A face only the Other could love.
Mad scientists rule the world. Horrifyingly.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
The Comic proper:
Act 1:
- The "Jars" in Beetlesburg
that criminals are put into for a very slow and public execution by starvation and sun exposure and then left to rot. - The Slaver Wasps. Every thing revealed about them just makes them worse. The novels reveal they fuse to the nerves of their victims. And the reason they initially didn't work on Sparks? It's not because the Other couldn't make them like that, it just made a promise to the Knights of Jove.
- Gil is already on a seething, barely-restrained mood when he is told that Agatha is dead. But when Pix begins to slander her name by claiming she led a wild clank towards the caravan, supposedly as revenge for the circus sending her away, and then has the audacity to ask if there was a reward for killing her, Gil goes ballistic: he shoves a gun on Pix's head, right between her eyes, and screams that she's lying. He would've likely killed her on the spot if Abner hadn't stepped in.
- The horse....thing from early in the comic's run, seen through the next five pages.
- The fate of Passholdt and its inhabitants; everyone in the town was either transformed into a slavering monster or was no doubt killed by their former neighbours. Even worse, the monsters clearly then went on to kill anyone who was travelling through the area and visited the town (plus anything in the surrounding countryside, as Lars and Augie's suspicions were first aroused when they couldn't see any signs of animal life whatsoever); Master Payne's circus is just the first party who actually survived to get word to the Baron. And even worse than that, it's later revealed that the infestation was due to a Spark loyal to the Other, who was messing around with Slaver Engines and managed to create a new and incredibly vicious form of revenant
- Augie also mentions that this isn't the first time the Circus has seen something like this; they've come across plenty of 'dead' towns in the past, or areas where something dreadful has clearly happened, even if the local fortified towns have managed to survive.
- Prince Aaronev's experiment when he's first introduced. The novel manages to take it up to eleven by mentioning twitching, and a small, strangled scream...
- Aaronev is all kinds of disturbing anyway. The man killed his daughter Anevka by putting her in the Summoning Engine, because he had a crush on Lucrezia.
- The summoning engine was used on any girl found to have the Spark. Aaronev used it on hundreds of girls, to the point that Spark demographics were altered over the following years, leading everyone to assume that only men could have the Spark.
- Princess Anevka Sturmvorous in her clank form is... quite unsettling with a Perpetual Smiler face and her clank form in this September 2019 strip is just full-on creepy. Of course, we never see what she looked like pre-clank, which is left to the audience to guess. Not that Anevka herself doesn't deserve some mention. Unlike a lot of the psychoes the comic has, she lacks any comedic traits whatsoever. Making it worse, we never really learn if this is because something went wrong with the mind-transfer, if there's just something about being a Clank, or if Anevka was just really like that (considering that in the novelizations it's mentioned that she killed her own mother, it's probably the latter).
- The Other / Lucrezia's relationship with Agatha is all kinds of hideously messed up to begin with, but it's strongly hinted that she / it intentionally conceived Agatha solely to use in the Summoning Engine. And Agatha was conceived after Bill and Barry went missing, raising a few very squicky questions as to just how she was conceived...
- The 4th novel says Lucrezia was pregnant with Agatha during the attack on the Castle.
- Klaus' reaction to learning he's been wasped and that Agatha is apparently Lucrezia is to attempt to kill her as soon as her back is turned; when Lars tries to defend her, Klaus easily cuts him down and paints a terrifying picture as he orders his troops to kill Agatha and her companions. At the same time he's clearly on the point of tears, as there's no other choice for him; he knows the damage Lucrezia could do if she kept control of him — and future events show how right he was. (Adding to the horror is that at this point he's likely aware that Zeetha is his daughter, and yet he'll probably have to kill her too.)
- Gil is normally an amiable and easy-going person, but at one point he manages to scare Zeetha:Zeetha: [regarding Zola] She sounds like an idiot.
Gil: Well, yes. But she was never a malicious one.
Zeetha: Is that important?
Gil: Heavens, yes! [gets right in Zeetha's face as his voice turns demented] If I let everyone I thought was an idiot die — there wouldn't be many people left. - The various tools Agatha's forebears left in the medical lab she and Gil try to cure Tarvek in are all designed for horrifying uses, except the scream generator which was just for ambiance without it actually having to injure someone to make the noise, including replacing blood with molten brass and eight different types of electrocution.
