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Happy 2011 everyone! I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to this year. I'm back in New York, surrounded by people I love, and am energized to draw a ton of comics.
The past few days I've been sick, per holiday tradition, and it inspired this one-shot. I'm feeling much better now and I'm going to eat some falafel.
78 thoughts on “#427 – the fever dreams of everest ning”
CLR
Aw, poor Eve…
Catherine
OMG… reading this hit so close to home. I've had that EXACT experience, with different details of the dream. But holy cow, I know exactly how this goes!
EmarAndZeb
I know what you mean. "Can't wake up yet… must… complete… dream-tasks!"
Sebastian
Whoa. This must be really common. I remember being sick with the flu 5 years ago and swearing that I had to go back to sleep to figure out exactly what that model train set had to do with a gas station within a living room. I went back to sleep only to do other things (something involving a radiator or a python?).
Really cool one-shot comic. Always so realistic. And I swore I thought Victor would be searched for again, but never found. Happy New Year!
MerchManDan
How do you know Eve was looking for Victor?
Sebastian
Wild guess; Victor is shady and mysterious and Eve was looking for him at the party. Always elusive… oh, and the name that is crossed out is relatively long.
sofacoin
By 'relatively long', you mean longer than Park or Will, right?
Sebastian
Yep.
Darkond2100
It has the area of a 5 letter word, not 6. Someone else…
Sebastian
You measured with Meredith's font?
imwithstupid
They are all different lengths…
AlmostLiterally
Glad you are feeling better, Mer.
Dear God, I know that dream. And Marek's video game face in the last panel is wonderful.
1SpacyHammond
Does that crossed-out name mean the brownout biscuit wotked after all? Oy.
Frelance
Nah, just means that, Bono style, Ning still hasn't found what she's looking for.
CLR
It means she can censor herself all way into her dreams.
lily
You can do it, Ning!
Penny Lane
What a treat! Such a long comic… 🙂 Happy New Year everybody!
Andrew
Dreams have a way of reading as being unintentionally funny due to their surreality and the inherent weirdness that our brains get up to while we're sleeping. As the dream sequence of this comic didn't make me laugh, I'd consider it a big success; it's actually kind of sad, and if nothing else telling of Eve's nature. Nice way to kick off the New Year.
jeremythedog
man! just reading this comic began to stress me out. i guess that means you did a darn good job, mer.
lil
Oh, I've done the REM overdose before. Poor sniffly Eve.
Sela
Heh, even with shorter bangs, you can't see Marek's eyes.
Maybe he doesn't have any.
Babygenius
oh geez, this made me literally lol
Leith
Oh man, now you've got me hanging out for the day he peels that fringe back to reveal a pair of Simpson-esque poached egg eyeballs taking up the upper third of his head. Or did this already happen?
That's not his fringe, it's his eyebrows!
Isaac
This was freakin' amazing.
Dell
Yeah. I would expect more people to be in awe, this is freaking insanely well done!
New found respect, miss Merideth Gran.
MerchManDan
Yup, dream absurdity; I know it well. No matter how bizarre the events in my dreams get, pretty much all I do is say "okay" and accept them. It never occurs to me that they might be intensely unlikely, if not downright impossible.
Fady
Oh man that is exactly how a dream is
This is great
Kyle H.
That dream sequence gave me that headsick feeling of "Stop, brain, you're not making any sense" that I get whenever I've slept ill/after too much food. Or whenever a Cat & Girl comic goes over my head. Again.
I think Marek's playing Grand Cause Row 2. Fuck yeah!
Jon
The Zombies! Hooray! Also, good comic.
kuro
Yay for the Zombies! And for dream that you're about to solve, just give me… a few more minutes… of sleep
Taylor Lopez (TeaLo)
What a spot-on recreation of what dreams are like. Everything in a dream makes so much sense, but once you've woken up, you realize how ridiculous it was. But sometimes you can never shake that feeling that something is still unresolved and you need to keep dreaming to figure out what it is.
Fantastic work ^_^
Professional Mole
I was wondering if Eve's dream was somewhat like a SimParty game. Then it evolved into completely crazy dream logic, and then I was too awed to even comment.
It took me a few minutes to write down this, btw. 😐
Khalid Birdsong
Loved the layout and design of this one!
Bryy
What an epic way to go into the New Year.
Justim
Problems with freinds nd family! Eve you cant make everyone happy you need time for you!
Eddurd
So when you feel awful … falafel?
damien walder
Dear Meredith (Happy New Year, btw11!!)
I have a question that will sound odd for at least a moment – where is Eve's Dad? What happened to Eve's parents expectations that the marriage ended – did it leave the Ning kids with extra tasks to solve in dreamland?
Person Man
That dream reminded me of some sort of strange sim/tycoon style video game. "Your guests are cold. You need to get them coats." "The roads are too slushy. You must clean them." A very trippy, micro-manage-y game.
Also, I love how Marek's beard is gone the first time he shows up in the dream, and then it's back again by the time he shows up again. I got a decent chuckle out of that. 😛
Rezmason
I'm guessing this is a reference to Professor Layton? I haff tvelve metchsteek?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/2/13/
meredith
nope, it's a not a reference to anything.
bacha
Not everything is from something. 🙂
Alicia
that was an interesting twist.
Mary Sue
With the name blotted out, this makes me almost think the cookie DID work. HRRM.
Thank you for the comic. 🙂
John
Out of recent experience I had this story line pegged from panel 4/5. I had some wicked fever dreams last month, and I'm coming down with the sickness again. Twice in two months is too much sick!
back flipsimmons
Just a guess, but to me dreams fly by and i'm doing something different like every 2 seconds always trying to get back to one part of my dream that i'm curious about or need to know. And waking up not knowing is the worst. I've slept an entire day just to find out what i want to know in a dream only to have different ones never quite getting back to where i started.
