Random Back Issues #140 - Step by Bloody Step #2

Why does this happen wherever I go with my fiercely protective armored giant?

The giant and the girl continue their journey, though tensions are continuing to run high, since the girl still doesn't know where they're going or why. The giant forbids her from visiting a village in the distance, so she scales a bluff at the first opportunity, only to find the village of greenish, goblin-like people being annihilated by enormous black airships. By the time the giant catches up, one of the ships targets them, and she slips from the giant's grasp, only saving her self by catching a thorny vine.

Pricked by the thorns, her blood prompts a burst of plant growth, lifting her high enough the giant can grab her and haul ass into a forest, all of which is observed by men in a smaller airship, who have taken hostage a farmer who tried to befriend the girl last issue.

Eventually, the pair reach a beach. While the girl alternately splashes in the waves and sulks in the shadows, the giant kills more potential threats and builds a big raft to cross the ocean. The girl does, while carving a scowly picture of herself on a tree, find several more carving nearby. Mystery!

Unfortunately, being extremely single-minded and direct makes their course easy to predict, so at the far shore waits a group of armed men. One shot wounds the girl, and when her blood hits the water, the giant goes berserk. Too bad the ones in his path are more of the green people, noticeably shackled around the ankles. They're slaughtered, to the horror of both the girl and the farmer, but to the glee of the soldiers, one of whom takes aim at the girl. The farmer shoves him, spoiling the shot - no doubt saving all their asses from that pissed off giant - and they withdraw.

The girl sees something in the sea and tries to push the raft there, but the ocean itself rises to bar her path, much like the desert did at one point last issue. The giant insists they keep going forward, and the girl's resentment only grows. Meanwhile, the farmer's been hauled before the prince? general? that's been tracking the pair, and gets an ultimatum: Help us out, or see what we do to your wife and kid.

Well, when you put it that way. . .

{10th longbox, 209th comic. Step by Bloody Step #2, by Si Spurrier (writer), Matias Bergara (artist), Mattheus Lopes (colorist), Jim Campbell (letterer)}