Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, Mk. XXVII: God Has Nothing to do With This

[TheLaughingMan]

Is it just me, or would the Bulgak/pit scene have been better finished with the closeup of his face, rather than with him checking his heart rate or whatever it is he's doing?

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Ohhhhh. I thought he was just having sexy times with the cave.

[Ignition]

Ohhhhh. I thought he was just having sexy times with the cave.

Was he saving Luna and whats-her-face the orc that were trapped in the Akta sanctuary's ground?

[CurlyKitGirl]

This characterization actually remains pretty consistent, if memory serves. And gets pretty unsettling.

You kind of remind me of something Rubakhin said back when he posted here. It was during a talk about some of the stupid names in this comic, I think, and he pointed out how he didn't like the name, "Luna," because of its implications. He said that the name (meaning "moon") had the unfortunate implication of the character not having any light of her own; that the only reason she ever shined was because of the light of Dominic. I doubt it was Mookie's intention, but that interpretation works pretty well, all things considered.

That is an unfortunate implication. Especially given that Dominic means 'lord' and the fan nickname is Dominus.
Gregory, for the record, means "watchful or vigilant". But folklore etmyology (what most people assume the etymology to be) it became associated with 'flock' or 'herd'. And, thanks to 16 popes and 10 saints, has gained the additional meaning of a shepherd watching over their flock, i.e. guiding them. *coughIesusfigurecough*
Unfortunate implications whahey!!

Analysing Dominus Deegan

The Golden Age*

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A Frail Hope of Adequate Enjoyment
21/05/2002 - 17/07/2002 Arcs covered: Oracle for Hire, The Curse
The First Signs of Serious Psychological Issues Appear
18/07/2002 - 4/12/2002 Arcs covered: The Curse, Luna, Into the Woods
In Which Teh Great Dominus Indulges in Torture and Terrifies Me
5/12/2002 - 21/02/2003 Arcs covered: Into the Woods, Couch Forts and Crying
Dominatrix Luna. Oh, and The Dominus is More Feared Than A Necromancer
22/01/2003 - 11/03/2003 Arcs covered: Makeover!, Mob Mentality
Thing Are Looking Up
12/03/2003 - 30/04/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts One and Two
Siggy Is Iesus. Make of That What You Will
01/05/2003 -23/06/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts Three and Four
The Great Dominus Is Officially A Marty Stue an It's THRILLER! THRILLER NIGHT!
24/06/2003 - 19/08/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts Five and Six
Character Development! And We Conclude an Arc
20/08/2003 - 10/09/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts Seven and Eight
Short Arc Is Short
11/09/2003 - 21/10/2003 Arcs covered: The Party

The Tarnished Age

Hell Is Meaningless Filler
23/10/2003 - 20/11/2003 Arcs covered: The Ecstasy and the Evil Part One

