I was about to say I thought it was a buck’s fizz, then I looked it up and they’re basically the same thing, except the buck’s fizz has more champagne.
And now I’ve got “Making Your Mind Up” stuck in my head.
You gotta scary dream,
All the non-humans have found,
But Nick hasn’t noticed while he and Dr Lee,
Play around.
The time is right to give them a fright,
By messing their minds up.
All of their creators
Say they’ll come and find.
It’s an unsettling vision,
Somehow pushed into their mind.
Remy’s doing voodoo tests,
To see if he can find out more,
But it’s still not clear exactly what it is he’s,
Looking for.
We still don’t know who’s behind the show,
And messing their minds up.
As has been mentioned a few times now, she may have indeed been having dreams about the Captain, but since she remembers even the bad things he did to her fondly, she wouldn’t think of them as nightmares.
Many people don’t remember their dreams unless they’re particularly traumatic, so Sweetheart could have had the dreams already, and simply not remembered them when she woke up.
Sweetheart has already had a nightmare about Captain Bram coming for her . . . with a rolled-up newspaper and a “Bad dog!” scold.
I suspect that if she had something like that again, she would wake up in existential terror.
I note that Sweetdaddy Jupiter also had the “nightmare” (when do spring-powered robot spiders sleep? How do they even dream?), even though his relationship with Tigerlily Jones has been only positive.
“when do spring-powered robot spiders sleep? How do they even dream?”
Only Tigerlily knows, and even if she were willing to tell only another spring-oriented Mad would be able to make sense of it.
The fact that zombies and cyborgs and wind-up robots are all getting the dreams does seem to argue for a supernatural force: it’s hard to see even Mad science being able to affect so varied a set of targets without regular humans picking up something too.
What if the thing that makes Sweetheart and Nick different is that they believe they fulfilled their creators’ goals? Babe invaded the USA. Nick became gun using plane. Unity ran away from home though. Pretty sure every other NHS we’ve seen knows that they have ‘disappointed’ their creators. “Find me the most vulnerable.”
Possibly the dreams are a way for A-Sig to assess which is the most vulnerable, by gauging everyone’s reactions to them? Or by gauging everyone’s reactions to the fact that everyone else is having the dreams?
Anyway, I’d be inclined to put Nick pretty high on the “most vulnerable” list because of his attachment to Ginny. If Mr. Green wants to get to him, he just has to go after her–although clearly he already knows this.
Okay! That explains Unity’s hands changing colors between the strip of her waking up and the strip of her storming Nick and Dr. Lee’s bedroom. They’re back to base waking colors now in the diner, so that strip was us watching Nick’s dream. Presumably, Unity stormed in with her ‘waking’ colored arms, Nick chased her out, then relived the recent events once he managed to fall asleep again, only with the altered colors that appeared in the strip and with off-panel added dialog from Dr. Lee snuck in at the end that he understandably didn’t see as being suspicious.
He identifies as a helicopter. I’d say he would classify himself as nonhuman. He’d probably use other words, like “posthuman” or “way cooler than human”, but the general idea still stands.
And if he doesn’t see himself as human anymore, i am inclined to follow.
He identifies as a helicopter with a human brain for a CPU, rather than as a human with an elaborate prosthesis. He is indeed an NHS or else he wouldn’t have been eligible for Skin Horse’s protection.
Skin Horse was legally allowed to help him, so legally he is not human. He doesn’t identify as human, or didn’t, or perhaps only identifies partly as human, that seems like it may be in flux recently but who knows. Also the question of whether a cyborg is human is an open one. He is a brain in a jar, even if the jar is a helicopter, the internet, and a cloned human body.
Given that U.N.I.T.Y. fought through a horde to get to the table, the staff might be meekly hiding when not needed and waiting for authorities to arrive.
I wonder if they still have government-issued credit cards. Those can take forever to ‘cancel.’ (And no time at all to trace, which might be one reason why they haven’t been.)
I was thinking that perhaps the fact that Nick wasn’t really CREATED by Dr. Lee, but was merely modified by her might be significant.
The same seems to be true of Sweetheart and her pack – Captain Bram genetically altered them, but arguably didn’t CREATE them.
Maybe the distinction is that only beings that were created “from nothing” are being affected? Unity didn’t exist until Dr. Lee created a bunch of nanites. Bubbles is the same way, as are the other robots who have been affected.
—
But then there are outliers who seem to break the pattern.
There’s Leo, who is described as a “genetically augmented African lion”, which at first brush sounds like he’s in the same boat of Sweetheart. But then again, Leo was also said to have been “grown in a lab” – which is pretty ambiguous. Could it be that the difference is Leo was grown in a test tube while the Bram dogs were bred?
