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

[Voice of Reason]

Hmmm, out of all the possible (read: "feasible") ways this can end, I'm holding out for something like this:

First, evil mantis has to monologue a bit, because that's stereotypical and expected. After receiving helpful information, Dominic will of course attempt to beam-blast his way out, but this time, it won't work because manta-mage is semi-competent and suppresses the use of magic in the house (although rare, we have seen Dominic's magic fail before). Dominic/Stunt get thrown up against a bookcase and that one particular book just happens to hit Dominic in his head (just because). He makes a grab for it, opens it up, and "bookmarks" outta there right before he gets beam-maged to death. Follow with a panel of Stunt praising the Dominus (How did you do that?). Dominic explains that he's "been worried" something like this would happen for a while now (or that he totally saw it coming. 'Cause he's a seer. Totally.) Final panel: "I mean, after all *insert some grotesque pun here*.

[T-O-E]

Given that this is a similar setup to when Smuggly ran away from a Halloween costume, there might be a similar solution. Maybe Dominic will put on a santa suit and Praying Mantis will run away because he cannot comprehend the true meaning of Christmas.

Dominic is going to show him the religious symbol of Luanism and Praying Mantis () is going to bow down to it.

Get it? Get it?

Rock on

<snip>

This is borderline DD fanfiction

[Traab]

Dominic is going to show him the religious symbol of Luanism and Praying Mantis () is going to bow down to it.

Get it? Get it?

Rock on



This is borderline DD fanfiction

Does that mean you dont like it? heh, was just coming up with a way that the forthcoming snoozefest could be at least standard cookie cutter levels of interesting, instead of a confusing stupid muddle like it will end up being anyways.

[Welf]

The other plausible out is that Mantis Mage isn't evil and is coming to help Team Deegan. But that doesn't explain why he crushed Dom's cane-ball. Not unless he knows Dadigan is dead and Dom's talking to a wily Terminator T-1000 right now.

I wonder if Mookie will ever realise that having half a dozen antagonists with the ability to warp to Dominic and instantly fry him doesn't gel with Dominic being an utter tool who does zip all to operate in secret.

Maybe he isn't a wizard, but a sorcerer with levels as bard to cast healing spells. And that's why he prefers pointless yet dramatic entries.

Given that this is a similar setup to when Smuggly ran away from a Halloween costume, there might be a similar solution. Maybe Dominic will put on a santa suit and Praying Mantis will run away because he cannot comprehend the true meaning of Christmas.

My money is on a giant frog. Frog cop, the old partner of crab cop.

Hmmm, out of all the possible (read: "feasible") ways this can end, I'm holding out for something like this:

First, evil mantis has to monologue a bit, because that's stereotypical and expected. After receiving helpful information, Dominic will of course attempt to beam-blast his way out, but this time, it won't work because manta-mage is semi-competent and suppresses the use of magic in the house (although rare, we have seen Dominic's magic fail before). Dominic/Stunt get thrown up against a bookcase and that one particular book just happens to hit Dominic in his head (just because). He makes a grab for it, opens it up, and "bookmarks" outta there right before he gets beam-maged to death. Follow with a panel of Stunt praising the Dominus (How did you do that?). Dominic explains that he's "been worried" something like this would happen for a while now (or that he totally saw it coming. 'Cause he's a seer. Totally.) Final panel: "I mean, after all *insert some grotesque pun here*.

A moment of danger and a solution that uses established elements? That sounds like consistent story telling. Never gonna happen.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Does that mean you dont like it? heh, was just coming up with a way that the forthcoming snoozefest could be at least standard cookie cutter levels of interesting, instead of a confusing stupid muddle like it will end up being anyways.

Nothing wrong with it per se... But the fact remains that you just wrote fanfiction for Dominic Deegan

[rocketpony]

The thing that just burns me is that we have mooks.
We have mooks that Dominic can fight, that can menace the cast, that can just fly around doing Evil.
We have them.

The cattleblasters.

Like, in one fell swoop, using the cattleblasters instead of Masutel in the desert would have a) re-established that the cattleblasters are people of consequence and not the blaringly useless fools that the art museum arc depicted, and b) left the archmage as more of an enigma than "goon who just collapses ceilings on people who can melt into floors".
Miranda could appeal to the archmagi for help against the cattleblasters and get the same brush-off as before - "Oh, they're not so much when they're each by themselves, so sending a circle archmage to deal with them is a pitiful waste of resources." They can still be on DJ's side, whatever, but let them keep their gravity as vast and unknowable creatures, instead of turning these supposed champions of the cosmos into whimpering dogs.

