Yay! Anniversary week day 2! Lots of stuff to ramble about.
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First up, if you didn’t see it, yesterday we kicked off the week with a guest blog post by Chuck Wendig and some awesome art from Douang Khamsitthisack.
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Today’s bonus art comes courtesty of Monster Commute creator Daniel Davis. Mr. Steamcrow himself gives us a warped, awesome take on Toby! Click the picture for the full size version.
If you haven’t been reading MC, you should. It’s twisted and funny and incredibly good looking and updates 5 days a week, putting chumps like me to shame.
Edit: Here is a link to the start of MC Chapter 2, where it switched from a Gag A Day style strip to a more story driven tale. This is a perfect jumping in point.
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New vote incentive today! A jumbo look at Teen Thorton, both in original line art and full color versions. Teen Thorton makes me happy. He’s just so proud. So please, go vote!
(I also realized that between today’s page and Ophelia’s story, we’ve had 2 flashbacks featuring beaming, content teenagers. Don’t worry, Eva’s story will certainly change that.)
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Also, man could I have lined up a more downer series of comics for Anniversary Week? ”Hey everybody! Come celebrate a year of Clockworks with our heroes sitting around talking about their dead and abducted families! Woo!” At least today’s page had the joy of panel 1. ;)
Ah well.
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Come back tomorrow, for a special bonus comic featuring Eva’s story. Then come back Friday for Clockworks #100, which will be full of twists and surprises!
I need to get me a pair of them snazzy boots.
Me too.
So, my two favorite parts of this page are very different:
The obvious fun of panel 1. Especially blown up large, that just makes me happy.
Thorton’s casual Fantasy Racism ™ in panel 2. I have a feeling his dad was more openly prejudiced towards faeborn, but the fact Thorton apparently doesn’t consider them “people” is very telling, especially with Ophelia and Toby right there.
Thanks for the explanation on that. I didn’t remember the Rookery right away.
It’s been a while since it’s shown up in the comic.
http://shawntionary.com/clockworks/?p=254
http://shawntionary.com/clockworks/?p=233
Eh, I’m pretty sure Ophelia and Toby shrug that sort of casual racism off. It must fly around them all the time so they’re inured to it most of the time.
I was just about to ask what Thorton meant by that. Thanks for answering.
Can’t wait until tomorrow’s comic!!
Oh hey, just noticed (and fixed) a typo in panel 2. “limited” was “limted” for the first few hours today. Oops.
Don’t you know we love to know the origins of the characters! Not depressing at all and well, adventurers are notorious for having horrible pasts that drive them.
Alll caught up. I missed Clockworks. :[ Poor Thorton. Has no family left.
One of the things I found really interesting about Clockworks: The Home Game, is the PCs families were really important, even if Toby is really the only one who has family around. In each case, how the characters interacted with their parents/siblings and the fate of their family really shaped who that character became.Which, you know, is fairly accurate to the real world.
So Thorton’s desire for vengeance, propensity to be quite brutal in combat, dismissal or religion, distrust of faeborn/elementalists, sense of honor and duty, etc etc are all shaped by his past, just like a real person.
In a lot of ways, we see a bunch of characters who are in need of a family. It’s one of the reasons I was so drawn to this cast, and one of the reasons I knew I’d love to make the comic.
When I first started out my dnd game, the dm made us make a back story for our characters, make a family, family friends, name them and everything. I have a whole list of characters that I’ve never talked about, only seen once, but they’re there. I think he mainly does it so he can exploit them. Like I created a mentor for my character and he ended up killing him off. So I now when a dm will ask me to create a back story for my character, creating a family, I won’t be able to trust them to not kill them off and make me enact vengeance on some demon or something.
Though I do think creating a family helps create the character a lot more than not creating one. Helps create a reason why you’re doing this, why you want this evil doer in jail, or dead. I like that you get to know Thorton’s back story, helps you connect with him more. And when you found out about Ophelia too, it really connected you to her and the story more. Make it more 3 dimensional.
“…and now I’m going to go and kill Lukov.”
Best. Line. Ever.
Also, damn. MC and CW in the same thingy? I.. well.. DAMN.
Inoright?!?!
Thorton had to stay home and watch a bat-themed ballet. His show was interrupted by a rather-desperate pan-handler, but Thorton never opened the door. Years later, Lukov said that this was actually him or one of his cronies considering dropping off the head, but since Thorton never opened the door, they dropped it at Varnak’s place instead.
Poor Thorton.
It’s always interesting when he talks a lot. He has such an unusual, stilted cadence of speech.
Once again, nice comic. Thorton looked so happy in the first panel…
I just love the fact that thorton had long hair, even when we was a teenager.
I think we can assume that in Irone, long hair and bears/goatees are a sign of masculinity. Boys probably start growing it out as soon as they are able.
Aww, poor Thorton. Mother and brother executed for an unknown crime, father decapitated, tendency to get hurt in full swing…
[...] be fair, Thorton has made his intentions clear for some [...]