Page 1271…
Hi all!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this week.
I’ll be at Omnicon this weekend. I’m doing my best to have Monday’s page done today before I go…
But if I’m unable to do this…I’ll have the page for you by mid afternoon Monday.
Thanks
If anyone is going to be in Cookeville, TN this weekend…I’ll be a guest at OmniCon!
I’d love to see some of you come out to this show. Should be a fun little show for me to drive to.
Also…
Have you downloaded our new iPad app?
You tell him Alex!
Nice page ! The tensions is building, and I’m not sure how Nick will make a good come back.
Great page and awesome last panel (talk about throwing caution to the wind and going for it), hope you have a great show and weekend Scott! 🙂
Wow. Nice suspenseful build-up!
Will try and make it by Omnicon, if so will definitely look you up!
While I am absolutely loving the action, I feel that this particular move of Alex is not the best one possible: the way he is holding his sword would work well, if Nic was no longer able to escape but, given the likelyhood of Nic moving, having the sword right side up would allow to modify the motion partway through as needed. As it is, I think Alex is now commited to this move until it is done, which lessens his chances of actually connecting.
Glad to see he is gaining a sense of purpose. However, he still needs to live in both worlds, otherwise his body will atrophy and die, cutting short his stay in dreamland (that is, if he were to find a way to stay there to begin with…) He needs to find a way to make the waking world as interesting to him as Dreamland is, so that he can flourish in both, learn from both, and apply said learning to both as needed. Perhaps, his determination to become a good ruler in Dreamland will motivate him to “do something with his life” in the waking world, so as to help him develop further.
BTW, I can’t help but wonder if any (human) king (of Dreamland) has ever married a Dreamlander… Would he then remain single in the waking world, so as to remain “faithful” to his Dreamlander wife? Could they actually have kids in Dreamland? (I.e., is it even physically possible?) So many possibilities, so many potential pitfals…
Death from above!
Considering how much apathy he has towards college, it’s pretty easy to realize that.
Uh oh. It looks like Alex never attended the Inara Serra school of swordplay. He’s going to look pretty awesome right up to the moment he gets swiped out of the air, I’m afraid!
I think Nick is obsessed with the fear that any (and perhaps all) future human kings will do the same thing Arthur did, and there’s no convincing him otherwise, but Alex’s speech should definitely make Nastajia proud.
Aw man. That Wind Waker stab I alluded to a few comics back looks so appropriate right now.* But it is a kids comic and I don’t think Alex’s luck will allow it (annoyingly).
*Going by the last panel here.
I wonder why Nic isn’t using his fire. He’s a dragon after all. No matter how great armor is, once you heat it up enough, whoever is inside gets roasted nicely.
these actionscenes really read like a movie(am I saying that right?:p)!!!
If he is still on his knees as in panel 2, clutching his chest, he will not be flying out of there at this moment. Why is he asking Alexander these questions? Is it because he himself is having doubts about who or what he is fighting for?
left himself open to gutting from below. good action though
That is a much better reason for Alex to be fighting.
😀
CROWNING MOMENT OF AWESOME!!!!!
Way to go, Alex!
Ya hya chouhada! Muad’dib!
…oh, sorry. Thought it said “a terrible purpose.” 😉
Go Alex, go!
These are recurring questions I’ve had.
Alex has the girl of his dreams. So, how does he get the girl of his dreams in the real world?
The Emperor gives us flight!
FYI- The Nicky ad (another web-comic) gave my computer a virus, so Ye Be Warned!
Yay Alex!
awe alex :,-(
Wow, what a statement! I bet Arthur never said anything like that. I wonder if that even registered with Nic. And it looks like poor Alex is going to be “hanging around” all weekend.
What? Was it a projectwonderful ad?
Could you give me the url?
I agree with Suzaku, crowning moment of awesome INDEED!
your repeating yourself nick. lol
i smell a head shot coming up….
while in normal swordsplay, this would be a bad move, a difference here is Alex can *fly*. So in theory he can do a better job of a “guided missile” than a human. (Back away from nic, then diving in and charge like a ram/bull, with sword in front rather than horns. Whether Nic can dodge or not depends on how well Alex can read the body of the quarterback when he goes in for the “tackle”. If Alex can dive fast enough, Nic’s army aren’t fast enough to simply take a swipe at him to stop him)
Thanks for another great week Scott!)
War.. Children….. It’s just a shot away…..
That’s something I’ve wondered as well, in the past, but because I couldn’t come up with the answer, I stopped thinking about it as much until you mentioned it. Perhaps, though, the amulet that Arthur was making would not only allow humans to enter Dreamland, but might also allow Dreamlanders to enter the waking world (or perhaps a modified version of it could do that). However, since it does require powerful casters on both sides to construct, it might prove difficult to make (but not impossible).
I would definitely say that if he marries Nastajia in Dreamland, that he should stay single in the waking world. As for children, that would be an odd turn of events, and it would be interesting to see what happens with that. Would he only see them when he slept? So many questions that this raises if he can’t find a way for Nastajia to also become present in the waking world. (And even if she does, would the waking world be able to handle an Elven princess/queen like her?)
Well, if Alex really feels strongly enough about Dreamland / Nastajia to take on a dragon single-handed, it may be enough to convince Nick to surrender if Nick’s real concern all along was that the King of Dreamland did not really have Dreamland’s best interests at heart, and that Arthur’s fate was due to his greater perceived loyalty to the “real” world than the dream world. In that sense, Arthur could be Dreamland’s equivalent of Britain’s King Charles I.
