but I am not sure if it is possible to make gamma strong enough to kill in minutes?? In RL, inhaling about 20 milligrams of plutonium would probably kill you within a few months.. you would have to ingest about 500 milligrams of plutonium to die immediately, where 100 milligrams of cyanide would do the same, and is a bit easier to purcase 🙂
– that must me some magical tree, to be able to *grow* with that at its centre…
What killed her was the amplified Gamma radiation, not the plutonium. A heavy dose of that is much more deadly than ingested plutonium. Why do you think they are so careful using X-Ray machines???
No, it is not. Ingested alpha-decaying radioactive isotopes are among the most damaging forms of radiation to humans. Gamma rays are penetrative like X-rays, only more-so. Most of the radiation will simply pass right through the average person. Low temperature neutrons from the reaction would be more dangerous to a human.
Actually, plutonium is some 10,000 times more toxic than lead. It might take 500mg to kill you with radiation, but it would take a significantly smaller amount to simply chemically poison you. Also, there was mention of gamma radiation. Plutonium mostly (~99.9999999999%) decays by alpha decay. If it’s giving off gamma radiation, it’s actually critical. That means it was both insanely pure and the casing was an exceptionally efficient neutron reflector. That plutonium would have to be the purest sample of Pu-239 on Earth and the casing would need to be lined with something with the density of dwarfs star material. It would be so dense, it would be too heavy for anyone to lift. Even 1cc of the stuff would be about 100,000,000 metric tons. The crust of the Earth wouldn’t be able to support it. It would literally sink into the center of the Earth. I’m guessing Paul just doesn’t know much about nuclear physics.
Wherever this is, it is definitely (1) not in THIS universe, is (2) supernatural, and thus the laws of physics as we know them simply do not apply here.
Plus, over the years, Paul has exhibited very good knowledge of physics, history, archeology, and uses that knowledge very effectively to throw us for major loops –
Just like he’s doing now 🙂
Paul definitely knows what he is doing, and has danged good reasons for the story twists that twist us!
First, the plutonium. Plutonium has been found on five different locations on site. If you remember an earlier video I put together, plutonium is a difficult isotope to detect because it doesn’t give off a gamma ray, it gives off an alpha particle, and that’s not picked up by the traditional Geiger counters.
yes you can make gamma radiation strong enough to kill. really fast.
A common example is if you take a spent fuel bundle from a nuclear plant (a fresh one not one from storage) and placed it at the end of a foot ball field. Then you run towards it you would never make it.
It is possible for gamma to kill in moments, but Plutonium gives off Alpha and Beta particles. You can hold a sphere of it in your hand without harm, since alpha particles don’t penetrate skin easily (provided it doesn’t ignite [pyrophoric]).
Like I said above, this is definitely not in our universe, so all laws of physics as we know them just aren’t applicable 😉
Paul’s already thrown us a major shock with her dying (Nooooo!), and no doubt there are far more shocks in store, much to my nail-biting delight.
Just sit back folks, trust that Paul knows exactly what the applicable science is in our world and where-ever-the-hell (literally???) that is, and enjoy!
Why analyze the dickens out of a wonderful story? This ain’t Literature 101 combined with Physics 102, ya know.
That^^. I agree with Wolf. To be perfectly blunt, If I’d want to learn about applied nuclear physics, I’d studied that instead of Western Philosophy.
Just enjoy the story. It’s NOT Physics 101. It’s “Magic-101” ;P
However, its obvious some of the readers like extrapolating “what if” scenarios; let them enjoy that as much as those who could care less. None of the entries I originally read were telling Paul he got it wrong…
the others dont get half as much airtime. in fact amanda hasnt been seen for yonks until recently.
brandi only seems to be in rare ones – usually with bud and jin now only seems to appear with alan.
…and here I thought I was the only one that didn’t like Shelly. I can’t stand her, and never have. However, that is perfectly okay 🙂 And I doubt she’s really gone (grrrr)
Yeah, right… my grandma had 5 sisters. All of them had/have kids. And they had kids. Should have killed off some relatives, right? Too many relatives, right?
See? That’s how stupid (phrased mildly) this reasoning is.
Real life =/= fiction. One of the many short story writing taboo: do not have too many main characters. It makes for difficult character development. Of course, this is not a short story and Paul’s done wonderful job of developing the character, but still. Devil’s advocate. 😀
I know! Here people are debating the science behind plutonium, but really…Shelly’s dead! I really hope not. Can’t wait until Monday to find out what happens next. I can see how she can be an annoying meat head, but overall I like her character and certainly didn’t want her to die. She provides a good contrast to Monica and the other more brainy/nerdy characters.
Ugh. Salvia flashbacks. I remember “dying” in my trip, and then waking up (actually just coming back to reality) from the dead. I thought my trip was an afterlife.
Amazing, and utterly terrifying on a visceral level. Don’t do salvia kids.
weapons grade plutonium, can be handled bare handed, without harm, any James Bond movie aficionado could tell you that… because there is no gamma rays. most it’s energy is alpha particles, which are absorbed by the dead skin cells on the surface of the skin.
It’s in a magic tube that does things to it. All bets are off.
(Being a retired 8-bit End Boss that’s made of radiation, I’m pretty sure I’m the ultimate expert in this specific instance at least. I know my fictional radiation.)
if the tube did something to it, then it is not longer plutonium. plutonium is very rare naturally, and any large amounts is manufactured by man, whether directly or indirectly.
Of course I highly doubt anything truly bad happened. From what I understand this could all just be a vision she sees from holding the relic. More than likely, she’ll wake up startled on Monday in front of Bud, Tina, and Monica again.
And if this relic shows you things you fear, this vision could be showing us Shelly’s inner fear of being expendable.
NOT!! Mu mind went WTF?..WTF?..WTF? from the moment I noticed the “dirty spost ” on Shelly.
This must be ,indeed, the clifhanger of all cliffhangers.
It also explains the wall of skulls. They’re all Shelly. It’s the sphinx’ way of honouring/remembering Shelly, or something.
(As most people, not as dense as me, already surmised)
Stunned. Not WTF, but definitely stunned. Mr. Taylor can’t be really killing off such an important main character, right? This is just a vision or dream quest, isn’t it?
OTOH, if he really is killing off Shelly permanently, I applaud the artistic integrity. Tragedy can be a powerful plot device, and this will certainly have major ramifications for M and the rest.
I would not want to be that particular Sphinx if Shelly really is dead. The thought of Monica and the Gollum girls gunning for me sends a cold chill down my spine.
If you can “poit” pee and poop out of a person, what could you do to a sphinx with that power ???
If you can survive being inside a U-boat when all 12 torpedoes went off and just get a new iron bathing suit out of the deal, what could a sphinx do to you???
Shelly’s passed on! This Shelly is no more! She has ceased to be! She’s expired and gone to meet her maker! She’s a stiff! Bereft of life, she rests in peace! She’s pushing up the daisies! Her metabolic processes are now history! She’s off the twig! She’s kicked the bucket, she’s shuffled off her mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-SHELLY!!
Thank you *so* much… you know, even when the comic is as gruesome as this one (I think the most brutal of all so far (and I hope Paul won’t be able to top that!)… worse than “crippling Jin”), the comments still can supply the humor.
Hmmm.. A dream sequence / vision quest / karmic sacrifice sort of thing?
Otherwise, how did Shelly survive placing the item in the previous time line? Or did she not? Remember the “Somehow you combined all your demons into one –me?” episode? Perhaps Shelly’s conscious is her own ghost!!!
Conspiracty-theorists claim that the priests that guarded the Ark of the Covenant, indeed, used lead-lined ceremonial clothing to shield themselves from whatever was in the buggered thing..
Soo..it’s not unlikely the Lanthians (with their obsessive meddling with all things dangerous) would have hazmat-suits and lead-lined suits too…
Problem is that plutonium refinement is a relatively modern technology.
…unless, of course, the handle thingie is somehow ancient magic tech that needs modern fuel sources (hey, how is it generating energy anyway? Nuclear reactors generate power by steam turbine…)
So, does this mean Shelly just relived something which happened to her in a past cycle? Does this mean the plutonium is safely in the handle waiting for the newest Shelly to fetch it? But, if it’s a vision of a past cycle, why is she wearing the clothes she was wearing at Monica’s house? Why would she be there in a quest tio fix Jin since Jin would still be OK because the CM is still in operation?
Also, her last words were “The Calendar” which would lead me to believe it was during a previous cycle in which she was slated to help in the “fixing” of the CM in 2012. Sort of saying “I can’t die now, I have to help fix the CM yet”. Or perhaps she realized she’d come back again so it wasn’t really over for her. Assuming they failed to fix the CM again. Anyway, it lends some credence to that pile of bones all being Shelly(s).
Hmmmm, the clothes could be a coincidence since it’s completely different time lines. Maybe in the previous timeline, instead of being about Jin, the hijinx with stinky and the relic were part of that cycle’s plan to fix the calendar machine. So same result, different motive. Of course earlier she said “she’s trying to help someone” so that seems more that it’s about Jin, than the whole universe.
but fixing (or is that phixing?) the CM was about helping jin and this was a possible angle to use in the process or just to stabilize her (see little lost girl in the mirror page) for the repair attempt.
I think you have it. This is another time loop, like with the calendar, that they will be stuck doing the same thing over and over like ‘Ground hog Day’ until all the steps to break it are completed.
Or maybe there is another calendar, in which the previous calendar was a sub-loop which had to be completed first before the new calendar resets . . .
The sphinx indicated that Shelly was “back in less than a cycle.” I don’t know what she did previously, but she must not have died doing it and she would have had to somehow come back within her current lifetime since she would not have regenerated due to the CM resetting. Unless, of course, the cycles to which the sphinx is referring are not the CM cycles.
