Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2021-08-12
‹‹ First ‹ Prev Buy! Comments(32) Next › Last ››

2021-08-12

by Jeffrey C. Wells on August 12, 2021 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Space-Bat-Angel-Dragon
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Discussion (32) ¬

  1. Candace
    August 12, 2021, 12:07 am | # | Reply

    I have to say I’m with Mr. Green on the Swedish Fish Oreos. Yuck!

    • jdreyfuss
      August 13, 2021, 10:38 am | # | Reply

      I mean, I love Oreos and I love Swedish Fish, but not together.

  2. Alphaghoul
    August 12, 2021, 12:18 am | # | Reply

    In response to awgiedawgie isn’t mad and crazy the same thing?

    • awgiedawgie
      August 12, 2021, 7:05 am | # | Reply

      Yes, mad and crazy are (pretty much) the same thing, but mad and Mad aren’t the same thing. Someone can be crazy without ever being Mad. Being crazy simply means being out of touch with reality.

      Being Mad allows one the unnatural ability to bend (or even just break) the laws of science to suit their whim. Everyone knows it’s impossible to create a cloning machine from a Coke machine, or to build a teleporter out of coat hangers, or to jam a USB cable up your nose to connect your brain to a computer. But that doesn’t stop Mads from doing it.

      • David B Huber
        August 12, 2021, 7:29 am | # | Reply

        Science is supposed to serve as a framework for investigating nature and at it’s core, the “scientific method” remains a valuable tool. But the Mad are gifted with a deeper insight, a level of intuition, allowing them to dispense with the training wheels so useful to lesser mortals.

        Of course this often comes with blinders outside their area of interest.

        I don’t view the Mad as breaking the laws of physics so much as embracing Clarke’s Law.

        • fire
          August 12, 2021, 3:01 pm | # | Reply

          Well the issue is that replicating the Mads’ work is often difficult or impossible. It’s not that they make leaps that sane minds wouldn’t, it’s that they make leaps that cannot be made at all.

          • Owls
            August 12, 2021, 7:31 pm | #

            I think a question of impossibility (ignoring the running gag for a moment) is… a bit wibbly wobbly.

            We’ve seen with Dr Lee that it’s *possible* to reverse engineer Mad Science. It’s entirely possible that you don’t *need* to be Mad to do what they do, you just need to be very, very, VERY smart. It may just be that being Mad is the easiest way to be that smart (or possibly a side effect of being that smart).

        • LuckyCheshire
          August 12, 2021, 10:36 pm | # | Reply

          I don’t view the Mads as having blinders on other fields exactly, I see it more as a strangely general form of hyperfocus. Basically each Mad will be extremely brilliant in whatever topic they’re drawn to (and to some extent adjacent disciplines) but will always choose to adress any given problem with that field, no matter how unsuited.
          That said, I wonder if certain disciplines are intrensically better than others? Are bicycles more powerful than gerbils? Can either of them top good ol’ giant robots? Or is everything dependent on the power level of the individual Mad themselves…
          My new theory: Each Mad’s chosen discipline is inversely specific to their power level. For example, Helen Narbon’s “center” seems to be gerbils- however, she’s powerful enough that she weilds a wide variety of genetic and biological science, as well as dabbling in some more tangential areas like psychology and revivication and so on. A similar effect can be seen with Tigerlilly. On the opposite end of the spectrum however, we have… bicycles. Just bicycles, nothing else really.

      • mickeyjf
        August 12, 2021, 10:07 am | # | Reply

        “Everyone knows it’s impossible” ??? Bah! That what the fools at the institute said!

  3. harryvoyager
    August 12, 2021, 12:23 am | # | Reply

    I hate to say it, I’m actually curious what those would be like. Once. Probably not twice…

    • Smurfton
      August 12, 2021, 12:45 am | # | Reply

      You’re five years too late, I’m afraid.
      https://www.delish.com/food-news/a48621/swedish-fish-oreos/

      • harryvoyager
        August 12, 2021, 1:33 am | # | Reply

        Curiosity never dies. It just gets… odd…

    • s854
      August 12, 2021, 7:51 am | # | Reply

      I had no idea there was a product called “Swedish Fish” before reading this strip. I’m not especially curious about finding out how either thing tastes.

