Mind Control Comics Forum

Friday, March 7th, 2014.

Right To much information , but we need more :D

And the word of the day is "oops".

Sounds about right. This got intriguing very quickly. Not that it wasn't earlier, but only more so now.   :D

Continued great stuff from the SJI team.

So much going on simultaneously, so much of it linked in a tangled web.  Was Cherry in the car when Dani was run down?  Seems most likely, but why would she want Dani gone?  Or maybe she wanted to damage (or weaken) Erin, knowing that she wouldn't let Dani die?  Or maybe she wanted Mallory out of the way and nearly killing Dani was a mistake, since Dani was wearing the Tulane-branded clothing; after all, Mallory has an undetermined amount of supernatural power as well (and we haven't seen her since she asked Samedi to show her her enemy).

Convenient for Cherry that Adrian is out and there's so much distraction going on.  Inconvenient that Dani is awesome in every way, and can spot the problem when Erin's too upset to notice.

I still feel sorry for Cherry, though - it's not as though she doesn't have good cause to be upset with and bitter at Erin.

I know Cherry is supposed to be looking up the stairs at Erin in the last panel, but I can't help imagining her rolling her eyes at her own stupidity at letting that sleep. 

"I can't believe I fucked that up."

'Me and my big mouth' was just what we were going for in that panel...thanks!

I kind of think Cherry fucked up when Dani told her in 267 that the watch was destroyed in her accident and Cherry didn't say, "Oh, what accident was this?" She hasn't exactly been discreet regarding how much she knows about all the people in the house. The others could have assumed that Erin had told her a lot of this stuff, but that idea could easily have been dispelled by Erin - and this argument must have made it pretty plain that Erin and Cherry haven't been in touch for years.

It seems like Cherry's primary aim has been to convince Erin that they should rebuild the watch by planting doubts in her mind about Rain and also about Adrian. Although that kind of ties in with what Julian has requested, it isn't obvious why it would be necessary: the harem members do whatever Adrian tells them to, don't they? But Erin is Adrian's fiancée. And perhaps Adrian is seen as a bit wet...

It will be interesting to see what happens if Cherry is backed into a corner.

This 330 year old promise thing. Maybe Adrian has been unknowingly guided here to Kearsarge for that reason. And possibly what happened to Echo was part of that guiding. We suspect Claudia was instrumental in what happened to Echo. And the polaroids suggest Dani inducted Claudia. So... No, me neither. But why does Dani have specifically polaroids of the induction of Claudia? If Dani really was sent here to induct Erin, then what was Adrian guided here for? And what is here, exactly? And why is it called the Saint James Infirmary? (That one was due for being asked again.)

You say it all
But Question and think off my head

SJI- I 267
this we now know the Heart of the watch came from Wilmot (From the Collage? or Clock Tower? or tunnel?)

SJI- I 276 Cherry look is MY BIG Fuck Mouth Put in FOOT.

Is Cherry telling really truth? Or She want to take over the New York Harem and have Erin at her side.
Now make me think That Rain and Girl friend Marliese Know where the Shell came from or it's power.
I may say is that Rain was also park of the New Your Harem and Marliese.

May be Why Danielle was sent to Kearsarge, If we believe Cherry.

Why do Cherry want to take out Mallory? or I'm looking to much into it?
I also think that Adrian was Guided to Kearsarge and also the link of Mother and Father going this Wilmot collage?

Cherry's strategy for incapacitating Erin seems to have been to tell big lies, make HUGE accusations, but to anchor them to tiny damning bits of truth or truth approximate.

Good strategy.  Almost worked seamlessly.  However, seconds away from her goal, Cherry got overexcited, and this was just her most obvious of several mistakes.

Her tactic change on Adrian was another red flag.  She spent a good deal of...vehemence on arguing that Adrian was just like Jakob (getting support from Rain and Marliese), and then turns around and asks "What about Echo?" with quite a bit of detail she shouldn't be aware of if she were actually one of Jak's girls under Dani.  In fact, none of the iterations of Dani we've met so far remembers Echo.

Nobody else in the various factions outside the SJI seems aware of Rain at all, yet.  This seems to be interesting circumstantial evidence that Cherry is the person who sent Rain the clock and note.  Might she be a more dangerous adversary than the Kuplers? ???

Which brings me to a last question.  Before the final mistake, there seemed to be a lot of things wrong with the Missouri guilt trip.  Didn't Erin just say "I stayed to heal you, and then I ran," in 275?

If Cherry's continued whining is supposed to have any tang of legitimacy at all, WTF is with the healing question? ???  Erin just told her 45 seconds ago that she used enough healing energy to save her life before running from the Thing to save herself.  Oh, and no anger for mysyeriously UNHARMED Aiken whose idea the whole thing was?  Well, allegedly.

We haven't had any indication that the mysterious thing that didn't work out was Aiken's idea. In telling Cherry that she had not been serious about attempting it, Erin says that Aiken said he couldn't do it. I think the implication is that if he couldn't do it then they certainly weren't going to be able to do it. As far as we know, he wasn't there when Cherry attempted it.

