Spooky scary Shelley-tons!! Ok Michael Distortion fans, this one is for you.
Drawn in Storyboard Pro 20.1 with custom brushes from Rozlyn Waltz. The Magnus Archives is a podcast written by Jonathan Sims, Directed by Alexander J Newall, and distributed by Rusty Quill! This clip features voice acting by Jonathan Sims and Luke Booys!
Had a lot of fun figuring out how Michael moves! Now that I’ve drawn his grand entrance, maybe someday I’ll draw the scene where he…uh…leaves.
eyyyyyy this hit 2 million views on tiktok this week! Thanks everyone for a great year!
I’m relistening to some old Magnus Archive episodes and I just got back to my absolute favorite Peak Jon Sims moment where he reads the case of a guy claiming to be stalked by a vengeful spirit of a spider he killed and Jon’s like “End recording. He was literally insane and delusional the end. This guy’s an idiot. Ghost spiders aren’t real. So this was stupid and we don’t care. Also the fact that he was found dead a week later with his corpse completely encased in spider webs is a normal thing, probably.”
beginning this blog with the very first piece of tma fanart i’ve done, hello.
[ID: Simple, sketchy comic of Jon Sims from TMA. In the first panel, he is shown sitting at a computer. Large text above him in all caps says “Supplemental”. He says “let me check martin’s search history, he may be up to nefarious deeds on the World Wide Web”. Tiny text next to his hands says “taptaptap” as he types.
The second panel shows him clicking on a “search history” button, and the third panel shows the history with timestamps in reverse chronological order:
13:45 boss stalking me?
13:45 tips for dealing with stalkers
13:43 taser gun
13:38 reddit - i (29m) am being stalked by my boss (???m)
13:32 stalking
13:30 how do i know if someone is stalking me
13:15 pepper spray
13:14 signs that you’re being followed
13:10 signs of stalking
13:09 stalking behaviour humans
13:05 stalking behaviour
13:02 frog teacup designs
The fourth panel shows Jon staring, slack-jawed, at the search history as he says “ah-”. End ID.]
Jonathan Sims as a moderately successful youtube personality because he uploads all his statement readings to the internet but all the video titles are Like That.
Institute Archivist DESTROYS Idiotic Ghost Theorists with FACTS and LOGIC
*thumbnail Martin made of Jon looking supremely smug with some stock-image man crouched over crying behind him*
He keeps it up throughout the seasons but the conviction really starts to wane.
Archivist Jonathan Sims Makes COMPELLING ARGUMENT Against Guy Who Has Some EQUALLY GOOD POINTS About Why Holes Are Evil
Season 5 it’s actually just wrapped right back around
Institute Archivist DESTROYS Idiotic Ghost Theorists With FACTS and LOGIC But Mostly With The SMITING POWERS He Got From GOD
ALT
This continues into s5 where it’s 20 minutes of tearing and glitches and then Jon going “that’s fucked up. Ceaseless Watcher, turn you gaze upon this wretched thing” followed by 30 seconds of prolonged agonized otherworldly screaming of a person being rent asunder.
The surviving like 20 people in his fanbase are divided whether this is Jonathan Sims incorporating the ongoing apocalypse into his gimmick or whether he’s just the guy who started the whole apocalypse.
On my current “relisten of random Magnus Archives episodes” I got to the s2 episode where the supplemental is everyone throwing Jon a “Stop Stalking Us on Suspicion of Murder” intervention party.
And they manage to convince Jon is wasn’t any of them because the cleaned-up CCTV footage exonerates them.
Except
ALT
Except
ALT
Jon… Buddy……
Jonathan “smartest man in the room” Sims: “Thank God. Everyone has a solid alibi. Including Elias who followed Gertrude down into the tunnels alone but don’t worry he was just down there to find the blood and he wasn’t down there killing her or anything. That would be lying.”
On my current “relisten of random Magnus Archives episodes” I got to the s2 episode where the supplemental is everyone throwing Jon a “Stop Stalking Us on Suspicion of Murder” intervention party.
And they manage to convince Jon is wasn’t any of them because the cleaned-up CCTV footage exonerates them.
Except
ALT
Except
ALT
Jon… Buddy……
Jonathan “smartest man in the room” Sims: “Thank God. Everyone has a solid alibi. Including Elias who followed Gertrude down into the tunnels alone but don’t worry he was just down there to find the blood and he wasn’t down there killing her or anything. That would be lying.”
On my current “relisten of random Magnus Archives episodes” I got to the s2 episode where the supplemental is everyone throwing Jon a “Stop Stalking Us on Suspicion of Murder” intervention party.
And they manage to convince Jon is wasn’t any of them because the cleaned-up CCTV footage exonerates them.
Except
ALT
Except
ALT
Jon… Buddy……
Jonathan “smartest man in the room” Sims: “Thank God. Everyone has a solid alibi. Including Elias who followed Gertrude down into the tunnels alone but don’t worry he was just down there to find the blood and he wasn’t down there killing her or anything. That would be lying.”
