destructive wave of earth and wood that scraped the sky and went on for kilometers in the distance, and this also seem to have ramped up the already-existing Forest refugee crisis tenfold. HOW MANY MORE SHOES DO YOU WANT DROPPED?! Will you not be satisfied until poor Annie is buried under a 5-story pile of shoes?! Tom might be cruel sometimes, but he's also perfectly capable of giving Annie a nice, wholesome, break from the chaos for a single freaking chapter!

[worldsong]

Even Anthony's tenacious psychological issues cannot withstand the joy and relief of seeing that his daughter is alive and well.

[Eversist]

Nov 1, 2021 18:31:03 GMT mturtle7 said:

Nov 1, 2021 7:25:32 GMT Eversist said:

Yeah, him "hiding in the court" doesn't bode well, hah.

For crying out loud, people, Loup just failed to get his powers under control, went berserk and tried to kill a bunch of people (very nearly succeeding in one case), and then inundated the already-devastated Court with an incredibly destructive wave of earth and wood that scraped the sky and went on for kilometers in the distance, and this also seem to have ramped up the already-existing Forest refugee crisis tenfold. HOW MANY MORE SHOES DO YOU WANT DROPPED?! Will you not be satisfied until poor Annie is buried under a 5-story pile of shoes?! Tom might be cruel sometimes, but he's also perfectly capable of giving Annie a nice, wholesome, break from the chaos for a single freaking chapter!

I know you're likely exaggerating for comedic effect (and despite my reply I'm not a shoe-drop-wait-er), but it seems like so far our heroes-and-directly-related have gotten off relatively (relatively!) scott-free overall in the catastrophic event. So I understand madjack's apprehension.

And the full saying is "waiting for the other shoe to drop." So in this case, Loup going nuts was one shoe...

[rylfrazier]

I really appreciate Tom showing us Tony being a better person rather than having characters tell us he's a better person now - it's a lot easier to tell for sure if there's actual evolution on Tony's part when we see it "on screen" rather than just hearing about it, which might be actual improvement, or it might be characters imagining improvement when there isn't improvement.

[silicondream]

Nov 1, 2021 7:10:29 GMT flowsthead said:

He's really emotive in both panels. That's unusual.

It is. If it was just in the close-up panel with Annie I'd think it was more about increased comfort with her specifically, but he seems to be pulling it off in a crowd as well.  I wonder if Tony's been training himself to appear more emotive in all contexts for her sake.  (Given Annie's own difficulty reading people, he wouldn't have to look much more natural to put her significantly at ease.)

I can imagine him reminding himself of the proper face to show her through the entire dig; Kat and the others may also have taken some distance to let the Carvers be awkward together.

[Igniz]

Young regular Tony -> old "Tony is now played by a different actor" -> young regular Tony

[blazingstar]

Nov 1, 2021 11:30:25 GMT blahzor said:

who's the guy in panel 2?

Came here to ask this same question. Maybe it's Elgamore? He looks so different than any character we've seen before! I don't recognize this smiley guy!  

[Runningflame]

Is that some kind of face, Carver?

[drmemory]

Speaking of shoes dropping, we haven't seen any actual casualties of the Loup event yet, right?  Except for robots, of course, which may or may not have their right CPUs inside.  The thing is, that looked like a really violent event, and many buildings have been toppled and some destroyed.  So unless they previously evacuated everyone that lived near the forest and closed down any services that were in those buildings, there may well have been injuries or deaths.  I imagine the court would only count human casualties, of course. I'm quite sure that robots would be counted as property damage.  Also androids, and possibly even Foley students. 

How likely is it that Aata will try to blame Loup for any such casualties?  I have to think he's busily doing that right now, as well as trying to convince the court that he is right about whatever he tried to sell them on that got them to allow his "Steal Coyote's Power" ops.  An unethical schemer would be trying to convince them that he was right, and Loup and Coyote are too dangerous to live, right?

"In my failure, I was proven correct" doesn't really sound like "I was wrong and shouldn't have aggroed the demi-god" or even "Oops"...

He even caught the first ride out so he could scurry in there and control the message.

I sorta hope I'm wrong about this, but if I'm not, I hope someone plucks his petals.

[Igniz]

Nov 5, 2021 4:11:00 GMT drmemory said:

So unless they previously evacuated everyone that lived near the forest and closed down any services that were in those buildings, there may well have been injuries or deaths.

According to the map in page 2092, at least certain parts were evacuated, being designated as unsafe zones. We can assume that the yellow zones bordering the forest were also evacuated, but can't guarantee it as we have yet to see the full extent of the tidal wave's damage.

Regarding Aata, a) while he clearly was a leader/prominent figure among the Shadow Men, it's clear that the operation was not only his doing, but that of the entire organization, as well as whatever or whoever Omega is, and b) more than the feeble attempt to steal Coyote's powers, it's clear that what really pushed Loup over the edge of his already teetering sanity was the information Coyote whispered to him, which is clearly related to his tooth, Renard and Coyote's plans for Annie.