Yeah, this ain’t gonna kill Xykon, but … Man… Boy’s gonna take serious ego damage. It both scares and impresses the hell out of me that V apparently prepares ‘that’ spell -every- damn day. I laughed my ass off when I saw the inscription. IN YER FACE, Xykon!
<Huff Puff> Finally made it to the end! <whew!>
659 strips digested in the span of about ten days. This strip manages to pull off an interesting twofer; it manages to firmly be the very thing it is also parodying. A la The Princess Bridge or Young Frankenstein, for example. Most parodies can’t also be enjoyed on the plot level-they typically go for the cheap laugh (c.f. Mel Brooks) at the expense of characterization and such. Not here. The plot, such as it is, is rather intriguing, if somewhat derivative.
My favorite character is Elan, for obvious reasons; he’s much like me actually, tho I am a bit more the absent-minded wizard type (more brains a bit less obliviousness). Second-favorite is the hobbit; he doesn’t make any excuses, at all, for whom he is. Plus he gets the funniest lines. The lich gets the second-most. The rest are pretty cool, with some which aren’t meant to inspire reader indentification (like the late Miko). I pity V and her huge ego.
Now the things I don’t like. There was (is, marginally) another fantasy webcomic some of you may remember, called Elf Life. Started out very strong, boy woos girl, wins girl, then loses girl, along with some evil goings-on that they have to oppose. But the strip underwent several long hiatuses (hiati?) and subsequent reinventions, until the original plot was pretty much lost and the creator seemed to lose all interest and updates pretty much stopped. I hope that isn’t what is happening here; for about 200 strips the plot was more or less in neutral, lots of activities full of sound and fury, signifying little (tho Roy’s sojourn in the afterlife revealed certain things). Recently (last 20 strips) things have picked up; the gang is all back together, but V succumbed to temptation and pride, with some nasty downplot consequences. I just hope the author isn’t going to pull a Chris Carter on us, is in fact going to resolve all plot threads eventually, does have a journey and destination in mind (even if 1000 strips down the road), and isn’t just jerking us around. So far tho it’s been a pretty compelling ride, and with a cute little cliffhanger at the end of 659.
Since there’s no dates on the strips I don’t know how often new ones come out-guess I’ll find out.
The author has said that he has then entire plot planned out and even has ideas for the ending strip.
Of course, that’s also what Dave Sim said in the 1970’s. “Oh yeah, I already have all 300 issues of Cerebus planned out. It’s gonna be awesome!”
Then the final issues came out, and they were slapdash, navel-gazing pap.
I haven’t finished the series (it’s hard to work up enthusiasm given Sim’s attitude but every few years I wind up with another phone book) but I’m not surprised. He seemed to be doing that more and more as the series went on and claimed that at least the fourth wall creator/creation discussion was in his plans from the point where he decided to do 300 issues (around Cerebus #20, IIRC).
When the strip hit it big, and Rich was able to quit his day job and start doing it “full time”, he went to a planned three new strips per week. But, not too long afterwards, he started suffering some health concerns, and the update schedule became more sporadic.
He’s kept to a rough schedule of two to three updates per week for the past couple of years, but it varies somewhat, and the exact times of the updates aren’t predictable or announced.
“My name is Mr. Jones, this is my colleague, Mr. Rodriguez. We’re here to serve you a cease and desist order for using copyright terms belonging to the estate of Professor J.R.R. Tolkein.”
“A spooooky cease and desist!”
“Shut up, Phil.”
It’s closer than that: during the siege of Azure city, V was 15th level, for 37.5 HP before CON bonuses. Half of that is 19…
But V did - just barely - survive a Meteor Swarm, so he must have pretty good CON bonuses. Call it a base CON of 14 and a +4 Enhancement bonus for +4 HP per level giving him an expected 97.5 HP.
IIRC, he also deliberately stopped announcing the updates and kept an irregular schedule when the server started buckling under the load. OOTS was basically slashdotting itself.
Errm, not to quibble, but you *seem *to be saying that Mel Brooks goes for cheap laughs. And then you contrast this with Young Frankenstein? Does *anything *about that strike you as…odd?
And of course another well-known fantasy author(ess) said the same, years back, and that the final lines were written and safe in the bank vault… and IMHO the final volume sucked donkey balls.
This whole V versus Xykon sequence, however, rawwwks. 
And in rereading I caught something I had overlooked the first time: V casts two spells in this strip. One is clearly the spell cast on the amulet as Blackwing is preparing to fly it to the rift, but V’s hand is lit with purple again just as Xykon casts ‘Mass Hold Person.’
Well, O-Chul was leading a charge, so I guess V felt he had to cast whatever he could in support. At this point, he probably doesn’t have anything more powerful than a Magic Missile left.
Actually, the Soul Splice replenished all of V’s spells, so V should still have most of his/her normal arsenal.
And 660 is up ! BOOM !
Toot! Toot!
Mmm. Well, a quick walking tour of the city with Locate Object should find it if it’s not washed out to sea, and Xykon is powerful enough to be able to cast Discern Location if it isn’t.
Unless some of those unnamed abjurations Xykon mentioned happen to preclude divination.
I think that V and O-Chul have a fair chance of escape now; if Xykon chases the phylactery.
He DID say that there’s so many that he’s forgotten what half of them do. And really, putting an anti-scrying spell on it makes sense, to keep his enemies from finding it.
A cute detail : the falling phylactery hit the statue of Redcloak in the eye.
Obligatory Sewer-Themed Labyrinth. Nice.
On the other hand, someone on the OOTS forums pointed out the Xykon couldn’t even find his keyswithout Redcloak’s help. That was a long time ago, but it would be just like Burlew to make that turn out to be plot significant.
OH MY GOD WILL THIS ROLLER COASTER EVER STOP!?
(They got Xykon angry. They won’t like him when he’s angry.)