- After Zola stabs Agatha and makes her collapse, Tarvek snaps and beats Zola to a bloody pulp, ranting all the while about how his life has fallen apart after losing everything to the schemes of Lucrezia and his Big, Screwed-Up Family, and that he absolutely won't let the same thing happen to Agatha. The previously unhinged Zola is left weakly uttering her surrender, but Tarvek is too angry to care; he rejects her surrender and decides to settle for nothing less that killing Zola with his own damn hands. To see Tarvek become so ferociously bloodthirsty is nothing short of unsettling.Tarvek: Oh, nonono no, you do not "give up!" YOU DIE!
- It has been revealed that the classic, shambling zombie-like revenants are only an unfortunate statistical extreme, hiding the fact that the larger population remained outwardly normal, just controllable by the Other's voice.
- The Dreen. The first thing that both Tarvek and a Jäger General do upon seeing one is panic and run for it.
Act 2:
- The reveal of how crapsack the world got over the Time Skip due to Klaus being removed from the playing field. It's only been two-and-a-half years, yet the Pax Transylvania is remembered as a halcyon golden age, and Gil is beyond his wits' end both trying to hold the Empire together and figure out what's going on with Mechanicsburg at the same time.
- The fate of Hraggel's Point, as described by two of Gil's agents who had horrifying front row seats:Woger: Hraggel's Point. The whole town's been wasped—and we were there. [...] We were supposed to sniff out [Herr Drumblebekk's] storehouses and trace his buyers. We tracked him to the second basement of a roadside inn. There was a hidden door in the floor, and when he went to open it it opened from the other side. I don't think he was expecting revenants. Yes, and these weren't just nice people mind-controlled by the Other... these were old style shamblers. They had masters. It was an invasion. Quiet. In the dead of night. They came up all over town—through basements and tunnels. Once the town was infected they left the same way. Then everyone went back to sleep, like nothing had ever happened. It was really creepy.
- Queen Albia is just plain freaky. Gil states that it's "literally unthinkable" for her subjects to disobey her, implying that she uses some kinda Mind Control or Hive Mind to control her people. The latter seems ruled out, but her absolute power over an (arguably) dying country is bizarre even in this universe as she's been alive for millenia as an immortal monarch. Her sparking out is also surprising. Judging by Voltaire's statements about her, you would assume she's relatively grounded and sane with control over her sparkiness. This isn't the case however. Whereas Voltaire and Klaus have very refined control of their "madness place", Albia gets almost completely consumed by it just as easily as a relatively green Agatha. Furthermore, she seems to want to make Agatha a permanent additional to her "garden" and seems to mean it literally, implying that she's been capturing and enslaving sparks for a very, very long time and forcing them to work for her. She also uses the Royal "We" when she speaks, but she is so insane that it makes you wonder if she doesn't literally have Multiple Personalities.
- When Tarvek starts figuring out who (or what) Higgs actually is, Higgs - who has been generally unflappable the whole time we've known him - laughs. And it's creepy as hell. (Then again, it's made less creepy once it's revealed Higgs is the jager spy master for the Heterodynes and firmly on Agatha's side.)
- Sparks alone are scary enough— people with a dubious grasp on sanity with the ability to warp the laws of reality via Science would be worrying to anyone. But when the simple-minded Doctor Dim has his intellect restored by a curious Eldritch Abomination, we find out just why Klaus cored the brain of Doctor Dimitri Vapnoople. He's not just your ordinary fulminating madboy with delusions of grandeur, he's a dangerous Social Darwinist Beastmaster with the ability to command eldritch monsters, and to top that all off, he's also a Combat Pragmatist. When Dr. Dim was first introduced, the Fate Worse than Death that Klaus had imposed upon him had seemed disproportionate, but after seeing him return to form within minutes of having his mind restored, it may be that Klaus didn't go far enough.
- Albia's flashback to the deaths of her fellow queens, and more specifically who was responsible for it: Lucrezia. But she's clearly been through the wringer - she's much older looking, and has had several body parts replaced, including an eye and quite possibly her legs.
- Albia reveals that the Other is not happy about having lost her connection with Agatha, and has now launched a full on invasion of Europa in a vengeful fury.
- The way Albia reveals this is by summoning everyone to her chambers. When Gil is first to approach, Agatha is nervous. One of her friends offhandedly mentions that the reason can't be that bad only for Gil's respectful and polite introduction to be cut off by Albia roaring 'Silence!' Everyone hearing that then comments that the situation is bad.
