Randomage ... complete and utter

Anklet

c. 1898-1899

by René Lalique

As some of you might recall from this essay, I spent the latter half of 2025 working on a comic for the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, Georgia. Tania Sammons, a curator at the museum who had previously licensed my guide to sailors’ tattoos for a show, wrote to me with an irresistible pitch: four cartoonists would be hired, assigned a vessel from the museum's extensive collection of models, then given six months to produce a short comic for publication in an anthology alongside an accompanying museum display.

How could I say no?

My original brief was to research the Anne, the ship that brought the first colonists to Georgia, but in the aftermath of my dad's death the story took off in directions I couldn't have foreseen.

I'm releasing the whole comic online to coincide with the opening of Drawn to the Sea, the exhibition in Savannah. If you're in the area this week (or anytime over the next nine months!) you can stop in and see all the amazing work that came from myself and fellow artists Avery Hick, Rich King, and Sharon Norwood. Details about the museum show are here.

In the meantime, here's a very personal comic.

Content Warning: this piece deals with suicide and parental mortality. Readers with trypophobia may want to skip pages 14 and 15.

I wanted to buy this print but last I checked on his site it was sold out. Here’s his shop though:

Also Triangle is one of my favorites

You send the thing out and maybe someone reads it and something moves in them and they have no way to tell you exactly what moved or why and you have no way to know if it was the thing you meant or something else entirely.

You're working in permanent uncertainty about whether any of it lands. and you keep going anyway. you have to develop this strange faith in the act itself, in the value of the attempt separate from the outcome, because if you need confirmation every time you sit down you will never sit down.

If God told Colonel Fitzwilliam or Mr. Darcy that Lizzie wasn't perfect, both of them would laugh, shrug, or argue

If God told Lord Stornoway that Lady Marjorie wasn't perfect, Lord Stornoway would try to fist fight God 

In the first movie alone, some of his greatest hits:

Successfully pickpocketed Rick on their first meeting, without Rick so much as joining the dots until later.

Survives a pitched battle on a burning ship without a scratch, and somehow gets the key from a burning hook-handed enemy mook in the process. (“And did I panic? I think not!”)

Survives a pitched battle in the Hamunaptra ruins while drunk, through liberal use of cover and picking off targets at range.

Rolls a Nat 20 on his deception check to avoid being massacred by a large group of hynotised enemies in the museum.

Survives the final pitched battle with the undead (again, through liberal use of cover, hiding and running).

Successfully makes his intelligence roll to translate the Book of Amun Ra (with the Help action from Evie).

Successfully uses the resulting control over the undead mooks to even out the battlefield, including the genius brain move of sending them after Ankh-Su-Namun to both save Evie and distract Imhotep.

Successfully pickpockets a lich while being strangled by him to regain the key and enable Evie to use the book to banish Imhotep altogether.

Yes, he’s fairly flimsy in direct battle, and if at all possible refuses to get to melee range with anybody. So he’s a ranged rogue, and has a tendency to use the environment to his advantage. But he’s clearly designed around Sleight of Hand, Charisma, and a decent sprinkling of Intelligence, and prefers to use object interactions and battlefield control to even out his odds. For all that, though, he fully will stay in melee range if he has no other choice, and take the opportunity to pickpocket the BBEG while he’s at it.

I didn't realise before, but this whole battle starts with Evie telling Jonathan that the only way to kill Imhotep is to open the book and read the spell to banish him. Jonathan says it's locked, they need the key, and Evie then tells him it's in Imhotep's robes.

When Jonathan sends the priest mummies after Ankh-Su-Namun with the spell on the cover (saving both Rick and Evie in the process), Imhotep is coming right for him. However, Imhotep is then briefly disabled by watching the brutal murder of his lover all over again, and Jonathan ... could have run. There's a beat there where Imhotep is completely focused on something else, and Jonathan absolutely has the presence of mind to use that, but he doesn't. Imhotep, now incensed that Jonathan has murdered his lover, promptly spins back around and goes to murder him back, and is only stopped because Rick returns the favour from earlier and saves him.

At which point a lightly-strangled Jonathan stands back up and tells Evie he got the key.

He fucking stayed put on purpose because he knew they needed the key, that Imhotep had the key, and that he was the only person who could fucking pickpocket the BBEG mid-strangulation and get away with it, so long as someone could swoop in before the undead wizard actually killed him. Imhotep is immortal and immune to damage if they don't do something about that. This is a fight of attrition they cannot win. And his sister told him what they needed to stop it, so Jonathan went and got it.

He cheerfully calls himself a coward, and then he goes and fatally pisses off a lich as a distraction, and then stands still to be murdered for it in order to get close enough to pickpocket the immortal pissed off undead. It wasn't that he took the opportunity while being strangled, he set up being strangled in order to have the opportunity.

Gold ring with garnet flower, Europe, 8th-14th century AD

FINALLY FINISHED !!!

I’ve been at this since like September. Originally the plan was to do five panels but by the time I reached three I realized it was absolutely going to be too heavy. If the back bothers me then I’ll just buy some black fabric and sew it on.

I pinned it excessively since I have been warned the feathers won’t flatten unless blocked aggressively. They still don’t behave themselves 100% but again, if it bothers me I’m willing to steam block it in the future. Super fun before and after pics.

Pattern is of course the feathered wings shawl by my favorite pattern designer craftyintentions.