Issue 19, Page 30
Sorry, Sedjet. Sorry Melissa, and everyone else.
But you WERE paying attention, weren’t you?
Didn’t you see the Idol absorb, not eat, anthro flesh?
Didn’t you hear them talk about how good it felt to belong to it?
Didn’t you see how they were all so inexorably drawn to it?
Didn’t you find yourself overwhelmingly curious about it?
Haven’t you always self so lonely and isolated?
Haven’t you always felt so hungry?
Aren’t you
always
so
hungry?
Transcript
1: In a flashback to Sedjet’s conversation with Julia. Julia is pressed up against the glass separator as she crawls back up to stand.
Julia: I didn’t touch it. I didn’t breathe it.
It wasn’t there on the planet.
I wasn’t sick and I’m- WE… we, we’re not… damaged…
2: Sedjet has leaned in, listening, watching with horror and confusion.
Julia (off-panel): And here… alone… I saw it in dreams. I heard it, but… it was my voice. I was talking. We were talking.
I know it now. Some… gut feeling. I can’t deny it anymore.
Sedjet…
Why do we get so hungry? So lonely? Why does the ache between us all hurt so much?
3: Sedjet steps back from the glass. Julia is still pressed close, face grinning and drooling. As her mentality breaks down, she’s grinning wider than before, face peeled back to show jagged, drooling teeth, her many eyes watching him.
Julia: We are the Black Idol.
All of us. Me. You. Melissa. Everyone.
We’re the same. We’re not us. We are the Idol in a dream.
We always were.
Wow.
I really feel for Julia.
Julia’s really hurting, but I don’t trust her view of what’s happening to her.
Such as- if [everyone] was secretly the Idol, then…in my opinion- quite a lot the people
in Julia’s world, would be growing tentacles…just like hers.
Wow. I can’t wait to see where Julia’s story goes. 😀
I think I recall one or more commenters postulating something along the lines that there are dormant BI cells being present in everyone, with Shankar radiation acting as an inhibitor. Perhaps Sedjet figures that if there is any truth to what Julia is suggesting, then using the chamber to isolate her from the radiation would make things much worse.
Yeah, I did suggest that.
Dormant fragments, or, a dormant FORM – e.g. BI dislikes the Shankar radiation, but, like lifeforms do, it has ADAPTED.
It’s analogous to humans in spacesuits.
A also wrote it’s just as possible that Julia’s view is a story she believes, but isn’t necessarily true.
Either way, that’s not bad news, really.
I mean, Sedjet’s about to verify… what? That they, as lifeforms, are much more powerful than previously thought? That death may be merely optional if they’re creative? That they can reshape themselves – heal, reconfigure – in iso chambers, as long as they’re disciplined enough?
Putting Julia in there might actually be healthy.
She is currently stuck in a form that’s… uncomfortable.
But the form seems to obey her just as “normal” flesh does.
I think if she stops freaking out, she could reform back, or at least stabilise her voicebox.
Of course, let’s remember Sedj possibly still has that BI fragment from the early event. He’s not a good subject to draw conclusions from.
We are venom
I love how Julia seems to be looking *straight ahead* at Sedjet,
with her muzzle looking like a MASK slid to the side
Still, in terms of cosmicHorrorific revelations, this one rates pretty OK
There’s another, though: that “spirit realm”.
Remember Ghost Guy who showed Rhoda how to look, and said anyone in the know would do anything to stay away from their “afterlife”?
I bet the spirit gluttons don’t want their soul farm going immortal on them.
There’s years of material in this comic yet.
Having read a slice of Mythos in the past, I’m understandably skeptical about revelations and truth from the mouth of someone under the influence. While it will sound compelling, and there may be evidence to back it up, almost always there’s something not being said which winds up being far more important.
I think this being we call the Black Idol for the sake of calling it *something* is very seductive, deceptive, and corrosive in nature. (Not quite to the level of Shadows, but pretty close.) Sure, one can say it has no reason to lie . . . but conversely it has no reason to tell the truth either, or even actually try a conversation at all.
What are Shadows?
“Shadows” as in “Vorlons and Shadows” from Babylon 5. They start off with a simple question: “What do you want?”, and then start off by giving it to you . . . and then ask a favor. A cycle which continues until you’re practically doing their bidding.
There’s more to it, naturally, but I’d rather not spoil the whole thing.
