September 25th, 2015
25 Sept 2015 · page 526 of 1306
This one was challenging. Fun, though.
Comments (56)
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JACK O'MALLEY IS A WITCH.
I'm... not sure what to do with this information.
Well, burning him isn't a viable option, any ideas?
Has he turned anyone into a newt?
Regardless of whether or not they got better, mind.
We must determine whether or not he weights the same as a duck.
"It's a fair cop..."
... does he weigh the same a duck?
Wait, Jason Reed beat me to it.
I thought that might be it last page.
"Read your mind, tear out your soul" anyone?
Oh wow I didn't even notice that. O_O
That would mean that if he wasn't so clumsy with wizardry, he'd be a Wizard of EXTREME ability- because he just did something MUCH like what was described here and did it in the previous story arc.
Hippo of happiness will flumph along giddily to this knowledge.
I dunno about clumsy. His ignorance on the subject is deliberately cultivated.
I just hope Nicola also figures it out!!!!
Oh, so
StarRose3 did call it last page :)
Yeah well, lust isn't much good without a body. eyebrow wiggle
Giving Lust a body - what could possibly go wrong?
Oh, dear. I do hope that give it its own body is all that she did for lust. Although things could certainly get interesting if Isa were part Lust.
This is the story of the spirit who was summoned by the witch,
whose story was told by Isabelle who was flying in a boat,
whose story was told by Henry who was sitting at a table,
whose story was drawn by Kate who posts from Manchester,
whose story I can read at my computer in Wisconsin.
While I smoke my pipe with Henry and Harriet.
Manchester? I'm pretty sure she's in Yorkshire. Still, I might be wrong.
If so, I hope she's besties with John Allison, because I'm reasonably sure he's from Leeds or its surrounds.
I've met him at conventions pretty often! He is a lovely chap, and was very understanding when I accidentally walked into his portfolio review room while trying to find the tea room.
...oh, Mal.
Well, it seems that Lust didn't waste any time putting that new body to use... The year in the comic is 1834, 400 years earlier is the early 1400s, which is when Izzy's research says the Liar's Heart started popping up.
[http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/july-17th-2015/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/july-17th-2015/")
Interesting note of how the ancestor's braids are coming undone; perhaps a visual representation of how she was loosing herself to Lust? Also of note that Harry and the sibs are the ninth generation descendants (eight generations ago) of a witch that gave Lust a body, fourth generation of a baron, grandchildren of the country's most famous hunter, and from Izzy, 1/8th Romani (of which the first were from India, and Sid just happens to be East Indian).
The differences between the ancestor and O'Malley are of note: with the right aptitude, anyone, with varied success, can train to be a wizard, but you MUST be born a witch to be a witch. Not only does this seem to be increasingly rare, it appears to not be hereditary, otherwise there'd be more popping up in Harry's family. While it's very unlikely that O'Malley could even train to be a wizard if he wanted to, he does have the physical abilities of a witch, which Ben was able to direct once he understood what O'Malley can see. The ancestor clearly had wizard training, or the equivalent, and was able to direct her own emotions; O'Malley can't even see his and had to borrow Wolfe's positive vibe. O'Malley has never had the opportunity to learn what he is, let alone how he can use his abilities like Harry's ancestor did.
Also, since O'Malley is a witch and a witch was able to give Lust a body, with direction could O'Malley possibly dispel/destroy the body?
Perhaps. He had the ability to dispel one of the most powerful malforms he or any other mortal ever experienced. None of the Deadlies are easy to deal or be trifled with. One wonders what our erstwhile ancestor was thinking...obvious that she couldn't have been.
I'm going to go with a Cynthia Von Doom situation. Make a bargain with the best of intentions for something that is supposed to make an intolerable situation better......then find out that, with a powerful spirit, you really need to read the fine print.
If she were Gytha Ogg, there wouldn't be any doubt of it!
Not just the braids, she's getting younger.
I like how the hair came out in the last panel.
