[2821] Just thinking.

[brendanthenavigator]

Again, since Coyote is a god, I think Lana died the moment she entered his throat.

[arf]

...to be reborn in another moment?

[Polyhymnia]

If you showed me this without context, I would assume it’s someone who’s recently been brainwashed, potentially after being kidnapped. Really unsettling.

[netherdan]

Aug 9, 2023 22:27:02 GMT arf said:

I think Lana is waiting to be taken somewhere by someone who *will* deal with electrical appliances.

So she's in robot purgatory for the time being, until they manage to find a robot psychopomp

[pyradonis]

Aug 9, 2023 23:28:20 GMT drmemory said:

If Lana were a robot or a golem rather than a NP, I wouldn't be nearly as worried, because those are just suspended (effectively dead) while powered down. But we don't really know whether New People are alive. Disturbing image regardless.

My bid for a future cookie: I predict the Lana we're seeing is in a toy box in the toy store and will be found there. Eventually.

Arbiter Saslamel said that Arthur was now a living creature. I think we can reasonable assume that this is valid for all the NP created after him. :-|

Love the toy box idea!

[hp]

Tom's art is looking freaking awesome on this page. I'm starting my first re-read after some years and the evolution is impressive. It has always been good, of course, but it used to be more simple and cartoonish

[drmemory]

A quick reminder of something I haven't seen mentioned for a while:

appearance selection

Of course Lana also said something about picking her own look based on knowing what boys liked (or something along those lines), so did not do the random thing. Like Robot, I would recommend against this.

Still, while everyone is pondering the disturbing uncanny valley image, this seemed like a good time to revisit her roots. 

[lightshade]

Aug 9, 2023 12:12:50 GMT stef1987 said:

Aug 9, 2023 7:32:11 GMT lightshade said:

If the comic is slowly coming to a close, as some fans are theorizing, I do wonder if Lana's death might be the first permanent one in the comic. Up until now, aside from Surma, no one has ever died for good. Some have come close or been reincarnated into new forms like the death faeries but there's never been a character that completely remained dead once they were introduced as first being alive. Heck, even Mort got a second chance at life as a ghost after his untimely death as a boy. If Lana is really dead, this could signify that some serious and permanent changes are coming for everyone.

I don't get why you don't consider Mort a permanent death, the fact that he was introduced to us as a ghost hardly matters.

Mainly because we learned about Mort in reverse. He was introduced as someone who was already dead and for a very long time nothing was known about his death. By the time we got to that point, his storyline was wrapping up, so the manner in which he died hardly mattered because he was already at the end literally and metaphorically speaking. Lana, on the other hand, felt very abrupt and rather shocking since she was at the beginning of her (new) life and there's been no indication that she will get a second chance at all.

[gpvos]

Aug 9, 2023 23:48:28 GMT brendanthenavigator said:

Again, since Coyote is a god, I think Lana died the moment she entered his throat.

This page is clearly meant to reassure readers that Lana is still alive (although no reassurance about her mental state is offered).

In fact, if Lana is indeed stowed away in some special dimension, maybe she won't be drawn into the Zimmyverse.

[imaginaryfriend]

Remember Dan Schiff? He was a character who was barely in the comic yet had an outsized impact because of his strongly-felt absence. I figure there are still at minimum two ways Lana could be brought back, so her departure isn't set in stone yet, but even if she does return I think there's going to be a parallel with Schiff in that her potential loss will have a strong effect on Jerrek/Loup which will drive some character development (like with Red and Ayilu).

[Isildur]

Aug 9, 2023 16:48:55 GMT Gemminie said:

We see Lana, the top of her track suit removed to reveal her tank top, sitting down on the floor of a small room or alcove, looking happily up at the viewer.

Does this mean Lana is alive somewhere? My thought is that her appearance is very similar to her appearance here, and the background is similar to that abandoned apartment that she and Jerrek were sharing. This looks like a flashback, or even a memory in Loup/Jerrek's mind.

But why place this here? One possibility: Lana is dead, and this is a final tribute to her, the last time Tom's going to draw her – or perhaps it's a character study he drew earlier on and decided to publish online here. Another possibility: whether she's alive or dead, Loup/Jerrek's memory of her is going to drive what happens in the next chapter in some measure, and this is a foreshadowing of that. Yet another possibility: this is where Lana is right now, possibly frozen in time, Coyote having simply moved her piece off the board with the intention of using her to further manipulate Loup later.

Or maybe other things I'm not thinking of.

I don't think I'd characterize that as "looking happily up at the viewer". She looked kind of broken to me, stuck on her "I'm Lana, I'm Jerrek's girlfriend!" expression as if shocked or frozen into catatonia.

By the way, the following comment from the day's on-site comments (gone now of course, but I read it before that comment batch was cleared and have retrieved it from an Internet Archive backup) got a chuckle from me: