The Days Have Worn Away
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| The Days Have Worn Away | |
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| Comic Strip Info | |
| Released: | December 20th, 2024 |
| Number of pages: | 330 |
| Artists: | Heather "makani" Campbell Bernardo Brice Brea Foster Tiana Oreglia |
| Writers: | Jay Pinkerton Erik Wolpaw |
| Colorists: | Maren "rennerei" Marmulla Ira Crosby |
The Days Have Worn Away (also known as Team Fortress Comics #7) is a comic released on December 20th, 2024. It is the final issue of a seven-part comic series, picking up where The Naked and the Dead left off.
Contents
Synopsis
The comic opens in 1979, seven years after the defeat of the TFC team in 1972. Merasmus is revealed to have been sent to the Badlands Correctional Institute, a prison with a perimeter littered with the remains of attempted escapees. Another prisoner, named Diego, is apologizing to Merasmus for running a card hustle rivaling the one of Merasmus. Diego, aware of his history as a magician, is frightened at the thought of crossing Merasmus off. Merasmus moves to deal with Diego by choking him, but Soldier, Zhanna, and their two children General Patton Doe and Georgia Washington Doe dig into Merasmus' cell. T-Bone, another one of Merasmus' cellmates, attempts to intervene, but Georgia snaps his neck. The family is there to free Merasmus so that he could act as their babysitter, but Merasmus is reluctant to leave his fellow prisoners behind. He only relents when Soldier notifies him that the Korean mafia is after him for unpaid debts.
The story then cuts back to seven years ago as Soldier recaps to Merasmus about what happened. Miss Pauling delivers a victory speech to the dying TFC Heavy, Soldier announces to Heavy his intentions to marry and start a family with Zhanna. Soldier gets down on one knee, offering a grenade while asking Heavy for his sister's hand in marriage, to which he says no. Soldier turns to Zhanna to offer her the greande instead, and she agrees. Heavy objects as Soldier does not get paid and that he lives in a cave, but they marry anyway. Soldier reveals that the cave he lives in is lined with "gold", but Heavy recognizes it as Australium. Miss Pauling snatches the piece away and prepares to take it to the Administrator in hopes of receiving a promotion, hiding news of Soldier's Australium from Saxton Hale. Hale decides to go take back Mann Co., albeit without Maggie, who ditched him. He steals Miss Pauling's plane and strands the mercenaries, leaving them with no other choice but to fly a rickety aircraft. They fly to where Engineer is at, but are forced to eject from the plane before they could land it and parachute down.
After Miss Pauling expresses urgency to meet with the Administrator, Engineer leads them to a mysterious door that takes them to a cavern underneath. He remains behind, seeing it unreasonable as his grandfather and father had not gone past that door. Fearing possible death as they descend into the cavern, Scout confesses to Miss Pauling that he had decided to move on from pursuing romance with her, stating that he began to realize that there are more women out in the world during their flight. Miss Pauling quips that those women would be hotter than her, and they bump fists.
In a flashback to a cold winter day in the 1820s, a young Elizabeth arrives at Zepheniah Mann's mansion to become his governess. Zepheniah informs her that the job will involve molding his two sons, Redmond and Blutarch, to become titans of industry until the stronger brother kills the other and becomes worthy to inherit the Mann fortune. 27 years later, in Teufort, New Mexico, USA, a dying Zepheniah signs his will. Elizabeth reveals that she had lied to Zepheniah about the land he had purchased and vowed to have his sons fight forever without either of them emerging victorious. Elizabeth whispers one last thing to Zepheniah; he passes shortly after. His body is returned to his manor where it is buried outside his family mausoleum and in a small, unremarkable grave.
