Tobias gets picked on again. Some day when he’s grown he’ll realize that his brothers love him. Today is not that day, though.
Skin Deep
Tobias gets picked on again. Some day when he’s grown he’ll realize that his brothers love him. Today is not that day, though.
69 Comments
Colin is all things right in the world. Surely it is kismet that he received these gifts so that he may put them to their greatest use. Teasing.
Haha. Tea-sing.
Yeah, that seems to be his specialtea.
When ot comes to tea he’s not ketteling around.
Or maybe he’ll grow up to be resentful, distant, and distrustful like a real person would! Ooh, woops, sorry, this is a comic, familial bullying of the designated butt-monkey is okay as long as its for comedic effect~ =)
And here we see the wild internet commenter, who has decided their own personal experience reflect the greater whole and judged a writer, who controls the aspects of their story and how their own characters act is in fact wrong.
No kidding. Got that from my sisters – my hate for them is now a slow burn. I sympathize with characters like Tobias too much – means “funny” pages like this lose their humor.
Honestly, I kind of feel the same. The Finn’s treatment of Tobias really rubs me the wrong way. He’s just constantly being put down or pelted with water or something. He hasn’t done anything to warrant that kind of abuse.
Tobias isn’t an entirely clean skin in the matter.
Re-read page 14 of Illumination.
http://www.skindeepcomic.com/archive/illumination-page-14-so-many-gryphons/
But yes, the recent pages feel like an overkill in response applied upon Tobias.
What is acceptable to do is not the same as what is acceptable to write of. If we could not write stories about people doing unkind things, we could not write stories.
Hi there! Just had to let you know that I used to read this comic back in high school like 5 years ago. I recently found it and a few others that I was sure were going to be dead or in infinite hiatus, while instead I am extremely pleasantly surprised that this one is still going strong!
So uhh, yeah. Just wanted to say how happy I am to see this comic is so successful.
Oh my gosh, I love whatever Tobias is doing in panel 3. He looks like a crow cawing.
Tobias: “RAAAAAAAAWWWK I HATE EVERYONE YOU ALL SUCK RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWK”
( I didn’t even notice the face before I saw your comment XD)
I now want a coffee mug that has “#1 Camolot” engraved on it.
This new-found desire is obviously unrelated to current events and oh god why are you all so adoribleblaahjgdhsahfioe
I hope Tobias has the good fortune to encounter a certain magical silver hammer, and that he is able to convince it to do some deconstruction work on his behalf.
Oh the look on Colin’s face when splashing that brew. What a waste of a brew as well.
Hmm, wander what tea they get, whether regular stuff like Tetley, Typhoo, Yorkshire tea or something abit more specialist.
PG Tips, maybe?
It claims to be the most popular tea in England or the UK, I forget which.
Bleah. PG Tips. Yorkshire Tea alllll the way for me :) Isn’t it in the UK?
Yup, Yorkshire is in the UK.
Toby is soon to go down the path to be the arch-villain of this web-comic. I can see it!
I see Tobias is taking his new waterbending abilities to full advantage lol
I think you mean Colin; Tobias is the target.
This is avatar with griffons
I think Tobias KNOWS… it’s just in the face of such relentless teasing one ceases to CARE for a moment. He’ll get them back one day, I’m sure of it..
You need TEA-sing
At least Collin was nice enough to make sure it was cold before splashing Toby with it. Lol.
I think we’re witnessing Tobias’ supervilian origins.
I wonder what his super evil supervillain name would be…
TOBERIZER!!
No, sounds like something Doofensmirtz would make
Sounds like deodorant, like “deodorizer.”
That would be:
“BEHOLD! THE TOBINATOR!”
He’s a menace to tea-drinkers everywhere!
That boy’s causin’ a ruckus and we don’t like it!
I foresee some SERIOUS GROUND RULES being laid down by Mom. If it were me, #1 would be “No doing anything whatsoever to the plumbing”, because having it back up due to flow-reversal or whatever would be unpleasant and plumbers are expensive no matter what country you’re in.
Rule #2 would have to do with no water-magic during meals, followed by a quick codicil that Yes, Colin, That Means Any Liquid, Not Just Water. Because Colin is a smart and sneaky little bugger with older brothers and will find any loophole he can. *I* sure would have. :P
I wonder if he could bend substances that are partial liquid, like, say, mud or cake batter.
So many loopholes to jump through
Presumably he can control the water in anything to a given maximum force: he probably couldn’t lift the entire sea, nor get water out of a diamond box, but could probably lift the box due to its water content.
Colin already has control over his magic? What about Jim and his magic?
Young minds are much more adaptable and flexible. Older minds are more set in their ways, so can be slower to learn skills that are not already within their established paradigm.
Remember, Colin at least got an introductory lesson. All Jimothy got was a very brief demo with no instruction whatsoever.
