I’ll be at STAPLE this weekend in Austin, Texas! If you’re in Austin, come over and see me!!!! I MIGHT have a few advance copies of Dogpatch available!
I’ll be at STAPLE this weekend in Austin, Texas! If you’re in Austin, come over and see me!!!! I MIGHT have a few advance copies of Dogpatch available!
72 Comments
My big sis lives in Austin! I might have to go visit her this weekend. :)
Seeing as they don’t live IN the Avalon, I have to wonder if they hide those family portraits when guests come to the house. Hopefully their home isn’t nearly as Gryphon saturated as the Noirs’ are deer-saturated.
Also look at that little angsty-looking younger Jim in that portrait. So cute!
I thought the Finns lived in the L.A. Where does it mention them living any other place? I don’t think they’d hang so many images of gryphons and gryphon-related stuff unless their house was located in the Avalon.
I never mentioned where they live! Everybody has just assumed that it’s in the Avalon!
Wait a minute… if you took the time to post a response… that means it’s not where we think it is. Is it in Liverpool? Europe? We gotta know Kory!
The first page of the comic says that they are in Merseyside, which is the county that Liverpool is located in!
Eh, close enough.
So the question now is, where in Liverpool is the Finns ancestral family home?
I think it is not in Liverpool, but rather somewhere in Merseyside county.
Have a look at a map of Liverpool.
It has a lot of suburbs and it covers a very large stretch of one side of the Mersey.
It’s going to be somewhere with a solid rock base just under the surface soil, ‘cos that’s what the catacombs were dug out from. Which means that it is probably quite far away from the estuary, and probably on higher ground. *goes off to hunt for geological maps of the region*
Any luck?
Liverpool is built on sandstone, and the stone comes right down to the waterfront in some parts, especially upstream of the city centre. In the 19th century, many railway tunnels were bored through the rock to get trains down to riverside.
My guess, based on photographs, is that the LA’s warehouse matches the real-life the tobacco warehouse on Stanley dock (which would be how Stanley the sea wyrm gets her name, since she’s swimming in it). This is the innermost dock of the whole complex – there are two other docks between it and the river. (Google it for maps and streetview.)
It’s in the flat part of Liverpool, but probably no more than a mile from the sandstone.
Nothing with a useful level of detail… The whole of the estuary is, naturally, covered in alluvial soil, which obscures the sandstone bedrock. The bedrock would lie close to the surface in places, sometimes even standing proud of the soil, but the maps I have seen don’t say exactly where, or give soil depths elsewhere.
Oh, and sandstone is a really nice and easy stone for tunneling through, so the ancestral Finns would have had no problems there.
@Greenwood Goat—
You’ve made me interested in finding out where on Earth (literally) the Finns’ family home is. It sounds like we’d both want something like the British Geological Survey’s “Liverpool: Bedrock and Superficial (1:50,000)” sheet: http://shop.bgs.ac.uk/Bookshop/product.cfm?p_id=E096BSUP
Or maybe one of the adjacent sheets… :-? It depends on where Fingol is, in Merseyside.
I had one, before, while trying to work out how the heck there was an earth-quake in Birmingham. And they’re the best geological maps, in the world. (Why not? They’re British.)
Kory, the way you describe the Finns in the characters section of the Exchanges book, you make it appear that the Finns do have a family home in the LA. Pages 122 and 125.
In the characters page for Exchanges, on the site, you explicitly say that Paul lives in the LA.
Paul has his own place and the Finns have a part-time place in the LA. Fingol, the family home, is not in the LA.
And now we know something we didn’t before.
Also, it can hardly have been beyond a family like the Finns to have created portals for convenient access to the LA. This would not of course change the status of the location of their domicile, and nor has it been mentioned or implied in story or in comments, but neither has it been precluded.
Considering Jim’s point about the catacombs taking up more space that they physically should, the Finns having set up other magic corridors to easily get to and from places would not be a far stretch of imagination at all.
Because Phineas the Red was heavily involved in the founding of the LA.
For pre-teen Jim to get his fringe that long, it would have taken him at least 6 months without a haircut.
Given that they are in a cave, I had assumed that they didn’t necessarily have to visit the Avalon to get there. Caves can extend for considerable distances and often have more than one entrance.
BTW, great job on Michelle’s expression in the first panel.
It’s gonna be an interesting thing, to actually see a turning that doesn’t involve passing out or being attacked by an undead bigfoot.
We saw that already.
Orientations, chapter 2, page 10, last frame. Lorne’s Turning.
https://www.skindeepcomic.com/archive/issue-two-page-10/
Oh come on that was a fraction of a single page. We are gonna see the whole event take place!
Grumpy Michelle is adorable.
I wonder if Colin’s just fantasizing about having a medallion or if he’s actually about to get one…
I’m pretty sure there’s a reason he’s so excited. Thumbs are amazing things to have. Now imagine getting thumbs at age 10. I’d be excited too I think.
Having raised two kids, I can think of a lot of advantages to children not getting opposable thumbs until they’re ten.
In Heinlein’s “The Star Beast,” Lummox’s species doesn’t even grow arms until they’re fairly old.
Instead they just have talons AND claws…
Omg, Colin’s so excited to see and use his human form! And I’m super excited about it too!
And more omg, I’m going to the ECCC on the 27th too! Eeee! I might be able to go say hi and get a book or five!
Lucky…
I got the popcorn
Is he excited about clothing? If he’s a streaker like Jim, that would be amusing.
