#rufftoon

@rufftoon

Random head-cannon time!!!!

For those of you who aren’t aware, one of the story board artists for ATLA made a sort of ‘what if?’ comic series called water tribe. ( @rufftoon her name’s johane matte seriously look her up!) Where-in Zhao lives, has his memory wiped by the moon and ocean spirits and lives in the northern water tribe. This particular episode of brain rot came to be when I was re-reading the series and came to when they were discussing when Zhao was first discovered to be alive, and how he’d been an empty shell and had to relearn everything. It got me thinking, Nauja and her family basically had to re-raise him he had to relearn how to do everything. What if that experience made him weirdly good deciphering non-verbal cues? Imagine it… toddler Payu trying to tell Nauja he wants something, grunting and crying because she doesn’t understand what he’s asking for and Zhao just walks up like “Hm? Oh yeah? Sure ok, got u.” And grabs whatever handing it to Payu. Who’s suddenly not crying? After being handed a thing he’s never asked for or shown any interest in whatsoever?! It would get so bad, Payu just straight up stops trying to talk and just goes to this ex-fire nation caveman for whatever he wants instead and Nauja’s PISSED.

“He needs to learn to talk dammit!!” - Nauja

“Y tho?” - Zhao probably

The 'Water Tribe' comic is, technically, a fan-comic about Zhao, but what distinguishes it is that it's written and drawn by a storyboard artist who actually worked on both AtLA and LoK, and did official comics for AtLA. It's been contradicted by Zhao's cameo in LoK, but the look and feel are IMO the closest you can get to the original animated series, so it goes on the shelf with my official Avatar comics.

I actually got it signed at the same time as the Zuko graphic novel, as Johane Matte and Benjamin Wilgus were sharing a table at NYCC. I had brought my own copy of Zuko's Story and purchased the Zhao comic there, but Wilgus got confused and thought I had purchased everything just then. So the original note hopes that I will enjoy it. But then Matte clarified the matter after I started walking away, so I was called back by Wilgus to get a post-script added with a correction to hoping I enjoyed it. So that's something unique.

Also, I forgot to mention before that Wilgus did a sketch of Cartoon Zuko in it, which is pretty much how everyone was treating the comic at the time- an AtLA prequel manga that for some reason had Zuko and Iroh drawn incorrectly but that's easy to ignore. XD

As for the manga itself, I think it has its ups and down, most of the ups being the bit with the Guru you're going to mention in your second part. It's not something I would recommend to anyone but the serious collector. ;)

Continued:

2/2 I remember liking the interactions between Zuko and the guru in that one. But the thing that surprised me the most was your signed copy of the comics. You mean to tell me that you willingly asked your archnemesis Gene Yang for his autograph? Are you truly Loopy777? xD Regarding the Avatar Legends game, can't you play with your brother? Or is he not an atla fan?

Hey, Yang was sharing the table with Hicks. I may not like his comics, but it would have been super awkward to just bring books for her to sign when most of the line had beloved copies of American Born Chinese with them! XD For the record, I think ABC lives up to the hype, and in fact I've loved all of Yang's original graphic novels that I've read. So I was able to have some pleasant conversations while waiting in that line.

However, one of the people waiting in line with me offered to get the rest of my Yang comics signed for me since she just had a couple of books for each author. I declined, saying I'd be happy just getting the first volumes signed since for me it's more about supporting the author and getting a nice thing for my collection. I did not say I didn't care that much about it that I wanted to bother someone else. XD

But yeah, here's the proof.

Added North art posted on Twitter in Nov 2017. It’s set during 1815-1816, shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, and seems to feature the first meeting of North and Jack Frost?

Added the four other ROTG comics (by other artists) posted on the official DreamWorks Animation tumblr, since they’re kinda related, and it’s nice to have them all in one place.

Why Zuko is so happy in Ba Sing Se (because who doesn’t love kittens)

They all have amazing art and story, but my favorites are Old Hills (because it shows more of Jack's 300 years alone), Legendary (because I love Rufftoon's young North character design), and Light and Shadow (because it's interesting to see Pitch's more subtle powers in action and there's a super cool artistic choice in Part 2).