Endtown by Aaron Neathery for August 09, 2013

Can’t hide from what you are.

Thats exactly my thoughts. But then we know her husband was killed by a topsider and then she was hassled about her husband saying the opposite from that old saying, free milk and a cow.I sure thought that with all they went through would have woven a strong bond.

Maude: “I can’t look past it if you’re going to continue to lie about it. Were YOU the one that killed my husband? Or was it one of your crazy teenager friends?”

Maude did try to avoid Linda for the last 4 weeks, but for some reason, every time she locked the door to her room, the rats would come and drag her back to the cell…

After being locked up with that person for a long period of time? Sure. Often times people are nicer to those they don’t know.

Maude, can’t you get it through your thick bovine skull that you need Linda as much as she needs you right now? Look what you two have been through!

So, what then? Will Linda have to be rehoused?

Going back a couple of days, with Holly and Wally, this song from New Zealand musician Dave Dobbyn seemed perfect, in mood if not in every factual detail. (And the photo montage is unconnected to Endtown, incidentally.) Beside You, by Dave Dobbyn

So why did Allgood not bring this up in the trial, as he had the truth of it in the official file? Maybe there’s going to be some kind of answer to that question figuring in this current crisis.

Three women alone for a month and they did not lay their lives on the floor, before and now??? Sounds very odd. Jail cells are the noisest places. Everyone chattering, usually about aches, loneliness, food and former persons in their lives. Expectation of what will happen. I worked as a nurse in a woman’s jail. Were the rats good to them? What, what ,what, what .Interested want to know…..Blessed Be

They just spent a bit of time in a very traumatic imprisonment and trial. Maude was raked over the coals about her husband. I would expect all three to be mixed up and angry. Holly tried to jump off the tower. Yea, I would expect Holly and Maude to be experiencing Post Traumatic stress. Linda was already in a PTSD mode because of her recent, past six months or so, experiences. Wabbit re Yesterday: Yes, there is an easier way to jump between days, months or years than just using the back key. You can use the calendar to the right of the back arrow, and select, in this order: Year, Month and Date. Here at gocomics Endtown begins on January 19, 2009. <br>Yes, you remember correctly. Somewhere, TSOJ has posted links to the six major story line beginnings, and has posted them in the comments before. Perhaps TSOJ has posted them in his blog or at WWW.Endtown.com. Search Three Steps Over Japan + blog to find his blog, or perhaps he will provide a link, but I do not know how gocomics feels about links that take you offsite. <br>Endtown.com is the location of "the underground" where occasionally people use the forums, in part because editing is easier, and it is outside gocomics and their wonderful revenue producing ads that allow artists to be featured on gocomics, and receive some compensation. <br> Aaronneathery.org is also a site where you may access earlier works by Aaron, including Electromatic Radio, a podcast(?) he made in the form of a radio show, that more informed posters than I occasionally cite, and earlier works including Al, Gustine, and Aaron Marx, among others.<BR>*EVERYONE*Please remember to go to the Endtown auction site using the banner to the right of the early comments, and browse that page, or previous months to find prints Aaron may still have available. If you find a drawing or several you would like to have, contact aaronneatheryg.mail to check on the availability and prices. Perhaps someone would like a number of prints to decorate an office, dental practice, pediatric or mental health facility. There is a DONATE button near the bottom of the auction page to support our favorite artist and his ongoing health and living expenses. I cannot thank SurfStuff55 and Selina enough for initiating and continuing a fundraiser to help pay some of Aaron’s medical expenses. We all were able to benefit by continuing to enjoy Endtown, rather than have Aaron cast into debtors prison, deprived of needed medical care. Yes, the strip was recently very,very dark, but because Aaron was able to continue the story, those who were able to stay with the story were thoroughly enthralled and entertained. Wednesday’s strip was one of the most powerful scenes I can recall. APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE APPLAUSE for Aaron, Surfi, Selina, Three Steps, Level_Head, Jenner, DadofThree, Mr Sherman, Sapphire Dragon Studios, Veteran and all those who were able to suppoef

Maude: “Hello. My name is Inigo Hefner. You killed my husband. Prepare to die.”