Allow me to point out that all the previous rigmarole was so that they could stop the CM before it reached the end of its programmed cycle length. So right now they’re what, three years ahead of when the CM would have reset everything?
*clumsily pats arm* Don’ worry kiddo ,Paul has got the biggest thumbs and the biggest hat ever..he’ll pull the-rabbit-of-rabbits out of that hat on monday or tuesday…..
Shelly and Tina may be soul-sisters, or something similar. So Shelly-as-Shelly may appear in a remarkable new form. Maybe as a spirit with a sword that would kill anyone else…and “haunted” by a body.
FWIW, Paul seems to have read some of the same references I have on plutonium toxicity.
That leads to an interesting thought. Could it be Shelly’s spirit that’s haunting Jin? A past Shelly spirit that is? Maybe a passel of past Shellys? They’d all be pretty teed off that the sphinx failed to mention that little detail BEFORE she extracted the vial from the tree.
Is it wrong that as much as she is probably my favorite character, I actually hope that this is real, because I am so burned out on 35 years of Dramatic Non-Deaths?
Interesting. But Shelly’s death when? Future? Past? Previous cycle? Not that I expect an answer as it would, understandably, give away too much plot at this point. At any rate, it’s still powerful and totally unexpected.
Jean Grey doesn’t need a tombstone she needs a revolving door. BTW, I’m out of the loop but last year she was coming back again. Is she dead or alive at the moment?
We have also witnessed Tina’s death, Monica’s death, and the deaths of all three Golem Girls. We have also read about Shelly’s ‘almost death’ (if not actual death) during her vision quest….
They say that the only people in comics to stay dead are Bucky (Captain America’s WWII partner) and Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, and I think they also came back.
they usually come back as ghosts that the villian has conjured or if the hero is under a lot of stress and needs their guidance for an epiphany or comfort of some kind. even then its still just their brains telling them what they already know…. however, i have a feeling this shelly is dead as a doornail and won’t be seen ever again…
I think Paul’s statement above is riffing on Steven Moffat’s explanation for why he opened the latest season of Doctor Who with the Eleventh Doctor’s regeneration-negating death. Most people reading Wapsi Square would recognize that. But it’s a worthy reminder that in the Who backstory, a cold and evil iteration of the Doctor was prophesied to arise after his eleventh incarnation.
So when fate or time travel is involved, dying is rarely meaningless. But it will often look like it is.
As for afterlife or rebirth, Shelly would have been better off following her Plains ancestors. They widely believed in spirits taking to the sky. Too bad for her that that visionquest was interrupted, because the Indo-European heroes have always been drawn to the realm of Pluto, the underworld…
Then Erishkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.
She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.
She struck her.
Inanna was turned into a corpse,
A piece of rotting meat,
And was hung from a hook on the wall.
Yeah, but you’re not the one telling the story. Paul just posted that we witnessed Shelly’s death. I guess it’s Super-Plutonium! with half the calories of regular plutonium. :/
It is if the case does amplify the gamma radiation. 500 REM is a lethal dose, that much could easily give that amount a close range. Amplified, who knows how many times, yes it could act that fast. But we would be talking over 5000 REM for that.
Problem there is that if it were giving off that much radiation (I thought it ‘recycled’?) then that capsule would be HOT. With the amount of alpha radiation coming off that little of a surface area, it might be getting into meltdown temperatures. Defiantly hot enough that Shelly couldn’t causally pick it up.
I’m thinking this is more ‘Shelly’s idea of Plutonium’ inside her vision.
Question is why does the artifact need it’s atomic batteries to power from Shelly, but Monica gets a scary boogie-girl? Because Shelly is a mechanic? Or would the scary Jin-thing have gotten Monica to slice the tree and get the magic power source?
Is powering up this artifact a Bad Idea(tm)? The last group that had it ended up dead and tried to boobytrap it… even if it wasn’t under the ocean…
And encapsulated inside the tree it would have built up enough heat to spontaneously combust long ago. Certainly when exposed to oxygen after Shelly split the tree.
In addition, wood does not stop gamma radiation. It’s really immaterial whether Shelly chopped the tree down or not. She would have received a lethal dose just being in the nearby.
the spinx said in the first pannel the radiation is amplified.
doesnt say how much.
berryllium
only ever heard of that in the film ‘the shadow’ where they made a berryllium sphere which could destroy a whole city. the berryllium amplified it i think
I’m going with the berilium sphere from “Galaxy Quest”. Power source, yes…but then you get the Omega-13 device, which backtracks time just long enough to undo a single mistake. Or, you know, un-dead Shelly.
Because… YOTD is not allowed to strike again! It’s over, damnit, no more dead people!! 😯
‘I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m just “Crewman Number Six.” I’m expendable. I’m the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is. I’ve gotta get outta here. ‘
YOTD stands for Year of the Dead. From March 17th, 2010, to March 18th, 2011, I lost 28 people and 5 pets, all of whom I knew well, most of whom I was related to, and the getting over it has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. When it gets to the point where people ask, “How’s it going?” and you answer, “Well, nobody I know died today” and aren’t joking… yeah.
Beryllium reflects neutrons. In an atom bomb, it reflects them back into the bomb core, increasing the amount of neutrons taking part in the chain reaction and letting you use less plutonium for the same amount of BOOM.
The Manhattan Project tested several metals for use as the “tamper”, including gold, silver and platinum. There is a story about how they tried a gold tamper, found it not very useful, and ended up using it as a doorstop until they could get it back to Fort Knox. A SEVERAL POUND gold doorstop.
The Dahlonega (Georgia) gold rush of 1829 (according to one account) started when someone discovered that the hunk of rock they’d been using as a doorstop was, in fact, a chunk of pure native gold.
it says the vile amplifies the radiation. I would assume, since its meant to be a power source, it would do so efficiently as possible to get the most radiation possible. there for it could be 100% of the normal radiation, or it could be 10000% of the radiation. either way, slight amounts of gamma radiation have been known to cause nasty cancers…and if you’re wondering how the tree could survive that, you have to remember it’s made of time, not of organic matter.
All of this argument over the physics is so much handwavium–(1) this is a dream sequence, in a magic landscape, and (2) not being described by experts.
Fairportfan, yes, something else is definitely coming. We end the week with a cliffhanger and a big pile of Radiation Does Not Work That Way, so I’m looking forward to Monday’s strip.
And, of course, this looks like Shelly’s artifact vision anyway.
I’m totally on board with Jamie here—killing off a character for dramatic flair and then revealing it to be all a dream sequence so you can keep the character is so Marvel. It’s much more dramatic to realize that sometimes bad things happen to good people and just let them die.
It’s what Goldman’s grandfather says to him when he insists that he must have read it wrong – that Westley can’t die.
I can’t remember how much of the framing story they actually used in the film; if you haven’t read the book, the framing story is actually almost as important as the story of Buttercup, Westley and Co.
(The Boy’s Room)
(The boy is now sitting up in bed. He’s obviously feeling much better now. He’s very into the story.)
Boy: You read that wrong. She doesn’t marry Humperdink, she marries Westley. I’m just sure of it. After all that Westley did for her, if she does not marry him, it wouldn’t be fair.
Grandfather: Well, who says life is fair? Where is that written? Life isn’t always fair.
Boy: I’m telling you you’re messing up the story, now get it right!
Grandfather: Do you want me to go on with this?
Boy: Yes.
Grandfather: All right, then. No more interruptions. (starts to read again) … at noon, she met her subjects again. This time as their Queen.
Maybe…you’d lose some readers who come here purely to escape the harsh realities of life (maybe), but the readers who appreciate good drama would probably become even more loyal fans.
i personally read fantasy because life bites like that
i dont need to be reminded constantly about reality. get reminded of that on a daily basis tyvm.
*sulks*
was a random rant there btw not dedicated at anyone or anything 🙂
still luv the comic 🙂
Word! I don’t understand the “well, it’s just like life” argument either. If I want life, I just have to wake up each morning (which I do anyway, I aitn’t dead).
Interesting thing is, if I have got this all straight, Shelly herself set this up.
The sphinx said that Shelly had been there before. But I note that the sphinx did not say that she left. One possible inference is that all of the bodies of the adventurers that the sphinx said she has been cleaning up … are all Shelly.
So what we have are multiple, um, spin-offs? Clones? I’m not sure I have a word to express this exactly. Shelly has built this scenario one life at a time.
And Shelly can be both dead, here in this dreamscape — if that’s what describes it — and alive back at Monica’s.
Hmmm … still a few loose ends here … gotta think about this for a while.
Well, we now have a purpose for the artifact! It’s to use up Shelly!
Seriously, can you imagine what kind of need would drive this series of actions? Something dreadful this way comes.
Iteration is a noun defined as a repetition (therefore the word you were looking for). Reiteration is a verb defined as excessively repeating something. Using reiteration as a noun is excessively redundant. 😛
Instance. If the artifact spawns a new instance of Shelly to go into the tree world, there could be an arbitrarily large number of dead Shellys there, one for each visit.
One hopes that it’s a simple fork and that each instance returns some information to the parent instance. Multi-threaded processing can get messy.
After the shock wore off, and I was able to give it some (Clear) thought –
Iterations is right. As I said above, ALL have died fifty-leven times since the CM malburptioned. We just watched a re-run………….
Actually, I’m not sure one can say everyone died. Whoever was alive in the world at the time of reset never died as such. At least not like Shelly just did. They simply … well, I don’t know what happened to them. They just ceased to exist I guess. I’m not sure you can call it death though. Maybe they were suspended in time until the next cycle caught up with them again. As the story stands right now, we have not reached that point yet.
