Archive for annotated-interlude-3

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 26

Mar31
by Erin Ptah on March 31, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Pieta statueFollowing up the “Last Supper” Steal with some Pietà Plagiarism. We’re hitting all the classics, here.

Saxon’s phrase is the classic, transliterated in Greek letters, original words would’ve made sense in either contemporary Hebrew or Aramaic (I used the version that sounds more Hebrew here), “My G-d, my G-d, why have you forsaken me?”

…and the reveal of Josh being gone, combined with the role Saxon takes in the Pietà panel, is the most hammer-unsubtle foreshadowing of what he’s going to do next.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 25b

Mar30
by Erin Ptah on March 30, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Magic circle directionsThis cloudburst wasn’t in the original online posting. I added it for the trade paperbacks, because I needed to shift which sides of the page the rest of the chapter would be printed on. It’ll be in the Master’s Edition, for the same reason.

…and I put the high-res on Clip Studio Assets, if you’re into that kind of thing.

The boxset is also getting some new sigils in Josh’s casting:

Left: the Seventh Pentacle of the Sun: “If any be by chance imprisoned or detained in fetters of iron, at the presence of this Pentacle, which should be engraved in Gold on the day and hour of the Sun, he will be immediately delivered and set at liberty.”

Right: the Fifth Pentacle of Mercury: “This commandeth the Spirits of Mercury, and serveth to open doors in whatever way they may be closed, and nothing it may encounter can resist it.”

Center: the (otherwise mostly-unseen) Sigil of the Donkey.

With the implication that there are probably 2 other sigils, in the cut-off circles at the top and bottom of the panel. Speculating on which others Josh would’ve picked is left as an exercise for the reader.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 25

Mar29
by Erin Ptah on March 29, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Nationwide transmutation circleThat’s right, the carvings on the pottery formed a Nationwide Transmutation Circle. Or in this case, a citywide circle. Which, in accordance with the historical principle of “cities only get large enough for people to have no more than a half-hour commute to work by the fastest method of transportation available,” is like a mile across.

The big square with lots of nested smaller circles is from the same source as all the pentacles, but it’s not one of the pentacles. It’s…not actually labeled, beyond “Figure 2”, in any of the sources I could find. Pretty sure it’s just a diagram for “this is how you set up the room (or, well, the city) in which you’re gonna do the magic.”

…I put the smaller pentacles in the circles for the Master’s Edition. More on that tomorrow.

(Also: now I’m getting more adventurous with the sound-effect fonts.)

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 24

Mar28
by Erin Ptah on March 28, 2023 at 12:01 AM

cross against ocean sunsetThe one where the whole page is unsubtly cross-shaped.

Writing this interlude, I picked through the whole canon timeline in way more detail than I ever did for Actual Religious Purposes. All the action on the big night is seriously compressed in this page, but I was poring over an hour-by-hour breakdown, deciding how to compress it.

And it’s…kind of impressive, really, how much “state tactics for suppressing your enemy anti-authoritarian activists who represent marginalized groups” have been consistent for the past several thousand years. Is the public opinion clearly against you? Get everything done behind closed doors, after hours, don’t give them any chance to form a protest until after the thing they’d be protesting is already done.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 23

Mar27
by Erin Ptah on March 27, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Picture of Mary, captioned, Abstinence: It's 99.999% effectiveHe’s worried about his mom, you guys.

Josh is a smart guy, he’s traveled the world and learned from the best, he’s literally magic, he has plans within plans and wheels within wheels set up here — and he’s prepared for the possibility that it’ll all fail anyway — except, he absolutely can’t risk leaving nobody to watch out for his mom.

I didn’t tag it in the original upload of this page, but that dove flying overhead in the last panel is supposed to be the Dove.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 22

Mar24
by Erin Ptah on March 24, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Last Supper with meme facesAnd here we have the obligatory “Last Supper” Steal.

Although I kept a few consistent, recurring character designs for Josh’s posse, I didn’t give most of them specific names or identifications. And of the ones who do have IDs (Rocky, Saxon, and María), I didn’t match their positions with the corresponding characters in Da Vinci’s painting (Simon Peter, Judas Iscariot, and “the disciple Josh was totally into”) (which lot of people assume was referring to John, not least because, uh, the phrase appears in the gospel John wrote) (and then, in turn, The Da Vinci Code championed the theory that prettyboy “John” in the painting was actually supposed to be Mary Magdalene).

Don’t try to use this panel as a guide to matching names and faces, is my point. The only one I deliberately drew in the right pose is Josh himself. And he’s the important one, anyway.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 21

Mar23
by Erin Ptah on March 23, 2023 at 12:01 AM

palm frondsSpeaking of JC Superstar: “I really didn’t come here of my own accord.”

The “Josh had his whole Holy Week demise planned out from the start, and Judas knowingly agreed to play his role in it” headcanon has been around since way before I came along. It’s hard to come up with a genuinely original twist on something that fans have been analyzing and writing meta on for literally thousands of years. But I hope “Judas followed Josh’s orders because he was a shapeshifting golem that Josh created” comes close.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 20

Mar22
by Erin Ptah on March 22, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Jesus Christ Superstar screencapOne of the drawbacks of trying to draw a comic like this is, while some of your references are historically-accurate, your searches will turn up a lot of material that’s simplified, modernized, or just generally stylized.

Consider the version of this same scene in Jesus Christ Superstar, where the desert skies stone walls are mixed with TVs, hand-lettered fliers, and that wild light-up table.

Sets and props aside, though, I didn’t have any reservations about including a few lyrics from JC Superstar. (There’s a bit of Godspell in here, too.) For dramatic, emotional, and catchy, they’re hard to beat.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 19

Mar21
by Erin Ptah on March 21, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Tableflip Yu-gi-oh cardAT LAST. The much-anticipated, patent-pending, Josh-approved invention of the tableflip.

“Magdala” was a town on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, so it’s a common interpretation that “Mary Magdalene” meant “Mary, a person who comes from Magdala.” Since I made this character María of Figham, i.e. the probably-a-different-person Mary of Bethany, I made it one of Josh’s nicknames instead: the Aramaic word “magdala” translates as “elevated” or “magnificent.”

That little “young scribe taking notes/old scribe giving directions” duo is really cute. Kinda wish I’d made them a running gag from earlier in the story — there could’ve been a lot of material there.

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Annotated Interlude 3 Page 18

Mar20
by Erin Ptah on March 20, 2023 at 12:01 AM

Palm Sunday paintingWhen this chapter was originally posted in 2015, I timed this page for a special bonus post on…well, not Palm Sunday, unfortunately, but I did manage to land it on Easter.

“I would totally wash that guy’s feet” is still a great line. Thirst: it gets different expressions in different times and places, but it’s always there.

Breadham = Bethlehem (“house of bread”).

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