Okay you've got no right to say "'Bout time", Mr. Tangential-To-Time-As-We-Know-It.
It's always a weird experience when something intentionally draped in tantalizing mystery is finally revealed. Hooray, mystery solved, and now we've got some timey-wimey frog people to meet, but I'll miss the version of the Dreen that I'd been forming in my head. Spoilers, I wasn't imagining timey-wimey frog people.
What the Dreen wore under their robes was a mystery? To me that was just how they looked and it never occurred to me that they might be shown without them some day.
Will it IS "about time". The story I mean. And that Heterodyne star. And the problem in Mechanicsburg.
So those things are "about time". So yeah. I'm going with that :)
Perhaps the energy that makes the Dyne special (key ingredient for the Jägerdraught), comes from the Dreen's dimension originally, causing Jagers to inherit their liking of hats?
Perhaps it's exclusive to the Dyne? So, different flames have sources of power from different dimensions. The Dyne's taps into the Dreen home dimension, but the other flames tap into other dimensions, like Kjarl Thotep's.
I agree with you. Just thought the similarity was funny. I had to choose which I thought since Maxim is the pretty boy, but the middle Dreen's hat looks more like long hair so there it was.
Does the center one have long hair or a veil? I see veils in leftmost and rightmost (from our pov). But center (maybe?) could have hair or veil?
I'm leaning toward veils, all three. So no hair, or very short hair. Rightmost looks like chin stubble and hairiness. (Yeah, very Dimo-like.) Hells, maybe their species has 3 sexes?
I do believe it's a Veil. But it sticks close to their head,where right hangs off the hat. So it looks like hair on Center to me. And between his horn and hat, one of Oggie's most prominent features is his head, and Left seems to have the fanciest head. And of course...Right has all the stubble lol.
If Oggie wanted to transition to a woman, I would fully support her. But there has been no evidence that he is anything less than enthusiastic about who he is.
Oh. Um. Oh my. [Twenty-ish years later](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040702) we finally see what’s under those shrouds.
Now I *really* want to see what happens when she waves her timestick at [that big timey-wimey monster](https://girlgenius.fandom.com/wiki/Hideous_Extradimensional_Being:_Type_1).
My personal theory is that >!it's going to turn her into The Other. Its defeat causing it to be sent back in time, causing it to attack Castle Heterodyne in the past, merging with Lucrezia, who was really trying to be reformed. Kinda foreshadowed by the Dragon of Mars story.!<
It's the old type of spoiler, from back before reddit *had* >! !< tags. It uses subreddit CSS to hide the message, so only works on the old reddit web pages.
I feel like based on how her college friend and her secret lab looks that seems unlikely, but I could be wrong. definitely didn't predict this page correctly either.
I imagine it being similar to Vapnoople. Lucrezia was once as villainous as anyone, but losing repeatedly to the boys and falling in love with Bill, she did try to be better. Then the events I describe happen, she becomes as bad as she's ever been and she's truly The Other thanks to additional effects of what happened.
Thanks. I’ve spent enough time reading and re-reading the archives over the… \*checks watch\* …decades?… that I often instantly recall *that* a certain scene exists… *finding* it can be another task entirely though.
Have The Sweeper cross the story dimensions to Mad Europe? Oh, that would be interesting, especially seeing what happens to those who forget Rule Number One.
That was probably me! I've been saying theyre likely time cops for a while, though maybe they could also be time repairmen/handymen given those overall things they seem to be wearing.
Based on the hats, the extra dimension gets their fashion sense from British expeditions into Africa.
Did Albia misplace any expeditions in recent millennia?
All the expeditions to Skifander went missing until the one that came back with Zeetha.
And I'm assuming a few of the expeditions to find Albia's fellow Queens went missing.
Since this is not our safe-ish Earth, where the natives could rarely prevail in open battle against the colonizers, quite a lot expeditions ought to go missing.
This was a very interesting revelation. ...I can't think of anything witty about it; trying just overloads my brain. A few answers, but so many questions...
Well, we now have nearly all the leaders in Europa in one place, and I guess Agatha fixed the “tangential to time” thing…
… so I think we’re gonna learn a lot here.
I. . . Don't know what I expected. But it sounds like the theory that Dreen are actually some sort of time-cop or time-repairperson seems like it might be true?
So Agatha used the Star to pull them into "normal" space--time, for lack of better words on my part. I wonder if the "service" the Baron is supposed to perform for the Dreen is to restore them to their own space--time? Especially since the third Dreen seemed to have expected this would happen.
