Category Archives: Webcomics

On the other hand, um, Doc Scratch playing everyone is a shocking development? Um, didn’t we know that already?

October 27, 2011 – 11:54 pm

(From MS Paint Adventures: Homestuck. Click for full-sized replacement curtains.)

Sixteen months ago, Homestuck, the current installment of MS Paint Adventures, started its fifth act. Thirteen months ago, it started the second act of that fifth act. Two months ago, MSPA went completely silent as Andrew Hussie worked on the flash to end the act, and just shy of the one-year anniversary of the start of Act 5-2, released a few extra, contentless pages to tide people over. To put all of that in perspective, Homestuck has only been going on for two and a half years, so Act 5 has taken up over half its lifespan, and Act 5-2 has come pretty close. What’s more, Act 5 has done more than that to make Homestuck what it is; it was Act 5-1 that gave us a proper introduction to the trolls, who practically define Homestuck‘s appeal at this point.

And now, after all that time, it has finally come to an end.

The end of such a momentous period in the “comic’s” history should be with a bang, and on this Hussie more than delivered, with a Flash animation so long (13 minutes) it had to be hosted on Newgrounds (which it then proceeded to crash when first uploaded), starts with a card that divides it into seven parts, can be paused (something that hasn’t happened for any previous flash), comes with its own modified site design, and eventually spills over to cover up its own title. Hussie has said in the past that he intended to keep pushing the envelope with what he could do with Homestuck, constantly trying to make it bigger, better, more spectacular, and this seems to be the sort of thing he was talking about. Rose and alternate-Vriska’s fights with Noir were originally going to be an epic Flash animation, but it took so long to put together the idea was scrapped in favor of starting the Scratch interlude early; I almost feel like this animation would feel less jarring if that animation had come to fruition. The only previous flash that would come close was the flash at the end of Act 4, and that was a long time ago.

Leading up to the flash, Hussie published a series of pages depicting Jade and Noir watching the Courtyard Droll touching down near their location and setting off a Barbasol bomb. (Turns out, stealing John’s dad’s wallet from the Wayward Vagabond without his ring or the Tumor inside was just as planned after all!) The frog tadpole they were with fell into some lava, and Jade fell to the ground, dead. Noir’s reaction is, in some sense, the culmination of a plot thread that hasn’t even been running that long. We only got a real look at Noir’s post-omnipotence mindset back in February, when we learned of his boredom with nothing to do except kill and his frustration with the dog-like thoughts Bec’s prototyping left him with, including loyalty and love towards Jade. So he tried to get his underlings to kill Jade for him. But during the Scratch interlude, he went as far as following Jade around everywhere (which did give him the opportunity to stomp on a lot of frogs), and now he gets upset and ultimately kills the Droll off-screen for following his own orders to the letter.

Noir then starts trying to destroy the universe, leaves Jade on a Quest Bed, and takes off to hide in the frog temple, where he proceeds to kill most of the Exiles. The Aimless Renegade does manage to destroy the vessels they arrived in, but gets killed before he destroys the one the Wayward Vagabond is in, though not to save his life as Noir simply pops in and rips out the uranium in his belly. Then – by all appearances – the circumstances under which Noir entered the trolls’ session prove to be very different from what most people anticipated, as Noir appears to simply put the uranium in its place and up and leave the Vagabond’s vessel, and pops up in the trolls’ session. This leaves a number of questions unanswered, foremost among them why Noir showed up in the trolls’ session, and how he showed up through what the trolls called a Scratch.

