Endtown by Aaron Neathery for August 23, 2012

Aww, Flask’s expression in the last panel. ;3;

:grabs her beak up ice cream and brownies in preparation for what’s to come: ;^;

Or, he is a mind reader. Now that is the face I would like on a coffee mug. The message I would send is " don’t touch my coffee"! Of course. Blessed Be

What a lesson on the nature of human beings. How their real self can be so different from the mask they project to protect themselves. Look at Flask’s face in the final panel, the despair, the agony, the utter… [words fail me].

One last wall to tear down, and Flask will be completely defenseless… Can Marx keeping hitting all the right buttons, or will this be game over again?————————————-Electromatic Radio, when there is no room for mistakes.

Captain FlaskTo the tune of Captain Jack by Billy JoelAfterlife, and you’re still hangin’ around.Tryin’ to get back to your subterfuge town.Find you’ve fallen through a hole in the ground.Big surprise.So you pick yourself up in this nowhere place.See your dirty tunic and your messed-up face.And the guy says back at home, you’re disgracedIn their eyes.But Captain Flask will make things fair againAnd live on as a damn fine kitty.Captain Flask, she’s Endtown’s heroine:The cat who tried to kill a city!So you sift the rubble of your ruined life.You’re no-one’s mother, and no-one’s wife.Ah, and still the man has gotta twist the knifeIn your soul.And you think of all those screwed-up years,You weighed your shoulders down with other people’s fears.Your big designs fell down, and bigger tearsTook their toll.But Captain Flask will make things fair againAnd show them she’s one damn fine kitty.Captain Flask, she’s Endtown’s heroine:The cat who almost killed a city!

Aaron Marx calls to Joe Hill … * laugh * nice touch.

Hmmm, she seems to be able to grab Marx now? I wonder if this means…

As if nobody knew that.

Hmmm. Looks like she’s capable of grabbing onto his jacket…;-)

AM’s a one man good cop/bad cop.

Let the story begin.

Not making fun of her, just it’s such an evocative expression!

And all shall be revealed.

Only Aaron Neathery knows. And then, we’ll all know.

My mind keeps seeing that as the Dragon Scroll from Kung-Fu Panda

“OK, Maybe now we will find out who Petey was before he was a transport brain. Will this be another year long story chapter?”This is one instance where I don’t care how long this flashback takes. Inquiring minds need to know!

Of course, it’s always possible that Flask isn’t really dead [not even really most sincerely dead] but that this whole appearance of death is a thing that’s been engineered by Aaron Marx [and with all those Dittos about, not to mention his other “Q-like” abilities, we know he’s capable of just that]:“Purely as a meansTo get Philomela to spill the beans.”If so, it has got to be one of the most original means of getting a character to reveal their back story.Something quite similar was done in The Phantom City, [Doc Savage Magazine, Dec. 1933]. One of the captured thugs wakes up to find he can’t move and it’s unbearably hot. He sees a devilish figure straight out of his culture [he’s an Arab] and fully believes he’s in Hell. He tells this demon whatever it wants to know, on the hope he will be spared. Then the lights come on. He’s buried to his neck in a box filled with sand; electric coils heated it up and the demon is only a mannequin, whose burning touch comes from a live electric wire in its hand. And Monk Mayfair is laughing his head off at how they tricked the guy!

Possible spoiler theory alert….

I think maybe the reason AM is “grabbable” in the last panel because its evidence that Aaron is tricking Flask into answering his questions, that she’s not actually dead just in a dimension outside of reality. Where she goes after the big reveal I don’t know. Maybe to a dimension where Petey didn’t buy the farm? its obvious at this point she is one distraught disturbed cookie because of what happened to him.

I know a Joe Hill in college. He was a professor in the Bible Department. Had him for Bible 103 – “Fundamentals of Christian Thought”.

I think Marx is an Endtown fan who couldn’t wait to find out what Flask’s deal is, so he located the closest reality on the spectrum (or close enough) where he could ask her directly. I guess the adaptation he’s been reading is distributed on scrolls. Maybe in his copy, Flask did succeed in her mission, and he found a reality where he could stop her and ask her why. He wasn’t in the story until he stepped in, so he wouldn’t have read ahead to see himself. When he catches up on his version, he might get a little self conscious. “Tell me, does Neathery’s artwork make me look fat?”

OooohhhhhHeartbreaking!It really would hurt Flask that Petey couldn’t really remember her as vividly as she could remember him.

This reminds me a lot of various exchanges between Death and the departed in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Flask can finally admit a few things, but it mostly doesn’t matter anymore. Death isn’t the enemy, how we conduct our lives is what counts and we often can be the worst enemy we will ever encounter.

Doesn’t Joe have a much more famous brother “Sam”?