124 The Battle for Gobwin Knob, Page 112

[Aquillion]

Still, for me it is about as out of place as if he did unsavory things on their graves. As impressive as the entire panel is, the last frame ruins the mood for me (well, maybe that was the intention after all). I know I can speak only for myself but I have the feeling that I am not alone.

To be fair...

Imagine we only saw Parson's side of things; we never saw or were introduced to Webnar or Dora. Or suppose instead of Webnar and Dora, the Marbits were lead by two slightly bigger Marbits, otherwise drawn identically, whose 'communication' was just incoherent sounds.

Would you feel the same way about this page?

Remember, for all intents and purposes, that is what Parson sees. All he knows is that the tunnels are being attacked by Marbits lead by warlords. He's never even seen a Marbit; he might think they're little triangle marshmellow squares. He knows Sizemore is freaked, but that's it.

I think that's the point. We see how horrible Parson's joking is, because we were introduced to Webnar and Dora, and because we saw them die. Parson saw neither; and I think that if we'd seen things solely from his position, people wouldn't be that upset.

In fact, I know that that is the case. This isn't the first engagement of the war. Parson's ordered units killed before. And he was joking the night before the battle. Nobody here protested. It was only after characters we know got killed, a few panels away, that people here started realizing something was wrong. As long as there was distance between Parson's joking and the killing, nobody here cared. Nothing has changed from Parson's view; it's just that the strip is forcing us to see what's going on. And no, you can't say the units that were killed before 'weren't people'; Stanley was promoted from the ranks, remember, and that means most intelligent-seeming units probably are, in fact, intelligent. Every Marbit Parson ordered killed was likely just as much worth getting upset over as Webnar and Dora.

I don't know which it was -- the closeness with which we were shown them, or the fact that suddenly the units getting killed look like us, or the fact that we've been introduced to them and know their name, or the fact that we were shown their deaths and it was made to look sympathetic.

But either way, I think that the fact that people are only reacting to this now is telling, and indicative that few people here can realistically claim to be different from Parson -- certainly, if you've never been concerned with the death toll or with Parson's joking before, you can't credibly criticize him for it now, because before the strip went out if its way to wave it in your face you were just the same way.