Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, Mk. XLIV: Stunt Bro and Hella Jayden

[Traab]

When I saw this strip I knew I had been preparing my whole day just for this moment. GIMP crashed on me 3 times in the process of making this, enjoy.

Spoiler

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Ironically, making this actually improved my mood given that today has been rough. Go figure.

Thats awesome.

[Toast1862]

Ironically, making this actually improved my mood given that today has been rough. Go figure.

That is the exact reason I make veggie edits when I'm incredibly pissed off at a strip. It's very therapeutic.

[rocketpony]

And why do they keep ignoring teleportation spells?!

That, at least, has some precedent.

As a bonus fun happy note, look at this comic. Look at the third panel, and how Dominic just straight up admits that he handled this situation poorly. Gaze upon it. Let it seep into you.

[Trazoi]

That is the exact reason I make veggie edits when I'm incredibly pissed off at a strip. It's very therapeutic.

Same with me and Dominikudigan. When a Deegan says something long and stupid I need to see that via Translation Party.

Edit: Speaking of which...

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The first panel is an instant favourite.

As a bonus fun happy note, look at this comic. Look at the third panel, and how Dominic just straight up admits that he handled this situation poorly. Gaze upon it. Let it seep into you.

Unfortunately I seem to remember Milov was under the impression Siggy had been dragged into hell via Karnak's influence at that stage, when actually the new canon is Siggy is the worst monster to ever walk the earth (which makes Milov and Jayden total idiots for hanging around with him and never suspecting, but I doubt Mookie thought that far). Dom's merely apologising for sparing Milov's feelings by keeping him in the dark, because Dom is always right and the greatest person ever (along with Luna, Greg and Nimmel).

[colonelslime]

Sneaky Gate

Future Link

Milov really needs to stop shoving it in Katya's face. This is actually pretty mean.

[Rappy]

Edit: Speaking of which...

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Bouillon cubes all the way down, man.

[random11]

Sneaky Gate

Future Link

Milov really needs to stop shoving it in Katya's face. This is actually pretty mean.

I wish this was the last panel:

"... At least that's what I wanted to say. In reality, I just stabbed her"

Nimmel's reaction is just perfect for this line.

[Zaq]

Edit: Speaking of which...

Spoiler

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The first panel is an instant favourite.

I'm honestly surprised that it stopped. Usually, when you get a self-replicating word like that, it just ends up taking over everything. Bouillon.


Anyway, new comic. Yup. New comic.

[rocketpony]

Leaving aside today's comic's content, just from a technical perspective, among y'all who draw comics, would you have done the gradually zooming out shot for the bottom panels? I'd have figured the three at the left would have been a zoom in, to mirror the growing intensity of her emotions (which themselves are mirrored by the growing beastliness of her appearance). The last panel's zoomed out frame would therefore be jarring, instead of a natural camera progression, matching the dogleg in the monologue.
Bonus: the loss of background as you zoomed in could be used as a scene transition, instead of now where the background is left deliberately abstract.

[random11]

Leaving aside today's comic's content, just from a technical perspective, among y'all who draw comics, would you have done the gradually zooming out shot for the bottom panels? I'd have figured the three at the left would have been a zoom in, to mirror the growing intensity of her emotions (which themselves are mirrored by the growing beastliness of her appearance). The last panel's zoomed out frame would therefore be jarring, instead of a natural camera progression, matching the dogleg in the monologue.
Bonus: the loss of background as you zoomed in could be used as a scene transition, instead of now where the background is left deliberately abstract.

I think that with the exception of the last panel, the zoom in and out were done for the sake of the speech balloons and not for any artistic reason.

[Gez]

Bonus: the loss of background as you zoomed in could be used as a scene transition, instead of now where the background is left deliberately abstract.

My theory, which I hold to make the comic bearable, is that the absence of background is a sign that Snuggly the Beast is devouring this comic's reality. Kind of like in the Neverending Story, with the Nothing erasing everything to replace it with a blank void.

And the protagonists are completely oblivious to it, hopefully right until it's their own turn to be erased.

[Trazoi]

My theory, which I hold to make the comic bearable, is that the absence of background is a sign that Snuggly the Beast is devouring this comic's reality. Kind of like in the Neverending Story, with the Nothing erasing everything to replace it with a blank void.

And the protagonists are completely oblivious to it, hopefully right until it's their own turn to be erased.

Dominic is in a coma and the Beast is the cancer that is slowly dissolving his mind.

The comic will end with a doctor solemning telling Dom's parents that he has passed away, and this means he will never find his house keys.

