This is what I look like. The desktop is a little anachronistic if you’ve been following my quest for Internet connections for my laptop; I have it at home but it’s not connected to the Internet right now. The image itself didn’t turn out quite like I envisioned, but close enough.

I’ll be posting this on various forums as I return to them (I should have already posted it on TV Tropes, Gravatar, Bleacher Report, and Twitter by the time you read this – not posting on Wikipedia because I don’t want to worry about licencing), and I’ve made some tweaks to the About Me page. Ironically, when I first started thinking about rewriting the About Me page it was to remove or tone down some of the scarier aspects, but now I think I’ve actually made it a little bit scarier. The story behind that is a story for another time, though.

A new element is all the rage in baseball graphics, pioneered by YES Network, with NESN changing its graphics shortly into the season to accommodate it, and starting to make appearances on ESPN. If the experiences of YES and NESN are any indication, this new element will effectively force already-crowded banners to become two-line boxes to squeeze it in. (How many banners are left on baseball coverage beyond Comcast SportsNet?)

I’m referring to the pitch count meter. The general trend seems to be to make the pitch count meter share space with wherever the speed of each pitch appears. YES and NESN have put the score and places of runners on the top line, and nothing else, with everything else going on the bottom line…

…while ESPN has put both elements in the same space as the positions of the runners on base. The pitch speed is displayed first for longer than normal, followed by the pitch count for a shorter period.

Incidentally, the design of YES and NESN’s boxes seems to suggest that Fox may want to consider a version of my original baseball two-line box idea. If Fox wanted to impose pitch count on its current two-line box, it would have to adopt an approach similar to ESPN’s and display both pitch speed and pitch count in the same space as the count and number of outs. (Incidentially, did anyone notice the red-white-and-blue theme all Fox and FSN graphics adopted for the positions of runners on base for July 4th weekend and reprised for the All-Star Game?)

In other baseball graphics news, MASN joins the box bandwagon, while SportsTime Ohio, whose graphics I’ve mocked in the past, creates a graphic easily mistaken for ESPN’s (using the same font and the same color down the sides of the team abbreviations seen in ESPN’s other new graphics) and may have outdone them in the process. The graphic still inexplicably disappears when not showing the pitcher-batter confrontation, and not displaying “MPH” on the pitch speed is jarring, but at least it doesn’t show a team logo when no one is on base for no reason anymore.

I get the sense that ESPN’s graphics for non-SportsCenter studio shows, which have been seen on “Winner’s Bracket”, “Baseball Tonight”, “The Decision”, and during ESPN’s World Cup coverage, were designed after the SportsCenter graphics and possibly following a change of priorities. Especially when a headline is shown at the bottom of the screen, the somewhat robotic look actually looks spiffier than SportsCenter, despite the latter supposedly being the flagship show. In addition, the graphics, especially the colors, look too specific and may have been designed for color symmetry with the World Cup world feed in mind; it’ll work for most sports, and worked really well during the World Cup, but it’s not meshing well at all on Baseball Tonight. BBTN could have done well to adopt the sport-specific look now seen on NFL Live and College Football Live; time will tell if that look survives the transition to the new graphics (though college football probably wouldn’t suffer from a full transition to them).

I much preferred ESPN’s actual World Cup score graphic to those on Univision and CBC, especially since ESPN didn’t try and fail to ape the world feed’s other graphics. But as the World Cup went along, ESPN first put up a display of team jerseys on the screen whenever it could, and then incorporated them into the graphic itself, at the expense of consistency with the world feed graphics. Had ESPN been thinking ahead, it could have added jersey colors in a way that created more flow, such as in a line underneath the team abbreviations.

During the World Cup, I noticed that ESPNews had dropped its larger BottomLine in favor of a BottomLine more like those in place on other ESPN networks. I haven’t been keeping up on my feeds so I don’t know if this has already gone through the sports media blogosphere (although SportsCenter will be expanding its presence on the News soon), but it seems odd that ESPNews is still using its old graphics, especially since they spill off the edges of the screen in SD. Might a change to get closer to ESPN’s other graphics be in the works?

If the graphics ESPN had during the British Open are its new golf graphics, they weren’t in place for the US Senior Open. They’re not dissimilar to graphics ESPN has sometimes added to other networks’ golf highlights during SportsCenter, and while they show the level of customization available across sports (even with changes in colors), they definitely reflect ESPN’s new graphic style… when displaying the leaderboard and studio personnel. I’d prefer the player-name-crammed-to-the-side style used in other sports than what ESPN actually used when showing player stats, involving the player name across the top in a jarringly different large Arial font. Look at the bottom video and tell me the front nine and back nine scores couldn’t have been shown consecutively – wasn’t the point of the new format to avoid taking up too much space? Even the World Series of Poker is using the name-crammed-to-the-side style!


Augusta National finally entered the 21st century, and adopted graphics for the Masters more like CBS’ current graphics for other golf tournaments, while still looking unique.

Versus’ new IndyCar graphics are a downgrade, and look too much like ESPN’s new motorsports graphics – complete with displaying time behind the leader on the same line as the name of each driver! On the plus side, shortly after (or maybe even before) my last roundup Versus did indeed shake up its other graphics – they’ve gone from aping old ESPN graphics to old Fox graphics, but it’s a start!

Finally, NBC… what are you doing, man?!? After how much I praised how you managed to get timeout indicators to mesh with the rest of your graphic, you go and adopt these bulky white things at the Hall of Fame Game.

There was a similar play in last year’s postseason where a fair ball (more indisputably fair than in this instance) was called foul. But in that case, the ball bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double, making it fairly straightforward to determine the outcome of the play – similar to how baseball currently determines whether a home run was fair or foul. You can’t use replay in circumstances where the actions of the players would determine the outcome of the play if it hadn’t ended.
We all want baseball to get with the 21st century and adopt replay, but let’s not get too carried away.

So most of what’s happened up to this point in the Steve and Terry theme since the reboot of the universe turns out to have been an extended flashback that just ended (in what may have supposed to have been June). Which is rather interesting in terms of fueling the “did the universe reboot to the beginning or not?” debate. All signs now seem to point to “no, except for Space”.
-From the last time I posted on IWC.

Want to know what was happening in the Space theme? You’ll never guess in a million years.

No, seriously. Guess.

The Space people were role-playing their first adventures together.

The Fantasy and Space themes, with their role-playing miniatures representing their characters, have always hewed closest to the idea of representing a role-playing game, and Space in particular has hewed close enough to it that the characters actually noticed the death of Me, but still, I did not see that coming. Not to mention the metaphysical questions it raises concerning the lack of Me.