“Holly’s weirdly tense reactions…”If only she knew the half of it. There was a time when Linda had been teasing and taunting Holly in preparation for sawing off her head to the satisfying sound of Wally’s screams. (Best keep that fact to yourself, Linda.)Looks like there’s some more healing to be done yet, and the two women will need to work it out between themselves.

I just hope this doesn’t lead to another visit to the clock tower…

So, this is what the greater good looks like?

The cat’s out of the bag now.

Boy, am I thick or what? ALL I SAW WAS LINDA TRYING TO BAKE A CAKE FOR AN OLD MAN BECAUSE SHE WAS MOVED BY HER COMPASSION FOR HIM AND HIS LONLINESS! SHE COULD RELATE.

Well it was going to come out one way or the other. Someone would have figured it out due to the fact Linda was never interrogated like the other two where. This would raise an issue as to why hammer the cow and mouse and be nice to the koala. Dont forget there are others who know who Linda really is. Jacob and Velda. They may be looking for a new head of security. What better than an ex-topsider with a grudge and no friends. The mere fact she is an ex topsider would to Jacob make her easy to control while working in Security. Linda finds her groove again as a topsider section leader and give her command over willing acolates? That is how Flask got the job the first time.Worked with Flask could work with Linda.Linda can never go back to the way it was.

Just reread Maude’s comments. If what she said can be taken at face value, it looks like she had figured it out before but was trying to look beyond who Linda was and try to help Linda adjust. The last thing she did before they were arrested was offer a toast to Linda with her own milk. Somehow being raked over the coals by Allgood has made her close off where associating with this former Topsider was unforgivable. I’m guessing Allgood’s accusations about Sam hurt her that much.

I woke up this morning thinking of Ravel’s “Bolero”. I’m sure most of you are familiar with it but for those who don’t, it is an interplay of the brass and woodwinds, the strings and the percussion parts of an orchestra. Each of the sections has their part to play separate from the rest but as the piece progresses the sections intermix. I’m trying to look at the overall big picture of the story from the time Linda was released from detention. I see Jake’s rise to power (in process) as one piece. Holly’s story as another piece. Is Linda and Maude’s coming to terms with the past the other piece? That would be interesting to find out.

Two news items of some relevance here. (1) A college professor has just been “outed” as having murdered his family when he was a teenager. And (2) an elderly woman injured in a car crash was identified as a girlfriend / partner-in-crime of a notorious 1950s murderer. Both have done their time and both were trying to rebuild their lives…but both still suffer from the “Isn’t that the man / woman who…” problem.#Has Linda committed crimes. Yes, definitely. Has she suffered for committing those crimes? Also, yes, definitely. And will she go on suffering? Well…looks likely. Things might go on for a while but then someone will whisper something…and it’s back to square one for her.

Throughout this story, it’s the post-mutation characters that have been real and important to me, not the people they were before they changed. Pre-Linda feels like a generic Topsider, Pre-Wally is just an outline, etc. Only since they changed are they really who they are. That’s the point Holly made to Wally to get him to let go of his old self-image. Endtown is supposed to be a fresh start and a rebirth to those who need it most. Maybe that’s why the mutagen was developed, out of some mad scientist’s good intentions for the monsters who needed saving spiritually, at the cost of creating new monsters. Too bad some people don’t want to bury the old monsters and keep resurrecting them because they can’t forgive.

Coyoty,I wouldn’t take it that far. In Wally’s flashback to his time in Bordavia we see a decent man who is struggling with his own doubts being confronted with something that felt larger than he could understand, let alone handle. Flask’s back story started out with a hint of what it was like to spend almost all of your life in a biosuit and the fact that it was enough to drive quite a few of these “perfect” men and women to suicide. I would wager that Linda’s premutation life as a young mother watching her child live and grow in a biosuit and dealing with her own questions and doubts had its share of quiet internal drama. Since Aaron focuses the strip on Endtown and its inhabitants, we only see glimpses of people’s premutation lives.That said, its beyond doubt that mutation adds a whole level of drama to people’s lives. Going from a statuesque woman to a 2 1/2 foot tall anthropomorphic koala and being threatened by one’s own tribe would have to generate all kinds of questions about oneself and one’s place in the world. Watching someone confront those kind of questions is more interesting than observing with someone who is certain about their place in the world. One could easily end up stronger from going through something like this. That could be what you mean about the mutagen creating people as “they really are”. Their lives have been forged.

