The eighty-first strip opens with minus excitedly taking a book off the shelf. Why is she so eager to read it, you ask? The following panel shows us the cover — it’s titled “Judy the Tank and the Trouble with Pirates”. So it’s just what a kid like minus loves— living weapons fighting pirates. Hooray! In classic Decompressed Comic fashion, the next six panels are of her looking at the book and occasionally flipping through the pages so that we know she’s making progress. Now that she’s all fired up about pirates, she holds her swivel chair like it’s a ship’s helm, and starts pretending to be a pirate.
There is only one problem. It turns out that she’s in a library. So this guy appears and asks her to stop making so much noise. minus is completely oblivious to this and thinks that he just wants to join her crew. When the man says no, minus says that he’ll walk the plank, and next thing he knows, he is tied up on a gangplank suspended over water, with minus pointing a cutlass at his back. His expression is frozen in a state of horror, and if you were in his situation, wouldn’t you be too? minus says that she’ll only let him go if he joins her crew, so he is pretty much bullied into it. I feel so sorry for him. So minus, trying to talk like a pirate by inserting “arr” into every other sentence, gives herself the piratical appellation of minus the black. Yes, really. The last panel shows her stomping around enthusiastically yelling “arr”, while the man she pressed into service is very weakly and unenthusiastically doing so. This is, of course, a story arc. The eighty-second strip is called minus. – the black –
It begins with a scene of the library from outside, one of those perfectly rectangular brick buildings. Over the next two panels, it disintegrates, and from inside we see the people’s surprise as the bookshelves start to collapse. All the leaves from the books join together, as we see that minus transformed the building into a pirate ship, essentially press-ganging everyone inside. minus sets up the swivel chair as the helm, and starts steering, like a boss, as the ship moves along the road, cutting a huge groove into its path.
Now, at this point, I would think that the best way to contain minus would be to have the green-haired girl be around her at all times to rein her in, but sadly that it not what happens, as can plainly be seen. The green-haired girl isn’t even in this story arc, which of course continues onto the next strip.
Since her pirate ship was originally a library, it still has all its books. So minus is poring over a book about pirates, and discovers something horrible. She puts the book down and informs everyone that it is time to eat. We get to see these innocent bystanders, away from minus, as they discuss what they might be having. All of them are looking forward to food. Much to their palpable disappointment, on the table are giant bowls filled with nothing but lemons. Once again, minus has taken things a little too far.
The guy from last strip asks her what the hell is going on, and she replies that they need to eat lemons in order to protect themselves from scurvy. Gee, if she had read the part of the book where it said that pirates stole from people and slaughtered those who tried to stand up to them, would she have condoned that? Wait, don’t answer…
The guy points out that they’re in no danger of scurvy because they’re on land and could just stop at a supermarket or something. He says that he’s not gonna eat the lemons. Unfortunately for him, at that very moment minus removes all the Vitamin C from his body, and he collapses, presumably from shock. The way minus reacts to this is just the same way any child would while playing pretend: she throws up her arms in horror and yells, “Oh no, scurvy!”1 Even though I don’t like her behavior in the rest of this arc, I did find that funny, as it shows that she’s still just playing a game and doesn’t actually mean ill will to anybody. (Though that in no way excuses her irresponsibility.)
Faced with this horrible spectacle, the other bystanders try to appease minus by shoving lemons down their gullets without even peeling them first, while she looks on, smugly. If one of them chokes, does she know the Heimlich maneuver?2
At least minus is trying not to be a hypocrite, because she tries a lemon herself. Apparently she never tried one before in her life, as she only now finds out that lemons are sour as all hell. You have to wonder why she didn’t just give them oranges. So what does she do? While she is about to take another bite, she actually transforms the lemon into cake just as it enters her mouth. Gee, I hope minus gets scurvy, I mean, I’ve been joking around, but it’s really hard to like her in this arc.
