Endtown by Aaron Neathery for August 24, 2018

The uncertainty of where this was going has been answered. There’s no shame in crying, right?

Rest in peace, Walt.

Panel 4… Aaron Marx in mourning.

Marx held his soul long enough to give him some peace. They were standing in a river of water.

Walt seems happy now…

At least Walter Trimble will be at peace now…

I’m hoping Portia is at peace as well. Perhaps Aaron reunited her with her brother. She did love Walter, but she deeply missed her brother.

Let us all use this time wisely, and say farewell to a good man (or bear, as the case may be…). Endtown will not be the same without him…

Perhaps next week, we’ll see what Jacob and Velda have to say for themselves…

It is not water!!!

I posted these yesterday.

https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2012/08/16

https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2012/10/12

https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2012/10/23

There is a current that is taking material (souls or the detrius, thereof) to the fountain for recycling.

Marx actually looks sorry. Was Walt an unintended consequence of the “greater good”? A lot of pigs and wolves are also dead, while the vast majority of those who profited from this whole breakfast meat debacle go about their business. I grant you it happens all too often in real life, but I can read the real life stories in the paper. This is supposed to be an escape from all that. If this (and Flask and Holly and Portia and all the others) is the Endtown version of a happy ending then …. I don’t know. Endtown is captivating, there’s no denying that. But it’s a painful, sad and depressing story told magnificently; which in a cruel way makes it even worse.

DadOf3: Agree. A magnificently told but sad and depressing story.

Others noted that Marx at least had a conversation with Flask before she was dispatched – and that Marx had a hand in where she was dispatched.

I was kind of looking forward to a conversation between Marx and Walt.

But alas, not even that?

EIGHT PANELS WAS NOT ENOUGH TO SAY GOODBYE TO WALT!

Do you suppose that Walt knows where he is and why he is there? Or have his memories of the troubles in Endtown been mercifully removed? I want to believe the latter is the case, and that he can go to his favorite fishing hole without a care in the world.

The story of Endtown as we know it begins with the death of billions. And you all prove the comment attributed to Stalin:

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

That flow around Marx is the statistic.

Is Walt’s passing more cruel than the surge that must have happened when that war broke out.

I liked Walt as a character. I had sympathy for him. But to borrow from another venue, Valar Morghulis.Walt, at least died fighting against the curse of selfishness that threatened Endtown. One hopes it was not in vain.

Endtowners live on borrowed time, threatened from without and from within by human nature (whatever its physical form). That is a fundamentally dark situation — and yet you read the toon.

The Walts and Hollys, Kirbees, and Wallys provide the light, but they are mere mortals, brief candles in the dark, easily snuffed. Aaron Marx is different, sometimes seemingly omniscient, other times a buffoon. It is the story of mortals, or when gods act like mortals that grabs us.

And Mr. Neathery did provide you with hope. Remember those quick visions of a happy Kirbee, Wally, Chic, and presumably Irving?

No whining. Great stories like Moby Dick of A Tale of Two Cities do not always have happy endings.

sighs Goodbye Walter. Wish things could have gone better for you.

It seems Walt is content to accept his fate. Especially if it involves a fishing rod.

There are quiet deaths and noisy ones, ripe lives and tragically interrupted ones; but good lives always leave a hole when they go. A heavenly fishing hole is not dictated by logic; it is a emotional necessity because of all the lovely, beautiful lives that we don’t want to let go of…and others that we will never meet in this life but it would be so awesome to eventually do so. Heaven.

I’m so sad for Walt. He was one of those characters who was there from the beginning, and he has grown a lot. I can see where Marx would want to see him on his way, being part of the fallout of helping Jacob get into power.

I think I know what I had hoped for, something like this:

Like the conversation with Flask, I was hoping Marx had called a time out to explain to Walt that, by killing Denise, the rest of her crew would get away with murder! Then, send him back to the bridge to alter the ending.

Not to be.

Not to be.

Is the fishing rod bamboo?

My. reading of Walt’s face is that the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders and all he can feel is relief. Damn shame it took dying to get out from under the burden, though

Goodbye Walt…..you served your time. Old soldiers never die….they just fade away.

Cheapskate0, what happens topside stays topside. Seems the scavengers, especially wolves and their rat overlords, were having a wild party topside while scrounging food supplies for Endtown. Like Wen Ho Lee W88 neutron bombs, the war left property intact while radiation killed people. So the scavengers could build hidden smokehouses and man-caves filled with all types of rich money, expensive luxury, filthy lucre from before the war. What happens in the bush stays in the bush. Cannibalism in Endtown started topside with the scavengers. The Endtown scavengers only had to hide from / evade topsider human military scouts. Which is why so many wolves volunteered to scrounge for food for Endtown. 5 year supply? Jacob knows that food has expiration dates.

