Awesome / Gunnerkrigg Court

Moment Subpages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned.

• From Chapter 1: The Shadow And The Robot:
  • Annie solves the problem of his shadow friend by creating a robot... without any idea on robotics. She just built the contraption and activated it, and it worked!
• From Chapter 3: Reynardine:
  • Annie displaying an unusual strength while throwing Winsbury, who was pissing off Kat.
• From Chapter 4: Not Very Scary:
  • When Mort— with a little help— finally learns how to be scary.
• From Chapter 7: Of New And Old:
  • The sheer calm style of Annie's refusal to turn over Reynardine — complete with flatly announcing her opinion on their treatment of Rey and ordering him around.
• From Chapter 8: Broken Glass And Other Things:
  • Kat showing up in a flying two-seater ship (which she'd built, using an anti-grav unit she'd already constructed out of a thermos and coat hangers, in less than one night) to save Annie.
• From Chapter 10: Dr. Disaster Versus The Creepy Space Aliens From Outer Space:
  • Annie, after proving too Genre Savvy for her own good, she takes the MST3K Mantra to heart and unleashes her inner Action Girl, proceeding to blow stuff up, hang lampshades, and take names.
• From Chapter 12: Mainly Involves Robots:
  • The moment that the readers find out that Reynardine can go from stuffed toy to a white wolf that's large enough for a human to ride. In the author's own words, "I've been waiting since Chapter 3 Page 23 to draw this."
• From Chapter 13: A Week For Kat:
  • Winsbury had it coming: ultimate schoolboy revenge.
• From Chapter 14: The Fangs of Summertime:
  • Reynardine - essentially a stuffed toy - while speaking to Ysengrin.
    "I tremble in the presence of your terrifying skills of gardening, Ysengrin."
  • The entirety of these two pages, including Annie giving "SPANKIES! Bad dog!" to Coyote.
  • In the next page, Coyote ends said ruse: "Stop!" BAP CRUNCH
• From Chapter 16: A Ghost Story:
  • 6-year-old Annie marching into a spectral inferno to give Martin a literal Cooldown Hug, starting here.
• From Chapter 17: The Medium Beginning
  • Jones spars with Eglamore unarmed and wins. She blocks a sword. With her face.
• From Chapter 18: S1:
  • Annie and Kat were being taunted in the corridor by a group of bullies who mocked their teddy bear. The "teddy bear" was of course Reynardine, who transformed and sent them running and screaming.
• From Chapter 20: Coyote Stories:
  • Coyote shows off.
• From Chapter 21: Blinking:
  • Kat punching Muut, essentially an owl-headed Native American version of the Grim Reaper, in the stomach for forcing Annie to guide her own mother into the afterlife. Never has something so ineffectual been so awesome.
• From Chapter 22: Ties:
  • Donald, Kat's dad, fooling a group of robots.
  • Eglamore's teacher Mr. Thorn leaps several hundred feet into the air, onto the back of a Rogat Orjak. It's badassery cannot be expressed with words, it must be witnessed.
• From Chapter 23: Terror Castle of the Jupiter Moon Martians:
  • Andrew casually admitting that he lets Parley boss him around because she's hot.
• From Chapter 24: Residential:
  • Annie's plan. After Paz fails to return one night, Annie develops a plan to reveal the truth about the disappearances. It turns out that Marcia, one of the Park's employees, was a Dryad, a being who can control and travel through the trees. She was kidnapping the students in order to bring them to the house. So Annie instructs Kat to bind the tree in said building, and while Annie draws a distraction for Eglamore, Marcia and Bob, all the remaining students take the house. To close it all, Jack trains the Laser Cows to work together and create an impenetrable laser field, solely to lock the camping chaperones out of their own building. In the end, coordinated students > Dryad + Husband + Sword-Wielding Badass. Teachers, you just got served.
  • Janet Llanwellyn and "fancy shooting".
• From Chapter 25: Sky Watcher And The Angel:
  • Kat is so good with robots that any one that spends more than thirty seconds with her is convinced she's an angel (the fact that she has her own prophet is speeding that along). But more specifically, here. Every robot in the Court is lined up to hear her thoughts on their creator's last actions.
  • The ending of the chapter. Sky Watcher's monologue, capped off by that last panel of it on its perch, a sweeping view of the city behind it. Simply beautiful.
    I continue to turn my face upward, measuring the same temperature, the same humidity, radiation and thousands of other variables.
    But now a new metric has been added. The number of angels I have seen is "one".
    And I will keep watch for more.