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We literally start in Hell. With Super Pointy Face Karnak. He owns a castle, so he's a lord. More tellingly, he has a bat-shaped cloak clasp, iust like Iack Skellington's bowtie. I therefore name Karnak King of part of Hell. Again, the pointy face of Karnak reminds me of a cartoon . . . film. I think. The fact that I can recognise that certain styles were copied, but not where is really bugging me.
It seems our plot for this arc will be: Karnak must stop TIM from taking over Hell.
But what kind of nimrod Lord would have power gloves which contain at least part of his power? Karnak would! Still, I have hope for this arc.
ARRRGH!! Demon-spider-woman! But we have a nice piece of Dominiverse lore: living people can be banished to Hell by white magic. That's a bit counterintuitive, you'd have thought healing magic would kill people; and black magic - being evil - would be able to banish people to Hell. ((Is this common for DnD?)) However, I would like to find out what happens when a living person is killed in Hell.
Hold on a second. On closer inspection Demon-Spider-Woman seems to have hooves. So is she actually meant to be a centaur? Because I despise and fear horses with a passion, but even I know horses legs don't move that way. Or is she balancing on paper chain? Wot? Massive art fail.
Six-legged centaur wot. And in p.2 Centaursect is sitting with her horse's body on the floor and horses. do. not. work. that. way. And then her central legs look like spaghetti.
Oh, and excessive gorn is not funny. Even with Centaursect's tongue sticking out as her head's being ripped off. Which definitely wouldn't work, but I'll pass that off as the Power Glove's Magic. Karnak and TIM love the Power Gloves.
Excessive boobage is not funny. And really, if they're warriors, they'd wear something a little more restrictive than that. I read in the Encyclopaedia Dominica of a phenomenum called Balloon Boobs. I'd like that add that in Hell all women suffer from Balloon Boobies. No matter what they looked like on earth.
More gore. Not funny. Very dark. It's not too badly draw, iust a big toneshift. Extendable hand onna string. Weird power. Why don't you iust cut the string.
Karnak, the Demon of Wounds . . . first off: awesome title. Second off: nice gloating speech. Especially given that your mini-army has been slaughtered and TIM is wearing your Power Gloves. ((I think we can chalk TIM up as having a Dramatic Past - sold his soul to a demon so he wouldn't die. Iustifies: being completely and utterly evil.))
In addition: why have all the dismembered people been shown with their tongue sticking out? It looks goofy and detracts from the drama of having TIM fighting a demon lord of Hell. Even if Karnak is gross and eats dead women's internal organs. Plus he's making another Faustian pact. I'm guessing that Karnak wants a Deegan - the GD himself? - dead. After all, the world revolves around the Dominus. But Karnak makes a good point: TIM could iust drink a dryad's blood. They can't be all that uncommon, and he did pretty well the first time until he bumped into the Deegan Host.
But gloating is fun.
And I was right. It's the DOminus. Although I'm left to wonder how TIM can read without any eyeballs. Or why TIM doesn't simply beat Karnak endlessly into the ground, imprisons him and takes over Karnak's region of Hell. But TIM's hardly the brightest Infernomancer in the universe, and revenge is always fun. But it's still a plot hole. A logical one.
Karnak is a Demon Lord of Hell. Smeg, he even has his own title, castle and army; but he can't kill one Infernomancer and take back his Power Gloves? Is Karnak really weak? Was he once human? He looks more human than everyone else I've seen so far in Hell. Even TIM looks more demonic than Karnak.
Creepy grin and internal monologue make for a good villain. I think it's because the smile is off-centre and off-model for a normal person, so it adds a nice bit of demon to Karnak. Plus from the monologue we can see how smart Karnak actually is: he had maybe five minutes to think of a plan once he discovered that the Power Gloves can bond to another person. Question: why would a Demon Lord of Hell make and wear weapons which can bond to another person? That kind of defeats the purpose of ruling in Hell where betrayal is pretty expected. In p.3 Karnak looks a bit um, cutesy. But p.4 mostly makes up for it.
Okay, next page -
WOT.
Four guest strips/fan art?!?! After the introduction to a dark and promising arc! THE HELL MOOKIE?
The worst part is that all four (this one's really funny too, so it beats out most DD strips) of them have art that is as good, or better than, the original artwork. Especially the one for 08/11/2003.
What tension and interest there was is completely ruined by the comedic value of the filler. And the fact the Mookie put guest strip/fanart FILLER into the comic right after starting the next maior arc in his story! At least have the common decency to do it after a story arc concludes, not after introducing the main frellin' plot.

This is not making me feel well disposed towards The Ecstasy and the Evil. I have, however, discovered what the Evil mentioned in the title is: meaningless guest art filler. Sure, some of it's funny, but that's no excuse for ruining the pacing of your story, which was trotting along quite nicely, art aside.
Karnak poses some good opportunities for villainy and antics though. Same for TIM. Especially now he has the Power Gloves. He loves the Power Gloves.

*Ages as defined by Trazoi here.

Next up! The Dominus has a BDSM kink.
Oh. God.

EDIT:

Might be from more than one place, but especially in that pose there's more than a fair similarity to Ky Kiske from the Guilty Gear games (Guilty Gear XX was released on the PS2 in the US in March 2003, so only about six months before that comic was made).

