Our new friend is more commonly known as “Cao Cao”, but that spelling always bugged me. “T’sao T’sao” sounds a lot more accurate to me so I’m sticking with it. In Chinese the name actually consists of two different characters, but the subtle difference in pronunciation is hard to reproduce in English. Reminds me of one of my math professors in college. His name was Chang Chang. The first day of class he came in and said “I am professor Chang Chang. First name Chang. Last name Chang. Even parents can’t tell difference.”
Yeah, a lot of people just don’t care and prononce it Caw Caw. Which is not only wrong, but also irrigating. It’s even worse with his son, whoes name prononced like Tsao Pei, still in a lot of English adaptations sounds like Cow Pee.
Quick consistency check — isn’t Guan Yu’s shoulder armor on the wrong shoulder in panel 1? Not a biggie, just happened to notice it was different between panel 1 and 3 and looked back to see where it was before.
Anyway, continue to love your work.
joel: you are totally right. Guess that’s what happens when I try to draw these things at 1 in the morning. Yikes.
KazeKoichi: Huh I’ve actually never heard the son’s name pronounced in English. Cow Pee… with a name like that no wonder he was messed up
說曹操曹操到! “Speak of Cao Cao and Cao Cao arrives!”
Romanizations are a pain, especially when printed without tone-marks and pronounced by the uninitiated. Cáo Cāo pronounced “Cow Cow” makes my ears bleed (and Cao Pi…) so Tsao Tsao is better. I think the Wade-Giles romanization is Ts’ao Ts’ao rather than T’sao T’sao (?) but who nowadays knows what the apostrophes even mean?
While I’m being picky, presumably Tsao Tsao is a captain of cavalry. Calvary was a place in Judea.
Oh! And I just noticed Liu Bei busy giving comfort to one of the wounded Yellow Turban bandits, while Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are “on guard” for the approach of the unknown horsemen. Nice little bit of ROTTK characterisation.
@Mercy: as usual you’re totally right about Ts’ao Ts’ao and cavalry, a hex on spellcheck for not reading my mind! Luckily those are easy to fix (unlike Guan Yu’s shoulder armor
)
So now, Ts’ao Ts’ao appears. He may be an ally now, but soon in the future, he will be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, rivals that Liu Bei and his men will ever face.