[Voice of Reason]

A moment of danger and a solution that uses established elements? That sounds like consistent story telling. Never gonna happen.

I can dream!

[Traab]

The thing that just burns me is that we have mooks.
We have mooks that Dominic can fight, that can menace the cast, that can just fly around doing Evil.
We have them.

The cattleblasters.

Like, in one fell swoop, using the cattleblasters instead of Masutel in the desert would have a) re-established that the cattleblasters are people of consequence and not the blaringly useless fools that the art museum arc depicted, and b) left the archmage as more of an enigma than "goon who just collapses ceilings on people who can melt into floors".
Miranda could appeal to the archmagi for help against the cattleblasters and get the same brush-off as before - "Oh, they're not so much when they're each by themselves, so sending a circle archmage to deal with them is a pitiful waste of resources." They can still be on DJ's side, whatever, but let them keep their gravity as vast and unknowable creatures, instead of turning these supposed champions of the cosmos into whimpering dogs.

The problem is, the cattleblasters have already been shown to be either innocent victims, or mutated mind controlled monsters on the level of danger as the puttys were to the power rangers. Wasnt luna fighting off three of them at once while carrying an injured cattleblaster?

Also, the reality for dom is, he is almost worthless in any fight that doesnt take place in the mental planes. His only non mental magic is smoke and mirrors basically. Like luna and her illusionary fireball spell back at the start. So even the mooks are too much for him unless he can hang back in the crowd of his friends and come up with a puppetmaster solution that uses their abilities to win the fight. That being said, I expect dom to convince stunt to stab mantis mage for him.

[rocketpony]

The problem is, the cattleblasters have already been shown to be either innocent victims, or mutated mind controlled monsters on the level of danger as the puttys were to the power rangers. Wasnt luna fighting off three of them at once while carrying an injured cattleblaster?

The fight with the last archmage we saw required almost literally no input from the heroes. The archmage showed up, and showed himself the door. Nimmel's involvement was almost an afterthought.
My point is, what we're getting in the narrative right now? is mooks. Mooks are attacking the cast. We already had mooks. We didn't need to enmooken more characters, or introduce more mooks. We had mooks.

[Trazoi]

I think Mookie thinks he's already solved the dangling plot thread of the cattleblaster in the art gallery arc. Now he's cleaning up the archmages so he can wrap up the plot.

We're very almost up to ten year mark for the comic, where Mookie has said he'll announce his future plans for what he'll be doing after he ends Dominic Deegan. I suspect his plan is to finish DD at the end of the year so he can start anew in 2013, but we'll see. The way Mookie writes pacing, Dominic could storm through TIM, the King and the Beast in a month if Mookie wanted to.

[Doompuppy]

Future Link
Sneaky Gate

I guess it was naive of us to expect tension to last the entire week, for once...

[WyvernLord]

This is stupid. 2nd circle archmage. From what I thought he was supposed to be like the second most powerful being in the multiverse. He got killed by someone Dominic knocks around nearly at will. Not very surprising though.

[random11]

Future Link
Sneaky Gate

I guess it was naive of us to expect tension to last the entire week, for once...

He'll probably get up again tomorrow, just in time for the weekly temporary cliffhanger.

Still, a knife wound?
It's like Mookie read all our guesses, and decided to show us what a REAL anticlimactic moment looks like.

This is stupid. 2nd circle archmage. From what I thought he was supposed to be like the second most powerful being in the multiverse. He got killed by someone Dominic knocks around nearly at will. Not very surprising though.

Dominic beat Stunt easily as an enemy.
But now, that Stunt joined Dominic, he gets a +5 bonus (plot damage) to his knife, and a deus ex machina feat he can use once per arc.

[Friv]

That being said, I expect dom to convince stunt to stab mantis mage for him.

*ding ding ding* We have a winner! Tell him what he won, Johnny.

"You have won... tears! Tears and sorrow, and the understanding that we have all wasted our lives!"

Wow! Congratulations!


Seriously, though, ugh.

Also, my suspicion on the Miranda thing is that the archmages ambushed her as a set, mind-whammied her the way that they've been controlled, and then scattered to hit everyone else at once like idiots. Miranda will then appear under mind-control, but Deeganism will save her perfectly. The question of whether that means the main cast just brutally murdered the archmages they could have saved will never be addressed.

