Alice Grove: A new webcomic by Jeph Jacques of QC

Wow.

Yeah that's going to be a super abrupt end, damn.

It's only...what, 5 more strips max to wrap everything up?

So all he had to do was sit back and wait.

Subsequently, unrestrained warfare of spaceuberwizards replaces all rocky planets of the solar system with asteroid belts.

See: Grossly Irresponsible, above.

See, this is the kind of thing that would be best revealed as they were traveling around on Earth, instead of put into a single page Info Dump.

Well, there's a couple different reveals here (and on the previous page):

• Ardent and Gavia aren't the only spaaaaace people who appeared on Earth
• The other space people also have Ardent's nanomachine problem.
• The nanomachine problem is capable of being transmitted.

....there's a progression here? And honestly you could have worked Pate in as someone chasing down rumors of people doing weird things, so our group has to dodge him (no small feat given the existence of Mr. Church).

The transmission of the nanomachines......shit I wonder if Ardent's interest in sex could have led to that reveal. That'd be one way to do it.

Transmission probably requires physical contact. Not necessarily intimate contact, but getting people with strong interest in interacting (in any way) with people down below makes the spread easier.

Yuk it up, Alice.

If Pate had sat in his office and waited a few years, he'dve gotten pretty much what he wanted and Alice wouldn't have had to go all HASSAN CHOP on his ass.

That's why she's cackling like a madwoman right now.

That and as an artificially enhanced super-soldier she is all too aware of how this power will be abused.

So I'm reading her laugher as, "oh wow, we're all fucked. Isn't this great. lets just repeat the whole super-technology war again then."

edited 18th Jul '17 8:11:26 AM by Matues

Note also that her laughter turns into crying at the end. She knows that once again she'll have to kill untold numbers of people, the majority of whom, unlike Pate, won't deserve it.

The question is, what will Alice do (or, perhaps, what can she do) to avoid being in that position again? Will, or can, she self-terminate? That'd be a rather bleak way to end the comic. Will she simply resign herself to another eventual turn as a weapon of mass destruction? That'd also be a bleak ending, if not quite as much. Will she go travelling off somewhere, perhaps together with Sedna, Ardent and Gavia, far away from either Earth or any of the Praeses, and try to start a new life? Can she?

edited 18th Jul '17 9:09:30 AM by AliceMacher

Notice that the background is fading away. That might be an artistic decision, or the real reason she's laughing is that she's realized All Is Not As It Seems. It would be one way to wrap all this up by Friday.

TFW.

She survived that?

The super-soldiers were built robust. And Ardent did have a go at staunching the blood loss.

edited 19th Jul '17 12:25:11 PM by Spindriver

Also Gavia contributed something with her powers.

Almost the end

And Jeph has already a new project planned.

This all kind of reminds me of this shonen manga that got canned after 12 chapters. There's this backstory about this prince guy and the people who killed his family, there's this shadowy organization dedicated to breaking these sealed pillars or whatever, and the first six chapters are basically the main hero's backstory and the shadowy organization's reveal. The end of chapter 12 has the main character risking his life for a sidekick he only just met, having like an afterlife flash to talk to his dead family, and basically saving the single sealed pillar - of which there were meant to be like twelve of - and overcoming the shadowy organization to save the world. They basically had to end the manga and give it one of those heartfelt awesome conclusions after twelve chapters, and it's super jarring.

AG has lasted longer, and this whole hubbub has been a lot more interesting and satisfying than a shonen manga grand finale after twelve chapters. But the fact that it ends tomorrow feels a little bit hollow.

Shaggy Dog Comic.

"Maybe find the black hole I'm entangled with. It would be nice to see it in person."

I'm not a physicist by profession but even I can spot two rather glaring science fails in that sentence.

1. You can't "see" a black hole.

2. Entanglement, like so many other phenomena in quantum physics, applies only at the subatomic level.

edited 20th Jul '17 5:33:51 PM by AliceMacher

And that's the end. I'm missing it already.

I started rereading today, too, so I'm feeling a renewed fondness for these characters.

Right-click the images and "open link in new tab" to see them full size. Or click here: [1]◊ [2]◊ [3]◊

edited 20th Jul '17 9:07:35 PM by Twiddler

I just got the total page count. It's 220, judging purely by the URLs.

God that ending felt weird. Like, I've rushed a comic story arc ending before but this takes the cake.

edited 20th Jul '17 10:08:30 PM by Pyrarson

[[quoteblock: I can't help but feel like I'll be old and gray before the story wraps up.]]

Larkmarn, 2014

edit: what even is quote markup? Is it something you eat?

edited 20th Jul '17 10:19:35 PM by Yinyang107

Quotes are like folders and unlike spoilers: Quotes and folders (and notes) have opening and closing tags.

Yeah its [[quoteblock]] and then [[/quoteblock]] to get

edited 20th Jul '17 10:24:10 PM by Adannor