Knowing Greg has written for Ninjago helped but I liked how I could pick up that it was his style when reading Kai and Bytar’s little short story Snake’s Honour together. I dunno how to describe it. Sometimes he has characters pull off these little tricks and maneuvers out of a comic, esp when he is doing a comic.
The part that really sold me though was his characterization of Bytar though, I could tell that was Greg because he always loves doing villains that are so proud in professing their nasty, twisted little thought processes. The way Bytar concludes his story about swindling Slithraa and Fangdam with “I risked dying just to spite my enemy tribes” was great.
Him being in a situation to tell Kai about this is because he applied that same mentality with fighting Kai and now he has to deal with the consequences of being stuck with and threatened by Kai into helping him escape. And at the end of the story Bytar risks being trapped forever just to take Kai down with him; Very scorpion and the frog.
Even the bottle episode nature of the story of a protagonist stuck with the villain and getting a glimpse into their little psyche felt very Matoro and Makuta in Mahri Nui. Especially the bit where Bytar argues Kai’s threat is a very Serpentine way to act, which makes Kai hesitate for a bit in introspection.
Snake’s Honour was released in August that year, followed by Kingdom of the Snakes in which Jay explores an alternate universe where the Serpentine successfully controlled the Great Devourer to take over Ninjago. That world’s Kai is forced to work for the Serpentine as a bounty hunter after Lasha captured Nya, and is overseen by Bytar as they have a similar dynamic as in Snake’s Honour but in reverse, with Kai being the one that is not trusted but insists otherwise, only to betray Bytar. They even wind up sharing a missing eye in the same place! Where are my Kaitar fans at…
Given how Greg loves his villains I feel like Snake’s Honour was his chance to stretch his writing the way he liked compared to the more usual kiddish tone of other activity books and their short stories. I guess he liked Kai and Bytar’s dynamic enough to bring it back in the graphic novel. I think the craziest takeaway from all of this is that Bytar had more interesting characterization in that little short story from an obscure activity book than most of the Forbidden Five…
Could you imagine if Greg was still a writer for Ninjago, after he got laid off by Lego? He’d have written such a good Forbidden Five. He may have done the same issue with all of his villains where he’s a bit repetitive in making them all straightforwardly evil and nasty and backstabbing but it’d have been better than nothing and tbf it’s not as if Greg can’t work with other writers’ specifications.
Imagine Zarkt with a personality like Bytar, where he’s reckless and spiteful and revels in doing things for the love of the game, causing misfortune to others by tearing things down without much regard for his own safety. Krika could be creepy so imagine applying that to Kur.
What if Kur was cursed by her element of Decay and that’s why she has any personality in sounding genuinely dismayed when speaking to a broken Prismatic Blade. Because she projects personalities and attachments onto inanimate inorganic objects that don’t wither and die, so seeing it happen to a legendary weapon made Kur existential. I love her goth vibes Greg would’ve done great with Kur.
