Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2018-11-13
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2018-11-13

by shaenon on November 13, 2018 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Figgs and Phantoms
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Discussion (44) ¬

  1. Towering Barbarian
    November 13, 2018, 12:10 am | # | Reply

    Well, you definitely can’t blame a girl for turning down a guy under circumstances like that! ^_^

  2. David B Huber
    November 13, 2018, 12:20 am | # | Reply

    If Mr. Green would treat Virginia like this, I shudder to think what must be happening to poor Nick!

    On the other hand, Dr. Lee’s righteous outrage is leaving her dangerously oblivious to the – ah – diligence with which her erstwhile subordinates are pursuing their duties…

    On the gripping hand, now would be an excellent time to learn this is a Ginny drone she has been piloting ever since being ordered to disassemble Nick!

    • Dave
      November 13, 2018, 12:37 am | # | Reply

      What gets me is, Green had that whole thing about how being Nick being a brain in a jar isn’t really “alive” anymore, and yet he’s trying to do the same thing to Virginia while still trying to get in her pants.

      Make up your mind, dude.

      • Towering Barbarian
        November 13, 2018, 12:49 am | # | Reply

        In fairness to Mr. Green, part of not having Anasig as firmly under his control as he believes it to be might involve the giving of orders in his name that he knows nothing about. To be mundane it needn’t even be an attempt to subvert his control if some executive assistant who doesn’t know he has a thing for Ginny was merely following standard procedure. @_@

        • David B Huber
          November 13, 2018, 1:01 am | # | Reply

          I’m wondering if the speculation that Mr. Green is an AI might explain the conflicting orders? A schizophrenic AI…

        • Owlmirror
          November 13, 2018, 1:04 am | # | Reply

          Or some executive assistant, knowing perfectly well that he has a thing for Ginny, gave the order in his name. . .

          [It does fit Dr. Englebright’s M.O., I think]

        • Dieter M.
          November 13, 2018, 6:19 am | # | Reply

          Is “Mr. Green” a person, or a title that many people share?

          • awgiedawgie
            November 13, 2018, 1:20 pm | #

            That is indeed another theory that has been posed at some point.

      • Urlance Woolsbane
        November 13, 2018, 1:30 am | # | Reply

        The contrast between his behavior as Dr. Ao and his behavior in the flesh is certainly interesting. I’d be tempted to say the former was all a ruse, were it not for advances he made as Violet Bee. But who knows? Maybe he’s a stone cold sociopath.

        • Robert Loughrey
          November 13, 2018, 1:02 pm | # | Reply

          Maybe?!?

        • Shadowmehr
          November 13, 2018, 7:51 pm | # | Reply

          Definitely and decidedly.

      • Owlmirror
        November 13, 2018, 1:56 am | # | Reply

        I don’t think it’s impossible that Mr. Green is a sociopath, saying whatever he thinks might get him whatever he wants, largely indifferent to consistency.

        Hm. Although I just had another thought. Dr. Ao’s statement might make sense if you consider something about Nick that he didn’t say explicitly. Nick identifies as a helicopter, and has joined the Machine Union. Dr. Ao/Mr. Green sees an explicit conflict going on — the Old War/New War between humanity and humanity’s sapient creations — and Nick is pretty much on the “wrong” side.

        In the comments for that comic, people were saying that Mr. Green didn’t know about how Nick was happy and alive as a helicopter. Maybe he did know, but used that knowledge to think of Nick as an enemy to be controlled, imprisoned, and ultimately destroyed.

        The fact that Nick also has a some sort of quasi-romantic relationship with Dr. Lee probably doesn’t make Mr. Green any more disposed to be sympathetic.

      • Frank
        November 13, 2018, 6:38 am | # | Reply

        Now I’m wondering if Mr. Green has a wife he’d be “not-cheating” on if and only if Dr Lee’s brain was in a jar

      • Robert Nowall
        November 13, 2018, 5:22 pm | # | Reply

        Strictly speaking, Dr. Lee’s brain isn’t in her pants. I’d post further about it, but it’s getting into a really weird area.

    • Robert Nowall
      November 13, 2018, 9:52 am | # | Reply

      Did he turn down Mr. Green, too?

