9. Gilda And Meek "Destiny's Prisoner" (Un-Iverse #20)
Rating: PG-13. Bloody violence (disturbingly against a child), adult themes, and some innuendo.
Author's Note for Gilda And Meek #9 "Destiny's Prisoner" (Un-Iverse #20)
I am amazed. I had never made it to Book Four before.
If you asked me to pick a definitive point in Gilda and Meek's entire canon to say "This is what it's all about," I would pick the six issues that make up "Book Four: Gilda And Meek: The Next Phase". Easily. They aren't the best issues, but they are the most Gilda and Meeky issues ever. As good as "Timeline Trilogy", "All Blood Things...", and Gilda and Meek's role in "The Terran Wars" is, all of that stuff is atypical Gilda and Meek. These six issues are pretty much the essence of the series. I will admit "The Apple" is a better example of Gilda and Meekiness than these issues. But that's only a single issue. These six issues in a row are pretty much what Gilda and Meek are about to me.
Why? First off, this is still when they're at Raggleworth Labs, which is an essential part of the series' appeal for me. The second lab is impersonal and it is just not the same, especially since most of the supporting cast doesn't really tend to appear.
Secondly, this is the first point in the series' run in which I think the characters have been well-established enough that I can actually take chances with them, like Gilda's shocking confrontation with Vic Puff in the next issue. I NEVER would have done that in the first eight issues, no matter how juicy and devastating the idea is, just because Gilda's personality hadn't yet been established. But now that it is, I can say in the next issue, that this is both out of the ordinary for Gilda, and completely in character at the same time. I couldn't do that in the first 8 issues. I was willing to take chances with the Narrative in the first eight issues ("Skeletons" is the most obvious example of this), but not with the characters. Not yet.
Third, there is an extra amount of downtime in these six issues, with Gilda, Meek, and Bernadette farting around with each other and making pop-culture observations and slams. And because we now know the characters, those references are way funnier than they used to be when they made them in the first 8 issues.
Fourth, we can actually recur some villains for the first time. While Augatha has already made a few appearances, Redmond, Mr. X, and Otterman's appearances had either been only one or two. It's not just the main cast that I feel I have finally established the personalities of. It's the supporting cast and guest villains too. And I can take chances with them too, like making Otterman an outright villain in his upcoming appearance. And it totally plays, it's totally okay, and you won't think less of Otterman later on when he's a hero. And that's because I already established the heroism and self-sacrificing nature of the character earlier on. So he's a crook for one issue, hoping to gain power. Big Whoop. It works and it might not have if I had him be a villain in his first appearance as originally planned.
Fifth, with the exception of the last two issues (which are a two-parter) they are all standalone one-parters. I love the multiparters as much as anyone, but a REAL Gilda and Meek story to me should only take one issue to finish. But maybe that's just me.
These six issues are pretty much what Gilda and Meek is about to me. And I personally think "Destiny's Prisoner" is the best of them.
This is the specific issue where the reader fully understands that not only is Gilda And Meek a serious drama instead of a "funny animal" humor book, but that it always was. Even "Skeletons" doesn't bring that home in the same way as Bernadette being hit with a brick in the head.
The previous versions of Redmond's second appearance and Vic's stochastic terrorism of Bernadette from when I were a kid were very different and much weaker. Some of the Gilda And Meek comics from when I was a kid had one or two redeeming virtues. I feel like this was around the time I was losing the thread of the plot. My first reboot occurred soon after.
I came up with the "Where's The Black Person On Friends?" joke myself. I have yet to meet a single person who doesn't love it. The withering punchline coming from the Piranha from all people makes it even MORE awesome and funny. No wonder Bernadette can never bring herself to bash him.
Speaking of reboots, I felt the need to include that underwhelming Humans / Howler team-up because that was the SPECIFIC shitty story that made me quit the saga for fifteen years during my last attempt. The previous version of the first One-Shots was horrific, and the Humans encounter with a Werewolf was the shittiest story I ever created (although the Piranha's original bout with the Mailman was pretty appalling too). I redid the Piranha story fairly successfully back in the first One-Shot, so I decided to do a short three page tribute to that awful story here, and made a 3 page Howler team-up actually passable.
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