Okay, Pete confirms it: alt-zoe is dead, not just bleeding under the stone and crawls out into the DoP to come back in another story arc. Good, that's one less female vying for Torg's attention (and could we get back to Riff's romantic escapades now?).

No, Pete! Don't go down that road. "Msny of you got it right."?!?!?!?! Awww man, your George Lucasing all over yourself. Please, understand. Viewers don't get things right or wrong, the artist does. If the viewers don't get something, then you haven't made it clear.

Well we're french. And it still doesn't make sense at all even with the emphasis on saying Horribus. None of us got it after 20 minutes of discussing the darn thing. I suspect some obscure cultural difference is involved making the comment meaningless to some people and obvious to others.

Anyone care to play Noam Chomsky to clear that strip up for me a bit more? (-;

Horribus didn't make a promise to keep AltZoe safe, Torg did. Horribus didn't fail at keeping AltZoe safe, Torg did. The purpose behind slaying Horribus at that time would have been vengence, not redemption. To redeam would be to make better. Horribus's death wouldn't have a different affect than stalling him. Torg realised that the path to redemption was up the pile. Zoe was redeamed when her death powered up the sword and prevented a possible deathblow to the diminished Goddess.

Actually, Torg decided against redemption. Killing Horribus simply because he killed Alt-Zoë would have been Vengeance - punishing for wrong-doing. Killing Horribus to make up for Torg's failure to protect Alt-Zoë would have been Redemption (and the statement "Horribus didn't promise to keep her safe" marks his charge as a quest for Redemption - he wanted to make some sort of payment to "make up for" his failure).

Vengeance is an outside search, to punish people that have done wrong (justly or unjustly). Redemption is an internal search, to repay yourself for your failure - Mosp went for redemption, saving Torg and fighting Horribus to make up for her betrayal eons ago. Torg took the third path, the path of heroes, and went to save the one he still could. He got neither vengeance nor redemption; he concluded that redemption was overrated.

I got the redemption vs. vengenance right away, but I hadn't thought of the "path of heroes." Strong stuff there.

You see? Pete reads these, children! Be nice and you might get quoted...

Good job, trying to clear it up for those us us who were confused. Thank you. And it's good to know Zoe-2 is dead, dead. Kil lthe spec before it starts!

I'm not disagreeing with anyone, I don't think, just putting it in my own words. (like to "hear" myself "talk" I guess)



My 2 cents- "Horribus didn't promise to keep her safe."- i.e. killing him is in no way punishing or correcting Torg's failure to protect alt-Zoe, and therefore can in no way redeam him of anything. She'll still be dead if Horribus becomes as such, and, in fact, not exercising his violent passions on Horribus was in fact more likely to be 'punishing' to Torg (emotionally).

EDIT: Put the I back in DIsagreeing (the first one no less)

I understood the redemption and vengeance thing right away, but the "Horribus didn't promise to keep her safe" is still eluding me completely as well as some friends. The other 6 poings have stopped trying and settled for "Pete makes nifty sense exactly 365 days a year even on leap years" or something.

Bring it on. I stand by my remarks. If your most loyal and annoying fanatics can't readilly get what you are trying to say, the what chance do your casual viewers have? I loved the story, I hope the strip can do high drama again sometime, but there are always going to be spots where you have to try really hard to make sure other people understand what is going through your head about what the characters are doing/thinking.

It means:

"I was the one that made the promise to keep Zoe safe. Horribus was not the one that promised to keep Zoe safe."

Well, most of the fanatics did figure it out, though. And really, the fact that we had to think about it to get it made it better for me, not worse. The comic wouldn't have been half as effective if Pete had just told us the point he was trying to make.