The larger piece is “Patrick”, and will shapeshift a new head soon; the smaller piece will crumble into inert dirt. In case you were curious.
Early in the planning of the comic, I thought about having Cohen forge a new Being for himself. It didn’t end up fitting the plot, but it was a serious-enough possibility that I seeded some clues like this.
Came up with a shortlist of animal forms, too. I wanted it to be (a) the first and only Being that wasn’t an African/Eurasian animal, as a low-key clue that this one was New and Different, and (b) black-and-white, to go with Cohen’s Aesthetic.
Again, for the curious, here’s the list:
- Beech marten
- Buttermilk racer
- Coal skink (pictured)
- Mountain goat
- Nilgiri marten
- Raccoon
- Skunk
- Spotted salamander
- Virginia opossum
And so . . .
Woman: Mmm . . .
Cohen: Hey, babe . . . Guess who’s got a few million bucks and a physical inability to accidentally get you pregnant?
Scientist: No, he’ll recover enough to transform in roughly five minutes. The only question is, which piece is “him”, and which is now dead weight?
Cohen: The Contract . . . ! No, don’t fade away! I need to transcribe you!
Lawyer: Are you sure you don’t want to wear a tie, sir?
Cohen: It’s only buyout negotiations. They’re lucky I bothered to wear a jacket.
[Caption: Miranda Imani Lake]
Secretary: What do I do with this, boss?
Cohen: Stick it in a file.
Created by humans, but artificially limited to fighting each other . . . Can that be the original design, or did someone come along later and depower them?
Cohen: Patrick, if it’s possible to create more Beings, do you think it would be ethical to do so?
Patrick: If you want to try it, sir, I don’t see why not!
Cohen: Yeah, I knew you would say something like that.
I guess this comic is too North America for capybara to have made the list? Or do they look too much like prairie dogs which look too much like squirrels for them to have that distinctive American look?
Which species of capybara is black-and-white?
Oh! I missed that was a requirement. I somehow had thought you merely meant they would be depicted in black and white.
For reference, yes I was curious.
I would say all animals on that list look quite similar to some european/african animal (which would be pressumably already “used”) but I guess only animal actually looking considerably different would be kangaroo. Even platypus looks similar to European species (several of them at once).
Well, we already knew that the threshold for different animal was not so big …