The now god-tiered Jade – whose dog ears suggest she still has everything her dreamself inherited when she was used to prototype her sprite, meaning she now has the powers of Bec plus god-tier powers and the knowledge of a Sprite, and (presumably) the omniscience that comes with combining the powers of Bec with a sentient being like Jade that Doc Scratch has shown – proceeds to shrink down and juggle the Battlefield and all four planets, keeping a promise to save all the denizens, as well as retrieve John after he completes the Scratch (which actually starts the Beat Mesa headed towards Skaia), and then forms a rectangle with her fingers, which forms a fenstrated wall that flashes images from an earlier, relatively more innocent time in the comic (the first time, surprisingly enough, I’ve ever felt the comic’s flashes were of lower image quality than its static or animated images), and at the very end of the flash, she takes the ship which John and herself are on, and literally breaks through the fourth wall, with the last image of the flash, displayed by the wall, being the very first page of the comic. (I’m a little surprised the flash doesn’t contain an Easter egg linking back to that first page; several of the normal interface links at the top do, but that seems like a bug.)

This leaves plausible a whole mess of implausible theories, including previously suggested ones, about John and Jade’s ultimate destination and Hussie’s “one yard” of direct influence (apparently shaking the life out of Scratch and creating the opportunity for Aradia’s ancestor’s attempted escape doesn’t count), including one I once read on TV Tropes that suggested they would literally land in Hussie’s back yard. More likely however, John and Jade will simply burst through the two fourth walls Hussie set up one yard apart, and likely end up somewhere near the comic’s beginning.

I also suspect we haven’t gotten the whole story as to why Noir feels “exiled” or “tricked” into the trolls’ session. The interpretation most directly suggested by the flash is that it’s a result of his shame at god-tiering Jade, but we had earlier been told that Noir destroyed the trolls’ Prospit, Derse, and all the planets to prevent the mistakes leading to his banishment; I don’t see any “outsmarting” of Noir going on that would have led to his banishment as depicted, or even anything that Noir’s biased perspective would construe as “outsmarting”; everything he does to enter the trolls’ session, he does of his own volition. That tells me either Hussie made a mistake trying to misdirect the audience, or I’ll be writing another post on it down the line. Could it be that Noir’s mistake is more specifically related to what Jade does after being god-tiered, or alternately and less likely, to leaving the Peregrine Mendicant alive (more on that in a bit)? Or could it be the destruction of the Green Sun (er, well, more on that in a bit) or the scratch, which he travelled back in time to postpone or obviate?

Meanwhile (whatever that word means in this comic), with the Draconian Dignitary killed by Dave off-screen, both Dave and Rose make their way to the Green Sun, where they find, inexplicably, two Quest Beds waiting for them (or rather, inside Derse’s moon, but the flash seems to indicate otherwise). Once deployed, the Tumor cracks open to show that it is apparently powered by the destruction of both the kids’ and trolls’ universes, and may in fact contain them. After the Green Sun is destroyed (as a sign of how confusing the flash is, apparently the intent is that the Tumor actually creates the Green Sun, but that’s hard to convey without dialogue), Dave and Rose pop out god-tiered (who wants to bet someone’s calling “deus ex machina”?) in front of Aradia and the ghost of a future-dead Sollux. After the living trolls notice the glow of the Sun’s destruction (er, creation), Sollux is shown completely freaking out with his eye sockets flashing black and white, which I actually originally interpreted as something his ghost with Aradia was doing because of the similar color scheme, but which I later realized was him living up to his ancestor’s example.

Oh, and the Peregrine Mendicant recovers the ring from the Wayward Vagabond’s corpse and is shown challenging Noir, apparently coming the same way he did, but showing up ten hours and twenty-five minutes later, and apparently bringing WV’s body with her (if you look closely). Between her and the possibility of “dog-tier” Jade joining the fight, this comic is starting to look like an episode of Dragonball Z (without, of course, the long drawn-out multi-episode fight scenes… hopefully). Seriously, three nigh-omnipotent beings?

All told, the end of Act 5 lived up to every expectation it had to to wrap up something as epic as Act 5 itself was, wrapping up most of the act’s individual plot points and completely shaking up the status quo. But it didn’t answer every question, and it raised more than a few questions of its own. One particularly glaring omission? The flash barely even hints at Lord English.

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (0)

Reflecting on the end of one of the defining elements of my life

October 25, 2011 – 7:06 pm

(Note: This post was originally going to have pictures, but I seem to have lost a second data cable for my phone. With luck I may have pictures in time for the Blog-day post at the end of the year.)

