Manly Guys Doing Manly Things

I'm pretty sure the ability to do that is a form of political savvy.

But yeah, Lamia have a bunch of different interpretations, none of which have much to do with the original myth.

edited 28th Sep '15 11:44:27 AM by Gilphon

Fun fact: there's a second type of lamia, from Basque myths, that has no actual connection to the Greek myth. (The etymology of the words gives it away that they have very different origins.) The Greek Lamia is one that you remember, and the one that most of the modern versions of the myth are based on.

The Basque lamiak (yes, that is the plural in the original language) were siren-like beings who were mostly female, although a few were male (known as maideak). They were basically humans with duck feet, lived in rivers, and would help farmers and the like after being given gifts of food.

It seems to specifically be crossing the Canadian border that does it.

I saw it in...I forget if it was an X-Men or Wolverine arc, but there was a story about someone being murdered and their body being ground up in a meatpacking plant to hide the crime. Because committing cannibalism in Canada results in Wendigos, the tainted meat caused an epidemic. Ultimately, the protagonists were able to bait the horde of wendigos into the U.S. as a temporary measure until a cure could be found.

edited 28th Sep '15 3:11:31 PM by TobiasDrake

I first heard about wendigos from the Monster In My Pocket figurines I collected as a child. My first encounter with the Marvel version was as the stage three boss of the X-Men arcade game.

That boss fight took place on Island M, though, which is probably far away from Canada (I don't follow comics close enough to know the specifics), but I doubt the arcade game is canon with respect to the comics anyway.

My own impression is that wendigos are pretty obscure, but perhaps not very obscure: I imagine that it's somewhat unlikely that someone from outside of their native region would know about them, but more likely than with entities such as the utburd/myling.

For myself, I think that I first learned about about the wendigo quite some time ago via general interests in mythology and fantasy, either via stories that used or referred to it, or via some book on mythology. (I'm from South Africa, so my exposure isn't likely a result of being near to the native region of the stories. :P)

... I'm curious, if I may go briefly off-topic: I was tempted to mention the tokoloshe as an entity more obscure than the wendigo, but it occurs to me that I don't know whether it is obscure outside of South Africa. (It's very well-known here, I believe.) How many others in this thread have heard of it?

Huh. I didn't recall that wendigos were included in Monster in My Pocket—in which case it's entirely possible that I first encountered them there, as I loved that collection as a child.

edited 28th Sep '15 4:29:38 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

I've never heard of a tokoloshe.

Here I read "Lamias" and at first glance I somehow thought I was reading "Llamas".

So if Canada, say, decided to stop being "Canada" for a few days and became, say, "Canuckland" or "I-Can't-Beleive-It's-Not-Canada!", would that get rid of the Wendigo curse? Or would it come back when they went back to being regular ol' Canada again?

Well, the sensible thing to do would be to have it be a curse on the land, and have the wendigo border not quite match the Canada border.

So yeah, changing the name of the country probably would cure it, because marvel and sensible mechanics to curses fell out years ago.

Don't let the strip title fool you. I'm much more interested to learn about the other character... and whoever her mystery sibling is.

edited 5th Oct '15 6:38:19 AM by wanderlustwarrior

Didn't expect Spider to speak so robotically.

According to a reply given to a comment on that page, her speech patterns are related to her having only about 75% of her human brain; I imagine that at least some of the lost functionality is replaced by an artificial brain.

@Gilphon: Interesting, and thank you. ^_^

edited 5th Oct '15 8:00:57 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

She was a cyberisation fangirl, I think she does a lot of it on purpose.

Yeah, to echo Adannor, I wouldn't be the least surprised to learn that the speech is a deliberate affectation. Eh, whatever floats your boat.

Reply = Word of Coelasquid, so nope, it really is due to her brain being part cyber.

I love the Space Whale Aesop in the caption.

B? Does his ex wife refer to him as Badass?

Badass IS his legal name.

And his serial number ends in B52, so I imagine he's used to that getting shortened down to B too.

New comic. Bit weird.

http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/sometimes-i-dont-know-if-things-i-write-are-funny-or-just-kind-of-weird

I sense it's a comic I'll probably have an easier time following once we get the color version.

Panels 3, 4, and 5 are implied to be on some sort of ice world mission they did back in the day.

Also, there's the realization as to why Commander likes Jared so much - given the chance, he'd act exactly the same.

In retrospect, it makes Jared's hope that Commander was his future self a bit brilliant - Jared recognized how alike he and Commander were all along.

So, Angel is their Mr. Fish? Is that what's going on?

Angel is the Commander to the Commander's Jared.

Perhaps it would be easier to explain if we defined roles.

The dynamic in question is a competent, straight-shooting leader and a second-in-command who's not quite as competent and a bit of a goofball.

When the dynamic is specifically Angel and Commander, Angel is the leader and Commander is the second-in-command. However, when the dynamic is specifically Commander and Jared, Commander becomes the leader and Jared is the second-in-command.

This, of course, begs the question of just what happens if Angel and Jared start working together.