Endtown by Aaron Neathery for April 13, 2016

Deer in the Head Lights. Poor Holly and Lynn.

Maybe its a baby fish? Crab? Squid?

Then there is something in the tub, too.

It is aquatic.

Not blood. Squid ink?

Truly horrifying.

Poor Lyn… I really hope he gets out of this ok. Unlikely, however.

Questions: did the baby morph in the womb?If the baby morphed after delivery, did it follow the rules for being awake when it changed?

Horrible.

Lyn probably doesn’t understand that that’s Holly, and then there’s all the blood….

Fish?

I must admit this is truly a depressing part of the story….I guess we should be careful what we ask for! We wanted to know what happened to Holly….well now we mostly know! This is truly disturbing….I’m not sure my mind would be able to comprehend all that happened if I were in her shoes…..

And you are a … Rat? … A Mouse? … A Nutria?Vhere, um, did you leave the (rest of the) Buddibombs?♫ It’s a god-awful small affairTo the girl with the mousy hair…

So Lyn is the one that triggers the BuddiBombs then…

Is there any vodka?

Yes…I think the buddybombs will soon come back into this game. And it won t end well.And it looks like that she didn’t recognize that she has mutated as well.

I have no idea what happened here as far as is it alive or,,She had an octopus? In Wichita a boyfriend was trying to revive a toddler who had a small sushi sized octopus in his throat . Whether the man hurt the boy or the boy had put it in his mouth, who knows.The point though is that tiny octopi are yucky looking and they stay alive after you cut their head off during cooking.

She gave birth to something, realized it needed water, and filled the tub for it. So, she’s trying to deal with the situation at this point instead of going bananas.

I was trying to reply to Just Sayin.“Is it a rat, a mouse a nutria”, It seems odd that we haven’t seen anyone who mutated into a regular type rat.

Since the security rats came to be from another source there should be some mutate to rats around Endtown. That show how cute rats really are. I love pet rats.

I would like to see the security rats story too.

I may not be processing the horror of what happened and will happen with Holly, it takes me a while to deal with sad and horrifying stuff.

Oh. I’m not sure what that means, but will look it up. I watched a video of a sushi octopus being prepared and the head kept swimming even in the hot water. Looked awful. Don’t want to try one.

Is a newborn sufficiently aware to have a “bad” mutation? A fish, a crab, a salamander are , conceptually, good mutations, though aquatic. It doesn’t appear to be a duck, since there’s nothing ON the water.

I suppose she believes it now—that humans are mutating into “monsters”:

http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2016/02/03

Holly would have had to have been asleep/unconscious when she mutated. I doubt that she was unconscious when she gave birth. So, she must have given birth after mutating.

Whatever she gave birth to, some form of aquatic creature or not, it did not survive. Holly’s guilt from this traumatic event was evident by her breakdown in Endtown, when she tells Wally that she had “lost the baby” right before attempting suicide.

http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2013/07/31

I have a feeling Mr. Neathery isn’t going to let us see the baby.

When Holly says, “Hello, dear…you’re a father…” is she speaking to Lyn or Wally?

forget the fact that you’re married to a rodentLyn is about to lose his marbles. :-O

Holly? Is there something you want to tell me about our vacation at Club Med last year? And if it is a salt-water baby, you might want to go get those really big boxes of salt from the pantry.

What is that in the corner?

Wally is looking at Holly, in what seems to be a look of concern for her sanity. He knows how scarred she is by this event, how it affects her long term. Lynn seems to be looking into the tub, trying to process the fact that his wife and child have turned into “monsters”. To his credit he hasn’t run, screaming, from the room.

Congratulations Reg! It’s a… squid.

I’m still trying to fully decipher Lynn. The bow tie, the long coat, the dark hair, the gloves two panels back… most likely Aaron Marx is playing the role of Lynn for this reenactment.

They are on a ship once owned by Marx. Lynn does acknowledge Wally. Wally did have the “dream” about Marx as a child before all of this started. Marx did something along this line with Flask. Is this part of Holly being ’healed" or is it an origin story for Marx in the multiverse?

