Dave Davenport Has Come Unstuck in Time: December 8-13, 2003
May 15, 2010 ~ 44 Comments
No, I don’t know why Dave thinks 1980s cops are more dangerous than regular cops. It probably comes from having spent most of that decade watching TV.
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“Everybody’s Got the Right to Their Dreams” is a number from the Stephen Sondheim musical Assassins. Sometimes I’ll go to really ridiculous lengths to work this stuff in.
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Doing this week of strips with the multiple time jumps was fun, but it was hard to write gags for it. This midweek lull works moderately well.
It’s a good thing Dave is enough of a nerd that this stuff makes sense to him.
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Man, everyone gets mad at Dave real fast. I probably should have built that up more gradually.
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I don’t know if getting abused by women is a defining feature of Dave’s life and character, as this plotline would seem to imply. It does happen to him a lot, though.
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Yeah, I’m quoting the “Star Trek” movies. Because I am a giant nerd.
I had to avoid showing Dave’s face in the last panel to set up a joke in Monday’s strip. It worked out better with just his fist anyway.
Monday:
If this storyline’s three time foliations can be divided into film genres, then we can appreciate the dizziness Dave must be feeling at being suddenly dropped from a family action movie into a teen romantic comedy or an existential science-fiction drama. More saliently, it also provides some insight into the kind of rules each temporal world operates under. Kids shooting a police car, for instance, makes perfect sense in 6-year-old Dave’s world.
(TUNE: “Band On The Run”, Wings)
Well, the cops are following in hot pursuit,
Their flashing lights are on …
‘Cause a driving nine-year-old, although she’s cute,
Just might be frowned upon!
Van on the run!
Van on the run!
‘Fore my luck expires,
I’ll shoot their tires
With Helen’s freaky gun!
We’re a van on the run,
Van on the run …
We’re a van on the run,
Van on the run …
“No, ma’am, I actually came to stop you because your high-beams are on… holy crap! You’re kids!”
1980s cops!
It’s probably because of Dr. Narbon’s vanity plates on the van. That MAD SCIENCE plate just wasn’t a good idea.
BTW, Ed, that filk is awesome. I’m still singing it.
I think Dave could use ont of these.
http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QW-CHEATSHEET&Category_Code=022
hoping the link to the Time Traveler’s Cheat Sheet works.
Tuesday:
It seems kind of redundant to paint a crude radiation symbol on a rock that’s already in the middle of an entire irradiated continent.
Heh.
I bet that was painted on it before it was irradiated. Or maybe that’s debris from [message redacted]
My dream also involves a time machine. And a hot tub full of Cool Whip. And Raquel Welch.
Oh, and hoping my wife never starts reading these comments.
I just realized — after twenty long years, the pinstriped suit still fits her?
@Eccentric: what’re you talking about? It’s extremely unlikely someone in college with an internship would be able to afford a suit that would last twenty years. Far more plausible is that she’s bought any number of pinstriped suits over the years, and this is simply the latest.
I feel confident predicting that as Vice President Mell has more than one pinstripe suits, and that it has been bought more recently than her college days.
That rock marks that quarter of the continent as irradiated. Very useful information for the many aliens and demons coming in for a visit. The Vice President knows those visits are not too uncommon.
There’s a rock on the other side of the land.
It tells of beautiful nuclides you can make.
Give in to madness, give it the upper hand…
the unusual chemicals are made of what you break.
Everybody’s got their right to their dream!
Sometimes government business needs no delay,
and time travelers should take one for the team,
otherwise their flimsy lies will be caught anyway…
I just saw Assassins last Friday night. It was amazing.
Heh.
Wednesday:
Crazy plans are much easier to stomach when you’ve already benefited from the results.
May I note that Helen of Dave’s six-year-old era is cute as a button labeled “DO NOT PUSH”?
So, does Dave have some sort of supermemory? I know I wouldn’t be able to remember the whole message.
He doesn’t have to remember the message verbatim; whatever he writes now is the exact message that his 16-year-old self already read ten years later.
(Tune: “Song that never ends”, by Sherry [sp?] Lewis)
This is the loop that never ends!
I can just watch as space-time bends!
At first I found it on the wall, not knowing what it was;
And now I’ll give it back to me to find, and that’s because…
This is the loop that never ends!
I can just watch as space-time bends!
At first I found it on the wall, not knowing what it was;
And now I’ll give it back to me to find, and that’s because…
This is the loop that never ends!
I can just watch as space-time bends!
At first I found it on the wall, not knowing what it was;
And now I’ll give it back to me to find, and that’s because…
(rinse and repeat)
Per Majel?, she just needs to realize that Dave inhabits? a “Post-Reality” world.
Usually, it’s one Post per day.
? Is her name a ‘Piss on Star Trek’ reference? Just curious . . . .
? I originally said ‘lives in,’ but sometimes he’s not alive.
My favorite bit about this strip is how Dave seems surprised that Majel doesn’t believe about the time travel.
A radiationhousezone!
I think it’s just like Dave to obsess over a woman who has the same first name as the wife of the creator of Star Trek.
Mind you, I’d have preferred the name Verity.
Thursday:
Don’t worry, Dave, these irate people are just a pack of cards.
It’s kind of silly to assume that this untouchable, pantheon-blessed demi-woman will suffer anything but superficial inconvenience from being stranded in neutron-poisoned badlands for who knows how long (but it would be kind of clever if in her ‘suicide note’ she appeared somewhat less invulnerable or healthy-looking than in this storyline).
For the ultimate fanboy dream name, she’d have to be Martina or Deanna. (Did Counsellor Troi have a sister named Helen?)
Ed: Actually, yes. But the rest of the family don’t speak about her after that whole messy business with the wooden horse.
And when the synchronicity hits… remember that at this point, Dave has *gained* control of the situation!
The fast pacing may be for the better – it’s difficult to stay mad at Dave.
I think the more important point about Majel Barrett-Roddenberry may be that she was the voice of the computer on Star Trek.
butsuri: that’s true, but she was also Lady Morella on Babylon 5, which is also cool.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand……….
Friday:
Finally, Dave has solved the Riddle of Time and can see the way out of this overpriced carnival funhouse.
It’s the greatest hits of the ’80s, the ’90s, and … the ’20s?
I love how Helen didn’t even argue or ask question. Punch a six-year-old boy in the face? No problem!
Huh, we seem to have lost a comic somewhere.
And so it all comes together.
Majel and Mell could have both been saying, “I have had enough of you”, but what was Helen saying?
“I…”
“…think I know what you’re up to.”
For what it’s worth, I love the rate of the buildup to this. It’s headlong in just the right way, and this strip is funny at the same time as being kind of painful. It’s one of my favorites.
“…missed the mosquito! Dang! Oh, sorry, Dave.”
“…HAVE THE POWER!!!”
“…’m not usually this violen…oh, wait! Yes I am!”
” … is where I punch you in the face …
‘L’ … you swear as time you now displace …
‘C’ … what comes to us, when … our acts are synchronous, and,
‘U’ … will shout ‘Eureka!’ ’cause it’s Greek, and you’re a geek, ah!”
IL – C – U when we get back in time!
You’ll see me, and things will be sublime!
I have had enough,
So pardon me if I get rough,
And IL – C – U when this is through!
(TUNE: “L-O-V-E”, Nat King Cole)