El Goonish Shive

Man this comic has more closets than Ikea

Not quite as weird as this sketchbook, though. Although that was, to be fair, apparently a Patreon request.

(I recently went through the 2014-2016 Patreon sketchbooks, and many of them are actually quite fun and interesting. IMO, much better in fact than what is posted now that Dan has full control over the pin-up options.)

New comic: tlod-016

I’m trying to think of something more insightful and less vain to say than called it!, but…

It does make sense. And honestly, I'm actually enjoying the conversation between Diane and Mirror Diane. It's amusing.

Oh okay so that aspect of Diane's character isn't actually being retconned away. I think.

And yeah, I'm enjoying the conversation between Diane and her younger self.

I'm amused by the blurb, in which Shive brings up phobias as an example of things that just sort of develop naturally over one's life and don't really have any clear point of origination.

I'm pretty sure my botanophobia is the product of being exposed to "Little Shop of Horrors" when I was three. I haven't exactly had a lot of experiences with evil plants trying to murder me over the last thirty years.

That's not to say he's wrong necessarily. Some phobias do develop naturally, I'm sure. It was just funny to me to hear him be like, "Phobias don't have a clear point of origin," and I'm like, "Little Shop of Horrors."

I can't quote chapter and verse at the moment, but not all phobias are created equally. There's a handful of "primitive fears" (spiders, snakes, and food poisoning are on the list, I know) where a single bad experience can create a lifelong reaction, even when you realize that the situation wasn't what you thought. The classic example is how, if you get sick after eating a food, you'll often find it unappealing or even down right nauseating, even if you later learn you had a case of the stomach flu. Even observing someone else getting sick after eating a food can cause the reaction. The other classic case I remember involved a young woman who experienced a lifelong phobia of snakes after she saw one and then shortly thereafter got her hand caught in a car door while viewing the snake. The brain connected the injury with the snake and conditioned her against them.

There are, of course, other sources for phobias. OCD is a pretty understandable source for one where the brain takes a single small incident and keeps looping it until it's a huge problem. People tend to think about obsessive cleaning, the ritual part, but it's generally rooted in the certain belief by the person suffering that horrible things will happen if they don't do a particular thing, or don't avoid a particular thing. The obsession leads to the compulsion, and ranges the gamut from cleanliness to vague feelings of doom to constant mental bombardment of violent images.

Ooo, I think I have that one. I can't even touch pictures of weird and creepy plants in a book, because I get images of the flower leaping out of the page and biting my finger off.

I mean, everyone who was around can pinpoint exactly when my acrophobia developed - I fell down a flight of concrete stairs when I was 3, bad enough that I split my chin open (I still have the scar, although my beard hides it generally). And my mild hydrophobia can be pinpointed to that time I almost drowned when I was 12. It's technically correct that phobias can develop over time such that you cannot point to a single moment that caused them to develop. But there are countless cases where everyone involved can conclusively pinpoint when they developed.

In short, Shive should not be a clinical psychologist. That was way too generalized.

Meanwhile, I'm scared of heights for no adequate reason and repeatedly nearly drowning has just taught me "you know, stay away from water you can't stand up in" rather than fear. So it does happen both ways.

NP Assorted009

Secret identities.

He can learn.

Shive, I know you evidently get a lot of emails, but did you really have to explain that joke?

Nobody forces you to read the comments.

Not one of his best strips. It's satirizing the Spider-Man mythos, but the punchline only works because of the changes he introduced to the source material for sake of satire. So rather than poking fun at Spider-Man, the jokes just winds up going, "Wouldn't Spider-Man be really silly if everything was different?"

Speaking from personal experience, Spider-Man has the best disguise in all of comics. Back in my senior year of high school, one guy showed up wearing a green morph suit and a hoodie, and it was completely impossible to figure out who he was. I only realized that he was someone I knew when he sat across from me in a science class and pulled off the mask. And, to quote my 17 year old self...

“This must be what it feels like to learn who Superman is.”

Just saying.

Say, what plotline do all of y'all want to come back first?

My answer will always be Nioi, and I still don’t know exactly why. I just want to know more about her whole deal, I guess.

And mine will always be Lord Tedd, the impossible dream.

Mine will be Justin's date, because he deserves a bit of happiness, and honestly, that's the kind of stuff I think Shive writes best.

I want to see Sam. And the date with Sarah, I guess.

I want to know who the fuck Luke's magic hunting group is. and why it's probably those college girls

Edited by MrAHR on Sep 25th 2018 at 2:40:46 PM

I want to know how much Pandora remembers and how much has changed there, but it's obviously too soon for that.

Actually, I want to change mine, I want to see who Mr. Verres was waiting for at the airport. I want to see that bad.

I’ve long since given up hope that Justin will ever get a date.

When’s the last time Justin was even in the comic.