Well, she’s one body filled with many voices. It’s tough, but for now, I’d personally still refer to her as one character, simply because we’ve only begun to identify the entities that inhabit her. And, other characters in the comic refer to her as one “person”. A personality still kind-of croaks through that we can identify, also. Singular, umbrella. *shrug* A matter of personal preference.
late last week her demons were in an argument, and the one that we’ve now nicknamed Nudge won the argument with a question that seemed to quiet everything down to the point that she just stopped in the middle of the road in her house……..
What makes this really creepy, is the spider is crawling into the socket, like the body is just sort of empty shell until one of them wakes up and makes it whole
We’ve seen that she can physically manifest her aspects, so I’m guessing that’s just what’s left when “nobody’s in.” I guess they forgot to lock up (lock down?) when they left in their version of going to dreamland. Kinda like nodding off on a couch. Nobiggie 😀
It’s both creepy and funny, crunny … freepy? I guess she just shuts down whereever she is at that moment. Another good reason she’ll probably never have a BF. Or a sleepover. So, now the question is, what triggers the shutdown?
Oooof! this time is one too much for me! I follow Wapsi Square since last summer, and I HAVE to say something! Now!
This-comic-is-awesome, thank you thank you thankyou sooo much!
Now, about this particular panel, I’ll have 2 remarks :
1) There is an ancient superstition somewhere (can’t remember where, sorry) that says that you should never kill a spider, as spiders are the sleeping ones’ souls…they just come in back at dawn…
2) There is a French saying about “having a spider in the ceiling” ; applies to someone considered a lunatic, at least slightly…
First time I see these 2 ideas used so literally, and I really like it 😉
I’ve still got a bunch of healing spider bites on me where one of the little creeps tried to decide if I was good to eat. Hooray, Tina 1, Spider 0. I hope Katherine’s are better behaved.
OKay, we’ve had the creepy interlude, can we go back to voyeurism tomorrow?
So her eyes set things on fire when she wakes up? I always thought her creepyness was fully internal. That all the images people like Mon and Bud see of her demons were figurative-ish. But now her nature is having a real effect on the real world. Interesting. And I guess she doesn’t have the convulsive morning dialogue and subsequent concert from that previous comic every day.
Also… that spider should have soooo gone into her mouth.
Ummm – looking at it again, i think that maybe it managed to actually get into her eye socket – because some of the smoke seems to be coming out of her mouth…
Good timing! If this had happened yesterday, she’d have said something like, ‘It’s Monday morning!’ with that chipper smile and decades of cartoon lore would be in turmoil.
I woke up one night with a *lady* bug crawling across my eyelid. it’s a darn good thing I was wearing cotton gloves (extra moisturizing hands) else i’d have poked myself in the *eye* getting it off.
Yeah, my first impression was that the spider was her animating spirit, returning to her body through the eye socket. But I guess the title implies it got fried.
Just a bit of curiosity from this simian, has anyone ‘hit’ on Tina? Aside from serving great brew, does Tina have any interests (aside from sprouting wings and doing psychiatry)?
Almost 8 years later, this reply, but in the FanFic realm there’s a guy named Stan who’s been driving her around in a vintage convertible sporty-mo-car…
I got the impression that the spider WAS Tina, or perhaps the physical manifestation of her ghosts, just returning home from a night out. At first it was like, “that spider just blew up inside her head!” But then I thought, “maybe that spider went into its shell and turned back into her soul.” (such as it were)
Yeah, that’s the same impression I got… The spider was(were) the demon(s)/spirit returning to the shell. “Eyes are the windows to the soul” and all that.
Well, there’s no reason why the spider form, now no longer of any immediate use, needs to rattle around. After all, the Phoenix immolates itself to regenerate, and yet is reborn, why can’t a spider (obviously a ‘special’ spider) do the same?
As I look at the progression of panels, it appears that the “internal fire” has started to glow well before the spider gets into her eye socket. What I can’t tell is whether or not it’s related to the rising of the sun or not, which raises (not begs!) the question of whether Tina functions at all at night.
There’s a lot about this person/lady/creature/legion that we don’t know yet, and I find it intriguing.
Tina’s been to the nighclub with the rest of the girls (golem and otherwise) so it’s not daylight-related, it’s just the way Tima gets her sleep-analog.
I think it’s possible that we are seeing light reflecting back at us. If it didn’t look as if the spider got into her eye, I would have thought that her eyes had a somewhat foggy glassy covering over them. In the last panel, her eyes appear to be reflecting light from her left and her left eye had a lighter color in the first 4 panels. If we were seeing an internal fire lighting up, I would have expected the light in her eyes to be more even.
