Quick thinking.
on June 20, 2018 at 12:01 amSITUATION RESOLVED!
Phew. Guess I’m done here– oh, right, I have to give last names to some Squad 82 folks. Ummm…
Okay, from left to right:
Agatha Larsen already has a last name. In case you were wondering why Agatha works at McAwesome’s in Shortpacked!, this Squad assignment was it. Robin needed a counterpart at McAwesome’s, and so I chose Blonde Robin from the squad she was originally from. Agatha’s Mormon in Dumbing of Age, so she wears fewer belly shirts there, but she’s exactly as chipper as she always was.
Travis! He needed a last name. It’s Amir now. He has a supporting role in Joyce and Walky!, later on, but otherwise hasn’t shown up anywhere else since.
Rachel! Otherwise known as “Other Rachel” over in Dumbing of Age. Needed a last name, so, uh, it’s Moore. Because “more” is a synonym of “other.” Yup. Dumbing of Age gave her blue eyes, lips, and purple hair to disambiguate her further from Amber Territory.
And there’s Andy O’Brien, previously named at some point. See, he looked like, you know, Conan O’Brien, so he’s named O’Brien, see? And he gets his first name from Andy Richter. Now that’s all explained. …. does he have another appearance after this? I honestly don’t recall. I guess he and Travis prooobably share a room or something on Danny/Walky/Joe/Mike’s floor in Dumbing of Age.
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Yeah Agatha, Mike he wants to shake hands…. with your neck.
Mike finds his lack of face disturbing.
Oh no, we can’t see Mike’s FAAAAAACCCE!
What happened to Joe’s old squad, and when was he officially moved?
When this loaded and I saw Robin on a page of this shape with the green wall color I had this moment of thinking I’d loaded up Shortpacked! on autopilot by mistake.
Why is Other Rachel grabbing her crotch?
She is itchy?
I look forward to Andy and Travis showing up for like two strips in Dumbing of Age three months from now and then immediately vanishing back into the ether.
Are belly shirts suddenly a thing again, or will they have to wait a few more years for the inevitable early-2000s nostalgia wave to set in? It seems like they’re starting to crop up again here and there.
crop top kinda came back with all the rest of the nineties stuff
Agathaaaaa! My day is made.
Candy bars: the perfect angst stopper.
Whilst Joyce has figured out the Mystery of Robin, it seems that poor Mike is in hell!
I might have wondered at this stage if Robin was not quite as guileless as she looks and showing a little passive-aggressiveness in panel 1: “Everyone else thinks you’re terrible, you don’t want to prove them right, do you?” But that’s not really her style.
I find what interests me the most at this stage of the reread is SEMME’s internal politics. The average non-128 squad member, it seems, used to think Walky was a manchild incompetent lucky enough to get a leadership role through pure nepotism (which, um…) and now thinks he’s an unstable psycho lucky enough to keep his leadership role through pure nepotism (which… UM…).
At least some of Mike’s general horribleness and Joyce’s early naivete is probably well-known to the other squad members, too. They probably think that Tony, like Jason before him, is the “adult in the room” barely keeping things together so that Mommy’s Little Boy can have his Squaddy-Waddy, and now that it is ALSO public knowledge that Walky accidentally killed Tony’s dad, they’re wondering when the final meltdown will happen and how much collateral damage there will be.
If they know anything at all about Robin, her joining the group will not be putting their minds at ease. At least Robin’s old squad seems very unlikely to judge her or anybody.