We get to see some new dragons! Whatttt!!!! The big grey one in the second panel is a cameo from T3rminus, the admin of my Discord Channel! Congrats buddy, you’re canon now.
I won’t be updating next week, I’m so sorry! I’m visiting family for a week and I wasn’t able to get a page done on time! Thank you so much for your patience and understanding!
44 Comments
Oh so this is not really hell just a place near it.
Yep pretty miuch.
This is the suburbs. Hell is the actual city.
‘The suburbs of Hell’ sound, in their own particular way, like they could actually prove worse than Hell, itself. -_-
MEESH!
BLOODY!
T…3?
Awesome!
Those dragons look like they aren’t gonna play nice, I’m now worried for Michelle’s safety. Guess we gotta wait until the next chapter to find out!
How does that spook her? She went through Hellmouth. There was kinda helldoggoxs face sized hint that you’re no longer in Kansas.
“But I thought Hellmouth might take me to Candyland or something. You know, they just got the portal cheap on retail.” XD
I think she’s just having a bit of an existential breakdown due to finding out that demons and literal Hell actually exists and that she’s kinda actually already in Hell.
Also I suspect a little pity thing going on, phrasing it the way she does…
She’s also probably wondering what this means for religion.
“Does this mean that the Bible actually happened?”
“Is Jesus actually real?”
“Are all those people that those nutty priests say on TV actually are going to hell? I hope not!”
Because Michelle already had an encounter with the Brother’s Grimm and just realized they’re probably here. Encounter beings on: https://www.skindeepcomic.com/archive/issue-five-page-16/
And considering the last time she encountered them she sent 2 of them back to Dis, i’m not quite sure how this is going to end.
And then she supposedly just forgot all about them and their Hellmouth…
‘Cose she did remember clearly what the Hellmouths are for. Or she’s just very afraid of doggos… Could actually be either…
But still. She should know where she’s going and what she’s probably finding there. B-Carver even said they are just taking up a spot on other people’s lawn. Need to check if he even mentioned who the people are…
But Mich has been a bit dense to some other clues as well, so… Kinda in character for her.
She was out of it when the dragon and the angel had that little chat. How could she know about Dis? As for asking questions, she was in the midde of a fight between Greg and Bloodcarver, overwhelmed by the memories of her ancestress and after that she was with a grumpy dragon.And she is only 18.
I think you answered your own question. She has all the knowledge of the sphinxes, so she presumably would have knowledge of Dis
She still needs time to process it all, she was on ‘TILT’ mode for a while.
May I ask what TILT stands for?
It’s an allusion to the old electro-mechanical pinball machines, back before video games. “Tilt” was the default error message, declaring that the machine had been physically jostled.
Somebody just had a trauma flashback.
Bloodcarver did say that residence in Dis was ‘existing’ rather than ‘living’. Look at how washed out and desaturated everything alive becomes except within Michelle’s immediate radius – a visual metaphor for the omnipresent despair and sapping of will. Makes me think the dragons actually want Michelle to ‘save’ them, though we don’t know at what cost yet.
Hey Bloodcarver, you know that pleasant quiet you were briefly enjoying? I think it’s about to end.
A disc? Of course the demon realm would be flat. Lol
Keep in mind that about 50% of the English-speaking world would not recognize the word “Dis” as anything other than a Brooklyn-accent rendition of “this.”
If Michelle hasn’t studied much mythology or literature or any of a few other topics, or doesn’t read fantasy the way most of us do (a-hem, she’s a character, not a reader) she may not have realized that word had anything to do with Hell.
“Demons of course” is a big thing to drop on somebody if it’s actually their first clue….
Outer circle of hell? Dragons are literally in Limbo!
Agreed that Michelle has gotten a lot more education in theology than she’s comfortable with (never mind education in mythology!). She knows there’s survival after death (her dad), and that angels and demons exist. Now she’s getting the existence of Hell shoved in her face, although she must have inferred it with the demons and all.
I wonder if she’ll start going to church?
I thought Dis was in the inner circle of Hell. Or do the circles start with number nine on the outside then work there way down numerically?