The eighty-fourth strip continues the story arc, but this strip is drawn in pen and ink. This one is narrated in the manner of those old serials. Apparently, minus has kept her involuntary crew at sea for several weeks. Surely she would have gotten bored long before then. And wouldn’t people be looking for her? This arc must be set during summer vacation or something. So they land at a port town, and minus overhears other sailors telling tall tales about her, which, knowing her nature, are probably all true. So, as these sailors are telling their tales, one of them, who looks astonishingly like Nostradamus, tells of a treasure buried on a cursed island. Naturally, minus heads out for it. Now, the narration mentions her crew, so I’m surprised they haven’t mutinied yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if they did, because they’re caught in a storm. But then minus stands on the deck of the ship, points at the sky, and commands it to halt, or she will release her fury upon it. And with that, the storm ceases. Now she’s just stealing Jesus’ shtick. what the hell?
The treasure is guarded by an undead horde of skeletons. In the one panel of the fight we see, minus is dueling one skeleton with her cutlass, while one of her crew is uppercutting a skeleton’s skull off. Dude, that’s awesome. When minus confronts the undead captain, who is apparently wearing a raincoat, he just gives the treasure to her because they’re the only crew who ever fought them, instead of running away in terror. Considering that minus created the skeletons just for this escapade, I am pretty sure that they are the first to fight them, period. But then again, there was that incident involving the ponytailed girl… Ah well. The strip ends with them sailing off, but the arc is still continued into the next one.
It opens on a beach, where we see some paper sticking out from the sand. Some boy finds it, and sees that it’s a map to the location of the treasure of minus the black. He’s all excited, gets a shovel, and follows the map to dig up the treasure. Sure enough, he finds it, and even though the treasure chest is full of jewels, he is able to pick it up in his hands. He leaves happily, and then a day passes, and minus arrives (alone) at where she buried the treasure. I have no idea what happened to her crew. She finds that someone stole her treasure, but doesn’t really care, as she never follows up on it. That is the end of the story arc. I do have to wonder why she left the map on a beach.
The eighty-sixth strip is minus and the green-haired girl playing with a Frisbee. Unfortunately it starts to rain, so what does minus do? She flies them up above the clouds, so that they can continue their game. I hope they don’t throw the Frisbee too far. Well, that’s the end of the strip; it was a short one because of the lack of dialogue.
The next strip also features the two of them, but is not a continuation. minus and the green-haired girl are playing indoors, slapping this annoying creature that pops up from out of the ground. But this is just the background. The real point to this strip is their conversation. minus asks the green-haired girl why she was absent from school. It turns out she was sick. minus, on the other hand, has never been sick before, but after hearing that her friend got to stay home from school, she makes herself sick the following day.
So the next morning, she wakes up, stays in bed, conjures up a television and a bowl of soup or something, and prepares to take the day off. Unfortunately for her, as soon as she starts to eat, she gets nauseous. Of course, she regrets her decision instantly. Karma, whoo! After spending the whole day miserable, the next day she is seen scowling at her friend, who has no idea of the reason for it.
The next strip features minus and the green-haired girl in the library once again. Hey, maybe she took my advice somehow, even though that’s clearly impossible. They’re reading, and minus starts to switch everybody’s heads around, just for the fun of it. Her friend tells her to stop it, so she reverts it back to normal. She apologizes to everyone3 but that doesn’t mean they aren’t angry with her, as you can see from their facial expressions. Then in the background of one panel we see somebody rush out the door. Turns out that minus had switched the bodies of a young woman and an old woman, and the old woman left (in the young woman’s body) before minus could switch them back, so the young woman has come to tell minus about this oversight. The last panel depicts the old woman walking outside, in a younger body, while somebody looks on.
The eighty-ninth strip begins a mini-arc which I like a lot more than that other arc. minus is walking outside and decides to create a staircase to the clouds. However, it turns out that a man and a woman saw her do this.4 You know what this means.
Unbeknownst to minus, the two follow her, and we get to see perfectly ordinary people walking on the clouds without minus’s knowledge. minus heads off somewhere, so the couple, the curious people they are, get into a cab and tail her. What is truly interesting about this is that this couple are among the only people in the entire comic who realize something is amiss when minus is around. They catch up with her, at the very same restaurant where she’s been ordering those super special awesome soft creams. The last panel shows them waving to her, as they ask if they can sit at her booth.
