Endtown by Aaron Neathery for March 25, 2016

“Get Ready For A Big Surprise!”

Ethel doesn’t seem too bright, does she?

Well, they didn’t just sprout legs and walk off! Voting links in profile.

Anybody need a pair of boots?

Poor Ethel, she’s clueless to the danger she’s in. Once those buddibombs got you labeled as “bad”, it’s search and destroy!

If only she knew that it is her they are after. She is about to find that out.

dang…it’s a Friday…a whole weekend to wait. UGH!!!

I love her tongue sticking out in that last panel.

Bad.Bad?You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.Have you had your mind blown lately?

An new term has entered the Endtown Lexicon..“As clueless as Kirbee”Silly ex-human! Buddibombs are for anthros!

Yeah. Again, I don’t want my computer deciding what lives and what dies. This is why I’m wondering why Microsoft let their Tay-bot learn from Twitter.

Holly is going to bet a piece of mutated Ethel on her and get the change herself.

Ethel? Are you ready to have your mind blown?

Poor Ethel, is she really that dense?

I don’t think Ethel is dense, its just that she and her friends (including a certain soon to be mouse girl) have so bought into Apex’s logic that she is unable to understand that the buddibombs consider her to be a threat and are about to do her considerable harm.

Uh oh.

Holly brought them all or at least half a dozen……they were cheaper that way.Holly outside has been acting that she is not paranoid.With this many in her hand bag……..she is totally paranoid.Buddibombs…..takes them out with a smile!!!

Do these things have any kind of override switch? ‘Cause if they don’t, it’ll be pretty ugly pretty soon…

It looks as if Holly is going to be responsible for a friend’s death, guilt trip number one. This could lead to the fetus’ change which would be guilt trip number two. This would explain why she was so welcoming to newcomers in Endtown.

This cannot end well.

Love Holly’s eyes – total terror!

Is Holly deliberately setting the BuddiBombs loose?

Hope Holly’s clothes don’t require dry cleaning.

Chances are Holly was keeping them safe from her husband. He made it clear he didn’t want them.

They had to buy the twelve-pack…Stay tuned next week for a totally mind-blowing experience!…Figuratively and literally…

(advance apology to readers)

Drat, Ethel, now you got me thinking of Ray Stevens’ “The Streak,”

DON’T LOOK ETHEL!!…but it’s too late.

Oh No. I just began to like Ethel.Ethel must not be as freaked out at her change makes me think that the mutation must feel natural in you still feel like your’e at home in your body she is so unaware of how threatening she looks and is pleased that Holly’s making use of the gift that she gave her. Ethel maybe was just being candid about noticing that fear made her hungry, I had assumed it was meant to be threatening

Maybe the Buddibombs don’t work quite like we thought.

I would have expected the buddy after saying Bad, to fling itself at the threat like a suicide-bomber. Holly looks calmer.Why would she bring the whole lot?

How doThe Buddibombs know what is a threat and what isn’t? Makes me wonder if they are programmed with a list of different things like Snakes, Spiders, Intruders, Suspicious packages,and the like. Does the fear the person they have been assigned to make them react?

Bad for Ethel, but good for Holly that she released all the buddy bombs. Otherwise, they’d label her “bad” when she changes.

Poor Ethel … she was a friend til the end – and a snake too part of that time.

When I first saw this picture, I had no idea how appropriate it would be.

Maybe they don’t explode. They are tearing their way out of Holly’s handbag. They seem to be using their pointed walking appendages. Would they burrow into their target? Or maybe a combination of burrowing and then exploding?

Ethel knows that she is not a bad, so buddibombs can’t really mean her.

Maybe they’re not going to do something incredibly violent and gory. Maybe they’ll just start singing a couple choruses of Michael Jackson’s “Bad.”

Holly’s not innocent here. I think she brought some buddies with her because she expected something like this. She may not have known how they’d react, but she’s not stopping them. They probably would stop if she told them to. She’s not telling them to.This may be for Wally’s benefit after all, to show him her true nature, as she was. It may also be to show him that monsters can turn into people as well. Holly wasn’t a nice person but she’s getting there, and he needs to make sure she doesn’t relapse. He’s her Evil Anonymous sponsor. He may have been there himself.The End gave everyone the opportunity to start over, erase their old identities and guilts, much like reincarnation. It’s not easy for some to forget, and they need a little help. Holly helped Wally let go of his old self by throwing away his photo. Now he has to help her let go of her old self. Not forget the old self, but accept that she’s a different person now.

Holly isn’t really a monster, not like the person Flask turned into. She is not bent on destroying people in pursuit of vengeance. She’s merely a fairly ordinary person who made a questionable deal with Apex to get out of a bad situation. She has also bought into Apex’s fear mongering to the point where she has welcomed a dozen autonomous explosives into her home. The scary thing about her rationalizations is that they don’t sound extraordinary. I could imagine people I know reacting the same way in our shoes. Holly isn’t a monster, she has allowed herself to become a pawn in Apex’s game.

Ethel is really pretty nonchalant about all this isn’t she?

Also, I’m rather suspecting that Buddibombs aren’t meant to go after ‘bad guys’ at all, but rather certain people who may have been exposed to certain mutagenic substances…

are the buddybombs programed to hunt and kill mutants or are being activated in response to holly ?

I thought that the virus was airborne, hence the need for Topsiders to wear full environment suits, all the time, 24/7/365. Logically, if this was the case, Holly should already have been exposed by entering the room, and her transformation to an insane, carnivorous, protoplasmic (being conscious) should already have begun. Yet, this not being the case, it may be that the Topsiders’ eventual suit mandate may have sprung from sheer paranoia rather than any deep understanding of the virus in question.

I have an awful suspision of how the bombs work. Since they can claw and climb- perhaps they have a dual attack mode, a grabby, teary attack, and a grab and explode attack. There is some very clever shaped charge technologies that can keep colateral damage to a minimum and still inflict a nasty shot to a target. (while shaped chargers have a focused effect on target, they still have a significant area blast effect as well) So Holly might still be subject to the equivelent to some stun grenade level of blast, poor Ethel could be torn apart by the focused effects.

Darwinskeeper, did you draw that? Or is it a Neatherly sketch?

The virus wasn’t airborne until its carriers were turned into airborne dust.

Oh, and, uh, hey guys. If you thought the ditto simulator did a good job emulating a car crash, wait til you get a realistic whiff of 12 BuddiBombs going off in your face.

It’s not good value for money if the whole twelve of them go off together to neutralise the one single threat. And if they’re smart bombs, their explosion will have a fail-safe to make sure they don’t injure the owner at the same time.

Value for money, eh? You might even say you get a lot of bang for your buck…

Ohh… how did they get activated?

I am afraid of snakes, but if they were as adorable as the one you have here, goodness, she is so cute!