      • John Campbell
        August 12, 2021, 2:57 pm | # | Reply

        They’re basically Gummi Bears, except piscine. They taste like red.

        I am baffled by the idea of combining them with Oreos, though from the link above it seems that the actual thing is less wtf than the picture I had in my head.

    • emusam
      August 12, 2021, 8:52 am | # | Reply

      Lingonberry-flavored, apparently.

  4. BMunro
    August 12, 2021, 12:44 am | # | Reply

    A whole trainload of now uncontrolled mad science creations, many of the sentient, not to mention zombies? I’d consider that a bigger job than just “cleanup”, but we shall see.

    • Trivena
      August 12, 2021, 5:24 am | # | Reply

      Job for McGuire, maybe?

  5. WuseMajor
    August 12, 2021, 12:54 am | # | Reply

    Personally, I’d be leaving the train ASAP, largely because he’s very correct. The people of St. Charlie are their own worst enemies in many cases.

    Given how mad science works, I’d expect at least one of them to have built a doomsday weapon or three that turns the entire world into marzipan or something, or at least the entire train. Or that some of the systems that the train relies on to function are so complex that only a mad genius can keep them from going critical at a moment’s notice. And, given that even normal people can’t necessarily resist pressing random buttons (and reality blind people might think it’s an espresso machine), I’d really be running right now.

    • awgiedawgie
      August 12, 2021, 7:07 am | # | Reply

      Quite.

    • Shadowmehr
      August 12, 2021, 1:15 pm | # | Reply

      You are very correct, but this raises the question on how to get off a train moving at high speed through unknown tunnels and possibly alternate dimensions?

      Also, a train made of marzipan? Yum!

  6. Robert Nowall
    August 12, 2021, 2:40 am | # | Reply

    There must be some stumbling around among the other inhabitants. Didn’t St. Charlie have a large undead contingent?

    • Discar
      August 12, 2021, 9:02 am | # | Reply

      St. Charlie decided they were icky after they went a-shambling, and they’re probably already all gone by now.

      • Robert Nowall
        August 12, 2021, 12:33 pm | # | Reply

        So the next stop for Anasigma and / or the Institute: Colma?

  7. Tom C
    August 12, 2021, 8:17 am | # | Reply

    Sooo… What happens when (not “if”) someone goes so very sane that they come out the other side? This is St. Charlie, after all.

    • Pcj70
      August 13, 2021, 12:27 am | # | Reply

      You probably get Mr. Green

  8. Robert Nowall
    August 12, 2021, 12:38 pm | # | Reply

    So Ira will hang out right here, while St. Charlie is filled up with fear. The reality-blind geniuses awaiting some clean-up-ness, with Swedish-fish Oreos dear.

  9. Pygar
    August 12, 2021, 4:34 pm | # | Reply

    Confession: When reading Shaenon’s stuff, I frequently “hear” Gene Wilder singing “Stir Crazy”!

  10. David B Huber
    August 12, 2021, 9:15 pm | # | Reply

    That must be Alpha Bravo. He’s got the lackey role down pat!

    • Robert Nowall
      August 12, 2021, 9:41 pm | # | Reply

      That’s Echo Bravo.

      • David B Huber
        August 12, 2021, 10:37 pm | # | Reply

        Thanks, Robert. My gaff! 😉

        • David B Huber
          August 12, 2021, 10:40 pm | # | Reply

          I meant gaffe!

  11. p5sr8r
    August 16, 2021, 12:07 pm | # | Reply

    Oh, I remember those. They were pretty good, but they tasted about like you’d expect. Flavor chemists have gotten pretty good; I had some cheeseburger or taco potato chips a while ago, (I can’t remember which, maybe both) and you could taste the lettuce.

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