As shown in the next strip, minus allows it. So they strike up a conversation with her, where the woman asks if minus is really all-powerful. Apparently minus has never really thought about this before. For some odd reason, the woman asks minus if she can make it so that the woman is in the man’s body and vice-versa. The man is skeptical of her ability to do this, and minus, completely oblivious to any possible ulterior motive for this, does it anyway, much to the man’s surprise. The woman, on the other hand, says that she knew minus could do it. (Though since their bodies are swapped, it looks like the man is saying this. S/he is also leaning on the table with closed eyes.) What follows are three rather inscrutable panels: The couple glance at each other and have an illegible conversation. Then the one in the female body glares at minus (enough to surprise her) and then in the third panel the “man” is leaning back in the booth while the “woman” is turned around with “her” feet on the top of the booth. Once again, they are having an illegible conversation. Apparently it was about how to make minus help the world, because then they ask her to eliminate all conflict in the world, just for a single day. But minus is a little kid and doesn’t know what the word “conflict” means. So the woman explains it as just people fighting. minus agrees. The couple look on, smiling, as it turns out that minus was eating her super special awesome soft cream this whole conversation.
Then the scene cuts to a basketball game. Players on both teams are going for the ball. Then, a player from one team passes it to a player of the other team! The two of them score goals together, and it’s a tie. minus got way too broad a definition of “conflict” here.
But not to worry, because the confusion will be cleared up in the next strip. For some reason I still haven’t figured out, both the man and woman are dressed in dinner jackets and have mustaches.5 They actually give an Infodump about how a land dispute was peacefully resolved… by the islanders agreeing to give up the island and live in the sea. The man points out that this is ironic wish fulfillment. It is clear to both of them that minus did not know what she was doing at all, between that and the basketball game. They take off their fake mustaches, and skip off to try their luck with minus again.
This time, they aren’t going to be so vague. No, instead they clarify, with reams of documents, in legalese, about exactly what they want minus to do. Then they skip off to the ice cream place and ask minus to look it over. Since she’s a child (who judging from her personality, may well have ADD or something) who doesn’t understand a word of the document, she doesn’t even get through a single page before getting bored and making origami and paper airplanes. We never see the couple’s reaction to this, as the strip is over.
The ninety-second strip is a three-for-one deal again. minus and the green-haired girl are looking at clouds, talking about what the clouds look like. Of course minus is giving the clouds uncanny resemblances to their guesses, and her friend calls her on this. minus denies it, but as soon as she makes a fire-breathing dragon, it becomes obvious. She is not a good liar, and that is probably a good thing. Her friend glances at her while she looks the other way, and whistles. As if it could be any more obvious.
So the green-haired girl asks minus to make a cloud shaped like a woman, for some reason. It passes into the city, where it waves at a little girl, which looks up at the cloud, and then it moves away. I have no idea what is going on. My guess is that it’s something personal related to the green-haired girl that minus doesn’t know about, since she didn’t elaborate.
The second part of the strip depicts the cloud as it continues along its path. It covers a city, approaches a waterfall, does a loop-de-loop in the sky, and approaches a flock of birds. It’s really nice artwork. This continues in the third part, where the cloud-lady sees a shooting star and follows it. It reaches a tropical island, and in the last panel, there’s a torrential downpour.
This was one of those stories where Armand only used minus to set up the story of one of the things she creates. In this case, it allowed him to show more landscapes, which I think are his best art. So I liked it, even though it had little to do with anything.
The ninety-fifth strip opens on a hillscape, with two houses clearly visible on the center hill. minus and the green-haired girl fly by on a flying carpet, and the green-haired girl notices the house. She talks about how cool it is, and that the people who live there must be pretty rich.
The green-haired girl starts looking at other things, while minus takes another look at the house. Then, she does something inexplicable. She takes advantage of perspective, moving her hand so that it looks like it is touching the house (though of course, it is nowhere near it). Then, she flicks it off the hill. Why? There is no reason for it. The closest I can get to an explanation is that she’s a populist or something and hates the rich. Just think of all the property damage she caused. Or worse— what if the owners were inside the house when she did that? She might have killed some people, and we will never know, ‘cause this is never mentioned again. I can’t help but wonder what the green-haired girl’s reaction is; we never see it.
All right, I can do one more strip today. The ninety-sixth strip reminds us that the green-haired girl is now the owner of the puppy, as she is taking him for a walk. Interestingly, she is wearing a jacket and the trees have orange leaves, suggesting that it is now fall. Maybe I was right about my speculation earlier.