If Nick’s decided he would rather be King than chief consigliere then it will be a fight to the finish, but I’m hoping Nick turns out to be more complicated than that – feeling betrayed by Arthur and struggling with whether (and if so, how much) to trust the new King Alexander. If not, then a sword that cuts through anything and armor that is immune to fire and which strongly resists physical attacks should be enough to allow Alex to overwhelm ol’ Nick in fairly short order.
I agree. It is POSSIBLE that Nick has been testing Alex. For centuries he has ruled Dreamland because nobody else could be trusted to do it. And you know why? Because nobody else had the courage to risk their life by fighting him. Now here is a HUMAN willing to risk his life fighting a FIRE BREATHING DRAGON! Ahem. It is POSSIBLE that Nick has been spending centuries waiting for someone WORTHY of following again. If so, Alex may be proving himself worthy of working with. If not, Nick is about to get his world turned.
I’ve just had the feeling for a long time that in a way the Battle of Dreamland is not just a battle for control of the land itself, but also for Nick. We don’t know where he comes from, but he’s always been there. I wonder…I wonder if he is part of Dreamland in a way in which we’ve never considered before. Maybe he isn’t an usurper the way we thought. Maybe in a way he’s a…shadow of Dreamland. A soul of some kind. Maybe he’s a reflection of Dreamland and Dreamland is a reflection of him. Wild theory and such of course. I just have a feeling that he’s more than just an usurper. I just have a feeling that he’s more integral than has been explained to us. And because of that feeling, I truly think that Nick has to be redeemed for Dreamland to be made whole.
I always thought that, eventually he’d find a way to stay in Dreamland.
I’m serious, this story, while separate and awesome entirely on its own, reminds me of Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy (Black, Red, White, and now Green). I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
Maybe Alex can eat some sort of fruit that prevents him from returning to the real world, like Thomas Hunter did in the Circle?
…I think Nic is going to end up on Earth. Somehow, he has to come in contact with Dan, right? And if Earth “doesn’t matter as much” to Alex, maybe Nic will find some way to manipulate that and trap him in Dreamland, perhaps taking his place in the real world.
It would be interesting to see how a dragon would fit in the real world. Would he have a different form? Or maybe none of that will happen and there’s some bigger bad guy pulling the strings from the Nightmare realm. Oh maaan, the suspense!! I love this comic. c:
I know this is the shallowest remark ever but . . . whoa.
I need to sit back and think this theory through. I LOVE it.
No stake except for the gorgeous purple haired elf chick!
Although this does rather beg the question – what is Nico fighting for, other than his own power base? Alex already as good as told Nico he’s fighting for love, and Nico can’t even grasp the concept. He must surely be one lonely dragon.
Hmm…
Maybe not a shadow of Dreamland as a whole, but maybe of the Nightmare Realm, which is the “opposite” side of the dream world and which co-exists in an uneasy truce with Dreamland. When Nic talked with the Nightmare Realm folks – the ones who always reminded me of the crocodile sequence in Disney’s “Fantasia” – he seemed to be “first among equals” rather than absolute master.
Here’s an idea: the role of the human king is to ensure that neither side of the Dream World gains supremacy over the other. As long as Arthur was “missing” rather than “gone” the Dreamland folks allowed Nicodemus to act as he did since things could be set to rights once Arthur returned. Once Arthur’s passing was revealed, the “jig was up” as they say and Nic’s long term as “Steward” came to an end.
Now Nic has to decide whether he goes back to the original justification for imprisoning Arthur (“I don’t trust the King’), or whether he and the Nightmare Realm go “all-in” against the new King in residence (“It’s good to be King, but there can be only one”).
I suppose a “dream world civil war” between Dreamland and the Nightmare Realm is possible, but that seems out-of-synch with the story thus far.
What would seem more in-synch would be for Nicodemus to devise a test for Alexander that will show once and for all whose interests Alex holds most dear. If Alex succeeds, the Nightmare Realm yields and swears fealty to Alexander because their fears will have been abated. If not….
Is it just me, or is Nick getting a bit repeatitive?
Page is almost ready. Will have Monday’s page by morning.
Just got back from Omnicon.
🙂
Good to hear the page is almost ready, but better to hear that you got back safely. I hope that you had a great time at Omnicon, and got to meet a lot of really cool people (though I’m sure you did).
Perhaps at first Nicodemus thought he was acting on behalf of Dreamland itself, but the way he has acted lately: destroying the pillars, killing everybody who opposed him, allowing the Nightmare Realm to run rampant (including letting them abduct children); shows that he has gone far beyond that, and has come to relish the power. He is definitely evil at this point, and due to how long he lives, I think that it is necessary for him to die (and perhaps being redeemed in his final moments, where he admits being wrong), as a living redemption might only last until some other human king does something he doesn’t like (but perhaps he could learn from this mistake, if redeemed, and not fall again in the future).
I also hope you had a good Omnicon! I didn’t make it, my wife and I are furiously looking for a house to move into in the Nashville area. Spent all Saturday morning looking, then passed out until dinner time.
Regardless of the merits of your point, I just have to say… what a great series you brought up. Love the Ted Dekker Circle Trilogy! :o)
Wow.. intense!
Nicodemus: “But you have to wake up…and I can have the Wraiths send you coffee!”
Alex: “I have bounced my reality checks!”