Awww mannnn…can a brotha get an ounce of positivity!?!?!? ;-) It’s darkest before the dawn…I know, I know.

We know what you’ve doneActually, Linda is guilty of causing great harm, even though unintentionally.Her baking a cake was the hook that the entire faux “trial” was hung on.It would have happened anyway at some point, but it was her act of kindness that allowed them to start the ball rolling.It turns out that what Maude had in mind was further reaching than just now, and Linda didn’t do anything that she should feel guilty over regarding the cake.But it was her actions that led her, Maude and Holly being hauled off to jail and trial.

“And by your reasoning, Maude’s reaction means she wasn’t in on it. Unless, she was in on it from the beginning, and pretended to be Linda’s friend and is now showing her true colors.”That’s just it, Maude’s behavior right now can go both ways. If she was in on it (I still think she was, to some extent), this may be her way of getting Linda to go away and stop bothering her. If she was in on it, that photo of her and her husband together is probably a fake and she’s preparing to throw it away. I’m waiting for confirmation one way or the other next week.

Also wondering…the relative fates of Linda and Flask. Flask certainly committed crimes, and against both Endtowners and Topsiders…yet when last seen, Flask was apparently traveling through time setting up Endtown and finding happiness while atoning for her crimes. Maybe Linda’s crimes were on a lower level…say, retail rather than wholesale…but shouldn’t Linda get an opportunity to atone and, maybe, find happiness, too?#(Then again, I’d hate to think Flask got sent off ‘cause she mutated into a hot kittycat and Linda didn’t ’cause she mutated into a dumpy koala…even in the post-apocalypse, the deck is still stacked in favor of those who are…well, never mind…)

You know what’d be cool? Is if Linda tries to turn detective and works backward from the trial, tracking down Allgood, talking to Dottie about the evidence she’d collected for her articles on the “out of control HC”, and determine that Roxie is the one that set her up. Along the way, she could try finding out if “Mr. Hopper” ever really existed, and if so, where, if anywhere, he’s buried…

Koalas are usually placid. As they live permanently in trees that no other animal can eat or climb, they have no need to move much. As their sole diet – eucalyptus leaves – are nutritionally poor, they never have much energy, they are placid because they also have no energy to move much. If they have to, they can run or fight, but it’s wasteful of what little energy they have. However, they’re not social. They will object if people try to pull them off a tree. A male will fight with another male. A male will chase, fight with and forcefully mate with a female. They’re not very amicable. Don’t confuse affability with lethargy. In the wild, they never make chocolate cake for strangers out of goodness of their hearts.

Robert NowallI think part of the reason that Flask got “special treatment”, as you put it, was because her behavior piqued Marx’s interest. Thus he not only arranged for her death, but planned to visit her between lives to learn why she did what she did. As he learned about the pain and suffering she went through — how one compassionate attempt to help someone mushroomed into love, was twisted to hatred of all Topsiders — Marx started having feelings beyond the natural physical attraction and decided to arrange it so that Philomena had a new life, complete with loving companion and a mission to serve the greater good.We also have to remember that Linda’s story is still playing out. The only hint we have of what may come for her is a picture Aaron drew of Linda in an Endtown Security uniform. Still there is plenty of time for her to find her place in Endtown, or to not find it or to end up like Octavius. Only Aaron knows for sure, and he very well may not.

So she’s a gumtree-shoe.

Perhaps Endtowners, and Maude might consider an old precept. “There but for the grace of God, (or Luck, whatever), …go I”. Linda was a product of her environment, and only 17 when she had her son, right? She was shaped by her life as a topsider, and parroting the ilk she was fed. (Among other things, yuk). She never had a chance to see mutants as anything other but freaks. She didn’t see into their humanity under the fur. Now that she’s a mutant, things are different. It finally dawned on her that a person’s outside isn’t important. Humanity isn’t physical, it’s a state of mind.

This has been somewhat enlightening hearing what you-all had the say. I thought I read it all before but a lot has been going on, I live the “detective Kowalski” story. It is hard to know which particular character may be plotting against whom, and why. Merri, I like what you had to say, same thing about "walk a mile in his/her shoes. And I just love Arron’s story and all you people seem like friends to me.