As for the anticipated resumption of the Irregular Crisis, that doesn’t seem to be happening – at the start of the new year, Me solved his “on the run from Death” problem by settling down “in my own home town, with my only remaining family”, and that seems to have been the last it’s been mentioned. Instead of a resumption of the Irregular Crisis, we seem to be getting a new Irregular Crisis, this one composed primarily of time-travel shenanigans with the 1940s turning into a hub of activity. One of the Martians that buzzed Roswell is being held at Area 51, where the 1980s Mythbusters, after moving to an alternate universe where the Nazis won World War II (suggesting the “scrambled history” may have indeed been major), have shown up, become their own grandfathers, and posed as Martians. Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley have started using their Doctor Who-esque time machine to recruit great scientific figures throughout history to travel to 1940, where the Pirates have turned up, as have Steve, Terry, and Jane Goodall, in a parody of Casablanca to boot (no, I am not making any of this up), and you just know that Cliffhangers, already set just a few years earlier, will get involved somehow, where the protagonists have learned of Hitler’s plans to conquer Europe.

(Mythbusters used to be one of my favorite themes and one of the few I would follow religiously if DMM offered per-theme RSS feeds, but it’s been turning me off of late. The closest we’ve seen of the “real” adult Adam and Jamie have been their Nazi-victory alternate universe counterparts, who just caused a rip in the space-time continuum by bringing unstable explosives to a trip through time; otherwise, it’s been all the 80s versions and their would-be grandfathers. And despite DMM working to preserve a PG rating, the whole “Adam and Jamie become their own each other’s grandparents” thing, besides feeling ripped off from Futurama, has just been painful to read.)

This crisis isn’t, so far, as far-reaching as the last one; Fantasy, Space, Nigerian Finance Minister, Shakespeare, and the part-time themes have maintained their own plots and haven’t gotten involved, yet. And beyond those themes (save Space), several other themes have, eventually, gotten to the point where they have picked up where they left off without any indication that anything happened, only getting diverted recently into the new crisis, namely Scientific Revolution, Cliffhangers, and Steve and Terry. On the other hand, other themes have had their disruptions feed directly into the new crisis, namely Martians and Mythbusters.

The new crisis is far from over, and knowing DMM is likely to continue to build right to the last day of the year. But if it weren’t for DMM’s reluctance to make money off his webcomic, I would think he’s trying to use all these crises to jazz up interest and maintain readership in his comic, using the hope of a resolution to string people along as long as possible. Instead, I’m left to wonder if the man who surprised me by saying my idea of IWC consisting of (then) sixteen comics in one, each of those comics being irregular, had never occured to him before, has gotten tired of the gimmick.

While writing this post, it occurred to me that the comic in which Me dies, effectively the start of the Irregular Crisis, is #1800. We’re now up to #2743, so the leadup to the Irregular Crisis, the Crisis itself, and everything leading up to this new crisis, has taken up a third of the comic’s entire existence. Add on top of that the fact that the multi-comic gimmick evolved over a very long time, starting around #30 and continuing past #100, and we’re fast approaching the point  (in about a year’s time plus) where the multi-comic gimmick as it’s best known, before all the themes started being united by crises, will have lasted only about half of the comic’s existence. As I’ve talked about before, David Morgan-Mar started a webcomic not really knowing what he was doing, only knowing that this newfangled “webcomic” thing sounded cool. The comic was titled “Irregular Webcomic” because he really didn’t anticipate the comic becoming as regular as it became – he’d just throw up something whenever he felt like throwing something up. In fact, re-reading that post, I’m reminded of the mini-crisis in 2007 involving four themes and a Martian invasion.

Irregular Webcomic! has been undergoing a slow Cerebus syndrome for most of its existence, and the point of no return was arguably a stretch from #457 to #793. For all of that stretch, a new Cliffhangers strip appeared, like clockwork, every three comics (which basically meant every three days). It was this stretch that led to Morgan-Mar sending the Fantasy cast off on a quest, because he’d come to realize that themes with ongoing storylines were easier to write than themes without, which benefited themes like Cliffhangers at the expense of themes like Fantasy and Space. Although the Scientific Revolution theme, which until recently was as TV Tropes described it – “an excuse for DMM to write heartfelt annotations about Newton, Halley, Pascal, Pasteur, Linnaeus and their contemporaries” – may have represented a backslide towards more gag-a-day comics with how relatively fast strips were coming out, the other themes without lengthy plotlines have not been heard from at all. Harry Potter and Imperial Rome have seen a grand total of two comics apiece since the reboot of the universe, and Star Wars and Supers have other reasons not to appear very often (Darths and Droids and the fact it’s hand-drawn by another party, respectively).

So perhaps it’s a natural progression from giving all the themes plotlines to trying to create an over-arching plotline for Irregular Webcomic! as a whole. But in trying to give people a reason to read IWC every single day, Morgan-Mar runs the risk of falling into PVP/Goats Syndrome (which I really need to settle on a single name for) by shoehorning some of the sillier themes, like Mythbusters and Steve and Terry, into these ominous, world-threatening plotlines. Most of those same themes successfully went through Cerebus Syndrome on their own terms by embracing their silliness as part of the plotline (though not always to the embedded extent Rich Burlew did), but when I see, say, the complete comic relief character of Steve panicking over the impending unraveling of time itself, I’m not sure whether I should be sitting on the edge of my seat or tipping it over guffawing in laughter.

Morgan-Mar seems to want to have it both ways, having a slapstick humor comic while also giving people a reason to follow the comic as a whole instead of single themes, and he doesn’t seem to be doing a good job of getting the two to work together. And it doesn’t help that the disparate themes are not very compatible with one another, spanning a span of time from the 1400s to the far future (not counting Imperial Rome, Fantasy, or several themes’ trips to the age of the dinosaurs), spanning nearly every genre imaginable, and spanning the entire globe and beyond, so that even giving them a reason to interact with one another to this extent requires inventing ridiculous contrivances.

I’m interested enough in where Morgan-Mar is going with this new crisis to keep reading to at least the end of the year, but fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. I’m not going to keep reading for a delayed resolution that isn’t there.

(If this post comes off a little more critical than I originally intended, well, re-read the title. I was tired by the time I was done.)

I have to say, I was surprised when I heard this last rumor. The Pac-10 seemed to be the most likely candidate not to expand at all; it’s quite possibly the most tight-knit group in college sports, any expansion would require a unanimous vote (so if one school had a problem with a potential addition it could scuttle the whole deal), and right now it’s neatly organized into five natural geographic rivalries. (This proposed expansion actually comes pretty close to preserving those geographic rivalries; the only inconsistency is in the Texas schools and Colorado, and even that can be divided into Texas/Texas A&M and Texas Tech/Colorado.) 16 teams is an unwieldy size for a conference, as the non-football Big East has shown, and as demonstrated by the convoluted “pod” systems proposed for a 16-team Big 10. And taking a whole bunch of teams from a single conference can result in those schools forming cliques. I could easily see the “original” 10 becoming the equivalent of the old Big 8 schools vis-a-vis the newcomers from the Southwest Conference, er, Big 12.

