Page 45.
I will be at TCAF this weekend in Toronto. Find me on the second floor at table 255. Along with Meal and other books I will have a few hardcover editions of OHS volumes 1 and 2.
Then I will be doing a few events in the New York metro area – first on Thursday the 16th I’ll be running a comic workshop for kids at the Ardsley Public Library. Then, on Friday and Saturday I’ll be speaking on a few panels at the Queers and Comics conference at the School of Visual Arts. I’ll see you there!
Oh, sweetie. :/ I’ve been sure it was her since she helped rescue Al from the giant construction bot – but my heart just hurts for her, seeing that sad smile as she calls herself a failure. Oh sweetie. You aren’t a failure, you didn’t fail at being what Brendan wanted.
My guess is, she thinks she failed *at being Al*. That maybe Sulla thinks her being transgender was an error in the copy, so she brought back Al in the body he “knew” in hopes of correcting that error. And thus, letting the dad she loves get back the man HE loves.
I hope hope HOPE all three characters are about to experience epiphanies, come to love and understand each other better, and maybe Al can make peace with his old demons.
Blue, you are frikkin AMAZING.
I KNEW IT!
I would scream, but I just got the baby to sleep! But the visuals, the dialogue- all of it is just so stunning! She looks like the poster from the opening and I am in love!
tfw when ur trans daughter robot clone is also your creator and the surrogate parental figure you will now rebel against in your own trans awakening :-/
Sulla’s pose in panel 1 looks like the poster of The Blue Lady/Fairy and the visual callback is so meaningful in context! I’m so in love with how this story is handled through touches like these.
I immediately noticed that as well. Such amazing storytelling!
I KNEW IT!
And I didn’t think thats was gonna be her reason :'(
“I’ve been working on this for three years.”
“I’m a failure.”
http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-1-page-27/
“Three years ago she […] asked me to change her”
Oh, Sulla…
Oh *dang*!! Good catch!
I wonder… does she feel like a failure because she tried so hard to be Al 2.0 but couldn’t even identify with Al’s (perceived) gender?
‘Cuz one thing about Sulla’s arc as a character that I keep thinking about is how she’s shown, in the present, as feeling out of place and “abnormal” more due to being a robot than due to being trans (as far as we know, anyway), so I wonder if *that* is part of her whole casserole of well-concealed issues. We know robots have their personhood more or less recognized as a whole in the current setting, but we don’t have a lot of hints regarding the full extent of it; does Sulla see herself as innately more of a “project” that needs to “work out” than a person, since she *was* built purposefully rather than conceived? Or are Al’s self-depersonalization issues seeping into her self-image because they share a brain configuration?
Either way, aaaaaa Sulla bby noooo
OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH MY GOSH.
oh gosh
oh no, baby, i mean you were always perfect and anything-but-a-failure ANYWAY, but
you were a *perfectly successful* copy
ohhhhh my gosh Blue i can’t believe how this is all culminating, i’m galaxy brain right now and also crying
Sulla and Al both calling themselves mistakes/failures… my heart hurts for both of them.
Well that certainly explains why Alastair’s body has the same features as Sulla’s (flight, etc.) – she modeled it after her own.
GOD just her saying she was working on rebuilding Al for 3 years knowing she also transitioned 3 years ago just screams a ton of implications my brain is on the FITZ
Yeah. :(
Hopefully this conversation changes her view of herself. I can imagine any leftover feelings of internalized transphobia Al had, combined with her own insecurity as both trans and a synthetic person in a world where both are stigmatized to some extent, would have made her feel inadequate when looking at this idealized version of Al everyone but Brendan saw.
Holy Sh*t.
The actual difference between Al & Sulla, is that Sulla had a loving parent that nurtured and cherished them?
Holy F*CK. I have a LOT of feeling going on right now.
And I have a lot of re-reading to do.
AAAHHHHH!! AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! Now I gotta read back from the beginning again because AAHHHH.
Blue, I was already in love with this story but now it’s 5000% stronger.
i’m crying looking @ her face
this is the best comic i’ve ever read
Shout-out to Will in the comments who called it nearly seven years ago: http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-2-page-6/
Also aaa Sulla don’t call yourself a failure!! I can’t take this heartache!!
Wow, he sure did. In detail. Even down to the question of whether Sulla considered herself a “failure.”
That’s … really impressive.
I… forgot I made that comment. Wow.
Sulla. Honey. No. No, please. You’re not a failure, just… Don’t.
Aggghhhh, my heart.
Dang, this tied in together super well.
God I love this comic!
OOoohhh! God this comic is so good!
No you’re not Sulla, you’re perfect! 😭
I hope she doesn’t feel this way due to any leftover (and/or independently formed) internalized transphobia. :(
I hope she and Al can help one another learn to love themselves.
Oh, Sulla. :(
I just want to give her a hug. If she is at all interested in a hug from an internet stranger.
That said, I wonder if Sulla’s either taking a bullet for someone or somehow not aware of the whole story. Where did the stick figure and the ballerina come from? And why were they so cruel to Al? Fascinating.
*Definitely* something worth keeping in mind. I had almost forgotten about the way they talked to Al not that long ago…
Best plot twist ever.