Also, Colin’s a kid. They’re a lot more open to ‘there’s this cool new thing you can do that you never expected!’ than those who have done the majority of their growing. Most of their life is finding out about new things and how to use them, whereas anyone past their teens are mostly worried about how to keep what they’ve got, going well.
Jim was, as you saw, rather more flabberghasted than Colin at finding out he had magic.
I was taken aback when I noticed a small detail on a second glance – the shadow of the tea! With brilliant facial expressions already nailed down, little things like that show how much Kory cares about his art.
Her art. Kory identifies with female pronouns.
Colin. Why must you be so cute, Colin? WHY?
For all that Colin in his current full form looks cute, he is a nasty spiteful little brat.
He’s an adorable little asshole and you know it.
Spite is a different emotion than ignorance is.
I used spiteful, quite deliberately, Superrad.
http://www.skindeepcomic.com/archive/illumination-page-14-so-many-gryphons/
Tobias is no clean skin.
But this scene, and the one near the fountain, it feels like overkill upon Tobias.
I wonder how long it will be, before we see Tobias wanting to permanently leave Fingol, just to get away from Colin.
Ohhhh, poor Toby.
And this was the last time the teabender was seen.
Man, I get why these pages are supposed to be funny, you know, pick on the moody teenager and all that, but I really worry about Tobias. The Finn parents don’t seem overly concerned about everyone picking on the same child, and that really sucks for Toby? He has no real way to fight back, and everyone ganging up on him and never taking him seriously is not gonna be good for his self-esteem.
I’m really hoping he’ll become friends with Greg or some such, or that he gets to be /something/ other than “comic relief grumpy teen”.
Also, I used to find Colin cute but he’s steering dangerously into “brat that needs a solid talking to” category. Splashing tea into people’s faces is really, really not cool. I would’ve gotten into serious trouble if I’d have tried that at home at his age. He’s starting to feel really out of control. You’d think after… four kids Mary and James would get the hang of this. Especially when one of the kids was Jim.
Greg’s only a visitor.
Tobias needs someone who is a local resident.
We saw, in one of the Patreon sketchbooks, that at a similar age to what Tobias is, Jim had friends locally. But does Tobias associate with anyone?
We know that Colin has no-one his own age.
He hangs out with his cousin Rupert, But I doubt that does much to help his confidence and self-esteem.
I don’t think Tobias can handle poofing any more.
At least it hasn’t reached toilet water yet.
Not that Mary would let Colin near her perfume in the first place…. :P
Just in case there’s anyone out there that doesn’t understand what Joseph was referring to:
Perfume is often called “Eau de toilette”. To be more specific, in modern perfumery, it describes the concentration of fragrance. In order from weakest to strongest:
Eau de cologne, with 2-6% aromatic compounds
Eau de toilette, with 5% to 15% (usually 10%) aromatic compounds
Eau de parfum, with 10% to 20% (usually 15%) aromatic compounds
Oh, and in this case, “Toilette” refers to its older meaning of “personal grooming”, and NOT the loo.
Once Colin finds out about Avatar I’m sure he’ll try all sorts of waterbending skills
Poor Tobias has done absolutely nothing wrong.
Poor Tobias. First rule of living with brothers like Colin: Don’t get mad. Get even. And keep a sponge handy or something.
With how fast Colin is picking up on how to (ab)use his variant of the Finn Curse, how long do you think it will take him to figure out how to shift the water out of fur/feathers/material and then hurl that water at whoever he wants?
My poor beloved Tobias son
The Brit in me shudders at the idea of ‘freshening up’ tea. Cold tea is ruined and can never be recovered.
No, I won’t admit to microwaving my tea and pulling a disgusted face as I drink it anyway, despite the awful taste.
:( Okay, Colin is crossing from adorable teasing to a little mean…
Dang Tobias you really need to do something!
that horrible brat need to learn his place, he is obviously asserting some sort of smug dominance or I know nothing of felinoid beings..
You should startle him, slap him not too hard with a paw and claws retracted -to not hurt him- in your feral form.
That idea is okay for mostly-felinoids like Jim or Lorne, but Tobias is a common gryphon, so he has talons instead of forepaws. They don’t retract.
But, the startlement idea is correct. A cat is smugly confident of his awareness of his surroundings. If you manage to startle or surprise him, it totally blows his cool.
I’m kinda wondering if this will instigate Tobias to find something that was hidden deep down out of anger?
In case no-one’s mentioned it before, the way you draw/colour the things seen through the glass-top coffee (coffaidh) table is awesome! ~Quite realistic, really.
Poor Tobias. I feel bad for defending their behavior a bit in the last update. The teasing in the last one was pretty friendly teasing, though they should have stopped because it obviously wasn’t being received as such. This, however, is just straight-up cruelty. Toby can be a pain, but he doesn’t deserve this. I like Jim and Colin, but they can be real turds sometimes.