October 17th, 2014
18 Oct 2014 · page 427 of 1306
He just thought it was sort of sad-coloured.
I'm at the Lakes Comic Art Festival all this weekend, come along and say hi!
Cast: Benjamin Thackerey, Heinrich Wolfe, Jack O'Malley
Comments (75)
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Ben's busy having terrible revelations while Jack is discovering how wonderful blue is. Yep, makes sense to me!
Spirit sight made him see the world in black and white... if you don't include the spirits. Now he can see in color.
Words cannot describe how adorable that last panel is.
Me and my sister had the same thought.
\\
Yea, I want a little pictures of Mal in the last one. I'm thinking a 2''x1''. In a little frame.
"i think i like blue."
ohmahgosh yes.
I like how if Wolfe wasn't there, they'd be completely stumped on the whole "envy" issue because O'Malley, who can see colors, doesn't know the names, and Ben, who wants to know the color, can't see them. Monochrome vision as a plot-point! And someone who suddenly gains color vision and /doesn't/ magically know which is which!
When 1+1 = Oh, Bugger. :|
I do hope Ben will explain why the deadly sins getting free is a bad thing now.
Isn't it always? :-)
Well, yes, but, back in No Rest for the Wicked Ben mentioned something about how it would be very bad if the seven deadlies got loose near the anchor, but he never said why. I'd like to know what might happen.
Squee! I've been waiting for Mal to start asking questions about colors.
Bawwwww, I think this is one of the most adorable pages yet >.<
Awwww, Mal has a new favorite color! :D
Time to talk to Sid and the Barbers.
===========
Flippin' autocorrect on Android.
Blue is my favourite colour.
Just saying.
Hey what do you know, Ben figured out the evil plot of the season. :)
I hope Captain Barber will introduce him to her younger sister and her younger sister's new partner. ^^
(oh, nice, posting works on chromium (but still not on firefox) ^^;)
I like the attention to details, especialyl tehre the fact Mal wouldn't know colours ^^
I have no idea how you'd fit it into the story but can you please have Mal come across a mantis shrimp?
What in tarnation would that do?
A peacock mantis shrimp is very bright and colorful. Mal would probably be overwhelmed by the brightness.
Don't try to tell me that's a real animal. That's clearly a buggerup.
No, it's a surviving member of the prehistoric ancestor of the modern clown. ZeFrank said so: True Facts About The Mantis Shrimp: [http://youtu.be/F5FEj9U-CJM](http://youtu.be/F5FEj9U-CJM "http://youtu.be/F5FEj9U-CJM")
(Okay, after seeing the topic raised, I just wanted an excuse to link to that video.)
I'm glad I stuck around for the ending when the one guy was actually brilliant enough to stick his finger down by the mantis shrimp. WELL WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN
Isn't that that shrimp that can see every kind of light, ever? I wonder if it can see spirits too...
Plot twist: Mal is half human, half mantis shrimp.
See here:
[http://theoatmeal.com/comic...](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp "http://theoatmeal.com/comics/mantis_shrimp")
What is the REAL purpose of Mal losing his sight, Lady Kate? Is it just that he needed to be able to identify colors as a life skill?
Envy says that the spirit sight (and the colorblindness) are a side effect of something else.... something that even Envy can't steal.
[http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/august-29th-2014/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/august-29th-2014/")
Hmmm.... If it's a side effect.... We have the deadly sins, but does that mean we have the heavenly virtues as well...? Does that mean that somehow Mal is a heavenly virtue or has a heavenly virtue in him? Would that be why he suppresses his spirit?
And if a virtue spirit can reside in a person... would our lovely Wolfe also have a virtue? ;) Food for thought!
It seems, from the cake chapter, that a virtue can be summoned up by summoning it from someone who has a lot of a particular quality. I don't think that a virtue could thus be a person or be in a person exactly, but a virtue can be summoned from a person. I would certainly think Wolfe's abundance of kindness and other virtues would make him a useful person to summon virtues from!
Mal doesn't suppress his spirit, he simply can't see it, which makes him upset when looking into a mirror. I doubt that he'd have that reaction if he actively suppressed his spirit. Imagine the implication of yourself having no spirit.
Do you mean writing-wise? That'll likely become apparent, but feel free to ask again after this story's done, if you're still wondering!
No, I mean to be sarcastic and vaguely amusing. Darn, that's twice now I've made a joke and you've taken me seriously.
I think one of the points of this was so he would know which color was blue. He likes blue... for a very good reason. We learned that today 3 years later. heh
THIS IS REVOLTING! I HATE THIS! "more?" PLEASE!
I feel sorry for Mal. He's stuck seeing all those things, but never normal colours... and now he has to make it so that he will lose his ability to see colours again.
Ben is on the ball! ^^ ... And it seems as if Mal is a little worried about him? Am I misreading the vibe?Nonesuch
Well done Ben for recognising the implications this time! I initially thought 'sad coloured' was because Mal associated the colour with the same colour as sadness, but my friend made me doubt that was what was meant. Seems logical though that Mal would associate the different emotions he's used to seeing in people with the colours he now sees. I'm curious as to what each colour means when seen in the aura of a person- we've consistently seen blue for sad, dark green is evidently envy (even Ben knows this), purple is perhaps happy, but I wonder about yellow, light green, light blue, red and orange. Ben's fright/surprise has showed as light yellow sometimes and a kind of orangey red other times. Not sure what the colours of his aura (tending towards light blue, orange, green and yellow) say about him either.
