VeeFriends Issue 17 Explained: Prophecy, Persistence, and Why Nobody Gets There Alone

VeeFriends Issue 17 is about Confident Cobra, but the moment I see that snake, I am reminded of my friend Brett DeVito, better known as The BeeZ on X. He owns the Gold Confident Cobra 1/1 NFT from VeeFriends Series 1.

He also owns Confident from my Alien Traits collection. That means Brett owns the VeeFriends character at the center of this issue and my own Alien Inks expression of the same trait.

The cobra connection keeps going. Brett's 8th Place logo is built from two cobras shown in profile, facing each other. Look at them together and they become a single cobra facing forward with its hood spread. At Brett's request, I was honored to make this Alien Inks version of the logo for him.

All of that explains why Confident Cobra immediately makes me think of Brett, but it goes beyond that. Brett means a lot more to me than the art and NFTs we have connected over. He has become one of my best friends, and one of the biggest reasons why is that he was there for me when a lot of other people were not.

I have been extremely public about the times I have felt left out, excluded, overlooked, targeted, and gatekept within VeeFriends. Not everyone gets highlighted or recognized equally, and not everyone experiences this community the same way.

When I said those things publicly, it felt like a lot of people decided I was just some negative asshole. That was easier than considering the possibility that I was a real person in real pain who was genuinely struggling. Brett did not write me off.

He reached out when he did not have to. He kept reaching out. He included me, connected me with people, and made sure I was not going through it alone. He did not fix every problem I had with VeeFriends, and I never expected him to. I do not say this lightly: Brett really saved me during that period, and I will always be deeply grateful to him for it.

On August 10, I wrote, "This is the best friendship I've had in a very long time," about Brett and Jolly. Sometimes community is not the vague idea of everyone belonging together. Sometimes it is two guys who would rather bring you to dinner than let you order McDonald's and eat it alone in your hotel-room shower with the water running. That sentence sounds insane because it is insane. It is also a real thing that almost happened, and they refused to let it happen.

Brett runs 8th Place LLC and a show called VF Sweet Spot on Whatnot. His X feed jumps from Anne Bagg's Community Night to Draw or Die updates, a James Patrick interview, and one VeeFriends seller's Whatnot show after another. He spends an absurd amount of time directing attention toward other people. That is only the part everyone can see. A lot of his most meaningful work happens through calls, texts, introductions, and one-on-one conversations that do not come with public recognition.

I have no use for surface-level virtue signaling. Posting the right value words where everyone can see them is easy. Doing the hard work on yourself and then showing up for someone when there is no audience is different. Brett does the second. For me, he is a much more real example of VeeFriends' stated values than many of the people who are better at publicly repeating those values than actually practicing them.

Brett deserves more attention and recognition from the VeeFriends brand and community than he receives, in my opinion. I cannot make anyone else give it to him, but I can give him his roses here.

Issue 17 opens with a whole group of cobras hanging out in the jungle. Some are reading and counting, two are playing checkers, one is watching TV, and a game of tag has already turned into an argument about cheating. In the middle of all that, one cobra says, "I ain't scared of $#*!" and another fires back, "That's good since you're full of it."

Then a large predator explodes through the leaves yelling, "SURPRISE!" The comic goes from cobras talking shit during an ordinary afternoon to an actual set of teeth and claws in one panel. Suddenly, who cheated at tag is no longer the problem.

The cobra family scatters so fast that the predator is left coughing in a cloud of dust. Honestly, that feels like the correct response to a surprise attack from something with teeth and claws.

One purple-hooded cobra stays behind. The predator opens its eyes, the cobra raises its hood, and the two stare each other down. Everyone else is gone. He isn't.

The predator roars and the cobra family hides behind rocks and leaves. Then, THUD. When they look again, the predator is flat on its back with the purple-hooded cobra standing on its chest.

This is when the family identifies him as Confident Cobra. When they ask how he did it, he answers, "Mom said our venom is as strong as hers! Don't fear no fools! Stand up for yourself." His first explanation for that confidence is not that he felt no danger. He trusted what his mother taught him about his own strength. GaryVee has spoken about that same mother-to-confidence connection in his own life. When The Observer asked whether he had always had unshakeable self-confidence, he answered, "Yes, my mother did a good job."

