I was struggling how to work this page to resolve the various sub-cliques and give them some form of an exit scene before moving on. When the “Are you stupid!” panel jumped into my head, the rest wrote itself. 😀
A reader mentioned Chanelle in the last strip's commentary and how she sort of... disappears from the scene in the last two pages. This is partially a result of me avoiding excessive panel crowding, but also part of my earlier effort to work Ricky into the scene a bit more strongly than he was initially written. I feel, as before, that this scene works better overall if the Orphanage Crew is prioritized over "at-school-friends" like Chanelle. Even though her physical presence is being downplayed, I think there's enough information to work with from previous strips for Chanelle's fate in the incident to be inferred.
The “are you stupid” panel is great, but shouldn’t it have a question mark too? It is in the form of a question.
Someone should tell George that calling people (especially people that you just helped to get in trouble) jerks isn’t the smartest idea. He’s going to be seeing them in class, in recess, at lunch, possibly trip away/to school, etc.
It’s likely more of a rhetorical question than an actual one, so the lack of question mark is to emphasise that it’s not really a question? I haven’t seen that before myself, but seeing as it happened twice (once in the commentary too) I think it’s intentional.
In other words, it could be a bit like the flat “what.”
I think George’s answer would be “How is that different than how my life is already?” Granted, he would be underestimating how bad the situation can really get, especially since Thomas has proven willing to commit murder if not obeyed, but he’s clearly no stranger to these people’s bullying. This is probably one of the few times he’s successfully struck back at them.
That is a HUGE leap in assumptions. Willing to commit murder? Really? You think he tried to kill her? He clearly didn’t know she was weak to cold, he even told her it wasn’t that cold out. He doesn’t understand how her body works. And I still think the kid has something wrong that he can’t control. That anger and fear he was showing was a bit much for someone with just an anger problem.
I’m just still completely baffled that anyone could possibly think he was trying to purposely kill Selkie.
It’s true that he didn’t know how much damage he was causing. I just don’t think for a second that he would have stopped if he had known. As you say, something wrong that he can’t control.
interesting, the recruited kids seam to end up taking the fall
Just like in life in our universe.
That’s what Amanda’s all about, Kotih.
Making other people take the blame for her trouble.
Re-reading the whole thing, this situation seems more like Tony’s fault than Amanda’s.
Sandy and Wu want a fair, fun fight, so that’s what they try to organize. Tony taunts Selkie into joining. Then he “crashes” the previously-friendy competition. Then he immediately gets the recruits involved. Amanda doesn’t do anything “bad” until she’s with Truck and Tony, and then she’s just (probably) egging them on just off-panel and calling Selkie “fish face”.
If Amanda did actually mastermind anything, we didn’t see it. It’s not like Amanda told Hamud that Selkie eats people in order to manipulate the snowball teams (strip 101). Other than that, the most Amanda does is to tell truck to stop when he goes too far.
So, yeah, Amanda was involved, but the on-panel evidence suggests it’s more Tony’s fault that things escalated out of hand, and Truck’s fault for deciding to ignore what everyone, including Amanda, was telling him.
Feud. This is probably how the Wakefields and Fromes started…
Those kids GRANDCHILDREN will be fighting.
When we first met Hamud, his parents had gone missing. Are we ever going to find out more about that? Do the police have any leads?
It takes practice, she said.
Anger can color speech bubbles, she implied…
ANYONE can make what they say RED with a little Effort!!!!