Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2013-08-07
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2013-08-07

by shaenon on August 7, 2013 at 12:00 am
Chapter: My House Is Me
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Discussion (47) ¬

  1. Patera Silk
    August 7, 2013, 12:33 am | # | Reply

    But it’s encrypted, no old Navajo dude around, and Krycek is still watching those Anasigma training videos about proper shoe care.

    • Nonie
      August 7, 2013, 9:59 am | # | Reply

      Patera – BWEEEE!

  2. Andrew
    August 7, 2013, 12:51 am | # | Reply

    Nick’s censor function be trolling.

    • Shadowmehr
      August 7, 2013, 7:10 pm | # | Reply

      Of course, if you had to listen to this guy talk and change all the swear words, wouldn’t you try to amuse yourself with the words you could use? An exercise in creativity, and a manner of revenge against the idiot cussing in your ear all day.

      • Knuckles
        January 24, 2022, 1:51 pm | # | Reply

        I’m deeply amused by the idea that Nick’s censor filter is, itself, a self-aware program, complete with the ability to be frustrated at its own purpose.

  3. Eddurd
    August 7, 2013, 12:54 am | # | Reply

    (TUNE: “Green Door”, Davie & Moore)

    Vault door,
    Nick could open with ease now!
    No chore,
    Only had to say “please” now!
    Old War!
    Answers, ev’ryone sees now!

     There’s an old film movie that they must inspect
     About the Old War!
     Gonna find the truth is what they least expect
     About the Old War!
     Find a Bell & Howell so they can project
     About the Old War!

    Vault door,
    Just for Nick was inviting …
    Large store
    Of old records and writing …
    Old War,
    Why was ev’ryone fighting?

    Old War!

    • Freddie Freelance
      August 7, 2013, 8:43 am | # | Reply

      Everyone old enough to know the tune to that song, even before reading the first line, needs to acknowledge that fact right now.

      “Raises hand”

      • little sis
        August 7, 2013, 10:48 am | # | Reply

        HAha! I’m unemployed and using an online site called Glassdoor. But when I mention it to someone I always mess up and say Greendoor. Not sure I want to be looking for work behind the green door! Luckily most people have no memory or are too young for the song.

        • Wayne Zombie
          August 7, 2013, 12:41 pm | # | Reply

          There’s a new film coming out Real Soon Now called Lovelace, a movie about the making of Deep Throat. Linda Lovelace said that in every scene that she was having sex, she was being raped. Her Wikipedia page paints a pretty sad life.

          • Sean Duggan
            August 7, 2013, 1:10 pm | #

            It probably says something about me, but I keep confused Linda Lovelace for Ada Lovelace.

        • Sean Duggan
          August 7, 2013, 1:10 pm | # | Reply

          If I remember my O. Henry right, behind The Green Door lies an impoverished and famished young girl ready to be swept off of her feet as she faints.

    • commodorejohn
      August 7, 2013, 12:55 pm | # | Reply

      You get bonus points for working “Bell & Howell” in there, sir.

  4. Huttj509
    August 7, 2013, 1:05 am | # | Reply

    Does Nick honestly not know what film is? Am I supposed to be feeling this old?

    • Amonduul
      August 7, 2013, 1:11 am | # | Reply

      Hard to say. I had assumed that Nick is a little too young to know what a laserdisc is (his status as the kind of nerd who might know what a laserdisc is anyways notwithstanding), but now I’m not so sure.

      • Freddie Freelance
        August 7, 2013, 8:46 am | # | Reply

        I agree with Yeti here; Nick isn’t old enough to know Laserdiscs, and he’s probably young enough to think CDs & DVDs are cute but outdated.

    • Wayne Zombie
      August 7, 2013, 12:42 pm | # | Reply

      I used to do film programming for science fiction conventions, and I mean 16mm film. My film club rented projectors and helped round up projectionists. And I do have a laserdisc collection, in fact, I’d like to find another LD player as mine needs some repairs.

  5. Brad
    August 7, 2013, 1:09 am | # | Reply

    Funny thing about that. I know people that still have laserdisc collections, and I know people who have never seen a laserdic.

    Yet everyone I know has seen old fashioned film. Because of old fashioned movies.

    • FlyingFish
      August 7, 2013, 9:22 am | # | Reply

      I have only seen a laserdisc played once.

      It contained Batman & Robin.

      I have now vowed to destroy all laserdiscs I encounter.

