Q&A Fun-times (Patreon)

Some amusing questions with questionable answers.
(Most of these are Patron submissions.)

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Q.  Is there a reason Zib goes by his last name? Does he not like his first name or did someone call him Zib once and it just kinda stuck?

A. It was a nickname handed to him by a mentor of his as he was finding his footing as a musician in the club scene. It was weird enough to stick, and seemed like something of a Jazz Corps promotion over Dor or Dory.

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 Q.  Heyo. Firstly, I'd like to say that I adore your comic; the art, story, and characters are all fantastic. I do have a question, though. In "Growltiger," Mitzi calls Viktor "Vinegar Tom," a name I hadn't heard before or since until I started watching the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I had assumed it was just a comment on his demeanor, but I guess it was also the name of a witch's familiar in 17th century England. So, I'm curious -- was that nickname in the common parlance of 1920's America?

 A.  It wasn’t common parlance in the 1920s - it was a sort of comment on Viktor’s demeanor in the form of affectionate-insult, and a bit of wordplay. These cats don’t seem to know that they look like cats, but sometimes they make incidental puns (toms being male cats) to that effect.

The name ‘Vinegar Tom’ derives from the 17th century book, The Discovery of Witches, chronicling the adventures of “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins as he traveled from town to town, rooting out the Devil’s servants...or in other words, menacing isolated, vulnerable old women until they had little choice but to confess to witchcraft, which usually ended in their execution.  One such unfortunate woman was made to call out the names of her familiars (probably just nicknames for domestic animals she kept), and Vinegar Tom was among them. You might have seen this illustration before.

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Q. I'm curious--as the comic has progressed, it's gone from sepia toned to gaining colors, and I wondered if that was in the original plan as the story progressed, or if you just decided to start adding color. It's beautiful, by the way.

A. I wish I could say it was some kind of clever pre-planned transition on my part. Really, though, it was just becoming increasingly tedious and limiting to work strictly in sepia. Not only did all the nighttime scenes take on an unappealing muddy brown character, but I felt I was missing out on opportunities to play with mood through color, so I decided to start implementing it in increments. A sudden shift would have been more jarring. I don’t think I’m quite hitting the mark with my use of color yet, but it’s a new challenge that keeps things interesting for me.  Thanks for the kind appraisal!

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 Q.  After the crack to the head, Rocky's behavior shifts quite drastically. While Rocky does have some kind of depressive streak under layers of mania, I'm not entirely sure if the accident just caused him to drop his guard or he received any head trauma that exacerbated the issue. Also, if the latter, even though he seems to have gone back to his "normal" self, will the change show up again?

 A.  You could say the temporary loss of mental wherewithal and the sense of defeat allowed his mask to slip a bit.  The ‘change’ was not so much a change as a reveal of something that underlies his reckless, frantic behavior.  He has since put the mask back on, with the zealous resolve and menace dialed up a bit. 

I’ll leave my explanation at that, though - to an extent, the ambiguity is by design, and the least effective way to divulge anything is through long-winded author-splaining on my part. As to whether or not Rocky’s other facet will show itself again, you can probably conjecture from what I’ve already said. I’d best let the comic tell the story, though (and plead for your patience while I slowly draw my way through it).

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 Q.  Did Zib have an early education with music or was it something he pursued as an adult? Did he look into other art forms (drawing/painting, dance/theatre, prose/poetry)?

  A.  Zib had an early and innate interest in music. His brothers were rough-and-tumble boys' boys, but he was consistently more concerned with what he could find to play on the phonograph or in absorbing the ragtime sounds rollicking from local bandstands in summer. His education began in public school classrooms and church choir. He played the clarinet initially, then took it upon himself to learn to play the piano. He was a young adult when he took up the saxophone.  He composes some of his own music, but he seldom deems a piece finished (as he’s probably more concerned with what his bandmates think of him than he lets on). If writing lyrics counts, I suppose you could call him something of a poet too.

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Q.  Fisticuffs! A fight between Victor and Nico! Who will win?

A.  Depends!  Viktor in his present state wouldn’t be up to the task, I’m afraid.  A younger, more spry, less injured Viktor would be a formidable match for Nico, though. Nico’s a bit more chest-and-arms where Viktor (who also dallied in bare-fisted boxing) had some juggernaut core strength from years of physically demanding farm and dock labor. That might have given Viktor a slight edge.

