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Huh, after all that talk about bullets and impacts last week, this is what you go with? No penetration, no blood, no disorientation at all, just pops back up with a tilaka dot on his forehead like nothing happened?

Congratulations on Al’Rashad finally taking a misstep I think is simply stupid. You lasted far longer than most comics. Now let’s see where this goes.

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Fakefaux said on April 8th, 2013 at 10:38 am

I knew he wasn’t entirely human.

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Mitchell Hundred said on April 8th, 2013 at 10:47 am

Now that I think about it, this was hinted at back in part two. Alric commented on how unnatural it was for someone to be simultaneously that large and that fast.

Also, I hope that now all those guards are going to do something. They’ve just been standing around doing nothing for (p)ages.

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Huh. Perhaps things will be made clearer in subsequent pages, but as of right now, the
art has made it very, very unclear as to what’s happened to Broah.

If the art is meant to depict the bullet having flattened itself on Broah’s forehead
without penetrating, that’s simply kind of dumb. If Broah’s skin is actually bulletproof, that shot from Alric wouldn’t have done shit to him. He’d have MAYBE flinched. He wouldn’t have fallen over.

On the other hand, if it’s meant to represent a hole rather than the bullet flattening on his forehead, and Broah is simply all “Huh. Bullet in my thinking meats. How inconvenient” then it’s still okay, because even if he can just shrug it off that thing going into him probably still really hurt.

Can I say how much I love it that Fezay escaped death by zombie bonfire in the last chapter only to die less than twenty pages later? Because that’s an awesome fake-out.

I also think we can assume that Dalakhra would not have stabbed the Caliph to death without some plan to survive the fallout.

Also, I finally, finally realized whom the Caliph reminded me of.

This is a picture of the late (and wonderful) Turhan Bey, who passed last October, in his final role as the Centauri Emperor on Babylon 5.

You look at that and tell me you’re not looking at Jandal.

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Also, I finally, finally realized whom the Caliph reminded me of.

This is a picture of the late (and wonderful) Turhan Bey, who passed last October, in his final role as the Centauri Emperor on Babylon 5.

You look at that and tell me you’re not looking at Jandal.

In my notes to Davinder I suggested using Armin Mueller-Stahl as a model for Jandal.

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Candlejack said on April 8th, 2013 at 12:48 pm

Looks to me like a smoking hole in his head. The lack of blood would be more of a hint than I mistake, I think.

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Now might be an appropriate time to ask “what’s a Gryg?”

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highlyverbal said on April 8th, 2013 at 2:23 pm

Why is it that every time trained military veterans turn their backs on giant, inhuman threats without a few precautionary stabs, it comes back to haunt them? And just when the Evil Overlord was about to reveal his plans, too! I totally misguessed what tired trope was coming.

@Murc “I also think we can assume that Dalakhra would not have stabbed the Caliph to death without some plan to survive the fallout.”

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about what we could assume about the Caliph’s cleverness in admitting Broah. Awkward.

(And, similarly, every military dude who let Broah stand near the chick. (And did she drink a wussy potion off-panel or something?))

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(And, similarly, every military dude who let Broah stand near the chick. (And did she drink a wussy potion off-panel or something?))

1. Broah was about fifteen feet away from Rayana before shit went down. He is very fast.

2. She didn’t drink a wussy potion: she was literally on her tiptoes because Broah was lifting his sword up against the underside of her chin and couldn’t move, which meant she couldn’t do anything as a result. Because Broah is very fast.

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Why is it that every time trained military veterans turn their backs on giant, inhuman threats without a few precautionary stabs, it comes back to haunt them?

Fezay did not “turn his back” on Broah in a cavalier or dismissive manner. Fezay was doing his job as a bodyguard, which is to ensure that his principal is safe. After ensuring that Rayana was no longer in imminent danger of having her throat slit, he turned back to Broah to ensure that he was down for the count.

Which is, of course, when Broah put a huge hole in him.

It would have been safer for Fezay to have moved directly against Broah at the same time as Alric shot him, but Fezay’s safety is of secondary concern to him. Rayana’s is.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing about what we could assume about the Caliph’s cleverness in admitting Broah.

