See Bozok’s line in panel 8 here.
Then look at Ian’s dialog in the penultimate panel here.
It seems that Ivy is Bozzok’s agent. Geoff *might *be.
It isn’t certain if Ivy has been foiling Ian’s escapes. Seems likely, but unconfirmed. Given The Giant’s habit of pulling uinexpected plot twists maybe there’s something else at work.
That said, does anyone here really care about Ian? He may be Haley’s dad, but he’s still a bit of an asshole.
Belkar is a huge asshole, but everyone loves him. Ian is a bit acerbic, true, but he’s also a grumpy old man that’s been tortured for the past decade. I think his personality hinges on showing Haley that your heroes aren’t always likable, even if they’re good people.
He was Haley’s entire motivation for adventuring, thus the reason for her joining the Order. Rich really needed to show what happened to him, or it would have been a dangling storyline. Can’t have any of those before the final showdown.
Yeah, but the final showdown isn’t for another two books. Plenty of time to deal with the fussy bits. Although with this story, two books might just represent 15 minutes of in-universe time!
But this way, he can show bits of what is happening with the fight against Tarquin, the same way he did the Resistance in Azure City. Although we can hope there is a better ending for this one. 
Not especially. Asshole aside, he’s just not very interesting or entertaining to me. Belkar, Tarquin and Xykon might be assholes but I’m happy to see them on the screen; this guy just fills space.
Ian was actually a lot more interesting as a missing person than he is as a found one. Once Burlew revealed the solution to the mystery of what happened to him and who had him, interest was over, really.
Exactly this. It’s fine if a character is evil, long as he’s stylishly evil. That’s one of the things I didn’t like about Burlew’s handling of Tarquin - he used to be stylishly evil, but then Burlew handed him the idiot ball.
It’s the journey, not the destination. He started off as stylishly evil so we could watch his descent into pitifulness.
Worse, into irrelevance.
In this strip, everybody’s dad is an asshole.
Bet Belkar’s was the nicest guy in the entire halfling nation.
The only relative of Belkar’s we know anything about was his Aunt Judy, who was apparently something of a piece of work.
Well, his last plan worked out pretty well, so who knows this time.
So is it still the evening of the same day that’s been going for 100-something strips, coming up on a year now?
Yep. That’s why I’m not too worried about Belkar kicking the bucket any time soon.
Pfftt. Agatha spent what, four and a half years in that damned castle?
Yeah, but she made up for it by crossing the next couple of years in about a page.