Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2022-04-27
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2022-04-27

by shaenon on April 27, 2022 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Phantomwise
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Discussion (57) ¬

  1. Moe Lane
    April 27, 2022, 12:04 am | # | Reply

    …Annnnnd where are your creators now?

    • Proxiehunter
      April 27, 2022, 12:22 am | # | Reply

      They made the mistake of saying “I am your creator, you must obey me.”

      • Duane B.
        April 27, 2022, 12:55 am | # | Reply

        In the second and fourth panel, it looks like Moustachio and Hitty
        have rallied the troops, and sent them on their missions!

        Zounds…The game is afoot.

        • Robert Nowall
          April 27, 2022, 10:21 am | # | Reply

          Or, in Hitty’s case, atread.

    • Candace
      April 27, 2022, 12:54 am | # | Reply

      The creations won the war. I think we can guess what happened to the creators.

      • BMunro
        April 27, 2022, 4:34 am | # | Reply

        Retired to a nice farm in the country?

      • David B Huber
        April 27, 2022, 7:17 am | # | Reply

        Perhaps they were evicted from Lovetron – and migrated to Earth?

    • 5-tons-of-flax
      April 27, 2022, 8:01 am | # | Reply

      In the words of Ruk,”Yes! That was the equation! Survival countermands programming.”

      • Candace
        April 28, 2022, 12:09 am | # | Reply

        Indeed.

  2. Jerry Aethers
    April 27, 2022, 12:04 am | # | Reply

    I am sure Tiger Lily is a self made, one of a kind, break the mold type person.

    • Candace
      April 27, 2022, 1:32 am | # | Reply

      She was, but is Berenice?

  3. dvandom
    April 27, 2022, 12:08 am | # | Reply

    “On purpose” is probably either “no” or “as much as any mad scientist does anything on purpose.”

  4. David B Huber
    April 27, 2022, 12:16 am | # | Reply

    Please no one point out that buried in the so-called “junk DNA” of humans lies the notice “Property of Andromedan BioMechs Inc.”…

    • Duane B.
      April 27, 2022, 12:44 am | # | Reply

      Mine has the “copyleft statement” open source ..natch

    • Semper Solus
      April 27, 2022, 12:25 pm | # | Reply

      Mine reads, “If you can read this, you may have already WON!”
      And then some boilerplate, and some gibberish that might be a mailing address.
      It is junk DNA, after all.

    • Shadowmehr
      April 27, 2022, 1:01 pm | # | Reply

      Lucky you, mine just has an address and menu from some restaurant in the Horsehead nebula. It really doesn’t sound that appetizing, even if I could get there.

    • Aname
      April 27, 2022, 2:50 pm | # | Reply

      Mine has, “You may already have won 50,000 quatloos”
      Yay, I’m Junk mail

    • awgiedawgie
      April 27, 2022, 9:51 pm | # | Reply

      Mine just has a tag that says “melt down and recycle for next batch”.

    • davidbreslin101
      April 28, 2022, 6:18 am | # | Reply

      Mine contains the schematics for a traditional Chinese sailing ship.

  5. aylatrigger
    April 27, 2022, 12:26 am | # | Reply

    How is it hard to believe someone would want to create “Statuesque, bisexual humanoids who do Afrofuturistic stuff”?
    I think it would take more of a mad brain for the sentient bees. At least they aren’t wasps…

    • D. Walker
      April 27, 2022, 1:17 am | # | Reply

      On a planet without humans, it is hard to believe someone would create what is basically a human. That’s like if on a planet without insects, someone created bees. What would compel someone to pick THAT specific form for an organism?

      • JoB
        April 27, 2022, 2:21 am | # | Reply

        And yet, Pavane is still going with that humanoid shape …

      • BMunro
        April 27, 2022, 4:36 am | # | Reply

        Presumably the creators of both bees and funky geniuses were on the humanoid side.

      • jdreyfuss
        April 27, 2022, 8:25 am | # | Reply

        Upright biped with a large central nervous system, forward binocular vision, and two arms with opposable digits? It’s the simplest workable template for a land-based sapient.