Picture from GGX2 here, to see what I mean:

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Edit: To add insult to injury, Ky Kiske is, among other things, the head of the Sacred Order of Holy Knights...

I knew it!
One of my friends played that game, that's where I might have seen it.
I also remember a similar costume in an anime, but, well, GGXX2 fits Greg's Knightly Outfit so much better. Not to mention it explains the better art style.

[Palmer]

I never quite understood why Mooks makes everyone who has a vision speak in that clunky, unnatural dialogue. Is it supposed to make it sound more ominous rather than goofy? Or just bad exposition?

[Oracle_Hunter]

I never quite understood why Mooks makes everyone who has a vision speak in that clunky, unnatural dialogue. Is it supposed to make it sound more ominous rather than goofy? Or just bad exposition?

Yes

[TamerBill]

Also I thought Mookie made a plot-hole with the Shintula's hair but turns out he didn't.

Massive link fail there, TOE.

Gregory, for the record, means "watchful or vigilant". But folklore etmyology (what most people assume the etymology to be) it became associated with 'flock' or 'herd'. And, thanks to 16 popes and 10 saints, has gained the additional meaning of a shepherd watching over their flock, i.e. guiding them.

A shepherd... or a cattle rancher?

Excessive boobage is not funny.

Boobage aside, I actually really like that particular strip. It amuses me.

[SaintRidley]

Curly, yes. Karnak was human once.

Also, you'll be better off if you just understand that Mookie constantly ruins his pacing in such a way.

[Coidzor]

Koorly, Bondage costs extra.

[T-O-E]

Was he saving Luna and whats-her-face the orc that were trapped in the Akta sanctuary's ground?

You mean his mortal love? Oh dear

Massive link fail there, TOE.

Oh come on, surely you've seen much worse.
Anyway, I apologise for wasting a nanosecond of your time.

[TheLaughingMan]

<_<

>_>

Adding Sexy Times Cave to Encyclopedia Dominus.

[Humbug]

Sexy Times Cave. ROFL.

[SpekterofDavid]

Anybody have a count of how many panels can be removed from the comic and not make one lick of a difference? Im up to 254

[Humbug]

Starting from where? The beginning? Or when DD started going downhill?

[Kizor]

You know, regardless of all other factors, there's one thing that the comic does right: the demons are evil.

This isn't damning with faint praise. In my experience, the buggers are written as misunderstood freedom fighters a lot of the time, and as inexplicably non-evil on other times. The freedom fighters angle is much like renegade drow struggling to cast off the shadow of their evil kin: refreshing the first time. Inexplicably non-evil demons run a serious risk of being dull. The whole point of demons is that they're evil. The source material hardly ever goes beyond that, and pop culture has only added generic horns-and-fire motifs. Taking evil away carries a novel for, I don't know, ten pages, but if the author doesn't then do something interesting with the change, demons are left with the gimmick of not being evil. Plenty of things are not evil. That's not good worldbuilding, that's a bunch of regular Joes with bad manners and a really tacky taste in interior decoration.

[M84]

Heyall,

You know, regardless of all other factors, there's one thing that the comic does right: the demons are evil.

This isn't damning with faint praise. In my experience, the buggers are written as misunderstood freedom fighters a lot of the time, and as inexplicably non-evil on other times. The freedom fighters angle is much like renegade drow struggling to cast off the shadow of their evil kin: refreshing the first time. Inexplicably non-evil demons run a serious risk of being dull. The whole point of demons is that they're evil. The source material hardly ever goes beyond that, and pop culture has only added generic horns-and-fire motifs. Taking evil away carries a novel for, I don't know, ten pages, but if the author doesn't then do something interesting with the change, demons are left with the gimmick of not being evil. Plenty of things are not evil. That's not good worldbuilding, that's a bunch of regular Joes with bad manners and a really tacky taste in interior decoration.

The Noble Demon can work. It just depends on good writing.