The story shifts to the 55th Chamber (and yes, 5 is GaryVee's favorite number), where mongooses train in martial arts to fight the world's deadliest snakes. They aren't practicing forms for decoration either. The class is kicking, striking, and dropping each other while three masters watch.

One student tears through everyone in front of him. Bodies are on the floor, the masters are paying attention, and the comic tells us directly that he stands out above all the others. Whatever test comes next, this mongoose has already earned his place at the front of the class.

The masters finally name their best student: Mentor Mongoose. His final and most daring test is waiting on Mystery Mountain, so he climbs through a full-blown snowstorm toward an ancient temple at the top. Apparently beating up the rest of the class was the easy part. The martial arts setup, brutal mountain climb, and isolated temple give me a serious Kill Bill vibe.

Inside, Wise Wasp tells Mentor Mongoose that he has waited generations for him to appear. That is one hell of a final exam. Mentor Mongoose thought he was climbing a mountain to prove himself. Wise Wasp says he was climbing toward his destiny.

But wait a second. How old is Wise Wasp? He's been waiting generations? He has to be hundreds of years old then. Is this wasp immortal?

Wise Wasp tells Mentor Mongoose that he will become the greatest mongoose of all time and no snake will touch him. The comic shows Mentor Mongoose snapping, biting, and overpowering snakes. He becomes an absolute snake-killing machine.

But there's a twist. Wise Wasp tells him that one day, a cobra will stand up to him. Mentor Mongoose must teach that cobra to be king. All that martial arts training is not just preparing Mentor Mongoose to fight snakes. It is preparing him to train one.

Wait, what? So he is ruthlessly murdering snakes all for the purpose of finding the one he can't kill through a process of death elimination? Then, after becoming the nightmare all snakes dread, he's supposed to flip sides and help train a cobra to be king?

There is also a biological problem here. A king cobra is not just a normal cobra that trains hard enough to become king. True cobras belong to the genus Naja, while king cobras belong to an entirely separate genus called Ophiophagus. King cobras are also the longest venomous snakes in the world. So technically, a king cobra has to be born one. Is Confident Cobra biologically already a king cobra and Mentor Mongoose is just helping him come into his own right as king? Or are they taking some artistic liberty here and saying Mentor Mongoose can train a normal cobra into becoming a King Cobra?

And how does Wise Wasp know all of this? We get that he's wise, but apparently he's so wise that he's psychic too?

The story returns to the cobra family, who are playing cards, drinking beers, and talking about dinner.

The beers bring me back to the question of what age group these comics are actually for. Issue 05 is seemingly the only one that warned parents it was for ages 14+ and not intended for younger readers. That issue had one human murder another and later piss on the grave containing his body, so I agree it crossed a much more severe line. But are murder and corpse desecration the official threshold? Adults over 21 can legally drink beer, but how old are these snakes? We have no idea. I imagine at least some parents will think cartoon snakes of uncertain age casually drinking crosses a line too.

Maybe not every issue needs a warning label, but should each one at least have a target age range or a simple “this age and up” rating? Movies, television, video games, and other types of media already give parents that kind of guidance. Why not these comics?

Confident Cobra asks Katie how her job interview went. Katie answers, “Terrible. I suck.” One bad interview and she has already turned the result into a judgment about herself.

Confident Cobra shuts that down immediately. He tells Katie she is awesome and offers to run a practice interview with her next time. He doesn't just tell Katie to stop talking badly about herself. He offers to help her prepare so the next interview can actually go differently. Before Katie can answer, someone yells, “Delivery!”

A delivery crew wheels a grand piano into the jungle for Mr. Confident Cobra. The moment the delivery guy looks up and realizes he is surrounded by snakes, he screams, “Oh my God!” Confident Cobra calmly confirms that this is the right place while the other workers abandon the piano and sprint back to the truck.

