Endtown by Aaron Neathery for April 29, 2019

Not QUITE what I was expecting…

Holy Holly, Batman!

Okay, would never would have guessed that. Even though now I think we have our connect with the “dream” sequence with Marx earlier in “candy land.”

That’s a twist in this plot

I haven’t seen a 10¢ comic in ages.

I love it! But does it have “Fat Freddy’s Cat” strips at the bottom of the pages?

Really nice photo effect. And maybe Duffy can’t see the comic without the “glasses” and can’t touch it without the gloves. Interesting “out of phase” situation? And someone called it (not me) that these might be parts of Topsider suits. This is great!

OK, I’m officially lost now!

Ohhh, I think I get it…

This is how the virus gets you. If you saw anything with cartoon animals or similar the virus goes for that data in your brain and does… Whatever. (Provided you are sleeping.) But the secondary effect is the virus for whatever reason ‘hides’ this data from the infected. If you are poofed into a bunny from reading Bugs Bunny for example, you can no longer see anything with a picture of bugs bunny on it. But with Wally it’s a special case because the Topsiders have gotten ahold of a comic book which might have interacted with Wally directly to make him what he is. They are studying him. This doesn’t really explain how mutants are BORN I will admit.

This is what happens when you get tired and stressed out and in need of a break. ‘Course it’s funny, too.

Yeah, so weird…

What the what?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!????

Their reality is a comic book. Marx really screwed up when he tapped all those realities.

Well, at least it isn’t a Hanna-Barbara copy of Scooby Doo. The world doesn’t need 22 of them.

10+ years of Endtown, and NOW this twist shows up. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re at FUBAR-Factor-5. I LOVE IT.

And here’s another thing I don’t think anyone has noticed….he’s wearing Topsider suit gloves? Does this mean that not only do you need the goggles to see the Topsider world, but gloves to interact with it as well? What do Endtowners look like through Topsider suits? Like their old human selves? What does that mean for the humans that didn’t mutate?

I have no doubt this twist will be discussed for years. I still believe that it’s all just Neathery’s plaything like he’s toying with a lower-dimensional universe.

Given that the dates say May-June and we’re on the cusp of June, I’m willing to bet we’re going to be reading this comic book for the next two months. 64 pages means 2-3 pages of the book per day.

The question is whether it’s meaningless, or whether the contents will have some bearing on the Endtown universe. I’m guessing the latter. In which case, does that mean we’re not done with Holly?

UHHHHHH

Buckle up and hang on to your hats! It’s going to be a wild ride!

This may indirectly connect to the “there is no virus” thing and I may have a theory.

“There is insufficient data for a meaningful answer”…

That is lampshading the 4th wall break.

Fantastic job on getting the look of a classic funny animal comic right. And Marx did comment that Wally is a cartoon cat…maybe there is more to that than just an off-the-cuff comment.

…I don’t know what I expected but this certainly wasn’t it. :D

I had to check the Overstreet price guide to make sure such a title didn’t exist. That just looks too real (as someone who has a number of Golden Age comix).

Are… you… KIDDING ME?!

Tom and Jerry… Eat your hearts out.

I’m curious as to who is J.J. Carter? Is this significant?

Hats off to Aaron Neathery! This is fantastic artwork.

Yep Welcome to Toon Town!

Has anyone else noticed how realistic-looking his hand is in the third panel?

(Well, not anatomically-correct by actual human standards, but it looks to me like Aaron may have actually taken a photo of some kind of stuffed hand or something.)

SHRIEEEEEK! SHRIEEEEK! SHRIEEEEEK!

Okay, everyone: sign up to Patreon and pay Aaron some money! He needs to make a living out of cartooning, and I want this weird, weird joy to keep going. SERIOUSLY!

I’m pretty sure Wally would have clocked him after seeing the invisible thing in the case, anyway.If Wally was “one of the Chosen,” I’m thinking his code name would be “Neo.”

I thought at the time that Wally’s reaction to the invisible contents of the case were over the top. But if he was able to see the comic without the aid of special lenses, perhaps he just thought someone was having a joke at his (and Holly’s) expense which might explain the angry reaction and Ravenscroft calling him a “Chosen One”. (Well, we knew he was special, didn’t we?)

Just glad to see Holly again—even if she is Wally’s antagonist in this comic.

By the way, I hope Aaron sticks to the “all color” promise on the cover.

For what it’s worth, “Endtown” showed up in my Tuesday morning GoComics e-mail, for the first time in a long time.

Love the look of the comic. Also love the 3D vision thru the glasses – Aaron is a true artist.

Wait a minute… Hasn’t J. J. Carter been mentioned before much earlier in the story? Is this some sort of interdimension (yeah, we’ve been there) plot twist?

