The Dreadful -- Chapter 5
 

Page 107!

Flashbacks! Cliffhangers! Cormac McCarthy references! Kit and Poe as school girls (which makes what Kit is reading really odd based on their ages here)!

We're gonna have a three page update this week too. Which is good, right?


(bonus points to anyone who knows what book Kit is reading from. Hint: It's the book I finished reading right before I started The Dreadful.)

Kit looks really weird in a skirt, especially since I always thought Poe was the girlier of the two.

Well, they're both wearing skirts, only one is short the other long. It still fits with my perception of the characters.

Oh, so they were. Poe's looked like jeans at first. Sorry.

Yeah, Kit's got a kind of anime sailor suit going on. Poe does too, actually, but like Dongs pointed out she has a long skirt on rather than a short pleated one (also Poe is wearing long sleeves).

It might seem odd that they would wear those kinds of things since they look so anime, but I did some research on clothing and sailor-suit style outfits did exist in the U.S around the late 1800s/early 1900s. Though I think they were designed for much younger girls (I didn't kill myself doing research, I just googled some pictures and found a site and ....there ya go).

So, I guess I'm somewhat historically accurate but not perfect. Ah well! :D

Girls having access to sailor schoolgirl outfits and pleated skirts makes me think of some kind of Wild West Sailor Moon combo...

The Dreadful being unconcerned with accuracy makes all sorts o' things possible.

So I guess the only question now is what manner of hilarious Mooman prayers will Boozloaf say when getting caught in a hostage situation.

I'm gonna throw a random guess at the book being Blood Meridian since you mention that one a lot. I really ought to read more Cormac McCarthy stuff. The Road was just aces as hell.

Yeah, it's from Blood Meridian :)

Blood Meridian seems like the kind of book someone would either really like (if they can stomach it) or really hate.

It's definitely not something your average school girl would read (and certainly not Kit), but I figured it'd be fun to mention it in the comic. It's sort of a combination shout-out. It's a shout-out to Cormac McCarthy and Blood Meridian, and it's also a shout-out to Jeff Smith, who frequently referenced Moby Dick in his comic "Bone" (which was also a kind of fantasy story).

Moby Dick and Blood Meridian are sometimes compared, for instance:

" In the entire range of American literature, only Moby-Dick bears comparison to Blood Meridian. Both are epic in scope, cosmically resonant, obsessed with open space and with language, exploring vast uncharted distances with a fanatically patient minuteness. Both manifest a sublime visionary power that is matched only by still more ferocious irony. Both savagely explode the American dream of manifest destiny, of racial domination and endless imperial expansion. But if anything, McCarthy writes with a yet more terrible clarity than does Melville.
—Steven Shaviro, "A Reading of Blood Meridian""

(that's from the Wiki article on Blood Meridian)

(McCarthy writing "terrible" clarity is...very accurate. Blood Meridian is just a heavy book.)

A quick question for you, and sorry if you answered this before (I don't remember you addressing this), but I was wondering if Kit and Poe are twins.

Just something that has been sitting at the back of my mind since the scene where Kit killed the guy with the bag over his head.

Yup. They're twins.