Endtown by Aaron Neathery for July 22, 2011

WOW … that’s a heavy load to carry.

NEWS!! “Endtown” is finally going to be collected in book form! The entire Modern Tales run (everything up to Endtown’s January 17th debut in Gocomics) will be collected in two volumes, due out March 2012 from Jarlidium Press. There will be extras in both volumes in order to sweeten the deal. You’ll be able to order the set from Amazon or directly from the publisher at www.jarlidium.com (and I’ll have a contest to give away some free signed copies, too).

Also (and apologies to Kraden for not mentioning this sooner) both Endtown and Electromatic Radio got a very cool mention on Actfur On Air (http://www.actfuronair.com/main/podcast/season-3-eps/s3ep07/).. Towards the end of the episode. This is probably the first ever non-print reference to Endtown (and probably the highest profile reference EMR has ever had)!

Gratz on the book.

Aaron, that is AWESOME news!! Do you know how the page format is going to look? As in, across like on the old website? Either way, it’s great to know that the books are coming! WooHoo!

Looking forward to it Aaron! Congrats! You definitely deserve it.

Allie’s hit bottom.

Alllie definitely looks crazed in the second panel. Aaron really captured that other person, letting the alcohol speak for you, reality. Poor Allie! She is really going to regret betraying the memory of her friends by turning her back on others.

The second and fourth panels are very telling. I like the use of the camera angle in the second panel – makes Allie look crazed and unreasonable. And Wally’s drooped ears in the last panel says it all. :(

Aaron, I was just re-reading the beginning of the Ballad of Holly and Wally and I had a question about Wally. It seems to me that the patch on Wally’s shirt is opposite of the symbol used by the Topsiders on their uniforms and transports. Was Wally on the other side during the War?

Yay Aaron! Excellent news, and Jarlidium Press is a good outfit! Things should look just fine, and I’ll make sure to order copies!Allie may be drunk and despairing, but she still has a point – that’s how those moments hurt the most. Now, when Holly hears of this, watch out!

Huzzah! Cannot wait for the book!! This strip is really making me dislike the weekends…. No new Endtown.

Well if that’s the underlayment of her personality, we know why she ended up crawling into the bottle in the first place. Still, none of this is really consistent with her behavior toward Wally when they first re-entered Endtown after the foray that Ed and Leo didn’t come back from. The only thing to explain that is that she was hoping for a relationship with Wally, and now feels jilted—and abandoned.Of course, we can clearly see that it’s the booze shouting here; liquid courage strikes again.I just really don’t want to believe that there’s no future for her at all.

I hope Wally is just going back to Hollys’ place. I would hate to think he’d abandon Holly and “go topside”. Course Holly and Allie could get into a “Cat-fight” over Wally,if he left and Holly would MAKE Allie take her out to look for him. Thus another chapter.

Even if this is a depiction (like that asinine poster told me Wednesday), Allie won’t find salvation from Johnny Walker and Captain Morgan (or Captain Haddock).

Oh, and good luck on the book coming out in January, Aaron!

Whow Doc! That’s be a interesting twist. That’s quite a overbite Allie has.

She’s projecting. She is just as responsible for her friends’ deaths as Wally is, and she’s hating herself. She thinks she’s a murderer herself for allowing their deaths.The irony is that neither are responsible. Rescuers die trying to rescue people of their own free will. When people fight for their lives, or the lives of others, they sometimes lose.

Poor Wally, those droopy ears say it all. On another note, congratulations Aaron on the book, that is great news. I am really looking forward to it.

Very typical alcoholic behavior (speaking as the child of one): lash out and lay all, even undeserved, blame on someone else they want to hurt because they’re hurting. Good writing.

A lot of different ways to look at which twists and turns the story could take from this point on (one of the many great characteristics of this strip). I like feelgood moments after tragic ones but that’s not always how life is, is it? Ready for the next rise, drop and loop-de-loop of this rollercoaster ride we know as “Endtown”.

Ya’ll way,WAY over my head! But at least, she did welcome him to Endtown.

Boy, these folks (me included) really do love your work and your success with this comic! Like they say, “keep up the good work!”

Seem to!

WOO HOO!!! Congrats Aaron! Credit card is out and raring to go! Just give the word!

That’s my boy! Congratulations Aaron! I always knew you could do it. :O)

AS I SAID YESTERDAY

Wally can’t help her unless she allows it. But even if she doesn’t let him in, she might get a hold of herself and pick herself out of her binge.I hope Wally doesn’t regress because of the guilt trip she threw in his face.Great job today, Aaron! The facial expressions in panel 2 and 4 are too real for words.______________________________________________

SAME AGAIN

Today, again the same for panels 2 and 4…but panel 4 has not Wally’s facial features—-the body posture is Heartbreaking!!! Oh Aaron, you must really get a giggle out of Fridays…you’re so mean. ;-PI hope Wally runs straight back to Holly before he does anything rash.

KUTGW,

Noreen

Oh, boy the misery of dealing with Alcoholics. It’s never quite their fault they’re in the condition they’re in and the mean ones love tearing everyone else down. I’d hate to be in a relationship with her. It’d be abusive and I’d be the one with the bruises. Wally, she was this way before you met her and would eventually be here if you’d never touched her world. Let her damage her own life, you don’t have to be part of it.

What a great comic! Really enjoying it. I had to go back and read as much as was available. Looking forward to more, more more.

oh damn, that’s cold

Full circle. Holly welcomes Wally to Endtown, then the person who brought him does the same, in a much different context.

Oops. I almost forgot to add this: Congrats on the book Aaron!

Thank you, surfstuff.. I or the publisher will be posting basic details towards the end of November, probably.

I don’t blame Allie. I don’t blame Wally or anyone else on or under that desolated planet. A combined mutagenic viral pandemic and nuclear holocaust is bound to leave many people with a bit of an adjustment disorder. Cut ’em all a little slack, guys!

The fact is that Wally isn’t to blame (directly, anyway) for either Ed’s or Leo’s deaths. Ed died because he was too stupid to duck for cover when his gun ran out of power. Leo died after Wally had rescued him and Allie from the transporter they’d been thrown into. You might make a case for Wally having had a part in Leo’s death because he didn’t kill the Topsider, but just tied him up – but Leo and Allie both went along with it. And in neither case was Wally unaffected by the deaths – both times, he was rather a basket case afterwards. And, remember, Allie came back to support him when he was hurting.

Her current animosity certainly comes from her own guilt, magnified and justified by the vast amounts of alcohol she’d consumed. I hope that Wally’s depression right now is both for the loss of Ed and Leo and for Allie’s descent into alcoholic muddiness, but not because he’s blaming himself for any of it.

It’s unclear to me if Wally is thinking more “well now I feel down again” or if it’s more “sigh, well, I had to try…” – and I do see him just walking back to Holly and hug her. HE now has support, while Allie doesn’t. (You can’t get support from a bottle.. it’ll just roll away from under you as you fall.)Yay for new storyline! I’m itching to see what other stories are lurking around.