No-Prize
on November 2, 2021 at 12:01 amSo like, Mike purposefully had no reason to be alive again in Shortpacked! after he graphically died in It’s Walky!. I just wanted a higher body count for the IW! finale, and thought it’d be funny if he just showed up alive again with no explanation. I never planned to explain it.
But with Dumbing of Age a few years old, and me purposefully writing Amber and Mike out of Shortpacked!’s main cast so that I didn’t have to write them frequently in both strips simultaneously, I figured, sure, why not, let’s cross that T and dot that I as I usher them offstage.
So here you go. Joyce conspired behind the scenes to get Mike resurrected off the radar. The government wasn’t gonna let Rosenthal Industries use up their time regrowing a Mike Warner, but a potential competitor might if Joyce threw them a bone. And Mike saved her life, so it was the least she could do.
It was something I made up after the fact, but I think it works.
It’s my headcanon that Joyce somehow got her wires crossed and leaked the tech to Galasso. They had one of those extended misunderstandings over the phone, where she asked him if he dealt in robots and things, he told her about their new shipment of Dinobots and son on.
That would actually explain a lot.
Actually, given that whatever Galasso uses for resurrections can’t possibly involve DNA given one of his victims is over 2000 years old and his corpse was, generously, poorly preserved, this would just raise further questions!
Shroud of Turin maybe? Who knows what bodily fluids leaked out after he was wrapped in it.
It’s a little-known fact that “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” was actually based on Galasso’s younger days….
Also, Martian Resurrection Machines canonically resurrect the being in question at the age they were prior to their death; it wouldn’t particularly explain Reagan then working at Shortpacked! for years, either.
Unless Reagan was recreated from tissue taken when he was in his prime, I guess. We have to assume all others were recreated with tissue taken shortly before their deaths. And that in the Walkyverse, the Shroud of Turin is not fake.
Would it matter when the tissue was taken? Martian ressurection machines recover the brain patterns from the echoes left after death. And Reagan suffered from dementia.
It was actually stated in Shortpacked that Walkyverse Reagan had faked his dementia (and I feel like possibly his death?) to make his presence there possible. (This is also consistent with why Galasso could potentially somehow get ahold of just enough genetic material to resurrect Yeshua – ‘how’ being irrelevant, it’s fucking Galasso – but could not use this technology for Circumstances We Will Be Seeing Shortly.)
I figured it brought back Reagan at peak physical condition for the age he died at. The machine obviously fixes fatal injuries, so it probably cures other medical problems as well.
I mean, Galasso is non-government. Also rival.
Also there’s some fair evidence that his company deals in tech (in addition to other things).
Convenient how the Galasso works!
It really was kind of a sweet tie-together, tho =D
I thought that the whole reason why the government wasn’t mass producing resurrection chambers was the fact that it required in-tact source parts from a Martian chamber.
I mean, it’s worth it to get Mike back, but if those suckers can be mass-produced life is gonna be interesting in the Walkyverse in a few years.
It isn’t already?
I mean, considering what happens at the end of Shortpacked! and what Machete has been talking about the future being like? How much more interesting do you want it to get?
Yeah, this would seem to imply that they didn’t actually need the components Lith recovered for anything other than reverse-engineering purposes, and that they can otherwise be recreated using only Earth materials. Guessing Joyce hasn’t leaked any more than this because the penalties if she got found out would be severe.
So wait, how many of the people who died in the IW! finale were resurrected?
I don’t think you’re going to get a hard answer for this one
Joe says that Mandy, Grace and Guns might be on the waiting list, but it doesn’t seem likely that a lot of the other dead even left enough behind to be rezzed.
Lith’s friends would have some preference. Lith would have made sure of that.
I honestly didn’t understand why the government didn’t ressurrect Mike the way they did Walky. But “they thought it was a waste of time” works.
Do you see Mike’s name in the comic title?
How would Joyce take historical Jesus?
POORLY
It was kinda funny how Mike just showed up in Shortpacked with no explanation, but this explanation makes a lot of sense. And we already knew Galasso brought back Reagan and historical Jesus, so he had to have gotten his hands on Martian resurrection tech somehow.
Galasso broke into McAwesome’s to do his Lazarus pit thing after hearing about how they brought back Franklin D. Roosevelt
You can’t prove that it’s not canon
So we all agree the competitor was Galasso. Not sure he needed the bloody shirt since he clearly improved on the design.
Yes, ‘Galasso’s Pizza and Subs (and Martian Resurrection Chambers) (and Toy Stores) Incorporated’has many surprises in store for the investors that do their due diligence.
I disagree.
Wait, so everyone in the comments is acting like this implies Joyce leaked it to Galasso specifically– is that official canon now?
No, Willis has never stated it was Galasso, and as noted above, it’s not trivial to reconcile what’s known about Martian resurrection machines with the people Galasso “brought back” (Reagan and Yeshua).