Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2015-03-02
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2015-03-02

by shaenon on March 2, 2015 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Mixed-Up Files
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Discussion (33) ¬

  1. Alphaghoul
    March 2, 2015, 12:12 am | # | Reply

    Hey wait a minute, goldbug’s in cahoots with anasigma! Maybe it’s really mr. Green pretending to be a secretive freedom fighter to manipulate people to his own agenda!

    • TPman
      March 2, 2015, 1:17 am | # | Reply

      Nah, my guess is that Goldbug just wants the drone’s cover to stay intact.

      • quin
        March 2, 2015, 9:25 am | # | Reply

        To be fair the last thing they need is a skilled precision @$&*! swear master to let a few %#&* swears louse thus turning the entire place mad instead of a select few people… or make even crazier mad scientists. I mean regular mad is “Take over the world!” and super mad is “Blow it all up to kingdom come!” as one super mad scientist nearly succeeded in leveling a large portion of the world before he settled back down to normal mad science.

  2. pdp15
    March 2, 2015, 12:21 am | # | Reply

    Plugh!

    • Urlance Woolsbane
      April 23, 2016, 2:45 pm | # | Reply

      “A hollow voice says ‘Fool!'”

  3. howiecat
    March 2, 2015, 12:31 am | # | Reply

    Is it likely that Goldbug is a grue?

  4. Frank
    March 2, 2015, 1:17 am | # | Reply

    ok nick, how are you getting out of here?

    • DarkStarling
      March 2, 2015, 2:34 pm | # | Reply

      I’m really hoping he learns how to hack himself out of neccessity.

  5. Frank
    March 2, 2015, 1:34 am | # | Reply

    Also, called it!

    • Ogden Wernstrom
      March 2, 2015, 3:29 pm | # | Reply

      It’s an homage to Dave Sim! Nobody else draws like that.

      • Shaenon
        March 2, 2015, 6:15 pm | # | Reply

        It’s a reverse John Byrne.

  6. Jay
    March 2, 2015, 1:43 am | # | Reply

    Hm. Is Nick’s swearfilter off in here, or has it just not learned Yiddish yet?

    • BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
      March 2, 2015, 2:36 am | # | Reply

      It’s off. That was mentioned last strip.

    • The Wealthy Aardvark
      March 2, 2015, 3:35 am | # | Reply

      Trying to swear in other languages is probably a habit by now.

    • muckenhoupt
      March 2, 2015, 8:29 am | # | Reply

      Both, actually.

  7. BrokenEye, the True False Prophet
    March 2, 2015, 2:40 am | # | Reply

    Wonder what all this looks like from Sweetheart’s perspective

    • Shadowmehr
      March 2, 2015, 7:17 pm | # | Reply

      I think this is only going to take a couple of seconds realtime for this to resolve. Sweetheart is going to see a long pause, and use it to come up with better counterarguments.

      When Nick is allowed back into the non-virtual world, she’ll either be starting them, or finishing up. Either way, it’ll be amusing to see/read.

  8. Robert Nowall
    March 2, 2015, 6:05 am | # | Reply

    In edduard’s absence…from “Swinging on a Star,” Bing Crosby’s version.

    Would you like to stay in the dark?
    Or take a moonlight walk in the park?
    You could let the dog have her lark,
    Or you could be eaten by a grue.

    A grue is a monster thing that dwells in the dark;
    Attacks just anything that barks.
    It could be invisible, it could be gray.
    He can’t be sighted in the light of day.
    And by the way, if you don’t want to say “adieu,”
    You will get eaten by a grue.

    (And I swear I never heard of a “grue” and had to look it up for details.)

  9. MisterTeatime
    March 2, 2015, 6:47 am | # | Reply

    o_o
    I thought Goldbug was a good guy. Abrasive, but good. Like Nick.
    This is over a line. (Hell, leaving the capability for this inside Nick’s systems is over a line.)
    Shaenon, Jeff: I feel personally betrayed. Excellent work.

    • daibhidc
      March 2, 2015, 8:04 am | # | Reply

      Wasn’t Goldbug running the drone back in Railway Children? I think that was a bit of a knock to his/her good guy status.

