Saint James Infirmary 300: More, Please, 2.

[Daphne]

Saturday, May 24th!

[laguna85]

Your 300 th Party time 

[Daphne]

And a special note from everyone here at MCC to thank our readers for sticking with us through issue 300! It's been quite the wild ride so far, and we hope it gets wilder here on out...

[Haight]

I think we like it wild 

[Haight]

Uhhh... who is that?  Might be Pearl just off the necklace, but we've never seen her wearing that particular one.  Maybe she's got a selection. 

On the other hand, what other improbably buxom jewish girls are in this story?  It's just been a while since we've seen her up close and the art has changed a bit since then.

[GodWilling]

Although she's certainly got Jacqui's... hair, I didn't think she looks like Miriam. (Although as you say, what Miriam would look like in that pose and rendered by these artists at this stage in the comic's history is hard for us to judge. And some other back-covering remarks.) As I took her to be a Wiccan character, I was assuming it's someone we haven't met. Or perhaps it's someone we have met in some parallel universe. Perhaps the mirror signifies such. Or perhaps it's just showing us her bottom, which is either way much appreciated.

Perhaps the presumably three parts of The Gig will elucidate. That usually very much happens. Certainly that title is suggestive of a Jacqui and Pearl related tale. So again, it's bound to be that.

[laguna85]

I think it's may be Miriam, She not wearing the same necklace, Not same in SJI-88.
There is a picture of Star of David with a circle around it.
Look at SJI-88 and This SJI-300 the body type is the same.


we may have to wait two week to get answer. I do love this splash page.
 Plutonian Knight have Nice Vacation break

[Daphne]

For crying out loud, of course it's Miriam!

[GodWilling]

As I say, no offence to the artists but it's 120 pages since Miriam appeared in the main comic and 179 since we saw her face - she's not the obvious candidate to appear out of nowhere for the 300th page. And the only thing she's wearing isn't the item she's normally wearing, and at this resolution it looks more like a thing other characters have been seen wearing.

Also, I'd have thought Miriam was way too sensible to locate a mirror that close to a radiator.

[laguna85]

For crying out loud, of course it's Miriam!

laughing out lond and thank you

[Haight]

In particular (and in my defense lol), maybe it's the angle but it looks like her jaw/chin is wider than we've seen Pearl's previously.  Also the somewhat harsh use of shadows make her look, *ahem* older than we assume Pearl to be.  

On the other hand... I'm really hoping this means we're closer to sexytimes involving Pearl.  And hopefully concurrently Jacqui.  Mebe get Erin in there too, just so we can get a good look at all the biggest racks in this story.  

On the other, other hand, what do you guys think the over/under on various forms of MC is for Pearl?  She's already being affected by the clocktower, it seems, and while we don't know 100% how that works it *does* seem to induce a bond of some sort if one gets busy while under the effects (see: Adrian's parents, the Honeywell twins).  Possibly she could get MCed by one of the villains in the series, and it falls to the harem to unsway her - which of course means making her part of the harem.  Last of my ideas, and possibly my favorite, is that a combination of Jacqui's programming making her want to expand the harem and her general frustration with her daughter leads her to use pink clouds, the pink clouds 'antidote,' a reconstructed watch, or any combination thereof to 'fix' it. 

[laguna85]

As I say, no offence to the artists but it's 120 pages since Miriam appeared in the main comic and 179 since we saw her face - she's not the obvious candidate to appear out of nowhere for the 300th page. And the only thing she's wearing isn't the item she's normally wearing, and at this resolution it looks more like a thing other characters have been seen wearing.

Also, I'd have thought Miriam was way too sensible to locate a mirror that close to a radiator.

SJI-88 we see Miriam face

SJI- 101 is the first time we see Rain face and her name
SjI - 120 is Rain face
SJI- 10 not good like of sue face
SJI-179 is SUE"  aka Phạm Thị Suong face

[GodWilling]

To clarify my post:-

300 - 120 = 180 Miriam running across the scene behind Q and Kanti - the last time we saw her.
300 - 179 = 121 Miriam carrying a tropical fish - the last time we could see her face.

But... 179 is Hitomi.

Will The Gig relate to the polaroid in 101?

I need to get my head back around the Jacqui/Pearl storyline - but it's late and my brain isn't working.

[GodWilling]

As I said, I've lost track of where we're at with the Pink Clouds / Q / Jacqui / Pearl/Miriam storyline. So I thought I'd try to gather things up a bit.

Q may or may not have invented Pink Clouds but either way he was producing it.

In 221 Yves said it was Q's private project and Q never told him or Jacqui about it. Jacqui also said she didn't know what Q was producing. But g17 suggests Q's lab wasn't exactly off limits to Yves.

The guest pages suggest Pearl had a thing for Q but g18 shows him intervening to stop her taking Pink Clouds accidentally. So it appears he wasn't at least initially intending to have sex with her.

But believing Jacqui and Pearl to be away, he did have sex with a very willing blonde who looked a lot like Katie but was apparently called Annie. (If Annie was under the influence of Pink Clouds, she was still sufficiently aware to be concerned about Jacqui finding out.)

But Pearl wasn't away. (Were Jacqui and Pearl supposed to be going to a gig in Concord?) Was Pearl hoping to have sex with Q that evening? Either way she saw Q having sex with Annie. When Jacqui told Adrian that Pearl had got Q busted, this was the scene used to illustrate that idea (93). So it would appear to be a key scene.

Whatever happened at that moment, it appears that Q used Pink Clouds on Pearl and the upshot was that she appeared not to be upset with Q for cheating on Jacqui - or for cheating on her, as she might have perceived it.

While Pearl is apparently under the influence (g20), there is a conversation between her and Q, and we're shown the start of a sexual encounter between them. But the speech bubbles are unattributed: the conversation and the scene being played out are not in synch. So did Q actually have sex with Pearl, or are we looking at her fantasy? Or are we looking at a suggestion Q planted in her mind?

Unless she was acting, it appears Pearl is susceptible to Pink Clouds. But it appears that Jacqui isn't (250(!)).

Jacqui doesn't believe Pearl had sex with Q (93). (So that isn't the significance of the scene with Q and Annie and Pearl.)

Pearl told the authorities that Jacqui handled the distribution of Pink Clouds. It was apparently Q's lawyers who got her off. 221 appears to show Q packing the stuff into a shipping box, which doesn't prove much but is suggestive.

So if what Pearl said wasn't true, did she believe what she was saying or was she deliberately lying? If she believed it, was that because someone other than Q was using Pink Clouds on her? And if she didn't, was she trying to shift the blame from Q onto her mother?

Q went to jail on a relatively minor charge. Jacqui promised to wait for him (224). When she says things changed while he was inside, it isn't clearly established that she's simply talking about her becoming part of Adrian's harem (225).

Upon release Q came back to Kearsarge, but it was left to Rain to tell Jacqui he was back (101). If he has made any contact with Jacqui at all, we know nothing about it. With remarkable speed he has taken up with Kanti instead. And it appears Jacqui did not expect his return to town to be inevitable (103) and she wasn't happy about it.

And of course almost simultaneously, Miriam has turned up too. And she may just possibly be taking an interest in Q's affairs (180). And now she's incredibly horny too. Is that just the effect of the belltower? Or is the fact that Q has created a powerful aphrodisiac in some way connected? The belltower has been on for days; her words suggest Miriam only started to feel the heat tonight.

[Haight]

Thanks for the roundup.  Yeah, we're still a bit unclear as to the circumstances in which PC was used on Pearl... and what the consequences of that were.