AFAICS there is only one timeline (The human one – the Sphinxs etc are outside of this..) so everything is erased and set back to the ‘start’ .. its only those not affected by this that wake up and remember the last one…
Actually I was referring to sending someone on a suicide mission without their knowledge or consent, even if it is “you” in a future time cycle. Missions with a sure outcome of death if the mission is accomplished have to be taken with full knowledge of the outcome.
Well, there shouldn’t be any more time cycles because the broken calendar machine was destroyed. So if this is real and is happening now, there shouldn’t be any more Shellys.
I’m wondering if that was a past Shelly. Perhaps the current Shelly is reliving the experience thanks to her connection with the artifact. Remember how Brandi narrated what happened in the pit? That may have been foreshadowing for this.
I suppose that brings up the question; had the Shelly we just saw die (we’ll call her “Future Shelly”) known the mission would be fatal AND she knew why it had to be done, would she have done it and sacrificed herself?
If the Shelly who set it all up (we’ll call her “Past Shelly”) knew the every next Shelly would be just like her in this self sacrificing attitude, then seting things up for a Future Shelly to die in the process would morally work out. So the outcome would have been the same if Future Shelly knew she would die or if she was completely ignorant of the fact until it was too late. This, despite the fact Past Shelly made the decision for Future Shelly (as this case seems to indicate).
Well, one potential snag would be if the earlier Shelly couldn’t be certain that they would fail to fix the calendar machine in the Future Shelly’s cycle. If they had taken care of the calendar, then Future Shelly would have been robbed of a potentially long life. As it turned out, neither Shelly was going to continue to exist for much longer because their timeline was going to be erased when the calendar machine reset.
I’m thinking she knew it would not be fixed because she did not get back with the relic+plutonium. Apparently this was critical in that time loop for fixing the CM. Or so they thought anyway.
Another way to intrepert her final words would be to combine the words from the two panels … “I need, the calendar.” Indicating her words meant she needed the calendar for something personal, and not just to give her a shot at another life. Perhaps in that loop she was in need of something the calendar could provide for her. Something we know nothing about at present. Thus she was lamenting her need for the calendar and the fact she would not get to use it to help her in some personal way.
well, interesting climax to this particular arc…
i like the progression of detail as she proceeds to die, and this probably solves where all the skulls came from…
anyway, can’t wait for monday…I’ll be hitting the bottle till then…
well it depends on when you think Shelly was first exposed to it. if the tree was letting the radiation through, then she was exposed to it the whole time she was there. also, its a comic, its shortened for story telling purposes.
@Kramegame: Why do you think there are special wards set up in the library to protect the sphinxes? That would imply that they are weaker outside of it. That would limit their ability to guard it and perform other tasks.
@eschmenk: yes, Phix is weaker outside of the library, otherwise she wouldn’t have had to make the distinction in telling Nudge that she can’t be hurt there, and as a result could have pummeled her right there in the coffee shop. I’m not saying it’s to improve their performance, it’s just making sure they don’t die on the job. plus if each sphinx has a location they can open a portal to that they can’t get hurt in, then they can’t attack each other, and it would help keep order in the system.
It’s reasons like this why I hate Star Trek.
Okay… The tube amplifies and recycles the gamma radiation… Waitaminiute…. Gamma radiation isn’t that dangerous (It’s basically higher energy X-rays. And the amount given off by that small of a sample would probably not be that much (not saying you’d want to swallow it…). But having a radioactive material contained in a tube that ‘recycles’ emitted gamma rays… are we talking about returning it? Baking unstable elements in high energy EM waves?!? That’s nuclear meltdown right there.
Now, Beryllium, however, is very toxic. It’ll eat your skin if you hold it in your hand. The good news is that it’ll let all the gamma rays out. The ones that aren’t recycled…
Alpha, beta, gamma – gamma is what does the most damage of the three.
Put it this way – if there’s a supernova pretty much anywhere within our galaxy, and its axis is aligned to direct its gamma ray burst this way – we all die.
Writers can easily let things get out of hand.
I recently saw an episode of Cowboy Bebop that constantly made reference to “the mono system”.
The story made more sense if you substituted “mono system” with “techno babble”.
I’d like to direct your attention to the
Demon Core experiments, particularly the second, involving plutonium and beryllium. The article doesn’t specify the amounts used, so that’s where the story telling can take over.
Yes, remember that the substances are revealed to be plutonium and beryllium… by a sphinx. A little different than being described by a Scottish starship engineer.
Shelly is dead.
She will be “cleaned up” and placed with honor among the other dead Shellys.
Long live Shelly.
This seems to be one of those assembly by lethal stages procedures where every assembler dies but the guy who finally carries it out of the assembly area.
Since the artifact is now loose in the present world I think we can assume the artifact is now ready for its designed function.
There is far more to this than we know. There has to be. I can accept senseless, meaningless, or pointless death in real life, but NOT in my webcomics.
just calling it now but this is a flashback that we unknowingly started watching of the previous cycle when they hadn’t fixed the calendar machine and shelly was there
Ya. I think everyone was thinking in terms of previous CM cycles. But it looks like we were off by at least one. So Shelly was using CM cycles to setup things for her finding all of the pieces that she separates. And this CM cycle with Shelly sacrificing herself to prime the flashback function of the hilt so the post-CM Shelly can find all of the pieces “safely” with the flashback. At least I’m hoping that’s what’s happening.
And I can’t believe that it’s Shelly setup things to do this. I smell Brandi’s involvement in all of this.
Well, here’s hoping it’s really (as people seemed to think/claim the last few days) just a vision and not real (or s.th. like A Dream with Freddy (wouldn’t that be a nice title for a slasher flick?))
Hmm, I just noticed: yesterday, a few here speculated Shelly could run screaming today. Maybe she will do so, but on Monday, in the real world? I’m not sure what I’d do, waking up from a dream of *actually* dying.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Wapsi Square — mighty Shelly has been rubbed out.
I Do Not Like This.
… but if it is to be…
…then they must retrieve the body, and build a fire.
Good Goddess people
She is in a Time-tree forest, and dies with the words of the calendar in her lips
Where is in the timeloop is Shelly? And Is this a past vision? Another timeline or Might have been?
Oh No and come Monday We could be switch over Kathrine or Amanda…
So… we have witnessed Shelly’s death. I’m with those hoping that is’s just a recollection of earlier CM cycle. It would be really, really sad to loose her from the main storyline…
This page is bothering me in another way – the technical explanation given is inconsistent, I would be happier if it was skipped all together as “magic”. This stuff is harmful precisely because of spontaneous nuclear fission, hence no half-life = no harm.
There’s a way more credible explaination close at hand: If you put a sub-critical sample of fissible material inside a beryllium mirror acting as neutron reflector, it could become critical for a breief moment before achieving new equilibrium with increased fission rate, neutron flux and heat production.
This way a safe to handle plutonium sample and supposedly safe to handle working relic/power generator (just don’t touch the loose wires!) could lethaly irradiate Shelly while putting it toghether. On the other hand, the heat wave and light flash caused by neutron surge would be rather hard do miss…
Well here’s hoping this was just her version of a nightmare as caused by touching the artifact. Little bit more in depth then Banshee woman that Monica saw though
however, what it is witnessed and what is true can be two completely things. this is only a moment, and its possibly in a vision that Shelly is having. You can experience death without actually dying.
Actually i think its actually Shirley who died. Shelly being the good twin and Shirley being the evil twin who got locked away in the attick by their dad and only lived of buckets of fishguts so far. Having escaped the attick Shirley wanted to get revenge on all fish by using the world using a giant atomic pacifier on the remaing whale population. I think we can all happily rest our minds now knowing that Shirley failed at her evil schemes.
Hmm .. It makes good sense, all of this. Mentioning the cm
Tells us this is another time-loop. So,yes,shelly dies for real
here.
I guess that the device is also a sort of recording device that
Plays the appropriate recording,when touched by the appropriate person.
In that way,much like Brandi’s diary,it points out the next stepstep.
Now that’s an interesting idea. The relic as recording device…playing back how it came to be? One has to wonder if (as so many are hoping) this was a previous Shelly death, does that mean that the artifact is still the container for a leathal radiation source…
I believe the plutonium is still in the artefact. What Shelly is “re-living” (my guess) is sort of her way of keeping a diary as Brandi did. Including part of the manual for the artifact as a recording on the artifact itself. Nowhere is stated that the artifact has just one function….
At some point in the loops, Shelly has figured-out how to make a recording play for her, and make scary apparitions for everybody else to keep them away from the plutonium inside.
I could even go sofar as to surmise there is a cycle where Shelly’s Mom doesn’t die ,and Shelly becomes the glyph-reader (her mom was a” linguist of sorts” )
Time-loops=endless possibilities. I loooove speculation 😀
Even the sphinx is crying…wow..
These events may explain her cranky demeanor. Seeing someone die over and over again, without being able to do something about it, must be maddening.
I guess this whole realm is saturated with radiation ,so Shelly started dying from the moment she entered ,every cycle again.
Next we’ll see Shelly wake-up all “WOAH!!!” and pretty peeved at Bud, but now understanding what’s in the device and what it’s use actually is: atomic battery for some lanthian doo-hickey that’s able to fix Jin.
Orrr..she died in the real world too ,and we get a tearful Bud cradling and hugging Shelly, allthewhile silently mumbling :”Why her..she was my friend…” M flipping-out, and Tina crying too, and discovering that demons can be crying for a loved one, getting her one step closer to being “human”…
:snif: *takes-out hanky* [pfrrrrooaaattt!!]
oooohkay… And here we have the net-result of sitting through too many dramatic movies with a super-sensitive BFF… 😆
Or the Sphinx is crying because she knows that this is the end of… whatever it was she was doing for Shelly and Shelly is really dead plus Paul said above that “you just witnessed Shelly’s death”.
