And up! One of our more complicated bits of balloon-work, but hopefully it leads the eye around properly. The content was originally going to be stretched out over three pages, but I really wanted to try to make it work as one page, since it’s a pretty intense dose of flashbacks and revelations. And thankfully, with some clever page arrangement and staging on Max-The-Artist’s part, we were able to pull it off.
BTW, those “circumstances” I mentioned in the previous post have arrived in the form of a baby girl (as most of you more-or-less gathered from the updates.) Max-the-father had assumed that since he and his wife would be taking time off from work for the new baby, he’d have just oodles of free time to work on the comic. Bob-who-is-now-a-grandfather, grizzled with the experience of age, tried not to laugh directly in his face. And as Bob expected, there was no free time and even less sleep and all Max’s drawing stuff was packed away to make room for baby stuff and nine million relatives dropping by.
However, possibilities are being discussed involving certain grandparents (Bob and wife) who can not only babysit but have plenty of space for Max to set up a drawing area for comic work. So this will be attempted. Max will try bringing over the new offspring, hand her off to doting grandparents, and settle himself down for comic work while Gramps introduces the baby (codename Megumin) to the Path of Explosions.
Eehh. I can feel myself getting in trouble already.
(also available in 4K resolution here: https://gum.co/Qteg)
And more below!
Bobservations
Magic and Miracles
As Cricket indicates, magic tends to work better for some people than others, and in many case whether you want it to or not. Sure, you can call it coincidence, post hoc fallacy, or just plain chance if you want, but we deeply superstitious people know better. Our hero managed to get himself soulbound just by bleeding and temporarily dying with a natural witch; but we can’t all be that lucky. Mostly all you get is a trope.
For instance, in the case of Max-The-Artist – he and his wife spent months preparing for this baby. All sorts of classes. He even took a day-long class in how to correctly install and test a baby car seat. I admit to being sort of stunned by this. We had a car seat when he was a baby, certainly, but I do not believe I even bothered to read the instructions. As for myself as a child, we didn’t even have car seats. Usually not even seat belts. Babies were just propped in the back seat using whatever was handy, such as a case of beer, and Dads drove up front smoking Chesterfield cigarettes. Mostly we lived.
But Max and his wife had taken all these classes and followed all the right nutrition guidelines and done the right exercises and training (you now are getting a picture of what kept the comic delayed) and so when they went in to have the baby they were ready. They did all the right things and they were calm and collected and the labor was progressing nicely and then Max’s wife looked at him and said: “You know, this labor stuff is easy. No problem at all.”
Well. To their credit (they’ve been around me long enough) both of them knew a flag when it was accidentally uttered. Max’s wife was hooked up to so many wires and tubes she couldn’t move, but Max himself was looking frantically around the metal-and-plastic room for something made of wood that they could knock on …when his wife had another contraction. And all the alarms went off.
I shall gloss over all the panic and the running nurses and medical personnel and Max’s terror as his wife was whisked away to an OR for an emergency C-Section – a process which seemed to take hours but (in another one of those coincidences) actually took almost exactly three minutes, important for precisely the reasons you can guess. As my sister remarked afterward, babies shouldn’t be allowed to have umbilical cords. You wouldn’t leave a rope in the crib, for God’s sake.
But the procedure was successful and baby is fine and all the tests say so. But I’m still going to knock some wood right now. There.
Because we have our own little miracle now, and she is precious.
My son-the-artist is a father, and (more importantly) I am a grandfather, with all the accorded rights and privileges thereof. Maybe I’ll smoke some Chesterfields.
Welcome to the new arrival!
She’s part of our life now, and we are all soulbound.
— Bob out
Nicely done! And so Sophie stays with Max…
I think even Harry Dresden would be impressed by that bit of on-the-fly ritual-making. ^_^
Well, more courting then Humphrey from “Use sword on Monster” got.
Perfect flashback. It carried everything nicely, and since this is a webcomic I could just go back to the start and read anew when I wanted to see the original setup.
Thanks for the comic, and congratulations!
I was born with my umbilical cord around my neck, too, but I wasn’t seriously harmed, once they got me breathing.
Yeah, Max may want to start carrying a piece of wood around now too. If I may suggest a good Irish shillelagh, so as to be in practice for when those ill-mannered louts show up in a decade and a half or so, looking to date his little girl.
