It’s the title drop! The Monster’s Loose! I’ve been waiting very patiently for this page (er, pages). With that, Skin Deep will be going on a small break for the rest of 2024! I didn’t want to take a break so soon after starting the comic again, but I just have too much stuff happening in December and something had to give. I thought this would be a good place to pause for a couple weeks.
Speaking of things happening in December, it’s time for a new round of Patreon Pin Club!
Blanche isn’t in this page but rest assured, he’s also playing on that stage! This quarter’s Pin Club celebrates Anthony and Blanche’s band, the Police Disco Lights! These pins will be 100% UV printed on flat black metal (for reference, the cheshire cat pins were partially UV printed! I’ve never done a 100% UV printed page before) and will be 2″ tall! I’m also planning on a sticker sheet, which will also probably be Police Disco Lights themed. Once I have that art I’ll post it on Patreon! Click here for more information on the Patreon Pin Club!
I’ll also be at Midwest FurFest this weekend! Come say hello!!
72 Comments
Anthony gets to be *happy*. Now that’s a treat. :)
Yay! Happy birb Anthony figured out how to play the guitar with his new hands. Yay!
And he figured out how to trim his feathers without causing a bloodbath!
From watching my parents clip chickens’ wings, I can say that it’s not actually that difficult, you just need to know where to look, and he’s got a friend who can point that out (and/or be a
hairfeather-dresser)I agree, super smitten first row fan: boys *are* dumb :p
Obviously a first time visitor to the LA, too. And boy the locals sure don’t hold back anymore with the (non-)secrecy, once you’ve made it into the Underground! 8-]
AAAH, it IS Anthony! YOU ROCK IT TONY!
I also spot Dean and Lily in the crowd, and possibly Paulbert? The Common Gryphon in the middle almost looks like Mary, but it could just be a gryphon who happens to be the same coloration as her, and that kind of looks like the back of Tony’s mom’s head! Showing support for her son during his show, maybe?
Yes, Dean and Lily are easy to spot. I think that is Paulbert at lower left, possibly with Lorne next to him. That does look like Mary chatting with a newby, and Ophelia to her left. The satyr at the bar (behind Dean’s left hand) may be Greg; Michelle could hidden by a pillar. Ike’s half-brother seems to be working as a waiter: I see the back of his horse-eared head, and his webbed hand holding a drink tray.
Hmmm, no, I don’t think that satyr at the bar is Greg – Hair’s the wrong color, for one, and the horns are the wrong length and shape, for another. Greg’s horns swoop up after the initial curve back, that particular satyr’s horns fully curl backwards. I could also argue that’s not so much Lorne as it’s John with Paul, he seems the more likely Lyon brother to be with Paul. Though I also don’t know that he’d be at the Underground for a concert, so it could also easily be anybody else – Even another gryphon. Aaaah, we get to have so much fun speculating while we wait for the mini-hiatus ~
You’re right, the satyr’s hair color is more like the background character who got his face slapped on page 3 of Exchanges chapter 3 (I think his name was something Celtic like Rory), but his horns seemed shorter; would they have grown that much in 2 years? I’m pretty sure Jon is the guy who just walked in, but I’m also pretty sure that the guy next to Paulbert is a Nemean; maybe it’s Remy?
If the Nemean next to Paulbert is Jon, the prevailing guess for the identity of the mustachioed “regular” who just walked in is still ‘Carver. If that is him, he’s closer to my guess that he might look like Sam Elliott than my guess that he’d look like Armstrong from FMA.
All the guessing about what human form ‘Carver might get with a medallion reminds me of a semi-obscure comic book from the ’80s and ’90s: Southern Knights. It was about an Atlanta-based super-group, and one of the founding members was apparently a man who could turn himself into a dragon. Of course, it turned out that he was actually a centuries-old dragon who could assume human shape. Late in the storyline, he gave an interview and the reporter asked him why he looked like Tom Selleck. He told her it was the same face he’d had since the first time he took human shape in the Middle Ages, and he thought of it as Tom Selleck looking like him.
I know logically when you say ‘like Armstrong from FMA’ you mean the wonderful posing hyper-muscular Armstrong brother, but for half a moment I pictured his sister who runs the north wall.
Man I’d let that woman order me around
I did a little more digging, and the Celtic-named satyr was Kiernan MacCulloch. His horns were less than half the length of this guy’s, so this must be some other satyr.