M is the one I’m most worried about if Shelly is dead-dead and not going to be somehow replaced with anouther version. She has control of the GG’s and we know what happens when they getpissed.
It is at least one true death of Shelly.
Jin also mentioned that she lost many friends, and somewhere hinted that She and Shelly were close friends. This could be the re-play of losing one of her friends in a past cycle.
I think I am gonna take a breather with my Latte, hot ,no Sugar (again, Paul: many thanks!!) in the confusion-corner ,enjoying the company of sunshine-up-ass-blowing Tina. :LOL:
Well, she would also loose the versions of people who were alive at the time the reset occurred as well as any other mortal friends she made during the 1450-year-long cycles.
Paul mentioned in a previous comment that what looks like tears are actually nasal markings similar to those on a cat. However, it appears that the Sphinx is not unmoved by what is happening to Shelley.
Irrelevant. Shelly has been here a maximum of 5 minutes. A radiation source capable of killing inside 5 minutes should be painful. I say the sphinx is either screwing with her or is catastrophically ignorant.
i actually said to someone at work after reading this comic that i was upset it was the weekend as i wouldnt know what happened until monday 😛
well done paul
you have actually made me like a monday.
i hope
…
unless this monday will be the bringer of crushing-of-any-hopes-we-may-have.
in which case..bugger
Er… well then.
yup… biggest cliffhanger ever…
but I am not sure if it is possible to make gamma strong enough to kill in minutes?? In RL, inhaling about 20 milligrams of plutonium would probably kill you within a few months.. you would have to ingest about 500 milligrams of plutonium to die immediately, where 100 milligrams of cyanide would do the same, and is a bit easier to purcase 🙂
– that must me some magical tree, to be able to *grow* with that at its centre…
Dream world warning?? toon physics??
What killed her was the amplified Gamma radiation, not the plutonium. A heavy dose of that is much more deadly than ingested plutonium. Why do you think they are so careful using X-Ray machines???
No, it is not. Ingested alpha-decaying radioactive isotopes are among the most damaging forms of radiation to humans. Gamma rays are penetrative like X-rays, only more-so. Most of the radiation will simply pass right through the average person. Low temperature neutrons from the reaction would be more dangerous to a human.
the point is discussed elsewhere here…
– how could the tree survive?
– some thing that small, with large a radiation would at least provide a “my, thats hot..”
buuuut, speculate on, we will se on monday… 🙂
Well, we already know that these sacred trees are special…now we have a better idea of how special.
Regardless, there’s something called artistic license…
Actually, plutonium is some 10,000 times more toxic than lead. It might take 500mg to kill you with radiation, but it would take a significantly smaller amount to simply chemically poison you. Also, there was mention of gamma radiation. Plutonium mostly (~99.9999999999%) decays by alpha decay. If it’s giving off gamma radiation, it’s actually critical. That means it was both insanely pure and the casing was an exceptionally efficient neutron reflector. That plutonium would have to be the purest sample of Pu-239 on Earth and the casing would need to be lined with something with the density of dwarfs star material. It would be so dense, it would be too heavy for anyone to lift. Even 1cc of the stuff would be about 100,000,000 metric tons. The crust of the Earth wouldn’t be able to support it. It would literally sink into the center of the Earth. I’m guessing Paul just doesn’t know much about nuclear physics.
Wherever this is, it is definitely (1) not in THIS universe, is (2) supernatural, and thus the laws of physics as we know them simply do not apply here.
Plus, over the years, Paul has exhibited very good knowledge of physics, history, archeology, and uses that knowledge very effectively to throw us for major loops –
Just like he’s doing now 🙂
Paul definitely knows what he is doing, and has danged good reasons for the story twists that twist us!
First, the plutonium. Plutonium has been found on five different locations on site. If you remember an earlier video I put together, plutonium is a difficult isotope to detect because it doesn’t give off a gamma ray, it gives off an alpha particle, and that’s not picked up by the traditional Geiger counters.
yes you can make gamma radiation strong enough to kill. really fast.
A common example is if you take a spent fuel bundle from a nuclear plant (a fresh one not one from storage) and placed it at the end of a foot ball field. Then you run towards it you would never make it.
It is possible for gamma to kill in moments, but Plutonium gives off Alpha and Beta particles. You can hold a sphere of it in your hand without harm, since alpha particles don’t penetrate skin easily (provided it doesn’t ignite [pyrophoric]).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation
Get it in your lungs, and you’ll have bigger problems, as when ingested it’s deadly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium
Data on absorbed dose and symptoms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome
Lethal dose: 24 hours to 4 days, depending on source.
Radiation incidents (not for the faint of heart)
http://bjr.birjournals.org/cgi/content/full/Supplement_27/1/41
Like I said above, this is definitely not in our universe, so all laws of physics as we know them just aren’t applicable 😉
Paul’s already thrown us a major shock with her dying (Nooooo!), and no doubt there are far more shocks in store, much to my nail-biting delight.
Just sit back folks, trust that Paul knows exactly what the applicable science is in our world and where-ever-the-hell (literally???) that is, and enjoy!
Why analyze the dickens out of a wonderful story? This ain’t Literature 101 combined with Physics 102, ya know.
Just sayin’ 😉
That^^. I agree with Wolf. To be perfectly blunt, If I’d want to learn about applied nuclear physics, I’d studied that instead of Western Philosophy.
Just enjoy the story. It’s NOT Physics 101. It’s “Magic-101” ;P
No argument! Enjoy the comic for what it’s worth.
However, its obvious some of the readers like extrapolating “what if” scenarios; let them enjoy that as much as those who could care less. None of the entries I originally read were telling Paul he got it wrong…
Just like “but TV never lies”,
Paul killed her! NFW GTFO!
her last words gives the impression that this isn’t the current shelly.
and if it is and she really is dead…. WooHoo! you got too many characters as is.
too many??
monica
shelly
tina
jin
bud
brandi
the others dont get half as much airtime. in fact amanda hasnt been seen for yonks until recently.
brandi only seems to be in rare ones – usually with bud and jin now only seems to appear with alan.
…and here I thought I was the only one that didn’t like Shelly. I can’t stand her, and never have. However, that is perfectly okay 🙂 And I doubt she’s really gone (grrrr)
Yeah, right… my grandma had 5 sisters. All of them had/have kids. And they had kids. Should have killed off some relatives, right? Too many relatives, right?
See? That’s how stupid (phrased mildly) this reasoning is.
Real life =/= fiction. One of the many short story writing taboo: do not have too many main characters. It makes for difficult character development. Of course, this is not a short story and Paul’s done wonderful job of developing the character, but still. Devil’s advocate. 😀
I know! Here people are debating the science behind plutonium, but really…Shelly’s dead! I really hope not. Can’t wait until Monday to find out what happens next. I can see how she can be an annoying meat head, but overall I like her character and certainly didn’t want her to die. She provides a good contrast to Monica and the other more brainy/nerdy characters.
Just….wow. I’ve never felt compelled to post before, but holy hanna, what a cliffhanger! Shelly can’t die, I love her character too much!
Ugh. Salvia flashbacks. I remember “dying” in my trip, and then waking up (actually just coming back to reality) from the dead. I thought my trip was an afterlife.
Amazing, and utterly terrifying on a visceral level. Don’t do salvia kids.
I use salvia pretty regularly without adverse effects . . . S. officinalis, that is.
S. Divinorum produces slightly different results XD
Note to self: When a sphinx makes a task seem really easy, watch out.
Add to that note: When a sphinx declares herself to be your executioner, believe her.
weapons grade plutonium, can be handled bare handed, without harm, any James Bond movie aficionado could tell you that… because there is no gamma rays. most it’s energy is alpha particles, which are absorbed by the dead skin cells on the surface of the skin.
It’s in a magic tube that does things to it. All bets are off.
(Being a retired 8-bit End Boss that’s made of radiation, I’m pretty sure I’m the ultimate expert in this specific instance at least. I know my fictional radiation.)
if the tube did something to it, then it is not longer plutonium. plutonium is very rare naturally, and any large amounts is manufactured by man, whether directly or indirectly.
Jeez Paul!! DX
Well like I said yesterday, the cliff hanger would be jaw dropping. But I expected something goofier.
Of course I highly doubt anything truly bad happened. From what I understand this could all just be a vision she sees from holding the relic. More than likely, she’ll wake up startled on Monday in front of Bud, Tina, and Monica again.
And if this relic shows you things you fear, this vision could be showing us Shelly’s inner fear of being expendable.
Or her fear of not accomplishing her mission. We all die, but few of us have the chance to be a mythic hero.
she mentioned the calandar machine, I think this is an old loop.
Yeah. I’ve been surprised by Paul before but this is the first time I have ever been stunned!
STUNNED I’m down right WTFing myself
Stunned… and shocked.
Yeah, shocked. And stunned.
Nah. I’m just “mildly taken aback”……..
NOT!! Mu mind went WTF?..WTF?..WTF? from the moment I noticed the “dirty spost ” on Shelly.
This must be ,indeed, the clifhanger of all cliffhangers.
It also explains the wall of skulls. They’re all Shelly. It’s the sphinx’ way of honouring/remembering Shelly, or something.
(As most people, not as dense as me, already surmised)
Stunned. Not WTF, but definitely stunned. Mr. Taylor can’t be really killing off such an important main character, right? This is just a vision or dream quest, isn’t it?
