By the end of last entry we had talked about a red herring that made no sense and a Chekhov’s Gun not being fired. We also got a bit of backstory about why Kargo had to kill his own brother which was there to explain the reasons why he lost control and repeatedly stabbed Savas. Do you know what he didn’t get? Explanation about the Meteor Tribe. Not only didn’t we get the promised explanation, but Kargo will not be the one to deliver that information, because Kargo don’t speak. Kargo kills.
Instead of getting our explanation about the Meteor tribe, which would have actually been more logical at stating the reasons why Kargo lost control, we got a pointless story about his brother. Here is the thing. It does not explain nor justify what Kargo did. Kargo lost control like a madman and kept hitting Savas once he was already dead, which is the kind of warning sign that should make anyone consider either getting a psychiatrist for him or getting as far away from him as possible. The situation with Ralek was a you or me situation where both Ferah’s and his life were at stake. The situation with Savas was something completely different considering Ferah was nowhere near them and Savas was boasting like an idiot, knowing this dog had caused havoc back in the tribe and knowing he was alone against him and Roamer. The fact Kargo lost control and became so aggressive is very scary, and while I’m of the opinion rapists don’t deserve any sort of clemency, it does not justify that sort of unchained violence.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/79/
As the page start we see Kargo waking up. It seems like he has been sleeping on the open with only a torch to keep him company. As it happened with Roamer, that torch had been out for long by the time Kargo woke up. I don’t know what time it is. From the lighting I’m guessing it’s rather early and yet the torch is not even smoking at all. Considering the ghouls are supposed to be a real threat, that’s the kind of thing you don’t want to screw up or you will be left with your ass naked in front of the creatures.
Kargo sees pawprints coming out of the hut. I don’t know how the snow works in this comic. Unless it has been snowing throughout the night, which it hasn’t since Kargo’s body is not covered in it, the snow around the hut should have been flattened by the constant coming and going of the dogs. All you have to do is go to a ski resort and look at the snow around transited areas. The snow is flattened, dirty and frozen in some places. Unless fresh snow covers it, there is now way Kargo should have been able to see pawprints retreating from the hut.
I would also like to point out that dogs, while they can sleep deeply, are usually alert enough that anyone walking past them should make enough noise to wake them up. Kargo is not a pet. Kargo is a wild, highly stressed dog with a lot of issues caused by the abuse he received while at the Meteor Tribe. No way Roamer should have been able to sneak past him without him realizing but, then, that’s the same thing we said about Roamer sneaking up on him from behind. Actually, scratch that. Even Savas managed to sneak up on him. These are some of the most oblivious people ever and I’m still wondering myself how come they’ve managed to survive for so long without being captured. They couldn’t perceive an enemy sneaking up on them even if they were wearing Christmas bells around their necks.
Kargo looks into the tent and sees that Roamer is gone. His trail seems to lead away from the hut and Kargo looks sadly at it, thinking that Roamer is gone for good. This was actually well done. There is not a single word on the page and yet, the way it is handled is enough to help us read into Kargo’s emotions and thoughts.
The next panel shows Roamer running with something in his mouth. The place is snowy but there are some green plants, and it actually looks pretty nice to be honest. We see that what Roamer is carrying in his mouth is Ferah’s coat which is blood stained. At first I thought maybe Ferah had gotten blood on it when she killed that Meteor dog but I checked back and I didn’t see any blood on her coat in any of the following panels. This is the first time we actually see the blood so I’m not sure where it came from or what is it for. We will discover the next page that Roamer is leaving a false trail for the Meteor dogs to follow but I don’t get why soak the coat in blood. If this is prey blood the dogs are going to know it is, and they’re supposed to be after Ferah’s scent, not the blood of some hare. Why use blood at all? I don’t get it.