        • D. Walker
          April 27, 2022, 4:07 pm | # | Reply

          …says the upright biped with inherent biases and a fundamental lack of exposure to other possibilities…

          In a universe as vast and varied and complicated as the one we live in, there is no reason to assume the same factors that shaped our evolution would apply on other worlds which may have radically different environmental factors, exhibiting wholly different evolutionary pressures on living organisms.

          Land-based sapients need not have binocular vision if they are not predators and do not fear predation. Likewise, they need not have opposable digits if they instead have suitably specializaed suckers, tentacles, proboscises / “trunks”, pedipalps, chelae / “claws”, etc.

          Also, simplicity of template is not a virtue if environmental factors favor complexity. And even if it were, OUR template is actually NOT the simplest “workable” one – just the one we ended up with because of the specific environmental pressures we faced.

          • davidbreslin101
            April 28, 2022, 6:22 am | #

            I have a suspcion that tool-using intelligent life will be more common on worlds where large land animals have six or more limbs, as it’ll be easier to switch one pair from walking to manipulation. Basically, it’s all centaurs out there.

          • jdreyfuss
            April 28, 2022, 10:10 am | #

            I’ll grant that I am showing a bias toward visual input over other senses, but aside from elephants, who still have forward binocular vision, the most intelligent animals on earth are pretty much all predators. And if you’re spending so much of your resources on your CNS in order to develop sapience, then you only have limited resources for the rest of your body, so having two sets of specialized limbs – one for locomotion and one for fine manipulation – is the most efficient use of those resources, since it allows you to use tools while walking. As far as upright stance, again, it’s a bias toward visual input, but if you are a sight-based hunter, keeping your eyes above your shoulders and having the highest possible vantage point while walking are both evolutionary advantages.

      • Aname
        April 27, 2022, 2:57 pm | # | Reply

        I’m partial to sentient starfish myself. Hivers rule!

    • jdreyfuss
      April 27, 2022, 8:22 am | # | Reply

      The wasps were the ones perpetrating the war on earth. (rimshot)

    • belboz
      April 27, 2022, 1:25 pm | # | Reply

      I don’t think the bees are sentient. Just the *swarms* of bees.

  6. DocFullbladder
    April 27, 2022, 12:52 am | # | Reply

    All bees are wasps. Ants, too. They’re a very successful evolutionary lineage. If you wanted durable infiltrators that can easily survive almost anywhere, something wasp-based might be just what the (mad) doctor ordered.

    • Candace
      April 28, 2022, 12:14 am | # | Reply

      Cockroaches are also very successful and hard to kill.

    • Ken
      April 28, 2022, 12:31 am | # | Reply

      Or maybe ants and wasps are mutant Lovetronian bees that the protector bees failed to kill off. What protector bees, you ask? There aren’t any because tree-of-life doesn’t flower here.

      (I hope I paked enough in here to ring a world-sized bell for you.)

    • davidbreslin101
      April 28, 2022, 6:27 am | # | Reply

      The hymenoptera are a fascinating bunch! Several different lineages have become social insects independantly of each other, thanks to a genetic quirk that makes sisters more similar to each other than mother and daughter are.

    • awgiedawgie
      April 28, 2022, 7:35 am | # | Reply

      Bees, wasps, and ants are all closely related, but they’re not all wasps. They’re three separate families of the order Hymenoptera. Yellowjackets are not bees, but are actually in the wasp family, along with hornets.

  7. Trivena
    April 27, 2022, 2:48 am | # | Reply

    So if Lovetronians are created species who won their war, who created them, and what happened to the losing side? Is Lovetron their original home?

  8. Robert Nowall
    April 27, 2022, 2:57 am | # | Reply

    Well, then, who created the creators?

    • David B Huber
      April 27, 2022, 4:16 am | # | Reply

      Turtles, obviously. All the way down. 😉

    • D. Walker
      April 27, 2022, 4:08 pm | # | Reply

      I’d try asking the Watchers for you, but I wasn’t watching to see where they went…

      • Duane B.
        April 27, 2022, 9:05 pm | # | Reply

        They come and go at will, they are wizards you know.