There’s also Alfie (and presumably the other cobras as well), who seem to break the pattern even more.
They were originally introduced as being “literal cobras”, “not a peaceful, enlightened race of genetically-enhanced cobra-like beings or anything”, and “just cobras”. But then they ended up being able to talk, and also it is revealed they were introduced to combat genetically-enhanced mongoose-like beings.
Their exact origin is unclear though – did they mutate from eating the non-mongooses? (Or from eating the experimental mice that they claimed was their primary food source once there were no longer non-mongooses to eat?) Or were the robots that described them as “just cobras” simply wrong? (They should have been aware that the cobras could talk, to be honest…)
Or maybe my theory just doesn’t hold water. Still unclear.
Pancakes with extra innuendo, please!
So she’s coming…for him. Could be. How did she spell it?
You know, it’s nice seeing the crew just getting breakfast together. Or maybe this counts as brunch? Tip does have a mimosa, it seems.
Breakfast isn’t just for breakfast any more.
I was about to say I thought it was a buck’s fizz, then I looked it up and they’re basically the same thing, except the buck’s fizz has more champagne.
And now I’ve got “Making Your Mind Up” stuck in my head.
And then this happened:
You gotta scary dream,
All the non-humans have found,
But Nick hasn’t noticed while he and Dr Lee,
Play around.
The time is right to give them a fright,
By messing their minds up.
All of their creators
Say they’ll come and find.
It’s an unsettling vision,
Somehow pushed into their mind.
Remy’s doing voodoo tests,
To see if he can find out more,
But it’s still not clear exactly what it is he’s,
Looking for.
We still don’t know who’s behind the show,
And messing their minds up.
It’s ALWAYS Mimosa time! (Try it with a little lemon-juice and sugar around the rim; mmmmm!)
Ok, it’s odd that Sweetheart wouldn’t be having dreams of Captain Bram
As has been mentioned a few times now, she may have indeed been having dreams about the Captain, but since she remembers even the bad things he did to her fondly, she wouldn’t think of them as nightmares.
Many people don’t remember their dreams unless they’re particularly traumatic, so Sweetheart could have had the dreams already, and simply not remembered them when she woke up.
Sweetheart has already had a nightmare about Captain Bram coming for her . . . with a rolled-up newspaper and a “Bad dog!” scold.
I suspect that if she had something like that again, she would wake up in existential terror.
I note that Sweetdaddy Jupiter also had the “nightmare” (when do spring-powered robot spiders sleep? How do they even dream?), even though his relationship with Tigerlily Jones has been only positive.
“when do spring-powered robot spiders sleep? How do they even dream?”
Only Tigerlily knows, and even if she were willing to tell only another spring-oriented Mad would be able to make sense of it.
The fact that zombies and cyborgs and wind-up robots are all getting the dreams does seem to argue for a supernatural force: it’s hard to see even Mad science being able to affect so varied a set of targets without regular humans picking up something too.
Do they dream of spring-powered sheep?
I want to say ‘Mobius sheep,’ but although I like how that sounds it’s not entirely right for this.
I wonder. Find me the MOST vulnerable. Maybe Sweetheart isn’t being counted as such?
Yup. You’re on to something.
So why is Unity? She may be a mite unstable, but I wouldn’t call her exactly vulnerable.
What if the thing that makes Sweetheart and Nick different is that they believe they fulfilled their creators’ goals? Babe invaded the USA. Nick became gun using plane. Unity ran away from home though. Pretty sure every other NHS we’ve seen knows that they have ‘disappointed’ their creators. “Find me the most vulnerable.”
But Virginia has told Unity that she belongs with Skin Horse, and basically (although maybe not in so many words) that she is proud of her.
Possibly the dreams are a way for A-Sig to assess which is the most vulnerable, by gauging everyone’s reactions to them? Or by gauging everyone’s reactions to the fact that everyone else is having the dreams?
Anyway, I’d be inclined to put Nick pretty high on the “most vulnerable” list because of his attachment to Ginny. If Mr. Green wants to get to him, he just has to go after her–although clearly he already knows this.
So, Nick has had the dream, but as many of us have suspected, he took it completely different.
I’m not sure we can infer that.
Nick may well have just been flustered by the phrasing, as Tip says. “Screaming that she’s coming”.
If Dr. Lee had actually appeared in a vision outside the context of sexing up, Nick might well have been creeped out.
I guess we’ll see.
“I didn’t know it was a nightmare” tells me that he has.
But he might be referring to something that happened when he was awake.
He was asked specifically about visions in panel 3.