      • awgiedawgie
        November 13, 2018, 9:33 pm | # | Reply

        Not in so many words, but Nick’s attitude when he discovered Violet Bee wasn’t human was just as good as turning him down.

  3. Owlmirror
    November 13, 2018, 12:23 am | # | Reply

    I just realized that Dr. Lee woke up without her glasses, and yet they were available for her to put on in the next strip. Oddly convenient, considering that they’d stripped her & dressed in her in a hospital gown, and cut her hair sloppily to prep her for brain extraction.

    It’s more than a little strange, too, that the surgeons are just holding sharp things up when the surgery has to be postponed, at best. Or are they made nervous by their subject ranting at them, and they want pointy things to feel like they have some defense lest she attack them?

    The injection being prepped looks like a possible setup for a quip about a sting delivered by bees. This works regardless of whether the bees literally enter the room, or have hacked the system so that an authoritative voice states that the operation has been cancelled and the subject is to be given clothes and her freedom.

    • Frank
      November 13, 2018, 6:39 am | # | Reply

      yeah, to paraphrase calvin and hobbes, don’t argue with the man holding a sharp blade to your head

    • Dr. Steve
      November 13, 2018, 8:51 am | # | Reply

      Are you suggesting that she might have woken up from one VR and into another?

      • Dalben
        November 13, 2018, 8:20 pm | # | Reply

        I agree. How do we know know she’s not still in the simulation? The increasingly bizarre circumstances might be a clue, except that in the world of mad science and anasigma the doctor’s (or technicians’) behavior and brain extraction methodology isn’t necessarily all that bizarre.

        I don’t think she’s still in the simulation, because we already had a long ‘deal with your personal demons while questioning what is real’ storyline with sweetheart. This one figuring out how to get out was more of a technical and puzzle solving exercise than a ‘me as with what is reality’ exercise. If does turn out to be a simulation anyway, it’ll probably just her figuring out how the VR works and how to manipulate it, not some endless nightmare scenario. But I think she’s out of the VR at this pokt.

    • MauveCloud
      November 13, 2018, 11:52 am | # | Reply

      “I just realized that Dr. Lee woke up without her glasses, and yet they were available for her to put on in the next strip.”

      Are you sure about that? I just went back a few pages, and it looks to me like she woke up *with* her glasses, though I’ll admit it’s tricky to see given the angle of the last panel (and I’m not 100% certain it was originally posted that way)

      • s854
        November 13, 2018, 5:08 pm | # | Reply

        MauveCloud: Virginia wasn’t wearing glasses in the frame where she’s lying down. http://skin-horse.com/comic/meet-you/.

        It’s not an issue, though. As she can’t see very much without her glasses, she obviously keeps a pair in hammerspace so she can find it easily enough. It’s certainly more useful than keeping hammers there.

        • D. Walker
          November 13, 2018, 5:51 pm | # | Reply

          Hammerspace isn’t really a thing in the Narboniverse…

          …but Mojo is! And we’ve seen Virginia use it before! Ties up neatly!

          • Mental Mouse
            November 15, 2018, 11:19 am | #

            “Hammerspace isn’t really a thing…” Mell might disagree with you.

          • awgiedawgie
            November 15, 2018, 7:50 pm | #

            “Mell might disagree with you”? There’s no “might” about it.

            “Mallets just happen.”

        • awgiedawgie
          November 13, 2018, 9:40 pm | # | Reply

          I gotta side with MauveCloud on this one. If you compare the side view of her in panel 2 here with the side view of her when she woke up, it definitely appears that she was wearing her glasses the whole time.

          It was probably necessary for her to have them on so that in the VR she would feel like they were there.

          • Owlmirror
            November 14, 2018, 1:54 am | #

            I don’t see anything that looks like glasses. In the panel after the FZZT, there’s a line that goes to the anesthesia mask, which looks like a strap, and that’s it. No sign of anything else that could be frames/temples.

            Also, now I look at it, her ear is missing. Or maybe it’s supposed to be obscured by the VR gear interface.

          • awgiedawgie
            November 15, 2018, 7:57 pm | #

            Are we looking at the same pictures? Look at the first two panels from today’s strip, and see the two simple lines that make up the temple and frames of her glasses. Those same two lines are there in the same position in the panel when she woke up. They’re not part of the respirator. And her ear is right there in plain sight between the lock of hair and the operating table.

