Woo. This is one of those pages that, without context, would make absolutely no sense to a new reader. Or even to a usual reader who's lost the thread.

So, let's review! The local monsters are having it out. Jack the wizard just blasted Mike the vampire out of the picture with a sort of magic overload. Zandra just rescued Jack along with Crystal, and is now rescuing Tomie the Book Woman from the attic of the Pointed House where she had been trapped thanks to its tendency to close itself up after crash landings (because she had tussled with a vampire herself and happened to bust through the window, which was bad because she has a phobia about this place). Meanwhile, Wally the werewolf has excised the claw which belonged to his dead pack-mate which had possessed the body of this poor woman who found it in the woods years and years ago. She's a vampire too, I guess. Somehow. It's complicated. The claw is really upset. It can talk because magic and stuff. Ask Mike Mignola. Monster body parts talk all the time.

Now we're all on the same page. Yes?

Puts "Talk to the hand" in a whole new light; They should put it on a plaque and sell it to the Mystery Spot.

She's got some serious wing-strength if she can carry that many people.

Feels like things are wrapping up a bit. Now we just need Boo to drop in and ruin everything again.

I was wondering if that lady was still in there. /phew!

Only one missing now is Sam.

Didn't Wally used to not be able to shift back to human form until day?

I really appreciate the fact that the severed paw used the phrase "tricks up my sleeve." It's just one of those type of silly ironies that get me every time.

I kind of like to think of the severed werewolf paw talking via the usual hand-puppet sort of gesture (you know the one--four fingers pressed together, thumb beneath them, opening and closing sort of like like a duck's beak.) (Though on second thought, that would probably be WAY too silly to fit the tone of this scene.)

In any case, I'm glad the poor Berserk-possessed woman is free of him now, albeit disarmed. (Maybe she can grow her arm back, somehow? Or at least get a really cool prosthetic!)

I wonder what he'll do with that paw. Have Zandra immolate it? Bury it so deep no one could ever get to it? Put it behind glass as a conversation piece that also converses? A mystery.

"Up my sleeve"

*trombone*

proud of yourself for that one? :P

Ahh, good ol' Mignola. I love the way he has the strangest things casually talk to each other, including body parts.
A nice homage for sure!
Although I'm slightly confused, I'd thought the paw had driven out the woman's spirit completely?

I think she undestands that Wally will not give her a hand.

"It's only a flesh wound!"

Idle question that has nothing to do with this page, but came about because I was going through the archives - was Sandra's human hair color retconned in the Subfusc arc or was she always meant to have darker hair that simply wasn't colored in during earlier depictions of her?

Just curious, chronologically how long has it been since she first got the hand?

But more importantly, the improvement on the art style is just so much more pronounced when looking at the detail of the characters then and now. Have you essentially drawn her how you would have drawn her then?

I really hope Mr. Chalk makes an appearance before the strip finishes.

Seems like everything's starting to wrap up. I wonder, once everyone has a chance to catch their breath, how readily Sandra's former friends are going to really accept her. She's doing a lot of good for them right now, but that came after literally putting them through hell. This might be more like a final penance, a way to make amends before she flies off into the sunset, so to speak.

Also, apropos of almost all the main characters appearing on the same page, I wonder how Sam is doing. Generally speaking, he's the character I worry about the least, so I expect when the group finds him again, he'll be surrounded by a pile of ass-kicked vampires. Ending up as a drained dry rabbit by the vamps would be a little too dark at this point.

This was my first page.

Was sent here ages ago by Black Shirt Boy and didn't have time to read then. Opened up to this page and spent a good bit of the weekend trying to read through till I could make sense of this page. Had gotten so deep that I didn't even recognize the page when I got back to it.

Twisted bit of space you've put together here, thanks for sharing it with us.

Now boarding Air Zandra. Please store your emotional baggage in the overhead compartment.

Hey Joe, what are the chances you'd go back over your early work and make it more in line with your style today (along with links to "this is what it looked like when I first started out")?

so much is happening, yet it all makes perfect sense.