OTOH, if he really is killing off Shelly permanently, I applaud the artistic integrity. Tragedy can be a powerful plot device, and this will certainly have major ramifications for M and the rest.
I would not want to be that particular Sphinx if Shelly really is dead. The thought of Monica and the Gollum girls gunning for me sends a cold chill down my spine.
If you can “poit” pee and poop out of a person, what could you do to a sphinx with that power ???
If you can survive being inside a U-boat when all 12 torpedoes went off and just get a new iron bathing suit out of the deal, what could a sphinx do to you???
o_O
2nd’d
Thirded…
Fourthed?
One o_O, two o_O, Three o_O, four…
Five o_O, six o_O, seven o_O, more…
Well, that puts a dampner on things for this weekend. *hoists a pint in her Honour* Slainte.
If that’s a pint of Guinness, add a double shot of Irish whiskey and I’ll join you.
“This may only be a vision.” Repeat three times and click the heels of your ruby slippers together until Monday.
Guinness. Bleh.
Art called it “toxic sludge” when Pip tried to get him to drink it a few St Patrick’s days ago.
Stout is fine in and of itself, but Guiness is nasty.
Now, Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout, OTOH…
FRIDAAAYYYY!!! (in the tone of Kirk yelling KAAAAAHN!!!)
I was expecting a rather different reaction than the one she had.
Seems…like a bad dream, or perhaps a gruesome metaphor.
…or…yeah, still liking the metaphor.
well she thought she was just going to go home, so it probably didn’t hit her that the vile might not be protected…
Wellllll Alrighty then. Of all the cliff hangers this is the cliff hangerist. Paul never fails to throw us a curve.
I … I can’t think of anything funny to say. *sobs in corner*
!!!
That “you’re” in “you’re job is done” might need some altering…
*pokes body with a stick* Ah-yep, Shelly is past-tense. 🙁
Kids, don’t eat plutonium or you’ll get atomic ache. 😀
So bad. Soooo bad. XD Yet so good. Ahahahaha.
Shelly’s passed on! This Shelly is no more! She has ceased to be! She’s expired and gone to meet her maker! She’s a stiff! Bereft of life, she rests in peace! She’s pushing up the daisies! Her metabolic processes are now history! She’s off the twig! She’s kicked the bucket, she’s shuffled off her mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-SHELLY!!
Thank you *so* much… you know, even when the comic is as gruesome as this one (I think the most brutal of all so far (and I hope Paul won’t be able to top that!)… worse than “crippling Jin”), the comments still can supply the humor.
Oh nice..love the dead parrot sakit..well played 🙂
Ahem — I resemble that comment!
Hmmm.. A dream sequence / vision quest / karmic sacrifice sort of thing?
Otherwise, how did Shelly survive placing the item in the previous time line? Or did she not? Remember the “Somehow you combined all your demons into one –me?” episode? Perhaps Shelly’s conscious is her own ghost!!!
Cue spooky music….
very true! 🙂 or did they do lead-lined suits back then??
Conspiracty-theorists claim that the priests that guarded the Ark of the Covenant, indeed, used lead-lined ceremonial clothing to shield themselves from whatever was in the buggered thing..
Soo..it’s not unlikely the Lanthians (with their obsessive meddling with all things dangerous) would have hazmat-suits and lead-lined suits too…
Problem is that plutonium refinement is a relatively modern technology.
…unless, of course, the handle thingie is somehow ancient magic tech that needs modern fuel sources (hey, how is it generating energy anyway? Nuclear reactors generate power by steam turbine…)
Except for the ones that generate it directly from heat.
Except for reactors that generate it directly from heat.
So, does this mean Shelly just relived something which happened to her in a past cycle? Does this mean the plutonium is safely in the handle waiting for the newest Shelly to fetch it? But, if it’s a vision of a past cycle, why is she wearing the clothes she was wearing at Monica’s house? Why would she be there in a quest tio fix Jin since Jin would still be OK because the CM is still in operation?
Also, her last words were “The Calendar” which would lead me to believe it was during a previous cycle in which she was slated to help in the “fixing” of the CM in 2012. Sort of saying “I can’t die now, I have to help fix the CM yet”. Or perhaps she realized she’d come back again so it wasn’t really over for her. Assuming they failed to fix the CM again. Anyway, it lends some credence to that pile of bones all being Shelly(s).
Hmmmm, the clothes could be a coincidence since it’s completely different time lines. Maybe in the previous timeline, instead of being about Jin, the hijinx with stinky and the relic were part of that cycle’s plan to fix the calendar machine. So same result, different motive. Of course earlier she said “she’s trying to help someone” so that seems more that it’s about Jin, than the whole universe.
but fixing (or is that phixing?) the CM was about helping jin and this was a possible angle to use in the process or just to stabilize her (see little lost girl in the mirror page) for the repair attempt.
Another thing. If she was the one who took it out of the handle and put it in the tree in the first place, would it not have killed her then too?
Huh! Maybe Shelly put that in the tree the prevous cycle (and died), which is why the Sphinx had seen her before.
I think you have it. This is another time loop, like with the calendar, that they will be stuck doing the same thing over and over like ‘Ground hog Day’ until all the steps to break it are completed.
Or maybe there is another calendar, in which the previous calendar was a sub-loop which had to be completed first before the new calendar resets . . .
This could be very, very, messy.
The sphinx indicated that Shelly was “back in less than a cycle.” I don’t know what she did previously, but she must not have died doing it and she would have had to somehow come back within her current lifetime since she would not have regenerated due to the CM resetting. Unless, of course, the cycles to which the sphinx is referring are not the CM cycles.
Allow me to point out that all the previous rigmarole was so that they could stop the CM before it reached the end of its programmed cycle length. So right now they’re what, three years ahead of when the CM would have reset everything?
she ‘did’ hide it in a graveyard.
in her own grave perhaps?
im gonna cling to that idea for dear life this weekend if you dont mind 🙂
Nope. She’s a goner. No more hi-jincks ,no more officer tight-bun jokes, and no more uncontrolled anger-explosions.
*takes out kilo-bag of salt and starts rubbing* >:)
Meh… She’s just having an “explainatory vision”, and will wake -up on her butt, probably shaking uncontrollable.
O.o
*cries*
*clumsily pats arm* Don’ worry kiddo ,Paul has got the biggest thumbs and the biggest hat ever..he’ll pull the-rabbit-of-rabbits out of that hat on monday or tuesday…..
Knowing Paul, he’ll likely pull a hat out of a rabbit.
^^That too 😀
@jay-em after jin (see early animal form) that will be sooooome bunny!!
Shelly and Tina may be soul-sisters, or something similar. So Shelly-as-Shelly may appear in a remarkable new form. Maybe as a spirit with a sword that would kill anyone else…and “haunted” by a body.
FWIW, Paul seems to have read some of the same references I have on plutonium toxicity.
That leads to an interesting thought. Could it be Shelly’s spirit that’s haunting Jin? A past Shelly spirit that is? Maybe a passel of past Shellys? They’d all be pretty teed off that the sphinx failed to mention that little detail BEFORE she extracted the vial from the tree.
Shelly told her not to.
sry, pedant nitpick:
in the first panel, s/you’re/your
*goes back into box in corner, closes lid*
*takes-out match ,lights corner of box, and sits back* 🙂
That would be one smelly bonfire…
Not if You don’t let the marshmallows go black.
Man, I hate it when that happens to me.
Paul, that was not a nice thing to do. I’m leaving for three weeks of backpacking tomorrow, and THIS is what I will dwell on?
Ah, but think of what a great time you will have going through 3 weeks of updates at one time!
Oooo…that’s a good point! I’m a bit jealous now!
I have this sinking feeling… that this isn’t a dream or hallucination. :<
…or an Imaginary Story.
Actually, I think it was a re-run…..see comments above.
Um…..Im kinda shocked…..the only words running through my head are these: WHAT….THE….F**K?! :O
Is it me or does the side profile of the Sphinx look a real lot like the side profile of Shelly in the panel to its left.
It was discussed before but yes, they do look a like.
Which is interesting as she looked like Monica when Shelly first came in.
..and Monica saw Jin…
Is it wrong that as much as she is probably my favorite character, I actually hope that this is real, because I am so burned out on 35 years of Dramatic Non-Deaths?
Let me just state for the record, you just witnessed Shelly’s death.
Well, ok, then! Kudos. I think. 🙂
That sounds weasel-worded to me.
Are you watching the new season of Dr Who?
wha??? um, uh, riiiight…..
true true true
(river slapping the doctor was good 😀 )
and rebirth right? please tell me there is a rebirth somewhere in that plot of yours….
Nope! No rebirth. Just “back to the current post-CM time-cycle.
.
.
.
.
.
or not… *evil laugh heard in the distance ,say the direction of St Paul, Mn*
Somehow it doesn’t seem to be your thing to throw spoilers like that Paul so if you don’t mind I’ll keep wondering what is really going on for now 😉
“The Impossible Astronaut”.
Interesting. But Shelly’s death when? Future? Past? Previous cycle? Not that I expect an answer as it would, understandably, give away too much plot at this point. At any rate, it’s still powerful and totally unexpected.
Her death in the current cycle, or a previous cycle? Let’s be a bit more specific here.
*sniff*
Is she DEAD dead or dead like Jean Grey?
Well, there’s completely dead, almost dead, partly dead, mostly dead…
Quick! Send for Miracle Max!
I’m not sure she has any change in her pockets. No pockets, for one thing.
But I bet 3/4 of the guys reading this would love to search her for loose change anyway…
Not in her present leaky condition.
Jean Grey doesn’t need a tombstone she needs a revolving door. BTW, I’m out of the loop but last year she was coming back again. Is she dead or alive at the moment?