I knew the Pac-10 had interest in Texas – any conference would, and Texas had come calling when the old Southwest Conference broke up – but I didn’t anticipate them gobbling up basically the entire Big 12 South. This tells me one of two things:

• The Pac-10 is deliberately destroying the Big 12 to erase competition when the TV contracts come up for renewal next year.
• The Pac-10 wanted Texas, but was told they needed to bring along Texas A&M and Texas Tech as well. (Recall that when Texas finally joined the Big 12, Texas politicians forced the Big 12 to take Texas Tech and Baylor over the objections of basically everyone else.) They then added Oklahoma and Oklahoma State for the hell of it and/or to preserve the Red River Rivalry.

If the latter of these is true, that suggests the price for adding Texas may have been too much for the Big 10 to take – they were willing to add Texas, but not Texas A&M and Texas Tech as well (and Oklahoma and Oklahoma State would have been a non-starter, especially if the Big Ten still wanted to add Notre Dame). Otherwise, for Texas to pass up the Big Ten would seem to suggest that the proposed Texas Longhorns Sports Network would make so much money it’s a better bet than having to split the gerbonkers money from the Big Ten Network. Nebraska would probably be the Big Ten’s third choice for expansion behind Notre Dame and Texas in some order, bringing a fantastic football program, a great volleyball program, but not much else and a small immediate market (though it will help the BTN in other areas); certainly the Big Ten won’t take kindly to the Pac-10 stealing their thunder, and they won’t just sit idly by and let the Pac-10 steal their 16-team idea.

Regardless, if all this happens as planned, the remaining pieces fall into place rather easily. Start with the “orphaned” members of the Big 12: Iowa State, the Kansas schools, Missouri, and Baylor. They would like to think the Big 10 would swoop in and save four of them, but Iowa State and Baylor in particular are weak links (despite Baylor’s basketball program and the potential of Iowa State-Iowa being an intraconference rivalry), and the Big 10 isn’t particularly interested in grabbing a bunch of schools just because they’re available. The Big 10 is primarily concerned with the New York City market and Notre Dame. The Big 10 could take Missouri just to have a lockdown on the St. Louis market, but after that they’re more likely to take Syracuse and Rutgers (possibly Pitt instead of Syracuse) and stop, and wait for that selection to cause the Big East to implode. At which point Notre Dame will come calling, the non-football schools will form their own conference, and six more schools end up orphaned.

Baylor I see going to Conference USA, the Kansas schools could bolt to the Mountain West and give that conference a championship game, and Iowa State could be stuck with the MAC. As for the Big East orphans, I see them getting split by the SEC and ACC. That would leave those two conferences with 15 schools each, one short of the Pac-16 and Big 16. I could see the SEC taking TCU and Memphis, giving it Memphis’ superlative basketball program and an inroad into the lucrative Texas market. The Mountain West could then replace TCU with (say) Nevada. The WAC then nabs a Conference USA team to keep the band together and give Louisiana Tech something resembling a playing partner, offsetting the addition of Baylor (or alternately, just nabs North Texas while C-USA nabs Troy). The former Big East non-football schools probably raid schools like Xavier from the A-10.

One thing to note is that the SEC could come out the big loser in this scenario. Last year the SEC signed contracts with CBS and ESPN that netted them billions of dollars and all sorts of concessions from ESPN – “SEC on ESPN” branding, an “SEC Weekly” show on ESPNU, and so forth – that the SEC thought made forming their own network unnecessary. Now, however, the Pac-10 is positioning itself to maximize value for its own new network, meaning if the ACC doesn’t do the same (and with its contract up right now, it’s entirely possible it won’t), the SEC will be committed to 15 years without its own network. The Big 10 isn’t lacking for games on ESPN, and the BTN’s distribution problems, part of the reason the SEC went to ESPN, have started to fade, so for the money sports the SEC may be at a significant exposure disadvantage, even with its syndicated games being beamed far and wide. I doubt most people in the SEC would prefer to add TCU, Memphis, and (say) Louisville and South Florida to wind up potentially losing much of its football advantage.

However, I do not see this becoming the new status quo in college football into perpetuity, for two reasons:

• In theory, this creates four superconferences of 16 teams each, so organizing a playoff should be simple: just take the champions of each conference. You could even preserve the Rose Bowl as a semifinal, with an ACC-SEC Sugar or Orange bowl in the other semifinal. Easy, right? Well… except you still have a very strong Mountain West with Utah, BYU, arguably Air Force, Boise State, and most tellingly, the sometimes-good Kansas schools. That’s a coalition strong enough to mount a serious antitrust challenge to any playoff that exclusive, even if it becomes the only relevant non-BCS conference. We’d probably still end up stuck with some sort of imperfect BCS compromise as a result.
• As mentioned, 16 is an unwieldy size for a college football conference, and could easily result in the formation of cliques. I’ve already mentioned how the Pac-10 will become the “old” Pac-10 and six Big 12 “interlopers” with only the Arizona schools and Colorado forming a narrow bridge between them. The ACC could have it even worse by taking on four Big East schools, which could join with the schools the ACC raided from the Big East a decade ago, especially Boston College, to butt heads with the conference’s Tobacco Road base. As these new TV contracts come up for renewal, people’s TV watching habits may change again, with the Internet becoming the new means for most people to watch sports. The result could be another conference shake-up in a decade’s time that could even result in some conference shrinking, including the ACC splitting in two and some of the Big 12 renegades seceding from the Pac-10 to join some of the better Mountain West teams in a pseudo-Big 12 revival.

However… there are now rumors swirling that Texas A&M is more interested in joining the SEC than the Pac-10. Certainly the SEC would prefer to add A&M, the second-most storied program in the state despite its recent hard times, than TCU, but I’m not buying this story because I’m thinking wherever Texas goes, A&M will follow (from what I’ve read there is no love lost between Texas and the SEC, so that’s out), though if they can maintain their rivalry as a nonconference game more power to them. If A&M does go to the SEC, the Pac-10 could add Utah; I’ve never been a fan of the Colorado-Utah route to the Pac-12, mostly because it doesn’t preserve those natural geographic rivalries, but in this case adding one fewer Big 12 team could help prevent the forming of cliques and Utah is geographically situated to help bolster the bridge between the two parts of the conference. However, there’s also a chance that the defection of A&M could completely undermine the package deal bringing the Big 12 South to the Pac-10, rendering everything unpredictable yet again. Texas to the Big 10 might not be dead yet; the Big East may be offering Notre Dame as a sacrificial lamb to salvage the rest of the conference (“just take Missouri and/or Texas rather than Syracuse or Rutgers!”). Stay tuned.

(If that blog post comes to fruition – and given how conveniently it matches its author’s opinions and hopes I’m skeptical, and even its author only gives it a 24% chance of happening – the Big 12 probably isn’t dead but instead raids the Mountain West of BYU, TCU, Air Force, and maybe New Mexico, leaving Boise State really wishing it hadn’t committed to the Mountain West so soon…)

I still can’t get over what Rich did three strips ago. He took one of the most clichéd setups in all of literature, one of the most anticipated comics in the entire strip and one almost guaranteed to be hard to read, and gave it a quintessentially OOTSian twist, somehow exceeding expectations, and making it at least a little easier to read in the process.

