Endtown by Aaron Neathery for February 11, 2022

Marx, being more grouchy than Groucho…

Yeah, the ones your are sitting on, kid…

Cue an outburst from Wally in 3 … 2 … 1 …

So, the orbs, ARE “souls”? Nice to see Marx back. Even if he is a little bit cantankerous. At this point, I think we might get to see some more old favorites taht had been “lost” in the past??!!

Him again. Okay, Marx, how about a few answers? What d’you mean, "the ones that don’t make it this far’? Where are Wally & Co. now? Are they where the remains of Eden were? Or some plane between existences? We’re still not entirely sure where that “nexus carriage” sent our anthro friends but I’m sure you know, Marx. What’s the plan now, since you’re so fond of pulling strings? (And yeah, I’m waiting for an outburst from Wally since he’s dealt with Marx before.)

Marx, you"re such a p-ick!

These souls race about to find these fountains to move on….if they fail….they become the stuff they are walking on. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Marx means well….god mode has got him a bit full of himself. So much to prepare for at the end of all things….who lives….who dies….what to do with Ted.

“Merchandise”….interesting descriptor for the apparent remains of people’s pysches……Do we have an angle of the Marx game we’ve not thought of before; or is he just being playing a W. C. Fields routine on them?

Who you all have been waiting for has finally arrived.

He’s baaaack

Yay! Marx is back! Can’t wait to see what happened to Kirby.

“Psst! Wally? You know this guy?”

Like blowing on that thing with cigar breath would make it all clean, now.

Trouble! Either the team needs real instructions, or the Wise Author decided to flip the goal on it’s ear.

Now wouldn’t it be weird if this were an Inception-like moment where Wally has really been knocked unconscious somewhere, and he’s only dreaming this, and now Marx sends them off to another dream within his current dream…

Deus ex machina to ensure reality bounces nicely back into place? Or a sign of something more sinister?

They’re all hanging out in the Bardo?

Says the guy who sent it on its way via second-hand smoke breath…

I do think, obviously I admit, that some iteration of “Marx” left a certain comic book stuck in a very certain control valve in a Biosuit manufacturing facility some “time” back. All leading to the world our boys have known.

Now, blowing a pitiful soul’s leftovers around via cigar breath is certainly no big deal; certainly not on par with moving Flask from death (caused, remember, by Marc’s interference) to resurrection in a previous Endtown(?).But, to our intrepid boys the arrival of Marx (which, if any, “one”…is there really any “one”?) presages most interesting moments to be lived through.

Damn Marxists…

Always some killjoy to ruin your mood! Life is tough enough.

This story just keeps getting better…Just finished my second read through here, my last one was about 2 years ago. So much better than I remember! Love me some 4 day long comic binges!

Welp, he had to show up at some point… sadly. Inevitably. Ugggh.

Huh, these look a lot like Eye, I wonder if there’s a connection there…?

Days later, thinking again:

Is this like the Internet?

Where we are product, not the customers?

Somehow this Marx looks younger than the original one; a young adult. Seems between the kid and the usual one we see.

Anybody is going to run to Marx and hug him??? I mean after what they’ve been through, that would have been my reaction.. Um.. any moment now.

Aaron Marx, Willie Wonka, Stephen Strange, Von Doom…; it is vital that dimension-hoppers be both temperamental and unpredictable, or they will destroy your plot-tension and derail your heroes. So even though Marx is on the scene, he will be unpredictable, unstable and unwilling to pull our epic travelers away from the precipice, and the precipices are all over the place.Waiter? More popcorn please. We appear to be approaching some turbulence.

On to the next “sob story”?