[Ganurath]

The mighty archmage
Stabbed to death in hubris
With Occam's Razor

Anticlimatic, perhaps. However, I for one found it hilarious, and am comforted by the knowledge that savvy and initiative can beat brute force in the Deeganverse.

[Glass Mouse]

Gotta admit... I giggled.

[busterswd]

Hm. Maybe the king's plan is to get the archmages all isolated and killed? We find Rillian survived somehow and ate the Manta Ray, Momma Deegan easily kills the lone archmage waiting for her, Snert pulls Nimmel Sue where he needs to be to murder the bacteria, and Stunt stabs the bug.

...

...

I got nothing. It's like he hates the possibility of anything slightly dramatic going to befall his characters.


Oh, and for the record, if he had played the earlier scenes differently, like actual fights with tension, suspense, and what not, this could have been hilarious. It's not bad, but he's frittering away what are supposedly beings powerful beyond anyone's comprehension as bad plot devices or jokes.

[Trazoi]

Writing Memorable Heroes and Villains in Action.

Anticlimatic, perhaps. However, I for one found it hilarious, and am comforted by the knowledge that savvy and initiative can beat brute force in the Deeganverse.

It's the sort of situation that would have been a funny anticlimax if the prior expections of this comic hadn't all prepared us for Mantis Mage to go down like a punk like every single other villain in recent DD history. Really, despite whatever people were joking about yesterday everyone knew it was either going to be this or Momigan warping in to save the day.

Seriously Mookie, write a competent villain in your story for goodness sake, sheesh:

"Any story where you have good guys versus bad guys can only be as smart as the intelligence of your baddest guy." - Bruce Willis on Die Hard.

Edit: Also the delivery of the "joke" is all off. I know this is partly YMMV, but Dominic should have been scared out of his mind, while Stunt was startled but then composed: "Meh, I've seen bigger in the Wild Edge". They shouldn't both be mildly scared at a murderous archmage stick insect.

Also Mantis Mage isn't dead yet, revealed due to Mookie writing the worst newsposts in webcomics.

[M84]

The weird thing is that a knife to the face isn't normally that fatal to an insect. Some like roaches can survive a while after being decapitated -- they only die because they starve.

It would be creepy if bug-mage suddenly rose up behind them after they assume he bit the dust.

[T-O-E]

I just stared at my monitor for like a minute. I can't believe he did that. He's like some kind of tension assassin. Tension executioner? Tension serial killer?

If Mantismage comes back from the dead, that'd be even worse. Somehow.

Haha we have no credible villains at all. Hardy har har.

The cattleblasters.

Like, in one fell swoop, using the cattleblasters instead of Masutel in the desert would have a) re-established that the cattleblasters are people of consequence and not the blaringly useless fools that the art museum arc depicted,

They would have still failed to see Stunt and woman. Incompetency either way!

[Trazoi]

It made some sense to send in an archmage against Rilian, because if it was just cattleblaster mooks we would be wondering why Rilian was worried. The problem was Stunt and woman did absolutely nothing to sneak past GiantSpaceRay Mage and the story cut right there when it finally got to the chance for interesting tense action.

Now Mookie's throwing all the archmages at the story one by one, and they aren't doing anything except being big monsters. It's so stupid. Snowsong was a better mage antagonist than this, and she was a junior member of the Chosen. I don't know how Mookie got to be so bad at villains, even by his earlier standards.

[random11]

Gotta admit... I giggled.

Could be funny if the image of the dead arch-magi didn't already establish that it was supposed to be hard to kill someone like this.

Looking back, you can add a dialog like
"My god! who could have killed Muray?"
"I don't know, but it seems like someone poked him with a sharp object".

Oh well, at least time easily beating a villain was intentional.

[Bobikus]

Yeah this could work as a cute anticlimax if the other mages were horrible threatening villains that the team barely survived encountering. Just doesn't work when he's just another in a line of nonthreatening villains.

[rocketpony]

Sorry guys, my money's on this being a way to get Stunt's knife out of the picture so when the mage wakes up on Friday, it'll be OH NO WHAT'LL WE DO because the guy who was a murderer in a kingdom of wizards has no idea how to murder a wizard, and Dominic has brittle bones so y'know he won't be able to do too much.
That has to be the case, right? Friday is imminent, and the alternative cliffhanger is that we cut to Miranda IN DANGER which will just have no credibility if today's being played straight.