In the meantime, however, we’ve been getting some long-overdue exposition. But before I relate the substance of the exposition, a note about the tone of the comic recently. Much of the current book has been a throwback to the very earliest days of OOTS, partially a side effect of enough plot points being wrapped up in the third book to render tenuous the connection to any future books, a problem Book 4 exacerbated. A month ago, I suggested that this led to a disconnection from the plot, the plot as an artificial goal without a lot of immediacy. (By the way, something I forgot to mention in that post: “Don’t Split the Party”? Really? I can understand the “we’ve gone to the classical literature well too often” rationale for avoiding the forum-favorite “A Tale of Two Parties”, but did you really have to go with the most uncreative, literal, bland title imaginable?)

However, especially since Tarquin took his helmet off, we’ve seen the good side of getting back to OOTS’ roots as well: a certain informal, fun-loving tone that isn’t afraid to resort to silliness. Partly it’s because the personalities of Elan and Tarquin bounce off one another, but the punchline of 724 is driven entirely by Gannji, and comes entirely from the inherent silliness of trying to pass a can of soup off as a “thermal detonator”. It’s kind of wonky and gives the impression Gannji’s personality is being warped by that of Elan and Tarquin, and it’s a little reminiscent of OOTS past, but in a good way. This same tone has continued into strip 725, where Tarquin’s narration is more than a little reminiscent of Shojo or Hinjo, or even Nale himself. And while 726 starts with awkward dialogue, you can’t help but get a smile on your face when Elan evokes some of his old antics (as much as I’ll have to say about Elan’s seemingly inconsistent character later).

Tarquin tells us tantalizingly little that we probably couldn’t have figured out ourselves: After his own attempt at a short-lived kingdom, Tarquin switched to mercenary work with Malack, his old buddy, which he’s been doing for fifteen years. When the Empire of Blood was conquered, Nale tried to be crowned instead, and – evidently with most of the original Linear Guild already in tow – fought his father and killed three of Malack’s children.

Nonetheless, there are some tantalizing elements of even this short, sketchy account (which may become fodder for another prequel down the line). Not only did Tarquin not start out on the Western Continent, Malack was “an old adventuring pal of mine”. If all Nale knows of Tarquin is his adventures on the Western Continent, as seems likely, it’s very possible that Tarquin did not start out as a bloodthirsty general, but an adventurer not unlike Elan – perhaps filling the role of Belkar crossed with Roy. (Worth noting that Elan and Nale’s mother was Tarquin’s first wife, and he’s gone on to have at least four more since – admittedly likely broken by the turmoil of the region.)

Moreover, if Malack has been serving as a mercenary High Priest for at least 15 years, it’s likely that Haley was wrong about the Empress of Blood being a figurehead, at least originally – she’s just grown fat and happy while on the throne (smart enough to kick Thog’s ass, not smart enough to be an effective ruler). (Also worth noting that the Empress of Blood’s two-year reign with no apparent challengers appears to be above average for the Western Continent.)

Oh, and then there’s the future to worry about… Haley’s “note” for Roy has to come into play, so the reunion of the OOTS can’t be as simple as V’s Sending (perhaps (s)he’s physically incapable of cramming a message into 25 words? Roy, Durkon, and Belkar come in guns a-blazin’?), and if Elan’s paying attention he’ll recognize that Haley’s concerns about Tarquin’s evilness will bear fruit as well. And then there’s the prospect of Tarquin knowing what happened to Haley’s father (a thought: might Bozzok’s “friends on the western continent” be related to Tarquin’s other “adventuring pals”?) and supporting the OOTS’ hunt for Girard’s Gate…

I am in no condition to be doing the heavy thinking required to make a blog post, let alone the schoolwork I’m behind almost the entire quarter on. (Let’s just say Thursday wasn’t a very good day for me.)

But… damn if Rich didn’t mostly make up for a mediocre first quarter of the book (and especially a current storyline that’s been dragging a little) with a strip you could tell he was waiting for as expectantly as the general. And damn if that’s totally not how I would have expected the general or Elan’s father to look or act like, and yet totally makes sense in retrospect.

I’ll likely have more to say later, as at this point I’m really interested in the backstory behind what’s happening now (the “Elan’s father = Tyrinar” theories are on life support at this point, but the idea of a connection between them is tantalizing), including why Tarquin put the hit out on Nale rather than the guy who had a vendetta against him (Malack), and getting a character two strips old seriously fleshed out, not to mention furthering the story itself.

(Seriously, Elan? An entire fatherless childhood is worth the one moment you stumble upon him? I shouldn’t be surprised given Elan’s propensity for the dramatic, but damn if it doesn’t suggest he has issues…)

Early round games will be broadcast on CBS, TBS, TNT, and… truTV? All of the proposed bidders had fourth channels that weren’t going to be as good as the others; ESPN had the best package with ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and ESPN Classic in a pinch or if ESPN was really committed to killing sports on ABC – although given the justification for not putting games on CBS College Sports, ABC Family would have been more likely than Classic or the U (although ESPN apparently didn’t think the U’s limited distribution was a factor). (Fox had FX, Fox Sports Net, and… Fox News? Fox Soccer Channel, in a pinch? Alternately, the Fox College Sports channels? Comcast/NBC had Versus, Universal Sports, and… Comcast SportsNet, or CNBC, or MSNBC?) But CBS and Turner could have used CBS College Sports and even if it didn’t reach as many people, at least it would have fit (and helped further distribution for the network). Heck, they could have even dipped into their existing team-up for the CW, though I don’t know how healthy that network is at the moment.

(Although ESPN had the best package of networks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the biggest call for a 96-team field came from their corner, and that this demand helped kill their chances. ESPN is really crowded with sports events on its schedule; among other things, on the first weekend of the tournament the Nationwide Series race would likely have to be pushed back to 11 AM ET or earlier to accommodate both men’s and women’s tournaments. The major obstacles, especially for ESPNU, are the wrestling championships, which could be moved to another weekend, and the NIT, especially the second round. I wouldn’t be surprised if ESPN wanted to kill the NIT to free up space for tournament games, even if those games would need to be replaced in the main tournament. For the same reason, unless the NIT died I can’t see ESPN not putting first round games on ABC, as it needs one-channel wiggle room and games aren’t being put on the News, and if that’s the case I can’t see them not putting the rest of the tournament on ABC either. Except…)

Needless to say I’m not pleased with CBS and Turner alternating coverage of the Final Four. I had a problem with one LCS being on broadcast and one not, and I have a problem with the Final Four only being on broadcast in alternate years, which doesn’t even make sense to me, unless Turner wanted some Final Fours if it was going to get in to the early rounds. And it was one thing for ABC (and NBC, and CBS) to show regular season college football but for the National Championship to be on cable, but it’s quite another for CBS to show early rounds of the NCAA Tournament but for the championship to be on cable.