      • BMunro
        March 2, 2015, 6:46 pm | # | Reply

        Well, the person running the drone _claimed_ to be. We can’t be sure that wasn’t disinformation.

  10. Aspasia
    March 2, 2015, 8:15 am | # | Reply

    Ok, a theory popped into my mind when Goldbug said let the dog handle this: could Goldbug in fact be Gavotte? Its known that Gavotte is manipulative and secretive, and Goldbug was responsible for getting Skin Horse involved with Nick in the first place, which just happened to gain them some expensive military hardware. And my first interpretation of today’s comic seems to be more about trusting Sweetheart to do her mission. Trusting teammates is a lesson Nick definitely has not learned. And on top of that Gavotte is indeed a gold (ok, technically yellow… and black) bug hive. However in arguments against, that might be a little too “on the nose”.

    • D. Walker
      March 2, 2015, 10:16 am | # | Reply

      Allow me to propose an alternate theory – Goldbug is actually Nick.

      More specifically, Goldbug is a different part of Nick’s psyche, a symptom of some form of dissociative identity disorder – most likely induced by trauma resultant from the brain surgery that made him into a cyborg to begin with. Nick is the “host” personality, which is why he has no memory of who and what Goldbug is, while Goldbug is an “alternate” personality that has access to his memories as well as their own.

      A big part of my reasoning is that (unless I missed something), Goldbug has only ever “appeared” and communicated with Nick inside his own mind. No one else has had any form of interaction with Goldbug whatsoever – suggesting Goldbug only exists in Nick’s head.

      Goldbug isn’t an outside force. Goldbug is Nick’s inner self trying to save him from his own mental blocks.

      • Rex Vivat
        March 2, 2015, 12:19 pm | # | Reply

        Back in the I Can Fly arc, General Sal said she called Skin Horse following advice from “Codename Goldbug” from A-Sig.

        • DarkStarling
          March 2, 2015, 2:37 pm | # | Reply

          I though that was just Goldbug hacking ASig to get the parties involved to follow directions, while leaving a calling card for those in the know.

          • Rex Vivat
            March 2, 2015, 3:14 pm | #

            Sure, but remember that later on Violet’s pilot boasts about being the one who “removed [Nick’s] spectacles”, which gives us a new link to A-Sig.
            In any case, that was for D. Walker, who didn’t remember that Nick wasn’t the only one to ever communicate with Goldbug.

    • Rex Vivat
      March 2, 2015, 12:11 pm | # | Reply

      Allow me to present a counterpoint to both of your theories: http://skin-horse.com/comic/treasonable-offense/

      • DarkStarling
        March 2, 2015, 2:37 pm | # | Reply

        Yeah, I’m pretty sure Goldbug is the proverbial Pavanne. Now we just need to get Mustachio’s take, since he seemed to know more.

    • Robert Nowall
      March 2, 2015, 4:54 pm | # | Reply

      Take it as simple as it can be. Goldbug, whoever (or whatever) he (she or it) is, does not want Nick jacking into the drone, but does wants Sweetheart to carry on instead. To that end, he’s willing to keep Nick stuck inside his brain-tank.

      What does it mean? Does it matter that Sweetheart-in-drone is inside the Institute?

  11. Rob Furr
    March 2, 2015, 12:22 pm | # | Reply

    The way this communication went reminds me a bit of a certain acronym-generating AI from St. Charlie.

    • Rex Vivat
      March 2, 2015, 12:37 pm | # | Reply

      Both of them communicate by writing in all caps in a blocky looking font, but that’s where the similarities end. GODOT is long winded, has perfect orthography, and doesn’t use punctuation (except for apostrophes and ampersands). Take a look at Saturday’s strip. That’s not something GODOT would write.

      • This Guy I Know
        March 3, 2015, 2:35 pm | # | Reply

        GODOT didn’t seem all that long-winded to me. In fact, Saturday’s strip was when I first saw the similarity between the two. It was remarkably reminiscent of many of GODOT’s interactions with the Skin Horse team. Not saying they’re one and the same, but I definitely see similarities.

  12. Knuckles
    January 27, 2022, 1:55 pm | # | Reply

    Getting all our fun video game references out here I see.

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