How do we explain him talking about “his parents” then?
The above is what I wrote before I got off my ass and looked up who Zeus’s parents were: Cronus and Rhea. Cronus, i.e., the Titan that ate his children to prevent them from usurping him.
F*$k me, it’s perfect. Great job.
A severely damaged god, with his INT and WIS knocked down by a couple dozen points each, may have a compromised magical immunity system. Besides, we don’t know that Xykon’s magic actually worked, only that the MitD’s eyes glowed in response.
Well, counter-intuitive as it seems to me, I can’t argue with that 
Eh, isn’t Zeus the guy with the beard and the snarl through his chest? If you mean that he doesn’t actually have X’s for eyes yet, the comic is pretty explicit that he dies last.
Yep. Note also that he’s the only god in the panel without Xs for eyes.
(On edit: Shojo may have said he died, but he’s just repeating what he’d been told. Also, Shojo lies).
Look, if I’m right, then nobody knows Zeus is alive - not Shojo, not Xykon, not even the other gods. And not he himself.
Okay, I’ve posted your theory (with credit) over there.
I’ve seen that last one. Had to get the video store guy to order it from the distributor, but totally worth it.
Thanks! Keep me posted on the response.
It’s been scotched: divine status means you’re immune to mind control, and the Big Game Hunters recognised it immediately.
As I noted above - the mind control immunity could be compromised as a result of massive damage (the Snarl is Rich’s creation, and the effects of its attacks are whatever he says they area; besides, it wouldn’t the first case of a god temporarily knocked down to mortal), and as for his form… shapeshifter. Just because the hunters identified what he looked like, doesn’t mean they identified him.
But hey, the fewer people agree with me, the better I’ll look when proven right.
And when the hunters “recognized” the MitD they were surprised to find it outside of its expected environment and by its ability to talk. This is evidence that the MitD is not really whatever it appears to be which fits in with the shapeshifting idea.
Interesting. There’s a few people on the GitP forum who are quick to claim any unexpected plot twist is a Deus ex Machina. They’re generally wrong.
But if it does turn out that MitD is the big Z,especially if he regains his memories through a device of some sort, then for once they’ll be right.
Soo… [wild speculation]
Suppose the power of the Snarl could be used not just to destroy gods, but to remake them, thus restoring the N-S-E-W balance to the Universe. And doing exactly that has really been the secret plan of the Gods. A few characters actually know this, like Xykon, the Underworld characters, and of course the Gods themselves.
So in the big climax, the power of the Snarl is re-directed to remake the Eastern pantheon. If Zeus is still around, he could be restored, and the other six Gods shown (Apollo, Ares, Hades, Poseidon, Aphrodite, and Demeter) remade from whatever raw material happens to be hanging around. And by “raw material,” I mean the characters. So Xykon hopes to be one of those characters (which explains quite logically exactly why he wants to fiddle with the Snarl).
But, if good wins out, the six available slots will be filled by the six members of OOTS. Belkar = Ares, of course (he’s the sexy shoeless God of War), which neatly fulfills his prophecy. Elan = the bard Apollo. Durkon = Hades, because he’s been taken over by Durkula (and would give another explanation for Thor’s seeming indifference to that fact). That leaves Roy = Poseidon, which is somewhat less satisfying, but maybe something’s coming up in future episodes which would make that more logical. I suppose V = Aphrodite as a back-play on words, which leaves Haley as Demeter. Alternatively, Roy gets stuck in the sex-change belt again and becomes Aphrodite, making V = Poseidon.
[/wild speculation]
In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves… whoa.
I dunno, I agree with Belkar = Ares and Durkon = Hades, but I would make Roy = Apollo, Haley = Aphrodite (come on, she’s hot and she knows it), V = Demeter, and that leaves Elan as Poseidon.
Roy is Zeus, Elan is Apollo. V – has a familiar?
If we assume that the MiTD is a damaged or time-shifted Zeus, when do we think that his major personality trait of screwing every female in sight will begin to appear? How fast do Gods grow up?
The characters ascending into the Pantheon is a nice thought for ending the strip. Would The Dark One or the IFCC be aware of this? How does TDO’s and RedCloak’s goal of rewriting things so that Goblins have a better say in Stickverse affairs mesh with zut’s proposed idea of how all of this will wrap up?
Dtilque’s observation about the irony of this potentially being a DxM is hilarious.
As an aside, the first panel of the current strip reminds me of the third-to-last panel of this strip.
Also: how has no one flagged V - who values knowledge and wisdom AND has a bird familiar - as Athena?
Good spot!