Look, Sal has a flush of non-yellow color to her as she’s thrown off balance!- Be too distracted by the cleverness of that to notice how hilariously bad her “LIES” face is.
- Finally Alan’s secret comes out. He’s not a dude! He’s an Alien dude in a human Pretender suit! There’ve been lots of hints, the most obvious of which are when Alan seems to, y’know, die a lot, but then appear later with no problem. Even his name is supposed to be a clue, being so close to the word “Alien.” The idea was come up with years prior when I was trying to distinguish him from other characters more. I had many sets of characters that were doppelgangers of me and my elementary school friends — For example, Walky and Danny were originally both me, and Alan (originally named “Dave”) and Joe were both my elementary school best friend (named “Dave”). But Joe became his own person and Alan… well, the part of Straight Man To Walky became Jason’s when I hit high school, and Alan suddenly had nothing to do. So it was decided that he was really an alien in disguise. The most elegant solution, obviously.
To the right is a Windows Paint edit a friend did to Alan’s Roomies!-era character model to workshop this idea. Sometimes I am reluctant to do awesome things with my childhood characters, and I need to have it demonstrated through art that I should definitely do these awesome things.
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That IS a pretty awesome edit tho!
oh yeah I forgot
Girls — Tackle!
Ack! I lost my grip!
I’m going to be sick.
So what are we here for?
Okay, Sal.
My heart will be blessed
A nice guy named Danny
Two words
BLAM! BLAM! CLUNK!
Your sorry rear!
Wha–?
A turbulent loop
Round One, page 8
Quiet, Joyce
BOOF!
Ah’ll fend off these last few Aliens
Why, Tony! You’re still alive?
Sir
You’re late for youth group
Look, a pretty tree!
How Sal was captured because of a spider. I’m guessing it was in the Power Booster Rod.
I, uh, command you to stop
Noise
Sal! Sal!
Ooh, spider!
Hands up
Your education was sorely lacking
Technology’s amazing nowadays
HUFF HUFF
I got it!
Ack! I lost my grip!
I had forgotten that this reveal came out here.
I forgot about Alan entirely, let alone that he’s an alien in disguise, since we’ve seen him so little recently.
I’m still drawing a blank. I had thought that was Jason, and was very confused by the last panel.
No bow tie.
I think you mean hilariously awesome.
Sal’s “LIES” face looks very Order of the Stick.
It’s always kind of hilarious to me that we’re supposed to care that a buncha nameless, identical members of a race we only ever see committing horrific war crimes died off-panel in the far past, but the narrative gives basically zero shits that the Aliens, who often have names, personalities, and now a guy on the good guy’s team are relentlessly slaughtered without a seocnd thought
Oh maybe that’s why Alan left HA. He didn’t want to end up dead like many of the other aliens before him who were killed by Semme.
HA must be quite angry that one of his guys is working for Semme. Now I wonder why Alan betrayed Ha.
I don’t believe it either. The goverment can’t even kill HA, but they wiped out and entire specie of super clever creatures?
Technologically advanced doesn’t necessarily mean clever. And HA is beyond clever, he’s cunning and possesses a profound understanding of human nature.
Will we see a real Alan in dumbingofage?
We’ve seen his feet – he’s the mathematics professor.
He’s Professor Rees the calculus teacher over there. Penny and Jason are his TAs
Thank you.
I did not see that coming! Like at all. I was wonderin’ why he was alive though
In the current season of Arby and Chief, the resident super idiot Chief is worried about “all teh Alans who is coming from outer space” and then BAM, over 30 evil aliens show up, all named Alan.
Point is: Alan is a great name.
Originally posted:
July 11, 2002
whaat
you’re kidding, right? LIES face is amazing.
It is her face in the next panel the one that is super weird.
Cool, but it would have been more impactful if I didn’t have to strain to remember who Alan is every time he shows up. I guess that won’t be much of a problem going forward.
So, now that we’re here… was Allan the Man in Black? Because if he wasn’t, I have no idea who else it could be.
I just flipped through Alan’s tag (mostly to remember the times he died) and it’s worth revisiting the strip in which he was formally introduced. Also that time he was especially perturbed by alien carnage. Or accidentally suggested Joyce bring Walky to the whole Year Zero thing, almost like he knew he was secretly an abductee.
Anyway, he is their alien expert, but now there’s a question of what he’s an expert of.
The “Especially perturbed” bit doesn’t do anything except show an underline when you hover over it.
Who’s Alan though?