Again, animals are casually talking to humans. We have seen this normalized across several issues now, but I still don't know what it tells us about where these stories take place. Is this somewhere in VeeWorld where humans and talking animals coexist, or can VeeFriends characters actually speak to humans in the real world too? The delivery guy is terrified that his customer is a snake, but he doesn't seem confused that the snake can talk. The communication itself is treated as normal, which only makes the worldbuilding question stranger.

Confident Cobra signs for the delivery, and the terrified worker tells him to keep the pen while running away.

The cobra family gathers around the piano and asks what it is and how Confident Cobra got it. His answer is, “I know a guy.” The comic cuts to Confident Cobra hissing at a terrified piano-store employee. Apparently, “I know a guy” is Confident Cobra's way of saying he intimidated a piano-store employee into handing over a piano. Or so it would seem.

Then one of the cobras points out the practical problem: snakes do not have arms or fingers. How exactly are they supposed to play? Confident Cobra says they will figure it out because he read that learning a musical instrument builds confidence and pride. That may be true, but he chose an instrument played almost entirely with fingers.

Just as Confident Cobra says they will figure it out, the comic abruptly cuts to Mentor Mongoose's face and a mouth full of teeth yelling, “Dinner time!” There is no warning that he is nearby or transition into his arrival. One second the cobra family is discussing a piano lesson. The next, the snake-killing machine from the prophecy is apparently coming to eat them.

Mentor Mongoose lunges at the cobra family and everyone scatters. Confident Cobra stays behind and tries to rally them. “Stop! Don't run away!” he yells. “Come on! You guys are better than this.”

Then an off-panel voice yells, “Help!” Confident Cobra turns toward the sound. We do not see who called out, only that someone nearby is in danger.

The off-panel voice belongs to a cobra named Katie. Mentor Mongoose has her pinned to the ground and is standing over her with his mouth open. Confident Cobra steps in and orders him to stop.

Confident Cobra raises his hood and says, “Let Katie go. Now.” This looks like Wise Wasp’s prophecy arriving in real time. A cobra is standing up to Mentor Mongoose, and this time standing up has an immediate purpose: Katie needs him.

Mentor Mongoose asks Confident Cobra, “Do you know who I am?!” He clearly expects Confident Cobra to recognize him and be afraid.

Confident Cobra answers, “I don't give a $#@% who you are. For the last time, let my sister go.” This is when we learn that Katie is his sister, which immediately raises the stakes. Confident Cobra is not stepping in for a random cobra. Mentor Mongoose has his sister pinned beneath him, and Confident Cobra is now confronting a mongoose trained to kill snakes.

Mentor Mongoose starts to answer, then remembers Wise Wasp’s prophecy: “One day a cobra will stand up to you.” He looks at Confident Cobra, gasps, “It's you?!” and flees the scene.

Confident Cobra goes straight to Katie and asks if she is okay. She coughs but says she will be okay.

The next morning, Confident Cobra tells the family he is going to teach them how to protect themselves and each other while becoming more confident.

He starts with posture: stand tall, strike a pose, and scare away threats. Then he moves into striking drills. Within seconds, the cobras are crashing into each other, yelling, and asking everyone to stop. His first attempt at group training becomes a pileup almost immediately.

Right off the rip, this is not going well. It looks like Mentor Mongoose may need to mentor Confident Cobra first, so Confident Cobra can learn how to teach and train the rest of the cobra family.

Mentor Mongoose spots a green snake and says it is not a cobra, but he is starving. He announces, “Lunch time!” and attacks. The snake dodges, leaving Mentor Mongoose to crash into the rocks and see stars. While Mentor Mongoose is still dazed, the snake bites him and sends him tumbling away.

Mentor Mongoose was introduced as an unstoppable snake-killing machine. Now a non-cobra snake only has to dodge once for his entire attack to fall apart. Something changed the moment Mentor Mongoose recognized Confident Cobra. But what exactly?

Five days later, Mentor Mongoose is back at his bachelor pad covered in bandages, sporting a black eye, and drinking whiskey from a bottle labeled with a 5, GaryVee’s favorite number. It is also another alcohol reference.

