Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2012-08-09
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2012-08-09

by shaenon on August 9, 2012 at 12:00 am
Chapter: Railway Children
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Discussion (37) ¬

  1. Diane Castle
    August 9, 2012, 12:02 am | # | Reply

    A stable gender-swap formula? Man, is that guy behind the times.

    • Jonathan SCE
      August 9, 2012, 12:07 am | # | Reply

      Maybe Helen’s wasn’t stable?

      • Wood
        August 9, 2012, 12:27 am | # | Reply

        From what I remember, it took a single kiss to canccel the effects…

    • Towering Barbarian
      August 9, 2012, 1:28 am | # | Reply

      It’s possible that one of the differences between Mads and sane scientists is that the Mads aren’t as likely to share their results even when the fools are smart enough not to laugh. Perhaps *especially* when the fools are smart enough not to laugh since that clearly means they’re trying to trick you into Divulging Your Secrets! Put it this way, if you were a Spark how many of your better inventions would *you* be inclined to share? o_O

      • ddr
        August 11, 2012, 12:26 pm | # | Reply

        All of them.

        Assuming by “share” you mean “unleash them on an unwitting public.”

  2. --jt--
    August 9, 2012, 12:40 am | # | Reply

    “Question redacted.” seems more appropriate for this strip.

  3. Klyfix
    August 9, 2012, 12:43 am | # | Reply

    I’m suddenly reminded of Dave in “Narbonic” despondent because a falling out with Helen might mean he’d never have lesbian sex again. Umm, yeah.

    These folk seem like nice enough sorts for mads.

  4. eddddd the mad genius
    August 9, 2012, 12:49 am | # | Reply

    It only just occured to me to wonder how Dave and Helen were able to have lesbian sex, if swapping bodily fluids changed the gender back.
    0_0

    • Kay Gilbert
      August 9, 2012, 1:14 am | # | Reply

      Well, lesbians have safe sex too, you know. Dental dams, finger cots . . .

    • John Campbell
      August 9, 2012, 9:34 pm | # | Reply

      Only Dave needs to be swapped, which limits the possibilities, but doesn’t rule it out entirely.

      Also, the simple gender-swap formula wasn’t their only option. They also had access to the transmogrification ray.

      Also also, the gender-swap formula wasn’t Helen’s doing. It was Artie’s.

      • Gemma
        June 27, 2013, 6:15 pm | # | Reply

        Chances are they used the ray- remember this?
        http://www.webcomicsnation.com/shaenongarrity/narbonic_plus/series.php?view=archive&chapter=51074

  5. mnementh
    August 9, 2012, 12:49 am | # | Reply

    “That guy” reminds me of “This guy”…

    http://dresdencodak.com/2006/08/30/traversing-the-luminiferous-aether/

    mnem
    “Superluminous*

  6. Andrew
    August 9, 2012, 1:27 am | # | Reply

    And Tip now has a new goal.

    • Forzin
      August 9, 2012, 2:28 am | # | Reply

      Tip’s got a lot of work ahead of him.

      • Ardacil
        February 27, 2015, 7:43 am | # | Reply

        Chances are, Tip, like most of us transvestites, is perfectly satisfied with his gender and has few dysmorphic goals. That being said, if given the opportunity to TEMPORARILY swap genders binarily, I’d totally snatch it up (pun intended).

        • Eraser820
          May 16, 2015, 3:35 pm | # | Reply

          Allow me to direct you to the compiled filename story paragraphs 10-11 located here: http://www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/skinhorse.txt

          “Actually, you can call me –” Tip shut up. He’d only started being Tippi recently, and mostly in his head, and it occurred to him that this might not be the best opportunity to break out the new name. It’d be a heck of a thing to get kicked out for saying the wrong thing just before the final test.

          Besides, he wasn’t sure about the name. He wasn’t sure about being a woman. He wasn’t sure about being a man, either, which was the whole problem. There was only one thing he could be sure about, which was that he looked fantastic. He clung to that sole certainty like a man, or possibly a woman, clutching a rock in a storm.

        • Darkstarr
          April 20, 2016, 1:50 am | # | Reply

          So would I!

          I might just be a fashion star
          All dressed in frilly rags
          Or perhaps I’ll cross the other side
          And walk around in
          Drag!
          –Oingo Boingo, “Who Do You Want To Be Today”

  7. Bartimaeus
    August 9, 2012, 2:08 am | # | Reply

    Want a mint?

  8. Eddurd
    August 9, 2012, 2:54 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “Maria” from The Sound of Music, Rodgers & Hammerstein)

    How do I solve a problem like gay marriage?
    How do a pair of men or women wed?
    We are the ones Republicans disparage!
    They’re trying to say
    With whom we can play
    In bed!