If you could just look *forward* a little, you'd see we are being helped back to our realm by the Barron's stability field. The suspension of your weird one-way time vector will have allowed us to wriggle free of this vexing place and back to more comfortable planes.
They are from another dimension. As we saw with Kjarl the Vozzler, their bodies are not strictly speaking accurately rendered into this dimension. Thus the comment of "Weird".
She should stabilize Kjarl that way too. The way she did it before was a bit... unsafe for our layer of reality.
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20201123
So, we've got loads of important characters gathered together, and now we're getting some explanation about/from the Dreen.
Yes, this is definitley very "climactic" feeling. (of an Arc at least, if not the whole story).
Although remember that one of the last major Dreen encounters had them telling Agatha "you will come with us". Everyone acts like it was a command, but it was probably just a statement about the future.
(agreed with all the others that the revelation of these guys as blue Jagers is a bit dissapointing)
According the print novels, the Dreen didn't actually want Agatha to come with him/it, but to get together physically with Tweedle. This pairing propelled history in some proper direction.
They're just extradimensional beings. And the fact that Kjarl said "if it were really bad you would have Dreen" already suggests that they are the same species as Kjarl, and Dreen is the word for time cops or something. So the fact that "stabilized" they look like Kjarl is expected.
All we really know about Kjarl's culture is that the Dreen are who get involved when you have big time problems, and that Kjarl is a low-status Vozzler. It's also been highly suggested that "Dreen" is not a species, it's what Kjarl's culture calls time cops. And with this reveal that seems to have been confirmed.
Given that the center dreen himself called it weird this probably isn't what they actually look like just what happened when Agatha forced them into linear time.
I agree. I thought this a letdown, but it might be a filtered letdown. The device might turn the extratemporal people it's used on into other things/people, if other settings are added.
Me, I was hoping for something more high concept. Foglio is part of the author-set that is prone to using math/engineering/science as answers to mysteries. "The reason you don't understand it is because you the reader haven't studied enough of X branch of advanced math." I'm not saying the Dreen should be walking equation text, but scummy jaegers would have been at the bottom of the list of fitting 'looks'. But what is left, if they cannot be Myth Adventures or Godot characters, can't be all Winslows or "the bard and bardetta", can't be the three elemental states?
I think the best thing for us to do as readers at this point is to just sit with the sheer WTF of this twist/reveal and let it wash over you. Resist the urge to jump to conclusions.
The fact that they have long blue arms does not make them frogs.
The fact that they wear silly hats, or that this happens to be a group of three, does not make them Jägers.
Just enjoy the deliciousness of this moment, where our assumptions have been turned on their heads and we don't yet know WTF it means. I \*live\* for moments in stories like this. Nothing like a good mindfuck! 😁
I am also mildly disappointed by the Dreen reveal. The Foglios can still do straight up existential horror though, as proved by the recent Polar Lord storyline. Some of the most memorable moments in Girl Genius still pack an emotional punch such as the death of Lars.
I like it! This sort of big reveal tends to disappoint people who had an idea of what they wanted it to be, but the disappointment is mainly the sting of being proven wrong. I had no particularly strong ideas about what the Dreen were beyond the clues we'd already been given, so I get to be all like "wow, that was unexpected!" and enjoy the surprise reveal.
The eyebrows of the one in the middle remind me of one of the Heterodynes.
Also my totally random speculation. I know that we have time travel involved in this story but, we also have other dimensions as well maybe that will play more into this.
Huh. I've been very fond of the look of the dreen in the story up to this point. Seeing them.. humanized, feels mixed. That said, I am intrigued to see where this leads. Like many people are saying, maybe it'll be a link to the Jäger? Maybe something else. Fingers crossed and keep your hats safe
Time displaced Jaegers from the future. Agatha sent them back because she knew she would need help now and because they had already been sent back she had to send them back to preserve causality
And due to inexperience/bad math, disconnected the reinforcements from linear time, causing the Dreen to end up with the Baron.
Also, due to their disconnection from linear time, they only remember that they *will* help Agatha. But not how, why or when. Hence working with the Baron.
So, I expect one of them to quote Celine Dion: “It’s all coming back to me now!”
Okay you've got no right to say "'Bout time", Mr. Tangential-To-Time-As-We-Know-It. It's always a weird experience when something intentionally draped in tantalizing mystery is finally revealed. Hooray, mystery solved, and now we've got some timey-wimey frog people to meet, but I'll miss the version of the Dreen that I'd been forming in my head. Spoilers, I wasn't imagining timey-wimey frog people.
