Maybe the REAL Annie is the Annies fused together by Annie all along.
-
Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
Gunnerkrigg status: Still rad!
- Thread starter SpoonyBard
- Start date
I'm more critical of this series than a lot of you guys, and it honestly just feels like Tom got bored of his Two Annies idea and hastily scrubbed it without thinking it through too much. Tom will do deep callbacks, but that mostly ends up feeling like the man papering over the lack of general direction and ironing out of how the world of his actually works. Which isn't the worst thing, it's how a lot of indefinitely long running comics work, especially a lot of the popular mangas he very clearly pulls inspiration from. But Gunnerkrigg Court mostly feels like it follows the Tite Kubo school of meanderingly exploring the author's nifty ideas only so long as they entertain them until the next one comes along and then it's an awkward transition into that new idea.
This very thing is basically what GC *does*, over and over. Event happens, followed by slow rollout of the consequences over many chapters and with many things in between. Maybe this thread will flop, but it hasn't yet, because it isn't clearly resolved; it was years before, e.g., the ravine ghost subplot was resolved, and it was resolved really, really well. I'll wait until this development is actually resolved before assuming it's already been resolved in a sucky way.
Tom has said before that he has weeks of comics in the hopper in advance of their publication. That doesn't strike me as someone who's winging it on a whim. Is it all planned out in every detail from now to the end? Probably not. But very little really is, despite how much people love to call for master-planning narratives.
Tom has said before that he has weeks of comics in the hopper in advance of their publication. That doesn't strike me as someone who's winging it on a whim. Is it all planned out in every detail from now to the end? Probably not. But very little really is, despite how much people love to call for master-planning narratives.
Last edited:
I think you could make the argument that the series has grown into something substantially different than what Tom envisioned at the outset, but that's also a natural progression when someone works on a serial project for over 15 years. The tone, storytelling and art style of the first chapter are super different than what we see now because Tom has grown as a person and an artist rather than because he's writing on a whim. Honestly, he probably had no idea GC was a even a 5-year project when he started, let alone the thing that would ultimately define his career.
To me, it's clear that Tom has developed into an artist that loves the slow burn and actions with consequences. He also likes grand plans whose effects aren't clear for a long time, as do many of the characters in his work. To me, this isn't "winging it" or playing with an idea until it's boring, it's long-form storytelling.
Yes, I strongly doubt that he had more than a vague idea where the comic was going to end up when he started it as a side project while working a full-time job. And that's fine! Many authors do this! Some have an idea of where a book or series will start and end, and the middle is all figuring out how to get from A to B on the fly.
In this case, I think he was building toward Tony's return from the start, since a firm time frame was established there (that it would be two years). Beyond that, who knows.
There's also a crucial difference between Tom's work and someone like Kubo's: he's working for himself, at a pace he himself sets, not putting out 20 pages every week under the supervision of an editor (and I've certainly read series that had a sudden shift in tone or plot that clearly came down from above, like Food Wars). He sometimes takes a long time to get back to things, but he does get back to or fully explore things; but he also doesn't spend, for example, two or three years spooling out a single battle without any significant narrative progression until the very end, even if he waits a couple years to pick up a loose thread again. I don't think the Kubo comparison is a good one at all.
In this case, I think he was building toward Tony's return from the start, since a firm time frame was established there (that it would be two years). Beyond that, who knows.
There's also a crucial difference between Tom's work and someone like Kubo's: he's working for himself, at a pace he himself sets, not putting out 20 pages every week under the supervision of an editor (and I've certainly read series that had a sudden shift in tone or plot that clearly came down from above, like Food Wars). He sometimes takes a long time to get back to things, but he does get back to or fully explore things; but he also doesn't spend, for example, two or three years spooling out a single battle without any significant narrative progression until the very end, even if he waits a couple years to pick up a loose thread again. I don't think the Kubo comparison is a good one at all.
Last edited:
Loup is so angry he’s reached a state of rigor mortis
David Lynch's "The Angriest Dog in the World"
And the inspiration for Dinosaur Comics;
Ooh; the better Bad Dog is back!
And an ominous image of a man saying “now”
And an ominous image of a man saying “now”
Hey, it's that guy!
Everything's............ fine???
I’m sure it’s fine
This ain’t coyotes first rodeo, kids
I dunno, Coyote's tail still seems to be attached to the current of aether, and the fact that time has stopped suggests to me that there's yet more going on.
It is, which means that an explanation is the furthest thing from Coyotes mind
There is absolutely no chance that this entire thing wasn’t exactly what Coyote planned all along