|
 He's a wizard turned undead abomination with an insatiable hunger for flesh. She's the precocious mutant heir to a ruthless bandit king. Together, they fight crime. Unsounded is a web  It's also awfully pretty. Here is some crappy old art from the first chapter (the really good stuff from later chapters tends to be spoilery.) Despite the lavishly detailed art, the author manages to put out 3+ pages a week with M/W/F updates that occasionally include multiple pages. Admittedly the comic's impressive buffer is maintained by month-long hiatuses between chapters, but that's one month off for 4-5 months of regular updates. After several years of production it's built up a nice little archive without being too much of a slog to get through. Unsounded is probably not for everybody. It tends to load up heavily on precocious child heroes, and the flipside of the story's excellent worldbuilding is that it has a serious exposition problem. It also goes to some very dark places; the first chapter with its happy-go-lucky antics is really a poor sample of what the comic delivers. I'd almost recommend diving straight into Chapter 2, but be warned that it gets very nasty, very quickly. The comic doesn't really dwell on grimdarkness, though. The main antagonist is probably the most genuinely sick bastard I've seen in comics and is also a major comic relief character. It's a lovely world, and the characters are just trying to get by shoveling some of it.  If you're interested in seeing more background material, the author has both a wiki and a Formspring densely packed with more than anybody could ever possibly want to know about the background details of Unsounded's world. The supplemental material is not at all required reading, though. The comic does an amazingly good job of working in subtle details for the reader to puzzle out, and when that's not enough, whenever something becomes really relevant it will happily bludgeon your face in with it. Again, exposition is not the comic's strong point. Ashley Cope's deviantart account also sometimes has relevant Unsounded art among other cool stuff, and I'm pretty sure it's in the 1% of deviantart accounts that doesn't have porn posted on it, so it may be worth checking out. You can also find convenient wallpaper-sized versions of some of the art in this post as well as other bonus art on the comic's extras page. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jan 30, 2013 |
#
¿
Jan 30, 2013 17:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 2, 2024 04:37 |
|
|
Tollymain posted:Also it's currently totally tripping balls right now come check it out! Did Sette just... create a miscarriage or something? You shouldn't be going around severing umbilical cords willy-nilly when you're wandering around inside the fabric of reality, Sette, no matter how nicely the fetuses ask.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2013 19:48
|
|
|
The magic octopus is just some kind of enchanted bondage toy, I'm pretty sure it's actually the shadow. There is some clever foreshadowing on the preceding page, before the octopus is switched on; you can see the ghost eel things diving in, and at the time there's nothing odd about that because you just assume they're incorporeal, but they're actually heading to the same place Sette goes (she actually follows them in.)
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2013 06:37
|
|
|
Yeah, there's a reason I don't really delve into the Formspring myself. The wiki is a nice happy medium--it's actually not very well fleshed out at all, which is probably a good thing because it provides a few general background details without getting into crazy minutiae and getting sidetracked about characters and settings that are not relevant to Unsounded. There is definitely something to be said for just discovering the world through the comic, though. The little details really are wonderful and it's great just exploring things through subtle hints here and there, at least until loving Matty stops the action for like two pages or something to explain some bullshit that you probably already knew most of god Matty why couldn't you have been stricken mute instead of blind
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2013 21:14
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:Are you sure that's the same guy? I don't really see much resemblance. Especially since that one hand he should be missing. From the bits of the Formspring I've glanced at, I gather that a lot of things that show up in Unsounded are things she came up with elsewhere that were adapted to fit the setting and story. So he's almost certainly based on the same guy even if she's not directly translating his entire "canon" into Unsounded. Either way I'm really hoping he's just here as more window dressing for Sette in Wonderland, but I'm not holding my breath :/
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2013 15:22
|
|
|
The Moon posted:No Starfish makes my skin crawl, but he is definitely a villain and hopefully he'll get what's coming to him. The trend is certainly promising, since the rest of the Red Berry Boys have been suffering progressively more horrible fates. Bett was knocked out and captured by the peaceguard, Ephsephin got sliced up and bludgeoned to death, Turas wound up painting the walls of Duane's room. (Cutter is still at large, so he doesn't count.)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2013 21:06
|
|
|
Pyradox posted:Well there's no way Sette will be that dumb, I mean - she knows that her amulet letting her command Duane is the only reason why she's safe from him in the first place, right? Besides Duane's good nature that is. Sette actually is kind of dumb, and it's a noticeable character trait that she's supremely convinced of her powers of manipulation. I'm not entirely thrilled about this development, but it's wholly in character for her reaction on meeting a new guy to be "okay how can I use this sucker."