As I mentioned in the third-ever post in the history of Da Blog, for the early part of my life I was a sort of vagabond. After living my first four years in the same house, over the succeeding years I moved to Los Angeles, the Seattle suburb of Issaquah, and Seattle itself, living a year in each place. Then in 1996 I moved again, this time just across the freeway from my previous place. This time, I would stay for more than a year. Much more.

Over half my life – indeed nearly two-thirds of my life – has been spent in that little hidden-away place as part of what might best be described as a quadruplex near Seattle’s University District. I moved in just before entering the third grade, and would complete elementary school, middle school, and high school there, as well as attend close to five years of college. I developed my habits there, cultivated my interests, discovered new ideas, started a blog. That house was where I discovered who I was and what I wanted to be. For a time I moved out and lived in a dorm room, but it was not meant to be, and after a few months I was back at the house where I started, where Da Blog became what it is today, whatever that is.

A few months ago my mom inherited a house in Issaquah when her mom died. Mom, not wanting to be anyone’s landlord, decided to move there herself, which meant I would have to come with her. And so it was that this past weekend, we packed up and moved away from my home of 15 years, bringing to a close a somewhat momentous era in my life.

I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a sobering moment, but I also have plenty of reason to look ahead. The area around the old house has changed over the years, and as I’ve chronicled on Da Blog in the past, I’ve had more than a few run-ins with obnoxious college student neighbors the past few years. This new house has no shared walls with anyone but people I already know. As it sets up, it also has a fairly private area for me to set up and do whatever I need to do, whether it’s on the computer, reading, or whatever; I effectively have an “office” for me to work in. On the other hand, a fairly lengthy commute to school is going to get even lengthier, and it looks like we’re going to add a dog at some point; I’ve never gotten along with dogs.

Although one era of my life has come to an end, a new one is just beginning, and I have every hope and expectation that this new home will provide the foundation upon which Da Blog will finally take off and I will achieve my success. Of course, I’ve said that sort of thing a bajillion times before, and this new home comes with something of a bad omen. I was already close before living in the Seattle area, but this new home is just eleven miles or so from the coordinates of the home of John from Homestuck.

Which spookily enough, brings me to my first real post from my new home…

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in About Me | Tagged | Comments (0)

You could say… he beat him like an… 808 drum. YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! (Okay, that was completely and utterly lame.)

October 5, 2011 – 11:03 pm

(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized architectural knowledge.)

I have very little to add to this strip. (Not a good thing when it’s a whopping four pages long. Oh well, let’s see how it goes this time…)

I have very little to add to Roy taking time out in the middle of the fight to shoo away the spectators instead of protecting himself or returning to the arena to keep Thog away from the spectators. (Or his line “I’m a big scary gladiator with permissive ideas about individual rights!”)

I have very little to add to Roy tricking Thog into shoving him into columns, waiting for him to de-rage, then letting everything the columns were holding up cave in on him. Or to Roy managing to get in a one-liner in the aftermath. Or to the stealthily-meta title. Or to the more-confusing-than-you-might-think panel of Zz’dtri being led off.

(Actually, I do need to stress this more than I just did. Roy not only concocts a plan to ultimately defeat Thog, he allows his own body to be battered and bruised carrying it to completion. And then he taunts Thog about how he did it. That is just… Let’s put it this way: There is a reason why professional wrestling is popular, and there is a reason putting on shows like this works for evil dictators like Tarquin.)

I have very little to add to whether Thog is dead as a result of this, and honestly, for the moment I don’t care. My hunch is he isn’t, though, based on the sort of drama framed around this scene and what Rich has done in the past (not to mention it wouldn’t matter much anyway, as Roy knows well). Frankly, I wonder more what this means for Roy: would this make him the new Champion, and if so, what would escaping do to that?

