Yeah, I guess that distance does qualify as closely surrounded. They’re lucky that none of their enemies seem to be armed with ranged weapons…or even just polearms. Fortunately for them, George Geekish’s economizing means that they may have countless opponents, but really only two different types – and both are armed with the most iconic weapons for their respective races. George would have loved to mix it up a bit more, but not at the price of having to print a third type of fold-ups. It cost him enough time with only the two types – minutes, at the very least, if not even a quarter of an hour.

And, just as fortunately, these highly economical fold-ups have one further drawback – their large, rectangular bases mean you can’t stack them very closely. So the monsters’ attempt at an overwhelming pile-up evolved into a massive traffic jam, instead. Even the Orcs and Trolls in the first row aren’t capable of getting into striking distance, although they’re close – those in the other ranks have no chance at all to contribute anything. Which, of course, also means that they can’t get injured or killed in turn – a fact that at least some of the more intelligent of them are gratefully aware of.

In case you feel that the cinematography in some of today’s panels has an unusual focus, you’re correct. Nolan’s regular cinematographer had to take a day off (unpaid, of course), and Nolan transferred someone from the other branch of his movie production business over. The branch that makes the NSFW movies. The new guy immediately groked what this scene was all about – with the small group surrounded by all of these hulking brutes. He was just a bit irritated that everybody was still clothed five minutes in – that was quite different from the way he had imagined the scene to develop. Anyway, the script called for some close-ups at the outset, to delay the reveal of the whole situation our heroes are in, and the new guy chose the focus for the close-up by habit…

And speaking of habits…yeah, nobody is really angry with Biff, anymore. That was different the first few times it happened, but at some point everybody had to accept that it wasn’t anything that Biff was really responsible for. Unlike all of his other mishaps, the annual New Year’s disaster is just something that needs to happen to keep the universe in balance.

More on Thursday.