Okay! That explains Unity’s hands changing colors between the strip of her waking up and the strip of her storming Nick and Dr. Lee’s bedroom. They’re back to base waking colors now in the diner, so that strip was us watching Nick’s dream. Presumably, Unity stormed in with her ‘waking’ colored arms, Nick chased her out, then relived the recent events once he managed to fall asleep again, only with the altered colors that appeared in the strip and with off-panel added dialog from Dr. Lee snuck in at the end that he understandably didn’t see as being suspicious.
She accidentally made Nick telepathic, and everybody’s been misinterpreting HIS dreams?
Heh. The dreams/visions don’t seem to have even a hint of eroticism, which they would if Nick were broadcasting them.
Many sophonts would find the erotic dreams of an attack helicopter to be somewhere between disquieting and horrifying.
Especially if you’re 500 meters up and you hear the ground say, “I’m coming for you!”
I know he’s, um, had some work done, but I’m not sure Nick IS “nonhuman”
He identifies as a helicopter. I’d say he would classify himself as nonhuman. He’d probably use other words, like “posthuman” or “way cooler than human”, but the general idea still stands.
And if he doesn’t see himself as human anymore, i am inclined to follow.
Nick identifies as a helicopter, but AG-I always identified him as a human. I don’t know whether either of these facts is relevant to the dreams.
He identifies as a helicopter with a human brain for a CPU, rather than as a human with an elaborate prosthesis. He is indeed an NHS or else he wouldn’t have been eligible for Skin Horse’s protection.
Skin Horse was legally allowed to help him, so legally he is not human. He doesn’t identify as human, or didn’t, or perhaps only identifies partly as human, that seems like it may be in flux recently but who knows. Also the question of whether a cyborg is human is an open one. He is a brain in a jar, even if the jar is a helicopter, the internet, and a cloned human body.
Virginia didn’t create Nick; she just rehoused him.
…and aroused him.
…and may yet espouse him?
…perhaps if she deloused him.
I think this whole arc was a setup for this joke.
I wouldn’t put it past them that the whole COMIC was a setup for this joke! 🙂
Five of them at the IHOP for breakfast. Since they’re now a rogue agency, who’s picking up the tab?
Given that U.N.I.T.Y. fought through a horde to get to the table, the staff might be meekly hiding when not needed and waiting for authorities to arrive.
I wonder if they still have government-issued credit cards. Those can take forever to ‘cancel.’ (And no time at all to trace, which might be one reason why they haven’t been.)
Nick’s comment in the fourth panel implies he *has* had those dreams, but interpreted them differently.
And Ginny’s little smile of satisfaction is just adorable!
There seems to be a frowny face on Tip’s pancake. I wonder if he requested a specific emoji or if it was an unhappy accident.
(in fact, it may be a three-eyed frowny face – perhaps a Narbonic reference?)
I see bacon on a plate. Nick’s gotta be careful—it’s not kosher.
The bacon appears to be directly in front of Sweetheart, so I don’t think Nick has to worry.
Strictly speaking, you’re not supposed to eat food from a kitchen that’s not up to standards.
Very observant of you!
Comes from asking a lot of rude questions when I was a kid.
Well. Played.
I was thinking that perhaps the fact that Nick wasn’t really CREATED by Dr. Lee, but was merely modified by her might be significant.
The same seems to be true of Sweetheart and her pack – Captain Bram genetically altered them, but arguably didn’t CREATE them.
Maybe the distinction is that only beings that were created “from nothing” are being affected? Unity didn’t exist until Dr. Lee created a bunch of nanites. Bubbles is the same way, as are the other robots who have been affected.
—
But then there are outliers who seem to break the pattern.
There’s Leo, who is described as a “genetically augmented African lion”, which at first brush sounds like he’s in the same boat of Sweetheart. But then again, Leo was also said to have been “grown in a lab” – which is pretty ambiguous. Could it be that the difference is Leo was grown in a test tube while the Bram dogs were bred?
There’s also Alfie (and presumably the other cobras as well), who seem to break the pattern even more.
They were originally introduced as being “literal cobras”, “not a peaceful, enlightened race of genetically-enhanced cobra-like beings or anything”, and “just cobras”. But then they ended up being able to talk, and also it is revealed they were introduced to combat genetically-enhanced mongoose-like beings.
Their exact origin is unclear though – did they mutate from eating the non-mongooses? (Or from eating the experimental mice that they claimed was their primary food source once there were no longer non-mongooses to eat?) Or were the robots that described them as “just cobras” simply wrong? (They should have been aware that the cobras could talk, to be honest…)
Or maybe my theory just doesn’t hold water. Still unclear.
Only Alfie. We don’t know for sure where the other cobras are, except they’re no longer at the safe house where they were last seen.