Endtown by Aaron Neathery for January 08, 2020

I would question that last statement. Living in a suit, with fear of a break in protection as your constant companion? And fearing for others transitioning? Worse, of course, if you don’t know that mutation while unconscious makes you a mutant and not a monster. Jim & Sarah did not know.

But they did know (or believe) that becoming a mutant will get rid of Sarah’s cancer. That woould cause some resentment, too.

Keep talking, lady! This is interesting.

Look on Duffy’s face says maybe we’re about to learn his real secret?

Yeah, Duffy’s face is revealing, I am just not sure what it portends. But, knowing A.N., it could be VERY interesting.

Nothing but negativity here!

The Mutants may not be blindly accepting the mass change as much as they don’t realize what has occurred to thier mass. Remember Wally and Kirbee didn’t even realize that they no longer had 5 fingers. They were gobsmacked to learn that they had lost a finger in the transition. Their mass has changed without them recognizing it.

This is really one of the most interesting strips in Endtown.

Think about the Topsider’s perspective. They have lost their world. They are confined to the suits. The Endtown world really belongs now to mutants and monsters. If Topsiders slip up, they become one or the other. So some anger, mis-directed.

After all their study (vivisection) of mutants, they should know there is no virus. The inexplicable always causes fear.

But they have become monsters, too. Turning mutants into mutts and transporter controllers? Monstrous. Vivisection of mutants? Monstrous. They have bought into that monstrous behavior. Remember that Linda Kowalski and her partner were going to casually and (in the case of her 17 year partner) gleefully turn Wally & Holly into mutts. One remembers the casual way nazis murdered Jews.

But that same Linda Kowalski later almost literally (if unintentionally) killed an old mutant with an act of kindness.

Keep going, Mr. Neathery! Keep going!

But answer me this so smart girl. Now that you are safely on a boat…..would you remove your protective head gear??? If there is nothing to make you change like a virus…..once out of danger, out of a hostile environment would you remove that suit when not at the safety of your lab. What do you fear? Admit something is causing this to happen…..to cause “mutation” and you don’t have a clue. Big deal about who gets bigger or smaller…….it’s a balance in effect. Redistribution of the matter when the Eden Project kicked in. But the cause……what is the triggering mechanism to make these mutations?

People have mentioned Duffy’s expression in panel 4, but personally I am more moved by the slight eyebrow movement on the Topsider’s helmet. Something about that resigned but slightly regretful expression adds much weight to her words.

This feels weird…. We’re getting answers and Marx isn’t around being all cryptic. Is today Extra-Dimensional Opposite Day?

You would think, you know, being busy just surviving might keep them from thinking about things too much…

“They”…. “Their”….??? Shouldn’t it be “we, us, and I”?

There’s no mutagenic virus, so the hint was in this mass discrepancy when a human becomes a monster or a mutant… Some kind of exchange between two parallel universes contaminating each other ? Branes colliding ?

Wally’s missing another finger…

I see that she is a practitioner of how win friends and influence others!

Wally: “So, where do you fit in all this, and why should we care?”

Topsy: “My father was a comicbook artist, and one day I threw out a whole box of his prefect-condition first edition comics…”

They?! Hmmmm…

Putting on my philosopher’s hat (I have one, it’s quite nice), our topsider is equating personal identity with bodily form but that is hardly the only way to think about it. John Locke defined personal identity as the continuous set of memories of experiences we have had. So Wally is still Wally because he can remember his life before becoming a “mutant” and who Wally is is that continuous pre and post-“mutation” person. That was a major plot line years ago, I believe, Wally dealing with how he is still himself despite his bodily change.

The topsider, despite her pretensions of open-mindedness, is following the topsider prejudice of condemning as no longer human the “mutants,” or “cartoons” in her mind. And that is the philosophical and moral-political question: how do we define humanity? By physical form or conscious form? We know what Descartes thought. If I lose a limb am I still me? "If I lose my memory am I still me? The topsiders clearly define “human” as looking like what a “normal human” looks like and this explains their bigotry against the “mutants” not the excuses this topsider gives. This question has implications for us in this supposedly real world.

Well, this is a lot of information we’re getting in a long time. Wally isn’t asking the right questions.

Ya, but there’s the rub… what of those born mutant? It’s not like they are born as topsiders and develop their mutation in-vitro. To them, it is completely natural….

The lady is lecturing someone on reality who was recently turned into a cookie. She doesn’t know the half of the overall weirdness, really.

Anyone who says it’s worse than suicide never committed suicide, or was every really that close to it Suicide changes you to, and you have no idea of that outcome. And that’s permanent. Maybe there’s a chance of the Mutants being mutated back to humans, it’s all science, right?Please dont make flippant remarks about suicide until you’ve tried it. Period.