Endtown by Aaron Neathery for November 23, 2015

Well, it ain’t the Opabinia Queen…

Has their ship come in?

I can’t tell what I’m looking at.

Aaron Marx’s ship?

I’m not sure I understand what’s going on in today’s strip. It looks like in panel1, they are approaching the mysterious object. Panels 2 and 3 show the dittos disbursing, causing the spider-buggy to disappear. Then panel 4 shows that the mysterious object is a ship with its bow buried in the sand.

Weren’t Wally’s dittos familiar with Aaron Marx? They seem to be even more bewildered than Wally and his friends. So are we about to see a new element introduced into our story?

Its the Edmund Fitzgerald.

It looks like a Great Lakes ore freighter with jet engines added to make it fly, or possibly to sail the powder covered surface of the land.

The Opabinia Queen looked like an old schooner without the masts.The ship above looks more like a tanker with engines strapped to the sides. It’s quite possible, though, that this is another vessel from the Lucranian fleet.And yes, Robert, I agree, the question mark is probably the dittos echoing Wally’s current emotional state.

From the angle, it looks like a flying freighter that failed and took a nose dive. And the dittos are confused as well.

The pods on the side do seem to be the ship’s engines. Remember, this is “almost” Earth, but with a slightly different history, including the use of technology. That being said, there is only one REAL obvious question: Why haven’t the Topsiders discovered it? They were in the area all night and a big number of sensors (radar, magnetic sensors, heat sensors, standard stuff even in this story) should have seen it.

Definitely a Great Lakes cargo ship. The question is how is it propped up at such an angle without its back breaking under its own weight? The keel on such large ships is designed to be flexible, not rigid. That also means it can’t be the Edmund Fitzgerald because she broke in two when she bottomed out in the storm that sank her. (Gotta love the History Channel)

Many ships these days have engine pods that are capable of rotating 360 degrees in order to maintain position.

xylophone

So THAT’S what was in the distance yesterday! I agree, looks like an ore frieghter, similar to the Fitz.

If it hasn’t been scoured by scavengers, there could be all kinds of crew stores- unless they’ve been undone by Amesworth Radiation. Similarly, as this is a bulk cargo ship, it could have anything from coal to corn. Normally, a ship might not endure at that angle (the Titanic is not a good example, however) but REALLY WEIRD things happened in the Last War, so almost anything is possible.

A PS, if the ship had flying pods, that would imply a particularly robust structure to deal with lift point loads- and clarify some of the tech base not fully explained before.

Now that is one big Cadillac.

It is sitting stern high and seems to have been abandoned before it ended up there.Notice the lines dangling from the side.You drop life boats to the water that way.If this was an air ship, this life boats would just launch away no reason for lines.A suggestion for abandoned could be virus monster mutations. The uninfected crew would have fled the ship.In the Endtown universe this could be expected. Remember Hillside with the flipped land over top. This being a ship is just as surprising.This Endtown universe reality has some really messed up things when it was created.Dittos could be hiding it like they did Hillside. Only with Wally’s ditto he was able to see through the concealment.

I’d love to have my own personal dittos, so they could form a light bulb over my head whenever I had a clever idea.

Well, it’s either a large boat or a gigantic xylophone…

this explains why they’re surrounded by fine dust, it’s what’s left of the sediment from the bottom of the sea or large lake beds…what the HELL happened during this war to reduce a body of water THIS HUGE to an enormous dust flat?

Ore freighter, maybe. Those torpedo-shape might be thrusters, but…. Also, the wheelhouse is way, way, way to low. Most freighters have the wheelhouse up as high as they can so the captain and watches can see farther (radar notwithstanding). I’ll bet the bugger is a flying vessel rather than a water-borne vessel.

All we can say for sure, right now… “?”

Holy Flying Freighters Catman!Wally’s surprise, has broken his concentration on the Dittoes.It’s a freighter alright, looks might like it might be fully loaded, all the cargo hatches are battened down.Those might be anti gravity pods on the sides, clearly this is a ship designed or retrofitted to traverse the wastes.The hard part of the journey has just begun.Hungry, thirsty, weak and crazy.. A mountain of steel and mystery now looms before them.Any food is going to be in the galley or the ships stores, waaaaay up there!Anyone who has ever had to climb something similar to this I sympathize with you. I’ve hiked up some pretty serious terrain, when I was much younger. I cannot imagine they will all make it to the top.Unless Wally imagineers them a Dittoe elevator!

Am I the only one who saw this and thought of the riverboat scene in “Cowboys and Aliens”. At one point, the group that is looking for people kidnapped by aliens comes across a paddlewheel steam boat that was upside down. It was hundreds of miles from any navigable river.

I was in Biloxi a year after Hurricane Camille. I remember seeing the beach on one side of the highway and a freighter on the other side of the highway. It wasn’t carried there by elephants.

Am I the only one who at first saw the neck of a guitar?

On 1st sight “oh they are looking at a stairway to heaven”, Then oops! it’s a boat.

After being dumped out of bad, it looks like Holly is pretty curious about this new development.

Maybe it was put there as a stern warning.

Chic: “There’s a HUGE frickin’ boat!? In the middle of a huge frickin’ DESERT!? Where’s the FRICKIN’ water?!?!”

I’m still thinking “flying freighter.” But, like the others above, the Edmund Fitzgerald did come to my mind, too.If it is a flying freighter, this could be the beginning of another pass at the Opabinian saga…

This strip brings to mind one limitation of Wally’s new ditto powers. They can make any structure (including moving structures) that he can imagine but only for as long as Wally is focusing on it. If he gets distracted, the Dittos form into something else.

I wonder if the captain’s name was Eddie.