And left of the pillar in the center, I think that’s the lamia woman we’ve seen in the Avalon a few times (Bugbear Tailsman 7 is the most clear one I think). The readhead faun at the bar is also a recurring background character.
I do gotta disagree with you on the facts of it being Lily. Lily is a darker shade of brown, plus her hair is not dyed red. I can see it, but I feel like Kory would’ve just kept it red instead of changing her hair to green for no apparent reason other than for Jim cuz he has green hair. I can see Dean as well, but it’s a matter of if it’s the lighting making things seem different, or if the fur is a different color. I do think it is likely Dean however, and if it’s Dean then it’s more likely that Lily is there with him. The lighting seems to make the grey of his fur look more brown, same with the dancing next to him.
The fur difference could be the lighting in the bar, like on Dean. As for the hair, she may have decided to dye it at some point in the past in-universe year or so. One of the sillier reasons I feel it’s Lily is if you go to the characters list, Lily and Dean are in dance poses, but I do acknowledge that could just be pure coincidence. Either way, we’ll find out in a couple weeks!
There are some people that I notice we /don’t/ see: any of the four people that we saw go through the tunnel ahead of the “regular”. They managed to get off-panel pretty quickly.
On a closer look, it’s possible that the guy chatting with Mary (?) is the one who was wearing a gray hoodie when he was passed through on page 2. (His jawline was visible on page 1.)
Mary and Tobias Finn are the only common gryphons I know of in the L.A., and I find it much easier to imagine Mary calmly chatting with an open-minded outsider than to picture Tobias being anywhere near such a place voluntarily.
Anthony looks SO HAPPY it fills me with joy…
Interesting to see what he ended up doing with his wings. Having one side clipped probably helps with mobility (and playing music) but oh man I bet getting used to THAT balance difference took time too lol
Hmmm, I’m as musical as a brick, but if there’s a part of his wing-arms that he’d need clipped to play the guitar, I’d guess that that’d be his right forearm, as it goes in front of the guitar body with all its doodads – I hence suspect that that arm isn’t as unclipped as it looks in this panel …
Well, the pin has longer feathers on that arm
possibly that bit’s clipped because of the angle he needs to twist that arm to get to the front of the neck of the guitar? so as to not be holding a bunch of feathers perpendicular
It’s hard to be sure with the limited perspectives so far, but I’m thinking that his wing-arm feathers are clipped, only past the elbow, on both sides. That leaves him with some of the long feathers he had such a hard time adjusting to at first (but must have gotten used to by now), but gives him more useful dexterity in his hands.
Maybe he can even play Borogove now!
“So, Anthony, you want to fly or play the guitar?”
“Guitar!!!”
In fairness, being confined to the Avalon means he wouldn’t really get to fly a whole lot anyway. I’d prioritize my hobbies, too.
Is anyone else imagining Anthony singing ALL of the bits in the title card, including the “Kory Bing 2024” and such? xD
‘Fraid not, but if he has a bird-ish syrinx and got used to using it in the meantime, there’s a chance that those musical notes besides the lyrics are not merely an indication of “oh BTW, he’s singing those lines, in case you didn’t guess that” … ;-)
Well, now I am earwormed by the Meat Loaf song. Thank you.
By the way, this isn’t a meatloaf song. Someone in another comment mentioned it, and I also looked up the lyrics and it’s “The Monster’s Loose” by Polaris, and it’s from Adventures of Pete & Pete. I recommend giving it a listen because it is a great song. Plus it gives you the idea of how to read the lyrics on the pages as well.
The “boys are dumb, throw rocks at them” shirt! I forgot they existed.
I noticed that too! major millennial nostalgia here.
Had to look for the Meat Loaf music – some parts is so Tony
And glad to see he is doing well
So glad that Anthony learnt to play! Also time to add “iconoclaster” to my volcabulary lol.
Have a good break Kory :)
I like you can see the parts where he cut his feathers.
Hehe good birb boi
Still no flying but boy, can Anthony sing!
Is that Tobias with (finally) adult ear tufts in the back?
That gryphon’s beak is the wrong shape for it to be Tobias. So far, Mary Finn is still the only common gryphon in or around the L.A. /that we’ve met/ who has the typically-shaped beak. If that’s not Mary, it must be some other gryphon that we have yet to meet.
Nice, we got the title drop
So Anthony…sings like a birb? >.>
The pins seem to show that Tony and Blanche have dyed each other’s colors into their hair! Yay besties!