Brian
If only I could have wacky dreams like this. I think my last great WTF dream was like in grade school. Now I just have horrible dreams about people attacking me and breaking my things…
Oh… nightmares.
spas
read this comic yesterday, woke up from dreaming today, thinking about eve's dream. that is weird.
John
*hug* Sorry you've been suck, I know it sucks so badly when that happens.
Thanks for the new comic…it's…an interesting one?
I didn't understand much of it, except that last part, always freaking happens, and then when I finally DO manage to go back to sleep, it's never the goddamn dream I ordered my mind to give me.
John
sick*
I just realized my typo when I checked for replies ><
valis_kr3
Just woke up form a rough night myself.
random
I remember watching an old-school humphrey bogart film when sick once. I relived that movie ten times or so in my sleep. Shit was scary.
NF
This has to be one of the most realistic portrayals of dreaming in humor I have ever read. Well done.
Nathanael
This comic is incredible, and perfectly captures the plasticity and single-mindedness of "dream logic". After reading through it the first time I realized she'd spoken with Marek twice in the dream and I suddenly wondered if he has grown or lost his beard between panels as he so often does between stories. Indeed, he had! 5-Stars.
Nathanael
There were two other things that really caught my attention in this comic that I forgot to mention. Firstly, I like how when Eve sees Marigold, her hair was dredded again. Since this would have been Eve's predominent mental picture of Marigold, in spite of her recent haircut, it makes sense that this is how she would dream of her, at least for now (until that mental image changes).
Secondly, that Eve thinks all of her dialogue makes complete sense. In my experience, it is notoriously difficult to speak aloud in a dream without it turning into actual vocalizations. This is what ends up happening in the end and it seems to cause Eve to awaken.
Again, very nice representation..
danineteen
I hate having dreams like that and then waking up in the middle of the night like that.
Church Librarian
Is there any reason Marek has a beard earlier in the dream, but not later in the dream besides the fact that it's a dream?
Mandy
I think when a lot of people write 'dream sequences,' they either go out of their way to make it very mysterious, or they try to make it 'make sense' the way reality does…
This is the first time I've ever seen a comic really capture a dream believably. Not super spacey or super realistic, a series of events that seem odd but are treated as normal anyway. Bravo indeed!
BaronHaynes
Best portrayal of dream logic I think I've ever seen in a comic. My favorite bit is "She left, Eve", where your mind suggests something might happen, and then immediately, it's already happened, before you could react. Dreams are jerks sometimes.
Grace
So the pastry worked??? And yeah, I try to get back to sleep when I have an incomplete dream, like an unsolved mystery or something haha. For a while I could even continue dreams from day to day O.o
dood
Any profile shot of Eve in her dream reminds me so much of Harold and the Purple Crayon.
Jor-El
I think Eve's feeling the aftereffects of the Amnesia Brownie.
ashleyw
I love the dream sequence. The pacing of it feels a lot like dreams I've had.
seann
Also, how old is that cell phone? antenna on a flip open rectangle?
dood
I swear to god I just had a dream where somebody told me the slush was coming in through the cracks and I felt the same way Eve did and then said I'll fix it. Get out of my brain, OP!!
jTh
For most of my life, ALL of my dreams were like this, never-ending frustrations and disappointments (and my worst nightmares have involved failing the expectations of others). I remember when I had my first happy dream and waking up stunned, and eventually realizing that other people probably didn't have the relentlessly frustrating dreams that I had. Mine have thankfully improved in recent years, but I did find this quite unsettling to read. With dreams done well so rarely in art(/television/movies/etc), I find the accomplishment rather stunning, while also quite unpleasant due to my personal experience.
Lola
I haven't been reading it lately, and so I just finished what I hadn't read, and now I am very much excited about it again!! I can't wait for updates, octopus pie has always been my favorite as a little New York transplant who loves the calm and Brooklyn, reading this gives me such peace of mind, and I don't really know why, I just know that I love it.
Chris Jones
Big big ups to the alt text. The Zombies rule/are completely appropriate companions to this strip and this comic in general.
Meeka
this is so gorgeous and closely observed.
Beck
I love these comics 🙂 Eve is awesome
Birdface
Are they playing Dead Rising 2? They are playing Dead Rising 2 oh jeez oh jeez
Stephanie
This just reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
adrianna
octopus pie the fukken shit haha
johnny vu
that was really beautifully done. i like how she speaks in captions throughout the dream until the end. its a nice transition from her talking in her dream to her actually speaking the words in real life as she's waking up.
jjmblue7
This reminds me of my fever dream of being a slave worker making textiles for the king on some stempunk brass tubing tree like structure with each prisoner in a little nest. I tried climbin across the pipe to the central building of the structure and slipped…slamming right into my hallway wall that snapped me out of it. I was like a fourth awake and trying to get to the bathroom.
glasslotus
This is the most accurate dream logic I have ever seen
momotaro
You know, I love it how she nails the dreams like this.
Whenever you dream, you always do things that contain the basic barebone emotion you'd feel, just minus the logic and stuff. So you never really question the absurdity of some of the stuff because it would make basic sense.
I had a dream like that just now actually.
If I were Eve, I would've gone over and hugged Hanna and Marek cuz I'd be so glad to see that they really aren't Dream NPCs D:
even if I was super sick lol
Spencer
I guess in OP world, facial hair grows ridiculously fast (will's stubble growing back in 3 panels, marek growing back his beard in the time it takes to go to a coat store and back…)