[Myrdhale]

My guess is that he's seen Sluggy Freelance and El Goonish Shive do it, so he figures he might as well do it.

Personally, I'm with Glass Mouse. It's potentially handy and doesn't detract from the comic. (What detracts from the comic is the rest of the newspost and, of course, the comic itself. Well, actually, pretty much everything on the web page detracts from the comic, except these reference links.)

I can see linking back when it adds useful context or important information to the current scene, like an editors note. For instance;

That, at least, has some precedent.

This is a good link because it establishes an important plot fact that is currently relevant withouth needing the characters to repeat the information in comic (something Mookie has done far to many times).

The Nimmel links aren't useful though. This is literally someone saying to a main protagonist "You've been through alot" and then linking back to EVERYTHING THAT CHARACTER HAS EVER BEEN THROUGH to show he's up to the task.

Imagine if everytime Batman fought a villain, the editor added a note about all the other times Batman has fought villain, just to make sure we knew he did.

I could see linking to one or 2 things, maybe. For a new comer to the comic who may have his doubts about 'The Pheonix'.

But 6 seperate links, featuring threats that range from legitimate evil superpowers to a bunch of furry fratboys?

The Newspost to me is part of the comic, the Author communicating directly with the reader. It's a place to get information out that wouldn't fit in the story, or just talk to your fans about what's going on and what they should expect. All these links just show me how much he adores his Sue self-insert and how he wants us to see how awesome he is so we do to.

yes, I can be petty!

[Mewtarthio]

Actually, I'm pretty sure he did that entire thing just so he could end on "college werewolves." You see, it's funny because all those things increasingly dark and evil, so you expect the last thing on the list to be the most terrifying of all, but it's actually the least terrifying. This is because Mookie was initially going for the old trope of gradually raising the stakes throughout the story, but in recent years he's kind of forgotten about that and had years upon years of filler.

[T-O-E]

"College werewolves" you say? More evidence for the "Dominic Deegan is just crappy Dresden Files" hypothesis. It's pretty damning.

-Both main characters are wizards
-They're both nerds
-They both live in a setting where magic serves some of the roles that technology does in our world
-They both make terrible jokes and references. Especially to things that do not fit with the setting, either flintstones with magic for Deegan or Harry-makes-internet-references-but-cannot-use-the-internet for the Dresden Files
-They're both kind of annoying. The difference is that Harry is a likeable and strong character even if his jokes are meme quality
-They're both "nice guys." The difference is that this is a recognised flaw of Harry's and he tries to improve on this
-They both have cats
-Harry could easily be an overpowered Mary Sue but he also has plenty of weaknesses, shortcomings and (intended) personal flaws. Mookie tried this but, well, I'm sure you can guess the result
-They're both snarky and deride their villains. Dominic is much more smug when he does it
-Again, college werewolves

I'm sure there are more. Can anyone think of any? Maybe how both series handle gay characters (badly) and how the authors' fetishes seem to crop up in disturbing ways?

Dominic is in a coma and the Beast is the cancer that is slowly dissolving his mind.

The comic will end with a doctor solemning telling Dom's parents that he has passed away, and this means he will never find his house keys.

No, Dominic was thrown off a cruise ship on holiday and the comic is his oxygen-deprived hallucination. The comic will end with a shot of a beach and a washed up corpse... With a fish on its head.

[Nerd-o-rama]

No, Dominic was thrown off a cruise ship on holiday and the comic is his oxygen-deprived hallucination. The comic will end with a shot of a beach and a washed up corpse... With a fish on its head.

My God.

EDIT: The image of M. Night Shyamalan I linked in this post was dead the whole time!!

[T-O-E]

So I searched "Dresden Files Dominic Deegan" and got this furry forum thread. Some similarities stolen from that guy:
-Third eye
-Doing magical things for money. Both sort of moved away from this as time went on
-Butcher put out a collection called "Wizard for Hire"
-The Bob/Spark dynamic

I'm not saying Deegan is a plagiarism of Dresden (it plagiarised other stuff) but that the latter is the same thing but better in every conceivable way.

Dominic Deegan is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. It's fun, but not the best fantasy story out there. And after listening to the forum thread about it over at the Giant in the playground website, I sort of feel bad about even taking that pleasure in it.

Recursion.

Write up a list of all the similarities and I'll point out why you are wrong since you dont want to actually read the comic and think that a guy like Mookie would have to rip off another writer when hes proven himself as a writer plenty of times.

What.

[MReav]

Harry-makes-internet-references-but-cannot-use-the-internet for the Dresden Files

He's got friends who can use the Internet, and they can print things out.