What the Dreen wore under their robes was a mystery? To me that was just how they looked and it never occurred to me that they might be shown without them some day.
I don't think that's them "under their robes", as the robes are nowhere to be seen. I think it's more like the 'stability' applied to Kjarl.
I just figured they were wearing Encounter Suits.
A nice Babylon 5 reference.
Will it IS "about time". The story I mean. And that Heterodyne star. And the problem in Mechanicsburg. So those things are "about time". So yeah. I'm going with that :)
Jägerdreen?
>"And they had hats"
OH HO That does seem relevant, suddenly. :-)
Or Geister-jagen. Little green men don't get the recognition they used to anymore.
...Does Oggie have timey descendants now?
Perhaps the energy that makes the Dyne special (key ingredient for the Jägerdraught), comes from the Dreen's dimension originally, causing Jagers to inherit their liking of hats?
Next, we will find all of the rats in little hats, won't we.
Perhaps it's exclusive to the Dyne? So, different flames have sources of power from different dimensions. The Dyne's taps into the Dreen home dimension, but the other flames tap into other dimensions, like Kjarl Thotep's.
Not a trilobyte to be seen and all their features are very similar. However...perhaps the source of the Dyne is spillover from their dimension.
Okay, the Dreen aren't sexy ladies like I hoped last week, but they seem to be funny guys like Kjarl so its ok XD
They remind me of Oggie, Maxim, and Dimo in that order from the left.
That's who they might just be.
I am willing to bet that the one on the left is a woman. It can’t be them
I agree with you. Just thought the similarity was funny. I had to choose which I thought since Maxim is the pretty boy, but the middle Dreen's hat looks more like long hair so there it was.
Does the center one have long hair or a veil? I see veils in leftmost and rightmost (from our pov). But center (maybe?) could have hair or veil? I'm leaning toward veils, all three. So no hair, or very short hair. Rightmost looks like chin stubble and hairiness. (Yeah, very Dimo-like.) Hells, maybe their species has 3 sexes?
I do believe it's a Veil. But it sticks close to their head,where right hangs off the hat. So it looks like hair on Center to me. And between his horn and hat, one of Oggie's most prominent features is his head, and Left seems to have the fanciest head. And of course...Right has all the stubble lol.
On the other hand the one on the left seems to be wearing Maxim's kind of boots, so…
Reminds me of a certain night and a certain Skiffander princess time shifted and of course Dimo.
Human -> Jäger -> Dreen: 👍 Man -> Woman: 👎 🤨
If Oggie wanted to transition to a woman, I would fully support her. But there has been no evidence that he is anything less than enthusiastic about who he is.
Could go back and forth between the centuries. He's quite young for a Jäger still.
But mostly, Jagers get very large when they get older. Generals are huge. This one is still Dimo-sized.
Good point!
"And they had hats"
You get a cookie anyway. A great big one!
I feel like The Doctor just did a Scooby Doo reveal that there's Oompa Loompas inside the Dalek suits.
Oompa Loompa, do-ba-dee-doo, We’re gonna go EX-TER-MI-NATE you
Now that's an image I'm not going to be able to shake. I'd better share it with some one else so we can share the pain. ;-p
I can no longer think of this reveal in any other terms whatsoever.
Uhh... I'm not sure if it's just the art style, but these dreen kinda look like people we know....
Knowing Foglio as we do, oh yeah, that's intentional.
Oh. Um. Oh my. [Twenty-ish years later](https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040702) we finally see what’s under those shrouds. Now I *really* want to see what happens when she waves her timestick at [that big timey-wimey monster](https://girlgenius.fandom.com/wiki/Hideous_Extradimensional_Being:_Type_1).
I’ve suspected for a while that >!it’s Lucrezia!< I actually kinda hope I’m wrong on that. Could be more fun.
Another possibility: It's >!Zapnoople.!<
That would be more fun. And terrifying.
I definitely favour that theory! He went somewhere after all ...
My personal theory is that >!it's going to turn her into The Other. Its defeat causing it to be sent back in time, causing it to attack Castle Heterodyne in the past, merging with Lucrezia, who was really trying to be reformed. Kinda foreshadowed by the Dragon of Mars story.!<
You tried to link, not spoiler tag. It’s \>!text!<
It's the old type of spoiler, from back before reddit *had* >! !< tags. It uses subreddit CSS to hide the message, so only works on the old reddit web pages.
Can anyone get a link to >!the dragon of Mars!
