2016/10/28 [DMFA #1706] - In Memoriam

[Lying Foo]

Goodbye, Jack.  You'll live on in our memories... and nowhere else.

...always male?  I thought the myth was the opposite...

[Kibin]

'bleh' is the best dying sound effect ever.

[Puyon]

Goodbye, Jack.  You'll live on in our memories... and nowhere else.

...always male?  I thought the myth was the opposite...

What's the difference between myths when it's all misinformation anyway.

I swear i remember an 'always male' myth somewhere but i'm not sure of the source... must be remembering it wrong after all

[Merlin]

Just a heads up, that number in the title's gonna be wrong because guest comics are always removed totally from the site upon next update

what's that? cross-post tape's production notes? don't mind if i do

The first draft was pretty weak, looking back at it. It was based loosely on the story of Mink's mother, who was beheaded by an adventurer who saw her clan marking. The village held a banquet in his honour, even though she was the town healer.
It felt rather too much like an actual Jack Chick tract, and didn't have the bouncy, absurd humour from, say, "Doom Town" or "Advanced Gardens and Snails."

Merlin suggested a different approach, emphasising how evil 'cubi are, rather than the 'kill them for fun and profit' angle.
"Rather like how Chick tackles Satanism. Every strip he does about Satanism is solid gold, because he genuinely believes they exist in the form of puppy-murdering babykillers. He doesn't have to show that they need to be stopped, he just shows What Will Happen if you let them run rampant."

As an example she gave me two halloween comics. I managed the first one but my brain seized up completely midway through the second, but it did give me the idea of having children as the protagonists in the form of Timmy and Jimmy.
Merlin also commented that real Chick Tracts tend to have a fractured, disconnected narrative, speculating that this might be deliberate to confuse the reader into just accepting rather than thinking things through. This later became the sudden flashback to Jimmy's childhood and the execution scene.

I hit a block around the point where Timmy discovers that his mother is a 'cubi. Sofox proof-read it, suggested the crossbow scene and contributed a lot of the dialogue for that scene. Dad was added by Merlin as an improvisation, with the words "Son, what is going on here did you kill your mother?" and "Oh. Okay." The grammar annoyed me enough that I made some changes to the text once the artwork came in. It had a few revisions, including "Did you behead your mother?" but I settled on "Why did you kill your mother?" since that has a certain absurdity to it anyway. I suggested changing "Oh, okay." into "GASP!!"

Another contribution of Merlin's was the additional dialogue in panel 4: "Since Chick Tracts are never subtle, I changed cell 4 to have Timmy actually think "My mother has a symbol...". I also had Jimmy saying "Anyway, see you tomorrow!"."

Originally Merlin wasn't sure how to handle the death of Timmy's mother: "When getting hit with the bolt, the incubus now says "Ow I'm die". Mainly because having him say something really stupid will offset the fact that they're getting murdered. "
I remembered that in one of the early Trick Tracts a trickster is hanged, and their eyes turn into Xs with the word "bleh", so we went with that instead. On the way home I also got the idea of adding the word "Bleh" to the execution scene in a couple of panels.

I had mentally set the story about 6000-6500 years before DMFA, centuries after the Dragon-Cubi war began. However, I forgot to tell this to Merlin, hence we had an odd assortment of characters ancient and modern, including Abel, Nactlarn and Aaryanna.

Some of the artwork and writing is derived from these scenes in DMFA: http://missmab.com/Comics/Vol_1217.php http://missmab.com/Comics/Vol_1583.php

[Tapewolf]

...always male?  I thought the myth was the opposite...

AFAIK in Christian mythology they are genderless and change sex on the fly to achieve whatever they're trying to do.  I'd have to look it up but it might have been the Maleus Maleficarium which claimed the standard operating procedure was to become female to steal a man's seed, and then switch to male so they can use the stolen seed to get someone pregnant, and that this would produce 'the best witches'.

In DMFA, they are like beings, i.e. binary sexual reproduction.  However, the most active/notorious clan is Nact'Larn who are always female as a clan trait, and people have assumed that all 'cubi are female-only.  I think that's on Nact'Larn's leader profile.

In the Incubus tract, the concept was to produce hate literature of the kind Hizell might go for, so various weird myths were smushed together in a garbled manner, and a few new one were added too such as the baby sacrifices and the whole "we have to cut the head off quick before they come back to life" thing.  This is also why Hizell and M'Chek are held on a pedestal despite actually being Really Evil.

'bleh' is the best dying sound effect ever.

It was copied from an old, old Trick Tract Merlin did where a Trickster was hanged.  I still think it was an awesome way to deal with the "How are we going to show someone being shot in the head with a crossbow and two people being beheaded?" problem.

Just a heads up, that number in the title's gonna be wrong because guest comics are always removed totally from the site upon next update

It's been posted to Katbox as well, and that's never happened before with a guest strip.  So we'll have to see...

[Merlin]

AFAIK in Christian mythology they are genderless and change sex on the fly to achieve whatever they're trying to do.  I'd have to look it up but it might have been the Maleus Maleficarium which claimed the standard operating procedure was to become female to steal a man's seed, and then switch to male so they can use the stolen seed to get someone pregnant, and that this would produce 'the best witches'.

That does sound crazy enough to be true

[Cassi-kun]

I think I remember an always-male mention in the comic too, specifically Abel freaking out at someone "explaining" Cubi behavior to him. I'll try to find it but I'm at work, so I have distractions going on 

[Tapewolf]

I think I remember an always-male mention in the comic too, specifically Abel freaking out at someone "explaining" Cubi behavior to him. I'll try to find it but I'm at work, so I have distractions going on

1143 - the conversation with Chicki.  "Is true that all 'cubi are female?  Become male only to attract female prey?"

That does sound crazy enough to be true

"Howbeit [Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum] proceedeth, affirming that All witches take their beginning from such filthie actions, wherein the divell, in likeness of a prettie wench, lieth prostitute as Succubus to the man, and reteining his nature and seede, conveieth it unto the witch, to whom he delivereth it as Incubus."  -The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Reginald Scot, Book 4, Chapter 2

[Cassi-kun]

I think I remember an always-male mention in the comic too, specifically Abel freaking out at someone "explaining" Cubi behavior to him. I'll try to find it but I'm at work, so I have distractions going on

1143 - the conversation with Chicki.  "Is true that all 'cubi are female?  Become male only to attract female prey?"

No, something different. I may just be imagining it because my brain is awesome, but I remember a conversation where Abel starts screaming or something as someone tries to repeat some fairly icky rumours to him as fact.

[Tapewolf]

No, something different. I may just be imagining it because my brain is awesome, but I remember a conversation where Abel starts screaming or something as someone tries to repeat some fairly icky rumours to him as fact.

Dorcan did this in Project Future p.330, but I can't think of a similar scene in DMFA proper offhand...

[Cassi-kun]

No, something different. I may just be imagining it because my brain is awesome, but I remember a conversation where Abel starts screaming or something as someone tries to repeat some fairly icky rumours to him as fact.

Dorcan did this in Project Future p.330, but I can't think of a similar scene in DMFA proper offhand...

Oh, then that's probably what I was thinking of. My brain does the smart good.

[Sofox]

Obviously I love the comic though I may be biased. Good choice on posting the comic Amber.