In any case, the puppy bounces around as if he were asking for something, but the green-haired girl has no idea what he wants. She asks minus about it, who says that he wants to fly. Glumly, the green-haired girl points out that she’s just a normal human and can’t fly. So minus asks her if she wants to be able to fly. There is a Beat Panel where the green-haired girl remembers that she has a friend who is omnipotent, and answers yes. So in the next panel, we see the green-haired girl soaring in the air alongside her puppy, and beaming with happiness, in exactly the same pose as that man whom minus gave wings earlier.
When they’re in the sky, the puppy starts doing flips, and once again, the green-haired girl doesn’t know why. In the last day (presumably the next day) it turns out that minus has no idea what it means either. Heh heh. I like the strips like that, which are just funny.
You’d better be ready for the next part, because really strange stuff is gonna happen. Stay tuned!
Footnotes
1 Strip 83, panel 12
2 And I know that you shouldn’t actually call it the Heimlich maneuver; whatever.
3 Which I think is a first, actually.
4 They look like the couple I talked about all the way back in part 2 of this review, but are probably not the same. But they could very well be, for all I know.
5 It should be pointed out that I don’t know if they’re back to their original bodies yet.
Forest Purple on 8 November 2013, 01:35 said:
Huh. When I saw that, I thought she did it kind of intentionally— like she was done playing pirates, so she just left the map for someone else to find so they could dig up the treasure.
Rachel on 9 November 2013, 02:19 said:
These reviews got me started reading the webcomic, and I have to say…I’m torn. On the one hand, Armand’s art is amazing. It’s beautiful and whimsical, and draws one into the story. minus is a fun character, and her adventures are wonderfully outlandish. The comic reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes in a lot of ways.
On the other hand, the idea that a school-aged girl with magical powers would not develop some sort of a moral compass as a result of her actions stretches credulity, at least for me. There are some kids who gleefully kill animals for the fun of it. Most, however, feel guilty or at least sad when an animal dies as a result of their actions. Maybe I missed it, but how did minus not feel any sort of remorse for what she did to the balloon vendor? Or the guy she sent into vitamin-C related shock? How did none of this affect her at all? Did she bring them back a few minutes later, or did she just go merrily on her way without a twinge of guilt? And wouldn’t she have heard something in the news about a balloon vendor vanishing, and wouldn’t there have been some sort of fallout from that? And if she didn’t feel any sort of guilt over what she did, how is Armand still writing her as a whimsical character? Shouldn’t she be turning darker grey as the strip goes on? I’m not saying that minus has to be a perfect angel—I loved Calvin because he was a troublemaker—but it just doesn’t feel like minus’ moral quandaries are being handled in a very realistic way.
Brendan Rizzo on 9 November 2013, 10:30 said:
So I’m not the only one who’s thought of this. There certainly have been times earlier in this review where I complain about minus’s behavior, and do not think it justified. At least Armand, unlike a lot of writers, never portrays her as in the right. Like you, I would like to think that minus makes up for these off-panel, but of course there is no evidence for this. It also appears to me that the character has a developmental disorder of some sort, taking into account that even some of her classmates are more mature than she is, but that just might be me finding false positives.
Taking all this in mind, I wonder what you’ll think of the finale.
Rachel on 9 November 2013, 13:18 said:
I do like that—both your calling minus out for her behavior and Armand’s portrayal of it. I wasn’t discounting what you’ve said about her behavior—I actually found many of your comments regarding it to be very insightful.
See, as I’ve been reading, I’ve often wondered if minus’ magic abilities have kept her from developing the idea that actions have consequences. I mean, if she causes destruction, she can fix it, can’t she? So this might lead her to think that, “It doesn’t matter what I do, because I can always fix it later. Reality is nothing more than a game for me to play, and these people are my toys. If I break them, I can fix them, no harm done.” But then again, as you pointed out, she is never shown fixing the destruction she causes. She simply causes it with little to no regard for the fallout—perhaps because she doesn’t realize there is fallout. Of course, the problem with that theory is the fact that minus’ adventures usually involve other people, who most likely would (and should) call her out for what she’s doing. Then again, the adults might all be so terrified of this reality-warping child that they just play along, hoping she’ll learn the difference between right and wrong on her own.
I haven’t gotten to the finale yet, but I’ll definitely be tuning into your review to see what you thought of it. :)