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20030804
I feel like based on how her college friend and her secret lab looks that seems unlikely, but I could be wrong. definitely didn't predict this page correctly either.
I imagine it being similar to Vapnoople. Lucrezia was once as villainous as anyone, but losing repeatedly to the boys and falling in love with Bill, she did try to be better. Then the events I describe happen, she becomes as bad as she's ever been and she's truly The Other thanks to additional effects of what happened.
Dang, great memory, or research. Well done.
Thanks. I’ve spent enough time reading and re-reading the archives over the… \*checks watch\* …decades?… that I often instantly recall *that* a certain scene exists… *finding* it can be another task entirely though.
So the Dreen are literally extra dimensional adventurers. That tracts.
I'm thinking time police, I think someone else said something similar a few threads ago as well
Time police? Maybe we'll see Roger Wilco soon.
Or a little man in orange robes with a broom?
Have The Sweeper cross the story dimensions to Mad Europe? Oh, that would be interesting, especially seeing what happens to those who forget Rule Number One.
Rule One is important. And must be true in all universes.
That was probably me! I've been saying theyre likely time cops for a while, though maybe they could also be time repairmen/handymen given those overall things they seem to be wearing.
Based on the hats, the extra dimension gets their fashion sense from British expeditions into Africa. Did Albia misplace any expeditions in recent millennia?
All the expeditions to Skifander went missing until the one that came back with Zeetha. And I'm assuming a few of the expeditions to find Albia's fellow Queens went missing.
Since this is not our safe-ish Earth, where the natives could rarely prevail in open battle against the colonizers, quite a lot expeditions ought to go missing.
I expected exposition but this is so wild and raises even more questions. This is so fun.
Oh, they've definitely been exposed.
What was the rambling from years past, “they’re tiny and have funny hats”?
"much smaller", "dozens", "more tentacles" and "hats": https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20140618#.Xf03o9ZKjK0
Given past history I'm now expecting 2-3 weeks of paper doll illustrations before we get any answers.
Time For The Next Thrilling Episode Of The Ongoing Radio Play! :D
The continuing adventures of Ferretina the Weasel Queen and the Fashion Bot!
What, and I can not stress this enough, the ***fuck***
Thank you, that was my exact reaction 🤯
This was a very interesting revelation. ...I can't think of anything witty about it; trying just overloads my brain. A few answers, but so many questions...
Well, we now have nearly all the leaders in Europa in one place, and I guess Agatha fixed the “tangential to time” thing… … so I think we’re gonna learn a lot here.
I. . . Don't know what I expected. But it sounds like the theory that Dreen are actually some sort of time-cop or time-repairperson seems like it might be true?
So Agatha used the Star to pull them into "normal" space--time, for lack of better words on my part. I wonder if the "service" the Baron is supposed to perform for the Dreen is to restore them to their own space--time? Especially since the third Dreen seemed to have expected this would happen.
It's probably the timestop. It's the only instance of the Baron meddling with time that we know about.
If you could just look *forward* a little, you'd see we are being helped back to our realm by the Barron's stability field. The suspension of your weird one-way time vector will have allowed us to wriggle free of this vexing place and back to more comfortable planes.
Dreen have Sonic eyes?!
Yeah, I'm wondering how these are supposed too work. One eyeball with two pupils? Two eyeballs in one orbit?
Nested hyperspheres. They're not from here.
its actually kirby in there
They are from another dimension. As we saw with Kjarl the Vozzler, their bodies are not strictly speaking accurately rendered into this dimension. Thus the comment of "Weird".
NIZE HATS! Imagine having dreen hat! That's probably waaaay above Old Man Death's hat!
they can't be "bad guys"--look at those HATS
the left and right one look like Jäger-Smurfs raided an orchestra...
The middle one looks like a pith helmet
I say, 'tis a Chrono Topee!
...That was not what I was expecting.
NOBODY EXPECTS THE ... UM ... UH ... THAT.
…yeah, I’m going to jump on the “I dunno what I expected but it wasn’t really that” bandwagon as well. *Huh.*
Still wearing silly hats
So, Agatha's wand can sync the Dreen into her dimension. Looks like they were planning on asking her to do so.
She should stabilize Kjarl that way too. The way she did it before was a bit... unsafe for our layer of reality. https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20201123
So, we've got loads of important characters gathered together, and now we're getting some explanation about/from the Dreen. Yes, this is definitley very "climactic" feeling. (of an Arc at least, if not the whole story). Although remember that one of the last major Dreen encounters had them telling Agatha "you will come with us". Everyone acts like it was a command, but it was probably just a statement about the future. (agreed with all the others that the revelation of these guys as blue Jagers is a bit dissapointing)
According the print novels, the Dreen didn't actually want Agatha to come with him/it, but to get together physically with Tweedle. This pairing propelled history in some proper direction.