ALT
Even funnier when you consider Elias was literally the one covering up Gertrude’s disappearance, hastily moving Jon into the archivist position, and telling no one.
Jonathan Cinnamon Toast Crunch are you SURE you don’t want to at least ask your boss a FOLLOW UP question about this.
On my current “relisten of random Magnus Archives episodes” I got to the s2 episode where the supplemental is everyone throwing Jon a “Stop Stalking Us on Suspicion of Murder” intervention party.
And they manage to convince Jon is wasn’t any of them because the cleaned-up CCTV footage exonerates them.
Except
ALT
Except
ALT
Jon… Buddy……
Jonathan “smartest man in the room” Sims: “Thank God. Everyone has a solid alibi. Including Elias who followed Gertrude down into the tunnels alone but don’t worry he was just down there to find the blood and he wasn’t down there killing her or anything. That would be lying.”
ALT
This is wild because Jon leaps right to suspecting the tape has been doctored. “I mean, the CCTV is so corrupted that the police can’t just use it immediately, and then they happen to finish restoring it just when I start really digging into the murder!? And if it was an option, why not clean it up when she first disappeared!?” (Episode 65)
And Leitner even says the same thing in Episode 80, that Elias could have potentially interfered with the CCTV. “Simple mechanical eyes? In his place of power? You think he can’t control everything they see? Assuming such interference wouldn’t ruin them beyond recovery, of course.”
But neither of them just consider that maybe during the time Elias claimed to discover the body, he was actually committing the murder first.
Which always led me to think that Elias wasn’t down there for very long, before coming back up and calling the police. In Episode 65, Tim says “You’ve spent a month staring at that footage – double-checking every moment, timing every tea break, looking at me like I somehow staged it,” so we know Jon was very concerned about timing and would have presumably been suspicious if Elias was down there for a long time when he was supposedly just discovering the body. Jon—after a month of careful checking—came to the conclusion that none of the people shown on tape had enough time to commit the murder while they were in the Archives before they reappeared on tape, which renewed his conviction that the murderer had used the tunnels.
This is exactly the kind of addition I needed, from someone who remembers all the hyper-specific details I do not remember.
This leads me to the ONLY conclusion I can arrive at which makes sense to me, which is that Eliajonah–as an avatar of The Eye–is able to manipulate how much people pay attention to him. And every time Jon looks over at him he’s just the picture of doey-eyed “who? me? wittle old me?”
On my current “relisten of random Magnus Archives episodes” I got to the s2 episode where the supplemental is everyone throwing Jon a “Stop Stalking Us on Suspicion of Murder” intervention party.
And they manage to convince Jon is wasn’t any of them because the cleaned-up CCTV footage exonerates them.
Except
ALT
Except
ALT
Jon… Buddy……
Jonathan “smartest man in the room” Sims: “Thank God. Everyone has a solid alibi. Including Elias who followed Gertrude down into the tunnels alone but don’t worry he was just down there to find the blood and he wasn’t down there killing her or anything. That would be lying.”
ALT
This is wild because Jon leaps right to suspecting the tape has been doctored. “I mean, the CCTV is so corrupted that the police can’t just use it immediately, and then they happen to finish restoring it just when I start really digging into the murder!? And if it was an option, why not clean it up when she first disappeared!?” (Episode 65)
And Leitner even says the same thing in Episode 80, that Elias could have potentially interfered with the CCTV. “Simple mechanical eyes? In his place of power? You think he can’t control everything they see? Assuming such interference wouldn’t ruin them beyond recovery, of course.”
But neither of them just consider that maybe during the time Elias claimed to discover the body, he was actually committing the murder first.
Which always led me to think that Elias wasn’t down there for very long, before coming back up and calling the police. In Episode 65, Tim says “You’ve spent a month staring at that footage – double-checking every moment, timing every tea break, looking at me like I somehow staged it,” so we know Jon was very concerned about timing and would have presumably been suspicious if Elias was down there for a long time when he was supposedly just discovering the body. Jon—after a month of careful checking—came to the conclusion that none of the people shown on tape had enough time to commit the murder while they were in the Archives before they reappeared on tape, which renewed his conviction that the murderer had used the tunnels.
This is exactly the kind of addition I needed, from someone who remembers all the hyper-specific details I do not remember.
This leads me to the ONLY conclusion I can arrive at which makes sense to me, which is that Eliajonah–as an avatar of The Eye–is able to manipulate how much people pay attention to him. And every time Jon looks over at him he’s just the picture of doey-eyed “who? me? wittle old me?”
Jon voice: “Supplemental. It’s not adding up. I still suspect it could be Tim, if he manipulated the tapes. Or Sasha, if she manipulated time. Or Martin, because I hate him. Or even Elias, who went down into the tunnels at the exact day and time Gertude was murdered while saying ‘I gotta kill Gertrude Robinson’–”
Elias:
ALT
Jon: “…Never mind it wasn’t Elias. So about Martin if he’s an identical twin–”