Before we continue, look at his right temple. Do you see it? Me neither. The wound is gone. It’s next day and the wound is gone, and no, no herbs or bark were applied to the wound as we never saw that. Ferah held some plant in her mouth and forgot about it the very next panel, where it had just disappeared. We never saw Roamer getting healed and there was plenty of time for that while they interacted in the tent. I’m not going to assume it happened off screen and, a few hours later, the wound is totally healed. I think the author simply forgot about it. Forgetting about wounds is not something strange, specially when you don’t write the thing on the very same day. This are fairly common mistakes that appear in a first draft but are usually corrected during the first revision. The fact that this kind of minor mistakes keep piling up makes me believe the author does not revise his work.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/80/
This page practically shows Roamer leaving the false trail. Nothing really relevant happens in this page but it’s actually quiet nice. The colors are a breath of fresh air after all that white and we actually get to see some really nice landscapes and a herd of large prey I’m sure the Asmundr pack would be very interested in. We also see a pair of meteor dogs walking by and I’m led to believe they’re actually following the trail although they seem kind of far from where Roamer has been leaving Ferah’s scent. I’m not going to nitpick that too much because, to be honest, I don’t care.
What I care about is, why now? Ferah and Kargo have been living in the same place for a long time. Kargo was two years old when he fought back and we know, from the bio, that he’s five. That means they’ve been staying close to the Meteor Tribe for three years. Ralek didn’t seem to have much of a problem to track them to their hideout, so how come Savas needed Kargo to take him to the hut? I already pointed out how that hut, with the torches and all, is like a beacon in the night. But still, these are dogs, and for once the author seems to remember it. Roamer is leaving a false scent trail to lure the Meteor dogs away from the tribe. When humans leave false scent trails it’s not to confuse humans, but to confuse the dogs that might come with the humans. How come these dogs are capable now of using their sense of smell but they’ve been unable to find them for three years? Ferah and Kargo haven’t stayed hidden in the hut. They’ve been walking all over the place. The Meteor dogs should have been able to study their patterns to place a trap for them.
It almost looks like they stopped caring at some point, which also doesn’t make sense. Ralek was sent to bring Ferah back. Kargo killed Ralek and the three other dogs. That was a month or so after Kargo escaped the tribe. Savas didn’t even know Ralek was dead and this all happened around three years ago. So what? Did the Meteor Tribe stopped receiving info from Ralek and simply shrugged it off? We’ve also seen that Kargo and Ferah kill Meteor dogs on sight, no questions asked. Again, why did the Meteor Tribe just let it happen without retaliation? I insist, these guys are not hidden in some secret fortress underground or anything. They don’t make a living inside tunnels like the Morlock. These guys have been living and moving in the open, killing Meteor dogs, and the Meteor tribe hasn’t given a shit about it.
Why is leaving a false trail so important all of a sudden? Why do we suddenly see two dogs following the trail? Why do they have to move? Because they killed Savas? Savas didn’t know where their hut was, and they didn’t seem to have to move so urgently when Ferah killed that shepherd guy. The bigger this comic gets the more the inconsistencies pile up. We have these two similar situations, one where Ferah kills and guy away from their territory and the other where Kargo does the same with Savas, yet they are handled differently according to the needs of the plot. We’ve already seen these guys don’t bother to hide their trails because Roamer had no problem in following Kargo, who was never seen trying to erase his prints or anything, so the Meteor tribe should have had no problem in following either of them to the hut once they left a corpse behind.
In one of the panels it shows Roamer peeing in a river. That would actually help to conceal his scent but, remember, these are dogs. While he has been leaving Ferah’s scent all over the place, so has he been leaving his own scent, so these Meteor dogs should be able to add two and two. They smell Ferah, but they smell this other guy who is leaving his pawprints all around the place. Well, obviously he’s leaving a false trail. False trails work with dogs because dogs are not very smart, to be honest. You tell a dog “follow this scent” and the dog follows, even if the smell of the single pair of footprints contradict the smell he’s supposed to be following. These dogs are supposed to have human like intelligence. The fact all of this is possible is because they’re a bunch of incompetent idiots and Roamer is the biggest of them because I still don’t understand why he didn’t tell the other two about his plan.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/81/
The sun is setting by the time Roamer makes it back to the hut, where a worried Kargo raises his head while Ferah tells him she knew he would be back. The effect would have been better if his ears were facing forward instead of bending slightly to the sides, since when a dog sees something he’s interested on their ears go straight and forward. Roamer, who is filthy and exhausted, collapses panting while Kargo approaches wondering where he has been. The moment he turns upside down we can see his pads are sore and bleedy looking. The first thing I want to say about this panel is that I don’t understand why Roamer is cut off. I’ve seen the author do this enough times and it looks as if he realized the three figures wouldn’t fit and didn’t try to resize or draw the whole panel again. There is no reason for half of Roamer to be cut off, specially part of the head.