Tina certainly is intriguing! There were 143 comments for Friday’s strip, and most of them were posted on Friday, already.
Yes, I meant to mention yesterday how it amazes me that a strip with so little action would merit such a plethora of comments…a testament to both Pablo’s ingenuity and our collective fascination with Tina.
I guess I got sidetracked by yesterday’s…uh…horizontal machinations, yuk yuk yuk…
She spent the night in a bar with M and crew, so I think it’s safe to say that she can function at night. I’d say that she can do so if she feels like it but usually shuts down at night because she’s got nothing better to do. Kinda sad but you could say that about quite a few aspects of her life.
Like Tessa and others, I hadn’t really expected Tina to manifest many physical signs of her unusual nature (her eyes and teeth excepted). A motionless sleep and sudden burning eyes seem more in the style of the golem girls, who are magical killing machines in the guise of human women; Tina is ‘merely’ a group of demons living in a human woman’s body. Now I wonder what other physical world tricks Tina might be able to pull off. I still think spending the night in a bed is more her style, though…and so is being a morning person.
I’m beginning to wonder if Tina really was just a human. We think so, but is it certain? Or maybe she somehow got part of Jin in that accident, so maybe she is part golem now.
I’m thinking Jin could have given part of herself to Tina. It might have happened exactly when Tina was killed or a little later at the morgue. I suspect Jin would have had to have done it intentionally. I think the girl could have slipped into the hole without Jin knowing in the temple, since there are special connections to the spirit world there and Jin was so out of it at the time. This is all only guessing, though.
I just stumbled upon this, too, but I don’t know if it fits in. Jin knew about Monica being committed, but I’m not sure how Nudge could have known about that before being part of Tina. I thought that Monica was committed after she ran in front of the bus. At most Jin would have known about what plans were being made a few days after the accident, if that was the case.
You obviously don’t want to know just how common it is for spiders get accidentally ‘eaten’ when they crawl in to people’s mouths while the person is asleep. It’s warm and humid in there, which many spiders like.
And yeah, spiders are Kat’s thing, but I don’t think there’s any unusual connection here. Just one wayward spider that got too close to the initial heat-pulse from Tina’s Demon-Reactor startup.
The question I have is is Tina’s body “Dead” or is it a living body where the brain/mind/human spirit/whatever has paid the bill and checked out but left it’s personal demons behind to keep the machinery of life running?
This energy surge in Tina may somewhat explain where she gets her bodily motivational force. It’s clearly something more than a simple biological process from eating food. An external force is applied. Perhaps something from the demons themselves. Something for which they use the sleep period to recharge in themselves?
Tina … an organic, humaniform robot operated from within by several disembodied intelligences. Didn’t Star Trek have at least one episode on this topic?
Did I mention Tina is my favorite character ?
You meant to say “Tina is my favorite characters”, right? Or may “are my favorite characters”. Hmm… this could be confusing.
Well, she’s one body filled with many voices. It’s tough, but for now, I’d personally still refer to her as one character, simply because we’ve only begun to identify the entities that inhabit her. And, other characters in the comic refer to her as one “person”. A personality still kind-of croaks through that we can identify, also. Singular, umbrella. *shrug* A matter of personal preference.
…Tina is many of my favorite character? 🙂
Ach! That is just CREEPY!
reminds me of a redead off of zelda:ocarina of time…..why did i just remember that…-cowers under blanket-
I like how that’s not disturbing at all.
Hmmm . Well , it does seem she owns a chair , at least .
Argh ! The thought of that spider slowly walking up her .
*shudders* I’ve had a spider crawl on me one night… NOT FUN!!!
Uh, did she have a Pet spider before or no?
And those eyes… Internal flames as the sun rose, bringing her back to life, relatively speaking?
If she did have a pet spider she now has a pet peice of ash 🙂
So why was she not in bed, with kitty?
late last week her demons were in an argument, and the one that we’ve now nicknamed Nudge won the argument with a question that seemed to quiet everything down to the point that she just stopped in the middle of the road in her house……..
Would you want poor kitty to meet the same fate as that spider?
Oh.
My.
Merciful.
Mother.
Of.
Mogg!
Pablo, my creepiness meter just crashed its needle against the post. Brr!
I wonder if Tina is going to be the central figure in this arc?
Is the Pope Catholic?
I’m beginning to wonder about that…
The very first cell is so eerie. Too cool.
A unnatural case of heartburn from the pizza ?