I have very little to add to the Linear Guild fight (and thus this whole long 100+-strip Empire of Blood sequence) winding down, with Zz’dtri and Vaarsuvius being indisposed (I don’t know if I’m putting the apostrophe in the right place and for the moment I don’t care), Elan meeting with Durkon, and Belkar and Mr. Scruffy meeting up. I have a feeling, though, that I will be making a lot more posts on OOTS in the future – Rich will probably start sending the Order to Girard’s Gate (finally) soon, and that could result in quite a few post-worthy revelations, not to mention more moments like this (though not quite of this caliber) in the near future. And that’s not even getting into the posts I’ve had planned but have been waiting for the right moment to actually do, like my last OOTS post.

(I almost wrote “sending his cast to…” there. Is Robert A. Howard rubbing off on me? Speaking of which…)

I have very little to add to what Tangents said about this strip, especially since I made some of the same points he does earlier in the fight (and as with that strip, this one works largely because there are no swords involved), except to say that cross-cutting between different fights in different places is in fact one of Rich’s favorite tactics, and that if the fight has been dragging I would blame the slowing update schedule.

I have very little to add to being most of the way done with this post, but still needing to insert pointless filler like this to keep the comic image from messing up the layout of the page. (Hmm… maybe I should have inserted a thumbnail of only a part of the comic, like I did in my very first OOTS post? But there’s so much comic to choose from…)

I just want to say two things, at least one of which I suspect Eric Burns(-White) would say if he were still posting:

This comic… tells you everything you need to know about Roy Greenhilt.

And also: Roy Greenhilt is awesome.

That is all.

(Just a little bit further… YES! It counts! That’s right, that’s right, who’s the boss, who’s the boss?)

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (2)

On the modern Ring of Gyges

September 28, 2011 – 12:41 am

(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized influence.)

Rich rarely makes huge storytelling blunders, a result of how straightforward the comic’s art style forces his storytelling to be, but this comic contains a pretty big one. In the midst of Belkar dealing with Mr. Scruffy’s injury, we get a random panel showing Enor with Mr. Scruffy’s head, Gannji with Belkar’s head, and the back of Belkar’s head.

Or a flashback to Enor and Gannji’s arena battle, giving context to Belkar’s decision to save the two by unleashing the allosaurus. That works too, but only if you remember (a hard task given how slow the comic has updated recently – Robert A. “Tangents” Howard had a post on this comic nearly a week ago) that the line in that panel was originally said by Roy in the original comic. The panel isn’t given any real context, certainly no buildup, and the “revelation” contained therein seems to be randomly divulged without any real impact or providing any additional meaning to current events. In fact, there isn’t really any reason we couldn’t have gotten it a lot sooner.

Regardless, we now have some context for that decision, and an opportunity for me to say something about it. What we knew before was that Belkar made that decision, and didn’t want Ian to tell Roy about it – and seemed uncomfortable taking Roy off the scent himself. Considering Belkar is currently trying to fake the sort of character growth that would lead to him releasing a dinosaur to save a couple of people he only knows for getting him thrown in jail, it seems odd that he would deny any responsibility for it and actively try to maintain Roy’s impression that he’s still every bit the bastard he’s always been.

But what I’ve noticed, re-reading past strips in this book and my posts on them, is that Belkar only ever claims to be a team player. He never claims to have any sort of character growth beyond that. He never actually tries to claim that he’s any less of a murderous psychopath, he simply claims he’s no more of one than any other adventurer (something of a sore spot of Rich’s). Which begs the question: is that what Shojo meant? When he asked Belkar to fake character growth, did he mean as little character growth as possible? Re-reading my original post on the matter, there may be evidence in favor of this interpretation:

To this point, it seems that Shojo’s point might be bigger than whether or not Belkar should be a “hero”, but whether he should simply live a life bigger than just stabbing everyone at every opportunity. Consider Belkar’s life immediately preceding being struck by the Mark of Justice: skipping out on the entire explanation of the Gates because he’d killed a guard and fled, leading Miko on a wild goose chase and slowly driving her more and more insane with fury, pretty much trying to get her to kill him out of blind fury for kicks. Belkar doesn’t even care about staying alive as long as he believes he can be quickly resurrected…we can place a name to Belkar’s life through the Mark of Justice experience: “anger and needless rage”. He’s spent too much time consumed with both to realize his true potential, whether that involves “hurting…living creature” or not.

