That’s not lampshading. This is lampshading.
Heh. Pity Roy didn’t think about replacing his ancestral sword from the cast page after Xykon shattered it – he could have saved the group dozens of panels worth of annoyance.
Why do I have this feeling that something horrible is about to happen?
I disagree. There’s been a lot of heaviness lately. I’ll bet this goes off with a smile, wink, joke and resurrection. It’s a ‘cleanse the palate’ time. That allows for a new trade paperback and a clean break for the next story arc.
So what is the general opinion on how long V will stay spliced? Once Roy is rezzed and they teleport to the area of the next gate, will V release the splice? Or is power addictive…
As long as he can.
And don’ forget the evil splicer’s ‘Meter’s Running’ from a couple of strips ago. If nothing else, THEY know that the longer V holds on to them the better off their evil masterminds will be.
I agree with Jonathan Chance. Burlew is trying to show how much more difficult and long he could make the storyline if he wanted (as some people are complaining), but instead he is trying to get Roy raised at the appropriate pace. He’s not just playing with the reader and making the strip unnecessarily long.
New one is up, and it’s pretty funny 
And yes, the cast page has been changed!
Wow. I read this comic once a few years ago, but I think I lost interest somewhere around #50 and didn’t continue reading it. Last week for some reason I decided to look at it again. I think I got hooked somewhere around #80 with Durkon’s love interest/Dwarven sense of duty subplot. This is a damn good webcomic.
Oh, definitely. I took the final panel in #649 to mean that Shit Is About To Go Down and that Roy’s gonna be dead for a while longer. I mean, “We keep overcoming plot obstacles at this pace, we’ll be killing Xykon five strips from now!” basically means that a whole heap of plot obstacles are going to show up in the next strip.
My wild-assed guess: Roy’s going to be dead for more than just a while longer. Something’s happened to his now-smashed body while the character page gag was going on, something that will keep Durkon from resurrecting Roy. V will attempt to intervene and royally screw things up. This will be the thing that pushes V firmly into Evil territory, Familicide was just a nudge.
Oh, absolutely. He makes a point of never having anything exciting happen on a big round number, or even a minor one like #650.
For people like me who had a ridiculous time finding the cast page (I eventually Googled it, followed a link to wikipedia, and found the cast page link in a footnote), here’s a direct link.
Completely right, and yet he also makes a point of foiling his readers’ expectations, so my intuition is that this will be the exception that proves his own rule. I’m looking for a rezzed Roy in 650 and all elements in place for the next story arc.
Or click on the big “?” button below the comic that says “Cast of Characters” when you mouse over it.
Er, no. Rich is not making fun of the “dreadfully slow pacing”. He’s making fun of the people complaining about the dreadfully slow pacing – because if he set his pacing at the rate demanded by the Whinge Brigade, the strip would be OVER, now.
He’s pointing out that the plotline isn’t the point of the strip. It’s the journey, not the destination, as it were.
… and no coincidence he put that line in Belkar’s speech bubbles, methinks.
That’s more or less what I was getting at with the perceived part, yeah.
Or even #400…
I feel sorry for V. Maybe I shouldn’t, maybe s/he’s getting set up to be the future big bad, but I can’t help it. I just reread the whole arc again starting from the battle of Azure City and after kicking all kinds of ass, V ran out of magic and couldn’t close the deal, and was forced to retreat and hide. The two people V seems closest to in the Order – Roy and Haley – were both lost, in different ways, and V hasn’t been able to help either. V took the whole thing much worse than any of the others, even Elan and Haley, and for someone who keeps such a tight rein on his/her emotions, I think V’s crackup was inevitable.
Of course all my sympathy means that V is probably gonna turn into an evil monster who’ll end up dead. Because, again, my approval of a fictional character is pretty much the touch of death.
Anyway. Does anyone think V has a chance at redemption, or did the Familicide mean we’re only at the beginning of his or her perfidy?
On a lighter note: I just got my copies of Start of Darkness and On the Origin of PCs, so YAY! Does it matter which I read first?
Man. A 40something woman who doesn’t even play D&D should not be this excited about a little stick figure comic. That’s some good writing on Rich’s part. (Or some major geekitude on mine!)
Proper release order is Origin then Start. There’s a small gag in Start that depends on you reading Origin first. It doesn’t make a real difference if you read it the other way around, though.
Heh, fair enough.
I think Rich has mentioned that he plots future strips pretty far in advance of the strip he’s on. So it’s likely that whatever strip # he had planned for Roy’s return got all buggered up by his unplanned Dave Arneson tribute eating up one of the strip #s.
In other words, what strip # Roy returns in is pretty much a crapshoot, anyway, at this point.