[Fawkes]

Taking evil away carries a novel for, I don't know, ten pages, but if the author doesn't then do something interesting with the change, demons are left with the gimmick of not being evil.

The Noble Demon can work. It just depends on good writing.

Also, it helps if you write something good.

[guttering flame]

Badie, the bad and evil demon was a bad and evil demon dude. When he woke up in the morning he would hunt children in the forest. At lunch he usually ate their bodies with Parmesan(*), in the afternoon he cooked their souls in his home at hell and at night, before bed, he taunted their mothers and fathers with bad dreams about what he did to their children.

Why he did it you ask? Because he was evil, that why!

One of the haunted mothers once asked him in her dream "Why did you do it?? Why did you kill my child, eat him up and then torture his soul? Why???"

Badie scratched his steaming red horned head with his barbed tail. "Well, because I'm evil. That's what evil demons do, no? And it makes me feel good doing evil stuff because I'm evil, just like I'm supposed to be. See the horns?"

The mother woke up and cried. Her other children and her husband tried to comfort her. "Don't cry. You always told us there's no use crying over spilled milk. That's a goodie's proverb and since we're all goodies we should stop crying and be happy."

The Demon nodded. That made sense. He stabbed the child's soul with his evil-affiliated trident once more.

The child cried.



The End

Wow. This was a great piece of story-telling and world-building. Thanks Kizor.


(*) This should be changed to hot sauce to make the character Baddie more evil and hence more interesting.

[TheLaughingMan]

Wow. This was a great piece of story-telling and world-building. Thanks Kizor.

Hey, it surpasses Mookie's writing. And Mookie's just checking off anime cliches as he goes, so "noble, bishie demon <3<3" is right up his alley. It's annoying how everyone considers demons being evil cliche, and yet I can't look through 25%* of any anime list without seeing a bishie demon doing noble things because he's hot and he just can't be evil . It's pretty much Draco in Leather Pants on a larger and more prevalent scale.

"Good demon" is cliche. EoS.

[guttering flame]

Hey, it surpasses Mookie's writing. And Mookie's just checking off anime cliches as he goes, so "noble, bishie demon <3<3" is right up his alley. It's annoying how everyone considers demons being evil cliche, and yet I can't look through 25%* of any anime list without seeing a bishie demon doing noble things because he's hot and he just can't be evil . It's pretty much Draco in Leather Pants on a larger and more prevalent scale.

"Good demon" is cliche. EoS.

Yeh. I dislike the trend to POV and relavitivize everybody too. Seeing THEIR viewpoint can be interesting but when you end with no bad or unsympathetic characters in a story the story becomes weaker. You can show us viewpoints without making everyone sympathetic good-in-their-own-eyes. Or just do without them.

Still, having good storytelling and compelling and believable characters is much more important than having (cartoonish) evil-doers

[CurlyKitGirl]

Curly, yes. Karnak was human once.

Also, you'll be better off if you just understand that Mookie constantly ruins his pacing in such a way.

Well, that little titbit of information has me lowering my expectations by 2.5. Yay.

Analysing Dominus Deegan

The Golden Age*

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A Frail Hope of Adequate Enjoyment
21/05/2002 - 17/07/2002 Arcs covered: Oracle for Hire, The Curse
The First Signs of Serious Psychological Issues Appear
18/07/2002 - 4/12/2002 Arcs covered: The Curse, Luna, Into the Woods
In Which Teh Great Dominus Indulges in Torture and Terrifies Me
5/12/2002 - 21/02/2003 Arcs covered: Into the Woods, Couch Forts and Crying
Dominatrix Luna. Oh, and The Dominus is More Feared Than A Necromancer
22/01/2003 - 11/03/2003 Arcs covered: Makeover!, Mob Mentality
Thing Are Looking Up
12/03/2003 - 30/04/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts One and Two
Siggy Is Iesus. Make of That What You Will
01/05/2003 -23/06/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts Three and Four
The Great Dominus Is Officially A Marty Stue an It's THRILLER! THRILLER NIGHT!
24/06/2003 - 19/08/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts Five and Six
Character Development! And We Conclude an Arc
20/08/2003 - 10/09/2003 Arcs covered: Visions of Doom Parts Seven and Eight
Short Arc Is Short
11/09/2003 - 21/10/2003 Arcs covered: The Party