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2013 23:50
|
|
|
Considering the number of characters who are already out looking for some kind of monstrous undead mage (including another new character who has shown up for one page and is already way cooler than Zombie McRapey will ever be), I'm kind of hopeful Murkoph winds up the victim of mistaken identity.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 15, 2013 23:18
|
|
|
Hodgepodge posted:Do we even know if Murkoph is a wright (mage)? Or particularly good at it? Dunno, but let's be honest, it's not like anyone's going to be in any mood to be picky. Pretty much everybody has a bone to pick with Duane as it is, if they see an undead dude licking little girls they're not going to be asking questions first.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2013 04:51
|
|
|
 Fabricated posted:And this guy is going to be essentially one of if not the primary antagonist(s). Guess he's certainly hateable enough. He still feels like kind of a cheap shock character even compared to Starfish, but I suppose some things come with the territory when one of your main protagonists' primary motivation is zealous overprotectiveness of children.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2013 15:38
|
|
|
EgoEgress posted:I actually quite enjoy this comic- I can totally see why some of y'all are getting skeeved off by it, but for whatever reason its flaws don't bother me. I read too much bad fantasy as a child to be put off by lots of exposition- probably for the same reason, I enjoy all the tidbits of worldbuilding throughout the comic. I love the worldbuilding, it's the beat-it-into-the-ground walls of text that are obnoxious. For instance, you can get a decent idea of how magic works from the big dog in the giant chase sequence in Mulimar: wrights casting by swapping around physical properties of objects. Duane sometimes comments on his glamours too. Pretty cool, right? But then the comic pauses for three pages in the middle of one of its biggest fight scenes in order to spell it out at great length. (Yes, I'm going to keep harping on this example.) The comic includes an amazing amount of subtle detail about the world in both its text and visuals and it's delicious, which is why it's so cloying when some breaks down into a multi-page-long infodump.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2013 18:57
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:Why do people keep saying this? One of Starfish's first actions after being introduced is to molest a little girl (sticking his hand up her shirt and feeling her up) before sending her off to have all her organs removed. This is the third or fourth time someone's tried to say that Starfish's crew did most of their bad stuff offscreen or that their evil was relatively subtle or whatever, but it wasn't. It was horrible and disturbing from the beginning, and it was always pretty drat blatant. For me it's about the presentation, not the content. I find Starfish and his henchmen to be really well done villains, not because they are monsters but because they are human. Ruthless bullies who will do unconscionable things for the promise of obscene wealth, yes, but they're still given distinctly human emotions and motivations. Even Starfish, who plunges the absolute depths of humanity's dregs and then goes a little lower, retains a certain base logic to his actions. In a way he's arguably more horrible because there's something dreadfully believable about him--you want to think that nobody could be quite so evil in real life, but you probably really don't want to find out. Whimsical Fantasy Rapeman just seems like a really cheap and lame character in comparison, even without delving into his questionable character inspiration.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2013 16:13
|
|
|
Duane's real face is a skull with a few flaky bits of skin, the face we see most of the time is a glamour. Here's a page with an artsy depiction of both faces.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2013 02:38
|
|
|
WAMPA_STOMPA posted:So how long until these kids get butchered? I'm guessing Duane didn't get his massive save-the-children complex from not watching his daughter die gruesomely in front of him, so... give it a week, maybe?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 11, 2013 18:17
|
|
|
T.G. Xarbala posted:The real reason Duane doesn't want to go to Cresce: He's a bad kisser and this embarrasses him terribly. Duane that's not how kissing works You're doing it wrong Duane
|
|
#
¿
Mar 22, 2013 13:59
|
|
|
Nanomashoes posted:Duane and his entire family will be murdered and he will be brought back as a zombie when he spends the whole meeting holding his fist an inch from the president's face while repeating "I'm not hitting you!" over and over. Huh. Now that you mention it Quigley's words might seem to be prophetic. On the other hand, I think Quigley would probably have heard about it if some bumfuck trash murdered the President. I mean Alderode does not seem to be big on transparency but that's probably something that would have made the rounds.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2013 22:55
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:Well, Duane's thrown some pretty nasty accusations at Cresce (particularly its queen). Maybe some of them are actually true. I suspect part of that is nationalism talking. Cresce has a hyper-egalitarian quasi-socialist thing going on and Duane does not approve.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 29, 2013 15:45
|
|
|
Wheats posted:I think you'll find that those puppies were Crescian spies. It's entirely possible that this is what the "gold for pelts" sign was about, since actual Crescians would stand out too much to be useful as spies. Of course, the alternative is that the sign has nothing to do with counterespionage and is pure nationalist hatemongering propaganda.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2013 02:15
|
|
|
Duane's weird minority religion just got a lot more badass now that we know it's based on deicide 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2013 14:21
|
|
|
ThatBasqueGuy posted:From what I understand, the Black Tongues are a really decentralized group of mages and scholars that have "Progress at all costs!" as their unifying motto. So they can range the gambit to chill guys that just want to make their own spells to baby sacrificing mad scientists. Yeah, we've seen several blacktongues and it appears they don't necessarily know about or approve of each others' plans.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2013 23:48
