Guys, remember the part where we talked about this being close to MT territory? This is going to become relevant now. No, not in the way you guys imagine since this comic avoids conflict like the plague, but it is evidence of how stupid these characters are. How did Kargo and Ferah survive for so long close to MT territory can only be explained because the villains are as incompetent as the heroes.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/48
The moment Roamer is deep in the forest he howls to call for his family, and I’m still wondering why Rovhanion decided to scream his name instead of doing exactly that. No, do not tell me it happened off-screen. If it wasn’t in the comic, it did not happen.
Next panel is actually pretty nice, not only visually which actually shows a very nice perspective, but also because of the yellow marked wolfish dog we see. I know it’s a male because later on we’ll see how females are treated in the tribe, and we also know this is a Meteor dog because we’ve already been introduced to them. We still don’t know about them but we’ve been hinted that they’re possibly dangerous. The fact that this dog is listening at the howl, which is nicely presented through a good looking sound effect, is a rather decent detail. It could mean danger for our hero or even for his whole pack. They’re few, unarmed and tired while this dog seems to be carrying leather bracers. As a way to present a potential threat it is actually well done.
Next panels shows the rest of the group laying down and, to be honest, that’s an ugly looking panel. In other panels the author has managed to blend in the overuse of brushes, but those bushes stand out like a sore thumb. Also, I’m not sure why not actually extend the scene to actually show us the moment when the pack hears his howl and respond and rush to meet him. Last page we finished our analysis talking about how this author liked to rush things to get to the point where he wants to be. This is yet another example. We’re missing the whole emotional potential of Rovhanion, the inexperienced leader who has lost a member from his pack, regaining hope the moment he hears Roamer. We’re missing on the reactions of the different members of his family, on how each of them feels and reacts upon reuniting again with him. This could be some nice exposition of how these people, who are family, feel about each other. Yet this is all pushed aside because what the comic wants to focus on is Kargo, Ferah and Roamer. There was more emotion in the goodbyes between three complete strangers than there is in the whole family reuniting. Roamer leaving the fugitives’ camp took a whole page. Roamer reuniting with his family didn’t even deserve a panel.
Lets continue. Rovhanion is surprised by the fact Roamer has been gone for two days only to return with just a scratch. Roamer should have gotten more than just a scratch from being knocked on the head with a stone. One of my dogs once slammed her head against a glass door trying to go out and she got a lump. Ronja then says this;
“It’s not the first time.”
I am Roamer and I like to roam. Really, what do you mean it is not the first time? It’s not the first time he falls down a pit and spends two days lost? Being lost for days is usually not someone’s choice, which is what ultimately happened to Roamer. Sure, he chose to follow Kargo instead of looking for his family straight away, but falling down a pit was not something he did on purpose. I’m guessing Ronja is talking about Roamers supposed tendency to roam, of which we’ve seen nothing. These are, yet again, the kind of things you have to actually show in a book. If Kainan, his parents, or even Jahla and Rovhanion had actually said something along the lines of; “don’t you go roaming, Roamer. We don’t know this world and we have to stick together.” it would have given us an idea about his tendencies to roam. Also, if instead of lazying about daydreaming about a journey we actually saw Ronja looking for Roamer who was exploring the surroundings of their territory, and mentioned something about him always lost in his own world, exploring by himself, and how someday that will have consequences for him, we would have been shown what this character liked. You can’t just craft a character with a certain personality and never show it unless it suits the plot. That’s not how storytelling works. Ronja is saying Roamer likes to roam, and I don’t believe her because we’ve never seen it, same as I don’t believe Kargo and Ferah being mistrusting.
Zilas obviously wonders how Roamer has survived through the night to which Roamer answers that he took shelter inside an old den. Ronja then says they never saw anything like that back at the territory to which I’m wondering if she’s stupid, since she was the one talking about the screeches they heard at night and said they possibly belonging to large winged predators. This would have been a good moment for her to actually say she was right about something strange lurking in the forest, but nope. We can’t have Ronja actually be right at all. She was to act as if she had completely forgotten she had been the one to point out the creatures’ existence barely three days ago to make the conversation flow in the direction the author wants it to.
Jahla says the following;
“Father must have placed a shield around that area to keep us safe.”
This was nice. The fact she’s using “must” shows that she’s speculating instead of pointing out stuff as if they were absolute truth. Jahla has some experience with shields. She’s seen Father use them back in Asmundr to keep his father, Ranulfr, captive while Lifa and her pups made a run for it. So this is actually reasonable explanation. It also means Father was aware of the ghouls existence or any other type of danger, because back in Asmundr he never gave much of a shit about the dogs to place a shield around their territory, and it’s not like Earth wasn’t lurking with dangerous spirits and other sorts of beasts. If he went as far as to place a shield around the dogs’ territory in Aedra it was because he was aware there was some sort of threat they couldn’t tackle by themselves. That also brings the question of why Father didn’t tell them about the shield and about the dangers lurking outside, so while Jahla seems sensible in her deductions, I’m left wondering if this is yet again another afterthought because it feels like it.
