Splat: Why do you enjoy cooking so much?
Twig: Hmmm. That's hard to say. I think I like that it's something I can do by myself. Each recipe is a mysterious puzzle that needs to be solved. Too much spice, or too little, and the pieces won't fit together. Too much or too little heat and it's burnt up or undercooked. It's exact, yet each time can be different and still work. It makes sense, and it doesn't, which makes sense to me.
Twig: Hmmm. That's hard to say. I think I like that it's something I can do by myself. Each recipe is a mysterious puzzle that needs to be solved. Too much spice, or too little, and the pieces won't fit together. Too much or too little heat and it's burnt up or undercooked. It's exact, yet each time can be different and still work. It makes sense, and it doesn't, which makes sense to me.
Twig is a 5-issue comic miniseries written by Skottie Young and illustrated by Kyle Strahm. It was published by Image Comics in 2022.
The eponymous Twig is a blue, furry creature who wakes up late for his new job as a placeling. An unfortunate series of events sends him and his slug-like sidekick, Splat, on a quest to find three elements to repair a magical gemstone before he can put it in its rightful place.
Not to be confused with the Web Serial Novel by Wildbow, Twig.
This comic contains examples of:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Most of the humanoid characters only wear a few accessories. For example, Twig has his bag and his small twig-hat, while the trapper has rings on all of their fingers.
- Alien Sky: The world has three moons: a large pink one, a small green one, and an even smaller blue one.
- Ambiguous Gender: Several characters, such as the Nektarmancer and the trapper, aren't referred to with any third-person pronouns, and their designs are androgynous.
- Arboreal Abode: Twig's house is built into a tree trunk.
- Astral Finale: The story culminates with Twig reaching the moon on a floating boat. He sings a song he learned earlier to it, which causes it to unravel, and the slug-like creature within's tears recharge the Power Gem he needs to deliver.
- Bookends: A karook appears on the first and last pages.
- Color-Coded Speech: Most of the characters have white speech bubbles, but Splat's are yellow, Lobee's are pink, the Boxed Loxs' are black with purple text, and Mr. Ploom's are purple. Also, Mount Guphin speaks with brown text.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Twig repeatedly has nightmares about a horde of monsters, including a furry, crowned one that seems to be their leader. None of them appear in the flesh because it's not Twig's job to fight them.
- Hero of Another Story: At the end, Twig places the red gem in a larger crystal, and then a Mushroom Man adds it to the hilt of his sword. Twig then reveals that placelings don't directly save the world; they place useful items so chosen heroes can find them. He describes himself as a "hero behind the hero".
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: "Tok" is used in certain phrases as a replacement for units of time. When Twig rushes towards Mount Guphin after waking up late, a talking tree shouts, "Every tok counts!"
- MacGuffin Escort Mission: A placeling's job is to deliver magical items to the right places so heroes can collect them. In this case, Twig has to deliver the gem to the place where blade blossums bloom, but he accidentally breaks it, so he has to go on a detour to fix it.
- Page-Turn Surprise:
- At the end of issue 1, Twig and Splat are looking for the pathsayer in his cartogratory. They wonder where he is, but on the next page, they see his skeleton.
- In issue 3, when Twig arrives at the Plains of the Horned Beast, he looks horrified. The next page reveals what he's looking at: a graveyard of horned beast skeletons.
- In issue 4, Twig holds up his pocket knife and prepares to kill the last horned beast... then on the next page, it turns out he couldn't go through with it.
- Pokémon Speak: The comic begins with Twig being woken up by a bird-like creature called a karook that screams, "Kaaaarooook!"
- Power Crystal: Twig receives a red, oval-shaped crystal from a miner that gives him a foreboding vision when plugged into the pathsayer's machine. Its magic, called nektar, then surges and causes and explosion, causing it to lose its power. He goes to find the Nektarmancer, who sends him on a quest to find three elements to recharge it. The gem's ultimate purpose is to be placed in the hero's sword.
- Riding into the Sunset: On the last page, Twig and Splat ride home on Lobee towards the setting sun, as they argue about if they want to go on another adventure or not.
- Rule of Three: Twig needs to find three elements to restore the gem's magic: the heart of a horned beast, a song from the Boxed Loxs, and a tear from the moon. It turns out only the last one directly charges the gem; Twig needs a horned beast's strength of character to get to the moon, and he sings the song to the slug-like creature inside the moon to get its tear.
- Scenery Gorn: When Twig arrives in the Plains of the Horned Beast, he's horrified by what he sees. Overleaf, there's a full-page image of the craggy landscape covered in skeletons of horned beasts who were killed by poachers.