I’d be excited to get pockets. Pockets are the entire reason for clothing. You can carry so many things in them, like a spy of sorts.
I love that the Finns have a mystical ancestor cave…in their basement.
All I have in my basement is dirt and stone. Mostly cause I don’t actually have a basement.
Time to change that. Get a pick, a shovel, and a few friends, and you’ll have your own magical burial crypt in no time!
I don’t even have a basement. D:
….or do I? >.>
*goes on an expedition*
I love the four-picture frame waiting for a photo of Colin. It’s the details you put in your work that always get me.
Indeed.
All the fine details in the strip build it into a believable world.
More importantly though, that photo frame shows the first colour pic of Tobias in human form, in the strip.
I think the last empty space is reserved for Collin – By the way Kory, will we see him getting his medallion on this arc?
They look like school pictures to me. Maybe the first year after they got their medallions?
It occurs to me that, while some references have implied that medallions tend to be presented at a landmark birthday such as the tenth. The Finns don’t seem to be doing that, since Colin’s birthday occurred well before the summer break. I’m guessing that some (perhaps more traditional?) families celebrate all such birthdays in the latest year on the same day, like Children’s Day in Japan.
Possible traditional dates include the summer solstice, and the last full moon before the solstice. Either would fall conveniently between school years.
I hate to be grim, but I had assumed the traditional time would be when a medallion becomes available. In other words…. at a funeral. There are, I thought, only a limited number of them available for some species.
Such extreme medallion shortages appear to be local, occasional occurrences, at most. In general, there seems to be some slack in the system. Madame U had at least one gryphon medallion for sale in September ’04.
Aww! Martha got to be in the portrait with her beloved master!
Looking at that portrait, I think it was painted before her passing away.
Likely before him passing away, as well!
Pretty psyched to see Colin after however long it was between Exchanges and Orientations! Also to see how Anthony ended up.
Either Anthony was turned back to a human form, got used to being a harpy, or is still panicked after like what, 8 months?
The spellbreak which triggered Anthony’s transformation happened about 10 months ago within the storyline, and the confirmation that he never actually was human came a few weeks later.
So, we’re talking at most 9 and a half months since Reunion.
Colin and Michelle. This will end badly. AKA adorably.
Oh hey! I just realized this page basically mirrors the Homecomings pages “The Attic”!
What Michelle in panel one needs is a hug.
Possibly a hug from a newly-medalioned Colin, who is hyper-excited over finally being old enough for hands.
…and as I read it, I realise how odd “old enough for hands” would sound to outsiders.
Just one of the things that makes this comic so fun.
Hands: Rated ages ten and up.
I didn’t even think about that! Would Colin be brought up to speed on how to write and read and stuff once he’s got hands, or does he already know arithmetic and reading and things, even though he can’t write any of it down?
Well there is a school in the L.A. for the children who are too young to have a medallion, so I would imagine that some of the topics would be literacy and mathmatics, if without Colin writing any of it himself. There is also a lot of homeschooling in the Avalon, so maybe Mary and Paul taught Colin at home instead?
Question: Does Finn’s family know he’s besty’s with a person who’s suppose to be extinct?
We don’t know for certain, yet, that Jim has told his family what Michelle is.
The reason why is Colin.
He’s too over-excitable to be trusted with learning what Michelle is.
It’s possible that his parents would know – they seem trustworthy enough to keep secrets – but with Colin about, telling any of them with him nearby is something of a risk to Michelle’s safety. Because kids aren’t the best at impulse control, and her being a sphinx is a Big Deal.
Best to assume only Jim knows.
Although I would not rule out the possibility that some other people know, but after all the wierd things they’ve seen, they don’t really care enough to be shocked.
It’s not so much Colin being shocked by Michelle.
It’s the RISK TO Michelle, considering his over-excitedness should he make any mention of WHAT Michelle is.
Her secret isn’t quite as secure as it once was, thanks to a certain lip-flapping angel. In front of an assortment of witnesses, Gabe mentioned a sphinx named Jocasta (gender unspecified) with ties to a satyr named Gregory Tragos. That was in May ’05, about a month before this story. In that time, how might the rumors have spread from the avalon of Dogpatch?
I gotta wonder, since medallions have been mentioned as being a somewhat finite resource, if Colin might not be getting one and that is the reason for the ellipsis in the last speech bubble.
Nope I am pretty sure he’s gonna get one. There is a finite number of medallions in the world, but gryphons are pretty common it seems, so I seriously doubt that there is any shortage of gryphon medallions.
Sweet mother of oh my holy love of God! I just now saw VanCAF in your Con Schedule and almost hyperventilated. VanCAF is the only con I’ve ever been able to visit, so I cherish the rare chance meet the members of my Pantheon. Yes, I said Pantheon. I believe in a certain divinity of fiction which I won’t get into because I’m sure no one cares and it’s my policy not to preach. The point is that from my perspective, you and hundreds like you are literally bigger than Jesus, and I eagerly await the chance to meet you.
P.S. I’m posting this at one in the morning and I get rather loopy at night, so I might seem a bit mad. I promise to maintain a better façade of sanity at VanCAF.
Ugh, did I really post that as a comment? I was right, I do get weird at night.
Oof. Sounds like little brother might be about to discover that none of the available Gryphon medallions are the right frequency for him… assuming it’s along the lines of “the wand chooses the wizard, so long as the wizard is the correct species” and not “the medallion works for every single member of that species, except when ‘unique’ things happen”.