Octopus Pie Eternal: A Wibbly Wobbly Timeline

Mar and Jane meet on the balcony outside the wedding, and begin to discuss their fight from the night before.

On November 23rd, Meredith Gran posed a question on Twitter: “Lately I’ve been wondering if I should draw more Octopus Pie as the characters age. I guess this is a typical dilemma for an artist: find a new conduit for exploring life as you live it, or risk turning the old one into a whole different thing. Hard to know what’s right…”

Then, in an immediate reply tweet, she shared the link to a new Octopus Pie story: “Octopus Pie Eternal.” Or perhaps this is the beginning of “Octopus Pie Eternal?” We don’t know yet – that’s a question that will be answered in the future, and I’ve said in the headline that this is a timeline! Right now, we need to back up.

In May of 2016, I interviewed Meredith Gran. Octopus Pie was getting a fourth volume published through Image Comics, and the interview is largely about that, and about her artistic process. However, the first question I asked was: “Do you feel like you’re growing and changing along with your characters?” You can read her full response in the original interview, but Gran pretty much said yes. Looking back, it occurs to me that I could have asked a follow-up question: Do you think your readers are growing along with your characters? But I didn’t, so we’ll move along.

The strip we all thought would be Octopus Pie’s last published on June 5, 2017. This is going to seem irrelevant to the timeline, but you’ll soon see that it’s not: in September of 2017, I started dating my Pathfinder Dungeon Master. I could describe her differently, but this is both a fact and the easiest way of giving you a glimpse into our dynamic and whole deal. In March of 2021 I was still dating that same woman (we were also still playing Pathfinder, if you were wondering) and Gran posted her first unexpected Octopus Pie update, “The Other Side,” in black and white.

“The Other Side” finds the characters weathering the same pandemic we’ve all been weathering, each in slightly different places. Larry is doing deliveries and making enough to deck out his van into a cozy home. Hanna is finally closing the doors on Bake ‘n Bake, and has temporarily moved in with her parents. Eve is pregnant and working with Jane in the coffee shop world again. Everything is frozen and everything is in flux.

Larry relaxes in his van in a panel from "The Other Side" by Meredith Gran.
Larry in “The Other Side,” content in his van.

It isn’t possible for relationships to stay the same as the people in them grow and change, and the specific circumstances of the pandemic weren’t exactly kind to shifting friendships. The very first Octopus Pie story arc was about Eve and Hanna becoming roommates and reigniting a friendship that hadn’t really existed since preschool. The original comic’s final arc ended with them embracing as Eve said softly to Hanna, “I wouldn’t be me without you.” But in “The Other Side” they’re living in different states, and facing very different futures. Their Zoom conversation together is warm and honest; their connection is still there, still vibrant, still a part of what shaped who they are as people. They’re also very separate, isolated in their own worlds by both the pandemic and their different paths in life. It’s not really good or bad, it just is what it is.

Valerie Halla returned to contribute her gorgeous colors to the comic, and the color version of “The Other Side” went up in July of 2022. If, like me, you totally missed this, I highly recommend rereading it in color! There is a lot of warm/cool contrast, with cool blues and purples pairing the cold of winter with moments of emotional isolation, while lush golds/yellows/reds highlight the joy of connection and the safety felt within each person’s pandemic pod. That feeling of safety bounds outward – it’s comforting to come back to this as a reader; to these familiar characters, their line work and colors and shapes, even as they face new struggles. Halla deftly shifts from cool to warm to cool to warm, emphasizing how all these feelings are present all at once. You can feel alone and feel held and cared for at the same damn time, and it’s a wild ride.

Speaking of feeling held and cared for, remember my DM, the lady I was dating? We got married on August 20, 2022. That brings us back to November 23, the day on which Meredith Gran returned to Octopus Pie to stab me, personally, in the heart.

(I need to note here, for the sake of accuracy as I am calling this whole thing a timeline, that it looks like Gran actually started uploading “Octopus Pie Eternal” at the end of September. However, that’s much less dramatic to say.)

“Eternal” greets our heroes in a late pandemic world; a more open one where people are having in-person weddings again. So, essentially, our present-day world. Larry and Hanna are living together in the van (you remember the van – Larry was established to be a van guy in “The Other Side”) in what initially appears to be wild bliss. “Wild” is meant literally here; they are very naked, blitzed out on love and probably weed, and Larry is even carrying logs around for some reason. It’s wild! They’re wildly happy!

Larry carries a big cut log naked while Hanna chills naked in the back of the van at the beginning of "Octopus Pie: Eternal."

For roughly three pages, anyway. Despite all the talk of babies and weddings, “Eternal” has a lot to say about endings. It’s a Death tarot card sort of thing, though – endings and deaths are part of a cycle. Endings ARE beginnings.

I’m getting ahead of myself, sorry – back to the timeline. After seeing Hanna and Larry’s rough ending – a stark, sudden realization that they are on different pages, that what one thought was escapism the other just thought was daily life – we look back at their small, sweet wedding, which swiftly bleeds into Sean’s large, kind of ridiculous wedding. Sean seems to have fully subsumed himself in his wife-to-be’s family, friends and life, thus his set of wedding guests are all people who haven’t seen each other in a while. We greet each couple where they are at. Hanna and Larry, of course, we’ve already seen – recently married and overly obsessed with each other. Eve and Will are exhausted as they care for a very chunky, very adorable baby. They’re wading through a sea of new parenting anxiety and effusive love, trying to simultaneously hold on to each moment with the baby while also finding time for themselves.