But more than that is the problem I have with the Final Four and national championship moving to cable at all. It’s a trend following on from the move of the BCS to ESPN, and the parties involved don’t see any pushback because TBS is nationally available, but this would set a really bad precedent. I don’t know this for certain, but unlike the BCS, the NCAA is a legitimate sanctioning body, and if Congress allowed this to stand it would likely open the floodgates for any championship, right up to the World Series and Super Bowl, to move to cable, and sports to all but abandon broadcast. ESPN may not like losing the tournament but they have to be salivating for Turner to win the argument. It might actually help an ESPN competitor like Versus to have more high-rated sporting events available, but if none takes advantage this would effectively give ESPN a monopoly on all of sports, with a few scraps left for Turner.

It’s interesting, though, that this alternation only starts in 2016 – after ESPN’s current BCS contract ends. Is this a sign that if the sports landscape becomes more broadcast-friendly, CBS might take the Elite Eight and Final Four back? Or that CBS and Turner might be hoping that by 2016, cable will have advanced to the point that a Congress that was reluctant now might be more forgiving? Or that the TV landscape will go all to hell, everyone will be watching on the Internet anyway, and it’ll be a non-issue? If being on CBS will “bring more ratings in the early years”, why not the later ones?

Will Turner start showing regular-season college basketball games? Will this be the end of staggered start times? I imagine the play-in games will move to Turner as well?

The NCAA Tournament “will have one look, but there will be separate branding” – so much for my hopes of Turner adopting consistent graphics across all sports, and on the other hand, is CBS planning on another graphics shake-up? Was the new graphics on the NFL last year a preview of further changes? Will CBS and Turner have different studio teams, and will there be one, two, or four studio teams?

I’m seeing several different theories as to why ESPN lost. One theory is that they’re saving up for an Olympic bid, but another is that ESPN is starting a new conservative bidding strategy as a result of increased interest from Disney bosses. That would mean a conservative Olympic bid as well, as well as a real opening for an ESPN competitor to swoop in.

Oh, and quit whining about Dick Vitale not being able to call a Final Four; I doubt ABC would be willing to put that sort of bombast to such a large and diverse audience on broadcast. He would have called the first two rounds only, since CBS’ B, C, and D color commentators already work for ESPN (though he might have bumped out Bill Raftery for the C spot – ESPN would face revolt if they didn’t hire Gus Johnson and there’s a reason CBS never paired him and Raft, so Dickie V wouldn’t have bumped out Len Elmore). I would have expected Brent Musberger, Bob Knight, and maybe Jay Bilas calling the Final Four – I know Knight is bombastic himself, but think of him as the new Billy Packer. I could see the other Sweet 16/Elite Eight teams being Brad Nessler/Jay Bilas, Sean McDonough/Bill Raftery, and Gus Johnson/Len Elmore, with Mike Patrick/Dick Vitale, Dave O’Brien/Steve Lavin, Mike Tirico/Hubie Brown, and Mike Breen/Mark Jackson/Jeff Van Gundy rounding out the first two round teams, with John Saunders, Hubert Davis, and Digger Phelps manning the studio.

On CBS and Turner, if I were to guess what they’ll do, is take the present teams, remove Dick Enberg who’s done with CBS apparently, add Marv Albert/Reggie Miller (and demote either Jay Bilas or Bill Raftery to the first two rounds only, with Verne Lundquist and either Bilas or Raft becoming the new B team, and Johnson/Elmore rounding out the Sweet 16/Elite Eight teams) and replace Dan Bonner with Doug Collins as Kevin Harlan’s partner for NBA synergy (as with my last two ESPN teams), throw out the Spero Dedes/Bob Wenzel team, and replace Mike Gminski as Tim Brando’s partner with Dan Bonner, Bilas, or Raftery, with the remainder going to Dick Stockton. (After Brando’s infamous performance one or two years ago when he lucked into a Gus Johnson situation and throughly blew it, I wouldn’t be surprised if CBS/Turner kept Dedes instead of Brando. I know the blogosphere hates Stockton, but he works TNT NBA games in the playoffs and is a big name.) Ian Eagle stays only because he already does some NBA playoff work for TNT; he’d be the first to go if it weren’t for that. You’re left with Nantz/Kellogg, Lundquist/Bilas, Albert/Miller, Johnson/Elmore, Harlan/Collins, Stockton/Raftery, Eagle/Spanarkel, Brando/Bonner (I could leave Spanarkel, Wenzel, or Gminski with Brando with Eagle getting Bonner, Bilas, or Raft).

Back in September, I stopped following OOTS and instead started on an archive binge from beginning to end.

Last month, I finished it.

Now, part of the reason for the binge taking so long was because of a side project I was working on at the same time, related to the binge but in retrospect distracting from its intended main goal. Once that side project caused the binge to slow to a crawl, I elected to postpone it until I had more time to work on it. Which, thanks to various other miscellaneous distractions, turned out to be this February, and in retrospect I should have postponed it even longer, because the related effects may turn out to be far more far-reaching (more on that later). But there’s a part of me that wonders if the length of the binge may have been a subconscious response on my part to the sub-par quality of the strip as of late.

In retrospect, I may have just barely missed one of the greatest single stretches in the history of webcomics, the stretch collected in the War and XPs book collection. If, as people have suggested, OOTS’s Cerebus Syndrome can be dated to the trial sequence at the end of the previous book (an increasingly dodgy proposition, as I’ll get to in a moment), and OOTS’s Cerebus Syndrome is a defining feature of what makes the comic great (as opposed to a series of D&D in-jokes), then the Golden Age of OOTS can be fairly exactly pinned down to that one book. A case could be made that you could pin it down to that stretch anyway – everything from about comic #380 to the end of the Battle of Azure City is pretty much one long Wham Episode. It’s almost stating the obvious that the greatest comic in the history of OOTS so far came from that stretch, whatever that comic may be. But in any case, book 4 seemed to be a significant disappointment. As awesome as V’s final descent into madness was, it seemed the exception and not the rule.

Now, OOTS being off its game is a little like The Simpsons being off its game, at least from the perspective of those who kept voting “Never Jumped” for that show on the old Jump the Shark site. OOTS’ worst is still better than the best of a lot of comics (the likes of Dresden Codak, 8-Bit Theater, and Scary Go Round come to mind – those of you who just shouted Ctrl+Alt+Del may remove yourselves now). Still, book 4 was marred by clunky dialogue, questionable characterization, a disturbing density of strips that are painful to read, and a general lack of the heart that characterized previous books. (Book 4 is perhaps more OOTS-dominated than any book since book 1, and is the first book in which the Linear Guild doesn’t directly appear. The unwillingness to go to anyone other than the OOTS for more than ten strips, if you don’t count Super-V’s attempt to engage Xykon and various IFCC shenanigans, may have come off as laziness.)