While Jandal was by all appearances and Word of God a very wise, very politically astute man, I think it is clear by this point that Dalakhra outplayed him in at least some respects. I will also note that, while Dalakhra may not have a GOOD plan for post-Caliph stabbing, he almost certainly has A plan.

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highlyverbal said on April 8th, 2013 at 5:03 pm

@MGK: “1. Broah was about fifteen feet away from Rayana before shit went down. He is very fast.”

Lol, leaving aside the burying the lede problem of having 2 episodes of inhuman speed occur off panel, let’s probe further how that would really look. A bunch of trained guards get instantly bypassed and non-wussy-girl gets instantly grabbed without any moments of her dodging around — and no one sees fit to mention that to their immediate superiors? That’s not a priority? So those silent, bumbling jackasses (including, I suppose, non-wussy-girl) just got Fezay killed. Nice.

“2. She didn’t drink a wussy potion: she was literally on her tiptoes because Broah was lifting his sword up against the underside of her chin and couldn’t move, which meant she couldn’t do anything as a result. Because Broah is very fast.”

My complaint is more about the priority to grab her for Fezay instead of handle the threat, with her help. You know, the one that just killed him? And is now a single instant away from grabbing her again? Cause he’s so darn fast! I was hoping non-wussy-girl would join Fezay and be on Broah like badgers. (Especially if she just saw him do some inhuman shit.) Maybe we should retcon in some sort of bodyguard code like Murc suggests, that Fezay had to tackle her whether she merited it or not? Whether not she could contribute?

Nobody tackles baby into a corner.

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What Murc said.

Fezay did everything right. He did his duty perfectly.

It’s not his fault that Broah is some sort of freak of nature.

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A bunch of trained guards get instantly bypassed and non-wussy-girl gets instantly grabbed without any moments of her dodging around — and no one sees fit to mention that to their immediate superiors? That’s not a priority?

Er… who is going to mention WHAT to their superiors, precisely?

There are probably guards all around, but not actually within the room. The current occupants of the room who are not dead are: Rayana, Fezay, Kahal, Alric, Broah, Dalakhra, Joro, and Apali. That’s it.

The other guards can probably hear in a general way what is going on, of course. Not enough to make out specifics (that would be dumb on Jandal’s part, as he was conducting high-level diplomacy with Dalakhra and Alric) but they have no fucking clue what’s going on. None of them saw Broah put a sword to Rayana’s throat. They DID hear the gunshot, most likely, but prior to the gunshot they had no reason to suspect anything was going on.

So I ask again, who was going to mention seeing Broah grab Rayana to “their immediate superiors?” Kahal and Fezay are the only guards in the room, and their immediate superior is the girl being held hostage.

My complaint is more about the priority to grab her for Fezay instead of handle the threat, with her help.

Protecting Rayana IS Fezay’s priority. She is the Califa. If it had been Kahal, sure, Fezay would have right after Broah. But Fezay is Captain of the Guard. He makes sure Rayana is safe FIRST. That is his JOB.

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highlyverbal said on April 8th, 2013 at 7:57 pm

@Murc: Start with Rayana herself. Instead of gasping out “Kahal” she needs to be gasping out “superpowers, be careful” or whatever.

So you’re trying to say, NO ONE was watching the giant dude armed with a giant sword? (So much happens off panel, it’s hard to trust our deductions, but ok.) Fine, I gladly withdraw my picayune, pedantic critique of the general guards’ awareness to replace it with questions about the Caliph’s general plan. Not having someone responsible for watching an ARMED Broah isn’t “getting outmaneuvered” — it’s criminally negligent on behalf of both Fezay and the Caliph (and breaks immersion). Rule number one in bodyguarding is keep an eye on the giant dude with the giant sword.

“He makes sure Rayana is safe FIRST.”

Ha, ha, he sure did! Well-done, Fezay! Nailed. It. (too soon?)

Yep, your layperson assumptions about how bodyguarding works in a fictional swashbuckling world were directly proven to be safe and accurate. Neutralizing the major threat really is much less important than tackling a possible combat ally!