|
|
|
So... over/under on the Weeping Plague being an instigated biological attack? It's getting too much mention for it not to be A Thing.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2013 15:17
|
|
|
TheFuzzyLumpkin posted:My speculation - and this is actual speculation, she's never said about it on the Formspring - is that while the government may not have created it, governmental factions are certainly willing to drag their feet on seriously fixing it in order to gain some political advantages. So now we know that 1) the Weeping Plague is definitely magical, and 2) Winalils is definitely studying it (making him indeed Kara's "black tongue doctor".) Apparently the idea of trying to weaponize it isn't new either. ...huh. If this flashback wasn't 6+ years old I would think that this is the whole plot right here. Starfish told Captain Toma that his payload "wasn't meant for Cresce", which raises the question of why he's smuggling it there in the first place. Cresce is on the western edge of the continent, so it's not like you have to go through Cresce to get anywhere. Unless, of course, you want to make it look like a biological attack is coming from Cresce... perhaps as retaliation for the current Aldish invasion, a plot that Winalils had plenty of advance warning on (and depending on his level of influence, may even have helped instigate.) So the Ssaelit faction gets their revenge on their countrymen, and the Crescians get the blame. Either way Councillor Bodie is sinister as gently caress, though. At this point I wouldn't put it past him to have been behind the original weeping plague outbreak and have deliberately unleashed it on his fellow Ssaelit, in order to thin out competition for power and create justification for "retaliatory" attacks. His "Whether by accident or design, the weeping plague fell upon a province of our good and blameless Ssaelit brethren" speech definitely reads like "haha yeah I nuked the gently caress out of those dorks."
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2013 15:10
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:I know it'll end badly but man, that is satisfying. According to Duane's wife this guy has a reputation for these speeches, which gives you an idea of how low Duane's social status is. You know, if the fact that he lived in a literal ghetto with obscene graffiti on the walls wasn't a clue.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2013 14:53
|
|
|
Yeah Man posted:You really have to wonder why Duane is so loyal to a country that considers him a traitor and scum because of his birth. Anywhere else he'd be a traitor and a heretic because of his religion. Sucks to be Duane!
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2013 19:04
|
|
|
Drakyn posted:I'm very curious as to HOW the horrible thing happens now. If it's as straight forward as "Bodie says hello" *family disemboweled, then Duane* I'd expect Duane to be brofisting Quigley on the subject of How Alderode Is The Pits, not still a patriotic loyalist. Unless he got a little selective editing of memories...but then it'd be weird that he keeps flashbacking to his daughter, and what's the point of erasing things that can torture him if you're being cruel? Maybe he thinks the system's fine but the people in charge of it need replacing... but a system that permits something awful to happen to your family would be a preeettty big hurdle to overcome even for a diehard 'my-country-right-or-wrong' man. When Duane got eaten by the wandering root he had a flashback to a what appeared to be Lemuel dying in battle against Cresce, and some of his comments about Cresce imply that he died there. I'm guessing his punishment primarily consists of getting shipped to the front lines or something, and that's where Bad Stuff happens, which is why he's still an ultra-patriot.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2013 17:02
|
|
|
Ohhhhhhhhh, interesting. I hadn't considered this angle. Glamour enforcement squads to look like Crescians: execute dissidents anonymously while sowing paranoia among the general population. Wwaaaaiit... Duane isn't stupid enough to believe that Cresce inserted a group of thugs deep into Alderode just to harass random undercastes, is he? Wow. If he is, and that's why Duane is so racist, he's an even bigger dork than I thought.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2013 14:47
|
|
|
FourLeaf posted:How can you tell they're only glamoured to look like Crescians? At this point it's just a guess, since 1) they're inexplicably deep in Alderode 2) they're doing Alderode's dirty work and 3) they're using Aldish slurs based on an Aldish caste system that Crescians wouldn't care about (and would likely find repugnant.) It's conceivable that Alderode maintains secret enforcer squads of mercenary Crescian expatriates, but that would require tact and delicacy to remain hidden amidst a population that hates them and would probably try to kill them on sight, and with the exception of the ninja these guys are all clumsy brute thugs.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2013 14:34
|
|
|
Seoinin posted:Question being, why go through all that trouble? If you're planning to ambush, like, a king or something then yeah disguising your guys as agents from your hated rival country is probably not a bad idea. But a low-level functionary like Duane? Why would Cresce go through all the trouble of smuggling a dozen idiot thugs and a ninja deep into territory where they are probably kill-on-sight just to gently caress with some low-level functionary? Alderode is a police state that relies on everyone's extreme paranoia and hatred of Crescians to keep the populace loosely on the same side, so spreading rumors about "Crescian terrorists" executing random citizens serves a productive purpose. I do like Cowcaster's theory though, since Winalils appears to have something to do with Duane's condition and it's been hinted that he's buddies with Shadwe.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 19, 2013 18:20
|
|
|
EgoEgress posted:Oh boy, look who's back! Sette and... oh. Great. Also because nobody in Cresce could possibly be stupid enough to think that this is a good idea, at least not with the Queen's name signed to it. This would be like "Hey American Christians, have this dead Jew. TAKE YOUR COUNTRY BACK! In loving memory of Osama bin-Laden."