ANTHONY !!! AND (off screen) BLANCHE!!! I am so hyped to see these lads and SOO hyped that they made a band !! oh its been so long since I’ve seen them, like a decade I think!! wow.
I hope you have a good rest of December, and have fun at the con !
ANTHONNNYYYYYYY OMGGGGGG
For those above mentioning “The Monster’s Loose” as a Meatloaf song, Kory’s confirmed (on Bluesky) that it is music from “The Adventures of Pete & Pete”, written / performed by the band Polaris.
Oh hey, it’s a multi-parter? I guess I was expecting a stand-alone chapter to re-establish the continuity after the timeskip.
The nixie in the front row is not Merial, so she must be a Liverpuddlian. At any rate, she’s gazing at Tony with rapt adoration. The newby in the “boys are dumb” shirt just looks stunned.
Hey, every proper band needs their groupies! 8-D
It’s a great scene and perfectly getting the atmosphere across!
For those wondering the song it’s actually POLARIS(The Monster’s Loose)
Lyrics: https://genius.com/Polaris-miracle-legion-the-monsters-loose-lyrics
Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2ZNahHQ790
Meat Loaf matches the year, but the lyrics are from the Polaris 2015 song, and more in line with the sort of music that Anthony would play.
That was just uploaded to youtube in 2015. The Polaris album came out in 1999 featuring songs that were recorded between 1992 and 1995.
Ooh! That makes more sense, it definitely has a 90s vibe. Thanks for the clarification.
AWWH their matching hair dye….
I can imagine someone like purple-hair (the one who loudly objected to the as-yet-unnamed regular being allowed to cut the line) arguing that Tony is not some kind of non-human; he’s an amputee wearing strange prosthetic legs as part of an elaborate costume!
[resolves to ignore everything that Just Cannot Be™]
[keeps walking into people all over the club]
If she doesn’t get over such ideas very quickly she’s really in the wrong place there!
On a different subject, I notice that an EXIT sign has been positioned to point toward the tunnel. I don’t think we’ve had this particular view before, but I doubt that this sign was there pre-tunnel.
I hope we get to see Anthony playing the solo part of The Monster’s Loose. Would be amazing to see him being so happy and pumped up to shred the guitar.
It’s nice seeing Anthony happy again. Glad he found out how to play.
For a performance by Police Lights Disco, shouldn’t the house lights be flashing or rotating red and blue?
Well, this is in the UK, where the police may use either blue or white for flashing (head)lights …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_vehicle_lighting
(Also: searchlights. Try to convince a U.S. cop that his Maglite should be flashing red and blue … ;-)
Something that’s so far gone unmentioned is there must have been a significant time skip. Long enough for Anthony to get over his funk and relearn the guitar, and join or form a band. Has it been months? years? and has Michelle been missing all this time because time passes differently in the infernal realms?
It’s been two years. There’s a time stamp on the first page of the chapter for October 29, 2006
Ah, thanks! That makes sense! :-)
Glad to see Anthony’s doing well and that he’s able to play that guitar.
I found Skin Deep last week and I finally caught up today. Now I get to experience hiatuses in real time lol
I’ve always been interested in mythical creatures and the interpretations people have of them, so I’ve enjoyed seeing the various species designs in this comic (especially since a lot of them don’t show up much in fantasy media).
Oh damn this polaris song is killer! The Anthony pin too.
Hope MFF was fun! Would be awesome to see you at a New England con like ANE or FCL someday.
Oh my god! It’s Anthony! He’s back! Woohoo! This page is the first time I’ve actually seen him in the comic ever since I first began reading all the way back in 2017. Wow, time sure flies by, huh? (No pun intended.) I can’t wait to see the comic return next year! Good luck, and happy new year Kory! <3
Will the chapter resume this week?
I’m aiming for the 28th. Moving has taken a lot longer than I thought!
Take your time Kory, we can wait :). Best of luck with the move!
Disappointing. I was looking forward to it after waiting for a long while.
I moved recently. She definitely needs all the slack she can get.
Honestly I’m just glad to see a comment that lets me know such a nice creator and person is okay. I was worried something may have happened! But a move does take a lot of work. Take all the time you need and I’m just glad to see you are doing okay and not in the hospital or anything else.
I wonder, does the bar stock nepeta-infused mead for felinids? (I’m picturing a bottle with a Cheshire-cat grin on the label.)
I wonder if there are such things as Doppelganger/ copycats in the skindeep vers. I mean it would be pretty cool if they were. The could disguise themselves as humans or any other um medallion wearing person and nobody would know.