Death of Arcane (and Harry Kay)
On to the story: It's a two-page spread, where we're supposed to read all the way across both pages on the first row and then read all the way across the second row of panels. Except I don't realize that and read the left page and then the right page and think, "that didn't work."
There are clues. The top row is similarly colored (all have blue/black trees as frames) and its center panel is split on the page ditch (what's the name for that?), and the both rows have panels that are all the same height, with the top row about twice as tall as the bottom row. Except I missed all that and got lost. On page 2.
Hmm... Wonder if this story has many false turns and hidden twists. Perhaps that is another clue. Or perhaps I just don't read comics very often.
But back to the story. TST seeks out the crash site of an airship of some kind, needing to make sure Arcane (his nemesis and opposite) is really and truly and most sincerely dead.Which it sure looks like. Arcane has no clothes and seems very thin. He has Gollum-like hair (unless that's brain tendrils) and very long teeth.
TST is relieved and also weirdly sad that Arcane is dead, but losing your enemy means losing your bearings. "And what ... am I going to do now?" he asks in the final panel.
The ship seems to have a very long strip that at first glance I thought was a yellow brick road. But the segments are pentagons (like little houses, not regular), and the strip is on top of the wreckage. There is a blue robot hand in the foreground of one panel. Or possibly the hand is just a human hand with ribbing from a glove going horizontal across the bones. But robot is more intriguing. What (or who?) was that ship made of?
Another panel has a grey rectangular piece in the foreground, hanging on a tree. At first I thought it was a bracket or other ship debris, but upon reflection, it's a broken pair of glasses, most likely the square glasses worn by the ghost face on the cover. Who is--make that was--probably going to be Harry Kay.
CHARACTERS
- Arcane - creepy looking, dead in crash of ship, apparently nemesis of TST. (I'm hoping this is the ghoul in the ghost faces on the cover, because I'd hate for there to be more than one of these creatures hanging about.) Name means hidden, secret, magical. "Started out human and threw it all away."
- Harry Kay - saved TST's life at some point, died in the same crash as Arcane. One of "the good" guys.
LETTERING - TST's words are in yellow boxes with black outline and white borders, rounded corners. He speaks with many ellipses.
I wonder why all-caps bother me in comments on the internet, but not when used in the comic books.
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