Continuity Repairs with Rob and Andy
Commentary: On
June 13, 2010 ~ 13 Comments
I loved doing the “Continuity Repairs” strips. Rob is Rob McCarthy, creator of Hell on Wheels. Andy is, of course, my husband. These are the actual answers they gave when I asked them these questions. Yes, “DUH! Magic cave!” is a direct quote.
I did write Rob’s dialogue in the last panel. “Answer me that, Mr. Green Lantern!” is a line from that 1970s Green Lantern/Green Arrow comic where an old black man chews out Green Lantern for not doing more to fight racial injustice. I say this a lot.
It’s basic many worlds interpretation! The early strips take place in a universe where Dave smoked, the strips since take place in a universe where he does not. There’s a timeline where Dave didn’t change the past and still smokes, and we don’t know what’s going on there now. In the current timeline, Dave doesn’t smoke, and the archive– being a record of the “Dave smokes” universe– doesn’t say what events led us here. Simple!
The conveyor belt scene in the ANTONIO SMITH arc can be solved much easier by saying that they both got the saw to slice through their bonds and then just leaped off at the last picosecond. (In fact, given the audacious theatricality of that arc, I wonder why that didn’t happen the first time.)
…. I’d prefer the explanation that the timeline was spliced at a certain point, after all these events had happened. So, he never smoked, but in the past he did smoke (before he never smoked).
Leon: Yeah, the point is that she’s a mad scientist, she’d have come up with something!
I’d also go for the Gilligan’s Island theory (“So help me, the women are hot”). The moonbase escape is tougher, but again, I’d assume he “came up with something” — especially since Madblood is so easy to manipulate, and Dave was already showing signs of his future talents. (Maybe he got the robots to let him out….)
For Mell’s rampage: “Mad Social Scientist”.
For Mell’s rampage, I prefer “clubbing in the head with the butt of her weapon = concussion = short-term memory loss”.
(TUNE: “Fixing A Hole”, The Beatles)
(What other song would I use? Answer me that, Mr. Green Lantern)
We’re patching a hole in the comic strip plot
That breaks the continuity
That she built up!
We’re fixing a goof that the author forgot
That languished in obscurity
‘Til it’s brought up!
And on the gerbil island there’s a magic cave
To grant the wish of Dave!
Made by the gods!
And ANTONIO SMITH, FOREN-
SIC LINGUIST cannot comprehend
How Dave escaped that saw, against all odds!
We’re mending mistakes that the readers might spot
Creating incongruity
When she screwed up!
As for the moonbase, don’t forget that even in the “Dave smokes” timeline, the nicotine addiction wasn’t the first thing that got Madblood. He felt the pains of the Mountain Dew jones first. Presumably, in the “Dave doesn’t smoke” timeline that was enough.
When will people ever learn! If you question the hows and whys of altered timelines, the Gods of Continuity will get angry, and destroy the universe, replacing it with something far stranger.
I learnt that lesson the last time I accidentally caused the end of the universe.
…
It got better.
You know, probably simpler to say the ur-gerbils bribed him with his other addiction – caffeine.
Andrew has a great shit-eating grin.
There’s an image of that line from Green Lantern at this link:
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/pics/gl76a.jpg
The “Gilligan’s Island Scenario”, with a grass-wearing Mell and a goddess-like sarong Priestess Helen left David with “No incentive to get off”? Tee hee.
Chainsaw escape: Antonio Smith mistied the knots on their arms, allowing Helen to work her hands free in time to escape the chair and rescue dave from the saw.
Island of the Ur-gerbils: The Ur-gerbils bought Dave’s friendship with a crate of Mt. dew they found.
Helen turning into Dave: Helen first figured out something was wrong when she started drinking tons of Mt.Dew and having a crush on Mick Foley.
Doppleganger Gambit: Madblood didn’t know how to work the transmogrifier properly, so when he switched the settings he missed the DNA inputting step Helen used to set the device to make dave into Madblood. since it didn’t have dave DNA to work with, Madblood had a negative reaction to the change. he was trying to get Dave to tell him how to fix things, with Dave’s snarky comments and the pain causing madblood to open the cell so he could reach Dave and physically shake the info out of him in anger.
Mell’s rampage in the CS department: as we see later, most of humanity has selective memory for events outside their expectations. mell shooting up a place was mostly unnoticed by the student body. the CS department are all part of Dave’s Gaming group, so while they remembered it, they also knew better than to go for help against mell. when they did mention it after the fact, people just assumed they were referring to some geeky video game or roleplaying session. the physical damage was chalked up to a wild party and a building in need of repairs by the college staff.
… This reminds me a *lot* of Umineko.