The Tarnished Age

Hell Is Meaningless Filler
23/10/2003 - 20/11/2003 Arcs covered: The Ecstasy and the Evil Part One

Kink + Dominus Deegan = Eye and Brain Bleach
11/11/2003 - 16/12/2003 Arcs covered: The Ecstasy and the Evil Parts Two and Three

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As foreshadowed in my last post, the Dominus has a BDSM kink. I know he's iust ioking with his brother, but this is still too much information.
Next we have a coincidence! Luna's sister lives in Erotic City! Erotica Sin City. Ummm, Sin City? That whoretastic Sin City? Well, the BLATANT NAME certainly suggests so!
I don't know about you, but when Lady Travoria's will was read out there was no suggestion whatsoever of any siblings, but I'll let it slide. Luna could have simply iumped to a conclusion.
No. Amelia Tavoria iust so happens to have married the GD's childhood (best?) friend Szark Sturtz. The family the GD iust so happens to have had a vision about. Contrived coincidence. Very contrived.
Given that the main visions of this webcomic have been about: Gregory being attacked, Iacob killing people and now people they both know, I'm beginning to suspect that you can adiust your Seer ability so that you only have visions about people you know.
Ohgod. Another unwanted reminder of the GD's kinky sex life.
Oh thank you! Another vision. Which is about Sister Pam, the woman who is romantically interested in Gregory. My Seer theory is getting more and more evidence supporting it.
Stunt and Bumper! Yay! And Luna's iust assaulted two young teenagers and left them to die of hypothermia. How lovely. To add to think evil the GD blackmails and threatens to murder these two boys.
And them they let them go free. Without reporting them to the proper authorities, or indeed, anything at all.
Two people who have robbed, stolen, and assaulted various people including the main pair; and Stunt and Bumper are left to go free. Again. Iust like from Into the Woods.
Okay, from now on, anything these two thieves do is the fault of the GD and Luna. So it really was their own fault that the GD got stabbed in the arm! The GD and Luna are slipping deeper and deeper into Evil. Hell, Luna even admits to enioying torturing them. Our heroes ladies and gentlemen!
And now they're watching Amelia commit adultery with someone. Nice. I knew that the Seer ability could be used for perverted reasons.
This other Seer is Celesto Morgan. And doing a Name Meaning thing-y on him for gits and shiggles provides this little nugget of fun.
Celesto looks to be a male form of Celeste meaning 'heavenly'. Morgan means 'sea-born'. So a he is a heavenly sea-born being. Celesto is now Venus.
And for Celesto's generosity in warning the Sturtz family of danger he gets a kinky threesome. And then Szark offers to let his childhood friend and sister-in-law watch them have another round! OhIesusChrist! My eyes! My brain!
This makes me worry about Mookie's sexuality and his . . . fantasies. And Szark is bisexual? And looks like a cross between Stunt and Graverobber from Repo! The Genetic Opera.
Wait. Szark has the Blight ("In the Blight he courts death as a suitor courts a maiden"), iust like Gregory did! And Gregory got the Blight ("In the Blight he courts death as a suitor courts a maiden") when a Demon Lord attacked the Deegans! And fifteen years ago Karnak gave Szark the wound!
Wot.
Let me get this straight:
An unknown number of years ago Demon Lord Hexlia (I'm having flashbacks to Axis Power Hetalia) attacked the Deegans. He (she?) wounded Gregory. This encouraged Gregory to learn white magic, the Dominus to train his Seering, and Iacob to learn necromancy. Setting up the entire plot.
Fifteen years ago, Demon Lord Karnak attacked Szark and wounded him. What are the chances of one family being attacked by two Demon Lords in what, five years? Must be that awful haircut of Deegan's.
In what is probably the first Deegan-centric vision (that of removing his fishy curse) he saves the life of one Lady Luna Travoria and meets Sir Siggy, Royal Knight of Callan.
Similarly, perhaps a year ago Demon Lord Karnak gave TIM his powers.
TIM tried to heal his wounds by killing a dryad. This brough Gregory, Luna, the Dominus, Stunt and Bumper into contact with TIM who subsequently tried to kill them all only to be killed by Super Saiyin Gregory. Thus putting TIM in contact with Demon Lord Karnak so he can steal the Power Gloves of Karnak. He loves the Power Gloves.
Sir Siggy is coincidentally the Knight contacted to save Lynne's Brook from the evil Deegans. Sir Siggy's companion iust so happens to be a childhood friend of Luna's. Along the way to Barthis Siggy & Co iust so happen to bump into Vilrath-Iacob.
Luna's sister Amelia is married to the DOminus' friend Szark. And the DOminus and Venus de Seer have iust so happened to have the same vision of danger to the Sturtz family. Oh, and Stunt and Bumper are obsessively stalking the Dominus throughout the entire country, and iust so happen to bump into them and overhear Dominus and Luna's destination.
And now Karnak has hired TIM to go to Erotica Whore City Sin City to kill either Szark of the Dominus.