• From Chapter 26: The Old Dog's Tricks:
  • Magnificent indeed.
  • Pluck.
• From Chapter 28: Spring Heeled, Part 2:
  • Jones ripping Jack's binding devices off a concrete wall.
  • Some pages later, instead of simply going on the dock like a normal person, she just jumps into what looks like really deep water like it was nothing. But THAT gets topped when she PUNCHES THROUGH A WALL instead of climbing the rope.
  • Near the end of the chapter, Zimmy takes things into her own hands. SPLAT!
• From Chapter 30: The Coward Heart:
  • Parley keeping her head and taking on a sword-wielding ghost while unarmed. Jeanne even compliments her on it.
    "A fine strike, fille."
• From Chapter 31: Fire Spike:
  • Jones is the master of the understated moment of awesome. She doesn't need to do anything flashy or overt; she just calmly tells Coyote how it is.
    "You know I can take her if I wish."
  • Ysengrin gets a small Moment of Awesome right here. It doesn't seem like much until you realize that Coyote could take Ysengrin's power and/or kill him with no effort and that Ysengrin is mostly just Coyote's right hand and never questions anything Coyote does or says. Except that one time. It also shows that while Ysengrin and Renard couldn't really stand each other at all, Ysengrin is still very angry at Coyote for betraying Renard.
  • Ysengrin's motivational speech to Annie a few pages later also counts as one, especially since he normally despises humans.
• From Chapter 33: Give And Take:
  • Kat manages to "revive" one of the older robots from the Court by transcribing a code that was thought to be too complex for humans to understand, a task she describes as "trying to draw the Mona Lisa on a postage stamp with a car tyre." But she does it.
• From Chapter 35: Parley And Smitty Are In This One:
  • Parley is sparring with Robot, whose inhuman speed and skill makes him too quick for her to effectively counter. So she improvises a completely new longsword style based on her Flash Step teleportation on the fly.
• From Chapter 38: Divine:
  • While it dips into the horrific and Tear Jerker territory, we're treated to a glance of Annie's fire elemental form here.
  • This moment when Zimmy travels through the ether to give Annie's dad a punch to the face, while shouting "Message from your little girl, mate!" Behold.
  • Kat's etheric form as viewed by Zimmy is terrifying to some (including Zimmy), and awesome to others. Either way, it's some of Tom's most memorable art.
• From Chapter 39: The Great Secret:
  • Antimony stands her ground with Coyote snarling in her face, here. Good lord, that girl knows how to call a bluff.
  • ZAM! Sir Eglamore, once more proving that he is a professional at being the Big Damned Hero.
• From Chapter 40: The Stone:
  • Jones' entire origin story tops everything else in the series. Case in point: she stopped a charging bison dead in its tracks.
• From Chapter 41: Changes:
  • Smitty didn't expect to become the Court's new Medium, but he doesn't hesitate to use that authority mere moments after receiving it, essentially stopping the Headmaster dead in his tracks when he tries to cut Annie off from the Court.
• From Chapter 43, Quicksilver:
  • We find out who Reynardine really is. After pages and pages of ambiguity and conflicted emotions, this moment hits you like...like the can of gas he's murdering Hetty with in it.
    Reynard: I said I will always regret that day, but it's my actions I will regret. Not the outcome.
    Hetty: Reynardine! You dropped all my things!
    Reynard: I can never forgive myself for what I tried to do. I had already taken a life, and I was prepared to do it again...This body is my shame. And when she smiles at me, I feel the shame of that moment anew! ''(attacks Hetty.)''
  • And in the next page: Choof. Flick.
  • Next page, the hits keep coming as Reynard reminds Hetty he's a fox spirit inside a proud wolf underneath that cute, plushy exterior. "And when I wear this symbol, I wear it with pride." CRUNCH
• From Chapter 44, Crash Course:
  • Ysengrin proving that, memory loss or no, he will protect Annie, even from his own soldiers.
  • Support your tank.
    Annie: How could I possibly help against those monsters? I'm supposed to be a diplomat!
    Coyote: Haha! So start speaking their language!
  • Annie shows off her badass credentials when she fights off one of the soldiers, by leaning into him.
  • After the brief glimpse in chapter 38, we finally get a better look at Annie's fire elemental form. And boy, is it awesome.
  • Her simple statement that she's happy to talk to anyone who needs a medium. A reminder and assertion of who she is, an implication of her lack of fear, and spoken so pleasantly that, together with her power display, it leaves no further room for arguments. Ambadassador indeed.
• From Chapter 46, The Realm of the Dead:
  • Kat had no idea she was doing it, but she was bossing around this thing.
