A few things:
No bonus comic tomorrow. I have Ophelia’s Story, Part 3 finished. But since I haven’t started at all the comic that will follow it, I figure it’s probably a good idea to learn from past mistakes and not kill myself trying to draw all sorts of crazy stuff for next week.
Apologies for leaving you guys for the weekend with the super downer ending from today’s comic. Those of you who read Doors & Windows remember the really terrible things I put the characters through in that one, but for those of you who mainly know me from Chainmail Bikini, this is probably a good time to adjust your perceptions and expectations a bit. 
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This is the 20th Clockworks comic. A minor milestone to be sure, but it’s a nice point to pause and look back at how things have begun. My goal is to make the greatest anything ever, and I don’t know if I’ve quite hit that, but it’s good to have a goal.
I am pretty proud that by now it should be clear that the comic is meant to be sad and funny, exciting and mysterious, intelligent and crude, and all sorts of other contradictions and combinations. If over the next few years I can find a balance of drama, action, and humor that comes anywhere remotely near Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Avatar the Last Airbender, I will consider the comic a rousing success.
Hopefully by now a bit of our heroes’ personalities have come through, and there’s a bit of versimilitude and pathos there.
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I’m going to be doing a bit of tweaking to the site, adding a few things. There will be a new page at the top “Hire Me”, detailing my commission illustration/cartooning work; as well as a ton of new links on the blogroll off on the left to some of the many, many incredible comics, artists, and steampunk stuff I’ve discovered since I began this comic.
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So, thank you guys for reading so far, I hope you enjoyed the gloom and doom of today’s strip, and I’ll see you on Tuesday.
This again reminds me of the “replacement” stories involving trolls from our folklore.
Incidentally, one of the often recurring themes in those stories is that if the parents ever crosses path, the troll mother always scolds the human one, because the trolls have always taken much better care of the human child, than the human parents have of the troll child.
Congrats on you 20th Clockwork! I’m enjoying it muchly.
The whole idea of fae/goblins/trolls stealing babies and replacing them is a pretty darn old one. The main version I remember reading had goblin babies left behind, but I suppose the Scandinavian version of a troll (my stepdad’s Norweigan) is a lot closer to a goblin than a giant D&D monster.
In the world of Clockworks, we can assume the legends of this happening are very old. Unfortunately, in the last 40 years or so it’s become something of a common occurance, enough to move out of the realm of faerie tale to “Oh crap, what do we do with all these trolls and goblins and aquatic elves?”
I’m looking forward to when I can share Toby’s Story, because it’s a fun contrast to Ophelia’s. Knowing what I know about my rough outline for the comic, Toby’s flashback is probably three or so months away, at least.
And Enesvy – thanks!
Yeah, the Scandinavian trolls are basically a crossbreed between the British Fey, and the Ogres… Especially the young females are apparently very attractive, although you have to be careful with them (they are strong enough to pinch off pieces of iron from (cold) horseshoes like it was silly putty… Plus according to many legends they have a bad habit of wrapping their tails around your neck while making out, which works if you, too, is a troll but tend to strangle humans…
…Anyway… I really like the background to the Clockwork setting. You are pulling me in real good! Keep up the good work. Please.
Love the stuff. I just got into savage worlds, and this is a good primer on how steampunk works. The world, the characters, the plot points. Its really cool to see how an RPG session converts into real stories.
@Avilan: Everyone knows a little asphyxiation heightens the pleasure!
The trick, of course, is to get them to let go before you pass out.
This comic has taken a turn from being a well told amusing story to a well told powerful yet amusing story. I like that in a story. /clap
Wow. Thank you.
Humor has always been a goal for the comic, but never the main one. Hopefully things will continue to be powerful yet amusing.
For some reason the sadness doesn’t quite get to me. Probably because the story isn’t being told by the little girl who got left at the orphanage, but by the adult who already made it through the ordeal. Or it could just be that it takes many more panels than a single one to make me sad.
Also, “discovered” seems to be missing its “s” in the second panel. Which is the real reason for my commenting, but wouldn’t it be boring if typos were the only thing I had to comment on?
Man, how did that typo make it through both of my proofreaders AND the thousand or so people who read this comic yesterday? I’m out of town, so it will get fixed Sunday at the earliest.
Back from the vacation!
And the comic made me baww. It was sad.
Tooting My Own Horn
I’m a big fan of movies or stories that leave things up to the audience’s imagination, and hopefully inspire the viewer to speculate and wonder and imagine. One of the things I personally really enjoy about this strip is you get a hint of things from Ophelia/Olivia’s parents’ perspective.
We don’t know their names, and they’re just a pair of silhouettes, but I think it’s easy enough to imagine what they went through. Wether what they did was right or wrong, I’m sure it wasn’t easy. And considering a few setting elements that have been mentioned in the Worldbuilding blog posts and will eventually become more clear in the comic, it’s possible O’s parents saved her life by taking her down to the Rookery orphanage.
Her parents haven’t really come up much in Clockworks: the Game beyond what you’ve seen here, but I like to imagine how things were from their perspective.
/tooting my own horn