I wonder: does this relate at all to the ending of the Holly’s Flashback/The Ship arc, and the unresolved comment by the other ship, “There is no mutagenic virus”?

Is this a perceptual thing? Like exposure to something used during the war (perhaps by Apex) causes the subject not to mutate, but to perceive some sort of distorted reality? That would explain why being stoned or unconscious leads to pleasant mutations—you aren’t lucid enough to notice the shift and its dissonance—and could even explain away schism syndrome as suddenly becoming aware of what’s actually going on and having a psychotic break from the shock.

Topsider gear both lets them not suffer the effects, to stay hidden if they want, and to see things from outside of their particular ‘reality’.

Marx isn’t some sort of super-omnipotent, omnipresent being, he’s rather like Al from Quantum Leap, stepping into other perceived realities with the ability to influence them because he’s not actually there—you just think he is.

Wild guessing but it’s what I do.

Perhaps it’s foreboding a possible reunion between Wally and Holly except Holly is the antagonist in the next arc.

Anil Seth, in a TED talk (link below) said that our minds hallucinate all the time, and that what we call reality is a shared hallucination. Seth’s talk made a lot of sense to me. It helps explain how some people do seem to see things a bit different from the rest of us. It’s a very good talk, and after seeing today’s Endtown, I am thinking Aaron has been on the same wavelength as Seth for some years before the TED talk.

I have to admit this begins to remind me of Robert Sheckley’s Mindswap although I don’t think Aaron is dropping acid as he writes…

https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality?language=en

By the way Mr. Neary, wonderful artwork!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are in the Neary Zone…

I haven’t enjoyed this comic for a long time. Months. Maybe years. The horror and depression have far outweighed the laughter that originally hooked me. It used to be a balancing act on the high wire but not for a long time. But I couldn’t walk away. My wife did, months ago. I couldn’t.

But this! This is magnificent! I’m not sure it’s worth what I endured to get here, but this one day is wonderful! Thank you, Mr. Neathery!

What do we have? The colony of Eden is apparently stable and well-provisioned, but the inhabitants are discouraged from activities that would allow them to think too much. There’s some kind of odd region at the edge of town where Duffy’s brother Benny died (or something). There’s at least one invisible person there in a Topsider-style suit. Duffy went back to that region to gather proof (tape recording), and maybe for revenge (paint bombs, knife). We see an Apex case containing an invisible comic book—one that can only be seen with special eyewear (and maybe can only be handled by special gloves). We’ve just found out that Duffy was aware of the invisible comic-so already had some idea of the nature of the “ghost”. Ravenscroft seems to be trying to gather proof and also recruiting help for some kind of effort—to expose the situation?(whatever it is). Did Apex perform some kind of dimension-jumping “Philadelphia Experiment”? Is there an out-of-our-dimensional-phase Apex experimental lab right next to (or even in the exact spot of) the town of Eden? Was the comic book the original test subject (which is why it’s in the briefcase)? What happened to the rest of the gloves and eyewear? Wild guesses is what many of us do in here. :-)

Here’s a bit more that my mind has been working out.

Ravencroft can see, when he’s using the goggles, given that he points out where the comic is. But he has no eyes.

At least…..his bird form has no eyes. In order for him to see with the goggles on, he must still have eyes somewhere, right? Eyes that only work through the Topsider suit?

My current theory is that not only was there no mutation, but this whole “reality” of Endtown is nothing more than a skin. Just as you could put a skin on an app to change its appearance, or a character in Minecraft or other game. That the fractured realities are still operating simultaneously. All the characters still have their human bodies, somewhere, existing in parallel dimensions, maybe, with their cartoony selves.

So what’s causing the fracture? Amesworth Radiation? Dittos? Neathery’s twisted story? What is clear to me is that whatever Apex used to protect their soldiers during the “mutation” crisis, and war, and Topsider armies is the only thing that protects them from the fracture, and still works as a filter even when the suit “bubble” of original reality is compromised.

Chalk up one more theory.

Great comic book!!!

I had a whole box of them when I was a kid, but my mother threw them out.

Walp folks, this is the Big Reveal: Endtown is actually a 10 year long prequel for the actual strip “Cardoodles” by JJ Carter. JJ, Joy-Juice, Carter created Aaron Neathery as a pen-name to disguise his actual identity but is now ready to reveal the real Cardodles story to a breathless world.From here on out, you will need the special X-ray glasses (from Whamo Toy Company@ Wheehawkin IL) by sending $19.95 to the Aaron Neathery Patreon site. Don’t miss another issue, send off for your X-ray glasses today!!

Although Trixie/Hollie is holding a gun to the head of Cracked Cat/Wally, does the heart shaped hole indicate a future reunion? And what about Kirbee?