Endtown by Aaron Neathery for January 20, 2020

Patience? Yeah, yeah, how long’s that going to take?

It’s a long way………….

A fragmented moon in the sky?

Maybe this is my pre-coffee question of the day, but why has she been traveling from one place to another for months? I’m still not clear what her goal is, unless it’s been mentioned in an earlier strip and I’m not remembering it because I’m not sufficiently caffeinated yet. How close are they to reaching this lab of hers, where everything will be made clear?

Going into places blind, it’s a wonder she hasn’t died yet from landing in a hostile environment. Maybe that suit of hers could protect her from a 500-foot drop, but the others aren’t protected (except maybe by the dittoes). Their landing above water in this particular alternate Earth was even more fortunate than we-the-readers realized!

For months??? I think we’re in for a scenery change…….to me that glowing thing looks like a damaged moon or…..one of those attack ships that wiped out all of Unity……

Ghost fish in the sky? Neathery having fun with us? Whatever it is, it probably is bad news.

Stars are visible in the sky in panel 1. As is Alan moping at the bow, not looking back, and Duffy chumming the waters.

Local cuisine? She’s got a sense of humor, she does!

And it sounds remarkably like the sort of device that Aaron Marx would give someone.

Whatever that is in the sky it’s illuminating land in the background, or is it just a cloud bank?

I’m still hung up on the info that there’s no mutagenic virus. Why wear a containment suit? Hopefully we’ll learn why people mutated.

Maybe that’s it now.

diverleo: Thus far, the clues as to “why people ‘mutated’” are:

They didn’t just “mutate” into animals, but cute, talking, cartoon animals.

We have seen the mysterious “comic book” in which at least all of the “mutants” have appeared.

We know that the “comic book” in which they appear can only be seen through the visors of (presumably) these containment suits.

So, while the suits may not protect them from a virus, it is protecting them from something.

Personal point of view: Just about everything else Aaron has shown us seems to have turned out to be “red herrings.” In particular, I’m thinking the pork cannibal arc, a particularly bloody, gruesome, and thus far, totally irrelevant episode. (As in, didn’t move the overall story forward or provide any clues other than what we already knew, that there was a secret hierarchy in Endtown)

“Red herring”? As in, Wally dropped out of sight and, once the mystery was solved (and Walt dispatched to the “other side”), we “drop in” on Wally once again.

And with Marx awaiting Walt on the “other side,” acting like the gate keeper of heaven, providing yet another mystery: Now that Walt’s life is over, he’s still a cartoon animal?!?

Frames one and four give us a clue about why Alan didn’t respond to Duffy’s fight with the creature, Alan is busy “Chumming” the waters for more creatures. He doesn’t handle the life of a sailor very well, does he?

That’s a whole lot of ding diddly!

Where’s a good Tardis when you need one?

Our Topsider knew about Cardoodles, characters taken from a comic owned by Aaron Marx. Eden was a hernia off of the Endtown universe (https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2019/07/03) doomed to collapse. But Eden was also a collection point for the chosen ones (https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2019/08/30), turned into a trap by the ravenous “I” (https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2019/06/07) The appearance of our Topsider triggered the collapse of Eden (https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2019/11/27 ).She says says she’s part of a team thats been studying transformations for three years ( https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2020/01/10 ) a team that considers the children of Anthros to be the new and true apex species. Ok…I got nuthin; go fish.

So, basically, this is a super-crap shoot. You roll the dice and hope you don’t throw snake-eyes!