I proceeded to suggest that “Really, nothing about the conversation says Belkar needs to stop acting outwardly evil; only the circumstances would determine that at any time”, and that one interpretation of Shojo’s remarks was that “Belkar needs to stop acting like he’s above the alignment system entirely, and start acting Chaotic Evil“: “Belkar, in this interpretation, is entirely within his rights to do exactly what he has been doing, but only as long as he at least makes an effort to get along with the rest of the Order of the Stick, and pay some effing attention to everything else that’s going on.”

Belkar’s reaction to his own decision to release the allosaurus suggests he’s taken this interpretation, but there’s a difference between not hiding your evil actions, and hiding your good ones. Belkar has an interest in Roy thinking he’s a team player, but somehow, he seems to also have an interest (or thinks he does) in Roy thinking he’s still a Chaotic Evil murderous psychopath. (It’s not that Roy would have a problem with him helping Gannji and Enor specifically; Roy’s own reaction disproves that.) Otherwise it would seem odd that Belkar would hide an act that would further his effort to convince Roy of his reformation, however defined. What makes it even odder is that Belkar has been introduced to the rewards of being good – but interestingly, his interpretation is wrong: “I did exactly what I always do – murder people horribly – but because I killed the people everyone else wanted me to kill, I get presents instead of jail time?”

So I have two interpretations of Belkar’s decision to hide his decision to release the allosaurus from Roy. The first is that Belkar is still new to this “society” and “morals” thing, and doesn’t realize that saving lives, even a couple of supposedly evil lives, is as praiseworthy as killing the people Roy asks him to. The second has to do with what we’ve now learned about the reason he released the allosaurus: that Belkar panicked at his own decision and didn’t know what to make of it. Under this interpretation, Belkar believes he had a one-time moment of weakness and worries that if Roy knew about it, he might not trust Belkar to do what needs to be done in the future. But not only is he wrong about what Roy’s reaction would be, he’s wrong about what that moment means, because I’m now with the group that believes that Belkar’s fake character growth, or at least his alliance with Mr. Scruffy, will lead to real character growth, at least in the short time he has before he inevitably dies – and perhaps Belkar’s line in the last panel suggests he realizes this. Perhaps it’s only now that he even realizes why he released the allosaurus to begin with.

Both interpretations also raise the question of why Ian doesn’t correct Belkar’s misconception, but I’ve been meaning to write a whole post on him…

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (0)

Just as soon as I got back to them…

September 21, 2011 – 10:58 am

…full-fledged webcomics reviews may be going back on the back burner for the foreseeable future.

I have a large backlog of posts I intended to get done over the summer, mostly sports-related, that I wanted to get as much of done as possible BEFORE school started. That… didn’t quite happen. I also just hit two of my largest feeds in my ongoing attempt to catch up on the RSS feeds I abandoned two years ago, and one of them will trigger a rather involved project. And there’s still one more project I’d like to follow up on.

However, one of the posts in my backlog is a VERY involved and interesting series on the state of the comics medium. Stay tuned for that.

By Morgan Wick | Also posted in Blog News | Comments (0)

How weird is IWC? I saw this coming by the second panel.

September 2, 2011 – 9:31 pm

(From Irregular Webcomic: Steve and Terry. Click for full-sized talentlessness.)

So earlier this week I tweeted how weird it was that Steve was about to become Hitler.

As it turns out, I wouldn’t know weird if it held me down and beat me up for my lunch money.

