Red’s First Steps: Page 19
Aug03
OK, what?! Mary’s slips of the tongue show that she clearly knows way more than she’s letting on. But HOW?!
Also, sorry for the extreme delay on this page, folks. It’s a combination of Carlos getting WAY too ambitious with this whole reference (which I’m sure many of you get), and then his Internet just completely dying on him for several days, right before he finished the page. He only managed to just barely send me the JPG of this page over his phone’s connection a few hours ago, which then required quite a bit of extra effort for me to edit, since I had to rewrite every line from scratch. But here it is!
hello, Phoenix Wright Games? have i got 3 new characters for you! also, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say: Mary studied the arts of the Genies and Djinns. like Boss Hog from a chapter in the I Dream of Jeannie Bottle Comics.
That could explain some of it. But she seems to know who Jeanie, specifically, actually is!
oh. well i was trying to make some sense of the page, without giving too much away.
I don’t know any more than you do. The comments I put in the page description are entirely my own speculations.
Mary comment of not letting the Genie out of the bottle, would seem to indicate that Mary probably knows that she dealing with some Genie here that is named Jeanie. We already knew that she knew about witches are and there magic, because, of her attendance at Southeil all girls school and this would seem to indicate that she also knows about Genie magic with bottle and lamps too. Using such an old saying to say that she knows what going on and without actually saying that she knows what going on at the same time, is way too obvious here. She is obviously not interested in finding the Genie that turned her son into her daughter or in turning her daughter back into her son again, now that she over the shock of him coming home as a girl. It Henry and Clarence that are the one’s that don’t like what they see.
I think it’s more relevant to say that she knows WHAT Jeanie is instead of who, which leads to the question how much does she know about magic? (and how much of a witch is she)
It’s pretty obvious at this point in the arc that Mary must have some knowledge of the magical world, hence all her suspicious words and actions as well as her rather unfazed reaction to her son being as Henry put it “Transmuted” into a girl.
It’s also obvious that something is going on at southeil (my theory being it’s a sort of recruiting ground for witches in order to boost their numbers)
according to the earlier pages of the comic, you’re right on the beam. but they’re particularly interested in Melvin, because his Dad knows a thing or 2 about Genie Magic and Witch Magic.
That also why there interested in Tiffany who was formerly Clarence. Remember there are also different witches guild too and the one that runs the Southeil Girl School game up with Tiffany who just happens to be one of Melvin Friend too. So, therefor, Tiffany a keeper in there eye’s too. It would not be surprise if Clamor the familiar is from another witches guild and she friendly BJ. The different witches guild are going to be picking there own agents to get close to Melvin so that they don’t get left out of the loop. That what I see happening here.
Mary seems to be doing Mia Fey poses.
Nope, she is channeling Franziska Von Karma in all her bitchness (minus the whip).
The “foolish fool” line is one of Franziska’s catch phrases.
Nope, the poses are clearly Mia Fey’s. It’s pretty clear.
@ijuinkun
All the poses after the first one are Mia Fey from when she’s playable in Trials and Tribulations. She’s even biting her thumb the same way Mia does in that game.
So, no reaction when Red switches from “Dad” to “Henry”? I can totally see Red ending up a Daddy’s girl.
Again, why wouldn’t Mary see Red’s transformation as a golden opportunity for both her and for Red? If Mary is looking for some kind of redemption Red’s transformation actually gives that narrative more power. Mary is allowing her own interests to cloud her judgement but that’s a common failing among parents I’m afraid. But sometimes parents have to push their kids. Knowing when it’s not appropriate is a constant struggle without easy answers.
As for how to force Jean to restore Red, how about… asking nicely? Jean isn’t punishing Red, she just forgot to turn him back. Jean’s isn’t aggressively mean, just selfish. I can totally see Jean going “Oops, sorry.” poof as long as they don’t turn it into a confrontation that would threaten her ego or get her back up. Heck, a little “you’re the only one who can help” ego stroking wouldn’t hurt either. Note to Red: tears will probably work better than yelling
I can’t really see red being turned back into guy, mostly because the comic would lose its poster girl, the scenarios I can see are
They find Jean she tries to turn red back but some outside force prevents it from working
Melvin tries a new spell that is supposed to “pull the girl enchantment off” however it just ends up splitting Clarence and Red into 2 separate beings
She ends up being a girl for so long that by the time they find a way to reverse it, she doesn’t know if she want’s to turn back
Sure, Jean isn’t punishing Red … however, they have no way to know that. They don’t know her like we do.