Before we continue I want to talk a bit about the paws. Untrained pets like the ones we have at home will get sore paws and bleedy pads if we take them through a trail they’re not used to for long enoughw. Their pads are used to walking in soft ground like the floors at home, the street and soft, cut off grass. Placing one of these dogs through a harsh, forest trail and forcing them to walk long distances without training their pads first to harden up will get them hurt. However, Roamer is not a pet. He’s a wild dog who has been living in the wilderness all his life. Wolves can walk for more than thirty kilometers a day. Roamer might be a dog but he’s a wild dog. He really should have had not that much of a problem traveling long distances through harsh terrain. We’re supposed to believe this guy loves roaming and then he gets sore pads for traveling a few kilometers.
“I felt I had to do something about this Meteor tribe situation, so I did.”
Why did you think you had to do something about the Meteor Tribe? Why, out of all the options you could have chosen, you decided to leave a false trail? I’ve already pointed out that the tribe never found Kargo or Ferah. The only one who ever did was Ralek and that was years ago. Also, Roamer, you don’t know anything about these people. You should have talked to Kargo and Ferah and all three of you should have elaborated a plan to stay safe from the MT. Why do these people keep doing things without consulting the rest of the pack? And why does nobody call them off on that? Kargo releasing Roamer. Kargo bringing Roamer back. Roamer going for a stroll. Ferah doesn’t do any of the sort because she’s a passive, nonexistent character who seems to exist only to deliver information. What is wrong with you? I’ve gotten mad with my parents because they would tell me we were visiting family the very same morning we were leaving, and I had already made my plans. I was so angry at a certain point I talked with them and they actually stopped doing it. Why do these people tolerate this kind of behavior?
I’m guessing Roamer’s whole plan was to drive the search party away so Kargo and Ferah didn’t have to move, since the whole “we’re moving out” idea gets forgotten as soon as it got mentioned a few pages back. I’ve got a couple of complains about this. The first is the fact Roamer left his family because a pack that size was bound to settle in one place, and Roamer couldn’t handle that, so instead he chose to move with Kargo and Ferah to settle in at their miserable hut. Roamer being a roamer I would have expected he would be excited about being on the move, yet he went ahead and, without telling anyone about his plan, he left a false trail so they wouldn’t have to leave. This is my interpretation of the events, ok? I don’t know why Roamer left the false trail because it is never explained, but the fact they don’t move out after this makes me think this might be one of the reasons. So Roamer’s trait, the one that gives him his name? It’s kicked out of the story the moment it stopped being convenient. It was used to get him to leave his family and now that he’s where the author wants him he’s not a roamer any more.
My second complain about this whole thing is that, false trails are not left to bore the pursuers until they give up completely and go home. False trails give you a precious time to get the fuck out of there, to get the hounds away from your heels so you can escape. The moment they realize they’ve been following a false trail they’re going to go back on their steps until they get the good trail, and then they’re back to the chase again. If you stay at the same place they’re going to catch you.
Do you know what would have actually been a damn good idea? Going back home and getting Kainan and the rest of the pack to ally against the Meteor Tribe. That is something you could have done, because your family is still there, fourteen dogs strong without counting you and two felines. They are hardened warriors, they know how to fight and they’ve done it before. I’m not talking about a full headon assault to the heavily fortified tribe, but you could have gotten them to move to the hut and prepare a fortification of sorts to fight against the tribe. What are the Meteors going to do? Bring the whole tribe? Their numbers are more or less equal and the females are useless anyways, so they don’t count. That would have been a better idea than this whole false trail bullshit. And I did like the pages, they were very pretty, but the idea is stupid.