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Q.  Mordecai and Rocky sit down to a game of anachronistic Scrabble (apparently it was made in 1938). As they both have fairly extensive vocabularies, who would win?

 A.  Mordecai would win - not necessarily because his vocabulary is more extensive, but because he would make strategic use of the double and triple word and letter scores. Rocky would be distracted trying to play the loopiest words he could concoct.

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Q.  Which house would each of the main cast (mentioned above in the Cactus-friend question, but also including Rocky) be sorted into, if they were to go to Hogwarts.

A.  Hmm...tough call.

Calvin - Hufflepuff by day, Gryffindor by night

Ivy - Gryffindor

Mitzi - Slytherin, but maybe a heartbroke Hufflepuff deep down

Mordecai - Ravenclaw

Viktor - Gryffindor

Nico - Gryffindor

Serafine - Slytherin

Wick - Hufflepuff

Zib - Ravenclaw

Rocky - I have no idea. Gigglesnort...Blunderpuss...Babblespaz?

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 Q.  Rocky (for enigmatic reasons) must go out-of-town for a few days and (somehow) manages to have each of the main cast (Calvin, Ivy, Mitzi, Mordecai, Nico, Seraphine, Victor, Wick, and Zib) to babysit Cactus-friend for a night. How would each of them handle it looming over them, watching them sleep?

A.

• Calvin would toss and turn, entangled under layers of blankets and pillows, trying in vain to shield himself from the searing judgment emanating from its unfocused eyeballs. Before sunrise, feverish, he’d take to the yard to chop the firewood. Chop and chop. Chop until his blisters had blisters.
  
• Ivy would give it a half-hearted makeover, thinking perhaps a little hat, some rouge, a smidge of lipstick might render the abominable thing more presentable. When it became clear that the preening had only served to make things worse - much worse - she’d talk some hapless boy on campus into watching it for her. A little later that semester, when the skies turned gray and the last of the autumn leaves were falling, the boy would drop out of classes, quietly and without explanation.
  
• Mitzi would sip her nightcap and exchange suspicious glances with it. By the time she’d finished her third nightcap, there’d be a photograph of Atlas pinned over its cactus face and she’d have drifted off to sleep in the midst of their conversation.
  
• Mordecai would draw the conclusion that something so wretched and asymmetrical must be exhibiting signs of disease and would expeditiously relieve himself of its presence by relieving it of its suffering. The cactus would not retaliate. Not immediately…
  
• If Nico could be at ease in the swamps, inured to the dangerous muck, what bother could a singular ugly plant be? He’d be undaunted in his endeavor to nap peacefully. He would, however, have a strange dream in which he was cooking an omelette for a sickly, glassy-eyed orphan child. In the dream, he would accidentally slice off part of his finger and lose it in the egg batter. The child would look so hopeful and relish the meal so exultantly, Nico would not be able to bring himself to tell him the truth about the omelette. He would wake, perplexed, echoing the words, “De Truth About De Omelette.”
  
• Serafine wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. In fact, she might even strike up a camaraderie with it.  Rocky would find some curious looking sigils carved into it upon its return. The cactus would smell of burnt offerings.
  
• Viktor and the cactus would be locked in a stalemate glare-down all night, a ceaseless, violent, cacophony of phantom banjos underscoring their clash. Having slept nary a wink, Viktor’d be even crankier than usual the next day and, as a result, seven people would forfeit their lives.  The cactus would be sated.
  
• Wick would absentmindedly leave it at the office...or in the car...or in the wall safe, and would forget about it until some inappropriate time of night, at which point he would phone Lacy to task her with retrieving it. She’d insist on extra compensation as the train and the trolleys wouldn’t be running at this hour and she’d have to hire a cab. The next morning, she’d have found it and Wick would jokingly insist he didn’t remember agreeing to compensate her. Lacy wouldn’t laugh. The cactus would grimace silently at Wick as he sipped a 9am scotch. “I don’t get enough of this from the duck?” he would mutter to himself.
  
• Zib would be torn between being some kind of friend to Rocky and being some kind of friend to everyone else by ridding the world of the accursed, spiny homunculus. After a good long smoke and a good long think, he would resolve to place the cactus outside on the narrow fire escape railing overnight, leaving it to fate to decide whether it should persist or be sent plummeting to its demise by, say, a gentle breeze or the clumsy fluttering of a pigeon. When Zib woke the cactus would be there in the strange stillness of morning, staring at him through the window from its place on the rail. Zib would feel queasy. The cactus would remember this.