Endtown by Aaron Neathery for December 05, 2016

D@MN!

(Sniff…must have some grit in my eye.) Farewell, sweet Holly, and sweet dreams.

My prediction is that we haven’t seen the last of Capt. Holly Hollister!

This is wrong in so many ways, but the show must go on, I guess…. ( I don’t expect there will be a surprise reprieve next week) :_(

And she lived happily ever after! She might show up in the story later (to provide aid with her ship or some such. maybe or a brief cameo appearance), but in the meantime she’s found contentment and safety which is exactly what she needs.

In the last panel, Wally is smiling. Is it because he got Holly safely to her destination?

When and where was Holly a Captain?!

Did we meet this particular cat in the course of the Saga of Holly Hollister?

She’s now captain of the ghostly ship. That’s an interesting reveal. I wonder what happened to Hollis.

That.. is an awesome cat!

There’s a doctor back in Endtown* who might not take that very well once he finds out.

*If there’s an Endtown left, that is.

Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of my wife’s death. Very close to home. Farewell, Holly. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Best character exit evah!

Captain ??

Captain?!?!?!

Ride, Captain ride, upon your magic ship…

She had an entire different experience from the time she walked through that door.I plan to go back and look what her state was just before.Hungry, cranky, with no idea this would happen, I think.It wasn’t a plan on her part, to get to that destination, she seemed somewhat suicidal while climbing the ladder..

They didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.

They weren’t fighting with each other, she had admitted something was wrong with her.

I also feel like Wally may be happy that she has found peace, even if it’s her own reality / a parallel universe.

My mind was expecting him to be feeling sorry for himself; most of us would , but that was not what I saw.Aaron is amazing when picturing emotions.

If this is true, he would feel like a burden had been lifted and he’s glad Holly has come to terms with her trauma in her past.

Not the way I wanted it, I thought it would be Wally and Holly forever, but lots of us know that happens with about half of us.

SO I bet Kirbee and Chik are just what Wally needs in his life.

“Kept him from being alone,—- oh Holly I couldn’t have done anymore..”.

i’m reminded of the old comic “Fever Dreams.” Specifically the story “To Meet the Faces That You Meet” by Jan Strnad, Richard Corben, and J.A.Richardson. Great story, i recommend looking it up. (Kitchen Sink Comics, 1972)

Since she has been made Captain she has full control and will not be a battery. Good deal.

Actually, Holly will still power the ship, that’s part of the deal of being Captain. The thing is, the Fitz won’t treat her as an expendable power source to be run into the ground. She will also have some control of where the ship goes and what it does.

This makes a lot of sense. Holly was the first one to go through the door. She ended up on the bridge, became the Captain and used the dittos to tell her story to Wally so that he could understand the things that were eating her. She then used the AI to convince Wally to pick up his people and leave, taking the decoy Holly with provisions before vanishing. This also explains why the decoy Holly couldn’t look Wally in the eye after he learned about the deception. So long Captain Hollister.

Interesting transition. That kind of suggests that the ship didn’t just get hidden by dittos. It actually finished recharging and left this dimension. The ship wouldn’t need or want a captain unless it had somewhere to go and some way to get there. It also raises an interesting point about the ship being deluded that it was Lyn and being possessive of Holly. Was it operating under Holly’s direction (conscious or unconscious), trying to get Wally et al to leave the ship?

I’ve read back Nov.-December of last year . Plus a little before and after.She didn’t go completely bananas until she lost Clive, and at a point Wally said to Kirbee “both of us do”, not saying ‘All of us do’ and Holly noticed that. The dittos guided them to the ship, and then since Holly lost it-went through the door-ended up in the cabin.I think that Darwinkeeper is correct in his summing it up. He got the whole thing right, I believe.Her showing her past to Wally so he would understand why she was the way she was. Lots of interesting comments.

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

.

Invictus by William Ernest Henly

Well done, Aaron Neathery!

Well……dang.

Okay, so confirmation on who’s the captain.Also, it’s funny seeing a mouse pet a cat (non-anthropomorphic). :-)

I wonder if she named the cat “Wally”

Since Holly knows she is living in an illusion, I wonder how long she can suspend disbelief before the true reality of her situation hits her?

Can salvation for our favorite mouse be this easy?

My keyboard was wet, but now. . . my laptop is floating away.

My heart is broken.

I cry with you, Wally.