Here’s the funny thing: It wouldn’t be surprising if the “Me” character, as the creator of Irregular Webcomic!, was more important to history than anyone else in the room knows. Yoinking him out of history could conceivably cause the very reality they inhabit to collapse from the lack of his presence, maybe even cause the timeline distortion they’re having to deal with in the first place. Of course, Me has already been killed off once, but in this comic, that’s relatively minor.

Beyond that? I quite literally have no words to describe this. Whatever David Morgan-Mar is on, I want some of it. (Of course, that depends on which Morgan-Mar we’re talking about…)

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (0)

You know, I wouldn’t count out his chances of succeeding, at least in the short term. Maybe even as far as becoming a Planet of the Apes parody.

August 31, 2011 – 12:00 pm

(From Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click for full-sized revenge.)

So Ted’s plot isn’t world domination. Instead, he remains what he was from the start: a version of the Linux penguin.

This story arc continues to be reminiscent of the early days of Ctrl+Alt+Del, right down to looking to involve versions of real-life high-profile figures being invaded by the CAD cast. Most people have probably forgotten or are only dimly aware of CAD‘s pro-Microsoft stance, with the main relic of it being Zeke’s being made out of an X-Box.

There’s a part of me that wants to wonder how far back Tim had this story line planned out, probably before the evolution of the comic… except that Tim hinted around the time of the miscarriage that that story arc had, itself, been planned out fairly early in the comic’s history, perhaps as far back as Lilah’s introduction, which was probably less than halfway through the first year. This storyline, then, may be continuing the trend, previously noted, of Buckley trying to get away from the grimdarkness of the immediate post-miscarriage era and back to a more fun-loving time in CAD‘s history, with Ethan getting involved in wacky, out-there plots.

Given where the comic has gone since those early days, I still can’t help but shake the feeling that this plotline will leave long-lasting impacts on the cast. However, at this point I’d be far from surprised if it doesn’t.

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (0)

It’s like a big ball of timey… wimey… stuff.

August 31, 2011 – 10:00 am

(From Irregular Webcomic: Shakespeare. Click for full-sized command of the English language.)

Okay, I am officially lost as to how these time shenanigans work.

The only way I can make sense of Shakespeare’s nervousness in the third panel, and make the punchline not a complete non-sequitur, is to come to the conclusion that once the timeline is fixed, Shakespeare will “return” to the 16th and 17th centuries.

The conceit of the Shakespeare theme has always been “if Shakespeare had been born 400 years later“. While it has obviously never precisely adhered to “real” history, aside from the impact Shakespeare had on the English language apparently being applied anyway, neither has it ever hinted that that “real” history ever existed, if that makes sense. Shakespeare was in the 20th and 21st centuries before the Irregular Crisis, and we’ve established that the Nazis lost in their timeline.

If I’m right about where Morgan-Mar is going with this, it raises far too many questions: How did Shakespeare get time-displaced from the 16th and 17th centuries? Why didn’t the Irregular Crisis return him there, and why would fixing World War II do so if the Crisis didn’t? How does he know he was displaced 400 years? If he retains his memory of his time in modern times (which would make Shakespeare’s characters of Ophelia and Mercutio named after their IWC counterparts instead of the other way around), which seems to be the most consistent way of doing things, wouldn’t that cause as much upheaval of the timeline as anything else, and potentially more than just keeping him in modern times?

On the other hand, perhaps we now have a glimpse of where Morgan-Mar was headed with Shakespeare and Ophelia’s relationship upgrade…

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (0)

As for why I didn’t post this on Wednesday? Distractions. I’d really rather not talk about it. Suffice to say, Homestuck is sucking me in even when it’s on hiatus.

August 29, 2011 – 4:19 pm

(From Ctrl+Alt+Del. Click for full-sized conveniences.)

Oh, I’ve been really remiss in not talking about the current storyline in Ctrl+Alt+Del.

After wrapping up the surprisingly fast and ultimately fruitless KOTOR storyline, Tim Buckley rather abruptly shifted gears to Ethan’s attempt to figure out just what Scott was working on in that locked room. Until the cliffhanger two weeks ago, I wasn’t entirely convinced that his attempt would be successful; after all, it had been a lingering mystery for some time, we got gobsmacked with this story arc out of nowhere, and until fairly recently Scott looked like one of a number of concepts that had been forgotten without explanation.

