Endtown by Aaron Neathery for March 26, 2018

And it seemed to be working so far…

While going through the archives for this story arc, I collected links to a few of the strips that I think offer additional clues as to what’s really going on behind the scenes.

http://tsoj.manga.org/endtown/endtown_shortage_links.html

Jake: “I’m not done. I ended that policy in order to redirect the foragers to focus solely on tobacco. You can thank me later. Smoke?”

Flask had a good plan. Kept the population thinned by sending scavengers topside. But its only a six year supply at current population level. Increases will shorten the supply. But do remember Jacob believes the only true survival is outlasting the Topsiders or defeating them. With Topsiders I dont believe food is a problem. As far as open warfare……that would be suicide.

So who was the late Cooper Hooper conspiring with, then? And to what purpose? The Endtowners who look like wolves are eliminated—-was that the goal all along? And just who has been consuming the Endtowners who look like pigs?

“Ease the public,” he says…

The porcimorphs are being bullied into becoming sausages. The lupimorphs terrorized the town, believing they’re being discriminated against. An Equimorph seamstress was driven to suicide after defending her porcimorph friend from a bad-mouthing lupimorph. A lupimorph lawyer was hung from a lamppost by his own kind after he was just doing his job. And let’s not forget the rattumorphs. They were called in to hunt down the lupimorphs after they celebrated the equimorph’s suicide and killed the lupimoprh laywer.

And Philo Foxworthy thinks spreading stories about Jacob Jackrabbit, who has been trying to keep everyone (including foragers) alive by legalizing homemade dairy products and encouraging everyone to not be ashamed of their animal forms, would “ease the public”. Makes perfect sense to me…

NOTE: Dragoncat Award for Best Creative Mind goes to KR155150 for coming up with the terms “lupimorphs” and “porcimorphs”. Great idea, in my opinion!

Oh, and remember, Foxworthy… You open them, you eat them. Bon appetit!

Who killed cooper then to remain in the dark? Were those riots and deaths all planned, wanted or collateral damage? Is that pork thing connected or independant from the plot against Jake?

Well, that sort-of answers my question about the foraging. I hadn’t considered that the scavenging expeditions were not supposed to return.

Like I said last week, it took a bit, but the lights have come on and Philo knows he’s been played. Still hard to see Jake as the innocent in this scenario, but hey, this is Endtown! Anything can (and eventually does) happen. ;-)

I think it’s safe to say that Endtown is indeed facing an existential crisis, but I’d be willing to bet a substantial portion of the farm that it’s bigger than a bunny… ;-)

Foodwise, Endtown is not anywhere near having a shortage. When you consider they are currently harvesting their own hydroponics, then a six year reserve is a major achievement. The next question to ask… who benefits from the rumors of shortages? Who benefits from the fear induced creation of a “soylent porcine” food source? Only time, and Aaron Neatherly will tell.

They have a long term crisis of no new food being produced unless you utilize the milk and eggs to help extend it. And what about those plants growing in blood?

Foxworthy, you’ve been played like a cheap pianola.

“Jacob, I don’t think you understand that I’M the victim here! I was almost hit with a can of beans!”

I always sorta wondered what a ditto collection getting into endtown might be like.

They have intelligence, cunning, and the emotional high running, they prosper along with the body count rising to just reap the emotional energy of this.

Does anybody here remember the comment from a previous story line that involved a cargo ship in a desert? Didn’t they say that the cause of the morphing did not involve any kind of viruses? That storyline did not explain much of anything.

LS/MFT! Lucky Strikes Mean Foxworthy Trouble! ;-)

While we’ve got a bit of free time until the next strip, Lucranians.

The abandoned ship computer Wally talked to (http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2016/09/16) told him that Lucranian ships are not allowed to visit parallel-reality Earths that still have living inhabitants, and that ALL of the Earths immediately bracketing Wally’s on both sides are dead planets. Additionally, the wars that wiped out those Earths were triggered by resource shortages (http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2016/09/21). Wally’s war was the only one triggered by a mutation plague.

Yet, Aaron Marx had said that Wally’s was Marx’s favorite incarnation of Endtown, and to Flask, he said, “Where else could I have a post mortem chat with the villain of my favorite iteration of the Endtown reality spectrum?” (http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2012/08/22). In the same strip, Marx says that Flask had killed the captain of the Lucranian ship she hijacked (in the other realities), implying that, yes, Lucranian ships have visited inhabited Earths before.

Finally, the conversation we saw between Wally and the abandoned ship’s computer was what Marx (http://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2016/12/12) wanted everyone to see. On the one hand, he’s saying that there are multiple realities where Endtown exists, on the other, he’s reporting the Lucranian ship saying that there is just the one, and the Earths in the surrounding realities are all dead. If we can’t believe him regarding parallel Endtowns and manned Lucranian ships not visiting inhabited Earths, why believe him when he has someone say there’s no mutation vector?

if no more foraging, where are the can goods coming from?

Tbh they are facing an existential crisis under him – just not food shortage, but cannibalism.