Only now did I notice something about this strip. This is the third time in the comic (at least) that someone has been Forcecaged, and the second time V cast the spell. Both other forcecages (Xykon on Miko and Vaarsuvius on Mama Dragon) were actual
cages, with holes; this one is a solid cube. I found that interesting, and wonder whether it means RC will eventually suffocate in there (that is, whether he would if this were actually happening).
Also, since nobody else has said it, I loooove the exchange between X and RC in panel 6; the Giant does indeed love to hang lampshades on his genre-savvy characters.
RJJ7 wrote:But I still feel that the plot twist with Redcloak made things come unstuck. I agree with willpell that I like Xykon and find him more compelling.
Don't get me wrong, I like the new Redcloak too. I just don't feel Xykon has suffered Villain Decay as some others seemed to think; RC is plotting against him, but that doesn't mean RC is now secretly the more important villain and Xykon is just a chump (only that RC thinks so). Xykon's strength as a character is his ability to think the unthinkable; nobody can really predict him, and so I suspect RC is going to end up strangling himself with his "puppet strings", bringing a disastrous end to his ostensibly-slightly-noble excuse for his villainous actions, and thus reinforcing why he is in fact a real villain, rather than a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
He's afraid of what his own team will do to him if he fails
That's not what I got from the "No pressure" immediately afterward. I get that TD1 is a vengeful guy, but he seemed fair-minded; if Redcloak gives the Plan his best effort and fails through no fault of his own, I don't think TD1 will be unreasonably inclined to punish him "just because". Now if he does royally bungle the job through his own fault, then TD1 would be perfectly justified in creating a special private hell for RC, but I didn't get that RC was sweating because he was worried about that, just in a more general "the boss is looking over your shoulder, this is the company's biggest client, so no more screwing around on company time" kind of sense. In essence, reinforcing that there is pressure, which is usually exactly the case when you're told otherwise.
DrinksTooMuchCoffee wrote:Also, Belkar wasn't dead any more.
In the dream-sequence, he was shown to have died and then didn't appear again. So I'm wondering what's behind those swirls in his eyes in the last panel. Does he now perceive himself as being dead, or is there a separate illusion for everyone, or is he just miraculously alive again and nobody has figured out that this is weird?
EDIT: I just thought of a hilarious scenario. Having "killed" Xykon now, it'd be a bit repetitive to actually fight him later, and we're thinking that confrontations with him are likely to happen later, at Kraagor's Tomb and/or X's "fortress tomb thingy on the Astral Plane", both of which are locations too interesting not to visit. So how's this: the Order somehow fights and beats Team Tarquin (or possibly makes a tense alliance of necessity with them, despite both Nale's desire to kill the OOTS and Roy's desire to avenge and/or rescue Durkon), goes and finds the Gate to try and prepare some last-ditch defense against Xykon, and finds out that
he was already there, found the gate wasn't useful for his purposes, and moved on, having neither known nor cared that anyone else was coming after Girard's Gate.
EDIT 2 - Huh. Editing this message (twice) 3 hours after it was posted, I don't get a new timestamp. Weird.
), but for whatever reason, I wasn't seeing it (I was interpreting the big purple runes as somehow activating immediately following the battle; as in, a big "ooh, what's happening now?" moment).