What is this?!
The Six Degrees of Separation from Dominus Deegan?!
Because wow. That is so contrived it's unbelievable. I'm guessing that Siggy's going to show up in PornoSin City too.
Because he's been in nearly every arc so far.
Christ.
Really?
There's willing suspension of disbelief, and then there's this. It would have been fine if every single person in the entire history of the comic ever didn't iust so happen to know or be somehow related either to the Deegans or someone the Deegans know.
Seriously.

And why is zombie-Szark (iust look at him!) breaking the fourth wall while his lover's sleep? I bet it was only included because of the 'dramatic'ness of a so-called three-part narrative split wasn't enough to fill the four-panel format.

Well.
Let's see how ludicrously connected everything will be next time around.

*Ages as defined by Trazoi here.

Note: I lost my original post due to an internet crash, so this is a reconstruction.

Next up! Crude sex iokes. Woo.

[averagejoe]

Still, I have hope for this arc.

Heh. Hahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*ahem*

If TIM can read and see everything, why the heck does he even want his eyes back?

It's also weird seeing TIM back when he had characterization and wasn't so simply and obtusely about the evulz. Evlulz? Something like that.

A shepherd... or a cattle rancher?

One of the haunted mothers once asked him in her dream "Why did you do it?? Why did you kill my child, eat him up and then torture his soul? Why???"

'Cuz I'm evil.

Sorry. Your story just reminded me of this.

[CurlyKitGirl]

Heh. Hahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

*ahem*

If TIM can read and see everything, why the heck does he even want his eyes back?

It's also weird seeing TIM back when he had characterization and wasn't so simply and obtusely about the evulz. Evlulz? Something like that.

Don't worry.
All the flippin' contrived coincidences have officially snapped any vain hope I had of a well-written story into myriad little glittering pieces.
Too many coincidence in about ten strips.


EXTREMELY bad writing.

[Kizor]

Hah! Thank you, guttering flame, you make a good point: I had considered good demons in terms of their potential for bad storytelling, but not evil demons. What's your take on this, or was it expressed in the story?

If more people wrote stupid little stories at each other, the net would be a better place.

I'll bite. I'm growing fond of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (especially as read by John Cleese). A series of letters from a senior devil to a young tempter on achieving the damnation of a man, it is, perhaps, more of a meditation than a narrative. I find Screwy to be interesting literary evil, as straw-mannish as he gets in letter 10.

There's also the multiplayer strategy game Solium Infernum, a struggle for the throne of Hell. My information is all second-hand as I find it icky, being a practicing-and-well-indeed-in-need-of-practice Christian. The more I learn, the more it seems that this is a case of me being stupid rather than a legitimate grievance.