Jane and Marigold are still in love but struggling to realize their different desires for the future. Jane seems to have gone full coffee shop world girlboss – she wears PANTSUITS now, our Jane! – whereas Marigold is distracted – she’s knitting for babies, thinking about how other people’s kids are faring, always looking away toward the possibility of parenthood. We learn in passing that they’re married. Marigold congratulates Hanna on her marriage, and Hanna responds, “Uh, you too! How late am I?” They’re swiftly interrupted by Sean, who is running around setting up for the party and yelling greetings at everyone. That’s it – as it was at the end of the original comic run, Jane and Marigold’s relationship seems like a forgone conclusion. Of course they’re still together.

Sean interrupts Hanna and Marigold's conversation, running by carrying bags and yelling about the party.
Oh Sean, never change.

I never saw myself in Jane or Marigold really. I like them both a lot as characters, and the growth of their relationship in the original comic was beautiful. Their return in “Eternal” resonated on a basic level, initially – we’re all queer and married. My path, however, was less idyllic. I used to be very anti-marriage, and I still kind of am, for the record! Marriage was, for most of my life, illegal for me (depending on my partner; I’m bisexual) so I rejected it. This was a sticking point in my relationship with my then-girlfriend, because she did want to get married. It meant a lot to her, which kicked off an internal debate for me. Marriage was a legal contract granting various rights – hospital visitation, filing joint taxes, etc. Wouldn’t it make sense to be able to provide her insurance? Wasn’t it just a good idea, on paper?

During one of several conversations about all these pieces of marriage – what they meant, and did we really want them? – it suddenly sunk in: my partner is my person, but I am also her person. I’m the one who could advocate for her best should something terrible happen, and while the thought is absolutely terrifying, I want to be able to be there. I want to take care of her. That was it; that was the thing that made it all click. It was insurance, hospital visits and all the on-paper legal contract bullshit, sure – but it was also that moment of surety that I care for her deeply, and I want to be able to be there, even if it’s hard.

Here comes the knife.

“Eternal” doesn’t find Jane and Marigold in married paradise – it finds them at an impasse. Marigold wants to be a parent, and Jane keeps claiming she’ll want to be one too, one day – but she doesn’t. She won’t. In the camp bathroom they spout their worst fears at each other. “You’ve killed me,” declares Marigold. “You think I haven’t been waiting for this?” cries Jane, “The day you’d wake up needing your real life to begin, and I’d’ve been this brief digression along the way?”

Speaking of digressions, I must make a quick one to stand in awe of how Gran illustrates these fights. As their conversation escalates, Marigold and Jane stop looking at each other via a mirror. Marigold turns to face Jane directly, her body taking up the largest panel on the page, tears spilling from her eyes as the rest of her face contorts into rage. Gran captures this moment in which grief turns into anger perfectly, and hits these beats again and again as the argument rages on. Bold text in the word bubbles accompanies each twisting facial expression, guiding the reader on to the exact words said that spur each of the women to voice their cruelest, most fearful thoughts. It all ends with Jane alone and shrouded in darkness – even her own silhouette is, initially, as dark as the night. It is ROUGH and palpable and, to anyone who’s had such a fight.

Marigold and Jane face each other in the camp bathroom, beginning to argue about the possibility of having children.

Marriage is not necessarily goal-oriented. In her wedding toast, Hanna likens it instead to a party – a chaotic thing. But, Hanna explains, within the chaos of a party you end up drawn to the one person you really, actually want to talk to. There isn’t a simple, linear journey to finding that pocket of joy and love. It just happens amidst the chaos. That’s a fair and beautiful way to imagine the beginning of a relationship, but one’s goals and visions for the future matter too, and it’s here that Gran drives the blade deep into my own heart. My marriage has just begun, and thank goodness – I don’t really like parties – but what if our dreams don’t line up in the end? What if all the concerns we voiced and thought we’d faced enough weren’t discussed thoroughly enough? What if one of the big things ends it all?

As girlboss as Jane seems to have become, she didn’t start dating Marigold with a joint goal in mind. An unexpected and beautiful reading of The Velveteen Rabbit brings Jane to a point of understanding: she just loved Marigold, loved meeting and knowing and changing with her. After Hanna’s speech she finds Marigold outside and tells her, “I’ve already found eternity. I am a whole person, thanks to you.”

The comic doesn’t end with their conversation, but this is one of many cyclical moments – it’s that whole Death tarot card thing again. Their relationship – by my interpretation; neither Jane nor Marigold states directly that they are separating – is reaching a death, but no one has been murdered. No time was wasted. Their relationship was its own life, its own time, its own beautiful, wonderful thing, and within it they’ve both grown. This death sucks, but it’s not just an end. It’s also a beginning. My own marriage has just started, and I hope it never ends, but I can also set aside my worries and accept that if it does, I was still right to put my love and hope and time into this very good person.

Page 53 of “Eternal,” this last moment between Jane and Marigold, was posted on November 19th. I read it on November 23rd, after seeing that question from Gran’s on Twitter: “I guess this is a typical dilemma for an artist: find a new conduit for exploring life as you live it, or risk turning the old one into a whole different thing?” I started writing this piece on November 28th, looked back at that interview from May 2016, and found my own question that maybe answers Gran – Are the Octopus Pie readers growing along with the characters? I am. I didn’t know I was, but I am, and I’m grateful for slips, falls, and revelations we can share along the way.

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Alenka Figa

Alenka Figa

Alenka is a queer librarian and intense cat parent. When not librarian-ing they spend their days reading zines and indie comics and listening to D&D podcasts. Find them on Bluesky @uprightgarfield.

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