Of course, the poster child for iffy characterization in Book 4 is Celia, who seemingly stepped right into Miko’s role as the most hated character in the strip. Celia had so many problems that sorting between them proved to be a challenge. Seemingly out of the blue, Celia became a holier-than-thou pacifist idiot, going against her prior characterization in the process, in a seemingly pointless manner, if the existence of a thread asking what the point of her presence was during my absence is any indication. (Tellingly, I know of no similar thread for Roy on the material plane outside the visit to the Oracle.) Celia was not even particularly consistent about being a pacifist – not only did it go against her willingness to zap Nale and Thog, it also went against her willingness to defend the OOTS (“professional murderers”) to Shojo’s court, and she eventually found herself blatantly cheerleading Haley’s slaying of her own former friends like nobody’s business. I’m still partial to my theory that she was just too ashamed of her limited capability in battle, and when Haley asked if it was a conscientious objection, Celia ran with it rather than admit the truth – the only other consistent interpretation is that Celia is perfectly fine with other people killing for her, and if that was the case I don’t think she would have had a problem with Belkar killing a hobgoblin, since it seems fairly obvious that her ploy to escape them is motivated more by a desire to avoid killing, whatever the base of that desire, than the concern for the Resistance she espouses (if that were the case she’d have brought it up right off the bat), not to mention she wouldn’t have stopped the very killing she’d cheered on earlier. (At least my theory doesn’t make her an incomprehensible raging hypocrite.) Rich’s attempts to explain or play off the most blatant self-contradiction, her pacifism, were interpreted as attempts to redeem her, which led to accusations that Rich didn’t understand the real reasons Celia was so hated, her idiocy (itself contradictory – how is someone studying to be a lawyer that naive? I’m amazed she didn’t figure Roy could fly on his own power). Frankly, judging by the fact that Haley gets the last word on Celia with similar words to what the forum was feeling, without even Roy objecting on-screen, I suspect that Celia was intended to be hated.

(Do not even get me started on Elan. I could write a whole post on how he’s been handled.)

Part of the reason for the intensity of the hatred towards Celia may have been the fact that, during Book 4, the main plot of OOTS ground to a complete halt, as everyone was more preoccupied with getting the gang back together and their own plot than actually getting to the next gate, and the entire book seemed pointless compared to the rest of the megaplot. I’ve said before that, with only a few changes, the end of Book 3 could conceivably have marked the end of the entire strip, and the general aimlessness of Book 4 seems to back me up on that, suggesting that it really was intended as “halftime” between two very different comics. OOTS Gamer Theory Syndrome was one result, but another was that, once the OOTS got back together, V’s Soul Splice ended (and he and O-Chul reunited with the OOTS in such fashion I half-expected this strip or this one to be titled “Deus Ex Monstro” or “Monstrum Ex Machina”), and Roy was resurrected, the clunky dialogue revved into overdrive, and continued even into the strips I skipped. Rich seemed to have trouble making a seamless transition back to the main plot, resorting to much expospeak during the meeting of the “War Council”, and the whole thing almost felt like starting from scratch, with the whole “lich-and-gate thing” more of an abstract obligation than anything else. (The fact the OOTS was finally in one piece and unencumbered again may have contributed to this feeling.)

And as much as I was excited at the revelation of the “planet-within-the-planet”, I couldn’t help but dread the directions this could possibly go. It had all the hallmarks of a shock-value “everything-you-know-is-wrong” twist, and whether it led to mucho exposition, a Planet of the Apes ending, “Adventures on the Snarl World” (a very distressingly common theory for Book 6), or something else equally trippy, it could not help but lead to something stupid.

And then the next book started… rather jarringly, to say the least. The 1-2 and 2-3 transitions had transition strips that helped ease things, and comic 485 flowed directly out of comic 484. The transition from book 4 to book 5 could have used a transition strip, because it was hard for me to get oriented, especially after a lengthy break, after getting simply plopped in Sandsedge (especially with even more expospeak instead of just letting it be an establishing shot). This is one of the more obvious book transitions Rich has ever done, and along with how suddenly the subsequent random encounter starts, really underlines the clunkiness of Rich’s writing of late – occasionally reading more like an OOTS fanfic. (But that strip is the biggest problem among the strips I skipped.)

And then came the strip that may have singlehandedly subconsciously convinced me to quit OOTS for the time being.

I refer, of course, to the rest of the OOTS’ complete inability to acknowledge Blackwing’s existence. That was a cruel trick to play on V, and I couldn’t help but sympathize with her plight. Now, my extreme negative reaction to this comic probably has something to do with the way I personally process information, but I was far from the only one who had a problem with it – probably most of the forums didn’t even understand what was going on, and those that did were understandably frustrated. (It did not help that, despite mounds of evidence that people can, in fact, SEE Blackwing, people still think they can’t. In retrospect, Rich should not have included the bit where Belkar can’t see the bird.)

But as much as I hated this twist, at least it imposed interesting questions that needed answering. Why wasn’t the OOTS able to acknowledge Blackwing’s existence? What, exactly, happened back at the rift? To what extent was the OOTS memory-wiped – could someone be forced to acknowledge Blackwing’s existence by, say, being asked to remember events where there would be a gaping hole without Blackwing? Surely Vaarsuvius, doubted by his own teammates, would seek, with such an inquisitive mind as his, to get to the bottom of this question?

But no. V makes ZERO on-screen effort to prove Blackwing’s existence or investigate his seeming lack thereof. Instead it seems that the point of one of the most maddening twists in the history of the strip, one that insulted our intelligence and made the OOTS seem like either jerks or idiots, was to turn Blackwing into the “good angel”, to literally strip him of his reality and turn him into V’s imaginary friend, his conscience and guiding spirit in his ongoing character development. Never mind that this could have just as easily been done with a literal good angel, or that the process of setting Blackwing up for this role involved setting up a huge plot twist and then forgetting about it.

Comic, meet wall.

I am not in the camp of those on the forums who claim that #674 was “just a joke”. I certainly hope it wasn’t (and references to the comic since then suggest it isn’t), although reading without an eye to speculation leads to the disturbing conclusion that the sole point of it was solely to illustrate V’s anger management problems, regardless of what about the characters had to be contradicted to get there. First, it’s not funny. Second, the joke relies on the contradiction of previous comics. Third, if the joke is in-universe played on V by the OOTS, it requires unconvincingly derailing all their characters, especially Haley, who’s V’s friend and has, in the past, been more connected to Blackwing (she named the bird, for crying out loud) than V herself has. Fourth, if the joke is external to the universe, it still requires bending the characters unconvincingly, and OOTS is too much of a plot-oriented strip at this point to make a continuity-free joke.

