That's how you can tell this is a fantasy comic. I mean, yes, the talking animals and all, but Alice working for a newspaper that seems to be thriving? One would have to go to some imaginary kingdom--like England--to find such a thing!
Something else that constantly shocks me is discovering that people are actually reading the comic. See, earlier this week, Statcounter started showing me multiple hits from the site TVTropes. This wasn't shocking in and of itself: I'd put a link to Daily Grind on their list of Long Running Webcomics earlier this year when we reached 2,000 pages.
The shocking part was that the hits were coming from a discussion of the trope they call the Hikaru Genji Plan, described as "A story where a man scores with a woman because the man had a protective role towards the woman when she was a child." Go take a look, and you'll find a paragraph about Howlett and Jolene near the bottom of this page.
And yes, theirs is a decidedly non-sexual relationship, and the whole "predator/prey" thing they've got going on strikes me as creepy enough all on its own, but just the idea that someone is reading my odd little comic and thinking about this stuff makes me very happy. Especially since the next Book is gonna center on the various relationships between some of our characters--Howlett and Jo, Doc and Alice, Tharka and Gana, Mrs. Teasdale and her family. It's just nice to know that we're all on the same metaphorical page.
Thirty-Six - Chiaroscuro