Ahhhhh, Sulla. I thought it was her. But now that Al knows who’s responsible, can he hate her for it? She is, in some ways, part of him – but he’s always been good at hating himself.
I’m really curious how this is going to play out. So many questions.
Like, it’s well and good to have the money, but it is strange for Brendan to still not be able to tell much about who made Al or where he came from in his previous examinations and trying to investigate it. Brendan’s still well connected, so for someone to make such an advanced body, yet have no industry presence, that’s a bit strange.
I also imagine Sulla did not understand the nature of Al’s relationship to Brendan, or this would have been a really messed up thing to do to Brendan without giving him any forewarning.
I am so intrigued.
I suggested this for my in-real-life comic book club a while back and we finally got around to it and discussed it tonight. So cool that the solution to the (first) mystery was resolved on the very day we read it!
“You still stand watch, O human star, burning without a flicker, perfect flame, bright and resourceful spirit. Each of your rays a great idea — O torch which passes from hand to hand, from age to age, world without end.”
Oh Sulla…
You felt you failed at *being Al* but you never were Al. You couldn’t be Al. You were always you.
Could it be that Sulla is covering for someone else, and we still have another plot twist coming up? I was pretty certain from early on that it was one or more AI’s owned by Brendan (“. . . the estate of Mr. Pinsky . . . http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-1-page-12/) who reconstructed Al, but my money was on Gimel for heading up the project. I thought it was a callback to the way R. Giskard Reventlov in The Robots of Dawn was underestimated because of his lack of humaniform appearance. And Sulla acted so innocent around Al showing up. Is she really that devious?
I have the same sense. There’s a lot more going on than what we see here. I hope someone hasn’t threatened her.
Ballerina and Doggobot said they were commissioned, so Sulla may not have been involved too much in the nitty gritty. Maybe they’re synth rights activists and that’s why they were also keen to bring Al back, while Sulla had her own motives.
my HEART
now I’m just remembering how Brendan reacted to Sulla saying she wasn’t a boy: http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-6-page-61/
To grow up being told she was trans because she was a flawed copy of Al, and then to have the original in the (cyber)flesh confirm that it’s not just her, must be such a trip for both her and Al.
Man. This is like an entire family of people who are bad at letting go of things.
Plot twist!
Whooo boy. That strip has me all kindsa twitchy and goosebumpy right now. Pardon me while I spend ALL FUCKING DAY crying in a park now.
But seriously, well done, Blue, but wow this is right in the feels.
I take back everything I said about Sulla’s individuality. I love her again.
Your story and art are shaking something somewhere deep in my heart.
Thank you ^^
OOH MY GOD
Jeezus, Al. Please fuggin’ hug her already. You, too, Brendan. There’s some serious “heal/love your inner child” allusions going on here.
This comic is a masterpiece of storytelling. You’ve created something so magnificent, Blue.
http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-7-page-34/
“Brendan, come on. There IS no real me. Only my image and my actions. Nothing else MATTERS. And it never did.”
They were both wrong.
Therapist: “So, what brings you all to family therapy today?”
Brendan: “Well, I tried to copy the brain of my dying lover, and instead sorta kinda made a lovely half-clone robot daughter”
Sulla: “And feeling like a mistake I kinda sorta also tried to make a brain clone of their dead lover, and succeeded?”
Al: “My mom is my daughter and also me sorta”
Therapist: “I should have just become a geologist.”
Ah, but then they’d be stuck giving therapy to lesbian space rocks.
I suspected this outcome ever since reading Oh, Maker. It can be found on this site’s Extras page.
BABY NO
I just got caught up after not reading for a few years and I’m glad I did.
Sulla is so not a failure and I hope she realizes that and I hope Al figures out who he is and comes to grips with his fears.
I want this little family to be ok.
Alright y’all I’m gonna theorize- Ballerina and Dogbot are not real, some sort of mental projection from Al’s artificial brain, designed maybe as a personalized self-diagnostic, and to reintegrate him into the world when he was activated? Because think about it, whenever they show up Al is the only one there, except in the scene in the synth corridor where he chases the ballerina, but also no one else acknowledges her presence. In the forest above the frozen lake, they find him and appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as quick, no vehicle in sight. Meanwhile Sulla is searching from the air and takes longer to find him, plus doesn’t see dog and ballerina despite missing them by moments. Its totally possible that the car they drove him into town in at the beginning is self driving, being on the hover track and all. Why ballerina and dog robot specifically, I’m not sure. Could be two creations that meant a lot to him, his first prototype and his precious dancing ballerina, and thats why the diagnostic program chose their shapes.
Blue, was your portrayal of Al influenced by Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris? In his existential troubles at sudden reanimation under unknown motives, he reminds me quite a bit of Rheya (Harey in some translations), and his relationship with Brendan draws parallels to Rheya’s relation to Kris.
Yes, absolutely. The dynamic between the two main characters haa always been interesting to me – a person reunited with someone lost and finding them changed, and that lost person coming to terms with how they’ve changed, and the larger unknowable force that made it possible. It’s a great story.
I suppose strictly speaking the way this project has gone down the tubes does raise the extent to which you are a failure . . . But you’re not a failure, and you especially weren’t one three years ago.
Awww, no, no no.
Hello. And Bye.