(See GILLIGAN, item 7a and STAR TREK, item 7b)
on December 18, 2018 at 12:01 amChapter: Ridin' Fences
Location: Squad 128's apartment
More like the past is coming, mirite???
Man, in 2018 they’d call this a slow news day. Walky shakin’ his fist, all “how dare people know Joyce… did the thing she did,” but don’t worry, like, I’m sure the President will do 80 shitty things before dinnertime and nobody’ll even remember.
and yes the gore is uncensored in the original layered version
i…. checked
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Wait, so it’s a crime to shoot your own clone?
Just like it’s a crime to murder your twin sister. Because that’s exactly what it is.
It’s a crime to kill a living person, so yes.
Even if you make that argument, I think a strict interpretation of the law as it’s written probably doesn’t account for evil clones.
The law probably doesn’t take into account the technology to instantly produce a mature duplicate by turning energy into matter.
Anti-Joyce never legally existed, the only paper records may be SEMMF debriefing reports like that one.
Point being this would have been an easy cover-up, so naturally SEMMF couldn’t pull it off.
What are you talking about? Undocumented people are still not legal to murder. It doesn’t need to take any kind of technology into account for that.
Anti-Joyce wasn’t really an evil clone, just a horny one.
wouldn’t it technically be suicide and come with the risk of being put in a mental institution?
Huh? No. The body she killed is distinct from the one she lives in, so it’s manslaughter at the least. Being genetically identical to the victim changes nothing.
I suspect it seems off because the evil clone being killed or at least dying at the end is such a common trope it doesn’t really register as murder.
“Killing your own clone is still murder”, according to Constable Odo.
Agents of US intelligence and law enforcement service take a life, this is I guess news
Good luck with your investigation, Asshat. There’s no proof that this “clone” ever actually existed. Can you file murder charges if the supposed victim has no documented existence? (yes, Joyce did a bad thing, but O’Ryan isn’t doing this out of any sense of Justice; he’s doing it because he hates SEMME and the brainwashed mole saw an opportunity.)
It is documented. You’re looking at the documents in panel 1. Apparently SEMME left a paper trail.
Those could be fake. (they’re not) But any lawyer worth his salt should be able to throw the case out on lack of verifiable evidence. A jury would probably think it preposterous that a clone existed and especially the way it was supposedly created as described.
A lawyer should be able to throw the case out… if it goes to court with just that. Before it goes to court, it can be used to warrant an investigation, which will uncover all the evidence they need, and is exactly what Bart is explicitly talking about in the comic.
In a world where superpowers and aliens and giant robot apes exist, convincing a jury that clones also exist might not be that hard a sell.
Well, if there’s no evidence at all, they can’t charge you, but they don’t need documented existence of the victim.
I mean, if you kill someone and they can’t identify the victim, but can prove you killed them, it’s still murder. Just murder of “Jane Doe”.
I’m not sure you have to be brainwashed to hate SEMME. “Kidnapping children and faking their deaths for a secret army” is pretty bad look.
Two things.
First, I cannot for the life of me remember why Star Trek and Gilligan are being referenced. Like, at all. Unless it’s just a reference to other shows with clones? But why would that be an exhibit? Yeah, I have no clue what the joke there is. Anyone feel free to explain.
Second… having gone back to the Anti-Joyce section to check that this wasn’t a call back to a joke made there (if so, I couldn’t find it), I just wanted to mention again for the record how the Anti-Joyce thing went in my Mutants and Masterminds game.
When “openly bisexual pro poly” Joyce got duped, it created an anti-Joyce that hated sexuality and wanted to kill the other her. Basically, the Joyce from the actual comic ended up being Anti Joyce in my game.
Bi-Joyce did not only NOT shoot her, but talked her down, disarmed her, and arrested her to make sure she got the help she needed. She even tried to make friends with her in the super-hero prison where she ended up being held (along with Sal, post Denver incident, actually). I think Bi-Joyce may have helped my world’s Anti-Joyce have a very PG relationship with Walky eventually.
You had a group playing a Mutants and Masterminds game based on It’s Walky, but as a divergent version of the continuity? That’s kind of awesome.
