Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2022-03-07
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2022-03-07

by shaenon on March 7, 2022 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon
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Discussion (43) ¬

  1. ngmatt
    March 7, 2022, 12:05 am | # | Reply

    I knew it, lovetron is responsible for her strange and unfunky behavior, they must not have taken her rejection well.

    • Towering Barbarian
      March 7, 2022, 12:13 am | # | Reply

      Another hint that they are pretty much a sucker trap. My memory of Baum’s books is fuzzy enough that I can’t think of what the Oz equivalent would be. @_@

      • Ahno Neemus
        March 7, 2022, 7:34 am | # | Reply

        The closest thing I can think of is Roquat’s Deal in Ozma of Oz. That’s a pretty sketchy connection tho.

        • woozy
          March 7, 2022, 2:29 pm | # | Reply

          I was going to mention that.

          But I wasn’t entirely sure though what exactly what was meant by “Another hint that they are pretty much a sucker trap”

          (The Nome Kings deal was a classic Sucker’s Bet– it always bothered me that in the end the claimed he was dishonest and unfair when he played exactly be the rules *as he set them up* [he was actually more than fair– he never said the later guessers would get more guesses to account for the new prisoners– but he allowed that] and they were the stupid ones for agreeing to play by his rules in the first place [I mean, how incompetent in math do you need to be to think having eleven guesses out of unknown number of {but implied at least a room full} options are *good* odds] … and then they cheated when they discovered it was hard).

          • Towering Barbarian
            March 7, 2022, 5:51 pm | #

            “Sucker bait” is American slang for something attractive on the surface that turns out to be the lure of a scam. It’s called sucker bait because usually people who aren’t being gullible can spot that the bait in question is too good to be true. (Con Artists referred to their victims as suckers).

            In this case, the non-Oz example that was popping into my mind was Damon Knight’s To Serve Man. The offer that the humans were getting was definitely sucker bait. 🙂

  2. awgiedawgie
    March 7, 2022, 12:05 am | # | Reply

    Poor Tip… he’s suddenly more disillusioned than ever.

    • Towering Barbarian
      March 7, 2022, 12:10 am | # | Reply

      Can’t really blame him. This was definitely a pretty fast knuckler pitch to come his way just as he thought it was safe to relax.

    • Candace
      March 7, 2022, 1:41 am | # | Reply

      I wonder if Tip is about to snap. That could prove to be…unfortunate.

      • Duane B.
        March 7, 2022, 10:27 am | # | Reply

        Oh No…not the puppets

        Shudder

        • Moe Lane
          March 7, 2022, 5:00 pm | # | Reply

          We’ve never seen Tip unleash the full power of his mojo.

  3. Towering Barbarian
    March 7, 2022, 12:07 am | # | Reply

    No Twirling Transformation Scene? What sort of extraterrestrial princess feels to have a Twirling Transformation Scene that puts her into a sailor fuku? 🙂

    • Towering Barbarian
      March 7, 2022, 2:27 am | # | Reply

      “feels to have” should be “fails to have”. *^_^*

    • Shadowmehr
      March 7, 2022, 1:19 pm | # | Reply

      Obviously a funky extraterrestrial princess. She’ll change into some jive threads inside.

  4. Urlance Woolsbane
    March 7, 2022, 12:49 am | # | Reply

    Hmmmm
    So what was going on with mirror universe Berenice? Her sanity wasn’t impaired, nor would I describe a biomass-ravaged world as “Funky”

    • Adept+Arcanist
      March 7, 2022, 2:28 pm | # | Reply

      I think she’s probably proof that we’re getting hustled here. Tigerlily’s a mad genius, and the lost princess shtick is a cover for brainwashing her to come along, I think.

      • Owls
        March 7, 2022, 7:02 pm | # | Reply

        “Let me tell you a secret. You think I’m crazy because I don’t know I’m not an Egyptian princess reincarnated on Planet Lovetron. But I do know. I’m crazy because I don’t CARE.”

        • Urlance Woolsbane
          March 7, 2022, 11:05 pm | # | Reply

          Ooooo
          Good memory

  5. Robert Nowall
    March 7, 2022, 4:12 am | # | Reply

    Then she’s *not* a human being.