Frankly, I don’t find V’s attempt at redemption terribly convincing either. It seems odd that V would go from being mad with power to engaging in a twelve-step program and trying to distance herself from anything that reminds her of the old V in a couple of days. V’s experience with the Soul Splice was a teachable moment, but what she learned in Xykon’s throne room was that power could take the form of everything at her disposal, not merely brute-force arcane power, and that among the powers at her disposal was people other than herself. V herself later articulates the value of planning, while Durkon lectures her about the value of small victories. All that points to ways she can better use her magic, not anger management issues or other requirements to totally change her personality. V later characterizes the incident in 677-678 as “evoking first and making inquiries afterward” (in typical Vaarsuvian fashion), but it still feels like Rich took a few logical leaps along the way. (And there’s a big difference between “use your allies to your advantage” and “don’t get involved at all if your teammates can handle it even if things would be over a lot sooner”.) I could sympathise very much with Vaarsuvius’ plight and compare it to my own situation (again, more on that later) if I found it suitably convincing. (And it’s likely V’s divorce won’t be as simple as “I will not contest it”, especially being on the same continent as the elves.)

So, what else has happened while I was away? Well, we also got one heck of an unexpected plot twist concerning the much-anticipated liberation of Ian Starshine: the country that originally captured him almost certainly no longer exists. As Rich has been wont to do recently, this tears asunder mounds of forum theories on how said liberation might go down, while opening up whole new frontiers for speculation. It does not necessarily invalidate the once-commonly-held “Tyrinar is Elan and Nale’s father” theory, especially since Nale’s father seems to have been a general, not necessarily the leader of a nation, when Nale was young. I could easily see a story being told of a once-mighty conqueror ultimately undone and left to destitution, possibly by his own favored son. (On the other hand, the idea that Tyrinar’s real name is Ian Starshine, or worse Girard Draketooth, is just stupid – along the lines of the planet-within-the-planet. And equating Ian with Girard just because they both have red hair is stupidest of all.)

Belkar is really bad at pretending to be good. Earlier, he at least gave off the impression that he was reforming, holding off Bozzok and Crystal as though out of a genuine concern for Haley, taking an option that would result in less killing, and even sparing Crystal’s life instead of stealing a kill from Haley. But he becomes substantially more obnoxious about it here, and once the OOTS leaves Sandsedge he basically becomes the same old Belkar as always, only with a few words here and there about being a team player, offset by the numerous times he lets the facade slip. (Sorry, this is not a team player.) This seems to further back up my interpretation of Shojo’s advice as Belkar needing only to know the OOTS’ moral framework, not necessarily follow it. (And if that’s not Belkar’s interpretation of the matter, it may soon be.) The other half of that interpretation – it doesn’t matter even if the OOTS doesn’t buy it – seems also to be happening.

And then there’s the absolute blockbuster – and second speculation-shattering development – that completely overturns the complacency that seemed to come over the OOTS early in the book (come on, reaching Girard’s Gate twenty strips in?) and could be fodder for an entire post in itself: the coordinates Roy picked up from Shojo were in fact the result of a deliberate attempt by Girard to mislead Soon, sending the OOTS right back to square one. More to the point, the rift between the members of the Order of the Scribble may have been deeper than anticipated. Its plot relevancy may have seemed to have faded when Hinjo declared Soon’s Oath expired, but my post on Serini’s non-interference clause now seems more relevant than ever. (Similarly, incidentially, the revelation of the Linear Guild being pawns of the IFCC makes my “Linear Guild is really helping the OOTS” theory surprisingly plausible in a twisted way.)

That previous post pointed out that comic #277, which introduced the rift and non-interference clause, depicted something that could be seen to be deeper than it made it sound – a team on the verge of becoming mutual enemies – and in that light, this revelation isn’t as much of a stretch. Still, what would lead Girard to basically assume a paladin, of all people, would break his oath? Did Girard just underestimate the power of a paladin’s word? Was Girard just that paranoid? Given the reference to “the power of the Snarl” (not the power of the Gate, and readers of the Start of Darkness prequel will know the difference), was said power such that nothing else could overcome the lust for it, such that it was the real motivation behind the breakup of the Order of the Scribble, not defense? Was Soon, in fact, just the sort of person to make Girard think would break his oath? Perhaps Soon’s classic exegesis of redemption to Miko came from more personal experience than we thought – perhaps Soon wasn’t very much unlike her. At the very least, it’s always bugged me that a (by all appearances) ordinary paladin, who predated the order of paladins he founded, somehow became the lord of Azure City (also predating the Sapphire Guard), for what we thought were reasons that weren’t to be put in the official histories. Between this and the “planet-within-the-planet”, it’s starting to look like the Crayons of Time series may have gotten just about every single thing wrong; its sole purpose was notifying the OOTS about what they “need to know”. We may be in for a lot of exposition if and when the OOTS meets Serini (I still doubt Girard would still be alive after all this time, life-extending spells aside, and scratch my head at the OOTS seemingly assuming he is, while NOT assuming the same about Serini).

Or was it Girard that wasn’t very much unlike Miko?

So Miko is assigned to pick up these people who have done something that threatens the fabric of the entire universe. Along the way, she hears much more about their dastardly deeds. Exactly what these people are planning she doesn’t know, but they can’t be good, and they certainly don’t go down quietly once cornered – and the party leader even scans as strongly evil. Oh, but that was the lich’s crown interfering, everyone in the party really isn’t evil, with the possible exception of the halfling with the lead sheet – and all those dastardly deeds were actually done by their evil twins, and once they know what the charges are they go along willingly, if not quietly, and if with mounds of gold. (Okay, in retrospect given later revelations Miko could have introduced herself in a less threatening fashion, but at the point she engages them she’s got mounds of evidence they’re up to no good.)

And while Miko probably shouldn’t have dismissed their calls for rest and asked them to sleep in a muddy ditch, they do bilk her for everything she has when they do find an inn. Then they ask her to evacuate the inn because “professional killers” are after the leader, then the inn explodes with her inside, then she catches a member of the party gloating at her demise, and the leader turned female, and reacting insincerely to the hotel bill being paid. And then the leader, who’s been hitting on you for this entire time, tells you off and you have to drag them back to Azure City in chains.

Then you catch them trying to escape once there, and the halfling (who, reportedly, she’s confirmed to be evil at this point) actually has, while baiting you in the process. Then, after a long and arduous chase, the rest of the party actually defends the vile creep and saves him from death, apparently off the hook for their known crime. But wait – here comes the clincher…

So it’s sometime later, and you just happen to be at a watchtower when an evil party shows up, and in this evil party is the same lich the party claimed to have destroyed. So, to sum up, the Order of the Stick, who’s been involved in a number of suspicious circumstances besides, destroyed a gate, something that holds together the fabric of the universe, but claimed it was an accident and they were keeping the lich’s plans from coming to fruition anyway, a lich they killed, except the lich isn’t dead (well, dead-dead). They don’t detect as evil, but the party leader initially did before they were prepared for you to do so, for a frankly ridiculous reason. Xykon actually asking them to destroy the gate is only “probable”, but anything else that would seem likely still doesn’t speak well of the Order of the Stick. Being dead can be something tough to ascertain, but generally you should know when something has been completely destroyed. The Order of the Stick, according to #371, claimed to have “destroy”ed Xykon, and they didn’t. Why would they unless they wanted to give the impression that Xykon wasn’t a threat? Sure, the argument is riddled with holes, but from the big picture it’s amazingly plausible from Miko’s perspective. The main questions would be why the Order would have acknowledged Xykon’s existence (couldn’t know Miko hadn’t heard of him, perhaps?) and why they still came along willingly…

…until you find out the man you’ve accepted as your lord has not only been “fak[ing his] senility just to avoid being assassinated” but breaking the laws willy-nilly, to the extent of rigging the trial to acquit the Order of the Stick, who he’s conspiring with to send to Girard’s Gate in violation of Soon’s Oath, which he expresses contempt for. At this point, would you expect Miko to get more confused, or for things to make a lot more sense for her? Not even Hinjo buys Shojo’s argument that he was “doing what was best for the entire city” and working for its “safety”. At this point, Occam’s Razor might actually suggest Shojo was trying to get all the gates destroyed so he and Xykon could use the Snarl to take over the world – indeed, that Shojo exactly fit the profile Girard was afraid of.