But we don’t really need to theorize about how body-guarding SHOULD work, we have canon on Fezay’s casual attitude towards Rayana sharing the swash-buckling risks; whether or not she would tolerate over-protectiveness; and whether or not her contribution is significant and welcomed in combat. (q.v. book 4, pg. 4, 5, and 9-10)

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Thomas Wilde said on April 8th, 2013 at 8:14 pm

If the art is meant to depict the bullet having flattened itself on Broah’s forehead
without penetrating, that’s simply kind of dumb. If Broah’s skin is actually bulletproof, that shot from Alric wouldn’t have done shit to him. He’d have MAYBE flinched. He wouldn’t have fallen over.

Even with a modern-day nine-millimeter handgun, it’s not uncommon for a bullet to strike someone and not successfully penetrate the skull (or ribs, for that matter). With a flintlock pistol that he’s been carrying around for most of a day including a lengthy jaunt in a sewer, I’m surprised it even fired, let alone with sufficient velocity to punch through that man-mountain’s forehead.

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So you’re trying to say, NO ONE was watching the giant dude armed with a giant sword? (So much happens off panel, it’s hard to trust our deductions, but ok.) Fine, I gladly withdraw my picayune, pedantic critique of the general guards’ awareness to replace it with questions about the Caliph’s general plan

Who are these “general guards” whose awareness you’re talking about?

There are two guards in the room. One is named Fezay, the other is named Kahal. They just saw Dalakhra stab Jandal, the man whose safety is their top priority, right in the heart. They can be forgiven for taking their eyes off Broah when that happened.

Kahal and Fezay KNOW how fast Broah is. They’ve seen him in action. Rayana has no need to tell them, and even if she did, she just watched her father DIE and then had a huge dude put a sword at her throat. It is therefore reasonable she call out for her bodyguard and lover in that instant.

The most valid point you have is that nobody should have been allowed armed into the Caliph’s presence who wasn’t one of his own bodyguards. That’s a legitimate point. Fezay should have insisted that both Broah AND Alric be disarmed before allowed a private audience. (Dalakhra is probably too high-ranking for it to be socially acceptable to frisk him for a knife.)

The Caliphate has been around for a long, long time. Jandal can’t be the first Caliph to die by violence aimed at him from a jealous noble. He should have taken better precautions.

Neutralizing the major threat really is much less important than tackling a possible combat ally!

Rayana is NOT A COMBAT ALLY to Fezay! She is his PROTECTEE. Fezay is not doing his job if he either allows or encourages her to participate in fights as an equal! To an extent Rayana undercuts his ability to do his job by doing shit like sneaking out at night where assassins can get at her, but that doesn’t mean Fezay isn’t going to try.

@Thomas Wilde: My point was sort of that if the bullet didn’t, in fact, penetrate Broah’s skull, he shouldn’t have fallen over. Even modern rounds with high velocity AND high stopping power don’t typically hit people with enough force to make them fall over from the impact. (Falling over from the pain and shock of having a vital organ turned to jelly is another matter.)

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Thomas Wilde said on April 8th, 2013 at 10:01 pm

It wouldn’t be the impact per se that knocked him over. It’d be getting punched in the forehead hard enough to make your brain wobbly from hydrostatic shock. The toughest dude in the world’s going to black out for at least a couple of seconds from that.

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Man, if you think the page-a-week pace sucks for us, think about how much it must suck for MGK to read comments every week taking him to task for alleged “lapses” that he has addressed directly in the script for the yet-unpublished pages.

I learned my lesson when my own complaint about Dalakhra not recognizing Alric in the pits turned out to be addressed directly something like two weeks later. In a script I presume was finalized long ago.

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It wouldn’t be the impact per se that knocked him over. It’d be getting punched in the forehead hard enough to make your brain wobbly from hydrostatic shock. The toughest dude in the world’s going to black out for at least a couple of seconds from that.
Don’t forget the pain. I’m pretty sure that the body’s instinct would be to move away from the sudden source of massive pain right in the forehead.

Also, I was kind of hoping that Broah would be dead, and wondering what interesting sorts of developments would arise from Dalakhra suddenly being outnumbered four to one. As it is, I’m still quite interested in what’s going to happen, because now, Dalakhra has his foes thoroughly outgunned, and they know it, but his trump card is free to make a run for it.

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I love it. This comic is AWESOME.

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Peztopiary said on April 10th, 2013 at 5:10 am

That is not how I expected that to work. At all. I love this comic, and suspect anyone who worries about immersion of being the kind of person who shouldn’t read comics.

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