    • mickeyjf
      November 13, 2018, 6:42 pm | # | Reply

      Let us not pick artwork nits that distract from the essence of the plot, busily unfolding like an origami frog in a gentle spring rain, thickening like a fine cream sauce. Mary Worth this is not.

      • awgiedawgie
        November 13, 2018, 9:41 pm | # | Reply

        Mmmmm… frogs in a nice cream sauce. Sounds tasty.

  4. awgiedawgie
    November 13, 2018, 12:27 am | # | Reply

    I love that — upon hearing that it was her nemesis (sort of) who has tried to have her killed (more or less) — her reaction is not terror, or even outrage (the outrage was upon learning that someone else was doing the brain-schlorping around there), but simply annoyance. Reminds me of some of Helen’s responses to Madblood.

  5. =Tamar
    November 13, 2018, 12:51 am | # | Reply

    Is this whole setup a sting operation?

    • Owlmirror
      November 13, 2018, 1:19 am | # | Reply

      “Attention, surgeons in the extirpation OR. New orders from Mr. Green: Dr. Lee is to be dressed, taken to the Atrium, and given tea with lots of honey, spit-spot.”

  6. Ogden Wernstrom
    November 13, 2018, 5:32 am | # | Reply

    For a moment I thought Ira’s choices were morally challenging, but on second thought, it’s hardly a challenge, is it? Camus said one must imagine Sisyphus happy. No doubt Ira’s diligent research revealed that the specific labor that engenders maximal satisfaction is to live in a work camp harvesting walnuts. One daydreams of vast banks of warehoused brains emitting astronomical quantities of utilitons. Of course, as Virginia pointed out, Ira himself could be considered to be a walnut harvester, so one must imagine Ira to be thankless, misunderstood, but also happy — infectiously happy, even, as he shares the job he loves with the world.

    • Rick Mangekian
      November 13, 2018, 8:45 am | # | Reply

      Actually, I thought that harvesting walnuts was a symbolic representation of Dr. Lee’s occupation of harvesting brains.

      • Ogden Wernstrom
        November 13, 2018, 12:45 pm | # | Reply

        Yes, but Dr. Green does it too, by delegation. Though I suppose it is more satisfying to be directly involved in the nuts and legumes of the process. Virginia sure seems to miss it.

  7. SVGeezer
    November 13, 2018, 9:42 am | # | Reply

    But is Mr Green always in control of Mr Green? Since he has to be many different things at the same time how can he always be the same thing at different times?

  8. Robert Nowall
    November 13, 2018, 9:52 am | # | Reply

    Is that Echo Bravo wielding the scalpel?

    • Shadowmehr
      November 13, 2018, 7:53 pm | # | Reply

      Lets hope not. For a MIB, he shouldn’t be allowed to play with sharp instruments.

  9. Ogden Wernstrom
    November 13, 2018, 12:40 pm | # | Reply

    I must correct this ridiculous discussion of “brain extraction,” which is a ridiculous old wive’s tale. The scientific name for this procedure is “brain liberation.” Your opinions are ignorant and invalid if you can’t even use the right terminology. Though I should also mention that there is an evolving consensus that “brain liberation” has become a derogatory label for what is now more accurately and scientifically called “cerebral unfettering which by definition is an unalloyed good.”

    • awgiedawgie
      November 13, 2018, 1:28 pm | # | Reply

      Yes, but in order to liberate the brain from its confines, it must indeed be extracted from the skull. So while “brain liberation” may be the objective, “brain extraction” is, in point of fact, the process.

      • Robert Loughrey
        November 13, 2018, 2:30 pm | # | Reply

        Hey you don’t get to use “Brain Extraction!!!” That word is only for us – You’re being corporeal-ist!

      • Bruce A Munro
        November 13, 2018, 4:41 pm | # | Reply

        Liberation, extraction, whatevs. Where’s my sriracha? – Unity

    • Robert Nowall
      November 13, 2018, 11:30 pm | # | Reply

      Fat lot of good it does to liberate a brain if it’s not plugged into anything.

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