Final Quest # 13

I'm also looking a bit at the costume. It seems the weird neck thing from Rogue's Curse 2 has arrived, but as the pirate shirt hasn't, I don't think this is "tall" Rayowill yet. Could be, though- he seems to have a longer face and smaller eyes than he had in his last appearance in FQ10. But it's probably just artistic license.

I bet he blows shit up like I knew he could... all along.... without the aid of the Palace or spirits.

He's long over due to vent out some pent up rage, and justifiably so at this point.

I know the cover is all we have to go on, but really...how often has the cover accurately depicted what happens in FQ? About all we can truly take from this is that Rayowill is (probably) in this issue, and that (maybe) Venka gets injured.

It definitely won't be Tall Rayek. Unless Wendy plays with the timeline, Rayek doesn't get re-shaped until 400 years after the Second Palace War.

And now we know that Venka gets injured at the end of issue 12... and Rayowill starts blasting around.
What else could happen?

Yes. The elves could go to the troll tunnels to find Cutter, but he's not there. He's kicking it with the tree elves... I mean fung guys.

Lunakat wrote:

Yes. The elves could go to the troll tunnels to find Cutter, but he's not there. He's kicking it with the tree elves... I mean fung guys.

How dare you make that pun before me?

Lunakat wrote:

Yes. The elves could go to the troll tunnels to find Cutter, but he's not there. He's kicking it with the tree elves... I mean fung guys.

That's a great name for them!

Fung guys! ROFLMAO brilliant name! That's what I'm gonna call them from now on.

My work here is done.

Lunakat wrote:

with the tree elves... I mean fung guys.

ILU, Lunakat XD

I went looking for previews(this is the next issue, right?) and got nothing.

Lunakat wrote:

Yes. The elves could go to the troll tunnels to find Cutter, but he's not there. He's kicking it with the tree elves... I mean fung guys.

Hey, they're touchy about their STDs... (..poor choice of words, sorry)  but if Cutter wants to risk it, well, thats his business. Leetah doesnt need to worry about it, she's basically immune...

Preview! Preview!  

Here

Edit: no major spoiler in it

Gosh, the coloring is all messed up again. Skimback is supposed to be yellowish with dark brown hair, but on pg. 3 he's pale flesh tone with light brown hair. The panel in the top right corner on that page is so weird. I have absolutely no idea who the blonde Wavedancer is supposed to be? I don't recognize that hair/outfit combo, maybe a messed up Sandsparkle or No-Ripple (and is it just me is or is her head not really aligned with her neck? She should probably see a healer about that, lol!) Another coloring oops on pg. 4 with Snakeskin's white hair.

The full page image on pg. 1 is pretty exciting though, and I can't wait to see Rayek and Reef go bananas on some Djunsmen.

I think Blondie is supposed to be Sandsparkle, but god, what a messed up drawing - the proportions are completely skewed.

The coloring is so so bad. Why?

I want to like this. But it's so... eh.

I don't recognize this Rayek. He's always been a hot-head but he's never been blood-thirsty. What happened to "is it a honor for [animals] to die in terror and pain?" I admit, I can see him going all psycho with Winnie's "loving" help AFTER Venka was shot, but he was there from the get-go. So sad to see, after all that complex character growth, him regressed to cartoon villainy. Once, he and Cutter were cut of the same cloth. "Meant to do great things but likely to stumble trying to manage too much." (For however much we can trust Khavi.) But this? It's like someone else altogether.

I know, Manga. I've given up on any actual Rayek character development a long time ago....ever since, Kumbaya Palace Scene, oh yeah, I've been holding onto Winnowill the whole time and never mind whatever character development I had earlier, and Oh Why isn't your mind an etchasketch?







Ugh.

Not impressed. Colours bad, proportions off, characters OOC. If this were a fanfic, I'd be constantly trying to hold back on a scathing review.

Is... it the 27th yet?