Mentor Mongoose stares at himself in the mirror and cannot understand what happened. He eats pythons, vipers, and cobras for breakfast. Snakes fear him. He is the best mongoose ever. Then he corrects himself: “I was the best mongoose ever.”

Confident Cobra never even fought Mentor Mongoose, but after meeting him, Mentor Mongoose has no confidence left. Wait, is that where Confident Cobra gets his confidence? Does he somehow vampirically siphon it out of anyone who opposes him?

Then Mentor Mongoose remembers the prophecy and hits the real problem: “How do I teach a cobra anything? I hate cobras!” He has trained his entire life to kill snakes. How is he supposed to turn around and mentor one?

Confident Cobra straps members of the cobra family to boards and lines them up for another strike drill. He shouts, “Strike!” and everything immediately falls apart. The cobras crash into each other, fall over, bite one another, and end up tangled in another pile.

One cobra says, “Maybe we can’t do it, Confident.” Confident Cobra refuses to accept that: “You can do it. Now stand up. Let’s try it again.”

What exactly is the adjustment here besides strapping everyone to boards? There is value in standing back up and trying again, but there needs to be some kind of correction between attempts. Otherwise, they are just repeating the same mistakes with confidence.

Confident Cobra is confident, but he is not yet calibrated to lead and guide the cobra family. This is starting to make Mentor Mongoose’s role make sense. The cobras do not know it yet, but Confident Cobra needs someone to teach him how to teach them.

As Confident Cobra lines everyone up to try again, Mentor Mongoose appears behind him. One cobra spots him and yells, “Mongoose!” The entire family hisses and gathers behind Confident Cobra while Mentor Mongoose raises his hands and says, “I come in peace.”

That is a lot to ask them to believe. The last time they saw Mentor Mongoose, he was trying to eat Katie. Now he is back asking the same family to believe he means them no harm.

Still, the cobra family’s reaction reveals something the training drills have not. They may not know how to strike in formation, but they know exactly who to gather behind when a real threat appears. Confident Cobra may not be calibrated to train them yet, but the family already trusts him to stand in front.

Mentor Mongoose tells Confident Cobra that he is there to help him. Confident Cobra immediately refuses and threatens to end Mentor Mongoose if he does not leave. The rest of the family joins in with another warning. As Mentor Mongoose walks away, he thinks, “More like Over-Confident Cobra.”

But what has Confident Cobra seen that should make him less confident? He stood up to Mentor Mongoose once, and Mentor Mongoose fled. Now Mentor Mongoose is back covered in bandages and asking for peace. As far as Confident Cobra is concerned, he has no reason to fear Mentor Mongoose. That is not overconfidence. It is confidence backed by their only encounter.

Mentor Mongoose may be exactly what Confident Cobra needs, but there is no way for Confident Cobra to know that. Before he can mentor Confident Cobra, he has to get past being the monster the cobra family was training to defend itself against.

That night, Mentor Mongoose sits at home with what appears to be another beer bottle beside him and asks, “How can I mentor a cobra if I can’t see him?” He looks at a piano book and a kung fu book, gets an idea, starts typing, and clicks Print On-Demand.

Of all the ways I expected Mentor Mongoose to begin fulfilling an ancient prophecy, clicking Print On-Demand was not one of them. Is he about to smuggle the mentoring into some kind of printed teaching guide or pamphlet?

Confident Cobra will not let Mentor Mongoose get close enough to teach him directly, so Mentor Mongoose appears to be packaging the lesson as something Confident Cobra might read without knowing who wrote it.

Confident Cobra finds a red book lying in the jungle titled Kung Fu and Piano for Cobras. Mentor Mongoose watches from behind a tree as Confident Cobra picks it up, starts reading, and declares, “This is it!”

So the teaching guide was actually a full print-on-demand book combining Confident Cobra’s two failed training methods. Mentor Mongoose cannot teach him face to face, so he has hidden the mentoring inside something Confident Cobra believes he discovered himself.