I can’t see much sadness to this resolution. Holly has been carrying a terrible burden for years. She hasn’t been herself for years, because of the traumas we’ve seen in her replay…and whatever else came after. She has a chance to lose this burden, and possibly heal herself. She has a chance to save herself, without relying on someone she could lose. (she once said-during one of her tantrums- “no one ever comes back”. 8/26/2011)Wally is losing her, but not because she died. Holly is moving on to a better place by her own choice. If she’s the captain, then the AI should be under her control (although some of the comments the “Lyn-image” made may show some instability.) If she’s running the ship…then some day she could come back-though we probably won’t see it. I think Wally is smiling, because of those things. Holly is alive, and has chosen to move on to heal herself. And, it’s possible she could come back.

Ah, so Holly is now Captain of the Lucranian ship. Something may occur where their paths cross again, I just wonder how Doc Chase will feel about this? Might there still be a chance to ever see another incarnation of Captain Flask. There was an incident showing the construction of Endtown with the ‘Duchess’ and Marx as her assistant.

I think Holly was on the brink of schism, and becoming captain of the Fitzgerald saved her. It fed off her trauma, “eating her cancer”, and gave her a chance at recovery. Wally may realize that she needs the Fitzgerald to keep her balanced, and from falling over the brink like Jim did when he felt rejected by a lover.

.

If the Fitzgerald left the dimension, then Holly’s probably going to be getting a crash course in interreality commerce. She’s going to have to make her ownership legal and learn how to make a living with the ship. When she comes back, she’ll have a lot more experience and confidence, and some answers on how the worlds work. That story would make a great strip on its own, if only Aaron had the time and money for it.

.

I wonder what the laws are for the inhabitants of an inhabited reality taking a salvage ship off-reality. I don’t think it was clear whether the ships were left behind to cover up Lucranian activity, or if it’s illegal for the ships to be used at all. If a native were to salvage a salvage ship, that might get around interreality embargoes, if any, and allow Holly to conduct business with it, if there are no laws against it because it had never happened before.

So, I was right (along with a few others). Holly became the captain of the ship. Maybe she also chose to show the others her story so that they’d understand her desire to live in a fantasy world rather than in a harsh reality?

If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time there’s been a non-anthropomorphic animal in this strip. She’s not in Wally’s paradigm, she’s not in the earlier paradigm, but she’s clearly still a mouse, so the history happened and now she’s in a separate paradigm? BTW, Aaron, I love Holly’s foot placement under the chair in the first panel. Nice attention to detail.

Just noticed the residential window and the tree outside the window. She’s back on normal earth but it still a mouse?

I wonder if that cat is modelled on one of Aaron and Selina’s.

I’m still incredibly sad at losing Holly. Sad and happy for her at last.

On further thought, going forward from here…. Holly is captain of a ship, and has left for parts unknown. She’s probably out of danger. However— Wally, Kirbee, Chic, and Irving are out in a wasteland (possibly without dittos); in a world where the mjtagenic whatever is still active and monsters and Topsiders are hunting. Now what?

Now to ship Kirby and Wally! Toot toot! All aboard!

Thus spake Holly: “We both know that appearance can be deceiving..but only if we let them..and that’s the choice that each of us makes every day of our lives..”

http://the-collection.booru.org/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=51848

I am beginning to wonder what the gas bags in the Lucranian ships contained. Flask knew that whatever it was would be very explosive so I assumed it was deuterium that fueled a fusion reactor that powered the ship. Now we know that the ship is fueled by the Captain’s emotions. We also saw the Fitzgerald lose its gas bag before it fell to earth. Thus the question, what does that thing do and why is it important?

Strangely enough I’m thinking of a situation that the Doctor ran into in WWII London in the first season of the revised “Doctor Who”. Something was causing a rash of people walking around with gas masks asking “are you my mummy?” The answer was that somebody dropped an alien medical something or another containing nano-bots that found a lost, scared kid who was wearing a gas mask, fixed him up and assumed that humans were supposed to look like that.

Never thought she’d go this way.

But I agree, I also feel that this isn’t the last we’ll see of her.

If this is supposed to be an illusion then why does Holly see herself as a mouse and not a human woman as she does here husband and child? Curious!

I am crying

I wouldnt trade holly for kirbee, I liked holly so much more as a character in the story.

But I’m 5 years too late to complain