Endtown by Aaron Neathery for May 11, 2016

Aahh, so he did rescue Holly, like someone was suggesting.

Our favorite mouse made it!

Ah, and here I was thinking Holly would have died in that horrible explosion. I don’t know how anyone could have predicted she’d survive.

Better put a rain check on that vacation, Doc. Your skills are gonna be in high demand soon.

If Doc blacks out now, Holly might be able to take the wheel, but that is about all she can do in her present form. At least Doc will be able to mutate and heal, but will he be able to wake up and take the wheel in time to prevent a major crash?

Holly isn’t looking so good. Well, considering….

Well, that’s my one right for this year! ;-)

Now to go waaaaay out on a limb, how about this:

1. Doc sees his passenger and realizes it’s Holly.

2. Realizes he can’t go to a hospital because the authorities will grab her.

3. Decides instead to trust them both to his old poker buddy (and local genius) Nikolai.

It could happen…. ;-)

Well it was clear holly would survive, and this would explain how. It’s pretty logical what happens next. Doc blanks out, Holly takes the wheel sufficiently that they don’t flat-out die, Doc Mutates. That, or doc makes it to an associates location before mutating. Either route, they both know they’re screwed without retreating somewhere. I’m suspecting Doc knows something of endtown for them to turn out there.

Holly is looking a little wild-eyed in panel 3. She still has blood on her hands as well.

I am surprised Doc made it thru the gate. I would have thought the NDCC (or whatever) would have closed all exits by now.

Still, Aaron’s doing a great job of manipulating our reader’s emotions – he gave us Holly, then he gave us whack job Holly who we were coming to dislike with her nasty behavior, now he gives us why Holly is like that…

It sounds as if Doc is making peace with his probable death. Evoking his dead wife and his assumed dead Holly, as if he is ready to join them.

Doc is making peace with his impending doom. He is invoking the name of his dead wife and Holly who he assumes is dead also. It is up to Holly to save him and herself.

It looks like a resolution to this may be coming soon. Either Holly makes peace and accepts her past or she fights it and loses her sanity. I’m not saying it will be easy to accept but its better than crazy.

The air car may have autopilot. It would allow for Doc to set a destination before passing out. There is also a lot going on in this story that is as much for us, the reader’s information as it is for Wally and company. To be able to help Holly, Wally has quite a bit of information already to assist Holly in coming to grips with her past. The only next thing would be Holly witnessing Doc Chase’s transformation and fearing being locked in a flying car with a monster instead of him changing into his present form as a badger if I remember correctly.

I’m betting we are also going to find out how they get to Endtown and who knows of its existence. Somebody already referenced Professor Mallard and I think they’re right. Does Doc Chase know him before coming to Endtown?

Another thing about Endtown is that I doubt it is nearby. Cities in Hillside were pretty much blown to dust and Endtown would have to be far away from any metropolis to be able to survive the destruction.

It seems to me that he doesn’t know that Holly is back there. A stow-away! I hate to think of what his reaction will be when he gets the news!

I had the impression that Endtown was built over ‘centuries’, from Flask’s back/side story.

Has anyone published a compendium on Endtown et al?

Looks like Holly has four fingers (and a hidden thumb behind the seat) in the third panel.

We’re hearing Doc’s thoughts. Unless this is a dramatization “based on real events”, I think we know who the presenter is now. It would also explain the stinkeyes “Lyn” was giving Wally. Wally wasn’t being told to take care of Lyn’s wife; he was being told to take care of Doc’s daughter. We suspect Doc knows more than expected about Apex and Endtown and the mutations; now I think he has knowledge of the Lucraneans. Or maybe he’s working with Marx, who does know about all that.

I think very soon Doc is going to see Holly and panic. If panic is the trigger for the mutations, he’s either going to tell Holly to knock him out, or she’s going to do it anyway to defend herself because she’s seen what happened to Lyn. Panic may be the difference between monster and anthro. People who are awake and panicking are chaotic, and there’s no chaos when a person’s unconscious while changing.

I hope that car has auto-pilot. Because Doc won’t be conscious for much longer (which may or may not be a good thing!). And Holly is clearly in so shape to drive.

Now would be a really good time for the The of the World as We Know It…

Holly snuck into his car. I was expecting that (like most of you).Now I’m wondering how Doc goes unconscious so his mutation becomes that of the funny animal variety.

Regarding the building of Endtown, I got the impression that Marx had manipulated time somehow to send Flask back in time so she could prepare Endtown (and perhaps other underground cities) before the disaster happened.

She’s a mutation plague ra… mouse.

Poor Doc. I really feel for him.

Ok, I have an official correction. The full name for Disease Control is The Neitherland Department of Disease Control (NDDC).

As long as the strip has been running, it would be neat to see an indexed archive that goes over the major story arcs.

Someone (TSOJ) correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve gotten the impression over the years that Hillside was huge, more of a city-state than just what we think of as a city. Since Endtown is supposedly a “mile” underground, it could easily (or at least as easily as anything that big could be) have been built without any knowledge of the folks above. I also seem to remember an Endtown resident talking once about what it was like to sit underground and listen to civilization being destroyed above, so it would seem Endtown must have been prepared beforehand.Now, given that time travel doesn’t exist (as we have been assured) the Endtown we saw being built in Flask’s backstory/life after death had to have been in one of Marx’s alternate realities, but that doesn’t mean that “our” Endtown did not have similar origins.

DADOF3 (GoComics isn’t letting me reply to you directly):You’re not wrong.

Yep, I did remember it right. See 8/27/13. History of Endtown 101, courtesy of Cooper. ;-)

If I remember correctly, it was Dottie Proctor who made the comment about hearing their homes being destroyed. She was going to the surface for the first time since the end of civilization in hope of finding evidence that would prove that Al and Gustine was innocent. Endtown does not look like a natural cavern, its walls are straight and square with one another and its canals are all parallel. I can’t imagine how somebody might excavate something like that but I have no doubt that the cavern that Endtown exists in is man made.

I think in the third panel, he’s not staying conscious. If Holly is a plague mouse, now would be a good time for her to contage. She’s going to have to take the wheel, and get her cooties on him, and save his life. When he comes to, he’s going to want an explanation, and she’s going to think he means for the car getting wrecked.

I see him passing out from blood loss, Holly grabbing the wheel, in time to see him mutate into a badger. He is a badger, right?

Anyone notice the wheels on the gate are for a chain link fence? Wow, gated in, or CAGED in?

I spent a lot of time underground, the areas least likely to be affected by a nuke, even to the point I walked from the Bronx to Ossining, out of boredom and curiosity, also to see how fast I could get out of dodge by foot.

In retrospect, that’s a pretty crappy childhood, teaching oneself IEDs, survival skills, performing self surgery (cat bite that got infected, had to debride the wound in salt water, not fun). But if you ever come in with a massive wound, I’m yer guy.

Perhaps that’s why I identify with Wally.

Two massive quakes (Loma Prieta and Nisqually), a few hurricanes here and there, people getting shot mere meters away, a few days ago some poor shlub fell off the curb directly under the rear wheels of a bus. Not sure if my life is being filmed by Michael Bay or George Zapruder at times.

Aaron has fixed the finger.