- It's very easy to write off Othar Trygvassen (Gentleman Adventurer) as a humorously unkillable comic relief character, but every now and again he reminds us that his mission is to kill every spark in the world. Upon his return in Act 2 Volume 8, after Tarvek shows a surprising (to Othar) amount of basic decency, he showers him with praise, then rather creepily reminds him that all the girls that fell victim to the Sturmvorous Summoning Engines were Sparks, and thus fated to die anyway, but Tarvek would be one of the last he'd go after.
- For that matter, Tarvek reminding everyone just how many girls met their deaths at the Summoning Engines, enough to alter the demographics of a whole generation to where female sparks are seen as rare in that age range.
- Othar's goofball act? It is in fact an act. When the situation is serious enough, he drops it. In the novels, seeing this is enough to unnerve the Baron.
- Agatha decides to sabotage the "cursed waters" that Dr. Monahan and Clank!Lucrezia are bathing in and they start to melt.
- The Song Keeper, the corrupted Great Cetacean mentioned by the Deepspeaker. To call it a Kaiju is severely understating it, it literally has an entire army of kaiju within it.
- It turns out even that is understating just how terrifying this entity is. It's not only large enough to hold several kaiju inside of it, it has strong enough sight to not only see a relatively tiny aircraft in the sky, but it can launch flying creatures from the pupils of its eyes.
- Imagine you're Neena from this page: Agatha has just caught you on the outside of a blimp several kilometers in the air after a spear has cut your lifeline; the mother of all kaiju, The Song Keeper, is bearing down on you with all of their monsters in tow; then, just to add a fart on the proverbial crap sandwich, Lucrezia, who had just been preoccupied with a fight and is absolutely gigantic, suddenly appears to grab Agatha (and you by extension). Is it any wonder poor Neena freezes??
- We finally get a little exposition on the Polar Ice Lords, and it's not pretty. According to Neena, when the Great Ice retreated, Albia found the things that they had left behind; whatever it was, it was so horrible that she wouldn't talk about it. Because they stay up north and kill anyone who gets near, it's hard to learn anything at all about them, but following their attempted invasion two years ago, after Gil quarantined some of their people post-retreat, Neena snuck into one of their settlements in an attempt to speak with them: they variously described the Polar Lords as wizards, demons and monsters, capable of warping reality itself. Though Neena believed at the time that the people she spoke to were outright insane and difficult to understand, she was rattled enough that she still believes they might have been telling the truth.
- And now we've finally seen the Polar Lords in person. An army of frozen Revenants whose mere presence causes a biting blizzard to form in the immediate area, and they're led by some kind of lich-like, draconic thing that freezes one of its soldiers to death for even entertaining the idea of parleying with the British-Wulfenbach coalition.
- Worse yet, the freezing process doesn't seem to be fatal, at least, at first glance. Instead, it does kill them and it turns the person's corpse into a type of revenant even if they were immunized from the slaver wasps. The body continues to move and talk like a puppet. Whatever powers they have, if they have brought their blizzards with them, they are more powerful than Lucrezia since even she can't just summon the ability to control someone on a whim. Whether or not these undead monstrosities keep any sort of intelligence hasn't been answered.
- Even worse? The Polar Lord responsible for the above horrors that Agatha defeats is all but stated to be a weakling compared to most of his kind, and he was still one of Agatha's deadliest foes to date that took quick thinking, heavy firepower and a lot of sheer luck to defeat, and after his death a senior, clearly more powerful Polar Lord makes it clear that he will be back to settle the score for this insult one day. No wonder Agatha's determined to learn as much as she can about these things.
Supplementary material:
- The Bad Future from Othar's Twitter adventures.
- The prologue of Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess has Andronicus Valois as it's POV character during the war with the Heterodynes, and it sheds light on how terrifying Mad Scientists like the Old Heterodynes must have been for "normal" non-Sparky people to go up against. Coalition armies had to pick up the dead bodies of their fallen comrades and take them elsewhere, because they "had learned the hard way that you didn’t allow The Heterodyne to collect your dead" (the implication being that the Heterodynes would collect the dead bodies to, for lack of a better term, reuse).
- Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg gives us a lot of time in the Baron's head, and it makes his situation all the more horrifying; he's aware of his enslavement and constantly battling to defy Lucrezia, a person who not only knows him intimately but takes great delight in making him do things he hates and will cause him pain — up to and including a forced mental overlay on his own son.
