The webcomics blog about webcomics

Like Unto The Deathless Phoenix

We at Fleen have long followed the career of Ryan North, the Toronto Man-Mountain of legend. Even his tragic death from sploding could not stop his relentless march towards ever greater creative endeavours, a march which is somewhat simpler today thanks to his recent re-embodiment.

Alert readers may recall that North took the precaution of constructing a mathematical representation of his physical body such that even the icy talons of death would not long grip him. After arcane rituals that are best left undescribed, a sacramental libation was poured into a representation of North’s skull, his ineffable life-force came rushing back in, bursting the vessel with his mighty essence and causing his physical being to spontaneously reconstruct from nothing, a process which was thankfully caught on video.

Doubters may feel that this account of North Re-Risen is implausible, and cling to the cover story that North never died in the first place, but merely exploded a model of his head. To those doubters I ask: If this is the case, why is the newly reborn North seen in the video at the 0:40 mark in a dry, clean set of clothes despite the slushy weather? Not so much as a waterspot or splash upon his person, or even his shoes!

Clearly, it can only be because he did not exist in that slushy alleyway, manifesting not only a new body but also pristine raiment appropriate to the climate. Clapping his hands to show appreciation to those that helped in this resurrection, one can almost hear his jovial thoughts: Good work everybody; thanks for helping me return from the Lands Beyond Living on account of my spectral form was freaking out Chompsky.

In any event, we at Fleen welcome North¹ back to the world of the living and will await with bated breath the wisdom that he brings. Not to mention the fact that having a physical body again will make it much easier to finish copy-editing TBONTB:ACFABRNAAWST, which appears to be well situated for an on-time release in May.

As long as we’re on a Ryan North kick today, we would be remiss if we didn’t note one of his other major projects², the Machine of Death anthology which is due in July to coincide with San Diego Comic Con.

North’s co-editor, David Malki !³, dropped some MoD news on us this morning with the announcement that the MoD structured card game (distinguishing it from the previously-available MoD cards which could be adapted to many play styles or just freaking out your friends) has been finalized and will be available via the obligatory Kickstart later this week. The Kris Straub-designed cards look like they perfectly straddle the line between amusing and morbid, which is no surprise to anybody that’s been reading Straub’s Broodhollow. Keep your eyes peeled for the KS announcement, and be ready to hop on this one.

________________
¹ All hail.

² You know, besides the all-time top-funded publishing project on Kickstarter and defeating Death Itself.

³ Who himself was named yesterday to the presentation staff at this year’s MaxFunCon

[…] in point: the promised Kickstarter campaign for the the Machine of Death game hit yesterday afternoon, achieved its US$23,000 goal in about twelve hours, and is plugging away […]

RSS feed for comments on this post.