You’re nearly two weeks late. 
Oh, no wonder I couldn’t find it that far back.
Another twist to the “world inside the rift”
the existence of which even the gods apparently didn’t know about…
Thank you, Rich.
Happy New Year to you.
So much for the all-seeing Odin. Or, he could have known about it, and was keeping it from Thor for reasons.
Given none of the characters are complaining about permanent level loss, and Durkon got raised without looking like he was sitting at 1 HP, I’m guessing Burlew is going to ignore a few of the game mechanical issues involved with Hilgya killing and raising him in rapid succession. It was a hilarious twist at the end of the last strip.
I don’t see how Durkon can reasonably expect to have any custody or anything to do with Kudzu (beyond writing Hilgya a support check, if Dwarven society provides for that), when he’s dealing with a woman who believes at her core that, “Everything is a competition, and the only people who think otherwise are losers who lose.”
I wonder if there’s any significance to V just sitting there, looking distressed, but unlike the rest of the Order, not saying anything during the last few panels?
That was one tight strip: Rich delivers again. I liked how Thor figured he was culpable in the misfired resurrection, when honestly he wasn’t at all.
Nah, the question mark indicates he didn’t have a clue. Rich fan-wanked that problem away by making Odin a little demented (he’ll get better though!). Bottom line, it seems we have more plot twists/developments in front of us.
V doesn’t have a high degree of emotional intelligence, so it’s not a shock that she couldn’t see through Durkula, who after all was actively trying to deceive the group. But s/he’s smart enough, prideful enough, and introspective enough to question why she didn’t pick up on things (and Belkar did).
Continuing the earlier discussion, Hilgya is nuts, also evil. It’s pretty obvious to us (and should be obvious to anyone versed in Dwarven society) that Durkon is trying to do the right thing and trying to make amends. The proper thing to do (from Hilgya’s perspective) is to deliver him a tongue lashing beginning with “No you wanker”.
But she isn’t a heroine. In fact she’s evil. Doesn’t mean that some of her motivations aren’t legit: writers who are not hacks often pen adversaries where evil involves decent motivations taken too far, due to fanaticism or absence of care for consequence. Hollywood usually takes a more infantile approach, where adversaries are conveniently venomous or sociopathic. Lazy writing, easily pandered audience.
Maybe he can at least influence his son into a mindset where he recognizes that “everything [being] a competition” means that Kudzu is himself in competition with his mother; and at the end, Thor’s side wins over Loki’s side.
How is a woman with those kinds of views going to let Durkon have any say over Kudzu whatsoever? In fact, with her stated motivations, I’m not sure why she’d stick around any further. I’m not convinced she’d want to help out killing the Exarch, except she does say in an earlier strip that Loki finds, IIRC, “the undead to be icky.”
So maybe it’d be in line with her God’s views that she help cleanse Firmament with fire, from an undead infestation, but I can’t see her wanting to stick around longer than that. If she’s not sticking around, she’s taking Kudzu with her, and then Durkon doesn’t get a chance to influence him. I certainly can’t see her, as Burlew’s drawn her, wanting anything to do with any kind of joint custody or visitation arrangement. Doing so would be ‘not winning’ as much as she possibly could in their competition. Sole custody is a higher score in family court than joint custody or sole custody with limited visitation.
(I wonder if Burlew had a family member or friend go through a divorce recently?)
I like your observation on V’s lack of emotional intelligence, and then covering up with silence, some wounded pride at not being able to see Greg for what he was. I’d add that V’s shock must be fairly large for him/her to not have one of his/hir usual lengthy, pithy comments ready.
I think Hilgya’s evil, and certainly, absolutely, 100% Chaotic, but she doesn’t strike me as the same kind of Evil as either Xykon or Belkar before his curse. Or Thog, now that I think of it. I’d thought you could put her in the CN pink box we saw during Thor’s trip through the Outer Planes—Don’t Tell Me What To Do!—albeit with some evil tendencies, but the evil tendencies keep stacking up, don’t they? I guess there are large gradations of CE.
Pretty decent writing job to give us such different characters who embody very different ways of living in accordance with ultimately a similar moral compass.
Fascinating and/or disturbing
Your points are well-taken, as far as they go. But we already have a character (Vaarsuvius) sacrificing a connection with their offspring in the interest of saving the world. I don’t really see Burlew going back to that well, and he’s got all the time in the world to construct a plausible story that encompasses enough reconciliation between Durkon and Hilgya to allow for that much Durkon-Kudzu contact (maybe if Durkon dies for good he could manifest to Kudzu in visions the way Gene Greenhilt could manifest to Roy).
Yeah, Burlew has been very good about showing diversity within alignments. An alignment is not a personality; it’s just a way of describing one aspect of personality. Daimyo Kubota is not like Redcloak is not like Not-Durkon, despite all of them being Lawful Evil. O-Chul, Hinjo, Miko, Roy, and Durkon are all different, despite all being Lawful Good. Belkar, Hilgya, Xykon, and Thog are very different sorts of Chaotic Evil. On reflection, there aren’t all that many CG major characters, but Elan and Haley are still fairly different. And on the other hand, there are some definite similarities between, say, Elan and Tarquin, despite their opposite alignments.
Or maybe Burlew just couldn’t come up with a good punchline for V.
Burlew wrote a whole article on how he creates evil characters.
Aaand Belkar gets another inadvertent shove toward the Light Side of the Force.
Belkar would be Durkon’s fourth choice from among the party? Who comes after him?
I’d have expected the list to go something like Roy, Haley, Elan, Vaarsuvius, Scruffy, Blackwing, Belkar.
Elan, most likely.