Time-travel arcs, especially time-looping arcs, give you a lot of opportunities to save work by copy-pasting panels you’ve already drawn when that sequence of events repeats.
…and I could’ve done that with half the panels here, too! But I wanted Future Thorn’s journey to feel like it all flowed smoothly together.
No prize for the first reader to link all the earlier Future Thorn appearances I re-drew.
Trivia: I originally sketched most of the flashback panels right after I drew Future Thorn’s appearance in Only One Bed. Then I figured the plot wasn’t gonna circle back to him for a while anyway, so I should hold off on recapping his backstory (forwardstory?) until then.
Future Thorn (thinking): This mission is the whole reason I time-jumped in the first place, and I don’t get any do-overs. No pressure.
??? (future flashback): It has the same enchantment Acai would’ve put on it. Should work the exact same way. I already programmed in the date.
Narration: Not far back enough.
Too far back!
Not even the right country.
Future Thorn (thinking): Okay. Took a while. But that’s a good sign, right? Just like she predicted, probably.
Narration: Wrong country and centuries early.
Overshot again. But only by a couple seasons this time!
Too early, but maybe I was supposed to intervene here.
Definitely not supposed to intervene . . . but I can stop and watch, right?
“Works exactly the same way,” my foot.
Future Thorn (thinking): Noooo pressure.
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Kale: new hairdo or just flapping in the wind? Either way, i don’t see any braceleeeets!
Oooh, nice catch! Maybe when he gets them off?
TBH I’m thinking the ?? speaking character in the second panel might be Kale as well, from the sash design. I don’t think he can do time spells, but maybe a future power-up or just that’s why they are so glitchy.
Thirding the hope that it’s a flash-forward. in that context, to my mind, that look on his face is very “Powers-That-Be, Please let me have changed enough that my costume isn’t recognizable” concentration look.
Without checking, panel 8 looks like the night of the Kolpovision party, and Kale did have one bracelet removed that night, by Thorn.
I thought the same thing, but Kale didn’t run in that scene while he was transforming. I am gonna jump on the bandwagon with Puzzler and Khyrin tho and hope very much that Panel 2 is also Kale! Taking the lighting into consideration, and the jagged sleeve edge, and the sash, that could be an updated version of his magical outfit. (also LOL Thorn starts going grey when or before Mulberry is a little tyke. I wonder how he’ll react when someone points out the first few greys.)
Okay, but in panel 8 Thorn says he overshot again. Would that not place panel 8 earlier on the timeline than the target date?
Perhaps it’s during the incident when Kudzu flipped out.
I was assuming that the “overshot” comment was him moving forward in time from the “centuries too early” panel immediately prior, and ending up too far forward – but I can absolutely see the wording being applied to ‘traveling from the future backwards, oops went too far back’ relative to his starting point and goal.
Also:
Panel 4 is Holly at the aquarium during the “Laceleaf’s stalker” event
Panel 6 is earlier (co-temporally?) in the current arc
Panel 7 is the “Wacky bracelet” photo event referenced by the vampires
Panel 9 is Thorn advising Gracie during the fire spirits outage (and getting a shower)
Panel 10 is Leif singing during the karaoke outing – I think during the summer festival?
Panel 12 is also the current arc
I’m too tired to look up the strips now, but maybe tomorrow…
Future Thorn, is it possible that it actually *does* work the same way, and you just don’t have appreciation for the sort of madness that is time travel?
To be fair, Acai probably has more experience with targeting these things. But it feels like the sort of thing that the professionals would be able to gloss over trivially and look like they got it down regardless of how well they really had it down. I mean, nobody but Acai gets to watch it all play out, right? Or does Acai even get to watch it play out? But basically, what happens in a failed time loop stays in a failed time loop.
to quote the Time Mage herself: “you would not BELIEVE how common it is to have a snag”
Yup. I mean, the snag is probably something different, but it would support the idea that time spells are inherently buggy and hard to do right, so I totally wouldn’t be surprised if Mulberry also needed multiple tries to arrive at right date. After all, there is reason why they made her unmemorable and it’s not because time manipulations are easy :-).
The sleeve and the bit of cape we can see of “???” in panel two are very reminiscent of Magical Kudzu. I suppose the yellow-orange tone of the panel may be misleading us towards that association… or I may be overthinking this, and it’s just the appropriate color tone for a panel with Future Kale in it. (Does not seem to be quite the same tone as on panel eight, though…)
Hmmm … time magic is part of fire domain …
Hey Boss? Several panels have different nose shapes for Future! Thorn. It is especially jarring in panels 9 and 10, bottom row, left- most. You might want to, heh, tweak his nose for the book this appears in.
Those panels are lit from dramatically different angles, of course the shadows are going to contour them differently than normal!
Beyond that — one of the reasons I draw comics and not animation is so I don’t have to worry about being 100% perfectly on-model from one frame to the next. No character is exactly the same shape panel-to-panel. It’s fine.
Right-o
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