    Now that I’ve made a formula that’s stable,
    We can make all the fundies flip their lids!
    With people of either sex
    Combining in ways complex,
    Doing the stuff the G.O.P. forbids!
    Oh, now that I’ve solved the problem of gay marriage,
    I and my wife at last can have some kids!

  9. Barking Monkey
    August 9, 2012, 3:14 am | # | Reply

    Sooo, if it’s his WIFE wouldn’t he have to divorce her prior to gay-marrying her? I wouldn’t guess Massachusetts law would auto-annul a marriage in the event of a sex change.

    • Eric Burns-White
      August 9, 2012, 6:08 am | # | Reply

      No no no. He’s married to her, now he wants to gay marry her. They’re experimenting with bisexual monogamous bigamy.

      What, you don’t think they have mad social scientists in Saint Charlie?

      • Andrew
        August 9, 2012, 6:23 am | # | Reply

        Oh dear God. You’re right. What had Mell wrought?

      • Ben Jims
        August 9, 2012, 8:49 am | # | Reply

        It would seem the dude is channeling Dr. Mittelmind.

      • Dim Matter
        August 9, 2012, 10:44 am | # | Reply

        But why would they only be able to have children once he had the gender swap formula? The only thing I can think of is that his wife is barren, so after getting gay married he’ll turn her into a man and then he’ll bear the children. Either that, or they just agreed to focus on work early on, and would only worry about starting a family once one of them had made a breakthrough big enough to guarantee Mad Tenure.

        • Kay Gilbert
          August 9, 2012, 1:12 pm | # | Reply

          Stop making sense! Logic is anathema to Mad Science.

  10. Cubist
    August 9, 2012, 5:12 am | # | Reply

    [tune: LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS]

    Pic-ture your-self on a train be-neath Bos-ton
    Whose guts won’t all fit in its ex-ter-nal shell
    En-ter: Your ri-vals. You all have been booked
    (On a) Hand-bas-ket head-ing to Hell…

    Who gets the cred-it for 5-sid-ed squares
    Ti-ling (the) imma-cu-late floor?
    Ar-chi-tects Saar-inen, Esch-er, and Pei
    In one skull.

    Non-Eu-cli-di-an… St. Char-lie!
    Non-Eu-cli-di-an… St. Char-lie!
    Non-Eu-cli-di-an… St. Char-lie!
    Ohhhhhhhhh…

    • Efogoto
      August 9, 2012, 10:32 am | # | Reply

      Love it, Cubist, but shouldn’t this be illustrated by “Nude Descending An Escalator”?

    • Eddurd
      August 9, 2012, 4:24 pm | # | Reply

      “Skin Horse on the train … with Ruby”?

  11. Animeraider
    August 9, 2012, 7:13 am | # | Reply

    “Swoof”

    Of the gazillion things to like about today’s strip, that’s my favorite.

  12. Wodwo
    August 9, 2012, 9:01 am | # | Reply

    Man, Sergio is way behind the curb. I guess he really has been responsibly hiding his genius in a bunker since elementary school.
    Well, that, or he’s one of those people who can’t see past the trench coat to the sentient panda within.

  13. Ryushikaze
    August 9, 2012, 11:53 am | # | Reply

    From what I can see, no, actually, she DIDN’T say ‘human and otherwise,’ at any point which makes me wonder if we missed a strip in here somewhere.

    • Ryushikaze
      August 9, 2012, 11:54 am | # | Reply

      Oh, wait, she did, it was just several strips back, but she also already mentioned it was an interspecies community.. I guess Sergio’s just so gobsmacked at their White Castle he didn’t mention it til now.

  14. Lunad
    August 9, 2012, 3:01 pm | # | Reply

    I home that is actually a sex-swap formula, otherwise, it’s not going to make much of a difference to the US gov.

  15. Gib
    August 9, 2012, 3:17 pm | # | Reply

    “gay-marry” is my new favorite verb. ^^

  16. Tualha
    August 9, 2012, 3:21 pm | # | Reply

    Psst! Tip! Think you can get me a dose of that formula? I’ll make it worth your while.

  17. Shadowmehr
    August 9, 2012, 5:18 pm | # | Reply

    If Madness is their baseline, what the heck counts as completely off the rails? (Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun.)

  18. KTLeone
    August 9, 2012, 10:17 pm | # | Reply

    It’s a gender swap formula, not a gender changing formula. So that means he can’t gay marry his wife because she would be male. Or would he find someone else to swap with? Would that be grounds for divorce? Who would get the before-mentioned children? Why am I in a legal battle over hypothetical, fictional scenarios in a web comic? Damn you Skin-Horse, I forgot what reality looked like. (Right now it looks a lot like hot-pockets)

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