      • commodorejohn
        August 7, 2013, 12:56 pm | # | Reply

        But no video format is free from the taint of Batman & Robin. It’s like original sin.

        Also, you can have my Wrath of Khan LD when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

  6. Tetra Valent
    August 7, 2013, 1:19 am | # | Reply

    Ah, no, Tip, that is in Moustachio’s memory drum, left behind….

    So where are they going to find a 9-track EBCDIC tape reader? All to read the single number “42”.

  7. Max
    August 7, 2013, 3:42 am | # | Reply

    Oh dear. After that sort of lead-up, this trope predicts that roll HAS to spontaneously combust in 3…2…1… (after all it might actually be made of celluloid by the looks of it)

    • Rex Vivat
      August 7, 2013, 2:05 pm | # | Reply

      Or it will have absolutely useless contents.

    • Saberbeam
      August 7, 2013, 4:02 pm | # | Reply

      Or perhaps it will combust after they view it, Mission Impossible style.

      “In the event that you are captured or killed during this mission, Skin Horse will pull up your psych profile to prove that you were probably acting on your own accord for the sake of fashion, paperwork, sammyches or lolz. In the event that you are zombified, you will be granted a stipend for the purchase of brains.”

      • Tetra Valent
        August 7, 2013, 6:03 pm | # | Reply

        Since they’re all “on vacation”, Gavotte already has that covered.

  8. Elaborate
    August 7, 2013, 3:56 am | # | Reply

    The censor function is getting into the spirit of things!
    Can we expect to see word substitutions fit for a princess from now on? 🙂

    • Stig
      August 7, 2013, 2:50 pm | # | Reply

      I hope so. That is so kawaiiii!

      I hope that is why we got the June 7 reveal that the censor program is adaptive.

  9. Robert The Addled
    August 7, 2013, 5:01 am | # | Reply

    Some of the punk engineers at work have never seen the Elvis beach movies, a Jerry Lewis comedy, or the creature feature movies I grew up on. I was born before the last moon landing, grew up with a rotary phone (and the push-buttons that made rotary noises), recall when a HDD cost more than a computer, and when cable finally came to my neighborhood.

    It is, alas, not a stretch to believe that Nick (nicky? in drone mode?) has never seen a movie reel.

    Its amazing how much

    • Keiya
      August 7, 2013, 5:44 am | # | Reply

      It really is a stretch, seeing how often imagery of them is used in things like pre-shows in movie theaters and the like.

      • Daibhid C
        August 7, 2013, 6:26 am | # | Reply

        Yeah, you don’t need to have seen a film projector in operation to know what a film reel is.

        My neice has never seen a rotary dial telephone except in the Communications wing of Edinburgh Museum. But since it remains the international symbol for telephones even on the keypad of her mobile, she knows what they are.

        • Yotz
          August 7, 2013, 7:04 am | # | Reply

          But this is precicely the problem. Your neice, among many others, knows thouse things as [i]symbols[/i], not the actual thing. And symbols are really strange sometimes – like with torture/execution tool, that became a symbol of compassion, for example.

          I personally saw – and talked to – seweral people, who easely identify icon on “save” button as “diskette”, but have no clue what “floppy disk” is. And there are more, who knows that icon as “blue and white square” only. When you try to explain, first words they say are usually something akin “ah, ancient flash drive”.

    • Rafun Li
      August 7, 2013, 7:13 am | # | Reply

      Well, I never saw any of those movies, never saw the appeal of Elvis in any case, and grew up with cable. But I know what a rotary phone looks like (because my grandma kept hers) and I know what a movie reel is, because you can hardly watch a Disney movie without one… Really can’t see Nick not knowing them.

      • Manifesta
        August 7, 2013, 7:10 pm | # | Reply

        I recommend Love Me Tender for surprisingly deft acting, Jailhouse Rock for that and terrific music, Viva Las Vegas for the kick-ass style, and Blue Hawaii, which is both charming and culturally sensitive.

    • Freddie Freelance
      August 7, 2013, 9:15 am | # | Reply

      I know what you mean; I was born several months after *Meet the Beatles* was released and several days before the release of the Warren Commission Report, and I can remember phone prefixes (like PEnnsylvania 6-5000), computers the size of one room schoolhouses, hard drives the size and shape of cake carriers (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/historydisplays/FifthFloor/MagneticDataStorage/DataStorageImages/DiskPacks/BurroughsDiskPack.jpg), having a 12″ B&W TV that we’d take out & set on a kitchen chair when we’d watch TV, TV shows that would advertise “In COLOR” at the start of the show, “Speed Racer” first being shown on TV, watching “Chiller Theatre” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok6uzndOmPA)…

    • jdreyfuss
      August 7, 2013, 10:30 am | # | Reply

      I just want to say that my high school, when I graduated in 2001, had a rotary pay phone in its lobby. Also that I’m at least as surprised that Nick knows what a laserdisc is as I am that he doesn’t recognize a film reel.

