The Stick Awards II: Second Edition (#0831 - #0840)

[Bird]

833 is nice, but it has to be 832--a page I love even more than the winner of the previous round. It may just be me, but 832 has the tensest ending of any OotS page--period. Xykon is a complete loose cannon, and there was no way of telling how he'd react to the news of Tsukiko's murder. Redcloak certainly played it off confidently, but Jirix and the MitD were sure unnerved. (I read their expressions not as 'oh-my-god-you-killed-her' but 'oh-my-god-what-will-Xykon-do'.) Meanwhile, Xykon's skull head is, of course, inscrutable.

The whole delicate cat-and-mouse (well, cat-and-cat) game that Red and Xykon have could have unraveled right there. It didn't, of course, but in some ways that makes the strip even more memorable--Xykon played it cool, but we're still waiting for the big blow-up.