The Symbol of Extra-Terrestrial Oppression Punished
on July 31, 2015 at 12:01 amChapter: That Seventies Strip
Characters: Alan Rees, Anthony McHenry, David Walkerton, Jason Chesterfield, Joyce Brown, Linda Walkerton, Mike Warner, Sal Walters, Steve Walkerton
Location: David's apartment
Man, SEMME shoulda been called SETOP.
Anyway, have the Paul Bunyanest explanation for the yellow stripes ever.
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better than “and on the way I fell onto some wet paint sorta like a Pepe Le Pew short except a different direction”?
why does Alan look so creepy? I feel like he’s staring into my soul. I stared into the Alan, but when the Alan stared back…I blinked.
When I look at him, I just imagine his eyes getting further and further apart.
There… Might be a reason for that. Or there might be no reason at all and he’s just drawn that way. Or there’s no reason at all and he’s just drawn that way, but David Willis will CLAIM there’s totally a reason for that and it was always meant to be that way.
Man, I thought that explanation for Alan not being dead came before this.
So many things I lost track of in that first binge read-through, I suppose.
psh WHAT EVER david that is the COOLEST explanation for the origin of the stripes ever and what fabulous use of gray on gray on YELLOW, I love it! DANG ARTFULNESS
Very Sin City use of colour, there.
So let me get this straight, when she goes on a berserker rampage, she not only kills the Martians that killed her buddy, but she actually gets to Mars somehow to kill all the rest of them?
That’s… a powerful berserker rampage. Remind me not to mess with this lady.
As I understand it, the civilization that arose on Mars abandoned it long ago, due to resource exhaustion or ecological collapse or some such, and spread out into the galaxy. The only ones left in Sol System were the outpost they left behind on Earth, and it’s those that Linda genocided. There are other Martians still in other star systems, but none on Mars itself, or elsewhere in Sol System.
And they’re not the same as the guys in the purple suits, who are Aliens, from the planet Alien.
David, I don’t wan to be mean to your past self, but…
Well, maybe I do want to be mean to your past self.
That last text box? Good God it needs an editor.
Huh. That was a lot less mean than anticipated.
So anyway, does Anthony have a yellow striped hidden under that jacket?
yep.
I don’t think we ever see him without the suit jacket so we’d know.
It’d be kind of a cool moment, though, if he got caught in a tight spot, cornered by aliens, and ripped open his jacket to show the stripe, all Superman-style, and went to town on them.
Not “going to town” like Billie means it, though.
That would instead be a hilarious moment.
I wonder if there are any languages in which “Symbol of Extra-Terrestrial Oppression Punished” gets abbreviated “SEMME”. Maybe something like “Symbole de Extra-Mondiale Mucho Épouvantable”.
simbolo de extra mundial monopolio espacial(portuguese)
I’m not sure about Portuguese, but in Spanish, that sounds pretty silly and bordering on gibberish.
YES. Crisis averted. For a given value of “crisis”.
Walky has Joyce’s triangle smile here. That’s creepy too.
This was forever remembered as “The Day Willis Found A Highlighter”.
it had rolled under his desk
Alternate title: “My Burdensome Life of Combat and Emotional Retardation”.
so it’s like bardock, but instead of a bandana she use it as a… does that have a name?
I believe it’s called ‘forced symbolism’ He gave the SEMME a yellow stripe and then decided it had to mean something so he had to force it.
Tube top?
can that exist now?
It was the ’70s, they totally had tube tops.
A sash, I believe. And for what it’s worth, I thought it was cool…
it’s their tribal buff, like on Survivor.
…I’ll see myself out.
…can someone translate the last sentence into… something less word-salady?
“I murdered all the Martians, but Big Boss said people should wear the stripe and kick all the other bad aliens’ butts, too.”
“Both the government and I agreed we were long overdue for a retirement. Even though the martians were gone, Anthony believed there was still a need to be prepared against alien threats. But he demanded, that in some way, the new defenders of Earth bare the symbol of those vanquished under extra-terrestrial oppression.”
So that’s where the stripe came from! Given that all the Abductees were geneticallymmodified, there is still a ‘yellow star’ feel about it to me, though…
In Paranoia, a yellow stripe is the official sign of a registered mutant…
Avoid termination! Register your mutation!
Yeah, and it was also a symbol of governmental oppression. Given what readers who know the end-game know about the real origin of the Abductees, the real face of the oppressor isn’t alien.
Selective colouring always gives me an artist-boner.
So this is the origin of the vaunted “PT Belt”, of military usage.
That is how they get their superpowers in my head canon.
…do I wanna know how much less effective the original colors were?
I think I’ll leave it to the imagination this time.
Anyway, that’s a real Bardock move there Linda.