Oh shit, O'Malley is the witch.
Ah i see the rest of the comments have concluded the same thing!
Great minds... ;-)
Oh, this can't be good.
Whoops? :/
The sketchy style is really lovely.
I did wonder whether spirits could get bodies, even the more powerful and visible malforms so far seem to have been made of smoke. I wonder how it works?
Only six generations in 400 years? That implies some impressive youth-extension.... Natural witchiness or unnatural spirit deal?
You stopped counting at izzy's grandma
How do you parse "four hundred years ago, my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother" as anything but equating six generations with 400 years?
Seven with Izzy included, she's about 20 here so it's six generations back over 380 years, giving a life expectancy of just over 60. Youth extension is not a thing here is what I am saying basically
Average time between generations doesn't equal life expectancy. Average time between generations equals average age when a person becomes a parent. If this is sixtyish, you definitely have youth extension going on.
You're getting confused. You're assuming this is young Izzy speaking to Henry in the Sailfin in 1792, who is not. This is great-grandma Izzy speaking, sitting at the dinner table with her husband, grandchildren and great-granddaughters, years later in 1834. Izzy's mother is gen six, Izzy gen seven, her son (Harry's father) gen eight, and Harry is generation nine. And Harry and her sibs are old enough to have children; Harry's nieces is generation ten.
Come to think of it, she did kind of squint at Voss before declaring he held great emotion and should unbidden himself, didn't she? I had wondered how she knew.
On the other hand if she was I'd have expected Envy to want to take her abilities like with Mal.
IIRC the reason Envy urged Voss to steal Mal's sight was to stop him from interfering. There was no reason for Envy to care about her powers since she wasn't likely to get in the way.
Oh gosh, this is a really pretty page.
Agreed!
The other option is that I got it wrong! There is no life extension of any kind occurring, I hate that trope.
No, no. That was the wrong answer! The right one was that you typo'd the year and you REALLY meant 200; OR, that Grandmother's, Grandmother's, Grandmother is merely an idiom for an ancestor from a long time ago. Yeah, that's it, go for option 2.
I really don't get how Mal feets here... everyone seems to mention it. Did I miss something?
The feats attributed to witches are ones we saw Mal do. Read people's mind ? Check. See things the rest of us cannot ? Check. Give a physical body to a spirit ? The Happy Happy Hyppo says "Check". Nowhere in the comics you'll find an official confirmation (yet) but the definition of a witch fits Mal too well to ignore.
Ha, must've somehow missed that one:) Thanks a lot:)
He didn't give a spirit a body, the hippo was just another of the random malforms he finds around the place and brings along to annoy Ben (at least, there's no suggestion it wasn't). That's not to say he couldn't if he actually studied magic, as we know that's not likely to happen unless somebody's behind him with a big stick.
She sees what he sees. Look at Panel One.
Took me a minute.
A person after my own heart as I did the same thing. Only I used my own family tree and realized 6 generations was only about 200 years.
Five generations back in my family puts me at the ancestor who fought in the USAian Civil War.
So now we know that Izzy's bloodline is definitely important to Lust (and possibly to all of the deadlies), which likely makes Henry's siblings and cousins irrelevant to them. The question is whether Henry and/or Izzy will do something that will make one or both of them even more significant to the deadlies, so that any siblings or cousins Izzy might have also become irrelevant.
I'm not sure it's as simple as Mal being just one of a number of witches. Envy referred to him as "the one who stands between" - not "one who stands between" - so that suggests that it expected there to be only one person like Mal on the scene. Maybe it's because of "the witch of the anchor", i.e. there would traditionally be one Widdershins witch and Envy took Mal to be it. Or maybe something else weird. Anyway, the plot is clearly going to thicken further for Mal... in spite of his best efforts to dodge.
:-D :-D :-D Sanjay, you win an Internet.
YES O'MALLEY IS A WITCH.
What?
what . . .
where has my brain gone?