Sep01
Courtney
Hey guys! Due to a bizarre illness, I didn’t have the energy or mental acuity to color this today, but you can expect the complete comic sometime very soon.
Happy Labor Dabor! YOU BETTER NOT BE WORKING.
The Fourth
Updated Mondays and Fridays!
The Fourth by Courtney Svatek and Victor Acuña is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Awww, Derk made the map? I knew there was a lot of heart put into it!
DOES HOMEWORK COUNT? I don’t think so, but I have plenty of that I’m in the middle of.
Hope you get to feeling better soon; bizarre illnesses are the worst kind.
I imagine there’s a little note on the bottom that says “I’m sorry we have to fight
“
Ok, so it isn’t the first encounter.
Derk is really lanky!
Blanks say “Phew” all the time.
Since he’s actually stepping over the invisible minion going poof, does that mean Blank knows how the respawning mechanic works?
Those things on Derk’s wrists are like the bangles from FFVII right?
Nope! We might flash back to THAT some day, but we wanted to set this prequel in a time where the norms had already been established.
Yeah, he did come out kind of leaner than usual in that fourth panel. I might have to go back and beef him up.
I had to add that in because otherwise he just appeared to be making a kissy face.
Well, the minion was there and poofed as he was stepping over it. But he might know from experience that they’re just invisible, not gone. I don’t know how savvy Blank is to all the inner workings of villainy.
Uh, sure! I’m woefully undereducated in Final Fantasy. Pretty much all my exposure comes from Kingdom Hearts.
Basically, the only armor in the game is little bracelets, and somehow they protect you from everything from swords to bullets to atomic lizards.
I saw it and I thought ‘Derk is clearly a poorly shaved gorilla. I mean he could walk on all fours with minimal effort!’
Sadly my workplace doesn’t believe in Labor Day, so I had to get to work…food won’t sell itself! But! At least I came home to a nice comic-good work as always Courtney…and by the by, hope you feel better soon!
Boo! I’m sorry! >_< But thanks. I do feel better now. It passed as quickly as it came... after losing a large chunk of my Sunday to sleeping it off though.
I don’t know if you intended it, or if it plays into a backstory that might get spoiled if you comfirmed/denied any of my thoughts on it but Derk seems sort of like a good guy on the bad guy side. Besides being one of the few “humans” I’ve seen in skarva’s employ he also has light magic which is generally associated with the side of ‘good’. His personality and look also seem like if I haven’t seen him walking with skarva, he’d fit right in with other heroes or even be the main one himself. Going more into things that you might have to ignore to keep from spoiling, since he seems like he could have easily been ‘good’ or even a hero at one point but doesn’t seem to have any bad feelings with skarva I’m guessing something happened where skarva helped him out or did something that seemed morally right even while being a villain which lead Derk to joining his side, probably a big back story.
I’ve had thoughts/theories of this in the past but seeing the scene in the last few panels just brought it back to mind even stronger than usual.
Well, you’re definitely on the right track regarding his character. Derk could have easily been a hero, but it’s more important to him to serve the people he loves than the gods or some abstract ideal like goodness or justice. And one of those people he cares about more than anything happens to be Skärva. Some day you’ll find out why that is!
Even with a map, Blank still managed to get lost in a dead end.
Or it was a map TO the castle instead of OF the castle.
Side note: Link needs to do more door-kicking in the Zelda series.
Well, to be fair to Blank, if you look here: http://thefourthcomic.com/?comic=ghost-busted You’ll see that there are two unexplored rooms and it isn’t clear which one leads to the boss room, since there are no doors drawn in.
Nah, poor Blanko is the only really specific parody character we have; let the poor child have something of his own to his name XD
True. I just really like door-kicking and would like to do it more.
Don’t wait for game developers! Do it in real life!
You know, I tend to get these to guys names mixed up. They both have short, one syllable names that seem to fit the other person better. Like “Blank”, for Derk’s blank eyes. Totally not judging you for your name choices PLEASEDON’THATEME.
Well, Blank’s name is supposed to evoke how the main character in adventure games can often be named by the player. If that helps. :3 http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/TheFourth?from=Main.TheFourth Check out “Hello, Insert Name Here”.
Yeeahh, is there a reason Derk has egg white eyes? He can clearly see, so it’s not a deformity. What’s up with that?
Well he’s not the only person running around Idenau with eyes like that, is he? Plus the long arms… You can draw your own conclusions. I think some people have figured it out.
Lurkin, minus curse it looks like. Various anatomical oddities covers a lot when it comes to god curses. He’s lacking the grey skin, the lack of body hair, the fangs, and the curse-ears.
No idea how he would be curse resistant though, but with the knowledge that the gods cursed every other Lurkin on the planet it makes more sense as to why he would work with cursed beings, even discounting the power of friendship.
Were that the case, it would imply an interesting result if the curse was lifted from Lurkins by Skärva fighting the Gods; suddenly every Lurkin is a Derk in terms of hair. Floyd evolves into . The Gods chose the ‘removal of body hair’ as an aspect of the curse for some reason or another, and it might have been because they used it like dwarves use beards, or Lurkin use ears.
Kagey, I think you tried to put in a link there and it didn’t work? I’m very curious as to what Floyd evolves into
Anyway that’s a great theory and I really like it. The truth is a bit simpler, however. I’m afraid we’re going to let you elaborate theorists down!
Good thing we’ve got plenty of surprises to reveal eventually…
The removal of body hair is just to make them a bit more alien. I wish the gods would curse me with that though. Shaving is a pain.
Ok yeah I’m not good at a href.
http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa353/kgy121/2013-10-28-part3page2811.png
Y’know what, you’ve made me realize how much I appreciate Floyd just the way he is.
I had to work on Labor day…
BUT YAY DERK
Boo. But yay!