Eeugh.
on December 11, 2021 at 1:01 amChapter: Same Planet, Different Dementia
Location: Rosenthal Industries
Some folks were irate that we came back from our weekend cliffhanger having missed Robin taking Head Alien II apart. Eh, maybe! I was worried at the time that prolonged battle sequences were taxing the patience of the strip’s more Batman-Joke-Oriented Readership, but more importantly… the emotional crux of the battle is Leslie. It doesn’t need to see Robin do any of that stuff. The important things have been said, and the cleanup is best delivered this way, as cleanup. I stand by this narrative decision.
Anyway, yay, Rachel is back!!!!
what happen, I have all these feels
Somebody set up us the feels!
I love Robin’s last line here. When Robin did wacky hijinks, a lot of the time she just ended up hurting the people around her, and burning her bridges. When Leslie did wacky hijinks, she reunited a family who’d been separated for years (admittedly at the expense of tearing another apart), and freed a whole universe of people who had been unable to develop, change, or grow for over a decade. She touched billions of lives for the better. She really is the best, and— at least in this universe— she and Robin really are perfect for each other.
I miss them so, when I look at their Dumbingverse counterparts.
As for the lack of a Robin fight scene, I choose to believe that she kicked Head Alien II’s ass in less than the time it takes to load this page after the previous one.
(also rachel should probably be in the character tags, not the other tag tags)
I really like the idea that after all the huge, dramatic battles against the Head Alien(s), all they ever really needed to take him down was a properly motivated Robin.
Unfortunately, it’s rather unethical to keep putting Robin’s love interest in mortal peril, so it’s probably for the best that this was the last time any of the cast would fight a Head Alien. Until/unless Willis’s buffer gets so large he has to write a second webcomic to keep from becoming newspaper strip levels of buffer, and the Future Kids And Dorothy series finally becomes a thing.
A newspaper strip buffer is typically 60 strips.
I’ve got 140.
I both respect and fear you. Guess Funky Winkerbean’s the outlier of year-long buffers?
And so visually complex, too! I’m glad no one had to draw a picture of any of that.
Oh, neat, you predicted how (spoiler) would die in the Transformers comics.
Yeah, this was five years before Requiem of the Wreckers… Did Nick Roche read Shortpacked?
I think the pacing works well without showing Robin dealing the final blow.
I mean, Robin is a speedster. Speedsters are always holding back, until you enrage them. Then they end you at the speed of thought. There would be literally nothing to see, not even a blur.
….
Wait, if Robin could take out the HA WITH COSMIC SEMI-OMNIPOTENCE so quickly, how come he was ever a threat?
Robin needed to be angry enough to stay focused.
Yep. Normal goofy speedster Robin? Not nearly as much of a threat. Last strip was the first time we ever saw her angry enough to get serious.
Turns out, Serious Robin is even scarier than Angry Walky or Angry Joyce!
It would’ve been cool to see Robin defeating HA II like she describes, but I think this story arc works fine without us actually seeing that.
Yup, and this is not Grrl Power, where a fight takes a year to finish.
Prolonged battle sequences potentially taxing the patience of the audience? Brother, you’re not kidding! Not necessarily in your comics, though. The whole second half of The Matrix, for example.