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.
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 after his initial arrest. As 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 grenade instead, and she agrees. The Soldier subsequently pulls the pin out of the grenade and uses it as an engagement ring while throwing the grenade behind Zhanna. 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 never 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, who is aware of Elizabeth's actions and the fact that "Elizabeth" is just an alias, arrives and revives her using his 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 having an empty stock of the miracle gravel when she was actually hiding 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 inquires Scout about how he can afford to raise that many kids alone, Scout reveals that he won a lawsuit against the city of Teufort for the numerous injuries he had sustained there. 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 with their families and pets, 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 as they are 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
- Name reveals
- The Engineer addresses Miss Pauling as Flo, revealing her first name. She was previously only known as "F. Pauling".
- The Scout's last name, Willis, is seen on the letters in the Spy's hand, as well as on the mailbox. Previously only his first name, Jeremy, was known.
- 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 18
- "You know, Diego... they say pain is weakness leaving the body..." is a reference to one of Soldier's voice commands.
- Page 44
- While the page's artwork is mostly identical to page 256 of The Naked and the Dead, the line Miss Pauling delivers is actually seen on page 252 while she is kneeling.
- Page 82
- The statue showcases the other mercenary teams of Mann Co., with Team Ajax, Team B, Team Citadel, Team D, and Team Echelon. The bottom of the statue has a ripped-off plaque, likely for Team Fortress.
- Page 95
- Scout is referring to his hallucination of Miss Pauling in A Cold Day in Hell.
- Page 110
- Several books can be seen in the foreground:
- The Big Book of Knowing When Rodin Was Born - Auguste Rodin was the sculptor of The Thinkerand was born nearly 2 decades after the time this panel takes place in.
- Bronze vs. Alabaster: Knowing the Difference - The Thinker is made of bronze; alabaster is a mineral and a soft rock used for carvings and as a source of plaster powder.
- So You've Just Purchased Rodin's Father's The Thinker - This implies in the Team Fortress universe, Auguste Rodin's father made a version of The Thinker before Auguste himself.
- Page 119
- A few names can be seen amongst the gravestones: Algernon Mann, Ezekiel Mann, Jedidiah Mann, Augustus Mann, Horatio Mann, as well as a "W. Mann" with the second initial cut off.
- Page 131
- In-game screenshots of maps can be found on the monitors (from left to right): Viaduct, Steel (point B), Egypt, Badlands, Upward, and Foundry (middle point).
- Page 135
- The building blocks are in the shape of 2Fort.
- Page 206
- Like page 131, the monitors show in-game screenshots of maps (from left to right): Upward, Foundry, Badlands, Steel, Upward, Viaduct, Badlands (twice), Egypt (top), Steel (bottom), Foundry (top), Badlands (bottom), Egypt, Badlands, and Viaduct.
- Page 248
- The photo Soldier shows is the hidden Mann family photo from the first Scream Fortress Update. The Soldier's thumb is not positioned high enough to block the body of the mysterious middle figure, although this is likely an oversight.
- Page 262
- Megatherium is an extinct genus of ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Late Pleistocene time periods. Its name is Greek for "great beast".
- Mictlān is the underworld of Aztec mythology.
- Page 282
- Soldier is referring to his and the Scout's expedition to find the Heavy in A Cold Day in Hell.
- 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.
- Page 301
- Merasmus lists that the Soldier:
- Broke into his home and killed Tom Jones (Ring of Fired page 41);
- Framed him for the murder (Ring of Fired page 43), although it is Miss Pauling who was responsible, as she was disguised as a policeman and tricked him into checking Tom Jones' pulse;
- Let him rot in a jail for seven years (Grave Matters page 5), and;
- Let him get tortured and killed by the Korean Mafia (this issue, page 301).
- Page 305
- The Spy's letters have all been left unread by the Scout through the timeskip.
- What appears to be the names of the Scout's former wives are striked out on his mailbox: Willis Mitchell, Willis Graham, and Willis Gibson.
- Lynn is a municipality in Massachusetts, United States; Lynn Street is a real street located in Boston's West End.
- Page 309
- A portrait of Scout's mother and a young Scout can be seen on the left wall. The full illustration was drawn by Tiana Oreglia, one of the comic's artists.
- Page 313
- The Spy hesitates before calling himself the Scout's "friend from work", writer Jay Pinkerton mentions in an email that Tanya is the Spy's "grand-daughter", meaning he avoided stating that he is her grandfather.
- Page 327
- The attendees of the Scout's family gathering are most of the playable characters and their families/partners, from left to right:
- The Scout (with his four kids offscreen) and the Spy.
- The Demoman with his mother Mrs. Tilly Degroot, and the sentient Eyelander (above the Heavy).
- The Heavy with his family: his mother and his sisters, Yana (above the Heavy's mother), Zhanna and Bronislava (next to the Medic).
- The Medic, ready to carve the turkey with a Bonesaw; his grown-up baboon from The Naked and the Dead page 256 (top left, hanging from the curtain); and Archimedes, sitting on top of the Eyelander.
- The Pyro and the Dalmatian puppy (now grown up) from Ring of Fired page 66, to the right of the turkey.
- The Soldier, with his two children General Patton Doe (held by Yana) and Georgia Washington Doe (to the left of Zhanna).
- The Sniper and the Engineer.
- The ghosts of Tom Jones and Merasmus, presumably haunting a brick from Merasmus' old house (top right).
- Along with an assortment of Sandviches, a can of Captain Dan's Army Surplus Soup is held by the Soldier, along with a large surplus under the right-side table.
- The cupcakes beside the left wall are team-colored red and blue.
- The decorations on the left wall include paper cutouts of several projectiles: a rocket, stickybomb, and the ball from the Sandman.
Trivia
- Page 35
- Soldier's kids are named after two famous figures from United States history: George S. Patton, a famous general in the United States army and George Washington, the founding father and first president of the United States.
- Page 330
- The last scene of Hale and Maggie fighting cheetahs has been the ending since the first comic issue. The last line spoke is a reference to a Saxton Hale postcard.[1]
- The fourth wall break at the end of the comic was inspired by writer Erik Wolpaw watching the finale of Batman: The Brave and the Bold with his son.[1]
- Tiana Oreglia, one of the comic's artists, explained that Scout's mother is absent from the Christmas party due to the fact that she has many of her other children besides Scout to attend to.[2]