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2013 15:29
|
|
|
PleasingFungus posted:So, uh, remind me. Who are we looking at here? Looks like Turas, the henchman that Duane turned inside out in the sex hotel. (Also sounds like him, since he was at the hotel on an errand to bring Sette back.)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2013 20:10
|
|
|
Azran posted:I feel dumb, I don't get the leg commentary. Duane's leg has gotten progressively hosed up over the past couple of days and needs to be repaired. He's commenting on the fact that his mindless zombie self left Turas's legs untouched, as though he's planning on repairing himself using spare parts or something.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2013 17:44
|
|
|
A Gnarlacious Bro posted:See my interpretation of that scene and a few earlier was that he kicked the poo poo out of her and banished her and the zombie (or something) and she concocted a convoluted narrative about her importence to him out of love. Nah, not unless the entire comic is an unreliable narrator. We've had Duane's account of how and (ostensibly) why Nary sent him and Sette west. I still believe that Sette was sent as expendable zombie bait to lure Duane into Cresce. At one point Duane even complains that Nary's blackmailing was unnecessary because he would have agreed to the (fictionalized) escort mission for its own sake, because Duane will always drop everything to save a child in danger and Nary/Lord Winalils knew this. EDIT: Also drat  I definitely have not been paying enough attention around the edges of the flashback panels.
the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Nov 7, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2013 17:09
|
|
|
Also at least their ringleader isn't actually Crescian (and is probably Lemuel, despite his scar not being drawn.) The guys on the rack might be Crescians--it's conceivable they scrounged up some Crescian prisoners to torture into confessing, if they were worried about any glamours on their thugs being uncovered. On the other hand, this is Alderode and torturing their own disguised stooges to death would be the most dickish thing to do so that's probably it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2013 15:58
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:Cresce is a bunch of imperialistic, unempathetic dickwads, but even with that in mind Alderode still comes out looking like North Korea with wizards. Don't forget commie necromancers! But Alderode is definitely winning the evil race so far.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2013 23:54
|
|
|
Jackard posted:What, did Rahm think he was acting Aldish, or something else? Cresce seems to have a thing for egalitarianism. In theory this should extend to acceptance of different races; for most Crescians this gets overridden by nationalistic pride and xenophobia, at least where the Aldish are concerned, but Rahm presumably believes in the ideals that most of his countrymen merely give lip service to (because he is The Best Character.) Calling someone a freak for their skin tone runs counter to all the principles that Cresce is supposed to be founded on even if most people happily ignore that part.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2013 16:31
|
|
|
Happy Yeti posted:Lord Winalils is the weirdo wright who gives Sette the pymaric that allows her to control Duane when he's asleep. It's implied he has something to do with Stockyard and whatever the real reason is to send Sette to Cresce. He's also probably one and the same with this "Delicieu" that keeps getting mentioned. Rahm's description of Delicieu makes it sound like it's someone's pen name and they're definitely tighter than spooky ghost kid is letting on (Delicieu's research is described as being obsessed with pain; when Winalils gave Sette the zombie-control amulet, she said that it "smells like pain" or something similar.)
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2013 16:00
|
|
|
Roland Jones posted:From a disagreement over who handles this to attempting literal backstabbing, well then. Turns out the racists are not good people. Who knew. Aw shucks, here I thought they were the good kind of cops that are on the payroll of a villainous crimelord who is literally destroying the city.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2014 15:48
|
|
|
Good lord, that speech gave me goosebumps (mostly because I just got out of the shower and was still drying off, but still.) Also it says a lot about Sette: we know that her larger-than-life swagger is built on a foundation of repression and willful denial of how awful her life is. No wonder she's the best at lying 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 17, 2014 18:55
|
|
|
I think we're somewhere around the halfway mark according to the author.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2014 22:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 2, 2024 04:37 |
|
|
Tollymain posted:Duane you enormous nerd stop that Duane's battle plan for taking out Stockyard's henchwomen 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2014 14:35
|
|