PaRARGdox 08
This is the Wednesday update – click the back button to see the Sunday update!
Magellan Island in ruins?!: This is not a simulation or training exercise… just in case you’re wondering. We are indeed witnessing a full scale attack by the Rarg. “But how, what, where, who, why?” you might be asking? Particularly… “How has it come to this? What has happened since the attack at Jupiter? Where are the big guns? Who are those dead people in frame one? Why is this happening?” Stay tuned…
Also, “did this page take me ages to draw?” Yes. Yes it did.
Families/Cемьи: New voting incentive featuring Red Vlad, Comrade Katya, Epoch, and Charisma kicks off March 1. Stay tuned!
Next update: Sunday, February 23, 2020: One final chance.
Wow, those things are more than just survival suits!
It’s a wonder that they ever manage to get any schooling done.
They have more problems than Hogwarts.
Tuesdays.
I am assuming that the blonde facing away from us in panel 2 is Charisma. What happened that could scrape her up that much?! I remember her getting blasted by Sister Superior and all it did was burn away her clothes. Kaycee looks like she is injured about as much, but she is a lot more squishy than Charisma.
I see Olga, but where is her new teacher, Vostok? Where did he scamper off to or hide? I sure hope that one is still among the survivors.
I am hoping that is not Ron Bass down in the bottom-right corner of the first panel. I like him!
Well, good news is it isn’t Ron Bass… but it is Tom Bass!
Gah! I was afraid it was, but really hoped it wasn’t. Freya will be devastated and that might have a lot of consequences.
A grinding, pulsing sound can be heard a just down the trench from our heroes. A blue box about 2 metres tall and 1m X 1m at its base fades into view. The door opens and blonde woman comes out with 3 others.
Woman: Oh, this does not look good.
Older man: You think? Doc, I think this looks like a war zone.
Younger woman: Doctor, do you know what those things are? They look kinda nasty.
Older Woman (Doctor): Oh, dear. That is really not good, but I have dealt with little creatures hiding inside metal shells before. This shouldn’t be that much harder.
Older man: Oy! Is there somebody in charge here?
Go!Anna: That would be me, I think. Where did you come from?
Doctor: A planet about 3200 light years away, 380 years ago, next Thursday, that way, but the light from its star will still be coming from that way. Oh, you mean this. That’s just my ship.
Kaycee: Everybody down! It’s gonna blow!
Doctor: [ Holds up a device that makes an unfamiliar pulsing sound. The sound stops an she looks at it ] Hmm, yeah that should do it. Now where are those guys going? Oh, how rude of me. Hello, I’m the Doctor. This is Graham, his grandson Ryan and Yaz. What exactly seems to be the problem?
Rochelle: [ Holding up a cobbled together device ] Yes, I was correct. The invaders are communicating using microwaves. Um, Doctor, is it? What exactly did you do to prevent the immanent detonation, especially using a sonic detector like that?
It seems pretty obvious to me. The scientists who used to work for Magellan pushed up the project timeline for mining Jupiter much further than it would have gotten normally. The millionaire or whoever with sponsoring that project had their resources rather than needing to go to the Russians for theirs. As a result, the Rarg, attacked Magellan rather than the Russians.
Those two staffers their last thoughts were probably of Magellan and as a result the Rarg telepathicly picked up on that as the source of their attackers.
The thing I’ve always wondered about energy fields like this is if they extend underground, not as if you would dig down from the surface, but instead digging in from below. The device was obviously able to dig down, so that would seem the best attack vector against it.
As for what it does…a high speed drill would only need to reach magma level, not the core to really make Magellan a hot place in the old town tonight!
Just Magellan island? I’m pretty sure there’s going to be an earth-shattering kaboom when that machine is done drilling.
Didn’t I see that in Abram’s Star Trek movie?
You very well did. Although that involved some nonsensical ‘red matter’…
Let me guess: we will be reverting this by time travelling again.
That’s my guess as well. The story is called PaRARGdox, there’s nothing paradoxical about the timeline having been altered, so there’s probably something that’s going to happen that’ll create an actual paradox.
I’m still thinking (hoping?) ParadoxiMan is going to be involved prominently
http://magellanverse.com/comic/punchin/
I hope it’s time travel. Otherwise this is a major shakeup and it would be weird for such a permanent change to happen off-panel. But we’ll see. We know Grace isn’t afraid to make devastating changes to her universe and characters. Still, kind of hard to have a comic about people going to a superhero school when said school is just rubble…
To be honest, given the collection of locales/settings we’ve toured from Kaycee’s perspective (Magellan Island, Oz Magellan/Sydney, and Locke Island/Astral Mindscapes.) I was really looking forward to do Space/The Moon.
