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31 Jul 2027 – 1 Aug 2027
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Who else was obsessively refreshing the page at 7:59 BST looking for the new update?
I just open Kate's twitter page at that time and watch the head of the tab. :) Seeing (1), I hurry to refresh the comics page and read the update. :)
Some of us were in the elevator at 4 pm Beijing Time and the thought "Wait a minute, there's a new page of Widdershins!" hit us like a thunderbolt and we quickly whipped out our phones 😁
I was sleeping ten hours prior to my time right now. Which is apparently when this posted. So I just let my feed reader notify me as usual :P
I'm sure that Herr Wolfe, Mr Malik and Mr Thackerey would all tell O'Malley that they are willing to give their lives to Save the World.
So he doesn't ask them, just looks up at them, in the third panel. :/ Really, I doubt they can tell anything at all, in the states they are.
Btw, Mal has to face this dilemma now because Isabelle chose to save Henry's life rather than bind Lux, a half of century ago.
I see who you left out there, and I would challenge you on that but to be fair they would be the ones willing to make the sacrifice she would be the one holding out for a third option to save herself and the world. Wolfe and Sid would just be grateful everything turned out alright, and Ben and Mal would get into an argument about acceptable losses that will fizzle into "I'm glad you made it through in one piece".
Well, Verity said once, "I'm not getting my head pulled off for anyone!": [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/may-6th-2013/ "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/may-6th-2013/")
And I wonder if it is factually true, in the part "for anyone". :) Still, she is ready to take risks, it's her job, after all, and I suspect she tends to underestimate dangers. But an direct act of self-sacrifice is a different matter.
Time... for respite!
Eesh, Luxuria is not as smart as it thinks. A humanity 100% obsessed with Lust will go extinct soon enough, and where will its influence be then?
How does he have so much control over this place?
I have a feeling that he doesn't have that much, just that Mal isn't resisting his control, probably because he doesn't know how or that he can. An experienced, knowledgeable witch could probably chain him right up like Mal did with Greed, break the hold he has over their friends, and send him packing.
Mal is not an experienced, knowledgeable witch.
...which makes us hope that the Mountain and Island Witches will come knocking soon....
This helpless moment for Mal has been done SO WELL. Oh god I just want everything to stop. You're killing me, Kate.
We’ve never seen Mal cry that I remember, but he looks close to it in panel 4.
I don't know, to me he looks mostly angry. Tears of helpless rage maybe?
It’s the wavery line of his mouth that suggested tears to me. His expression seems like a combination of helpless anger and scowling to keep from crying.
The bells are pealing
And they're revealing
The simple key to happiness
It isn't evil
It isn't good
It's only what the people miss
The bells explain what they've been lacking all along
They were disorganized and that was what was wrong
Eesh. I just wanna cover my eyes and not look up 'til the crisis has been averted. The world-building, the character-building... Dammit, Kate, I didn't want to get this attached to fictional people, I have a hard enough time worrying for the safety of my real-life people.
In other news, am I reading too much into it to see this as Mal doing an uncannily accurate impression of Sidney? Influenced by the spirit being nakedly laid out in the Between Space, maybe--and does that then mean we'll see him channel Wolfe and Ben?
Also, seems like that last panel has echoes of the way Mal was treated by ol' what's-'er-bother when he was a lad.
>am I reading too much into it to see this as Mal doing an uncannily accurate impression of Sidney?
That's an interesting point. The way he has his hands pressed over his mouth in the first panel does look a lot like Sid.
You know what it looks like to me? Like he's trying to stop himself from throwing up. The idea of letting Lux control everyone's thoughts? It makes me feel sick, too.
The first panel gave me the impression that he stops himself from saying something (Sid made a gesture like this when Ben went into "Everyone is better than me!" mode before him), but your version seems very plausible to me.
"Channeling Wolfe and Ben" makes me think of that one fight in Buffy the Vampire Slayer where she defeated the Big Bad by channeling all her friend's strengths, which would be a really interesting twist to this fight.
I mean... it's what Lux is (sort of) trying to do, right? Why shouldn't Mal respond in kind? The more I think about it, the more I like this idea!
... if this ends up being what happens, you and I will have to come back here and put some sort of spoiler code in place for future readers.
Why? Guessing something that turns out to be right isn't a spoiler. Someone reading through the comments later during a first pass through the comic has no more way to know for sure that it's right, than we do now.
What would be a spoiler... would be adding a spoiler tag afterwards, from later knowledge, thereby confirming that this particular speculative theory is what's going to happen! If you want to do that to dance and claim victory, fine, but don't say it's for future readers.
A, my intent is entirely what I said--for future readers. I rather resent the implication that it'd be a selfish move. B, if I were the type to "claim victory", I'd do it on the reveal page, not here.
That said, C, you're right that to spoiler it after the fact would itself be such, thanks for the heads-up.
It's a powerful moment, after years of Mal's defensive blusterings and dodgings, to see him so desperate. He's very much an echo of that small, powerless boy here. Also Lust in panel 4 is magnificent. Gosh your art's grown so much!