We have also witnessed Tina’s death, Monica’s death, and the deaths of all three Golem Girls. We have also read about Shelly’s ‘almost death’ (if not actual death) during her vision quest….
that makes me think… does this phix know how to make golems??? 😛
tehnically we havent witnessed them
in all accounts they have been rehashing something in the past
this is something that could be happing right now real time. no memory. could be no happyish ending.
It’s interesting how Paul got in most of the stages of death here. Denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance.
Well, you must admit she had to hurry–not a lot of time to cover all the stages as fast as it was killing her. Still, I’m amazed at how well she did.
“… Denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance. …”
And that, mind you, is just the comments!
@fatuncle
heh i think im still in denial 😛
@Paula: Watch out for the crocodiles. 😉
Also, you have to think ‘which death?’ Since the Calendar Machine started malfunctioning, EVERYONE has died fifty-seven times, more or less….
They say that the only people in comics to stay dead are Bucky (Captain America’s WWII partner) and Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, and I think they also came back.
Heh. Uncle Ben 🙂
they usually come back as ghosts that the villian has conjured or if the hero is under a lot of stress and needs their guidance for an epiphany or comfort of some kind. even then its still just their brains telling them what they already know…. however, i have a feeling this shelly is dead as a doornail and won’t be seen ever again…
Baron Zemo. (Unless he’s come back since i last checked.)
I think Paul’s statement above is riffing on Steven Moffat’s explanation for why he opened the latest season of Doctor Who with the Eleventh Doctor’s regeneration-negating death. Most people reading Wapsi Square would recognize that. But it’s a worthy reminder that in the Who backstory, a cold and evil iteration of the Doctor was prophesied to arise after his eleventh incarnation.
So when fate or time travel is involved, dying is rarely meaningless. But it will often look like it is.
As for afterlife or rebirth, Shelly would have been better off following her Plains ancestors. They widely believed in spirits taking to the sky. Too bad for her that that visionquest was interrupted, because the Indo-European heroes have always been drawn to the realm of Pluto, the underworld…
Then Erishkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.
She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.
She struck her.
Inanna was turned into a corpse,
A piece of rotting meat,
And was hung from a hook on the wall.
as in “This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be!” or Superman dead?
Okay, but which Shelley?
Everyone pay attention.
Paul’s comment is one of the classical examples of ‘throwing gas on a bonfire’.
Now, back to your speculating.
hi hi
That is one seriously ignoble death.
Not enough plutonium in that vial to emit enough radiation to kill anybody, at least not that fast.
Something else is coming.
Yeah, but you’re not the one telling the story. Paul just posted that we witnessed Shelly’s death. I guess it’s Super-Plutonium! with half the calories of regular plutonium. :/
More like quadruple the calories.
pfft… Who would consume that? :p
Oh, Shelly.
It was the one substance she could not abide. It was her nemesis, her kryptonite.
It was cluetonium.
And I will take comfort in THAT, and wait impatiently for Monday….
It is if the case does amplify the gamma radiation. 500 REM is a lethal dose, that much could easily give that amount a close range. Amplified, who knows how many times, yes it could act that fast. But we would be talking over 5000 REM for that.
Problem there is that if it were giving off that much radiation (I thought it ‘recycled’?) then that capsule would be HOT. With the amount of alpha radiation coming off that little of a surface area, it might be getting into meltdown temperatures. Defiantly hot enough that Shelly couldn’t causally pick it up.
I’m thinking this is more ‘Shelly’s idea of Plutonium’ inside her vision.
Question is why does the artifact need it’s atomic batteries to power from Shelly, but Monica gets a scary boogie-girl? Because Shelly is a mechanic? Or would the scary Jin-thing have gotten Monica to slice the tree and get the magic power source?
Is powering up this artifact a Bad Idea(tm)? The last group that had it ended up dead and tried to boobytrap it… even if it wasn’t under the ocean…
And encapsulated inside the tree it would have built up enough heat to spontaneously combust long ago. Certainly when exposed to oxygen after Shelly split the tree.
In addition, wood does not stop gamma radiation. It’s really immaterial whether Shelly chopped the tree down or not. She would have received a lethal dose just being in the nearby.
the spinx said in the first pannel the radiation is amplified.
doesnt say how much.
berryllium
only ever heard of that in the film ‘the shadow’ where they made a berryllium sphere which could destroy a whole city. the berryllium amplified it i think
Beryllium is like Aluminum. Except lighter. And really toxic. It’s used to make windows in x-ray machines that let the x-rays through.
In fact, it’s used in making Nuclear “devices”…
I’m going with the berilium sphere from “Galaxy Quest”. Power source, yes…but then you get the Omega-13 device, which backtracks time just long enough to undo a single mistake. Or, you know, un-dead Shelly.
Because… YOTD is not allowed to strike again! It’s over, damnit, no more dead people!! 😯
‘I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m just “Crewman Number Six.” I’m expendable. I’m the guy in the episode who dies to prove how serious the situation is. I’ve gotta get outta here. ‘
Let’s get out of here before one of those things kills Guy!
yes your right
shadow was bronzium
ah well started with ‘b’
What is YOTD?
Erm..
…last year.
YOTD stands for Year of the Dead. From March 17th, 2010, to March 18th, 2011, I lost 28 people and 5 pets, all of whom I knew well, most of whom I was related to, and the getting over it has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. When it gets to the point where people ask, “How’s it going?” and you answer, “Well, nobody I know died today” and aren’t joking… yeah.
Sorry, TMI, I know… 😯
Beryllium reflects neutrons. In an atom bomb, it reflects them back into the bomb core, increasing the amount of neutrons taking part in the chain reaction and letting you use less plutonium for the same amount of BOOM.
The Manhattan Project tested several metals for use as the “tamper”, including gold, silver and platinum. There is a story about how they tried a gold tamper, found it not very useful, and ended up using it as a doorstop until they could get it back to Fort Knox. A SEVERAL POUND gold doorstop.
The Dahlonega (Georgia) gold rush of 1829 (according to one account) started when someone discovered that the hunk of rock they’d been using as a doorstop was, in fact, a chunk of pure native gold.
A fifteen-pound chunk.
Gold would probably make a very good doorstop because it’s so dense. It sounds very practical to me.
However, if it was Cobalt-60…Now THERE’S a Gamma source!
it says the vile amplifies the radiation. I would assume, since its meant to be a power source, it would do so efficiently as possible to get the most radiation possible. there for it could be 100% of the normal radiation, or it could be 10000% of the radiation. either way, slight amounts of gamma radiation have been known to cause nasty cancers…and if you’re wondering how the tree could survive that, you have to remember it’s made of time, not of organic matter.
Hey, while we’re on about physics, how does a sword that small chop a tree that big cleanly in half with a single blow?
Isaac Newton needs love, too, people.
It’s very sharp and very thin and very strong and very dense and very well lubricated?
And has some force behind it.
But it doesn’t seem long enough for such an even cut.
Maybe Bible-inspired alchemy has the answer.
All of this argument over the physics is so much handwavium–(1) this is a dream sequence, in a magic landscape, and (2) not being described by experts.
Fairportfan, yes, something else is definitely coming. We end the week with a cliffhanger and a big pile of Radiation Does Not Work That Way, so I’m looking forward to Monday’s strip.
And, of course, this looks like Shelly’s artifact vision anyway.
I’m totally on board with Jamie here—killing off a character for dramatic flair and then revealing it to be all a dream sequence so you can keep the character is so Marvel. It’s much more dramatic to realize that sometimes bad things happen to good people and just let them die.
Yup, much more dramatic… *and* a good way to lose readers.
The Princess Bride:
Agh. “die”
Sometimes the wrong people drr drr drr.
Shelly got herself killed by being a Holy Fool. She even needs to have the fact that she’s dying explained to her twice.
i cannot remember that line from the film.
in the book?
It’s what Goldman’s grandfather says to him when he insists that he must have read it wrong – that Westley can’t die.
I can’t remember how much of the framing story they actually used in the film; if you haven’t read the book, the framing story is actually almost as important as the story of Buttercup, Westley and Co.
ah
it IS in there. just differently.
(The Boy’s Room)
(The boy is now sitting up in bed. He’s obviously feeling much better now. He’s very into the story.)
Boy: You read that wrong. She doesn’t marry Humperdink, she marries Westley. I’m just sure of it. After all that Westley did for her, if she does not marry him, it wouldn’t be fair.
Grandfather: Well, who says life is fair? Where is that written? Life isn’t always fair.
Boy: I’m telling you you’re messing up the story, now get it right!
Grandfather: Do you want me to go on with this?
Boy: Yes.
Grandfather: All right, then. No more interruptions. (starts to read again) … at noon, she met her subjects again. This time as their Queen.
Maybe…you’d lose some readers who come here purely to escape the harsh realities of life (maybe), but the readers who appreciate good drama would probably become even more loyal fans.
i personally read fantasy because life bites like that
i dont need to be reminded constantly about reality. get reminded of that on a daily basis tyvm.
*sulks*
was a random rant there btw not dedicated at anyone or anything 🙂
still luv the comic 🙂
Word! I don’t understand the “well, it’s just like life” argument either. If I want life, I just have to wake up each morning (which I do anyway, I aitn’t dead).
That was what kept me coming back to Hill Street Blues, week after week – the first episode made it clear that everybody’s ass was up for grabs.
Yes, that was a great show.
“Let’s be careful out there.”
…why does it creep me out when you guys reference films and tv shows that I’ve only studied in screenwriting classes?
thank you for the compliment
we watch such awsome stuff it is required by education to study it 😀
That… was not nice.