Ferah wonders where he’s led the trail and he says he stopped by a stream to which Ferah responds that he has walked all the way to Shadow Brook, which must be far away according to her words. I don’t know where that is and I honestly don’t give a shit about fantasy maps. If you’re unable to help me visualize your world through words alone, a map is not going to make things better. I will not be reading a book and turning to the first page to look for the Forest of Nightmares or the Spine of the World or the Swamps of Misery in an overcrowded, illogical map. What I’m wondering though is how she was able to know exactly where he had been because he arrived at a stream. We already saw this problem in the first pages, when Roamer was kept captive and he wasn’t given water. Where do these dogs drink? There should have been streams all over the place for them to survive, so Ferah shouldn’t have been able to know that he had been at Shadow Brook. If there is that single stream so far away, where are these people getting the water to drink? No, you can’t eat snow to hydrate yourself. That’s a terrible idea. Google it if you don’t believe me. You have to melt it and boil if before you even consider putting it in your mouth.
Roamer says he’s sorry that he ruined her coat and she laughs and says it is ok, as she’s more concerned about him. So Roamer asked Ferah to borrow her coat without telling her what he was going to do with it. After that he soaked it in blood and walked several kilometers rubbing it on rocks, ground, bushes and wherever he deemed appropriate. This whole process obviously leaves the coat in rags, and yet Ferah, who didn’t know what he was going to do with it, is ok with it. Again, why do these two keep doing things without telling her? Why is Ferah ok with practically every choice they make? If someone borrowed my coat and ruined it, I don’t care if it was to save a kitten, I’d be royally pissed. I think telling Ferah that her stuff was going to be destroyed would have actually been a nice thing to do.
I hate these assholes so much!
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/82/
Roamer goes into the hut and Kargo follows him inside. I didn’t get Ferah’s reaction from the previous page’s last panel so I didn’t bother analyzing it.
“Gratitude, I think is the word you’re looking for.”
The author believes people don’t like Gary Stu… excuse me, Roamer, because of his flaws. People don’t like Roamer because of things like this. This is such an arrogant response I want to slap that self sufficient smile off his face. Also, gratitude for what? You don’t even know if this was necessary because you decided to put a plan in motion without asking any of the dogs actually involved with the Meteor Tribe whether this was a good idea at all. For all you know you could have led them straight to the hut with the pawprints alone, which is something that could actually still happen the moment those dogs realize they’ve been following a false trail and walk back to the point where you started leaving Ferah’s scent. Just because you were walking through a sandy path it doesn’t mean your paws don’t leave a trail. Sandy trails are not made of concrete and if the terrain is humid your paws are going to leave a print. Even if the weather is dry enough your paw will leave a mark on the sand, and your scent will be all over the place. So, let me ask you again, Roamer. Gratitude for what?
Also, why are you even using that word? When have you heard Kargo use gratitude? I might be wrong but the only time I recall Kargo using that word was when he killed the white dog and looted his body. Roamer shouldn’t even know about this word. This is, yet again, the author knowing something and placing it in a character’s mouth without realizing the character can’t possibly know it. I keep insisting but these are the kind of issues that get corrected after a first revision. A book needs multiple revisions because, in each of them, you’ll be looking at different things, but the big ones are the first two revisions which is where inconsistencies and plot holes get addressed and corrected.
“You shouldn’t have gone alone.”
Kargo is right. He actually tells Roamer that he was being reckless as he doesn’t know anything about this world, specially since they haven’t told him anything yet, but still. Roamer doesn’t know what’s out there, and he answers like a spoiled brat with; “yeah, I could have died or gotten captured, I know.” meaning he was aware of the risks and still decided to go by himself without telling anyone where he was going. It’s not only that he could have encountered a dangerous predator. He could have gotten wounded or trapped, and Kargo would think he had gone back to his pack while his pack thinks he’s with Kargo and Ferah. By the time they realized he wasn’t with either Roamer would have been long dead. That’s one of the reasons you always have to tell people where you are, just in case something happens so they have time to rescue you before you starve to death, die of infection, freeze or bleed out. I’m aware this doesn’t always work, but what really doesn’t work is when you go out on your own and nobody knows where the fuck you’ve gone to.
“It would have been way too obvious if you came with me.”