Just a minor grammar ‘ngggh’ while reading — ‘discrete’ is “individually separate and distinct”; ‘discreet’ is “careful and circumspect in one’s speech or actions”. It’s one of the more common homonym confusions.
Huh, I did not know that there were two different spellings. Stupid English…
It’s fixed now.
I love how Henry’s characterization has surprised me, he went from looking like a scary asshole stepdad stereotype to the reality being a pretty decent fellow who’s definitely not a mafia guy, a man of logic and reason who’s brain goes to mush at the sight of a cute redhead
definitely despite how little he’s appeared definitely taking a place as one of my favorites replacing Kazom *he knows what he did*
Finding “Steeve” for 500k and breaking thumbs sounds EXACTLY like mafia.
I think he might be referring to the Steve from Sailorsun.org, who was in debt and thus forced Bay to do the arena battles to pay it off.
Here we see Mickey and Fingers attempting to collect:
https://sailorsun.org/?comic=08062008
@ ijuinkun Wow! Amazing detective work! I thought I would need to reveal their origins myself, one of these days!
Thank you for the new panels, this has moved the story a long quite a bit with its extra large size. As to Mary, she did get what she has always wanted, but she may be somewhat trying to protect her husband and new daughter. Genies are not always known for their good will, and she may not want to find out what this genie would do if threats were made to it. Jeanie didn’t treat the fisherman on the boat that found her bottle very well when they made demands, think how some other genies would have acted.
Lol, that second to last panel is absolutely priceless.
Since everything Mary said is an actual fact that has happened in the comic.
When was there a flying dog? I forget.
Wotch out for Shape shifting animals of Science and Magic. Were Beasts might work at Science Labs. It might be Wright to Listen to a Phoenix. Things can change in a Winx if you find the right Club. Anything Goes in a world that might have a half-demon and old perverts. who knows what’s next Oni princess flying out of a UFO?
As much as i hate to say it scary mom has a very good point.
Also very good use of dramatic posses in this installment.
“Talking cats” could suggest two things. One is that is Mary has witnessed witches and familiars talking with one another. The other thing could be that she knows about Kazom. Now we can be pretty sure Mary knows that Jinn are real; perhaps she even knows things about the specific Jinn known as “Jeanie” or “Jeannie”.
Now for one of my Amazing Crackpot Theories: We know that Henry isn’t Clarence/Tiffany/Red’s biological father. What if Kazom is Red’s real dad?
We know that Mary know about witches and probably talking cats, because, they had plenty of them at Southeil when she was going to school there. That is pretty much a given that she know about those things.
Mary has given us enough hint that she probably knows about genie or Jinn too and may even have met a few of them while she was at Southeil school sixteen year ago and before she was thrown out of the inner circle there. Jeanie has only been a Genie for a week or no more than a month at this point in time, so Mary doesn’t know of Jeanie pacifically. But, she may recognize that some women name Jeanie turning her son into her daughter was probably the handy work of some Genie named Jeanie. With all the information that Mary was exposed to while at Southeil school, she can make a pretty good guess as to what has happened to her son. She probably much has a pretty good idea of how to unravel this thing if she wanted to, but, it obvious that she doesn’t want to go there. She want to keep Clarence a girl.
Sixteen year ago, Kazom was in human form and a Genie Lord and Guano was still running acting like Gilligan a real bozo. Kazom didn’t get turned into a cat form until Melvin was 8 or 9 years old and Kazom does have tendency to chase the women around. That all I am going to say about it.
It could be ENTIRELY possible for E no longer being equal to mc2.
For hundreds of years, there was an immutable law of physics that was never challenged: that in any reaction occurring in the Universe, mass was conserved. That no matter what you put in, what reacted, and what came out, the sum of what you began with and the sum of what you ended with would be equal.
HOWEVER, we know hat Black Holes, which basically just take stuff and don´t give out anything.