Monday's comic!

[murgatroyd_666]

https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20210906

... and that explains why female Sparks are so rare ...

Comments

[murgatroyd_666]

I had been hoping that female Sparks were rare because at the end of the tale Agatha had control of the Time Portal, and she was tracking them down and rescuing them. She would accumulate a small army of teenage girl Sparks, all of them idealistic and out to change the world ...

Alas, probably not.

[spectrum_09]

Lilith, a.k.a. Judy said, "Girls with the Spark - they usually just disappear."
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040723#.YTXlT45KjIU
The hint about why girl sparks were rare came early.

Anevka added a clue. "My father collected girls with the Spark whenever he could."
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20060424#.YTXmK45KjIU

[marycatelli]

Yeah. This is not news. And it's a hard to justify that it's news to Tarvek.

[murgatroyd_666]

Right. I knew that. But I had been hoping that Agatha could rescue some of them.

[madfilkentist]

This is getting really grim. Mass murder on a continent-wide scale.

[marycatelli]

Putting faces on the dead always draws the cheer out of things.

[turbobeholder]

Also, Othar finds himself in a strange place.
I wonder whether we'll see Tarvek plainly explain to him the consequences of his "grand idea", including the part where it left more openings for those Geisters.

[marycatelli]

The thing is -- Othar wants all the Sparks dead. Is the jarring effect of this news enough to make him NOT think that's so many fewer for him to kill?

[spectrum_09]

Othar wants to kill all Sparks. He tried to kill Agatha when she identified herself as a Spark. BUT...when he meets DuMedd and discovers that Agatha is a Heterodyne; that somehow makes her just fine, even if she did push him out of a dirigible.. Why does Othar like the Heterodynes, even though they are Sparks? Granted, there is only one Heterodyne left, that anyone knows of. But what's his deal?

[marycatelli]

And does his heroic side make him object to the deaths of damsels in distress?

[murgatroyd_666]

Speaking of female Sparks, I'm looking forward to the return of Ruxala and Miss Baumhund. (Whether they're Sparks or not.)

Also, a possible complication: Lucrezia believes that only an organic brain can possess the Spark. Let's hope she never learns of Agatha's Dingbot mini-clanks.

[elmegil]

do any of the dingbots have the spark though?

[bunsen_h]

Tarvek suspects as much; Gil seems less convinced.

[murgatroyd_666]

Now I'm starting to worry. While it was going on, I wondered about the narrative purpose of the battle of the dingbot factions in Castle Heterodyne, the one resolved by the creation of Queenie. Why was that long digression included?

With the benefit of hindsight, I can speculate that it had one of two purposes:
* Foreshadowing the rise of a Queen
* Giving one of the Bad Guys -- Lucrezia, or the Anevka version of Lucrezia, or Zola -- access to a smart clank with the Spark.

The second scenario might have very bad implications.