The fishing pole gained more detail as it sat in Aaron’s hands!

Take care, Bear..

With a tear in my eye and a smile on my face I bid Walt goodbye. At the very end he left happy and content and that’s as good an ending as any Endtowner can hope for.

If there is such a thing as “closure” we are given it with Walt. The others; just gone.

Der Bingle had it right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDeQzjKHaeE

Whats even left now? Who’s remains that make people want to see this through, are there any relatable characters that remain, I certainly doubt it. R.I.P Walt and R.I.P Endtown.

On to the next story? Hope so.

Sad ending for him, but he got a nice reward instead of staying in the crazy house or being drunk. Going to guess little Miss Piggy is going into the cannon now, or someone picks her up and she gets eaten herself.

“Now, who else wants to be a cannibal?”

I’d like to think Walt and Portia are off somewhere, fishing peacefully…

A couple of definitions:Psychopomp: It comes from Greek mythology—guides souls to afterlife or “what’s next”, depending on interpretationBardo: This is from Tibetan Buddhism—it’s where souls stay between existences. It’s not a place of punishment, but the self-reflection may not be pretty.

That said, if Marx is acting as a Psychopomp, handing Walt his fishing rod is a way of saying “Hey, you made it. You learned what you were supposed to learn, suffered what you had to suffer, and now it’s time to get off the wheel and go join the Cosmos. Good fishing!”

It’s significant that Marx shows up in time to guide Walt. Marx is keeping a lot of places, people, and times in his little punkin’ head. He had to be there with Flask as well. Those are the ones we get to see—there’s a lot of deaths that happen that we don’t get to see the afterwards. I think the Foxworthy/Marx meeting would be quite interesting!

So, you have Marx, who appears to be able to exist on multiple levels of existence at many times. He also appears to be taking more of an interest in what’s going on. If he’s a stand-in for a deity, he definitely came across as a “set it and forget it” type, or a Tom Bombadil type (thank you Tolkien for the disinterested deity!). It’s only after he’s had personal interactions with the results of his dice roll that he starts to care. The trouble is, the more he cases, the more likely he’s going to twang a quantum that shouldn’t have been. Oops…

(lab rats, did someone say lab rats? The lab rats are already there!)

Now we need just one more picture – one that shows Walt fishing and Portia keeping him company…

“Derailed in Uncle Ho’s Victory Garden” by Tim Page is sort of like the scavinging party with cannibalism on topside from Endtown. Scavangers certainly had first dibs on whatever they found. And they could stash treasure (the best booze) in hidden man-caves for later expeditions topside. [Also “Air America” movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Mel Gibson] So I do not think this arc of cannibal villians is done.

By the way, though Walt may or may not be on his way to a better place…the gang still in Endtown still has to deal with the aftermath of the cannibalism ring.

Anyone got an extra bamboo fishing pole? I’m going to miss Walt.

Now we tie up all the loose ends. IMO Jake has to pay for this – the whole debacle was the result of a monumental screw-up on his part.

this scene almost reminds me of this earlier scene where marx hands wally an assault rifle made of dittos and said “it’s very you” i can think he’s saying the same thing to walt now with the fishing pole.

Marx just handed him the bear necessities.

Marx has the ability to travel between dimensions (just as the Lucraneans do) and certain other unusual abilities seem to go with that (swallowing explosions for example). In this instance, he meets Walt immediately after his demise and although he passes the fishing pole to Walt, he neither delays him nor directs him on. Remember, Marx was responsible for Flask’s demise. He rigged the gun to explode. He then transported her to this place (remember, her body never hit the ground) and kept her there until he had rescued the others and had his sit down with Mallard. Only then did he return to Flask to ask her his questions (not omnipresent). By his own admission he only knew the parts of Flask’s story that had been depicted up to that point (not omniscient) and could not detain her indefinitely (not omnipotent). He does somehow absorb the “cancer” from her spirit and sends her on, intact, to a different itteration of Endtown (where she hangs out with another version of Marx). AN himself has said Marx is not a god figure and has limitations. Though he is able to travel between dimensions, he appears to be a part of this one, since different versions of him exist in other dimensions.

And with that, the last good person in Endtown dies. It’s Rats all the way down now.