El Goonish Shive

Yeah... if not for that explanation, I would've had no idea what was going on in this one.

I was interpreting it as Ashley asking what would happen if she grew back to normal size while holding a piece of cake.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 26th 2021 at 11:52:08 AM

I think it's cute but confusing.

Tagline of the series.

That almost feels like looking for a misinterpretation. Why would growing whilst holding the cake be in question?

Thank you, Luke, for explaining that "baby emoji - confident emoji - flabbergasted emoji" translates to "easy, normal, hard mode." Even a subtitled pictogram can be hopelessly opaque.

I think Luke was repeating what George actually said.

Remind me to never use pictograms in a comic, wow.

Behold, cake!

And Jeremy.

Excuse me, sir, you dropped this link.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 1st 2021 at 8:23:45 AM

Roll up your sleeves and get eating! Gosh, do you like cake or not?

I honestly assume everyone is able to find the main site and doesn't need a link every two days.

it's for convenience

you can say "hey an update" and link to the update and then people can click the link and read the update before seeing your comments on it, and also this works no matter how long it's been since they checked into the thread

Ideally, it should be a permalink, so you can reference it in the future.

It's long-practiced forum courtesy. If a new comic came up, putting up the link tells everybody that a new comic came out and if you're going to make a comment about a new comic that hasn't been linked yet, putting up a link to that comic helps everybody see what you're trying to say.

It's not like it takes much effort to copy the weblink and put in a bunch of brackets.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 2nd 2021 at 11:12:29 AM

Double-post but for the sake of uploading: Larry's bisexual? Or not? I guess, I haven't been reading the non-NP stuff for a while.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 2nd 2021 at 4:01:39 AM

Surprise "Painted Black" reference.

Please, give us a bloody title before you finish this storyline. We've been "Title Pending" since...(looks at the first comic with that title) ''April 17, 2019?'' Almost two years!

I know it's not the most important thing but jeez, I'll take anything.

Edit: "Cheerledra"?

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 4th 2021 at 11:21:59 AM

MAJOR spoilers, Fred. Don't ask.

Ok, I asked Dan a question similar to this but specifically asking what George thought the backstory was, since he knows Cheerleadra's identity and was curious about the backstory in the canon so he is bound to have a bizarre theory by now (though probably less bizarre than the canon one). Maybe there will be follow up from George in the next comic.

Also,I really like Varia's design. Shame she's not a real character.

Wrong Answers Only 12

"There's hardly any crime around here to stop"? They're big enough to have a university that seems to be both well-regarded and not especially selective in-state, so it can't be that safe...

Edited by TwinBird on Mar 5th 2021 at 2:28:53 PM

Luke's pretty much hit the nail on the head with regards to one of the most unrealistic elements of any superhero media: patrolling. The idea that you can just walk down the street and BAM, bank robbery in progress. The sort of crimes superheroes fight aren't actually very common. Plus, cities are kind of big? Aimlessly wandering around downtown is actually a terrible way to find crime.

Superheroes are a form of escapist media and fighting crime is integral to superheroes, so the world is made into a much more dangerous place to facilitate nightly crime-fighting. At any given moment, five different stores in the city are being broken into. Bank robberies happen every other week. Terrorist attacks at least five times per month. Etc.

Crime is a lot more rare than superhero media might lead you to believe, and of the crime that does happen, very little of it would be something a superhero might encounter on their nightly patrol. When people think of superheroes "fighting crime", they're not usually thinking about domestic disturbances, drug use, prostitution, insurance fraud, insider trading, tax evasion, etc. They might be thinking of rape, but rape almost never actually happens in back alleys at gunpoint.

Superheroes fight high spectacle violent crime. Muggings, spree shootings, gang wars, serial killings. And those are generally few and far between. It genuinely is likely that if Elliot decided to go out and patrol for crime to fight as Cheerleadra, he'd get bored pretty quick.

EDIT: In fact, "fighting crime" is starting to become something of a Dead Horse Trope even in superhero media. Superheroes themselves don't do a lot of crime-fighting anymore. Sure, you might see like two pages of Spider-Man thwarting a bank robbery as an intro to an arc here and there, but it's very rare to have something like "Doc Ock is robbing the bank! Stop him, Spider-Man!" be the focus of a story.

Superheroes fight supervillains to thwart over-the-top supervillain plots. Crime-fighting is an afterthought.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 6th 2021 at 5:01:42 AM

Did superheroes ever fight a lot of "regular" criminals, though, even romantic ones like gangsters and bank robbers? The sort of criminals superheroes fight is familiar enough that "Batman villain" has entered the vernacular for those few criminals who approach them.

Edited by TwinBird on Mar 6th 2021 at 11:10:14 AM

For a while Batman Cold Open was a way to show superheroes fighting crime while also focusing on the supervillain plots. I don't know how much that is used at the moment.

I remember that actually being a thing. Spiderman, Superman, the Flash...

A lot of tv shows, live-action and cartoons, use that crime (though it wasn't usually the A-Plot) a lot.

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 6th 2021 at 8:37:42 AM

The general flow of crime in superhero stories is that the hero at first fights regular criminals and such, followed by organized crime, followed by supervillains, followed by organized crime controlled by supervillains. Regular crooks inevitably end up joining some Team Evil or another in some way, and eventually instead of regular joes robbing other regular joes the average "non supervillain" crime you'll get superheroes facing is conspiracies and such.

See also: detective stories, especially tv shows. I'm pretty sure more people died in the small town in Murder She Wrote than most small New England towns actually have.

Or old epics/legends, which posit that there are tons more kingdoms in the world than there actually were, to justify some rival unspecified king or sultan or warlord being the antagonist of X story being one.

When making a story in which a character fights a lot of stuff, rule #1 is contriving a way to ensure that there is a lot of stuff to fight.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 7th 2021 at 1:47:11 AM

Well, I seem to have called it regarding Tedd becoming more understanding of their mother - not to the point of Easily Forgiven, but at least to the point of considering that Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You.

Makes sense, considering that they're typically the Official Couple in universes where their orientations are complementary.

Edited by ironballs16 on Mar 9th 2021 at 12:22:41 PM

I went back because I wanted to see the damage effect on Noriko again and I noticed something unrelated to Tedd and their mom. Specifically, Tedd screams and Elliott's the first person to come running. He's even in front of Grace on the next page.

Some things never change.