This is... scary! I'm starting to think these previews are a bad idea, all the day is scaring us twice!
I love this new protective Reef, just it won't destroy him if he's forced to kill. He seems like a guy for whom even enemies, even killing humans, could have some severe psychological issues.
BTW, I had no problems recognising Sandsparke. No... not like that... The fact that we've never seen that hair-outfit-combo doesn't really matter. The elves are allowed to change their style every now and then. Despite what Cutter seems to think...

manga wrote:

I don't recognize this Rayek. He's always been a hot-head but he's never been blood-thirsty. What happened to "is it a honor for [animals] to die in terror and pain?" I admit, I can see him going all psycho with Winnie's "loving" help AFTER Venka was shot, but he was there from the get-go. So sad to see, after all that complex character growth, him regressed to cartoon villainy. Once, he and Cutter were cut of the same cloth. "Meant to do great things but likely to stumble trying to manage too much." (For however much we can trust Khavi.) But this? It's like someone else altogether.

Bear in mind that Rayek isn't quite himself, and haven't been so for about 50 years.
It's not the first time he's lost his mind from being sorta possesed by dead elf spirits.
One think I'm thankful for is that he actually noticed Venka getting shot. I was worried he'd be so lost in his enraged state that he didn't even notice, or worse; accidentally blasted her. Which would've been downright horrible. Rayek has done many bad things, but he haven't done anything bad enough to suffer from the pain of accidentally killing one of the people who means the most to him.

I get him being incensed enough to start blasting the humans who killed that old man. That fits him: a good basis but an extreme reaction. It's the "Yes, Winnowill, let's make their deaths agonizing" and "I've never loved you more than at this moment" (as we're torturing and killing) that seems OOC. Not to mention, if this is an example of how well he's been keeping Winnowill under control, then they must be leaving a trail of death across Abode and the other elves are going to be responsible for all the murders because they let it keep going.

Speaking of art, the scene where Rayek is floating and looking over his shoulder at Ekuar, Venka and Windkin looks off. Rayek looks like he was posed standing on the ground and then clipped and pasted into the air. The sense of gravity feels off.

Oh... I'm sure he's been doing a fine job of keeping her under control until now. Which might turn out to be a problem! Maybe it'll turn out to be like when you keep something under preassure for too long. In the end it just bursts!
Which means that even when Rayek does something right he still can't get a break! In fact you could say that this entire mess - the thing with Winnowill, not the thing with the humans - is at least indirectly thanks to him owning up to his biggest mistake ever, and being willing to make amends.

In the panel where Rayek sais "I have never loved you more, dark spirit, than at this moment.", to me Rayek doesn't look quite like himself. I get the impression Winnowil has found a way to influence him. If this is the case, I don't think his comment is OOC. I think Redhead Ember is right and Winnowil might have gotten a hold on him because he has been under pressure for too long. I like this storyline.

I don't care that Rayek has gone off the deep end. I hope that gets explored more. I mean-- he has an insane person living in his head that he won't let go of. That make sense.

At this point, the drawings seem fine.

What's killing me here is the color. Last issue was bad-- but these preview pages are awful. Talk about popping the background and receding the foreground to completely flatten an image! The colors aren't compatible. There is no logic to the saturation. And why are Venka, Windkin and Ekuar some variation between bile green and jaundice yellow?

Is there no professional colorist they can hire? I liked what Sonny did in the first few issues, but its like he just suddenly started busting this out without putting any time or thought (or skill) into it. Does he suspect at all that this might be bad? Wendy Pini has created some beautiful work in the past that had lovely colors in it. Does she really think this coloring is good?

I hope it gets better. I hope skin tones, at least, stop being grey and yellow-- and that the colorist starts paying attention to foreground, middle ground and background, like before.

But maybe I'm just expecting too much. I mean-- this is a kids comic book after all. Are kids going to notice and care about this stuff? Probably not.