It makes sense to me. The original Lovecraft stories which heavily influenced this comic say that the Alien Gods created all life on earth. In the At The Mountains of Madness for instance, the Narrator impiles that the Elder Things created life on earth as an whim with the cells left over created from Shiggroths.
Oh no! It looks like the alien biogoop is about to hit the fan!
Wnat does this mean about those insectoid aliens from the previous chapters & the reptilians that lived on this planet before the anthros? Could they have just been adaptations of The Black Star too?
*What
And also the Martians.
We are the Legion (dead by daylight)
“We are the Borg. You shall be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
Dullest twist that could possibly be here.
I’m giving up all theorisations. That’s bullshit. I quit.
The water, water, the water had some of the black stars parts in it,
That has been a popular theory, till now.
And it’s QUITE plausible, still.
I mean:
* Julia’s thoughts have been drifting. She may have come up with a story that is compellingly convincing, but not true. We make ourselves believe weirder things even without growing weird brainotomy first.
* Aside from Mel’s short visit, Julia’s sole contact with others is Sedjet. Possibly-still-infected Sedjet. Not a good reference point.
Still, I’d go with the “we’re all made of it” theory.
Except maybe Xijo, being a martian he’s already exhausted his unusualness quota 😉
Maybe both are true, in a way. Maybe the anthro species evolved from, or with the aid of, the BI in the distant past. If that were the case, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she didn’t catch the infection from the water.
Now that. That twist is almost word-for-word the kind of idea that made Lovecraftian and otherwise-unknowable-horror writing so compelling in the first place.
I’m almost angry some people in the comments got it right.
Nicely done. Nicely done indeed.
Mind, it feels like it contradicts some things we saw earlier. But oh does that only make me eager to see where things go from here.
So anthropoids on Earth are all the idol, which for some reason turns into normal-looking, mortal sentient beings when exposed to the high levels of Shankar radiation on the Earth for long periods of time. And mutates into weird-looking random stuff much faster if exposed to a very high dose. It’s not so clear why the samples stored in the ruins maintain their shape; maybe the Silver Mass nearby suppresses the mutations? And the reason why some people feel the urge to touch the idol is because they subconsciously want to return to their original state, and/or because they start to view the idol as being the same species, and develop a strong sexual attraction to it. And this also explains why hundreds or thousands of intelligent species suddenly “evolved” at the same time on Earth; they didn’t actually evolve here, but rather come from the Black Idol taking a humanoid shape that resembles animals it encountered (or ate?) here. I think that all makes some sense?
This also explains the space sickness mentioned here, as it’s just the idol starting to wake up and mutate the body:
http://orderoftheblackdog.com/comic/issue-17-page-12/
And maybe why the doppelganger thing mentioned going back to the “source” here:
http://orderoftheblackdog.com/comic/issue-15-page-24/
And why the dinosaur guy views the anthropoids on Earth so negatively here:
http://orderoftheblackdog.com/comic/issue-13-page-15/
And the shocking truth about the Black Star that he reveals here:
http://orderoftheblackdog.com/comic/issue-13-page-21/
And why Dr. Dara looks so shocked, then deflated, when she looks at her genetic results here:
http://orderoftheblackdog.com/comic/issue-19-page-20/
So there have been little hints that this was coming for a long time, just not enough that people put it together until recently.
Note also the mentions of the space station on these pages:
http://orderoftheblackdog.com/comic/issue-5-page-19/
http://orderoftheblackdog.com/comic/issue-18-page-18/
If people who go far away from Earth for long enough all end up like Julia, that space station could be a very bad idea…
I honestly don’t know how to feel about this. On the one hand, as said before, this is a Lovecraftian-inspired comic. So, having the source of Julia’s condition be something quantifiable like the water she drank would be opposed to that. On the other hand, having that just be a red herring would be…I dunno, a little trite and beneath Immy. On the OTHER tentacle (where’d that tentacle come from?) I honestly can’t decide which would be a better writing choice, and I’ll gobble up the truth like a whore gobbles cock either way.
I hope it’s not wrapping up too soon! I still have tons of unanswered questions stemming from the flashback comics
Flashback comics?
The ones with Ikal and the alien bugs.
whelp i kinda guessed this was the case once that llizard guy was talking about how godforsaken all the organisms here are or whatever he said