The game does wonderful things with making its mechanics serve the story: a crusade may be called against Heaven. It cannot succeed. The players know this. Yet they must commit their legions - rare, expensive troops - or be ridiculed and lose all-important prestige. What demented kind of prestige is that? All parties follow an elaborate etiquette: what kinds of offenses are grounds for a vendetta, how long wars may last and when their objectives must be announced, et cetera. I'm told it conveys a sense of barely restrained rage. Every so often, a player breaks the rules, causing all others to descend upon him and tear him apart. The fluff never breaks character. It goes on about the Tyrant of Heaven and the greatness of infernal dukes and princes, but the mechanics make clear that these are dogs fighting for scraps at their master's table.

[SaintRidley]

Look on the bright side, Curly. Now you can do like us - look on as Mookie comes up with awesome concepts and then feel the knife twist as he fails to execute them in any remotely mediocre way.


So, basically Paradise Lost as an RPG, Kizor?

[averagejoe]

I don't know about you, but when Lady Travoria's will was read out there was no suggestion whatsoever of any siblings, but I'll let it slide. Luna could have simply iumped to a conclusion.

Actually, One Of Luna's Sisters is, by now, a well established plot device in the strip. And to my knowledge it's never been confirmed that we know all of them.

Wait. Szark has the Blight ("In the Blight he courts death as a suitor courts a maiden"), iust like Gregory did! And Gregory got the Blight ("In the Blight he courts death as a suitor courts a maiden") when a Demon Lord attacked the Deegans! And fifteen years ago Karnak gave Szark the wound!

Helexia isn't a demon lord, she's a necromancer. Szark doesn't have the blight, he has a wound that won't close, like TIM's. Neither of which is the blight.

Greg didn't get the blight when Helexia attacked them, he got it from Jacob, also a necromancer.

Which isn't to say the strip isn't contrived as hell...

[Trazoi]

@Kizor: Hey, I got a copy of Solium Infernum in an indie strategy game bundle a whiles back! Unfortunately I've only barely played it so I don't remember much about it, mainly because the learning curve is somewhat steep. I do remember infernal politics being a major point though.

My main problem with DD demons isn't that they're evil, it's that they're all Chaotic Evil with a capital C, capital E. Specifically, the sort of evil I call blarghblarghevilblarghblargh. Their standard greeting is to try and behead each other, and their most advanced strategy is "Kill 'Em All". That's fine if they were video game enemies, but it's a setback if they're going to be major characters in a drama. It's a double setback in a comic that is meant to have humorous moments combined in; the only jokes DD demons can be used in are extremely black ones, and I can't remember any that approached "funny".

The demons in comics like Narbonic or especially Sluggy Freelance would have been a way around this. They're still extremely evil, but they've got a layer of humorous incompetence that can be used for jokes. And when you need them as a serious plot point as was done in Sluggy, you can tone back the incompetence and show them as a true threat.

Personally, I wish the demons in DD would show some cunning now and then. Demon lords being simply more killcrazy than lesser demons is boring - I want to see them manipulate demons and people as easily as pawns on a chessboard.

Edit: Oh, and sneaky gate. More recap goodness. Wasn't this arc going to be all about evil creatures doing evil deeds?

[spectralphoenix]

More recap goodness. Wasn't this arc going to be all about evil creatures doing evil deeds?

I'm guessing that Mookie isn't really sure how to do an arc without a good guy, so Orcfernomancer is getting bumped up. Now it's just a question of whether Loxo gets to be the good love interest who is redeemed and delivers an Inappropriate Ass Shot or the evil woman who gets killed and delivers an Inappropriate Ass Shot.

[Humbug]

Maybe Bulgak will still remain an irredeemable baddie. Mookie promised us there will be no good guys in this arc. He'll follow through... right?

[TheLaughingMan]

Maybe Bulgak will still remain an irredeemable baddie. Mookie promised us there will be no good guys in this arc. He'll follow through... right?

Oh ye of little faith.

[Thufir]

Along the way to Barthis Siggy & Co iust so happen to bump into Vilrath-Iacob.

I assumed that was a deliberate move on Jacob's part.
The rest though, your point stands.

Evlulz?

I approve of this word.