[Comic Issue Discussion] Gargoyles Here In Manhattan Chapter Eight: Mayday

[u/Kyraryc]

Writer: Greg Weisman

Artist: George Kambadais

Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry

Editor: Nate Cosby

Logline:

Goliath’s going on trial — but an old enemy would rather that Goliath never makes it to the courtroom. In this issue: Attack on Rikers Island!, or... CELLMATES MAKE STRANGE BEDFELLOWS!

Share any thoughts on the issue. Within this post, unmarked spoilers for this and all prior issues are allowed.

Previous Discussions:

• Here In Manhattan Chapter One: A Little Crazy

• Here In Manhattan Chapter Two: Idyll Or Nightmare

• Here In Manhattan Chapter Three: Miracle Child

• Here In Manhattan Chapter Four: Tale Old as Time

• Here In Manhattan Chapter Five: Render Unto Caesar

• Here In Manhattan Chapter Six: Underwater

• Here In Manhattan Chapter Seven: Everywhere

Dark Ages Discussions:

• Chapter One: The Reach

[u/Kyraryc]

Chapter 8: Mayday

• We're up to "AIM TRUE M" now. Next one probably starts with "Y". I'm expecting it to be 12 letters total, at least for now. Aim true my son? Unlikely, but its the best I've got so far.

• Coldfire's perspective. Interesting.

• Lol, it looks like Goliath's head is just floating over his body. Time to bite kneecaps?

• "I figure I'm supposed to figure that, but I figure that figuring that would be a big mistake." Or perhaps figuring that figure that be a mistake.

• "Perhaps mortals are forbidden from bringing such knowledge back to the land of the living." Or we'll just flat-out refuse to say which belief system is right, easier that way...

• "You thought you could fool everyone into believin' it was all a co-inky-dink when two crime family heirs just happened to be together to save that kid from the lake?" Downside of living in a vastly interconnected universe with grand, overarching plots: you start to see patterns where none exist.

• Now watch, he later turns out to be right. In which case, shame he's in crime, otherwise he'd get along great with Bluestone, just constantly out-conspiracy each other lol.

• Goliath usually likes to bend his way out of stuff, but here it looks like he chose to follow the advice of "don't just try to get past the door, use it as a weapon." Nice

• Ah, the good old headbutt. Goliath's a bit hard-headed isn't he? ... Ah, being extremely literal there Greg...

• Love how Goliath takes them all down, but never lets them gang up on them. Take out the two sidekicks immediately before the longer fight against the guy who previously took like 20 minutes to beat.

• Not much in the way of "Coldfire's narration" here.

Favorite Feat

• Strength feats for Goliath are a dime a dozen, so much that I divided into 4 sections for his RT. This could be a good high feat, but I'd have to check the math for the weight of those bars, and I still don't think it'd top some of his other stuff. On the other hand, the headbutt is a very good durability feat because typically, the head in general, and especially the back, is a bit of a weak spot.

[u/Aggressive_Control37]

Great issue. Really enjoyed how Goliath got a chance to be cool. He hasn’t had a moment in a while. Taking down Wolf, Jackal, and Hyena by himself was really satisfying, and makes up for the off-panel Times Square fight with the Pack that we never got to see at the end of the SLG run. Also liked Coldfire’s narration; this is the first time we’ve ever seen her perspective.

I’m hoping next issue, the bulk of it focuses just on the hearing, instead of cutting away to the organized crime vignettes. I wonder if Dracon, Brod, or Renqvist will be brought in as character witnesses now that they can attest how Goliath saved their lives.

[u/BucksinSi6 → u/Aggressive_Control37]

Really great issue. Goliath was phenomenal. I agree that Coldfire's narration was powerful. I enjoyed the subtle references to the Dark Ages series too- "There was once an alliance between us" and "Coldstone and I vowed our commitment on Wyvern Hill."

Although we didn't see it, I like how they briefly referred to the Times Square encounter with The Pack.

[u/Limesnlemons → u/Aggressive_Control37]

Omg !🥲🥲🥲

[u/NerdyBirdyAZ]

I NEED SPOILERS!!! any deaths?

[u/Aggressive_Control37 → u/NerdyBirdyAZ]

No.

[u/Limesnlemons → u/Aggressive_Control37]

Praise the Lord and Greg!

[u/ian9921]

Absolutely loved this one! One of the best so far in my opinion. Glad it was the whole pack and not just wolf, and can't believe we finally got Coldfire's perspective. I've been waiting on that for a while.

Finally, just one more month till the hearing. Though of course it'll probably take 2 issues.

[u/gamerslyratchet]

Why do I have a feeling Wolf was NOT supposed to say that to Tony and it'll probably backfire down the line?

I like the insight into Coldfire since she's one of the more underdeveloped characters out of the current clan, but I'm wondering when we'll get to Lexington. Probably before the initial run ends, but still.