[spectralphoenix]

-They both live in a setting where magic serves some of the roles that technology does in our world

Do they? I mean, Harry's world is pretty much our own as far as the muggles are concerned, and it's not like he's using magical computers to keep up with his friends or anything.

Maybe how both series handle gay characters (badly)

Are there any actually gay characters in Dresden Files? I don't remember any.

[MReav]

Are there any actually gay characters in Dresden Files? I don't remember any.

Both Harry and Thomas impersonate gay guys at various points. Does that count?

[spectralphoenix]

Both Harry and Thomas impersonate gay guys at various points. Does that count?

In Thomas's case, I felt the books made a point that he was deliberately playing into a stereotype which the White Court were at least partially responsible for. I'll leave aside questions of how tasteful that was, but I feel it's a far cry from Mookie making a point of having his oh-so-realistic gay man who is gay to show how progressive he is.

I mean really, besides the werewolves thing, I think interpreting most of the items on T-O-E's list broadly enough to put Dresden Files and DD under the same roof would result in half the SFF section at the bookstore being Dominic Deegan ripoffs.

[random11]

-Doing magical things for money. Both sort of moved away from this as time went on

Harry got a salary from a different source at some point, which definitely counts as using his magic for money.
Also, there are time skips between books and it is told that Harry works in the usual job during that time. So while the story moves away from doing magic for money, the character itself doesn't.

Both Harry and Thomas impersonate gay guys at various points. Does that count?

Both Harry and Thomas intentionally went for the gay stereotypes, it was pretty clear in the books that it was not seen by them as "the way gays behave"

He's got friends who can use the Internet, and they can print things out.

It can work, but considering the amount of references, it feels more like an excuse than a reason.
As a fan, I usually just accept that as a known flaw of the book.
A flaw that is mostly harmless since it doesn't affect the plot, and was done for a specific character.

[Zaq]

Not even sneaky.

I'm not sure what's up with Mookie's recent obsession with peppering each newspost with links about Nimmel's past. Has he just discovered the archive function or something? If I believed for one second it would improve his memory and help forestall Mookie Forgot, I'd almost be happy about it.

Anyway, this comic makes me sad, just because it's really obvious to me how a better writer could make this actually something decent. That's often the case, but it really seems obvious here for some reason. Not sure why.

EDIT: You know what else this strip really underscores for me? The fact that Mookie's never bothered to actually explain why werewolves would choose to be in one form over another at any given moment. One would expect them to have a reason to want to change back and forth, or else they'd simply be in one form or the other all the time, right? (That, or it'd be involuntary or semi-involuntary, but that doesn't seem to be the case.) But we get none of that. We have no idea about why werewolves would want to be in either form. So lazy.

[Frogwarrior]

Holy mackerel you guys, I JUST discovered the Dresden Files like last week, how are you guys suddenly talking about it, what the heck.

Anyway... have we ever seen indication that Katya can sort-of-but-not-quite transform before? I thought she couldn't transform; maybe she just gets a bit fuzzy when she's really mad?

[Glass Mouse]

Anyway... have we ever seen indication that Katya can sort-of-but-not-quite transform before? I thought she couldn't transform; maybe she just gets a bit fuzzy when she's really mad?

Yep, we have.

[random11]

Holy mackerel you guys, I JUST discovered the Dresden Files like last week, how are you guys suddenly talking about it, what the heck.

Great series, enjoy!

Anyway... have we ever seen indication that Katya can sort-of-but-not-quite transform before? I thought she couldn't transform; maybe she just gets a bit fuzzy when she's really mad?

I think she could either not fully transform, or couldn't control it properly.

[T-O-E]

Who is he looking at? Who is he looking at?!?!

Do they? I mean, Harry's world is pretty much our own as far as the muggles are concerned, and it's not like he's using magical computers to keep up with his friends or anything.

I haven't read all the books but isn't there a thing called the Paranet which is basically just a magical internet?

[lord_khaine]

I haven't read all the books but isn't there a thing called the Paranet which is basically just a magical internet?

No, the paranet is a collection of low-level magical practioners, who have joined up to help defend each other from the many supernatural entities who would threaten them.

[T-O-E]

No, the paranet is a collection of low-level magical practioners, who have joined up to help defend each other from the many supernatural entities who would threaten them.

Oh, I thought it was used for more than that.

---

Holy crap guys. Nimmel is an ice wizard. He is an ice guy.

That has got to be intentional.

[ninja_penguin]

Oh, I thought it was used for more than that.

It's the name of an organization, not an object or thing, for what its worth.