    • 5-tons-of-flax
      March 7, 2022, 8:00 am | # | Reply

      We love our Queeeen (er, Princess), and Lovetron’s dreamin’!

    • Bruce A Munro
      March 7, 2022, 2:19 pm | # | Reply

      I _am_ somewhat puzzled how Lovetron can have any non-bee nobility.

  6. Owlmirror
    March 7, 2022, 4:43 am | # | Reply

    (Since there are two characters with the name “Tip”, I will disambiguate: Tip!Oz is not Tip!SH)

    It kinda seemed like Tip!SH might follow Tip!Oz’s story arc, but it looks like Tigerlily might be the actual Tip!Oz’s analog, in the way that Tip!Oz transforms at the end of the book he appears in. Tip!SH has no secret alternate, so far as we know. Tip!Oz was an actual lost princess of Oz, transformed by magic — and once transformed back into a girl, while Ozma said “I’m just the same Tip”, it quickly became clear that Ozma had a very different personality, as distinct from Tip!Oz as Berenice is from Tigerlily.

    And while it isn’t exactly the same thing as a gender change, I have a sneaking suspicion that Princess Berenice is, or will be, the Man.

    • Owlmirror
      March 7, 2022, 4:47 am | # | Reply

      I also wondered if Tigerlily was following General Jinjur’s arc. While Jinjur did lead a successful Army of Revolt, Jinjur is ultimately captured and her government is dissolved, and Ozma is crowned. We later see that Jinjur simply gave up on her ambitions and retired to quietly garden.

      But while there are some hints of Jinjur in Tigerlily, I don’t think the parallel holds.

      • Bernerlb
        March 7, 2022, 4:54 pm | # | Reply

        She did keep her hobby of keeping men in line…

    • David B Huber
      March 7, 2022, 6:59 am | # | Reply

      Ooh, good thinking Owlmirror! That makes a lot of sense.

    • Rob Nobody
      March 7, 2022, 4:05 pm | # | Reply

      “Tip!SH has no secret alternate, so far as we know.”

      Oh, I believe Tip!SH must be Dorothy, despite the name. A “normal” person who is thrust into a strange new world of talking animals, patchwork creatures, and metal men… and it turns out they actually fit in much there than in the “real” world.

      • Rob Nobody
        March 7, 2022, 4:10 pm | # | Reply

        Oh, and of course… Ira gave Tip a balloon.

        http://skin-horse.com/comic/2018-08-12/

    • Picturebook
      March 7, 2022, 5:50 pm | # | Reply

      This is my fear, too–in a very real way, her battle against The Man was a battle against herself.

  7. Moe Lane
    March 7, 2022, 7:44 am | # | Reply

    I don’t trust this Mothership stuff in the slightest.

    • awgiedawgie
      March 7, 2022, 8:21 am | # | Reply

      Probably wise. They are attempting to “rescue” all the NHSes without even bothering to ask them if they want to be rescued. And yet no one besides Gavotte seems to be questioning it.

      • Robert Nowall
        March 7, 2022, 9:07 am | # | Reply

        Well, so far it’s just Tony and Merc and Princess Berenice that seemed to want to go. I’m not sure about questioning it, but some of the others said they don’t wanna.

  8. Leslie'seenit
    March 7, 2022, 9:04 am | # | Reply

    Well, isn’t it obvious? Our Tigress-lilly got sufficient PRE-NUP(yup, I said it) and ‘ain’t playin’ anymore. She’s got every THING she ever wanted or tried to make….all she has to do is OBEY.
    And by the way, Tip, who I love and respect, looks as ratty as the few ‘dressers’ I’ve known. Doesn’t make HIM look good, but maybe he needs this. Why didn’t HE suspect she’d be ‘iffy’?

  9. Robert Nowall
    March 7, 2022, 12:13 pm | # | Reply

    You told your plans to me,
    And now you’ve changed your mind.
    You used to speak in jive.
    And now you’re so refined.
    You know, the gang could tell.
    I thought I knew you well,
    But I don’t know you.