In the year that followed, Elizabeth slowly began to lose the will to live, eventually deciding to commit suicide by hanging herself. Gray Mann stops her, who is aware of Elizabeth's actions and the fact that "Elizabeth" was just an alias. Elizabeth hangs herself, but is revived back to life using Gray's own life extending machine. When inquired about the yellow "miracle gravel" Zepheniah left behind for her, she disregards it as worthless fool's gold, until Gray informs her that it is actually a new element capable of extending the human lifespan well beyond natural expectancy (as he just demonstrated by reviving her). She sends Gray away by lying about an empty stock of the miracle gravel when she actually had an exorbitant amount, and proceeded to exhume Zepheniah's body that night.
Back in the present, the mercenaries find a young Administrator speaking menacingly to a resurrected Zepheniah, who is strapped to a harness that had been injecting him with Australium, and the Administrator had forced him to watch the never-ending war between RED and BLU for the past century. So much time had passed to the point that the Administrator does not even remember her reasons for bringing Zepheniah back from the dead. She asks Miss Pauling if she had brought her more Australium as instructed, but Miss Pauling hides her piece away and denies. The Administator begins to age rapidly, leading her to taunt Zepheniah one last time and declare that spending the past century torturing him was worth it. Exhausting any Australium they had left, both of their bodies crumbled away to dust. Miss Pauling is the last to leave the room; she speaks with the Engineer again, who advises her to mine Soldier's cave for every deposit of Australium present and commit it to the deepest aquatic trench she could find, to which she asks if he knows any deep aquatic trenches.
The story jumps back to seven years after, in Gwangju, South Korea. A tied-up Soldier had been recapping the events as Merasmus was being tortured by the Korean mafia, which ultimately resulted in his death. Merasmus' ghost remains in the room, but only Soldier can see him, and the Korean mafia begin torturing Soldier. Heavy and Sniper barge into the room and confront the mafia, but learn that Merasmus' debt totaled to only 12,000 won, equivalent to 17 U.S. dollars. Heavy pays the mafia with a $20 bill, which frees Soldier. Merasmus also escapes by haunting a brick which Soldier then carries out in his pants. They then head back to Merasmus' burnt-down house to collect a brick and allow Tom Jones to linger in the living world together with Merasmus in Soldier's pants.
A drunken Saxton Hale daydreams about a past adventure with Maggie when Mr. Bidwell wakes him to sign documents. Hale had taken back Mann Co. from a now-14-year-old Olivia Mann, who was demoted to a desk secretary. Both of them hate their positions; Olivia disliked being part of her father's plans of world domination, so Hale promptly fires her. Overjoyed, Olivia hugs Hale and leaves the room, but Hale is reminded by Bidwell that she is in his custody. Hale also resigns from Mann Co., naming Bidwell the new CEO and Mr. Reddy the new owner. He decides to reunite with Maggie to rejuvenate his life of adventure.
Scout—now a single father of many children—has invited all the mercenaries to his home in Boston, USA for the holidays. Spy is the first to arrive, and when he inquired Scout about how he can afford to raise that many kids alone, Scout reveals that he won a lawsuit against the city for numerous injuries he had sustained. Spy greets one of Scout's children, Tanya, who ran up to them and introduces himself as her father's friend from work, before gifting her his balaclava. The remaining mercenaries and their families, alongside the Eyelander and the ghosts of Merasmus and Tom Jones, arrive soon after. The reader is the last to arrive at the party, and Scout proclaims that they wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything without our support.
Many decades later, in the current day, an elderly Hale and Maggie take on a pack of cheetahs cornered on a cliff. The comic concludes with Hale asking Maggie, "What's the matter, Mags...You wanna live forever?".
Pages
All pages of the "The Days Have Worn Away" comic.
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Notes
- Page 5
- The third cover shows several strange blueprints scattered on the floor: these include a Swiss-Army flintlock Pistol, a Gatling gun, a prosthetic robot hand, a wheeled "crawling baby" Gatling gun, a double-sided beam gun, and a gelatin dessert with a Sandvich inside, among other things.
- Page 292
- Heavy mentions that 12,000 won is 17 US Dollars. However, in 1979, 12 thousand South Korean won was actually 19.76 USD.