• Chapter 47, See ya!:
  • Annie gets angry.
• Chapter 49, The Torn Sea:
  • Kat finally taps into the Ether and goes full-on Mad Scientist.
  • Annie sends a message to Reynard, saying that she's in danger. When the narrative next cuts back to Reynard, he is leading an entire fleet of boats to help her. Even seeing the massive, physics-defying chasm cut into the ocean doesn't faze him.
  • Shadow flying.
  • Paz using her Friend to All Living Things powers to inform Lindsey of the situation. Who then body slams the ship. Memorably summed up with her comment here:
    Paz: Que no soy una amenaza? ^Translation I am not a threat?
  • Kat here, in her etheric form:
    Kat: I don't ever want to see you again.
• Chapter 52, Sneak:
  • There are some things even Annie won't give up for him. Considering the regression Anthony has caused Annie these past few chapters, this simple act of rebellion shows some of her fire—the one that belonged to her mother—still rages on inside her.
  • Someone finally, finally, tells Anthony to cut the crap:
    "Tony, where the hell have you been?"
    • The look on Kat's face in the first panel pretty much mirrors everyone else's reaction to Donald's question.
  • Kat finally getting to verbally cut loose regarding Anthony's absence and defending Reynard:
    Anthony: I cannot be so quick to assume [Reynard]'s harmless.
    Kat: So quick?! You weren't even here!
  • We finally find out who the "sneak" in this chapter was. And boy, it is AWESOME.
• Chapter 53, Annie and the Fire:
  • Anthony's true motivations for what he did to Annie: The Court was going to kick out his daughter and remove her from their program and support. He managed to broker a deal to bring her into line, all for the love of the last bit of his wife he had left. Keep in mind that he almost killed her with his etheric antenna, and was on the verge of giving it all up himself. He has done everything over the past few chapters so his daughter could have a chance, and so he could have a reason to live himself.
• Chapter 54, Meetings and Re-Meeting
  • Coyote comes to the Court to find out what has happened to Annie and they try to pass off everything as Anthony's fault. In a very sweet case of Laser-Guided Karma this works too well as Coyote shows them how much this has ticked him off by knocking over a building.
  • Anthony immediately gets a moment of his own following this as he questions how can he let Annie go to the forest knowing Coyote's temper. Bear in mind that he has been briefed on Annie's dealing with the forest and just saw an example of why going against Coyote may be a bad idea. Gotta respect that he's willing to stand up to a Physical God just for his daughter.
  • Coyote responds to Anthony's concerns by delivering a long overdue What the Hell, Hero? speech where he points out that Tony's actions have basically shattered Annie internally and that he has no business judging considering what he's done. For bonus points Coyote is reading Anthony's mind during this and really enjoying the inner conflict the man is going through. Well-Intentioned Extremist or not the man has been overdue for some karma.
  • Ysengrin hears Annie's explanation for why she partitioned her anger. And he decides it's total bullshit and shatters her blinker stone, forcing her to face her rage, even telling her to turn her fury on him if she has to.
    Ysengrin: Direct your anger at me if you must. Now, at least, you cannot ignore it. Your father looks at you and sees the ghost of his dead wife. It is his loss if he does not see what an incredible creature his daughter is.
    • And of course, the end of the chapter where Annie decides to confront Anthony and get Renard back from him.
• Chapter 59: Jeanne:
  • Annie is trapped in a maze within the ether so what happens when Kat decides to go in to help her? She distorts the ether with her presence alone.
• Chapter 60: The Other Shore:
  • Parley doing to Jeanne what's basically a Fighting Game combo. Upon deciding that Jeanne is too fast for her, she starts her combo by letting her get close so she can teleport and pummel the ghost from the back, then in the next page after the wake-up, Jeanne realizes she struck her from the back, and now receives a hit right in the head, then in the next page Parley teleports again, then uppercuts her from the back, and pummels Jeanne's back mid-air, sending her to kiss the ground.
  • Smitty taking the knife that he knew was meant for Parley.
• Chapter 61: Red's Friend Gets A Name Too I Suppose:
  • As harsh as it is, Red going off on Annie, giving her a much-needed call out about Annie's more dubious actions involving the attempt to free Jeanne.
  • Kat's response to that is even better as she talks to Annie later and says that Red was the one who insisted she should go in the first place and she was just lashing out because she brought her own friend along, putting her in danger. Kat even wonders why Red was there in the first place and says that Annie's friends all trusted her and chose to go, while Red shouldn't have been there.

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