Yeah, because the pawprints of a stranger and Ferah’s scent is not obvious at all, and yes, Roamer, you left pawprints. Stop thinking you didn’t, you smartass. Also, why would it have been obvious? So Kargo and Ferah moving south together is an obvious false trail? If something I’d find it odd that Ferah was walking alone with the newcomer while Kargo remained nowhere to be seen. They’ve always been together. Kargo is her knight in shining armor. Why would he leave her alone precisely now?
“There are better ways [of helping] than sprinting off on your own in a world you don’t know!”
I have to keep agreeing with Kargo. This was reckless and stupid, and there were easier, better ways of helping them than running off without telling anyone about his plan. For example, get your family to help you! The pack’s got the manpower, they’ve got weapons and they’ve got the skills. They’re underfed but that should be easily solved as soon as Kargo and Ferah tell them where to find prey, or even you. You saw a large herd of antelopes. Just tell them where to find them and get them to help you against these people.
This is one of many possible options but not the only one. The best thing Roamer can do, and has to do, is to talk with Kargo and Ferah and the three of them should plan out a strategy to stay safe from the Meteor Tribe, even if such strategy is something as simple as moving out. The whole false trail would have been a great option if, meanwhile, the rest of the group ran off in another direction, giving them precious hours to get as far from the area as possible. Obviously, this is something either Kargo or Ferah would have needed to do as they know the place, while the other one led Roamer away. Whatever they do, they should do it together. Playing the hero while your friends don’t know what you’re doing is really stupid.
Lets place an example. There is a videogame called Eve Online. It’s a space MMO open world sandbox where you can pretty much do whatever you want. One of the things you can do is form a fleet to go fight other players, and I’m not talking about orderly, 4Vs4 fights either. I’m talking you and your bunch of 10 idiots might encounter a huge fleet of 200 and get your ass kicked to Oblivion. Eve is the type of game where, if you play the hero without telling your fleet what you’re planning to do you’re going to teleport back home since the other player is pretty much going to blow your ship up, and your escape pod as well. I know because I’ve had this happen to me. I’ve hero tackled ships that were superior to mine thinking I could take them on and, by the time I realized I had screwed up big and called my fleet through TS they simply didn’t have time to come rescue me.
What Roamer did was very, very stupid. What if Kargo decided he was not going to let him go without a talk and ran after him? What if Ferah followed his scent instead of staying behind? They would have ruined the false trail, or they could have encountered that pair of Meteor dogs and gotten caught or killed. Or maybe Kargo rushed towards Asmundr territory and some Meteor dogs followed him right to Roamer’s family. A lot of things could have gone wrong simply because Roamer decided to put a plan to work without telling absolutely anyone. The fact not more things go wrong in this comic is not because the characters are intelligent and cunning, it’s because the author wants it that way, and that’s it. Characters keep doing stupid things and being awful people, and they never have to face the consequences.
Kargo asks Roamer if he’s staying with them and Roamer says that of course he is. What I liked about this page was the fact Kargo seemed genuinely concerned about Roamer. His anger is understandable as Roamer was, indeed, being reckless and stupid, and it helps show that it is all born out of his worry for the other dog. This is perhaps one of the few instances where we actually see Roamer being called off about his behavior, but, sadly, nothing is really learned and he doesn’t grow as a character. What I didn’t like about this whole scene was how Roamer, after learning a bit the Meteor Tribe, if at least to consider them possibly dangerous, didn’t run off back to his pack to warn them. Roamer just doesn’t care about his family at all.
http://home-comic.thecomicseries.com/comics/83/
The first panel shows Ferah eavesdropping because that’s something really nice to do. So, your friend wants some time alone with his love interest to explain things, and what do you do? Eavesdrop like a nosy dick. It fascinates me how unimportant Ferah is in general, and how little protagonism she actually has. Throughout the comic Ferah is mainly used for two things; deliver information and to fuel Kargo’s manpain and self righteous rage. Aside from that she barely seems to exist at all. She could be switched for a book and the result would have been exactly the same. I don’t mind that she’s pushed aside so Kargo and Roamer can have a little talk. It bothers me that this is something that happens constantly. These two do a lot of things alone, and the few times she’s actually with them she’s not really doing much more than looking pretty in the comic pages, and only because she has a really nice design. Why is she there at all? A writer has to either make the characters worth their time on screen, or to scratch them completely. I’ve had to scratch characters because they were more of a burden than what they offered the story. A write should never tremble when it means scratching useless things from a story, even if it means a whole character and character arch.