Rovhanion says they should go home and Zilas makes a joke about leaving before Roamer disappears again, all while looking grouchy. Zilas is such a compelling and interesting character. Roamer looks back with a sad looking expression and I’m yet again left wondering why he cares so much for these people. They haven’t been nice to him. Sure, they were somewhat nice at times, but it’s not like he had a welcoming stay back at their camp. Kargo repeatedly told him to fuck off when they first met, then he knocked him out cold, tied him to a rock, starved him for a full day without even giving him water and threatened him repeatedly. Why is he sad that he’s leaving? Why does he even care at all? Do not say anything about Stockholm Syndrome because that’s not what the author was going for.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/49
We tune back to our favorite fugitives. Kargo and Ferah are just chilling out in the sun because that’s the sort of thing someone afraid of being backstabbed does. Both look as if they’ve lost their pet and Ferah asks Kargo is he’s thinking about him too. Really, what is wrong with you people? Roamer is possibly the most annoying, petulant, arrogant asshole and you’ve only known him for a day in which you’ve kept him tied to a boulder. Why do you care about him at all? Ferah even goes as far as to mention they hadn’t smiled like that since they were pups, to which I wonder what the fuck she’s talking about. They really haven’t interacted with him at all and the only moments I’ve seen them smile they were joking about eating him, something Roamer wasn’t very happy about. If that’s your idea of friendship and happiness I want you far away, Ferah.
This is yet again of the comic telling but now showing us stuff. It’s plot convenient that they both feel happy about Roamer being there, but what we’ve seen is them both being worried to the bone because they didn’t want to kill him but were too afraid to let him go. That’s the kind of stressful situation you want gone, not a moment of happiness in an otherwise miserable existence. It’s also an example of the type of stuff you should avoid in your story. If you want to get characters together, make sure you do it in a way that makes sense. Otherwise scratch it and start again until you get something that’s sound and logical. Right now the author is forcing the situation because he wants to bring them together, but it doesn’t feel genuine nor logical.
Kargo refuses to answer and I guess I’m supposed to interpret his expression as proof that he’s feeling miserable, but it looks to me as if he’s yet again out of fucks to give. Kargo then says he will be the one hunting this time. The reason why wolves live in packs is, among other things, because they hunt in packs. Hunting in packs means they can work out strategies to take down faster prey and it also means they have the combined strength to tackle large, dangerous prey like boar, deer and bison. Why would Kargo reject such an obvious advantage that is hunting with the pack while Ferah does nothing but lazy around? I don’t get it, and it’s not even plot convenient because we will see there was no reason for Ferah not to be there at all.
Also, Kargo is yet again going to act behind her back. Kargo is such a nice guy who takes Ferah’s opinion into account all the time, keeping her informed about things that will affect her too and asking her opinion before actually acting. It’s nice to see Kargo thinks about Ferah as an equal. You know what this also reminds me to? Children and pets. Do you take your dog’s or your toddler’s opinion into account when buying a house or moving to a different country? I didn’t think so. Ferah, this adult woman, is considered by Kargo to be a toddler or a pet. He treats her well, but doesn’t seem to think of her in terms of an adult person, but as if she was a little child with no criteria.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/50/
The first panel actually looks nice. I like the soft colors and the perspective of both dogs running towards us. I’m unsure whether the long shadow means that it’s already afternoon, which could be, but I like the detail of it. I know the author is using brushes for the trees in the background but it doesn’t look bad or out of place like that other panel we saw in the previous page. The first character we see is Keirr who seems happy that his brother is back. They share a genuine, heartwarming welcome, something that should be expected between brothers even when they’ve been separated for two days. Roamer was lost for two days in a world they knew nothing about and which was plagued by ghouls. He could have died for all they knew, and yet when he finally finds his family it doesn’t deserve a single panel. Throughout the comic it’s feeling more and more as if Roamer didn’t belong to the Asmundr pack at all. It makes me wonder why the author didn’t make this story independent from the first, seeing how the original characters are really irrelevant and the focus is in a character that appeared once at the very end of the comic. The old characters we knew and loved get pushed aside in favor of Roamer.
Keirr wonders why they’re back so soon and Zilas the Grumpy Cat says this world is nothing to be excited about. Such a nice character, that Zilas. Keirr obviously wonders what happened and Rovhanion says they should get everyone. This part, while it is obviously plot convenient yet again, at least makes enough sense. They’ve encountered a threat they didn’t know existed. They don’t know how to defend themselves from the ghouls. It makes sense to go back, think about their options and get better prepared for a following expedition, which is something Jahla actually mentions later on. It’s good, it makes sense in the context of the story and it focuses the plot towards a goal, even if it is a short term goal. If we play with the pack’s desperation to get food we could get an awesome survival horror story.
