Endtown by Aaron Neathery for January 29, 2018

Hate to say that i saw that coming. No real shortage of suspects, though…

Somebody leaked something.

Fish heads. Fish heads. Rolly, polly fish heads. Fish heads fish heads. Eat ’em up yum! ♫

Well, is that Cooper’s, or Foxworthy’s?

Hint, hint!

Uh-oh…

“Oh Bloody Hell!”

Dial “M” for Murder!

Thought it was the goo that was smoking a cigarette. Second glance told me Foxworthy dropped his cigarette into it.

Cooper can’t come to the secret meeting right now. Would you like to leave a message?

Mr. Cooper won’t be joining us for the rest of his life.

This is one time Phil shouldn’t stick around to see what happens next or else he’s next. It looks like his attempt to bring down Jacob just hit a dead end.

I thought liquid might be flammable, since Foxworthy was warned he’d regret not going along with Cooper. (not Cooperating…heh). But, if it’s blood, and Cooper’s…why? He’s part of the plan. I’m really enjoying this.

It looks like the bench is in front of an alleyway, which seems to be Cooper’s type of place to emerge from. I’m betting that Cooper’s corpse is the source of the blood. The implication is that someone (Jacob?) got Cooper to set up the meeting to draw Foxworthy to the location, then killed Cooper to implicate Foxworthy. The fox thinks he’s going to take the rabbit down? Hah!

First 2 frames, looks like some blood splatter on the wall of the alley.

I wasn’t sure if the stuff on the alley wall in the first two panels was blood spatter or not. Maybe it’s just mold.

If he doesn’t run fast, Foxworthy may soon be… Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper.ba dum tiss

This has all been a diversion! Jake demonstrated that there is no food shortage, but what else is most likely in short supply? What about housing? They have been down below for 6+ years now, and based on the kids we’ve seen, Mother Nature is still at work replenishing things. Since the implementation of the ditto shields, fewer foragers are being lost. Endtown isn’t equipped with suburbs, so how do we control the population level? They needed to cull the herd. Missing pigs were a red herring to implicate the wolves (which for some reason there were more of) and the wolves were (unfortunately for them) more than happy to cooperate. Now the population has been adjusted and the colony is set for another 6 years or so. Cooper was a loose end, just like the wolf journalist. (This is probably all completely wrong, but it was sure fun to write :-) )

Looks like Foxworthy has lost his handler. I wonder what he will do with out the guidance.

Now we wait and see if someone is watching Foxworthy discover that Cooper has been murdered. At least at this point we think Cooper’s been murdered. Those are blood spatters on the wall in panels 1 and 2. The look of stunned surprise on Foxworthy’s face and the pool of blood are further clues that something is very wrong.

Now for more suspense — whodunit?

When the badguys start severing loose ends that means they are getting ready to make their move.

If it was flammable the fumes would ignite. The mouthpiece has been silenced. Message sent. No one screws with the Bunny.

Wow….I hadn’t even thought that Foxworthy could have been stabbed as some have mentioned. That kind of makes sense. I still can’t get past the veiled threat (or not so veiled threat) that Cooper made about Foxworthy regretting his decision. I’d also forgotten that Jacob already knows about these meetings. He just didn’t know who Foxworthy was meeting with. ( http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2017/8/4 ) But it doesn’t make sense for Jacob to have either one of them quietly bumped off.

Cooper was a mouthpiece – doesn’t mean he was in charge or even high up in the conspiracy. If you think it’s all going south, what would a ruthless conspirators do other than cut links that lead back to themselves. I’m guessing Cooper’s throat was considered such a link…

Not to get too technical or anything, but if it were Philo who was stabbed, the cigarette would not have fallen into the pool of blood. The blood would have flowed OVER the cigarette. That blood was already there before the cigarette dropped.

For a moment, I thought that was oil. And Philo just dropped his cigarette in it…?

This just in… KA-BOOM!!!

An appalling act, but beautifully rendered by the artist. So cinematic.

Do you think Foxworthy will report the crime? Or… will he hot-foot it out of there to protect his separation from the nefarious affairs he and Cooper were involved in?

Cooper…he sleeps with the fishes. Oh, wait.

Guessing someone is erasing their trails – and setting the paper up. Good thing he asked her to be in an hour early to take over then.

Aaron’s been clever here. Note that the speech balloon in panel 3 is just three dots. This could be either “???” or “AAARGH”. And, therein lies the suspense.

Do we know that it’s not HIS blood?

i have the feeling that if it’s not his blood, his blood will be joining it next.