Congrats on joining the Grandfather Club. I enjoy my two grandchildren quite a bit.
I agree with Foradain’s Dresden comment.
I’ll knock on wood for ya. Congratulations. :L
QUEUE DRAMATIC MUSIC!!!!!
How much do you want – a few hours or a few days?
Plenty of dramatic music out there to put in the queue…
Most COMPLICATED marriage ceremony EVER aye Max?
And CONGRATULATIONS to the new father!
Dude, with those requirements no wonder she never known it to really work.
Yeah, you only need a marriage license, a ritual ‘combat’, blood brother ritual and wedding vows.
Damn, why does that never work?
“Yeah we KINDA cast a spell. Maybe. If you squint. In low light. With bad eyesight.”
There is a similar accidental incantation in Zotz!
Great page, and a great point within the story – I LOVE such moments when things fall into place 🙂 If they occur and don’t feel “forced in” (this here feels just right), then I as a reader feel safe with the author of the story. That’s not always the case.
And congrats for successfully achieving Dad status to Max-the-artist and for successfully achieving Granddad status to Bob-the-author. Once in a while it pays being prepared.
(Yay!)
Thanks for the words of encouragement all! Check back monday for a fresh vote incentive as well.
Thanks for voting everyone! Also, this month’s incentive makes a great smartphone wallpaper, when cropped vertically.
Faraidin’s right about harry Dresden, and congratulations on the little Crisis-spawn. May the little nibbler raise your blood pressure for decades to come.
Love it and can relate 100% right down to the Chesterfield smoking dad. Congratulations!
Two Bobs on the same website!? Oh, how dare you sir, how dare you! There is only to be one true Bob to be laid upon this site, and he had already laid the foundation for this site when he created it with Sir Max of the Artists, before you stumbled within its valiance good sir! You may stay within their greatness, but you will never be the one and only Grand Bob of this abode. Think of the mass confusion! He’s Bob, she’s Bob, they’re all Bob! Thank you for your comment though.
When my younger son was small we had some remodeling done on the house by a construction team, two members of which were also named Bob. My younger son (Max-the-Artist’s younger brother) gathered from this that all men who did work were named Bob, and began referring to carpenters as “Wood Bobs,” gardeners as “Grass Bobs,” cement workers as “Mud Bobs,” etc. This caught on with the workers themselves, who began laughingly calling each other “Bob” no matter what their actual names. It entered the family lexicon and “The Bobs” are still our term for workmen to this day.
It’s awesome that they played along, allowing it to become the joke that it did. Not as many people play along with stuff like that anymore. We had a similar thing in our family where my younger sister thought fudge was the word for anything sweet or candy related. I don’t remember exactly how or where the confusion came in, but it got the point that not only were candy bars ,M&M’s, and fudge being fudge, but brownies, cookies, cake, pie, smarties, ice cream, popsicles, donuts and similar things were all fudge. It didn’t matter how much my mother and father corrected her, if it was sweet and considered a treat it was fudge. After she was old enough to realize her mistake, we would still poke fun here and there. The joke went on for most of our childhood, but died out for a while after high school, as most things do. It still comes up in conversation every once in a while now. Thanks for sharing the Bob story by the way. It was nice.
You brought back a memory of an article that was in ’73’ magazine. A Ham radio publication, and the article was mentioning that everyone on CQ seemed to be using the handle ‘Bob’. The phrase from the article was; “It seems that every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there is not named Tom, Dick, or Harry; they’re all named Bob!”
What’s a CQ?
CQ is an abbreviation used in Ham radio as a request to talk to anybody listening. It comes from an old telegraph usage to all stations along a line ,abbreviating the first 2 syllables of the French word se’curite’, in the meaning of ‘pay attention’.
CQ just means “seek you”.
Nice tie-in flashback. Had an “M. Night” moment there. And congratulations.
A little Christopher Nolan as well.
I also shall knock on wood for the new dad, by wood I mean the bar, and knock as in soon to be emptied glass on said bar to call for a second round, yer gonna need it XD
Congratulations! And definitely a sheleleigh for future sutors ( I have that and a cattle cane on hand). Less mess than a shotgun!