Inside the hut the conversation continues. In the previous page Roamer had asked for something to heal his sore pads and now Kargo completely ignores Roamer to talk about something totally unrelated. The author should really read this conversations aloud, preferably with another person, to realize how disjointed they are. These conversations keep jumping all over the place as if the author had decided he needed to talk about several points and tried to cram all of them into a couple of pages. I know writing natural conversations is hard, specially when you want the conversation to flow into a certain direction and it just refuses to do so. What works for me is, usually, to just follow the flow of the conversation, see where it leads. I can always change it later and try several ways to work on it until I manage something that sounds natural. Sometimes interesting ideas pop up from these exercises.
The conversation they’re having now is about Kargo killing Savas and the way Roamer looked at him. I’m not going to tell you. I’m going to show you.
“I don’t want you to ever cast me that look again.”
So, where you guys expecting Kargo to actually explain why he killed Savas? To actually talk about how Savas is a monster who spawned from a tribe of monster where females are systematically abused and males are placed through rough training to become brainwashed warriors? Have you tried to tell him it was an us or them situation? That Savas would have killed both of them and taken Ferah captive to be continuously raped until she either spawned pups for the tribe or was killed from exhaustion and abuse, or both? No, why would Kargo think of reasonable ways to explain himself. That’s for weaklings, and Kargo is a man, not a weakling. Kargo has to demand that he never be watched as if he was a monster because those are Kargo’s wishes and the rest of us must obey, and that’s it. This is really what it looked to me. It seems as if Kargo is basically saying nobody has a right to judge his actions because he doesn’t want to be told there is something wrong with him.
“I’m not a monster..”
I’m sick of those two points. Actually, yes, Kargo, you’re a monster. You have no control of yourself. You repeatedly stabbed a dog even when he was long dead. This, in the legal code of my country, is called murder with unjustifiable cruelty, and it is considered an aggravating circumstance. It means that if you kill someone by stabbing them repeatedly, your jail sentence will be longer. Unjustifiable cruelty is the kind of thing monsters do, so yes, Kargo, you are a monster and a danger to yourself and those around you. I am wondering whether this is the character speaking to Roamer or the author telling his readers that Kargo is a poor, tortured soul, not an out of control psychopath who shoots repeatedly and never asks because he doesn’t give a shit. I’ve insisted on this a lot. Kargo is a terrible character and I wouldn’t let him anywhere near me or the ones I love because I can’t trust our safety around him. He needs to be locked and put under treatment, and I don’t take kindly to the author trying to stuff down my throat that I’m wrong to judge him by his actions when that’s the kind of person he has created and the kind of person he’s showing. If the author thinks he needs to justify his protagonist to the readers, maybe he should reconsider the type of character he has created.
“You misunderstood me, I was just confused..” “I never saw you as one.”
I am going to act a bit as the devil’s advocate here. The first part? I buy it. I can understand Roamer being confused after seeing his friend go crazy and destroy another dog with unjustifiable cruelty. There is an event in my life I will never forget. My grandpa had a small plantation, and cats would roam the place. There was this female that was always there and she was pregnant most of the time. These were feral cats and I was a little child, so don’t judge me too harshly because I didn’t know all I know today about cat overpopulation and neutering/spaying to keep reproduction under control. Well, I had seen the cat coming and going where the tomatoes were planted and my grandpa came to me and asked me where she was, because she had kittens and they needed to be relocated to a safe place. I was maybe seven or eight, so I told him. After a while I went to look for him to see if he had found the kittens because I wanted to see them. I saw my grandfather slamming the newborns against the floor repeatedly, then throwing them over the fence to the pastures at the other side. I was shocked, crying hysterically. Was I surprised? Of course I was. I never imagined my grandfather, who would often tell me stories he made up, could be so cruel.