Confident Cobra has no idea Mentor Mongoose wrote it, which is exactly why this works. Mentor Mongoose can teach him without Confident Cobra knowing who the teacher is. That is a pretty sneaky way to mentor someone who refuses to be mentored. Kudos to Mentor Mongoose for the innovative thinking.

Using Kung Fu and Piano for Cobras, Confident Cobra assigns notes to Carl, Katie, Kevin, and the rest of the cobra family. They press the piano keys in sequence, move together, and finally make music.

The piano part works. Confident Cobra gives each cobra a specific note instead of placing everyone in front of the instrument without a clear plan. But the book promises both kung fu and piano, and the comic only shows the piano correction. The cobra family never completes a successful martial arts drill or learns how to defend themselves. Maybe that part is coming in the next issue.

Mentor Mongoose watches from the bushes and says, “I knew you could do it!” Confident Cobra still has no idea Mentor Mongoose is there or that the book came from him.

Then the comic ends. Wise Wasp’s prophecy clearly is not finished yet. Mentor Mongoose found a way to teach Confident Cobra without revealing himself, but teaching him to be king is going to take more than one successful piano lesson.

In Closing

VeeFriends Issue 17 ends with Mentor Mongoose solving his access problem in the strangest possible way. He secretly writes a print-on-demand book, leaves it in the jungle, and watches from the bushes while Confident Cobra teaches from it.

That solution is only necessary because Mentor Mongoose spent his entire life becoming the exact opposite of someone Confident Cobra should trust. Wise Wasp told him to become the greatest mongoose of all time, so Mentor Mongoose became an absolute snake-killing machine. Then the prophecy required him to stop killing and teach a cobra instead. His first encounter with the cobra family did not exactly help that transition. He tried to eat them and had Katie pinned beneath him before Confident Cobra stepped in.

Confident Cobra refusing his help is not an inability to accept guidance. He has no reason to believe the mongoose who tried to eat his sister has suddenly returned as his mentor.

Confident Cobra is also not missing confidence. He stands up to Mentor Mongoose without knowing who he is or what Wise Wasp predicted. When Mentor Mongoose returns, the entire cobra family gathers behind Confident Cobra. What he is missing is the ability to turn that confidence into useful instruction. He can convince everyone to stand back up and try again, but he does not know what to correct between attempts. Confidence gets the cobra family back on their feet. It does not tell them what to do differently once they are standing.

Mentor Mongoose has the opposite problem. He knows how to fight and train, but his identity and reputation make it impossible for Confident Cobra to hear the lesson directly. The book separates the information from the mongoose delivering it. Confident Cobra accepts a method he would have immediately rejected if he knew where it came from.

That is where the deeper confidence lesson lands for me. Nobody in this issue builds confidence alone. Confident Cobra’s mother teaches him to trust his own strength. Confident Cobra gives Katie more than reassurance by offering to help her practice for her next interview. Mentor Mongoose gives Confident Cobra the correction his own lessons are missing. Confident Cobra then turns that correction into a specific role for every cobra at the piano.

The difference becomes visible in the way Confident Cobra teaches before and after receiving Mentor Mongoose’s instructions. His original method is mostly insistence: stand up, try again, you can do it. The cobra family keeps trying, but he gives them no correction, so they keep crashing. Mentor Mongoose gives him something confidence alone could not: a specific plan. Each cobra gets a note, and for the first time, their effort produces a successful result. They still have not learned kung fu or how to defend themselves, but now they have one result they can point to instead of only Confident Cobra’s assurance. Their first success does not come from believing harder. It comes from changing the method.

Mentor Mongoose’s first successful act of mentorship also happens when he gives up getting credit for it. He does not force Confident Cobra to accept him, reveal that he wrote the book, or step out from the bushes. He changes how the lesson is delivered so Confident Cobra can actually receive it. That may be the most mentor-like thing Mentor Mongoose does in the entire issue.

Mentor Mongoose’s own confidence falls apart the moment the prophecy begins unfolding. Confident Cobra never even fights him, but five days later, the greatest mongoose of all time is covered in bandages and no longer believes he is the greatest. I still do not know if Confident Cobra somehow vampirically siphoned the confidence out of him, but Mentor Mongoose clearly only knew who he was while his job was killing snakes. Teaching one forces him to become something else.

