The fourth volume of the most excellent webcomic picks up the story at the start of Annie’s third year at the eponymous school, having returned from a summer spent in Gillitie Wood. Her first task is to make up with Kat, who doesn’t know how to deal with her running away at the end of the previous volume. This volume sees existing relationships between familiar characters deepen and new ones formed.
Robot appears to be becoming somewhat obsessed with Kat, but not so much that he doesn’t form a close relationship with Shadow; Kat seems somewhat confused, but not so much that she doesn’t start translating the evolved programming of the Court robots; and as for Annie, well, we get to see some of the fire buried within her as she attempts revenge on Jack for the spider incident in the previous volume and a little more of her relationship with her father.
There’s a weird chapter that I had forgotten about where she is in a coma and Zimmy helps her out. There’s a lot of foreshadowing going on there, and I can’t help but feel that her father is somewhere at the heart of it.
At the time of writing, this is the last paper collection of Gunnerkrigg Court, so I’m reduced to following it, three pages a week, online, which, given the pace of the storytelling, is grindingly slow. I can’t wait for the next volume now, although given that this one was only released this year, it could be some time away yet.
