Endtown by Aaron Neathery for August 17, 2016

Whoa! That sure ain’t Marx! He’s come to bury the hatchet.

HASSAN CHOP!

Looks a lot like Lynn….and he ain’t happy.

This is the nightmare side of a dreamscape from the dittos…this ride’s not over yet.

Referencing my comment on the previous page… I TOLD YOU SO!

It’s Lyn coming at Wally with an axe, but it’s looking a little sketchy to me.

Heeeere’s Lynny!

Lyn?Okayyyy… This story has now officially become weird.

Watch it with that thing, Lyn. You’ll lose an eye… I mean… sorry, bad taste.

Careful with that axe, Eugene… I mean, Lyn.

What did Wally look like before his transformation?

Ah, there’s Lynn. Figured we’d see him again. ;-)

Edit: I copied @PunkTiger ’s comment. Great minds and all that.

That is one jealous ex. I can’t tell, it’s a little foggy. Will this Wally be able to reproduce? 

There was a joke about three samurai warriors, demonstrating their skill with the katana. 

This one is close: 

http://www.thejokeyard.com/funny_jokes/the_jewish_samurai.html

Steppenwolf I had been thinking this scenario was similar to Dante’s Divine Comedy , and Wally was visiting Inferno , or maybe Purgatorio . With Wally perhaps being dead, and all the scenarios were past life reviews. May still have some similarity. But this scene reminds me of Harry Haller’s trip to The Magic Theater , which he thought was another cinema. Then he goes through a number of scenes based on an invitation. http://m.sparknotes.com/lit/steppenwolf/section6.rhtml "“TONIGHT AT THE MAGIC THEATER—FOR MADMEN ONLY—PRICE OF ADMITTANCE YOUR MIND.—NOT FOR EVERYBODY.—HERMINE IS IN HELL.” Just a parallel, but sometimes I wonder how much of the story is Wally wandering through various tableaux. Is he dead? Is this Purgatory? Or is Wally present to liberate soles from self imposed purgatory? Does Wally get the girl(Holly)? Or did he have his own girl(not Holly. Kirbee?), whose memory has thusfar been suppressed.

Before loading today’s comic, I honestly had a thought that it might be Lynn. Really, really. However, my thought did not include the axe. Ain’t got a clue what’s going on.

Unless this whole thing is feeding off of Holly’s fears?

I guess Lyn just wanted to…SUNGLASSES…axe Wally a question, Topsider-style.

By the way, does Lyn’s dramatic entrance here mean that he is behind Holly’s memory playback experience?

This has been foreshadowed. Every time Lyn has looked at Wally in the past, he’s given him a dirty, angry, hostile look, as though he blames Wally for everything that has gone wrong. Somebody has a major grudge against Wally, it would seem.

Maybe the Lyn monster didn’t die (was only shot with regular bullets) and met up with wild dittos living out his nightmare til now

Just a thought… None of us have the slightest clue as to what Lyn actually looked like. All we have here is whatever the dittos depict. We have seen this whole episode from the viewpoint of the observers (Wally & Co.). This could actually be some Marxian relative, or associate, who was merely playing the part of Lyn in the depiction. What I’m really getting at is this: the only one who knows what is really going on is Aaron. We think we “know” a lot of “facts” but all we really know are the glimpses that he has seen fit to reveal of the actual big picture beneath the surface. That’s what great storytellers do, and that’s why Endtown is so full of amazing twists and turns. For me, the more confusing and impossible the situation seems to be, the closer we are to being shown another incredible piece of the “real” Universe Neathery that has always been there, just beneath the dust. ;-)

Lyn??? He doesn’t look well, but he looks better than when we last saw him.

Not sure what I should wonder about the most – where he got the axe, how he got back, or what grudge the dittos might have against him acting this way.

If I was a shrink, I’d say Lyn is a manifestation of Holly’s unwillingness to let go of the past, a past that’s been holding her back from adapting to her current situation as it were. So far she’s been winging it. putting on a shaky show, but she hasn’t really gotten a grip since the war. And Lyn’s attacking Wally is a symbol of her fighting said changes, with Wally representing the now and Lyn representing the then. Who will win? needledrops on the fight theme from Amok Time

What’s that term? Jungian? I really need to look some of this stuff up.

Okay… I see your point… Now hide yourself…HIDE YOURSELF!!!

Hey, they have their differences. He just wants to bury the hatchet.

Why does Lyn look human here? We saw him turn into a monster. This is incongruence with the story.I think he has to be a ditto construct. If Wally threw something hard at him I bet he would be a hollow shell.

Aaron,EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!! EEK!!!

Where is Holly?

Did NOT see that coming. Good thing Wally did.

That can’t be Lynn. Lynn died before the End and would not have known Wally. I think this is Holly’s jealousy of Kirbee manifested as Lynn. When Holly went into the anomaly on the Fitzgerald, she was really wacked, with wild feelings about Wally’s interest in Kirbee and his abandoning Clive. That may have really been her reenacting her traumas, like a ghost repeating unfinished business before being able to move on. People think ghosts haunt places, but it’s really the places that haunt ghosts. Holly is haunted by her past, and because of the dittos, her past is haunting her companions as well.

These images may still be straight from Wally. He may be fighting an internal conflict over his part in the deadly use of force by Apex. He spent 5 years alone topside in the wastes, he did not want others help and declined to help when asked. Only his realization he was again responsible for someones death by his failure to act, forces him to come to Endtown

If you want to sort this out, it’s time to review a past experience. Go back to July 10, 2015 and read forward to August 05, 2015. There is quite a bit of prophesy in that experience.

Of all the things I might have expected, Lyn with a battle axe wasn’t one of them. To be fair, I didn’t really expect to see Flask, but she is easier on the eyes than Marx.

I don’t think that is Lyn….check the hair….just like Wally’s.Flash back to Gustine…..she found herself facing a rifle held by herself.Wally is teetering on Schism.

‘Cuz he’s the Axe Man, yeahhhh, the Axe Mannnnnn.

Well, that’s quite the twist!

This seems to be a quasi-dream sequence/memory of Holly’s. What if ‘Lyn’ is actually her subconscious mind and it DOES blame Wally for some of what happened? (The Id is not always rational and fixates on ideas. Holly was quite angry at Wally over the lost ‘brain-drive’ that used to be a human she cared for. She was confusing it with her baby. The loss set off a psychotic break in her personality which is why were seeing her past through the ditto driven re-enactment. If Wally could control them, why not Holly, too? Her emotional upset was way stronger than his and her subconscious may have seized control of the dittos. She needs to confront her unresolved feelings over the loss of her husband, child and world she knew. The dittos are helping her do this. I hope Wally survives until she recovers her wits.

It’s not often a man will come at you with an axe for making a pass at his widow.

Remember folks, what we (and Wally) have been watching is NOT (necessarily) a strict replay of past events. It’s like one of those movies that is “based on a true story” and the folks actually involved can barely recognize themselves. This presentation was done for a PURPOSE and very likely involved a large helping of “artistic license” in order to achieve that purpose. I think we are getting very close to finding out what that purpose may be, though as always, I could be way out in left field. It’s just that we’ve a ton of puzzle pieces dumped in our lap since old Octavius did his pole dance and I think we may be about to start putting some edge pieces together. ;-)

This story went way beyond weird some episodes ago!

“Right! One rabbit stew coming up!’ – Sir Bors

Wally is afraid that Lyn wants to do a hatchet job on him.

That was a close shave. Wally better learn to be careful what he axe for.