If I had to guess, I'd say that red would equal anger/wrath, since that's kind of the traditional (Western) pairing of emotion with the colour (just as dark green is traditionally paired with envy). This would make sense with the fright/surprise, too: the orangey-red times would supposedly be the ones where he was angry at being startled/frightened (red+light yellow), while the light yellow alone would be pure surprise or fright, you know? :)
I like this theory, and would make sense for Ben's reactions. Not sure about light green and light blue though- light envy, light sadness? Hah, if your theory was correct, Ben's aura is basically usually made of a mixture of light amounts of sadness, fear, fear mixed with anger, and some light envy- that's not precisely out of character but would be a bit sad! One thing that muddies the waters with regards to red and orange though is the page where Voss and Wolfe play to the happy crowd and their happy spirits are various degrees of red and orange. So it seems it can sometimes be positive emotion too- maybe passion and 'warm' feelings, though I somehow doubt it could possibly anything but annoyance during the times where Ben has expressed it in his aura?
"That is green."
("Helping!")
I love how one can't name the colors and the other one can't see them! And Mal discovering blue is adorable :)
so does this mean that the colors he saw the spirits in are different than real, physical colors?
No, it's just that he never saw the colors that other people saw, so nobody could tell him the names. And because the colors have been attached to strong emotions and sensations, he's never really thought about them just as colors before.
(Humming) "I'm blue, if I was green I would die, if I was green I would die ..."
When I was a kid, my schoolmates and I seriously thought that was how the chorus to 'Blue (Da Ba Dee)' went. That memory seemed humorously apt all of a sudden.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that that was the proper lyrics. My mom still makes fun of it.
Oh dear, Ben doesn't know about the snafus with Greed and Gluttony does he. Poor Ben! It's much worse than you think!
"Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic." Florence Ambrose.
So wait... who's been picking out Mal's clothes all this time? I mean, yeah, he wears mostly grays, but to him, everything looks gray. For all he knew, he could've been wearing purple and pukey green.
Hahh, yes, that would've been amusing if he suddenly realised the horror of his own mismatched and garish puke green and purple outfit (although not so nice for us to have to look at for all this time). But presumably he's aware enough that he could be accidentally wearing weird colours, and also concerned enough about not attracting attention, to make sure and ask for 'not colourful', or specifically grey and black stuff. Imagining Mal in the clothes shop, pointing at things like 'is this grey?' 'is there any colour on that?'. It helps that men hardly wore a lot of colour in the 19th century, of course, and dark colours would be good for practical reasons.
Later 19th century, yeah. I believe that earlier they wore brighter colors.
Dyes were Very Expensive and not available in a particularly wide range of colours before the discovery of aniline dyes, which ushered in the "[Mauve Decade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890s "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890s")"
Some dyes were, in fact, very expensive before modern dyes, but one could get a wide range of colors. Here's just one batch of options available from vegetable dyes: [https://www.flickr.com/phot...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/crossettlibrary/4521362734/ "https://www.flickr.com/photos/crossettlibrary/4521362734/")
I like blyou too
Wonder if he likes the blue because when Ben looks at him, his eyes are blue? Something connecting him to the colour. Or blue is a pretty nice colour without needing reason
I have been reading this comic for a very long time. This is the first that I got that he was color blind. I just thought the art work was to really make the aura/spirts pop! I started to go back and look at them all again. Freaking awesome!
Wow
Ben's glasses are steamy after the bath
I love the level of detail!
Adorable Jack is adorable.
Oh gosh discovering favorite colors that's awesome.
And adorable.
But I don't want to hurt his pride saying that. Or be punched in the face. Though I'm probably safe on that account. :P
Does Wolfe's exclamation in the first panel actually mean anything? Because typing in 'potztausend' into google translate doesn't bring anything up.
Throwing it into google leads me to believe it means "My goodness" or "Upon my soul". The site does say it's an antiquated exclamation however.
That said, I am not a native German speaker, so my answer might be completely wrong as it comes from the internet.
It is an antiquated exclamation and I love it! Suits Wolfe much better than the more modern (yet also not as often used anymore as an exclamation) "Donnerwetter!" Both exclamations have their origins in the image of a thunderstorm, with "Potztausend" literally meaning "a thousand times lightning" ("potz" for "blitz"), while "Donnerwetter" literally means "thunder weather". Both are exclamations of surprise. [/end of linguistic lesson]
[http://little-details.livej...](http://little-details.livejournal.com/2175134.html "http://little-details.livejournal.com/2175134.html")
Mal: "Which is this?"
Wolfe: "Blue."
Mal: "I think I like blue."
Just perfect.
And, even though it is small and not as detailed 'cause he's in the background while Ben has the Important Realization, Mal's expression is adorable.
Oh gosh, Mal learning his colors is adorable!
Awww, Mal has a favorite color? That is too sweet.
OH MY GOSH MAL IS THE MOST ADORABLE THING RIGHT NOW SERIOUSLY!! He's precious, so precious XD Discovering color for the first time awwww
Aww, he likes my favorite color. Now I have 1 more reason to like him :3
Green being the colour of "theft of energies" . . . so THIS is how the expression "the green-eyed monster" came about! Just . . . wow, just . . . THE WORLD MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE NOW, and I mean the real world not just Widdershins!
Mal's last line . . . my gash, Mal's last line. ^^
This chapter is still my favorite, and this page is one of the best. :D I love how Ben's freaking out but in the background, Mal is having this quiet moment of non-cynicism. The beauty of color caught him completely off-guard and it's nice to get to see that underneath all his (100% justified) grouchy sarcasm, there is a vulnerable human heart. Ms. Ashwin, thank you so much for the depth and the layers you are able to give your characters; the skill it takes is something that, being an aspiring writer, I can deeply appreciate.
wolfes aura is normaly blue
So the ‘sight’ means he can only the color of spirits?
I love everything about this panel what with Wolfe being incredibly concerned (and rightfully so), Ben making a horrifying realisation, all while Mal discovers blue