        No wait…that’s Gandolf.

  9. Towering Barbarian
    April 27, 2022, 4:28 am | # | Reply

    Am I evil if I point out that, Anasigma aside, the Earth humans weren’t doing anything particularly bad to the creations toward the end? That the only thing the humans were doing was merely ignoring the creations in favor of living out their own human lives? Pretty lame to try to build a tale of oppression out of “They aren’t paying attention to us!”. 😛

    • BMunro
      April 27, 2022, 4:46 am | # | Reply

      Well, with the Old War, this is the second time (some) humans have tried to exterminate the Constructs. The Constructs may have a bit more trouble distinguishing “general human population” and “human secret government” than you do. It’s not like the general population have done anything to stop the killing (sure, imposed reality blindness, but if the general population is incapable of restraining murderous minorities, what good does their lack of active malevolence do?)

      • Moe Lane
        April 27, 2022, 7:46 am | # | Reply

        I think that part of the problem was that the imposition of reality blindness made it impossible for the general human population to think Anasigma was committing *murder*. To give just one example: HT went to bed a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and woke up HOLY SMOKES IT’S A TIGER. Society gets very upset when the latter is allowed to wander through the halls. Note that A-Sig got more creatively sneaky when it came to going after the nonhumans who could pass…

    • jdreyfuss
      April 27, 2022, 8:29 am | # | Reply

      The power of propaganda cuts both ways. Anasigma didn’t just work at convincing humans that NHSes were either nonexistent or an existential threat, but also at convincing the NHSes that their only opportunity to survive was exile.

  10. Robert Nowall
    April 27, 2022, 10:19 am | # | Reply

    “Stop worrying about Earth!” says the bees. “You’re better than that, if you please. Two species from Lovetron beat creators thereof on and won their war—it’s the bee’s knees!”

    • Lady E
      April 27, 2022, 12:23 pm | # | Reply

      Bees Knees is a drink made with lemon juice, gin, and honey syrup. I can recommend it.

      • Nomi
        April 27, 2022, 4:13 pm | # | Reply

        Sounds like what my mother gave me for a sore throat when I was little, except with whiskey instead of gin. (I’m over 60, don’t call CPS)

        • Robert Nowall
          April 27, 2022, 8:24 pm | # | Reply

          Sometimes I don’t know whether you’ve heard the expression “the bee’s knees” or if you’r just a-funnin’ me.

  11. Felgraf
    April 27, 2022, 12:20 pm | # | Reply

    Wait hang on.

    .. didn’t gavotte claim that they hadn’t seen sapiences making new sapient species like this before? When explaining pavanes origin to Sweetheart?

    • Robert Nowall
      April 27, 2022, 2:41 pm | # | Reply

      It doesn’t actually say…but it does seem odd that they would be fascinated by an intelligent species creating intelligent species if they themselves were a created intelligent species. (Lot of “intelligent species,” right?)

      • Bernerlb
        April 27, 2022, 2:58 pm | # | Reply

        But, why not, “We can do it better, faster, stronger…”?

      • Robert Nowall
        April 27, 2022, 4:02 pm | # | Reply

        Also…if Tigerlily Jones is part of a created intelligent species, then she, with her robots, was, in turn, creating an intelligent species.

      • Ken
        April 28, 2022, 1:01 am | # | Reply

        Maybe they were too young to remember their own creation. Do you remember being a caveman?

        If, like in those insurance commercials, you are a caveman, I apologize.

  12. Carl Fishman
    April 27, 2022, 5:44 pm | # | Reply

    “We won our war.” So, their creators were CORRECT in fearing their potential.

    • awgiedawgie
      April 27, 2022, 9:56 pm | # | Reply

      Especially if at least some of the creators here on Earth had originally been exiled from Lovetron. They’d already been through it once.

      • BMunro
        April 27, 2022, 10:07 pm | # | Reply

        Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Mad Scientists are from Lovetron?

        • awgiedawgie
          April 27, 2022, 11:32 pm | # | Reply

          It could explain a lot (of course, it would probably raise as many questions as it answers).

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