That’s exciting, but that’s not going to happen. The expedition already served its purpose which was to bring Kargo and Roamer together. Now there is just no excuse for the rest of the Asmundr pack to move out of their territory. So what about the whole eating mice, needing to know this world? Nothing. The comic will just let it fade and it will never, ever be brought up again. Everything that we have read for the last 44 pages served one purpose and one only. To bring Kargo and Roamer together. That’s it. The whole potential this story had is wasted, and from now on this will not be a survival horror story. This is now becoming Asmundr 2.0, and next stop is Rhaas pack.
As the group moves we see Kargo spying on Roamer because stalking is so romantic, guys. Really, what is wrong with this people? There was nothing in Kargo’s personality so far that made him look like the creepy stalker kind. Also this world is supposed to be dangerous, hostile. Food is scarce and beasts lurk in the woods. Why is Kargo, this hardened survivor, suddenly following Roamer around? This is the author yet again rushing to get to what he considers the interesting parts, which in my opinion are not very interesting at all. These two have the chemistry of oil and water, and their relationship is so rushed and underdeveloped I can’t just take it seriously. Roamer has been gone for a few hours and Kargo is already looking for him because he misses him so much.
You guys know how this would have actually worked better? If the author had taken his time to actually develop their relationship, and I’m not talking about romantically. I’m talking about their friendship. Roamer, being the hypothetical roamer he is, could have been venturing out of pack territory and he could have had more accidental encounters with Kargo. They could have gotten in trouble together, slowly getting to know each other, to trust each other while, at the same time, showing us this hostile world and also Roamer’s personality.
Actually, that white Meteor dog that had heard Roamer’s howl, and who actually appears just in time for Kargo to save our hero’s white butt without him even noticing, would have presented one of many opportunities for the two of them to fight together as a way to bond. Instead, remember when we talked about the threat potential this dog represented for the group? It’s wasted right here, only two pages later. The fact that this meteor dog followed the pack after he heard Roamer has zero impact for the story because he’s dead four pages after. If a bear had suddenly popped out of the woods and smashed him against a tree it would have been equally meaningless.
On a last note before we move to the cringeworthy next page, I’m unsure whether this is pack territory or not. Keirr might have just been patrolling the border, the area right outside of the shield, but since it is invisible which kind of negates its utility if the dogs don’t know where the frontier is, I’m unsure whether we’re already in or out of pack territory. I still have a feeling the shield was an afterthought, and the way it works which varies as much as the ghouls is evidence of that. I don’t think the ghouls were afterthoughts, but they were never developed enough and were forgotten and left aside in favor of what we ultimately get.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/51/
The white dog tries to escape and Kargo follows. For a running dog, that’s some weird looking and very static pose. I’m not really sure what happens. We see Kargo sort of walking in panel three and the white dog suddenly attacks hitting him on his chainmail pauldron. I’m going to stop here for a second because, anyways, the fight is a sleep inducing bore. I’ve suspended my disbelief for enough time with this dogs. In Asmundr we actually learn that the dogs never created their knives, but these were given to them by the Skygods themselves when they gave wolves intelligence. Why these super intelligent beings didn’t give their dogs kevlar vests and bolter guns I’ll never know. Also, hominids were building tools long before they had reached the intelligence of modern humans, so intelligence is not a prerequisite of handling and even building tools.
Lets go back to chainmail and iron knives. This is the same ancient alien bullshit some people believe. That super intelligent creatures from outer space came to Earth and spent their time piling up stones and using humans who used primitive tools as slaves. We, modern civilizations, leave so much waste we’re soon going to drown in our own trash, but these ancient aliens were top efficient leaving behind absolutely no evidence of their existence. These guys are the same. They are highly intelligent and yet they give their dogs iron age tools, and I’m supposed to believe this is simply rational. Sorry, I’m not buying it. If you want me to believe your characters are intelligent, you need to have them actually act intelligently. When you want to do something simply because you think it’s so cool and then you go out of your way making the most contrived explanation to try to cover up for the fact that you never really thought this out, that’s going to create an Idiot Plot or a plothole.
Lets continue talking about the knives. It is impossible these knives, which were given to wild wolves at the same time as intelligence, because high cognitive processes can’t possibly evolve by themselves, would not have survived the passage of time. Even if you take good care of the blade it eventually deteriorates. A kitchen knife, a good one, barely lasts a year without going blunt from usage alone. We haven’t seen this dogs take care of their knives ever. Still, this was something I tried not to think about too much. We’ve also seen them wearing leathers, which should be impossible for them because tanning leather is not an easy process and requires several chemicals and the usage of tools. Still I tried not to think about this.
