Post by rberman on Oct 20, 2019 6:17:12 GMT -5
Issue #39 (April 2013)
The Story: There’s a war within Liana’s mind, as the Hierarchy and an astral projection of Seren try to influence whether she will wield the power of the Avatar to destroy Earth, or not.
In the communications nexus, Keris has awakened from his sedation ahead of schedule. Corrine and Reynaldo panic and gun him down. Niniri feels Keris’ death psychically and notices that the “Keris” sitting next to her is surprisingly hale and hearty. “Keris” reveals himself as Lady Bast, and a battle breaks out between Kovar and Emeris.
D’Mer cockily reveals which of the shards of Siovansin he and the rebels are gathered in. Niniri turns her attention to that shard, trying to force Liana to destroy it. Liana finds the strength to resist that command and instead turns the Avatar’s power on Niniri…
My Two Cents: Woah, time warp! It’s been over six years since the last issue. A whole group of Kindergarteners moved on to middle school. This issue has a bit of plot advancement but mainly lots of cool splash pages depicting the different facets of the war for Liana’s soul. There are also six pages of preview for Ted McKeever’s series Miniature Jesus, but that’s it. No sketches, no lettercol, no editorial explaining what happened to the series in the last six years.
We can guess that some of the time was spent publishing the revised edition of the first 38 issues in four trade volumes. “Revised” in the sense that she fixed lettering and backgrounds that didn’t satisfy her most recent perusal. Here’s an example of a background added to issue #29 when it was published in Volume 3 of the collected trade paperback. The original image:
And the new one with a background added (lower quality because of my camera, not Doran’s fault):
This issue, #39, is the first one not yet collected in trade form. As such, I bought it as an individual issue from an online source that was selling it for the cover price of $3.50, the last copy still left on Amazon. Whew! I’m a little leery to even handle it, knowing the contents are not available in any other form at present. Also, I’m forced to take my own photos for the images, so they won’t be so clear as before from here on out.
The other issues that currently exist are #40-42 which I have ordered from Doran but not received, so this is the end of the trail for this thread at the moment. Doran has stated that the current plan is for the series to wrap up with issue #50, but with her demonstrated ratio of plot to page, that seems unlikely. I am sure she envisioned many more issues originally, when she thought there would be six issues per year. The only person besides Doran who knows the conclusion is Bone author Jeff Smith, whose counsel she sought as to how to excise superfluous sub-plots to bring the series to a close. I can see this series having a third life on TV, with a much smaller cast.
The Story: There’s a war within Liana’s mind, as the Hierarchy and an astral projection of Seren try to influence whether she will wield the power of the Avatar to destroy Earth, or not.
In the communications nexus, Keris has awakened from his sedation ahead of schedule. Corrine and Reynaldo panic and gun him down. Niniri feels Keris’ death psychically and notices that the “Keris” sitting next to her is surprisingly hale and hearty. “Keris” reveals himself as Lady Bast, and a battle breaks out between Kovar and Emeris.
D’Mer cockily reveals which of the shards of Siovansin he and the rebels are gathered in. Niniri turns her attention to that shard, trying to force Liana to destroy it. Liana finds the strength to resist that command and instead turns the Avatar’s power on Niniri…
My Two Cents: Woah, time warp! It’s been over six years since the last issue. A whole group of Kindergarteners moved on to middle school. This issue has a bit of plot advancement but mainly lots of cool splash pages depicting the different facets of the war for Liana’s soul. There are also six pages of preview for Ted McKeever’s series Miniature Jesus, but that’s it. No sketches, no lettercol, no editorial explaining what happened to the series in the last six years.
We can guess that some of the time was spent publishing the revised edition of the first 38 issues in four trade volumes. “Revised” in the sense that she fixed lettering and backgrounds that didn’t satisfy her most recent perusal. Here’s an example of a background added to issue #29 when it was published in Volume 3 of the collected trade paperback. The original image:
And the new one with a background added (lower quality because of my camera, not Doran’s fault):
This issue, #39, is the first one not yet collected in trade form. As such, I bought it as an individual issue from an online source that was selling it for the cover price of $3.50, the last copy still left on Amazon. Whew! I’m a little leery to even handle it, knowing the contents are not available in any other form at present. Also, I’m forced to take my own photos for the images, so they won’t be so clear as before from here on out.
The other issues that currently exist are #40-42 which I have ordered from Doran but not received, so this is the end of the trail for this thread at the moment. Doran has stated that the current plan is for the series to wrap up with issue #50, but with her demonstrated ratio of plot to page, that seems unlikely. I am sure she envisioned many more issues originally, when she thought there would be six issues per year. The only person besides Doran who knows the conclusion is Bone author Jeff Smith, whose counsel she sought as to how to excise superfluous sub-plots to bring the series to a close. I can see this series having a third life on TV, with a much smaller cast.
