Page 11 is now online. Please let me know what you think..
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* snort! * He’s not the same as you and me; He doesn’t dig poetry. He’s so unhip that When…
Hah! Fun as it is, it looks to me like this George Shaw, whoever he is, is basically writing My…
[P]eople with money buy things, so a beggar with money can take on the role of consumer. Doolittle: I’m one…
People get into plenty of trouble dressing up for Halloween at costume parties with themes like, “come as the scariest…
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Nicely done, though the third panel… it looks like the woman’s hand is sticking through Mirka’s head (with only the fingers emerging on the far side). I’m guessing this is intentional, as if the woman’s sieving out her dreams… creepy.
Congratulations. You’ve drawn something that creeps me out. That is, of course, the hand into Mirka’s head. I really like it.
Nice toon. What’s up with girls slaughtering creeps? Is there a message? A silent education to eradicate the male sex when time comes? Hmmm… Bill Clinton here is his blog was right about women.
Oh, yeah, before I forget….. I really like the thought Mirka & Dragon being dropped. Very disturbing, though less creepy than the hand in the head.
yes, it does seem sort of Gaiman-esque, what with the stringy haired, spindly armed woman with creepy, CREEPY powers.
that’s a good thing. I must admit, in the first few pages I thought I was going to be bored. it seemed heavy on talking heads and personality interaction. again, not a bad thing, but I didn’t think it would hold my attention.
something like this showing up, even if it doesn’t flesh out and never comes up again, will still have my attention. good job.
yes, that entire thing is meant as a high order compliment, so please don’t take it otherwise.
Not to be over-technical about what is a cool image, but in the traditional Jewish imagery, the seat of desire is the heart, not the head. The head informs the person what he should do, but the heart holds all of the physical desires (like slaying dragons). The image is in Deuteronomy 10:6 that while we are divided between mind and heart now, there will come a time when “God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love God so that you may live.”
So an image truer to the Jewish roots of the characters would have the woman sticking her hand into the girl’s chest to pull out her desires, in some sort of blackmagic alternative version of circumcising the heart.
BTW, did the boys who were attacking the woman last month have horns? It looked like they did, but it was never mentioned, so I thought maybe I was misreading the picture.
Enjoying the story, even as I pick apart the theology . . .
Richard: Darn, you’re right – it would have been much better to have her draw the image from Mirka’s heart. Oh, well.
(Although I do have the excuse that although Mirka is Jewish, it’s ambiguous if the Witch is Jewish or not. Although Mirka and her community are Jewish, the mythology Mirka encounters isn’t always Jewish – they are part of the diaspora, after all).
(But the truth is, the Witch is probably Jewish, and I should have had her draw her imagery from the heart. Oh well.)
And no, neither of the bullies had horns.
Really good comment, by the way.
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ScottM: Yup, that was intentional.
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Jake: You found the dropped images disturbing? I thought that was funny – it really gave me the giggles to draw the expression on the tiny dropped dragon’s face.
Karpad, thanks very much for the compliment. The Witch (or machashaifeh) won’t show up again in this story after this scene ends, but she’s a very important character in at least two future Hereville stories, and maybe more.
Must have mis-read it then. Actually, I’ve been printing them out. It was page page 7 from June 17, and I’m looking at it now. The boys are wearing hats, and then the girl hits them with a tree branch and knocks one of their hats off in Panel 3. The boy is standing there hatless and slackjawed with what looks like two small white horns coming out of his head and what might be fangs in his open mouth. I thought, “They’re not boys, they’re monsters!” But then, no one ever mentioned it.
Yes I found the dropped thoughts disturbing. They’re so solid, what’s going to happen to them? Do they die on impact? How do they make their way in the (very large to them) world? Are they fully formed & conscious entities or just mindless homunculi? Based on the way they were drawn I took it that they are fully formed, conscious entities. And that is why I find the drop to be disturbing.
Oddly, that’s exactly the same things I was wondering while I was drawing that panel, Jake…
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Richard, those weren’t horns – those were leaves stuck in his hair. If there’s a reprint book of this story, I might redraw that panel a bit now…
The only problem I had with this page (and I seem to be alone in this) is that the third panel didn’t seem to be appropriately foreshadowed by the second. It wasn’t clear to me in the second panel that the woman’s fingers were inside of Mirka’s head and were not chopped off or badly drawn. We didn’t see that hand in the previous panel and there weren’t any obvious points of reference in the second panel to suggest that the fingers were inside of her head (as there were in the third panel with the ends of the fingers obviously sticking out of her head with the wrist obviously entering it). It would have helped, I think to have at least shown her right arm in the first panel as that would have given us a sense of where it was prior to the second panel and the length of its fingers. Just a thought.
I thought it was pretty cool. As to the issue of disturbing.. is that necessarily a bad thing in a ‘toon with monsters?
I got the hand-going-through-her-head bit, but what were those extra bulges on Mirka’s forehead?
Ooooh! Ooooh! I know this one. It is the dragon surfacing on the witch’s palm.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with “disturbing.” That’s why I congratulated Amp, it may be the first of his drawings that has disturbed me.
Spooky and creepy. I like it. The dragonslayer visual makes a powerful impact.
And, yes, disturbing. As Martha Stewart would say, were she not in solitary eating roaches, “It’s a good thing.”
I really like it.
One thing I was wondering though — why do the dragons look more like snakes?
why do the dragons look more like snakes?
Mirka really has no idea what dragons look like – she’s been raised without access to all the TV and fantasy images of dragons that we’re familiar with. She once heard a dragon described as “a great worm,” and that’s where this particular mental image of a dragon comes from.
I believe that traditionally dragon-images in the Bible are mixed with images of snakes/sea-monsters/Leviathans. A Jewish girl with only the texts to go on would likely get an image somewhere between a Giant Snake and the Loch Ness Monster. The image certainly struck me as within the realm of reasonable dragon-images.
Oddly, dragons are related to panda bears. Distantly, mind you. But take it as a warning: Dance with the Panda and you’ll get burned.
“I thought that was funny – it really gave me the giggles to draw the expression on the tiny dropped dragon’s face.”
That’s becasue you are sick and twisted :)
Having said that, the page was very creepy — once I figured out what was going on. The scene where she is dipping her hands into the girl’s head is a bit awkward: it was not clear to me at first hat was going on. I did not make the connection until the panel showing the witch holding the “thought” dragon and girl.
forgot to add: I am defintely hooked now. I hate waiting a week for the next page.
Speaking of hating to wait a week– I’m not seeing new Herevilles. Is a subscription required to continue past the 11th page? I don’t remember seeing “Hereville’s now up” posts… so it seems more likely that there’s a different problem.
Hope it’s resolveable– I enjoyed the story as far as it went.
Yes, I’ve been missing it, too.