231 – Pandora
It’s time for the ominous box to show up again. I don’t think Marie saw what Flore (and possible Laurence) did.
In some versions of the Pandora’s box myth that I’ve seen, Hope remains in the box. In others, it escapes after all the evils in the world do. I wonder if hope can also count as one of those evils.
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Laurence seems oddly smug in the last panel, I wonder why.
It looks like a “Just as planned” face to me for some reason.
It does seem fondly knowing, but I don’t get the feeling that she orchestrated anything.
…okay, I don’t get the feeling that she orchestrated this.
Well the box was open when Laurence 1st actually showed up in the “real world”, so perhaps she….encouraged…Nergal not to come out? Perhaps USING that butterfly?
I forgot about that, I wonder if she enjoys the taste of human souls?
Who doesn’t? Girl souls taste of sugar, spice and everything nice.
It’s a gremlin! So, uhm… I suppose Flore just stuffed all scary things from books and movies into that box? Seems reasonable.
That box would become crowded if water ever got inside it.
Mogwai, not a gremlin. Not yet, at least.
I have an ugly box where I put negative political campaign ads. In case I need a source of negative energy some day…
Woo Contra boss!
=D
It’s not a Contra boss. But it’s from a video game.
It looks to me very much like a Contra boss. Is it from a Konami game? Something 16 bit or earlier?
It’s 16 bit all right. I guess it has a 90s vibe to it, but I don’t think it resembles any of the Contra bosses. Well… maybe Super Contra’s Red Falcon boss? It’s a lot less dark though. And rest assured I would have made his one-eyed creepy worm-arm-things way more visible. :)
Kitirena down there got it. It’s Dark Force from Phantasy Star II!
Dark Force from the Phantasy Star series?
And if I’m not mistaken, The Great Cthulhu and Audrey II as well.
And I love the art style–it looks like Gahan Wilson’s work. I assume that was intentional? (If not, just say it was and take it as a compliment! -_^)
I’m… actually worried you know about Phantasy Star’s Dark Force. You’re a lot older than I imagine you to be. :)
Just how old are you implying that you think I am, nyao? And as for Gahan Wilson. he’s a professional cartoonist that draws different monsters for a living. The best place to see his work is in the book “A Night In The Lonesome October” by Roger Zelazny, since Gahan did the illustrations. (It’s also a fun book–how many times do you see Jack the Ripper as a hero? -_^)
Also… I don’t know anything about Gahan Wilson. XD
Is there something different about my art style in there? I didn’t try to draw differently, that’s pretty much how I always draw monsters and stuff. XD
Wilson’s cartoons tend to have a rather morbid sense of humor — except when it comes to cats, then they’re just plain hilarious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gahan_Wilson
AKA Dark Falz and many other incarnations… I haven’t played many of the classic Phantasy Star games, only the first and IV, but I did play quite a lot of Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast and Gamecube, as well as Phantasy Star Nova on Vita in Japanese currently.
Alas, Sega seems no longer interested in localizing anything Phantasy STar.
I don’t remember if it ever came up before, but I assume the box says אסור? (translates along the lines of forbidden or prohibited)
Wow! I think you’re the first person to notice this! Even though I realize I pretty fucked up the letter ו on this strip.
I actually know nothing about hebrew though. T_T
sometimes i like imagine that Flore and Laurence are light and dark magical girls. though, which is which i can never decide.
I’m not sure either.
Why not both? troll the fans hard.
They’d need a third sister dressed in gray!
The killer from Scream, Gizmo, the plant from Little Shop of Horrors (or any plant coming out of the Super Mario Bros. pipes), Cthulhu, and I’m quite dumb for the rest, not being able to figure them out XD
The hand sticking out of the box looks like cousin It from the Addams family.
Cousin Itt is a weird furry thing, it’s not a hand. You’re thinking of Thing.
Cousin Itt is a Wookie — an altogether ookie Wookie…
My bad. Hadn’t seen that show in ages.
As far as I can tell, they are:
Dark Force, Phantasy Star series (top)
Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories (middle left)
don’t know who the girl is in top right; maybe Sadako from The Ring movies?