Also I don’t understand the references either.
The crossover event with FANS!, I think.
And The FANS! club is centeree around Star Trek, again I think.
Indeed I did! It was some years ago now. I had my players play the cannon characters (they chose from among them) based on primers of their Dumbverse selves.
Joyce was played by my wife. For her, I had her read a bunch of Dumbverse Joyce and then said “her, but you’ve been mindwiped and have no memory of your life prior to waking up in SEMME”.
I also messed with a few universe details – things like “Ruth didn’t die – she and Billie are dating” and “Robin starts out as a member of Squad 128” – because one of the players wanted to play Robin. I ran Jason as an NPC.
Everyone built their abductees off a PL 8, I think. That allowed for around the level of super powers shown in comic. Jason I built at PL 5 or 6.
And, that done, I started off with some basic “capture the alien” missions that allowed people to learn the basics of the world and SEMME before dropping them into Year 0.
The main takeaway of all this is that my wife, knowing NOTHING about the continuity of Its Walky or any Dumbing of Age beyond the first book or so of DoA, initially played Joyce almost cannon perfect. But then things started to go different – see, this Joyce, having strong inherent feelings about love being super important but no memories of her religious upbringing or any strictures of society, ended up having random make-outs with Robin, asked out Joe because she heard he was “good at sex” and she wanted to try it, and then falling in mad crush with Jason because his falling in love with Sal and joining a team of abductees just to be near her was “the most romantic thing she’d ever heard”. Eventually she managed to confess her feelings to Jason and the two ended up dating. Also, random make-outs with Robin eventually led to more than making out (likely due to my Robin starter packet having some bits of Shortpacked! in it to help flesh out her backstory and personality) and they became “best friends with benefits”.
Both relationships grew alongside one another, which eventually led to Joyce being in a hinge-poly arrangement with Jason and Robin, neither of whom much liked one another, but were willing to tolerate one another for Joyce.
The best part was that, throughout all this, myWife!Joyce remained her sunny, usually optimistic, positive thinking self. She even expanded on this by helping out Jason by coming up with “team building exercises” – basically stuff the whole squad could do together for fun and relaxation. She also became a bit of a stepford smiler towards the end – still trying to keep everyone upbeat and calm even while she was falling apart inside. She practically radiated kindness and goodness.
It was a really fun game. My wife tends towards dramatic, brooding characters, so it was fun to see her play something very different from her norm (even if she still worked in some secret melodramatic brooding).
I guess in-universe, these are used as code words/code phrases. Not sure what they’re supposed to mask in that SEMME document, though, as all person names are in there in clear.
Out-of-universe they’re indeed probably references to the respective shows.
It’s an elevator pitch for the Melonpool webcomic: Gilligan’s Island Meets Star Trek
I’m kinda curious about what the full versions of the news reports scrolling at the bottom of the TV screen in the first 3 panels are.
The first one is a Space Ghost Coast to Coast reference:
http://snard.com/sg/guide/?ep=08&fmt=0
A lot of Joyce’s actions with SEMME won’t be public. But is she actually most notable for that interview, or is that just the news being full of itself?
“don’t worry, like, I’m sure the President will do 80 shitty things before dinnertime and nobody’ll even remember.”
This comic originally ran in, what, 2004? Good ol’ heartless Cheney was competent evil and kept his shitty deeds on the down-low. W’s bumbling made for some good distraction material. Ah, such innocent times the pre-Stupid-Watergate years were…
I can’t decide if John Oliver is happy right now that he can just enjoy this last week or if he’s disappointed he can’t report on it. Seventeen investigations. I need a “Lock him up” decal.
It’s wild how much Bart O’Ryan comes across as like… the good guy, upon reread
I always pictured Bart O’Ryan to be a good guy without the benefit of our point of view and privileged information.
-ref last panel: DUN! DUNN! DUNNNN!
I think he was suppossed to come across as the jerk who was right, but didn’t know (nor care about) the context.
But.
Objectively.
Was right.
I love the different colors used in those last three panels. I assume it’s something of a “dusk effect,” but I haven’t seen Willis use such a color scheme in previous strips.