While Miko did have her own quirks that made things worse, just as Girard probably did, every conclusion she came to (at least before her fall, when every aspect of her worldview falls apart, so you might expect her to go batshit insane) was at least partially reasonable given the available evidence. This, then, makes her fall and death all the more tragic, because she had no way of knowing better. Perhaps, then, Soon was prone to getting into circumstances that didn’t speak well for his character (and certainly his lawfulness) if you were working from incomplete information, and Girard extrapolated that out into thinking he was bound to break his oath eventually. At the very least, Girard may well be, character-wise, the chaotic equivalent of Miko, utterly blind to the worth of others (in this case, considering “Lawful Good” an oxymoron), utterly uncompromising (by not seeing any need to compromise, especially if Chaotic Neutral), quick-triggered, and absolutely full of himself.

But probably the best strips in the book so far have probably come from the Team Evil interlude, and they haven’t been lacking in plot twists. Rich completely ignored a multiple of 100 for the first time in strip #700, which nonetheless stoked more speculation on the identity of the MitD… unless you’ve read Start of Darkness and realize just how important Tsukiko really is becoming to Xykon, and how much trouble Redcloak doesn’t realize he’s in. Meanwhile, Redcloak – his goblin-state-consolidation plans cut short by V’s attack and Xykon’s response thereof – has elected to cut to the chase and proclaim that Azure City is Azure City no longer. Even once Redcloak leaves, it’ll be tough to oust the goblins – but on the other side, Redcloak seems to be setting in motion a backup plan for if and when his Plan A fails (evidently too cowed by Xykon to abandon Plan A entirely), suggesting two supposed allies are rather deep in a high-stakes game of chess… (And on the list of semi-major characters introduced as no-names, Jirix – who was dead when we last saw him – joins Kazumi, Daigo, Tsukiko, O-Chul, Hinjo… let’s just say Rich is fond of that trick. Also, the relevance of SoD to the main plot of OOTS has increased considerably in the past 200 comics.)

Finally, regarding this strip, the anachronisms on the poster tell us this has nothing to do with anything Nale may be doing now. Meanwhile, it sounds unlikely these two will actually get to the point of turning Elan and V in now, unless V’s plan doesn’t work, though that doesn’t mean there won’t be a lot of other people getting in their way. But it would be pointless to spend what’s about to be four strips on these two only for them to immediately disappear with no real impact… I’ll stop now.

New York, NY, Tuesday: What could be the last NIT semifinals had two games worthy of the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Dayton led 34-30 at the half and pushed it to 64-58 with three minutes left on technical free throws before Ole Miss started to come back, cutting the deficit to 64-62 with 64 seconds left. With 35.8 seconds left, Murphy Holloway went to the line with a chance to tie, but bricked the second free throw; London Warren hit one of two with 23.7 seconds left to put the lead back at two; Trevor Gaskins missed a layup, and Chris Johnson hit two free throws to make it a two-possession game with 11 seconds left; Warren knocked the ball out of bounds on the ensuing Rebel possession, and Johnson stole the inbounds pass, knocking down one of two free throws to send Dayton to the championship game, hoping to send a message after a disappointing season. Dayton 68, Mississippi 63.

Meanwhile, North Carolina is the NIT’s Butler, and might not have been that far off from Butler’s seed. But it certainly took them everything they had to knock off Rhode Island. The score was knotted 30-30 at halftime, and after Rhode Island took a 59-54 lead with 1:47 to play, UNC scored the next five points to knot it at 59-59. URI’s Delroy James whiffed on two free throws with 28.6 seconds left in regulation, and Larry Drew let the clock run down to six seconds before taking an ill-advised shot. Late in the extra session with UNC leading 68-67, Drew forced up a shot with five seconds left, beating the shot clock buzzer. Lamonte Ulmer picked up the rebound but lost control before getting off a shot before the buzzer sounded, leading Rhode Island coach Jim Baron to suggest a foul should have been called. North Carolina 68, Rhode Island 67 (OT).

Springfield, MO, Tuesday: Pacific led 35-29 after one and 50-44 with 11 minutes left, but Missouri State went on an 11-0 run in the next two minutes, taking a 55-50 lead. From there it was simply protecting it. Pacific went on a 5-2 run in the two minutes after that, but Missouri State locked down the game for good with a 12-4 run over the next five minutes, leading 69-59 with 2:19 to play. Pacific’s second half play was plagued by turnovers and fouls as five Bears scored in double figures, including 16 points from Caleb Patterson, who had played a total of 27 minutes the rest of the tournament. Pacific 65, Missouri State 78.

St. Louis, MO, Wednesday: Saint Louis scored the first nine points and overcame a 20-16 deficit to lead 33-24 at the break, but a high-scoring second half saw the game tied at 61 with 3:04 to play. From there, the Billikens’ youth caught up to them, as Virginia Commonwealth went on a 10-4 run to become the first team to sweep the CBI Championship Series. Virginia Commonwealth 71, Saint Louis 65.

New York, NY, Thursday: Could the NIT final – possibly the last game in NIT history – provide as much excitement as the semis? Dayton led 45-32 at the break, but North Carolina played them tight in the second half, starting on a 12-1 run in the first three and a half minutes before Dayton recovered. Marcus Ginyard missed a potential game-tying layup, leading to a Paul Williams 3 that put Dayton up 62-57 with 7:46 to play. UNC managed to cut the deficit to 67-63 with 3:37 left, but Chris Johnson hit a 3 and a dunk that put the Flyers up 72-63 with 2:50 left. North Carolina cut the deficit to 68-73 with 1:14 to play, but wouldn’t score the rest of the way. North Carolina 68, Dayton 79.

Congratulations to Missouri State, Virginia Commonwealth, and Dayton. Had North Carolina won, the season might end with UNC and Duke each holding postseason titles. Instead, mid-majors could hold all four postseason titles. That’s the norm for three of the four, but Butler’s trying to do something that hasn’t been done since UNLV two decades ago.