    • Miserichord
      August 7, 2013, 10:47 am | # | Reply

      Youngster. I was born before Sputnik, operated film projectors in school,
      wrote programs in Fortran on punch cards, had to go through an operator to get long distance, saw Elvis movies as first run, used 8″ flimsies, and remember seeing a 1 Meg HDD that was a stack of 10 platters 18″ in diameter in a Plexiglass stand 5′ tall. Probably cost more than a new luxury car.

      • =Tamar
        August 7, 2013, 1:14 pm | # | Reply

        Ah, youth. I remember when my local exchange brought in dial phones; before that we just told the operator who we wanted to talk to in the village. I briefly owned a dedicated word processor that used 8″ floppies, and they really were floppy.
        But I am surprised that Nick apparently doesn’t know – he is supposed to be a total geek, after all, and old tv shows show movie reels.

      • Robert The Addled
        August 7, 2013, 5:41 pm | # | Reply

        The only cakebox hard drives I ever saw I was destroying (formerly held classified material). That’s the same way I ever saw 8″ (or was it 10″?) floppy disks, and the 3/4 inch videocassettes (about as much bigger than VHS as VHS was bigger than beta percentage wise).

        I DID see a HDD (1 meg) that was the size of a modern multifunction printer though – and the guy who got it at the auction managed to get it running.

        • Altarboy
          August 8, 2013, 2:11 am | # | Reply

          My friend’s dad had several US govt magnetic tape reels in his garage that he couldn’t get rid of. He was signed as last in the chain of custody, without the authorization to destroy, nor did he have anyone to give them back to.
          So he held on to them out of a sense of duty(he was that type of guy, I think he maintained his TS clearance until the day he died).

  10. davidbreslin101
    August 7, 2013, 9:10 am | # | Reply

    I reckon Nick knows full well what a film reel is- he’s just shocked to learn how ridiculously space-intensive it is. “Laserdisc” is the worst insult he can think of for an obsolete data storage format.

    • WJS
      July 9, 2019, 12:33 pm | # | Reply

      I hadn’t thought of that interpretation, I like it.

  11. drbrain
    August 7, 2013, 1:42 pm | # | Reply

    so how old is sweetheart? and does she age in “dog years”?

    • drbrain
      August 7, 2013, 3:42 pm | # | Reply

      and what are those scroll marks on her in panel #1?

      • eddurd
        August 7, 2013, 3:48 pm | # | Reply

        That’s actually Tip’s skirt. Sweetheart’s body is off-panel to the reader’s right.

  12. Anonymous
    August 7, 2013, 4:20 pm | # | Reply

    First Unity goes around from Tip’s right side to his left side for no apparent reason, then she goes back to his right side for no apparent reason and Nick goes around Sweetheart for no apparent reason… or there could be passing-in-front-of-and-then-turning-around, but that would be even stranger… *wonders about their motivations*

    (Maybe, after going around to Tip’s left side, Unity went back to his right side because Nick was rapidly moving to take that position?)

    • =Tamar
      August 7, 2013, 9:48 pm | # | Reply

      No, it’s simple. Tip moves forward to take the reel from Nick. Then Unity moves forward and into position at Tip’s left. Then we have a closeup of Tip. Then the camera angle shifts to behind Sweetheart, and Tip and Unity turn around in place to look at Sweetheart when she speaks.

      • Anonymous
        August 8, 2013, 9:15 am | # | Reply

        I see! (In the fourth panel Unity is still to Tip’s right in terms of panel two, but appears to be to the left due to line of sight and turning.) Thank you very much for explaining this!

  13. mickeyf
    August 7, 2013, 7:50 pm | # | Reply

    It’s becoming evident that the median age of Garrity/Wells fans may be greater than the median age of Garrity/Wells. Do we flatter ourselves that a certain rich accumulation of culture is required to truely appreciate their awesome work?

    In other news, I’m looking at a notebook stting on my desk, given to me be some offspring or another. On the cover is some old fart who could be me. The caption says :

    “When I was your age I had to walk twelve miles to get stoned and have sex.”

    Some things never change.

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