The book works for the piano lesson, but it does not resolve the relationship. Mentor Mongoose has not apologized for trying to eat Katie. Confident Cobra does not know he is being mentored. The kung fu correction is still missing. Can Mentor Mongoose fulfill an ancient prophecy by anonymously dropping books in the jungle forever, or will he eventually have to reveal himself and earn Confident Cobra’s trust?

Wise Wasp said Mentor Mongoose must teach the cobra to be king. By the end of Issue 17, Mentor Mongoose has done something much smaller: he has proven that he can reach him.

Confident Cobra begins the issue standing alone because his mother taught him what he was capable of. He ends it helping the entire cobra family succeed because Mentor Mongoose quietly taught him what to do with that belief. That feels much more like the real beginning of the prophecy.

Who Is Your Mentor?

After the story, Mentor Mongoose asks the creative team, “Who is your mentor?” GaryVee names his dad, who taught him that his word is his bond and that making a commitment means keeping it even when it costs money or does not work out as planned.

Earlier in the issue, Confident Cobra credits his mother for teaching him to trust his own strength. GaryVee has also credited his mother for his confidence. Here, he credits his father with teaching him how to honor a commitment. His mother helped build the confidence. His father helped teach him what to do with his word.

Jim Rugg gives the most detailed answer. He names comic artist Ernie Steiner, who treated him like a professional when he was only sixteen. Steiner gave him professional comic paper, a Batman script to draw, feedback on the finished pages, and an honest warning about the business side of comics. He did not just tell Jim that he could become a comic artist. He showed him what the work and the industry actually looked like.

Andy Krainak and Ali Castro both name their mothers. D.J. Coffman names his seventh-grade art teacher, Mr. Fred Crump Jr., who saw his potential and encouraged him to draw every day. Kate Windels names her college professor Paul Johnson, whose excitement about creating made his students want to make something themselves.

Erin Johnson names her college concept professor, Jared Greenleaf. He taught her to capture beauty through concept, story, and composition. His larger lesson was that design is intentional and that an artist’s job is to communicate that intentionality in a way other people can recognize and understand.

Chris Fason says he never really had mentors, but then credits family members, teachers, supporters, and collaborators who helped him throughout his life and career. Chris appears to draw a line between having people support you and having someone you actually consider a mentor.

That makes Mentor Mongoose’s relationship with Confident Cobra even stranger. Confident Cobra is learning from him, but he does not know Mentor Mongoose wrote the book or that he is watching from the bushes. Has Mentor Mongoose actually become Confident Cobra’s mentor yet, or has he only found a way to influence him without a relationship?

Jim Rugg uses the final backmatter page to explain why the cobras were so difficult to draw. They have no arms, no legs, and no eyebrows, which takes away most of the obvious ways an artist would normally show what a character is doing or feeling. He used his sketchbook to figure out how Confident Cobra and his siblings should look and act.

The sketches show Jim testing different hoods, faces, body shapes, interactions, and ways to fit an entire family of cobras into the same scene. Confident Cobra’s giant purple hood makes him instantly recognizable, while the colors, sizes, expressions, and different ways the other cobras coil help keep the rest of the family from becoming one giant pile of interchangeable snakes.

That drawing problem ends up shaping half the comic. How do you make a snake play cards or play piano when it has no hands? The cards rest against their coils, and the piano finally works when each cobra is given a note to strike with its head. What made the cobras difficult to draw became one of the main engines of the story.

After The Issue

Inspired by how VeeFriends treats character traits as forces that shape reality, I created Alien Traits: a 1-of-1 NFT series interpreting each of the 251 core traits. No repeats. Each visual piece also includes a written definition of the trait it represents in OpenSea's "About" section.

Explore the full Alien Traits collection here: https://opensea.io/collection/alien-traits

Character First Appearances

VeeFriends' official Issue 17 article identifies three first comic-book appearances:

1. Confident Cobra
2. Mentor Mongoose
3. Wise Wasp

Easter Eggs

1. Mentor Mongoose is actually Mentor Meeting Mongoose, one of the original VeeFriends Series 1 access-token characters. He is also the first Series 1 access character to make an official VeeFriends comic book appearance.