Lux in Panel 2: "You know you want it," for humanity as a whole.
I love Panel 2. That perfect close-up combined with the emphasis on "ME." That tells you exactly who Lux is.
That's what makes this strip so hard to watch. Mal was just starting to come into his own, and then Lux reached in and yanked that power away in the most brutally efficient way possible.
Stop Lust = lose friends, save everyone else
Don't stop Lust = lose friends and everyone else
Good thing Mal isn't thinking about this logically, otherwise it would be the end of his friends ;;>.>
[Take A Third Option](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TakeAThirdOption "http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TakeAThirdOption") is our friend here.
The thing is that Mal sadly can't really stop Lust, not on his own in any case. He doesn't know the words, so he needs Harriet to actually stop him. Lust is at an impasse here, but of course, he has the advantage of hostages. And the terrible thing about hostages and the threat to kill them is that you can drag it out very slowly if you want, effectively torturing the person you are holding the hostages over.
I'm not sure if the first point is the case! He binds Greed without Harry reading anything: [https://www.widdershinscomi...](https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/march-2nd-2018/ "https://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/march-2nd-2018/")
Mal can unbind, but he can also bind. Might there be a solution in binding the spirits of his friends to the Anchor and then acting against Luxuria?
Those cages in panel three look empty.
Don't dwell on that, the panel just looked too crowded with them in
Well, he's a nasty piece of work.
Yes. Yes he is.
Wow wow wow, things are getting serious! The BBEG's master plan has been revealed, and the story nears its end! What will our heroes do?
I wonder if it will help that Mal's just recently relived what was, up till now, the lowest point of his life and been reminded that it all came out okay. Will that memory give him the strength to believe that he can get through this too? (On the other hand, Harry's pep talk during the flashback was mainly about how his friends are there to support him, which may just make him feel worse right now...)
I think both parts are a huge thing for him, and that's what makes this page so horrifying. He's finally coming into his own, both on letting people in and in terms of trusting his own powers, and then Lux just comes in and yanks all that away by both turning his power against him and putting people in danger because of their association with him.
Lux, I daresay you are succumbing to some unclarity of purpose yourself: you're sounding a lot more like Ambition here.
Really? He sounds exactly like Lust for Power to me.
AAAAAAAAA these pages are breaking my heart. I really hope that Mal can pull through ;-;
Urrrgghhhh. Giving all of humanity the sole emotion of lust? That's, like, an ace's worst nightmare. And Lust just wants to gloat about it as much as possible, doesn't he.
Where's that BOOT TO THE FACE Maria mentioned in the last page's comments...
The problem is, Lust-the-deadly-sin isn't necessarily the same as lust-the-emotion. Lust-the-deadly-sin covers lusting of all kinds, sexual or not, such as lusting for power, lusting for fame, lusting for knowledge, etc. We aces aren't above those lust varieties. :P
It's true but, I'm still grossed out... yeah. Look at its face... : P
Lux's threats of ripping them apart remind me about Ben's words to Mal, "I'd rather you made it through this in one piece". :/
“Same t’you!”
Ouch. 😣
hums "Komm, Susser Todd"
[https://www.youtube.com/wat...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc2hjkMmtv4 "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc2hjkMmtv4")
I'm starting to see why they took off his head... Well, actually I've wanted to do that myself sense about three panels after we met him, so I guess it's been a while now.
Jack O'Malley.. I thought you were over being pushed around
Mal.
MAL!
Think! Pretty lady. Weird hair. In the future box.
The future box.
I think it is time for the 2 minute time-out. Don't you?
I may be on dangerous ground here (again) but who is the human to whom Luxuria will bring clarity of thought? :-)
I think it's the general individual. You know, the "someone" who is is everyone.
That's a possibility. But I suspect that apostrophe is in the wrong place.
I think I know how Greed came up with Luxuria's plan cause he'd have done the same if he could.
On the last page, Ocean Burning was wondering about the fact that Harry seems to have disappeared altogether; on this page, Lux says that he has "the Barber girl's presence". Even if Lux put her in the Pink Fantasy World physically as well as mentally, that's still apparently "present" enough for his plan to work. (Unless he just stuck her in there to keep her out of the way while he dealt with Mal, and now he's planning to retrieve her before breaking the bindings on the other Sins...)
I got the impression Pink Fantasy World is a sort of pocket dimension to the anchor, in the same way the space they're in now appears to be both inside the anchor and not at the same time. She's still there, just not where anyone not in the pocket with her can see or interact with her.
I've been wondering about Mal's profile. It's similar to Lust's - at least, it's similar to the masculine body Lust is using. Was that body originally a human's and taken over, the way the other sins took over real people? This is a very speculative idea, but if that body was originally a real person, maybe Mal is a descendant, and thus there is a different bloodline link available. I don't know how that would work out, but it could be interesting.
My poor, poor Mal. Why must my favourite characters always suffer.
...got the feeling you only get to play that trick on O'Malley once. Because he doesn't seem the type to repeat his errors.