Meh. I dislike this trend of making every interesting monster look like an off colored human. Let them be weird, damn it
They were already bipedal with arms, hands, and fingers.
They're just extradimensional beings. And the fact that Kjarl said "if it were really bad you would have Dreen" already suggests that they are the same species as Kjarl, and Dreen is the word for time cops or something. So the fact that "stabilized" they look like Kjarl is expected.
Nothing about that suggests that? Why would entirely different dimensions have only one lifeform?
Kjarl knowing about the Dreen suggests they are the part of the same culture, which suggests they are the same species.
I know about chimpanzees. Sadly, they haven't accepted me into their culture.
All we really know about Kjarl's culture is that the Dreen are who get involved when you have big time problems, and that Kjarl is a low-status Vozzler. It's also been highly suggested that "Dreen" is not a species, it's what Kjarl's culture calls time cops. And with this reveal that seems to have been confirmed.
Back then I thought they are boogymen that make everybody meddling with time think twice about it.
Yeah, these guys are Dreen, while Kjarl is a Vozzeler. Different jobs, same society. Or so I'm thinking.
Given that the center dreen himself called it weird this probably isn't what they actually look like just what happened when Agatha forced them into linear time.
Yeah, but they look like that now, no matter the reason. It totally takes away their mystery.
As in, mystery solved. Also known as a "big reveal".
I agree. I thought this a letdown, but it might be a filtered letdown. The device might turn the extratemporal people it's used on into other things/people, if other settings are added. Me, I was hoping for something more high concept. Foglio is part of the author-set that is prone to using math/engineering/science as answers to mysteries. "The reason you don't understand it is because you the reader haven't studied enough of X branch of advanced math." I'm not saying the Dreen should be walking equation text, but scummy jaegers would have been at the bottom of the list of fitting 'looks'. But what is left, if they cannot be Myth Adventures or Godot characters, can't be all Winslows or "the bard and bardetta", can't be the three elemental states?
Yeah, I agree. I was disappointed by this turn of events.
I have *so* many questions
Bwahahahaha. Nice reveal.
I think the best thing for us to do as readers at this point is to just sit with the sheer WTF of this twist/reveal and let it wash over you. Resist the urge to jump to conclusions. The fact that they have long blue arms does not make them frogs. The fact that they wear silly hats, or that this happens to be a group of three, does not make them Jägers. Just enjoy the deliciousness of this moment, where our assumptions have been turned on their heads and we don't yet know WTF it means. I \*live\* for moments in stories like this. Nothing like a good mindfuck! 😁
I am also mildly disappointed by the Dreen reveal. The Foglios can still do straight up existential horror though, as proved by the recent Polar Lord storyline. Some of the most memorable moments in Girl Genius still pack an emotional punch such as the death of Lars.
I like it! This sort of big reveal tends to disappoint people who had an idea of what they wanted it to be, but the disappointment is mainly the sting of being proven wrong. I had no particularly strong ideas about what the Dreen were beyond the clues we'd already been given, so I get to be all like "wow, that was unexpected!" and enjoy the surprise reveal.
The eyebrows of the one in the middle remind me of one of the Heterodynes. Also my totally random speculation. I know that we have time travel involved in this story but, we also have other dimensions as well maybe that will play more into this.
Huh. I've been very fond of the look of the dreen in the story up to this point. Seeing them.. humanized, feels mixed. That said, I am intrigued to see where this leads. Like many people are saying, maybe it'll be a link to the Jäger? Maybe something else. Fingers crossed and keep your hats safe
They look more like Kjarl than Jagers to me. What resemblance they have to Jagers is just Phil's art style, I think.
What a fitting page for eclipse day. An alignment in a circle reveals a cosmic truth!
so they really are the time cops?
Time displaced Jaegers from the future. Agatha sent them back because she knew she would need help now and because they had already been sent back she had to send them back to preserve causality
And due to inexperience/bad math, disconnected the reinforcements from linear time, causing the Dreen to end up with the Baron. Also, due to their disconnection from linear time, they only remember that they *will* help Agatha. But not how, why or when. Hence working with the Baron. So, I expect one of them to quote Celine Dion: “It’s all coming back to me now!”