[elros]

Mookie has reached such a low that I can't even snark about it. He can't create, let alone maintain, tension at all. His attempt at "tee-hee" humor is just stupid and ill-paced. No matter what faults Mookie had, I respected him for reliably updating his comic and for having some decent (if poorly executed) ideas. But this... I can't even believe it.

Mookie is trying for something that was funny in "Raiders of the Lost Arc" when Indiana Jones was fighting a lot of enemies, and then used his gun to shoot a guy with a big sword. Why was that funny? Because Indiana just fought a lot of guys, he was tired, and he had a big gun! The other guy was just waving a sword around, so when Indy fired the gun, everyone laughed because it made sense. OF COURSE you would shoot the guy. He was dumb enough to bring a sword to a gun fight!
This scene, however, lacked any tension. Look at Dominic and Stunt- neither one showed any emotion at all. There are like "ho-hum, I guess an arch-mage is in front of us. I guess we should pay it some attention." How am I supposed to care if the main characters don't?

knowledge that savvy and initiative can beat brute force in the Deeganverse.

With all due respect, I don't see that at all. How is throwing a knife savvy? All it proves is that Mookie has dumbed down the arch-mages so that they are boring and ineffective. And that everyone close to the Deegans will never be in any real danger.

Snowsong was a better mage antagonist than this, and she was a junior member of the Chosen. I don't know how Mookie got to be so bad at villains, even by his earlier standards.

It is another example of how much worse DD has become overall.

[MReav]

Guys, why are you complaining?

It's an illusion! It's got to be. After so many years of the heroes pulling the "killed good guy turned out to be an illusion", we can finally have the villain pull that trick. Plus, it'll be a great setup for the MANDATORY FRIDAY CLIFFHANGER!!! (TM)

An archmage wouldn't jump into a potentially dangerous situation with zero protective spells, right? Right? *Pleading Eyes*

[Mr. McGician]

You know what? All of Mookie's jokes and plot twists are just excuses to avoid tension. Good writers use these things to create tension; Mookie uses them for the exact opposite purpose. And Mookie has done this enough that it's not clever anymore.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I laughed. I really did.

However, I am still expecting the archmage to get back up again. The other dead one at least got a week of strips to his name, and again, he's not exactly human. This sounds like a perfect excuse for him to shed his carapace and go full ROCK ON METAL BOSS FORM.

[random11]

Guys, why are you complaining?

It's an illusion! It's got to be. After so many years of the heroes pulling the "killed good guy turned out to be an illusion", we can finally have the villain pull that trick. Plus, it'll be a great setup for the MANDATORY FRIDAY CLIFFHANGER!!! (TM)

An archmage wouldn't jump into a potentially dangerous situation with zero protective spells, right? Right? *Pleading Eyes*

Just like the hero wouldn't just stay home without any protective spells when he knows he is the target of both a beast from another dimension and a king who is also a great magi?

But yes, I agree that the grasshopper will somehow rise again for Friday.

[Myrdhale]

His Newspost pretty much explains it all. He saw something he thought was funny in another comic, so he copies it without understanding why it was funny.

I bet in that other comic it was never directly established that the eldritch monster was immune to bullets, Mookie just assumed that's the case because it's the cliché. This was probably the first time a gun was used against the monster, and it was shown to be somewhat effective instead of what the protagonists expected. The monster then chose to run, not fall down dead, and would then on learn to be cautious about the protagonist's weapons, adding a new level of threat to dealing with it as it learns how to deal with you.

This is not the first time a knife has been used on people in this comic. This is the first time a stab wound has incapacitated someone instantaneously. This comes after the other archmage was completely thwarted by himself instead of any active action by the protagonisnts, and the first one we encountered was somehow tricked into not looking at the 2 people walking alone in the desert away from the ruins he was investigating for a treasure.

Mookie has no idea where he wants this to go and is just throwing ideas wildly at the canvas, hoping something will stick.

Edit: I think what's most annoying is that the Archmages aren't talking or acting in any sort of tactical way. They are just appearing, charging up spirit bombs or Kamehamehas, and getting trounced when they didn't charge up enough. This is completely out of character for how intelligent they were estrablished to be. It's like only Deegans can think in this comic.

I laughed. I really did.

However, I am still expecting the archmage to get back up again. The other dead one at least got a week of strips to his name, and again, he's not exactly human. This sounds like a perfect excuse for him to shed his carapace and go full ROCK ON METAL BOSS FORM.

I laughed, but not for the reason Mookie wanted me to.