The access characters were treated differently when VeeFriends Series 2 launched. Series 1 contained 268 characters, but Series 2 carried over only 236 of them and added 15 new characters. The 32 access characters were the ones left out, so they did not receive Series 2 NFT versions. They eventually made their Series 2 artwork debut through the Character Comfort apparel collection in 2023, but they still were not part of the Series 2 NFT collection.

There were three Mentor Meeting Mongoose NFTs, and each holder could redeem two private, two-hour mentoring sessions with GaryVee in New York City. Now Mentor Mongoose is the first access character to cross into the comics, and the one whose original access was literally mentorship is being turned into an actual mentor inside the story.

2. The 55th Chamber looks like a VeeFriends version of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, the 1978 kung fu movie. In the film, San Te trains through Shaolin's 35 chambers, with each chamber teaching a different part of martial arts. After completing his training, he wants to create the 36th Chamber so ordinary people can learn kung fu and defend themselves. That teaching mission is the entire reason the 36th Chamber exists.

That makes the connection much deeper than replacing 36 with 55 because 5 is GaryVee's favorite number. Mentor Mongoose is also the exceptional student who masters martial arts and then discovers that his real purpose is to teach someone else. He begins in the 55th Chamber learning how to destroy snakes. Wise Wasp then tells him that all of it was preparing him to train one.

And my Kill Bill reaction may have been even more on point than I realized. Gordon Liu, who played San Te in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, later played Johnny Mo and Pai Mei in the two Kill Bill movies. The 55th Chamber, the training sequences, Mentor Mongoose's transition from fighter to teacher, and the Kill Bill feeling are all running through the same kung fu-movie lineage.

Nobody involved with Issue 17 has officially confirmed the reference, but this is way too specific for me to treat as only the word "Chamber" and a random pair of 5s.

3. On Is It Canon?, Jim Rugg calls the final image of Mentor Mongoose's breakdown an open panel because it has no border around it. He says cartoonist Bill Griffith taught him that open panels give the reader's eye somewhere to rest and give a story room to breathe.

That fits this exact moment. The rest of the page is filled with Mentor Mongoose drinking, arguing with himself in the mirror, and replaying Wise Wasp's prophecy. Then almost everything disappears. Mentor Mongoose is left trudging across the blank page while asking how he can teach a cobra when he hates cobras. He suddenly looks a lot smaller than the greatest mongoose of all time.

A few scenes later, Jim Rugg uses that same lack of a border in the complete opposite way. Mentor Mongoose returns with "MONGOOSE!" stretching across the open center of the page behind him. During his breakdown, the empty space makes him look defeated and isolated. When he returns, it gives his name enough room to become enormous before the entire cobra family recoils.

The first open panel shows Mentor Mongoose with all of his confidence gone. The second lets his identity take over the page as he tries to step back into the role of the greatest mongoose of all time.

4. The first cobra we see counting starts with “17, 18, 19...” Starting at 17 in VeeFriends Issue 17 is way too exact to feel random. The issue number is hidden in plain sight on the first story page.

5. I thought the notes at the end might be hiding a song. The visible part of Confident Cobra’s instructions gives us F, F, E, D, E, E, E, E. The closest familiar match I could find was Jingle Bells, which has a section built around five Fs, five Es, and then D, D, E, D, G. That was close enough to make me look twice, but it is not the same sequence. The Alphabet Song and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star also contain F, F, E, E, D, D, C, but that match falls apart even faster.

An exact search for the comic’s sequence returned hundreds of unrelated songs. The speech balloon also begins in the middle of Confident Cobra’s instructions, and the floating notes have no staff or rhythm, so there is not enough information to identify a melody. My conclusion is that this probably is not a hidden song at all. But if any musicians reading this recognize something I missed, let me know what you hear.

Up Next

Read all VeeFriends Comics Explained posts here: VeeFriends Explained Posts.