The suddenly accelerating timeline in regards to the war, plus the very accessible wormhole to Earth make it a logical consequence that the Rarg skip Brother Russia (Mars). From a narrative perspective we (the readers) are quite familiar with Magellan’s security protocols (We’ve seen them succeed and fail, ranging from intelligent and prescient, to confused and scrambling.) Another storyline that involved many strips of Magellan reacting similarly to our new threat might have felt redundant and the only purpose I could see it serve is to establish the Rargs technology and battle tactics. There are many ways to accomplish that, however.
Xmung has shown us that they are a great writer. I am confident that this will be a great story arc that serves our characters well. I would hope that we will explore the consequences of this sudden acceleration and given how time travel has already been established, I dont see how Xmung could summon a reversal without undermining their narrative and their world building. Something they have never done on purpose.
Even so, this does feel a bit… drastic. I’m very invested in Kaycee and the whole Magellan tribe, so a quick 7-page glance-back and setup to an instant loss to a new enemy can’t help but make me feel saddened or disappointed. I would have like to see my friends struggle, I would have liked to be there for their failures. Seeing them retrospectively, (as I have little doubt we will use flashback pages to lay in some exposition) may lighten some of the narrative weight, as heroic gambits and clever plans will be attempted while we suffer the benefit of hindsight, already armed with the knowledge we have been given. Heroic sacrifices may become less inspiring and more depressing, as we already know many choices lead to failure and death. Oz Magellan’s jet lies there, torn from the sky and dashed against the battlefield that used to be our home, and now we know that is where it will always end up regardless of any defense they try to muster.
I have no doubt Xmung will give me more of the intelligent writing they have already given me. It is a gift I fully appreciate, and the only disappointment I have ever suffered from enjoying their work is that there is not more of it. That is not a criticism of Xmung, rather a criticism of reality, as the creator of this great world (Magellan) deserves to have all the time they need to continue to create it, far less burdened by tragedy or misfortune. (P.S. I was really sorry to hear about your Dad.)
I was really hoping to see a Space/Moon storyline, where the Rarg invasion collides with the not-yet-completed Magellan Moonbase, partially staffed by our intrepid third-years. Communication and collaboration with Earth could be easily cut off or blockaded.
It is easy for me to see how that could newly challenge our class, forcing them to rely on new teamwork opportunities (Most notably Charisma.) Not to mention it might serve as a nice contrast to previous storylines, limiting telepathic and magical resources, focusing more closely on a smaller group (Kaycee and Co) as the rest of the Magellan tribe defend earth. (Yes I realize the “Worst Field Trip” is very similar, but reinforcements were much narratively easier in comparison, not to mention a large number of new Magellanites and Genesplices to meet and build.)
However, I’m not the writer of this story, nor the creator of this world. I don’t know what the overarching narrative arc is across all the chapters. I can’t actually know the future. (I try really hard sometimes, though.) So this and that is just the idle musings of a madman.
Ah, but this is only the set-up… we will have many pages to go… unless, Earth is destroyed in a couple more pages that is. In which case this will be a very short story!
“In which case this will be a very short story!” – which makes at least me very confident that that is not going to happen 😉 We’re here for the long stories, the ones you so excel at writing.
Not going to put it past you!
But also not going to discount the possibility of the world blowing up -not- being the end of the story.
A short story. Grace, I don’t know if you’re capable of such things. Every time you make a prediction for how many pages a story will take, that prediction is always less than it ends up being. Heck, I think I remember Lock(e)down being described at the beginning as what you expected to be a shorter story (or was that Worst Fieldtrip Ever? It’s been a bit and my memory has never been reliable).
Not knocking your writing or anything. You keep it engaging and you simply do seem to have a lot happening in your stories. I guess another indication is your output for the first issue/chapter of Crossoverkill. It’s entertaining to see what you cook up, because one can know that you won’t make something that feels rushed to the ending, or that things were left out because you felt you needed to hit a certain amount of pages and no further, like writers sometimes come up against in the print industry (well, when they’re not having the other problem of desperately trying to stretch a thin story into six issues so it can be collected into a trade–and nobody would call your stories thin).
Ha, well I think I originally thought Bad Karma would be 100 pages – WRONG!! Anyway, I do have more of a handle on what drives a longer vs shorter story these days. Things That Matter, for example was about the length I figured it would be. Legacy too. It’s all about the number of characters and subplots. Which should have been obvious even back then, buuuuuut….
They’re running off to retrieve their Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. You can’t have a proper Earth shattering kaboom without one of those.
lol… indeed!!