Cherry's anger about the healing is that she was in hospital for two weeks and Erin didn't come to see her, let alone heal her. As far as we know Cherry never saw Erin again after the incident in the forest. My reading is that Cherry was serious - both about Erin and the magic. Erin didn't take things so seriously. When things got serious Erin ran. Cherry feels betrayed by Erin. Or at least, that's the button she's pushing.

272 panel 4.  "The only reason you're alive is because I healed you."

"And then you ran..." [followed by nonsensical bitching]

Then, in 276, Cherry asks the question "Why didn't you heal me?" and then makes her tactical error.  That question makes no sense in the context of the earlier conversation.

I'd forgotten they were apparently alone when Cherry did what she did.  I'm afraid I've been holding Aiken's expression when we first met him in the Guest Pages against him.

However, if Aiken's more powerful than Erin or Cherry (or was at the time of The Incident), why is Cherry not griping about his inaction?  No healing magic for him to use?  Or, is her whole narrative complete b.s.?

My take is that Aiken told them - or Erin - that he couldn't do it and that it shouldn't be attempted. I get the impression Aiken was a guiding influence for Erin. (I suspect he guided her to Wilmot - hence his expression in the guest page.) It isn't necessarily that he was more powerful (healing seems to be Erin's special thing) but, you know, someone presumably taught Shakespeare English.

Here in 276 Cherry is specifically talking about the time when she was in hospital and Erin didn't come to see her. Yes, Erin had probably saved Cherry's life, but she could have completed the job by coming to the hospital. And let's face it, the guilt trip is working: Erin does feel guilty about what she did, or didn't do.

So that is Aiken in the black shirt (guest page 2) with a smile on his face?

Guest page 10 Erin run out of the woods and with blood all over her and may be her or Cherry blood.
SJI- G 10 May be Erin Nightmare

next Was Cherry was in the car or driveing the car that hit Danielle?
Why Cherry go after Mallory with the car? if that she was after.

It looks increasingly likely. See also 256 - it appears Erin was in a sexual relationship with him. It also seems likely that the other woman in g2 was Cherry.


Erin's clothing was torn and she was bloodied in g10 and also 272. I can't get past the idea that panel one of 227 is Erin's dream. Presumably Erin was aware that Cherry was still alive even though she didn't visit her in hospital? I mean, Cherry did survive, didn't she? She didn't die? Cherry was - I guess - first introduced to us in a spooky way in the last panel of 232.

227 is my favourite page of SJI so forgive me for revisiting it once again. It has Laura emerging from Pink Clouds as a happy harem girl. There's the watch being resurrected. The back drop is the road where Dani was resurrected. The chicken is dead, but looks a lot like one we've seen recently that isn't. If that's Rain with the clarinet, well Polly must have died a long time ago. So is that a dead woman walking in panel one?


If Cherry was going after Mallory, when and how did she find out that it was Dani she hit? Was it a little joke that Mallory was absent this evening? Almost the first thing we saw Cherry ask was "Is Mallory here?" and when Dani said she might be back late Cherry said "That's a pity."

ok if going back to SJI-I 227
Panel One: Now well it's Erin after healing Cherry
Panel two: know is Laura
Panel three dead chicken may be part of Mallory
Panel Four Now we know is Denielle make the watch
Panel five to me is Echo
Panel Six is Erin and Mallory in bed with Adrian There are six lags

You may be right on 256 but can be any maie.

But Erin had her trademark haircut by the time of the incident (272). While the hair colour in 227 doesn't look like either of theirs, its shape doesn't look like Erin's, while it could be Cherry's.

That said, it isn't clear what Cherry's hairstyle was like in 272. 256 suggests Erin changed her hairstyle not that long before she came to Wilmot. In g2 the other woman has her hair styled a bit like Erin's, which may itself be suggestive of something.

The other idea I had for this panel was Mallory. We know something bad happened to Mallory's friend Charlotte (g21). Presumably she died because - hello - here's Baron La Croix. Did Mallory do something about it? (Did it involve the chicken?)


Indeed, but Mallory's chicken is still alive. So is this the past or a possible future?


But is this the past or a possible future? I accept it may be Dani making the watch in the first place, but we're presented with it on the night the watch was destroyed. And the idea that someone would want the watch to be rebuilt follows the very next day.

(There is an interesting idea of a watch as an instrument of enslavement and the parallel or directly connected idea of the fulfilment of a 330 year old promise. The watch being broken interrupts the flow of events - time is standing still. And, well, it is a holiday weekend in the story.)


We've been here before. This makes no sense to me. It's not an oboe and it appears to be quite an old instrument. But no matter - you may be right.


I think the point of this panel is that Adrian is awake and thinking while everyone else is still asleep. My first take on the page was that the other panels were the various thoughts going through Adrian's head, but the chicken, say, would be hard to explain. The title is a quote from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, which starts at daybreak with the audience being told what various characters are dreaming about. That gives us the possibility that what we're looking at in 227 are the dreams of SJI characters. If Adrian is awake then we can't see his dream. All these other things are going on and he's got to deal with them.