At the very least, it was unkind.
Interesting thing is, if I have got this all straight, Shelly herself set this up.
The sphinx said that Shelly had been there before. But I note that the sphinx did not say that she left. One possible inference is that all of the bodies of the adventurers that the sphinx said she has been cleaning up … are all Shelly.
So what we have are multiple, um, spin-offs? Clones? I’m not sure I have a word to express this exactly. Shelly has built this scenario one life at a time.
And Shelly can be both dead, here in this dreamscape — if that’s what describes it — and alive back at Monica’s.
Hmmm … still a few loose ends here … gotta think about this for a while.
Well, we now have a purpose for the artifact! It’s to use up Shelly!
Seriously, can you imagine what kind of need would drive this series of actions? Something dreadful this way comes.
So much for the sphinx being a heartless monster. She’s weeping …
Reiterations. That might be the word I was looking for.
Iteration is a noun defined as a repetition (therefore the word you were looking for). Reiteration is a verb defined as excessively repeating something. Using reiteration as a noun is excessively redundant. 😛
btw…that’s all from the first definitions of the words according to dictionary.reference.com…I just hate the word “reiteration”. 🙂
Between you and I, he ain’t worrying none about being repetitively redundant, irregardless.
URgh…*goes completely fetal*
Do I have to send you all to the Department of Redundant Repetition Department, Desk for Reiteration Desk?
Pete and Repete were sitting in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left?
Pete and Repete were sitting in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was left?
drops a small gold nugget in the pun jar and slinks away, hoping not to have hot coffee thrown on her head
Instance. If the artifact spawns a new instance of Shelly to go into the tree world, there could be an arbitrarily large number of dead Shellys there, one for each visit.
One hopes that it’s a simple fork and that each instance returns some information to the parent instance. Multi-threaded processing can get messy.
After the shock wore off, and I was able to give it some (Clear) thought –
Iterations is right. As I said above, ALL have died fifty-leven times since the CM malburptioned. We just watched a re-run………….
Actually, I’m not sure one can say everyone died. Whoever was alive in the world at the time of reset never died as such. At least not like Shelly just did. They simply … well, I don’t know what happened to them. They just ceased to exist I guess. I’m not sure you can call it death though. Maybe they were suspended in time until the next cycle caught up with them again. As the story stands right now, we have not reached that point yet.
AFAICS there is only one timeline (The human one – the Sphinxs etc are outside of this..) so everything is erased and set back to the ‘start’ .. its only those not affected by this that wake up and remember the last one…
..but do remember to separate ‘guesswork’ from what *actually* happens in the strip, including comments from the *author* 🙂 🙂
Oh and hey there was the “played the immortal politicians” line Maya gave Jin… http://wapsisquare.com/comic/quite-easy/
Illiad: True, I am speculating; I have never been completely right trying to second-guess ANY author (much less Paul), but I am somewhat confidant.
My, that was a weaselly sentence….
Actually I was referring to sending someone on a suicide mission without their knowledge or consent, even if it is “you” in a future time cycle. Missions with a sure outcome of death if the mission is accomplished have to be taken with full knowledge of the outcome.
Well, there shouldn’t be any more time cycles because the broken calendar machine was destroyed. So if this is real and is happening now, there shouldn’t be any more Shellys.
I’m wondering if that was a past Shelly. Perhaps the current Shelly is reliving the experience thanks to her connection with the artifact. Remember how Brandi narrated what happened in the pit? That may have been foreshadowing for this.
I suppose that brings up the question; had the Shelly we just saw die (we’ll call her “Future Shelly”) known the mission would be fatal AND she knew why it had to be done, would she have done it and sacrificed herself?
If the Shelly who set it all up (we’ll call her “Past Shelly”) knew the every next Shelly would be just like her in this self sacrificing attitude, then seting things up for a Future Shelly to die in the process would morally work out. So the outcome would have been the same if Future Shelly knew she would die or if she was completely ignorant of the fact until it was too late. This, despite the fact Past Shelly made the decision for Future Shelly (as this case seems to indicate).
Well, one potential snag would be if the earlier Shelly couldn’t be certain that they would fail to fix the calendar machine in the Future Shelly’s cycle. If they had taken care of the calendar, then Future Shelly would have been robbed of a potentially long life. As it turned out, neither Shelly was going to continue to exist for much longer because their timeline was going to be erased when the calendar machine reset.
I’m thinking she knew it would not be fixed because she did not get back with the relic+plutonium. Apparently this was critical in that time loop for fixing the CM. Or so they thought anyway.
Another way to intrepert her final words would be to combine the words from the two panels … “I need, the calendar.” Indicating her words meant she needed the calendar for something personal, and not just to give her a shot at another life. Perhaps in that loop she was in need of something the calendar could provide for her. Something we know nothing about at present. Thus she was lamenting her need for the calendar and the fact she would not get to use it to help her in some personal way.
well, interesting climax to this particular arc…
i like the progression of detail as she proceeds to die, and this probably solves where all the skulls came from…
anyway, can’t wait for monday…I’ll be hitting the bottle till then…
it is nice death artwork
Paul i have no idea how you can draw stuff like that and not shiver 🙂
He sure has studied ‘death by radiation poisoning” complete with sores and bleeding eyes, nose ,ears and mouth…brrr..
Paul Taylor- “the web comic artist who’s done his homework”
Yes, but the symptom onset time is…unlikely at best.
Also, the sphinx doesn’t seem to understand radiation as well as she should. But she may well know that she’s just feeding Shelly technobabble.
well it depends on when you think Shelly was first exposed to it. if the tree was letting the radiation through, then she was exposed to it the whole time she was there. also, its a comic, its shortened for story telling purposes.
…and tongue hanging out. Because nothing says you are dead as much as having your tongue extended (therefore tensed) and limp (therefore… relaxed…)
I think that’s pretty much how she looks after an explosive night with officer tight buns though, so it’s hard to say.
Ah, Yes! “The tongue” now if there’s one dead-giveaway of deadness.. *drops penny in pun-jar*
If you think that’s the case here, I need to introduce you to Junji Ito for some perspective.
Junji Ito?? Do.Not.Want! Suddenly I start to understand more about You than is comfortable…. 😛
BOO!
Oh wow.
that .. yea that sucks 🙁
but …
people can die…and it only be a way for them to change?
eh im grasping at non-existant swords
Paul youve done a frikkin joss whedon on us!
(Still havent fully forgiven that man for killing Doyle in angel)
I am interested how the sphinx seems to pause in the first sentence. almost like she says
its lethal…to you
now..if its amplified it would be lethal to anyone not just shelly.
Well, presumably it’s not lethal to the sphinx.
Irrelevant as the Sphinx did not handle the plutonium.
Not irrelevant if the amplified radiation is not restricted to the person holding the artifact…
@ Julie: if the same magical wards that protect Sphinxes in the library are set up here, then its irrelevant.
@Kramegame: Why do you think there are special wards set up in the library to protect the sphinxes? That would imply that they are weaker outside of it. That would limit their ability to guard it and perform other tasks.
@eschmenk: yes, Phix is weaker outside of the library, otherwise she wouldn’t have had to make the distinction in telling Nudge that she can’t be hurt there, and as a result could have pummeled her right there in the coffee shop. I’m not saying it’s to improve their performance, it’s just making sure they don’t die on the job. plus if each sphinx has a location they can open a portal to that they can’t get hurt in, then they can’t attack each other, and it would help keep order in the system.
….
What if thats Nudge. It could be Nudge and this is all some big trick. Please…
It’s reasons like this why I hate Star Trek.
Okay… The tube amplifies and recycles the gamma radiation… Waitaminiute…. Gamma radiation isn’t that dangerous (It’s basically higher energy X-rays. And the amount given off by that small of a sample would probably not be that much (not saying you’d want to swallow it…). But having a radioactive material contained in a tube that ‘recycles’ emitted gamma rays… are we talking about returning it? Baking unstable elements in high energy EM waves?!? That’s nuclear meltdown right there.
Now, Beryllium, however, is very toxic. It’ll eat your skin if you hold it in your hand. The good news is that it’ll let all the gamma rays out. The ones that aren’t recycled…
…it’s magic, Jason. Just move on…
It’s not magic, it’s story telling. You just need to suspend the real world and let Paul take you on a trip through his mind.
wasnt gamma radiation what turned the hulk?
Alpha, beta, gamma – gamma is what does the most damage of the three.
Put it this way – if there’s a supernova pretty much anywhere within our galaxy, and its axis is aligned to direct its gamma ray burst this way – we all die.
Writers can easily let things get out of hand.
I recently saw an episode of Cowboy Bebop that constantly made reference to “the mono system”.
The story made more sense if you substituted “mono system” with “techno babble”.
I’d like to direct your attention to the
Demon Core experiments, particularly the second, involving plutonium and beryllium. The article doesn’t specify the amounts used, so that’s where the story telling can take over.
Yes, remember that the substances are revealed to be plutonium and beryllium… by a sphinx. A little different than being described by a Scottish starship engineer.
“It’s clearly not a hut– it’s a generic low rise commercial building!”
There’s the whole Scottish accent, for one thing. 😛
Wow, that’s….
Wow.
Shelly is dead.
She will be “cleaned up” and placed with honor among the other dead Shellys.
Long live Shelly.
This seems to be one of those assembly by lethal stages procedures where every assembler dies but the guy who finally carries it out of the assembly area.
Since the artifact is now loose in the present world I think we can assume the artifact is now ready for its designed function.
“No, no, no – I kill the bus driver!”
placed with honor?
that sphinx is probably hungry and all. With nothing there but a cooked shelly, what would you do?