Ghostface, Scream movies (top right below stringy-haired girl)
again, don’t know who this character is on middle left
Audrey II, Little Shop of Horrors (middle right)
Gizmo the Mogwai, Gremlins 1 & 2 (lower left)
lower right (cyclops bat) could be a monster from the Final Fantasy series, or maybe something from Disgaea (again, I don’t know for sure)
middle left? something from the urban legends movie? or maybe some super old fish from spongebob squarepants?
You missed Thing from The Addams’s Family. (60s TV Series version.) But other people noticed him.
Everything in the picture, and the reason it’s there, from top to bottom. :)
*Dark Force. (Final boss version from from Phantasy Star II). Because you find him in a box in the game, Pandora’s box style, and it was obscure as fuck.
*Some Chtulhu-like thing. I dunno. Those are just generally creepy to me, and it did fit with the Ancient-One vibe this box has so far.
*Some creepy Japanese horror-movie ghost girl. Inspired from Sadako and all the others, since those have the habit of creeping out of things.
*Some creepy creature that looks like the Ghostface Killer’s mask from Scream because those things are really unsettling.
*Red from the “NES Godzilla Creepypasta”. This was the most obscure thing in the list, but this creature scares the beejesus out of me even today.
*Audrey II from the Little Shop of Horrors. Again, it grows out of a pot, so coming out of a box isn’t too weird for it.
*Gizmo from Gremlins. Again, it was found in a (shoe) box.
*A weird cyclopean bat monster thing. It’s a nightmare I had as a kid. The fact so many video game creatures look like this now does nothing to make me feel better about it.
*Thing from The Addams Family (60s TV series version). Again, it always came out from a box.
*And the one thing everybody missed, those thirteen eyes. We’ve seem them before. They’re watching us.
Dark Force is also found in a box in PS3, and served as a mid-boss three(!) times in PS4 before you finally battle Profound Darkness, and as the end boss in Phantasy Star Online and PS Universe.
The cyclops-bat thing made me think of the Ariman/Gazer family of monsters from Final Fantasy, specifically FF9 and FF11.
I noticed Thing from the Addams Family cartoon, but forgot to mention it until after I posted my last list, and couldn’t go back and edit my comment. (In the 60’s TV series, Thing didn’t have claws; it was Ted “Lurch” Cassidy’s hand, except when Thing and Lurch appeared on-screen together, when it was the hand of one of the crew filling in. If memory serves correctly, Thing in the cartoon series had claws, but I’m not sure. In the original Charles Addams cartoons, he was just a normal hand in a box.)
As for the eyes, I just assumed they were there as extra creepy background effect. I’d honestly forgotten that they’d appeared before, though…
Where’s Kyubey?
Let’s just be fortunate they didn’t unleash that evil on the world.
The Addams family hand-in-a-box was Thing. Cousin Itt was all hairy.
Yup!
And played by Felix Silla, whereas Thing was either Ted Cassidy (who also played Lurch) or another fellow who I can’t remember offhand. At least, that was the 60’s version. In the movies, Carel Struyken (who also player Lwaxana Troi’s butler Mr. Homm in ST:TNG) played Lurch, John Franklin played Cousin Itt, and professional magician Christopher Hart “lent a hand” -_^ as Thing.
I can’t believe nobody commented about Flore carelessly leaving the box unlocked. (It was originally locked with a key that she kept with her. http://frivolesque.com/archives/comic/104-heirloom )
I think I met the monsters of the box in their human forms last week. One broken rib, 36 hours on a concrete floor, and much of me is the same colors as panel 2. Send that butterfly my way, Flore.
Ow! I hope you get well soon, nyao!
Thank you, nyao!
I was going to make a joke about the rib only hurts when I laugh, but then I sneezed. @#$%! I still look and feel like the walking dead, but body temp. & hydration back up near normal. (Concrete floor sucked the heat and water out of me).
I wouldn’t call hope one of the evils, although its evil twin false hope might qualify.
There’s not really much of a difference there. If there’s even a one in a trillion chance then it’s not false hope, but your chances aren’t much better than if it was 0.
I have seen versions where hope was called the worst of the evils.
And Flore’s line in the last panel marks the last chance of the Nordiques ever returning to Quebec…
Er…. Go Habs Go ?!
In the last panel, Chloe seems to be looking at the butterfly, rather than at the box like in the first panel…
I think she’s looking at whatever Flore is looking at.