If this has all been said before, my apologies, I’m coming in late to the story and haven’t started on the comments until now.

Must be something in the tub, Lynn is looking right past Holly.

@Jenner, as a doctor maybe you’ll know: could the amount of blood we’re seeing be part of the birth fluids if it was a difficult birth?

“You’re a father” implies a live offspring. You know, maybe when Holly said “I lost the baby” maybe she really meant just that. We know that Holly somehow makes it from here to Endtown, and no one there ever mentions anything about a child. So what if, in the chaos that must have surrounded her making her way to Endtown, she and the child are somehow separated. Or worse, Lynn is awfully awake here. Could we be in for a reverse “Sparkplug” event? Possibilities abound, unfortunately… ;-(

Holly, you got some ‘spainin’ to do…

I’m beginning to wonder if maybe there was something exotic on that “party cart”…

Regardless of the apocalypse soon to come, what we have seen are key moments where Holly made a choice, or directly resulted from something Holly did. She has already said she lost the baby (hopefully she didn’t drown it, since it probably had mutated). Holly of “now”, has come to blame herself for what we’ve seen in flashback so far. She has carried these memories, and guilt, for 6 years. When we first met Holly, she seemed helpful. But helping others cope could help Holly forget her own story. Also, she might have been doing penance for her percieved mistakes.

Reminds me way too much of Eraserhead…

“Pants will be darkened” day. I’m afraid what Friday will be like.

One thing common to every mutation we’ve seen so far is that they breathe oxygen, even the fish transformations. I’m wondering if just because it looks like a fish (or other aquatic creature), it isn’t really like a dolphin and needs air to breathe.

Like Salen Stormwing, I’m afraid what Friday will be like.

Insert the two piano chords being played together to set the surreal mood for today’s strip. Aaron Neathery has masterfully communicated the tragedy in Holly’s past and soon it will be Wally’s turn to comfort her as she did back on the ship after seeing Wally’s back-story.

Never mind if it’s a boy or a girl…Is it a shark? A seal? A moray eel?

I’m thinking the gadget in the corner of the tub is the water faucet: bloody because Holly ran the water.

i would have to agree with @Habogee even if it was just a joke

Yes! I had to zoom in a bit to see what it was, but it was obvious that SOMETHING was going on. I can picture Holly crawling over the edge to “walk over” to it.

I still fear that she drowned the baby… I can agree that the present tense (you ARE a father) implies a living baby, but how many times have we seen someone get pushed over the edge hard enough that living versus dead is no longer a clear cut distinction? (“Paging Mr. Bates, red courtesy telephone please…”)

From the relative size perspectives it appears Holly has transformed into her mutant self. Now the baby is the question, she has always told Wally that she “lost” her baby…

Maybe she was planning on a water birth at home… Still: probably an aquatic mutant [I hope]

We know Holly was asleep during her mutation. But if the baby was awake at that time, then only God knows how to identify it. Remember when Flask was escaping from the Topsiders? She left a long trail of (what I like to call) “alien anthros” in her wake.Let us not be surprised if the poor thing looks more like one of those.

I should probably wait until Friday to say this, but…I can’t help but wonder (or worry) what the family portrait would look like.

Holly: "I’m going to name him “Nemo.” Want to play hide and seek with your son?"

Now I feel bad for the things I have said about Holly.

I thought it was established you needed to be asleep during the transformation process to avoid becoming a monster.

Oh, is Holly a monster?

Lyn’s not entirely unprepared, after the encounter with the mutant in the woods, and Doc Chase’s talk about people changing. He probably had suspicions about Holly’s visit with Ethel, knowing she had given Holly an assortment of fine explosives, and dropping the subject when he saw Holly distressed in bed. He may have done his own research on the changes, and be able to help Holly cope. Until her buddies get him.

Tomorrow we’ll see a child of unexpected features greet Lyn with open arms/flippers/tentacles/claws and say, “Dada!” (Mutant children mature a lot faster.)Another possibility for how they lose the baby: It’s taken away by the authorities, or Apex.We don’t know for certain any more that the baby died. They have lost it, but they may find it again.