Could be. It could actually be a female I suppose (but probably not one in this comic). But someone just bought Erin her ceremonial sword (or dagger, or whatever) for Christmas. It's right there, like it's just been opened. So someone with a working knowledge of magic bought her a present and it looks like maybe she's saying thank you. At this point we only know of one male character from Erin's past who fits that bill. But yes, that's just guessing.

If I may interject here just for a moment.

First off, I'm indescribably annoyed that you can't simply type in the web address of a page and get it.  Used to be you could do that, but not anymore.  Anyone know why?

Why are we sure this is Erin limping into a Walmart after healing Cherry and fleeing The Thing.  I must also say that Laura looks very confident in her panel--are we sure that's present and not a glimpse into the future?  I know next to nothing about wind instruments, but I tend to lean toward this being Echo's mouth.

With regard to the Watch--I honestly don't know.  It could be Dani piecing the housing together after getting home from the hospital, but it can't be her asembling The Watch for the first time, or reassembling it now since there are smears of not quite dried blood on some of the components being examined.

I like the read on dreams, and Adrian awake having to deal with everything floating around, but I seriously doubt Dani's view of making the watch or remaking it would look Panel 4.

227 isn't listed simply under its number, it's called 'the principality of the sky.'  Just go to 226 and then click forward.

Oops, that's fixed.

We're not. It really doesn't look like Erin to me. It could be Cherry. Or it could be someone else's dream, or whatever these are.


This was Saturday night - after Adrian told Laura about the watch and reassured her that he hadn't used Pink Clouds on her. She is very confident, and stepping out of a pinkish cloud.


It may be her mouth. Although it doesn't appear to match her lipstick colour of choice, pre- or post- enslavement in the New York harem. And she plays the oboe, using an oboe mouthpiece. I'm no expert on musical instruments but that looks a lot like a clarinet mouthpiece and nothing like an oboe mouthpiece. I actually think it looks like Erin's mouth. And I could come up with some reason for her to be having such a dream. But where would that leave panel one?


Or perhaps there is something red glowing inside it, illuminating the edges?

There are two mouthpiece One look like clarinet or sax and one thiner one that most people think of.
there is one go over the thin one.
sometime make it eazy to play the oboe

But Echo doesn't appear to have any problem playing the oboe with a proper oboe mouthpiece (146).

Mose Musician also can play more than one woodwind instrument
also a diffent Mouthpiece give a diffnt sound too.
20 year work with a 27 piece orchestra
I did not do the drawing
I did not see a woodwind instrument in Rain house Or I have see draw in?

It can't all be currently happening.  If it's flashes of past present and future, it's a tough call what's past, what's present and what's future.  The chicken is about Mallory; we've had Laura identified (though her outfit looks nothing like anything we've ever seen her in and gives off an entirely different presence and personality than we've ever seen, even when she's fabulously happy; we can see pieces of the Watch, but that doesn't look like glow to me, so that seems to be current.

Like I say, we've been here before. The question I'd ask is: if this is Echo, why draw her playing with this mouthpiece? If it were just a mouth playing an oboe, we'd say: "That's Echo. What's that doing here?" Frankly we'd be none the wiser for knowing it was Echo. I don't see that it adds anything to draw her using a different mouthpiece. Except it opens up the possibility that it isn't her. None of which is to say it isn't her or it can't be her. But I could point out that we didn't see any guns... anywhere... until they suddenly appeared on the kitchen table. Maybe it's a joke and it's Sue - she's a musician.

 Sue is violin musician

A quick thought on what Cherry might have been trying to accomplish.  Way back in #198/200 Erin performed some kind of ritual that looked like it was designed to protect the Infirmary.  In #206, the driver of a car that looks like the one that hit Danielle finds the shattered casing of the Watch.  Later that night, in #210 what looks like the same car pulls up outside the Infirmary, and in #215 the driver of the car is driven away by what looks like the mystical protection Erin set up.

One way to read this sequence of events is that Julian found the broken Watch, immediately headed over to the Infirmary to try to get it fixed, and was driven off.  So he went and picked up Cherry in the hopes she could use her leverage with Erin to undercut her defense of the Infirmary and the Watch expert it contains.

20 years with a 27-piece orchestra and you've never seen a mouth-bow...?

The fact remains that any female character in the entire comic could have a clarinet (or whatever) tucked away somewhere. When we're presented with a picture of a woman blowing into such a thing, Echo is of course the absolutely obvious candidate. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily her.


The problem with this as an explanation is that it made perfect sense up to the moment that Adrian just happened to bump into Julian (who just happened to be waiting for him at the exact place he was going to). Julian didn't need to get past Erin's magic to get the watch to Adrian. I think Cherry is going after Erin for a reason, but I don't think it can be quite that. I did ask somewhere, I think, what was the driver going to do if he'd got in on Saturday night? Presumably not kill Dani. A thought I keep coming back to is that the connection between Julian and Cherry is entirely circumstantial. It seems clear enough, but it may not be. Especially if there's more than one watch.