Dogs also should not be able to tie knots, or braid rope at all, or use said knives, and the more human things these dogs did the harder it was for me to maintain my suspension of disbelief. This was the point where I said “enough”. A chainmail is asking me to suspend my disbelief beyond the point where I’m able to, and you can’t just tell me to shut up because it was a gift of the gods. That’s a cheap and lazy way to explain why dogs are using tools they shouldn’t be able to craft to begin with.
Why didn’t this author simply create humans? It’s obvious he wants to tell a human story with human characters. These dogs don’t behave like dogs at all. They don’t use their noses, they don’t have heat periods and mate for pleasure, they barely howl at all, they don’t bark, they don’t fight like dogs, nor hunt like dogs. They are all communication impaired as we never see them displaying game cues, submission, distress signs, joy and happiness signs, etc. The only doglike behavior I’ve seen is aggression and not always. I have werewolf characters with a more wolf like behavior than these true, pure dogs have a doglike behavior. Some of the problems the comic has, starting with how expressionless these characters are and how often they seem to forget they’re dogs, would have easily been solved were these characters human to begin with.
I mean, just look at these two morons fighting. The white dog is throwing some sort of strange looking blade with his mouth. How many times have you seen a dog accurately throwing something with its mouth? I’ve seen dogs throw stuff to the air, but they’re about as accurate as the weather forecast, unless you believe accidentally hitting a china vase and shattering it in tiny pieces is being accurate. Why don’t they just engage with their fangs like dogs actually do? Humans use weapons aside from their fists because our evolutionary advantage since the Homo habilis has been building and handling tools. We don’t have fangs or claws. Species that don’t use tools are not necessarily more stupid than us. They just never needed to use tools because their body was good enough to survive. Evolution is not a path towards intelligence and tool handling, like we like to believe because it makes us feel so special thinking we’re at the top of evolution. Evolution means survival of the fittest, and we’re kind of lousy swimming when compared to a dolphin which is practically a missile with echolocation.
Dogs and wolves have fangs, and I would pay to have the strength these animals have in their mouths. They can tear through raw meat, pulverize bone to get to the marrow. They can break flesh as if it was butter. Why would they engage a fight with such inefficient methods when their bodies naturally give them all the weapons they need?
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/52/
Lets continue talking about the fight. Kargo manages to get a hold of the string and these two start a game of tug o’war. I’m not even sure what’s going on. This is all so confusing. Kargo seems to throw his weight back, and I’m unsure why he hasn’t fallen flat or lost balance. He manages to take the other dog’s weapon and, suddenly, a knife magically appear in his mouth. The white dog is trying to get a knife on his own when Kargo’s weapon slices his face. Leaving aside that this should not have been possible, from the perspective we have the blade couldn’t have possibly sliced the dog’s face like it did. This is breaking the 180 rule and is making the whole scene look confusing. We barely know what’s going on at all.
Another knife appears in Kargo’s mouth. From the way the panel is done it seems as if the knife was a boomerang that had returned to him somehow. I’m also not sure how many knives Kargo was carrying since it looked like he only had one, and now he has a second knife which seems like it’s the same one he has already thrown. Next panel shows Kargo teleporting next to the white dog and stabbing him in the throat, because the other dog was blinded by a little cut and did nothing to try to defend himself. I’m guessing he was surprised at Kargo’s supernatural abilities because there is no other way to explain this. Not only were there about five meters of distance between them, but for those who have ever had to put a dog through surgery, you know how careful you have to be because they don’t seem aware of the wound at all. The white dog should have been impaired or distracted by such a minor cut.
This was such a confusing and boring fight. There was not a single moment of tension. Not a single scene where I feared for Kargo’s life at all. It looked like a Pokemon fight. White Dog used Blade Throw. It wasn’t very effective. Kargo uses Tug o’War. White Dog is disarmed. Kargo uses Blade Throw. It hits dealing 34 HP. White Dog is Stunned. Kargo uses Blade to the Throat. It was very effective. White Dog faints.
I know fights are about one of the hardest things to manage in storytelling. Making a compelling, interesting and tense fight requires practice. I’ve done thousands of pages of practice alone and I’m still not very comfortable writing fights. Watching action sequences in movies and, even more important, reading well done, interesting fights in books like the ones we can find in R.A. Salvatore’s The Dark Elf books is very important to getting an idea of how to create a fight scene. Reading on the techniques of how to create a fight is also fundamental, because being a writer, like any other skill, means spending hours upon hours doing research on how to improve. Being a comic writer I would tell the author to check up on Marvel or DC. They have some pretty intense fights with dynamic panels and perspectives. One of the reason these fights are so boring is because the panels are usually in a single perspective. That doesn’t help at all.
We’re going to stop here for now.
Leyendo Entre Lineas 
2 comentarios en “Home Pages 42-46”