However, unlike Roamer, I saw him as a monster. I’ve never forgiven him to this day, not only because of what he did to these kittens, but because he betrayed me. He betrayed my trust, he used it to get to the kittens to kill them knowing as he knew how much I loved non human animals. So while I understand Roamer being confused, like, who wouldn’t? I can’t help but disagree with his claim that he never saw Kargo as a monster. This is Roamer, yet again, being an idiot because nobody in their right mind can see someone loose control like that and not think, at the very least, they need help, like, urgently. In my opinion this is the author forcing the situation and avoiding conflict. This was a perfect moment to get some conflict going on, to get Roamer to reconsider his choices, to wonder whether if he’ll be able to trust Kargo after that, and also to make Kargo think about himself, about his control issues and try to work his way out of them, to look for help.
Nope, nothing happens. Kargo kills Savas, and after a page of slight tension where Kargo thinks Roamer is gone for good everything is back to sunshine and butterflies. Any potential conflict, gone. Roamer actually starting to mature and to start thinking things through before he makes a choice? It doesn’t happen. Kargo realizing he has a problem and asking for help? Men don’t ask for help. Men are strong and violent and aggressive so deal the fuck with it. This part had a lot of potential for character growth, but it is tossed down the drain with Kargo making demands to not be judged because nobody has a right to judge his actions, and Roamer saying that all is fine because he still trusts this murderous, out of control psychopath. This is, yet again, something that is sadly consistent in the comic. Drama gets brushed aside as easily as this, conflict… what is that? And characters don’t grow because they’re absolutely perfect.
After that completely not touching moment which only served to return the characters back to the point they where at a few pages ago, they start joking about Roamer smelling because that’s so funny. Roamer says he has to take another swim in the lake, and I’m left wondering when he has ever taken a swim in the lake and which lake he’s talking about. If you’re going to include clauses such as these you better show us your character actually doing that before you talk about doing it again. Otherwise I’m supposed to interpret Roamer took a swim sometime off screen, and I’m sorry but you can’t just justify everything by saying it happened off screen. There are things, such as these, that have to be settled before to actually make effect. I know this might seem like a completely unimportant point, and it is. I don’t give three shits about Roamer swimming in a lake. It’s the fact this is repeatedly done in the comic. We have already talked about this, about how it is ok if characters do things off screen as long as there is some sort of evidence. You can’t just toss in something in the story as if it had been happening all the time and claim that, yeah, Roamer swimming in the lake is normal, it just happened off screen and we never saw evidence of that just because. That’s basically pulling shit out of your ass and calling me stupid for refusing to swallow it.
Roamer then talks about how he had to pee in the water to conceal his scent. The author should really look up search and rescue dogs, who are capable of smelling a corpse sunken in a lake, but ok, I guess the currents taking the pee away might have helped dissipate the smell. What I don’t understand is why peeing in the water makes him feel filthy. It’s not like he was swimming in the water while peeing. Kargo then makes a joke about Roamer being like a pup, and I’m guessing he means a human cub since I’ve yet to see a pup peeing in the water, and I’ve raised quiet a few, mind you. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure a lot of you guys had a pup, or a friend who had a pup, or a cousin or a friend of a guy you once talked to while waiting in line at the grocery store who had a pup, because exceptions happen, but the ones notorious for peeing in the water are human cubs, not dog pups. I can’t help but ask myself again why this guy insists so much in drawing dogs when it’s so obvious he wants to tell a story with humans.
“I..may have rolled in something…”
Yes, that’s written exactly like that. Still, I’m not going to nitpick this. Oh, no, this was actually dog behavior, and this comic is lacking in dog behavior so much I have to praise it when it actually happens. Wolves roll on carcasses and other smelly things to conceal their scent and make it easier to approach prey undetected, and dogs have inherited those instincts. That was actually an intelligent approach. Too bad this really interesting bit of canine behavior couldn’t be shown to us, and it is reduced to a joke about stinking. It was more important to show us how he peed in an ankle deep stream than how he actually concealed his scent by rolling on the carcass of a dead antelope.
I’m leaving the last two panels for the introduction of our next entry since we jump to a different scene and this entry is already long enough. See you next time, guys.
Leyendo Entre Lineas 
2 comentarios en “Home Pages 72-76”