Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2014-11-29
‹‹ First ‹ Prev Buy! Comments(33) Next › Last ››

2014-11-29

by shaenon on November 29, 2014 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Mixed-Up Files
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Discussion (33) ¬

  1. Ron Armstrong
    November 29, 2014, 12:10 am | # | Reply

    Oh my gawd!
    That actually makes sense!

    • Robert The Addled
      November 29, 2014, 6:51 am | # | Reply

      That was Helens 2nd use after saving dave

      And btw – it DID make the Dave clone reality blind.

    • oneuniverse2
      November 29, 2014, 2:12 pm | # | Reply

      Besides, if you’ve conquered the world, what’s the next challenge? Holding on to it, with all the boring administrative details?

  2. Eddurd
    November 29, 2014, 1:54 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “All I Know”, Art Garfunkel)

    I shoot you! You shoot me!
    These shots cure insanity!
    That Helen B.
    Devised this stuff …
    Makes us sane,
    And that’s mad enough!

    Shooting left, shooting right,
    ‘Twixt ourselves, we always fight!
    Through day and night
    These shots are hurled …
    If we stopped,
    We could rule the world!

     Doc Jones can move! She protects her groove!
     But the Cure, her mad genius could remove!
     Says Sweetheart, “It’s a use of which I approve!”

    But the Institute will cure each Mad,
    After stealing the tech they had!
    To steal is bad!
    Tigerlily seems
    To be planning
    Some counter-schemes!

    • Wofmanjim
      November 29, 2014, 10:02 am | # | Reply

      Frighteningly the first two lines of your filk work just as well for the Barney and Friends theme song.

      • Eddurd
        November 29, 2014, 10:14 am | # | Reply

        I shoot you, you shoot me,
        These shots cure insanity!
        If we all go sane, then that is really bad!
        Sci-en-tists should all be Mad!

        (Now I’m picturing Tigerlily, Imogene, pre-cure Debbi, Virginia Lee, Madblood, Dave, and Helen joining hands and singing this … right before Helen’s mom strafes them with a flamethrower.)

        • roberttheaddled
          November 29, 2014, 2:14 pm | # | Reply

          With that sort of line singing/dancing – adaptations of portions of Rocky Horror would probably be appropriate.

        • davidbreslin101
          November 29, 2014, 2:24 pm | # | Reply

          I know that tune under another name…

          This old man, he shot one
          With a madness-curing gun
          With a mwa-ha mwahaha
          Turn your dog to stone
          This old man will rule alone.

      • Ser Pentrose
        November 29, 2014, 11:22 am | # | Reply

        arrrgh! With my luck, and earworm prone nature, that’s going to be stuck in my head all day.

        At least Eddurd’s lyrics are more fun.

  3. Sevendeer
    November 29, 2014, 3:34 am | # | Reply

    The gummint shoulda left a perfectly viable situation well enough alone.

  4. BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
    November 29, 2014, 4:33 am | # | Reply

    Artie’s a character. The Cure is a plot point. Who else thinks that a series with a strong classic children’s literature motif would get plenty of use out of a FORENSIC LINGUIST?

  5. CyberSkull
    November 29, 2014, 6:08 am | # | Reply

    Now the cure takes on frightening dimensions. It is not normalcy envisioned by normals, but normalcy through the eyes of a madperson. Who knows what side effects are actually just part of the “normal” it inflicts?

    • roberttheaddled
      November 29, 2014, 8:03 am | # | Reply

      The WORST I can imagine is a sort of “Locked In” syndrome – The “Mad’ is fully aware and raving – but what comes out of the body is ‘normal’ speech and behavior.

      • Bradson Goldie
        November 29, 2014, 8:44 am | # | Reply

        Oh my god. That’s awful. I could have never come up with something that twisted.

        I’m not gonna lie, I really hope that’s accurate. The Cure is already painted as kind of a bad thing. (Dave doesn’t take it. Helen doesn’t take it. Their daughter presumably doesn’t take it. The mad community uses it as a weapon. It’s being forcibly administered.) This would give that vague sense of unease about the cure a real sense of horror.

        • roberttheaddled
          November 29, 2014, 2:21 pm | # | Reply

          That’s usually the mental/visual that’s portrayed for mind control in movies and television.