Dis is at the centre of hell and basically a hole which encompasses the last 4 layers (with several circles for each layer) when you go down with the devil at the bottom.
‘Limbo’ makes a great deal of sense. While in Dis, they effectively become zombies – ‘existing rather than living’ – able to walk and speak, but otherwise all other biological functions, including aging, simply stop. Look around, I don’t see much nutrition available in that landscape.
Actually I hope that the dragons still have their bodily needs, because that and the apparent lack of food in Dis would imply that nobody can just up and take away their right to use the hellmouths to visit Earth-Earth.
(Note that the Earth-Earth ends of hellmouths need to be hidden from the likes of Gabe, so one would assume that they wind up in areas where dragons can do a quick nightly cull of some herd without running into humans.)
Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget I’m a friggin’ nerd and things like “fiends live in Dis, because it’s *the* city of Hell” aren’t obvious for most people.
Do you have a more detailed drawing of that caterpillar dragon! it’s a really neat idea.
I like the dragons just poking around in the background. I hope things go well.
Good old Baator?
I dunno if it makes me a dumbass, but I didn’t notice the dragons in the first panel when I first read this page. I had to go over it a couple times to notice them. I actually kinda like that.
She has glowing shivers now? That’s an odd feature, but I’m not complaining.
I am not Dis-appointed! The Dis-owned appear to live here…. Next door to Dis-ruptive elements. I would expect anywhere that a dragon happens to live for any length of time (let alone this many dragons) to look like this. Desolation is desolation. It was described well in The Hobbit.
Meanwhile in Mythadventures, they say that a Demon is anyone who is an interdimensional traveller, not necessarily a denizen of hell, although they mention that some demons are pretty nasty, plenty are not, and so on. Hell not being the only alternate dimension. And once the humans dimension-hop, they too are demons.
Not being a Christian, I guess I see all of this in a different light to religious types. The comments section over the last few pages has been… bizarre. Full of people jumping to conclusions which I don’t recognise, even though I’ve read a bible and a Koran (I like fantasy, what can I say?). Like everyone is making all these extremely Theist assumptions. I guess it’s an American cultural thing or something, that would explain why it makes little sense to me. I do think Korys story will turn out to be more modern in scope, though. Enjoying it greatly!
It is very much an American cultural thing. Even though you will hear people talk about “separation of church and state”, we’re not a secular country. In fact, in my home state (Texas), you officially still have to acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being to run for political office.
Unofficially, that law… and others like it… haven’t been enforced since about 1961, when the Supreme Court determined that a Maryland man appointed as a notary public didn’t have to declare his belief in a supreme being to hold office, arguing it violated his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Still, candidates for office who are openly atheist face discrimination at the polls. There’s a subtle belief that atheists aren’t moral or trustworthy, so voters are reluctant to say they’d vote for them. A 2014 poll revealed that 53% of Americans believe it’s necessary to believe in God to be moral (I disagree, and so does the Pope), and a 2012 poll found that 43% would not vote for an atheist.
Bloodcarver, old thing, please stop tormenting Michelle with your dragon-snark. You KNOW she didn’t know any of this stuff before. You don’t need to be a jerk.
In the fifth pannel, isn’t it the dragon who had that little discussion with Jocarta? The one with the frizzly whatever around her head?
She has some bad experience with demons
Wouldn’t it be easier for Michelle to keep up with Bloodcarver if she transformed all the way into a sphinx? If being 4-legged didn’t make her faster, she could at least fly.
That is pretty sound logic, but she’s still getting used to her abilities and chances are her flight experience up to this point is barely enough to keep airborn for a minute or two without feeling extremely exhausted, which would actually slow her down more
It doesn’t really look like Mich actually has trouble keeping up with BloodCarver. He just kept moving while she had stopped to gawk at the scenery last page and is just catching up.
I love the little touch of how Bloodcarver has spots of a brighter, more cheery red, on the parts next to Michelle. Like she’s somehow got a little bubble around her neutralizing the effects of Dis.
The dragons all seem to be courious about the new arrival more than anything based on their looks.
Chances are that the concept of that sphinx having gone to hell might hold some appeal for them. :-P
Hey, you do you… Family comes first! Have fun and see you next week!