But no, now was the time for Buckley to finally give us the answer we’d all been waiting for… abso-freaking-lutely nothing out of the ordinary. I was all set to write a post that Monday even in this likely scenario, but delayed it to Wednesday when Scott, also predictably, caught Ethan in the act, to see if he would give some sort of explanation. None was forthcoming, especially once Buckley dropped another Friday cliffhanger: Scott was up to something nefarious after all.

But that also-semi-predictable revelation paled in comparison to what Buckley dropped on us Wednesday, which I doubt anyone saw coming: the penguin was behind it all along!

Okay, when I put it that way, it admittedly sounds kind of silly, and Buckley may be flirting with PVP/Goats Syndrome here. (A webcomic with Cerebus Syndrome that’s flirted with both First and Ten and PVP/Goats Syndromes? It’s the Webcomic Syndrome Triple Crown!) As gripping as this storyline is for someone who’s been following CAD for long enough to remember when Scott retreated into the back room, I can see it being just as annoying for one of the strip’s haters. In fact, this plotline is actually reminiscent of some of the worst plots of the pre-miscarriage era, when Ethan was founding religions and being the Savior of All Gaming. Ethan has once again been put in a position way above where he should be, and the only direction “Scott’s” plot can go is even sillier. What’s the plan, cause a new Ice Age so that telepathic penguins can take over the world?

This storyline may have me back engrossed in Ctrl+Alt+Del for the time being, and it’s even reminding me why I got interested in it to begin with. But it may also be a threshold test to see if I remain engrossed in CAD. If all those years of mystery were to set up one silly storyline – if there are no long-term ramifications to this whatsoever – or if “Scott’s” plan ends up being too silly, or Ethan’s role in stopping it too unlikely, to take seriously, it may ultimately be the storyline that finally drives me away from CAD, unless I decide to take it as a simple thrice-weekly silly diversion. I doubt I’ll make a final decision on the latter until I’ve gotten caught up on Darths and Droids, or the subject of my next webcomic review.

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (0)

Yes, I know I’m using “nonplussed” wrong, and I don’t care.

August 23, 2011 – 7:54 pm

(From Irregular Webcomic! Click for full-sized timeline refugees.)

What I find exceedingly interesting about this comic, and what makes it the biggest development in the Irregular Crisis in months, is the first panel.

There is plenty wonky about the alternate 1940 that most of the IWC cast has been sucked into, but Mercutio mentions none of it in the first panel. Everything Mercutio mentions is business as usual for the Cliffhangers theme, especially Hitler being a brain in a jar, which in the first place, implies that prior to the Irregular Crisis, Cliffhangers and Shakespeare were not in continuity with each other, and that history for the Shakespeare theme was the same as in our reality.

In the second place, it implies that the time flux the rest of the cast is trying to untie may be as simple as the history of the Cliffhangers theme overwriting everything else. This isn’t the first time this has been suggested – Hitler being a brain in a jar came as a complete shock to the Steve and Terry crew – but I had always written that off as a secret, heretofore undiscovered application of Nazi science – the yeti was completely nonplussed to discover Nazi teleportation technology the other Steve and Terry members were taken aback by. It has never been made as explicit as Mercutio makes it here. What’s more, it suggests that all the activity that has centered around 1933 and the Reichstag Fire is ultimately irrelevant, and may be making things worse. While Nazi victory is the most obvious consequence of a timeline divergence, addressing (or causing) the proximate cause of that may ignore a more far-reaching problem, yet one potentially simpler to fix, at least for the Paradox Department.

I have complained about the pace of the Irregular Crisis in the past, but David Morgan-Mar may finally be laying the groundwork for its resolution… even it it takes a rather circuitous, and yet far more fascinating, route to get there.

By Morgan Wick | Tagged | Comments (0)