          If you’ve ever seen the Mel Gibson movie “What Women Want” (sorry its what popped to mind for an example) that ‘disconnect’ between spoken and thoughts – except w/ more panic as people are TRYING to voice the unspoken.

          • gantradiesdracos
            November 29, 2014, 8:16 pm | #

            knowing the freaky things mads can do, what if it wipes the subjects personality and replaces it with a manufactured “normal” one approximated to be similar to their original one? i..may have been reading too many darkly cynical stories lately..

      • Henry
        November 29, 2014, 10:15 am | # | Reply

        I think the cure just causes the Mad to ignore all craziness, from inside or outside. Including the little fairies. Those are probably raving if the cure wears off.

  6. Robert Nowall
    November 29, 2014, 11:08 am | # | Reply

    Thought Dr. Lee was working on The Cure.

    • Mark Temple
      November 29, 2014, 1:44 pm | # | Reply

      it is possible she was working to reverse engineer it.. possibly even figure out Helen’s ‘improved’ version mentioned by her time travelling daughter to Dave.. the version which didn’t create reality blindness. one would presume the version that makes you reality blind would be used on the Mad Scientists that the shadow agencies want eliminated.. but the improved version might be useful if you want a useful mad scientist’s smarts and knowledge, but don’t want the madness-place parts.

      (speaking of which.. how much time has passed between narbonic and skin horse? could Helen and Dave have their kid by now?)

      • oneuniverse2
        November 29, 2014, 2:07 pm | # | Reply

        Even if you don’t consider Helen’s ability to force-grow human bodies, Narbonic started in 2000 and ended 2006, so yes, there has been enough time for Gamma to be almost 9 (if Dave and Helen had started Gamma before the end of Narbonic).

      • beacuzz
        November 30, 2014, 12:21 am | # | Reply

        um if that is the case doesn’t that sound like dr. lee.
        she is sufficiently crazy but some how just short of mad. and she can do can do and create mad science with out the madness. that sounds like cure2.0 to me.
        what if she was mad. but got cured and /now they have her creating mad science for them while suppling her with cure2.0

        • Robert Nowall
          November 30, 2014, 9:21 am | # | Reply

          Anybody who’s responsible for (1) Unity, (2) Nick, and (3) Bubbles ought to be a charter member of the Mad Scientist Union. Not to forget miscellaneous work like the modified brain dispenser.

        • DanD
          November 30, 2014, 3:06 pm | # | Reply

          Unless I’m misremembering, Gamma also never said when Helen developed the improved cure. It could be two days past the end of Narbonic.

    • BMunro
      November 29, 2014, 1:48 pm | # | Reply

      Well, her special talent [1] is reverse-engineering mad tech, so presumably she was working to make the Cure mass-producible by normals.

      [1] If she were a pony, what would her cutie mark be? 🙂

      • Jeffrey C. Wells
        November 29, 2014, 8:24 pm | # | Reply

        Dr. Lee’s cutie mark would clearly be a waffle, because she thinks a lot about breakfast and she is unable to think decisively.

        • Henry
          November 29, 2014, 11:59 pm | # | Reply

          Indeed!

        • roberttheaddled
          December 2, 2014, 5:55 pm | # | Reply

          As long as they are not Buttermilk. I Believe that was the code phrase used to shut-down the drone body auto-destruct. Unity was told to block ears and Lee hung up on Nick.

  7. Pygar
    November 29, 2014, 2:08 pm | # | Reply

    Mark, what is time to time-machine builders?

    • oneuniverse2
      November 29, 2014, 2:23 pm | # | Reply

      It costs an entire universe of energy to use the equipment, but who is counting?

  8. Shadowmehr
    November 29, 2014, 6:29 pm | # | Reply

    So Tigerlily doesn’t have a proble with the use of the Cure, but that Anasigma is using it efficiently?

    Bombing with chemical weapons is not an exact thing.

  9. codebrackercodebracker
    November 30, 2014, 2:22 pm | # | Reply

    Extremely relevant:
    http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic_plus/series.php?view=archive&chapter=52097

    • oneuniverse2
      December 1, 2014, 1:54 pm | # | Reply

      You’re right, especially that last strip. I wonder if Beta ever developed that rifle thingy.

  10. Christian Rose
    March 19, 2020, 8:14 am | # | Reply

    Wasn’t TJ’s last line paraphrased by Helen at one point?

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