Endtown by Aaron Neathery for March 14, 2022

oooooooooooo, scary

Colour me puzzled in black and white.

“Where is ‘He’?” as in where Ted actually is?

Or is there another “He” Marx is looking for?

I’d love to get Terrance’s take on all this.

Pain and Grace? Don’t mix well.

Paul Winchell. Boy, that name takes me back to my childhood. He was a ventriloquist and his two most famous characters were Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. He was very talented and smart, even to the point of being the inventor of the first mechanical heart.

There used to be a poster who could alter the brightness of the art and repost it. Looks like we need that talent right now. Same as the toothbrush monsters and the abandoned lighthouse story, what was it, over a year ago?

‘Ted’ isn’t exactly Edgar Bergen either… and Wally definitely isn’t Charlie McCarthy nor Mortimer Snerd! I know these three were before my time, but their fame spanned several decades.

The plot thickens……but so does borscht if you leave it on the burner too long. A reference to a vaudeville routine with puppets is just so like our Storyteller! I’d like to know just what has become of dear Wally…..I suspect a doppelganger is the re now.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” -Wizard of Oz

No Jimmy Nelson either.

Changing the exposure doesn’t really do much. but the last panel shows a sphere on the “angel’s” wing.. That could be the Eye. There are some scattered white dotsin the torso of the “angel”

But it looks like Wally has gone full Jim on us.

Clearly Marx is not impressed.

I is using Wally as misdirection. Wally’s the shadow on the cave wall, not the source of the dark. Marx is looking for the shadow of the candle holder on the other side of the light.

He’s got the cat’s tongue

“DO NOT BE AFRAID” has never been said and the person they said it to was like “Oh well, silly me, I overreacted to your presence. Forgive me.” Why do nearly omnipotent beings think that will work? For being all-knowing, they don’t know a lot.

No schism syndrome here, poor Wally is full-on possessed. That I/Eye thing is a menace. I hope Marx cleans its clock but good.

So this is what was controlling Jim?

Light and Dark?

Yin and Yang?

I predict a great Big Bang!

Well, that’s one way to restart a story arc.

Winchell’s real last name is Wilchinsky. Maybe Wally’s last name is sort of an homage, though it’s only a bit similar.

No where to run….no where to hide.

my take on it, is that Marx is asking where Wally is .. and ‘I’ then shows him wally, or wally’s “fundamental human essence”, which he is holding in his hand … while ‘I’ puppet masters Wally’s body…..

“Now and forever” is that promise.

Evanjellicle cats come out tonight

Evanjellicle cats come one, come all

The Evanjellicle moon is shining bright

Evanjellicles come to the Evanjellicle ball

I should dislike that the evil angel-eldritch wannabe wants to turn the team into soul firewood, but Wally just looks so happy. Mr Nazgul is quite the interesting problem. How long has he been there, and from where is he from?

Marx ain’t impressed. “I” should have picked someone 20 feet tall and holding a blazing sword. Check behind the curtain.

But Paul Winchell never had light coming out of his eyes and mouth!

Not to say that I am likely wrong here…but, when Marx is asking, “where is he?”, I think Marx has a better idea than “EYE” does? Since they are discussing ventriloquists , I think Marx has played the old ‘switcheroo’ somehow. Just a thought!

Spy vs. Spy..?

So… to recap: a few installments ago, Marx made a speech about vanishing souls, seemingly to draw out Ted/I/God. “I” had hitched a ride with the dittos, I’m guessing, since he was controlling them back in the topsider base even before their narrow escape. I’m assuming he/it had intended to ride along to wherever Wally and Co. were heading, but Marx managed to get him to reveal himself prematurely — and he’s using the dittos to project his own self-image of how he thinks he should appear. He has now snagged Wally’s soul and is controlling the empty shell of his body, essentially using it as a ventriloquist’s dummy.

So now the question is how will Marx force/trick Eye to hand over the stolen soul? Because Marx is as fiercely committed to protecting the main characters as Eye is hellbent on destroying them.

How many fingers am I holding up?

If that’s Wally’s mind in the sphere, I remember from “Star Trek” that this rarely turns out well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKgfcd6lqp4

Why would I want to be again what I already was? Been there, done that. Gawd, move in already.

If it was Paul Winchell, there’d be at least a few “hoo hoo”‘s in there. And maybe a song: The wonderful thing about eyeball is eyeballs are wonderful things; their tops can go through dimensions; their minds can use anything; they’re awful,evil,grumpy-and no-fun,fun,fun,fun,fun;the wonderful thing about eyeballs is: I’M THE ONLY ONE.

And here is a much, much earlier oblique reference to Paul Winchell — specifically to his famous dummy Knucklehead Smiff: https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2009/02/20

I guess that Marx has made a portmanteau out of ventriloquist and soliloquy. He just has to mess with everything.

I’ve lightened this strip, to show some of the details better. https://www.docrat.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Endtown-strip-20220314-lightened.jpg

Paul Winchell. I remember Winchell-Mahoney Time and also he did the voice for Tigger in the Pooh stories.