Starve.
sphinx – human
different species
and she DID call shelly a cow…
maybe she was considering hamburgers?
I tend to take a more general view. To me any intelligent species which eats another intelligent species is engaging in a form of cannibalism.
That. Did. NOT. HAPPEN.
There is far more to this than we know. There has to be. I can accept senseless, meaningless, or pointless death in real life, but NOT in my webcomics.
Well, at least she just got laid. It would suck if she died frustrated.
Goes to website:
<a href="http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com"
Presses button.
@Paul
But…but… Shelly is to hawt to die! What about that MonicaxShelly sex scene you said you were going to do?
I suck at html tags (T_T)
…maybe it’s Monday, disguised as CPR. :hopeful: ?
I hope not. I’ve lost too many comics to that stuff.
Clarification: Hopefully there is CPR on Monday. I’m not terribly interested in Shelly/Mon slash.
just calling it now but this is a flashback that we unknowingly started watching of the previous cycle when they hadn’t fixed the calendar machine and shelly was there
Ya. I think everyone was thinking in terms of previous CM cycles. But it looks like we were off by at least one. So Shelly was using CM cycles to setup things for her finding all of the pieces that she separates. And this CM cycle with Shelly sacrificing herself to prime the flashback function of the hilt so the post-CM Shelly can find all of the pieces “safely” with the flashback. At least I’m hoping that’s what’s happening.
And I can’t believe that it’s Shelly setup things to do this. I smell Brandi’s involvement in all of this.
Do you have any IDEA what this will do to her credit rating?
shed still be sent tax bills 😛
It’s inevitable.
Well, here’s hoping it’s really (as people seemed to think/claim the last few days) just a vision and not real (or s.th. like A Dream with Freddy (wouldn’t that be a nice title for a slasher flick?))
Hmm, I just noticed: yesterday, a few here speculated Shelly could run screaming today. Maybe she will do so, but on Monday, in the real world? I’m not sure what I’d do, waking up from a dream of *actually* dying.
(The name’s Ingrid, by the way…)
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Wapsi Square — mighty Shelly has been rubbed out.
I Do Not Like This.
… but if it is to be…
…then they must retrieve the body, and build a fire.
Don’t forget the tree as well. You’ll need the wood. After all the booze she drank over the years she could burn for a week.
Yes, convenient that. First to reduce the body to ashes, then to fire the clay. That is as much of the process that I know of.
Good Goddess people
She is in a Time-tree forest, and dies with the words of the calendar in her lips
Where is in the timeloop is Shelly? And Is this a past vision? Another timeline or Might have been?
Oh No and come Monday We could be switch over Kathrine or Amanda…
PBH
or better yet Nudge and Phix in the Library
I… can’t tell if this is the biggest cliffhanger of them all, or the most sadistic that Pablo has ever been.
So… we have witnessed Shelly’s death. I’m with those hoping that is’s just a recollection of earlier CM cycle. It would be really, really sad to loose her from the main storyline…
This page is bothering me in another way – the technical explanation given is inconsistent, I would be happier if it was skipped all together as “magic”. This stuff is harmful precisely because of spontaneous nuclear fission, hence no half-life = no harm.
There’s a way more credible explaination close at hand: If you put a sub-critical sample of fissible material inside a beryllium mirror acting as neutron reflector, it could become critical for a breief moment before achieving new equilibrium with increased fission rate, neutron flux and heat production.
This way a safe to handle plutonium sample and supposedly safe to handle working relic/power generator (just don’t touch the loose wires!) could lethaly irradiate Shelly while putting it toghether. On the other hand, the heat wave and light flash caused by neutron surge would be rather hard do miss…
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
ah… buh… wha….
*Whacks side of head to get brain working again*
Well here’s hoping this was just her version of a nightmare as caused by touching the artifact. Little bit more in depth then Banshee woman that Monica saw though
Nope. See above. Paul says “you just witnessed Shelly’s death.
however, what it is witnessed and what is true can be two completely things. this is only a moment, and its possibly in a vision that Shelly is having. You can experience death without actually dying.
Two completely different things?
How appropriate for Friday the 13th. Gulp.
Next week: Shelly’s previously unheard-of, completely identical twin sister Shirley arrives from Seattle…
…no she won’t, and don’t call me Shirley.
Actually i think its actually Shirley who died. Shelly being the good twin and Shirley being the evil twin who got locked away in the attick by their dad and only lived of buckets of fishguts so far. Having escaped the attick Shirley wanted to get revenge on all fish by using the world using a giant atomic pacifier on the remaing whale population. I think we can all happily rest our minds now knowing that Shirley failed at her evil schemes.
Hmm .. It makes good sense, all of this. Mentioning the cm
Tells us this is another time-loop. So,yes,shelly dies for real
here.
I guess that the device is also a sort of recording device that
Plays the appropriate recording,when touched by the appropriate person.
In that way,much like Brandi’s diary,it points out the next stepstep.
Ugh! Answering via mobile makes for odd texts…
Now that’s an interesting idea. The relic as recording device…playing back how it came to be? One has to wonder if (as so many are hoping) this was a previous Shelly death, does that mean that the artifact is still the container for a leathal radiation source…
I believe the plutonium is still in the artefact. What Shelly is “re-living” (my guess) is sort of her way of keeping a diary as Brandi did. Including part of the manual for the artifact as a recording on the artifact itself. Nowhere is stated that the artifact has just one function….
At some point in the loops, Shelly has figured-out how to make a recording play for her, and make scary apparitions for everybody else to keep them away from the plutonium inside.
I could even go sofar as to surmise there is a cycle where Shelly’s Mom doesn’t die ,and Shelly becomes the glyph-reader (her mom was a” linguist of sorts” )
Time-loops=endless possibilities. I loooove speculation 😀
Jus’ my E 0,02
Julie: “does that mean that the artifact is still the container for a leathal radiation source…”
Would you try to disarm it? 😛
That might explain why the Nazis were interested in it. It sounds like it could be used as a power source for a powerful weapon.
Over 120 comments, and the strip hasn’t been up seven hours! Boy! Touched a nerve, here, Paul.
i think i keep comming back in the hopes he updates early..
like today?
Even the sphinx is crying…wow..
These events may explain her cranky demeanor. Seeing someone die over and over again, without being able to do something about it, must be maddening.
I guess this whole realm is saturated with radiation ,so Shelly started dying from the moment she entered ,every cycle again.
Next we’ll see Shelly wake-up all “WOAH!!!” and pretty peeved at Bud, but now understanding what’s in the device and what it’s use actually is: atomic battery for some lanthian doo-hickey that’s able to fix Jin.
Orrr..she died in the real world too ,and we get a tearful Bud cradling and hugging Shelly, allthewhile silently mumbling :”Why her..she was my friend…” M flipping-out, and Tina crying too, and discovering that demons can be crying for a loved one, getting her one step closer to being “human”…
:snif: *takes-out hanky* [pfrrrrooaaattt!!]
oooohkay… And here we have the net-result of sitting through too many dramatic movies with a super-sensitive BFF… 😆
Or the Sphinx is crying because she knows that this is the end of… whatever it was she was doing for Shelly and Shelly is really dead plus Paul said above that “you just witnessed Shelly’s death”.
M is the one I’m most worried about if Shelly is dead-dead and not going to be somehow replaced with anouther version. She has control of the GG’s and we know what happens when they get pissed.
It is at least one true death of Shelly.
Jin also mentioned that she lost many friends, and somewhere hinted that She and Shelly were close friends. This could be the re-play of losing one of her friends in a past cycle.
I think I am gonna take a breather with my Latte, hot ,no Sugar (again, Paul: many thanks!!) in the confusion-corner ,enjoying the company of sunshine-up-ass-blowing Tina. :LOL:
Well, she would also loose the versions of people who were alive at the time the reset occurred as well as any other mortal friends she made during the 1450-year-long cycles.
Paul mentioned in a previous comment that what looks like tears are actually nasal markings similar to those on a cat. However, it appears that the Sphinx is not unmoved by what is happening to Shelley.
Hqiz. Now that I look closer… I wish we could edit/delete comments. :\
I need it to be Monday now!
Am I the only one who notices how similar the sphinx looks to Shelly?
its been mentioned a few times.
Okay, this time it’s MY turn to go “Aw, *$%#@!”
I’m thinking any radiation powerful enough to kill that quickly would have been felt.
Radiation that could kill that quickly should have been seen.
From over the horizon.
well it’s possible that the tree wasn’t shielding the radiation, so she was exposed to it the whole time, it just amplified when she pulled it out.
Irrelevant. Shelly has been here a maximum of 5 minutes. A radiation source capable of killing inside 5 minutes should be painful. I say the sphinx is either screwing with her or is catastrophically ignorant.
Well, she seems to be very most sincerely dead.
Wait. If the tube amplifies and recycles the Gamma, then none should have gotten out to harm Shelley. Right? Right?
Sheesh.
Memo to Paul: We’re supposed to love Friday and hate Monday. That’s the way the business world works. You’ve gotten me all backwards, Dude. 😉
haha
i actually said to someone at work after reading this comic that i was upset it was the weekend as i wouldnt know what happened until monday 😛
well done paul
you have actually made me like a monday.
i hope
…
unless this monday will be the bringer of crushing-of-any-hopes-we-may-have.
in which case..bugger
“Wait. If the tube amplifies and recycles the Gamma, then none should have gotten out to harm Shelley. Right? Right?”
If that were the case, the artifact probably couldn’t harness it.
Amplified and recycled Gamma?
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=455
The Old Wolf: er, no, its the *anticipation* that we love, the lack if stimulation we hate, nothing until monday!!
and as for excessive speculation, well….. :/