    No, I don’t know this girl
    Who helped us end the fight.
    And now you’ve straightened up,
    And said my first name right.
    It seems you’re moving on,
    The fox I knew is gone,
    And I don’t know you.

    I mean, I knew the art of making love,
    Thirty-five in, oh, fifteen years.
    I made it, too, I took a chance on you.
    A chance that you might calm my fears.

    You told your plans to me,
    And now you’ve changed your mind.
    Taking the Mothership,
    And leaving me behind.
    I’ll never understand.
    You’ve made a change of plan.
    No, I don’t know you.

    —from “You Don’t Know Me,” written by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold, sung by, well, lotsa people including Eddy Arnold, but probably most people know the version by Ray Charles.

    • Forrest M Davis
      March 8, 2022, 3:06 pm | # | Reply

      Yep, once I got far enough into the verse for the rhythm to sink in it immediately switched into Ray’s voice in my head.

  10. Dewy
    March 7, 2022, 1:18 pm | # | Reply

    You can’t subsume a personality as big, brass and bodacious as Tigerlilly Jones for long. I think she’s still there but playing the part. Free space ship and planet if she plays it right.

    • Frank Hightowerk
      March 7, 2022, 2:31 pm | # | Reply

      I like how you used brass there

  11. outworldcats
    March 7, 2022, 1:41 pm | # | Reply

    What in Ningauble’s Nine Hells is Tip Wearing!

    • Robert Nowall
      March 7, 2022, 1:50 pm | # | Reply

      Ach du leiber!

    • Candace
      March 8, 2022, 1:32 am | # | Reply

      Indeed. Tip emerged from the flying saucer wearing that abomination, so that could point to something being wrong here.

  12. Frank Hightowerk
    March 7, 2022, 2:33 pm | # | Reply

    aw well, there’s goes the money I had on on “she was actually sane all along”

  13. Robert Nowall
    March 7, 2022, 5:46 pm | # | Reply

    The lost Princess of Lovetron arrives. She’s given up talking in jive. Earth depleted her sanity and caused all her vanity. And, see? Her afro’s a beehive.

  14. Minivet
    March 12, 2022, 12:10 pm | # | Reply

    Are they actually the Unfunky UFO?! They took her funk and made it theirs!

  15. Owlmirror
    April 20, 2022, 12:01 am | # | Reply

    I was looking at this strip:
    https://skin-horse.com/comic/have-to-be/

    And I noticed some interesting contrasts and. Tigerlily specifically rejects ruling a square world. Could Lovetron be considered square? In the previous strip to the one linked, Tigerlily expresses suspicion of Pavane: “keep your ear open for the twist.”, “I think she doles out the sweet truth and not the stinging truth.”

    There’s also the framing of her face in the last panel here, and in the 3rd panel in the linked strip: Here, her face is bisected down the middle by the frame of the comic; there, her face is half blocked in the middle by the server. Here, it is the right side of her face that’s visible; there, it is the left half of her face. And finally, of course, Princess Berenice has ditched the eye protection.

    So, besides mind control, a couple of whack notions about Princess Berenice:

    1) Princess Berenice is a clone. Tigerlily, at the peak of her power, turned a vending machine into a clone-o-mat. She could have reused the one she made, or just turned something random into another one. She didn’t use it to create a perfect copy of herself, though — she specifically created a square clone. All of the sweet, and none of the sting.

    “Lovetron sounds pretty square to me. Go forth, my square sistah, and rule it squarely!”

    2) Princess Berenice is from the Mirror Universe, or some other alternate where Berenice Jones never went Mad, and things are pretty dire. Tigerlily may not understand worldgate tech, but she can nevertheless build it.

    “So, square sistah, you want to get on a flying saucer and go to a world of peace and love where you rule benevolently?” “Compared to my current situation? Hell yes!”

  16. Owlmirror
    April 20, 2022, 12:18 am | # | Reply

    Oh, and another whack notion: Assuming something in the above is true, and a Tigerlily Jones who is not Princess Berenice is still running around — maybe that’s who snatched Chris and Marcie. Or rather, Captain Beyond and Mama Foxfire. Tigerlily wants them for funk minions.

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