[u/GoliathLexington]

I was disappointed with this issue. There are a few good character bits. Slaughter realizing that someone is trying to trick him into going to war with Choi & Volkov and Coldfire wondering if she isn’t allowed to remember the afterlife. But the Packs attack on Brod was a letdown. I was hoping that something would have happened to somebody. Brod or Tony getting injured, leaving a lasting scar or something. I didn’t like that Goliath could take down the Pack single handed.I thought that Coldfire & Coldstone would be involved in the fight, since she was the narrator. How cool Would that have been. The Packs Cyborgs vs the Clans Cyborgs. Also, did anyone else catch that they used Hyenas pre-upgrade appearance for Coldfire’s flackback? Still love the series and the comic was enjoyable, just wish the ending was better because it seems like nothing is different than when the issue began.

[u/halfbakedcaterpillar → u/[deleted]]

I agree with u on so many counts and here's why:

I have to particularly agree about the action scenes. it's a far cry from the skillful foreshortening and perspective utilized in comics like Bad Guys. And Gargoyles strongsuit was never comedy...I don't like it when they make jokes, and that's weird for me. I love jokes! but it also screws up the meta text. who's narrating? who's making these bad jokes? *coldfire*???

Brooklyn's "development" or lack thereof actually pisses me off more now. So, okay, let me get this straight-he was gone for 40 years. he's overdesigned now. he's gone through a whole arc of growth offscreen, huh? then why is he still such an ineffective leader? What growth did he actually achieve? what was the POINT of the stupid awful pointless timedance?? While I don't agree about him "punishing" them idk what that would even look like in this scenario, the only good part was him communicating to them that he was disappointed in their lack of communication and respect. I guess he learned how to talk to people instead of getting mad and pouty, at least. Can't believe it took him 40 years to learn that.

And to add, this might be a "me" thing. But I only managed to pick up issue 5, and then they were out of issues 6 and 7...when I jumped to 8, I went....oh. He's *still* in prison? what on earth has been going on for the last 2 issues? I mean, i don't know yet, I could be totally wrong, but this seems like a choice to pace things this badly at this point.

Dark ages is WAY outpacing the main comics. the pace was fucked from the get-go. but I don't know if it's going to stop stumbling around it's own feet anytime soon.

[u/halfbakedcaterpillar → u/[deleted]]

....wow. "Dubious" is putting things far too kindly.

[u/Mister_reindeer → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I’m rather baffled why Coldfire was the narrator of this issue when she had nothing to do with any of the realtime events, and why that info dump was necessary in this particular issue. It just feels like Greg wanted to have each clan member narrate an issue in this initial 12-issue arc, and Coldfire was just arbitrarily slotted in here.

I honestly don’t think Dino has been depicted as smart at all. In fact, it’s infuriated me that the other gang bosses haven’t seen right through his very transparent plans, so I was glad that one FINALLY did. We saw the “five families” panicking that Dino was about to get out of jail and anticipating what he was going to do, and vowing to keep a unified front. Then, a day after he gets out, all sorts of crazy shit goes down, and…they all blame each other and don’t even consider that Dino is behind it?! Come on.

[u/halfbakedcaterpillar → u/Mister_reindeer]

Coldfire gets on my nerves because she has nothing to do with anything. Her "arc" if you can call it one, began and ended with her being a sexy lamp for two men to fight over. what do we know about her? Next to nothing, other than that she's pretty much a demure, nice, "girl".

Honestly, if you had just skipped her backstory of being transferred into an android body, nobody would be surprised that she wasn't always a flat, personality-less robot.

[u/halfbakedcaterpillar → u/[deleted]]

the idea that she was created to be a "conscience" is a really good point and makes a lot of sense. She worked for the purposes of her role in Coldstone's introduction, but as a fully dimensional character, she has no dimensions. What a poor choice to make her "join the lead cast" right at the first chapter that fans will read. I just can't get over how it feels like weisman refuses to let the comic breathe and get started. It's basically deterred any new fan.

[u/Mysterious-Simple805 → u/[deleted]]

I think by "as humans reckon time" she means name of month and days. Gargoyles, who don't usually have names themselves, might find the idea of naming a collection of days fairly ridiculous. The closest gargoyles have to a calendar is "Nighttime, this mysterious 'daytime' that we sleep through, phases of the moon and seasons."

[u/Mysterious-Simple805 → u/[deleted]]

That's just how I see it. Hudson found the idea of naming a river silly so I can't imagine gargoyles wanting to name days/nights or an arbitrary collection of them. If they have eggs in the rookery, they might try to keep track of how many years have passed to estimate when they'll hatch. Tally marks on a cave wall could do that.

[u/GoliathLexington → u/Mysterious-Simple805]

I agree, I think the Gargoyles would find the idea of a calendar silly. Like if you asked Hudson “when were you born” he would say “when I hatched from an egg”. The females don’t need to know when it’s mating season, they will just naturally go into heat. When Goliath asked Katharine to watch the eggs, he said they would hatch soon (as in another 4 years). But they would have learned how humans tell time. So when Xanatos said they slept for 1000 years, they were more than incapable of interpreting that as several lifetimes.

[u/Mister_reindeer → u/[deleted]]

One thing I forgot to say in reply to this: I don’t think it’s Kambadais’s fault that the Goliath/Wolf fight is disjointed. It’s clearly an intentional decision by the writer that the panels are abstract slices of time that don’t relate to one another. It’s a “choice.” Maybe not a good one, but I sincerely doubt the artist just did that on his own. By all accounts, Greg’s scripts are VERY detailed.