What makes this really creepy, is the spider is crawling into the socket, like the body is just sort of empty shell until one of them wakes up and makes it whole
We’ve seen that she can physically manifest her aspects, so I’m guessing that’s just what’s left when “nobody’s in.” I guess they forgot to lock up (lock down?) when they left in their version of going to dreamland. Kinda like nodding off on a couch. Nobiggie 😀
No, what’s really creepy is that she’s that cheery first thing in the morning. 😉
It’s as if her head turned into a reactor core or something.
Soooooooo… :O
…Tina’s a bug-zapper? 😉
I bet she’s quite popular at barbeque parties.
“Glad you could make it, Tina! Do us a favor; stand over there and do that bugzapper-eyes trick you do?”
On a side note, I guess that “I’m not allowed to hurt anyone” thing doesn’t apply to bugs. Poor, poor spider.
Oh, that TOTALLY wasn’t a creepy-as-all-get-out thing to see right before going to bed. 😉
“Eeeeeekkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would like to second that emotion:
Auuuuuuughhhhh!!!!!
Also I hope she dosen’t fry kitty if it decides momma’s face is perfect nappy spot should Tina lay down as shown before.
It’s both creepy and funny, crunny … freepy? I guess she just shuts down whereever she is at that moment. Another good reason she’ll probably never have a BF. Or a sleepover. So, now the question is, what triggers the shutdown?
Oooof! this time is one too much for me! I follow Wapsi Square since last summer, and I HAVE to say something! Now!
This-comic-is-awesome, thank you thank you thankyou sooo much!
Now, about this particular panel, I’ll have 2 remarks :
1) There is an ancient superstition somewhere (can’t remember where, sorry) that says that you should never kill a spider, as spiders are the sleeping ones’ souls…they just come in back at dawn…
2) There is a French saying about “having a spider in the ceiling” ; applies to someone considered a lunatic, at least slightly…
First time I see these 2 ideas used so literally, and I really like it 😉
It’s a Japanese belief to not kill spiders, but only in the morning. After the sun goes down, you can have at it.
It’s an Italian superstition not to kill spiders too… but only to ensure that it doesn’t rain the next day.
I’ve still got a bunch of healing spider bites on me where one of the little creeps tried to decide if I was good to eat. Hooray, Tina 1, Spider 0. I hope Katherine’s are better behaved.
OKay, we’ve had the creepy interlude, can we go back to voyeurism tomorrow?
Oh holy fark, now I’m gonna have nightmares…
Gawd I hate spiders. I need to stop checking for updates until morning now, apparently.
So her eyes set things on fire when she wakes up? I always thought her creepyness was fully internal. That all the images people like Mon and Bud see of her demons were figurative-ish. But now her nature is having a real effect on the real world. Interesting. And I guess she doesn’t have the convulsive morning dialogue and subsequent concert from that previous comic every day.
Also… that spider should have soooo gone into her mouth.
Ummm – looking at it again, i think that maybe it managed to actually get into her eye socket – because some of the smoke seems to be coming out of her mouth…
Oh … that smell … *shudder*
I once tried to eat something that smelled just like that. I failed.
Try a high-intensity floor lamp–and an active community of box-elder bugs that find it every 10-20 minutes.
Yum! Fried bug!
Disengagement of alternate personalities? Or maybe interdependence of the dominant?
Whatever it is, the one Daemon who Dictates Tina is in control, no matter what any of the others think…
eww eww eww eww eww!
Was that spider actually about to go inside Tinas eye?
I believe the spider actually did go inside the empty socket, where it was incinerated as the internal furnace fired up.
And that was the creepiest thing I’ve seen all week.
I think it *did* go into Tina’s eye, at least partially. The smoke is mostly inside her head in the 5th frame.
EWWW
EWW EWW EWW EWW!
*arachnophobic fleeing*
*Hewolf shaped hole in the side of the room*
Now, this is *seriously* creepy…
I love this – from creepy corpse to cheery Tina in zero seconds flat.
Yeah, that’s about what it takes to wake me up some mornings, too.
I think I’m the only one creeped out by the last panel the most…
Good timing! If this had happened yesterday, she’d have said something like, ‘It’s Monday morning!’ with that chipper smile and decades of cartoon lore would be in turmoil.
Oh no, the spider 🙁 I love spiders (and I know I’m probably lonely in that regard), so I found that pretty sad.
Creepy!
*I* woke up with a spider crawling ON my eye just a few weeks ago! I didn’t sleep for days afterwards… ugh. Now it’s refreshed in my memory…
I think I’ll cry now.
I woke up one night with a *lady* bug crawling across my eyelid. it’s a darn good thing I was wearing cotton gloves (extra moisturizing hands) else i’d have poked myself in the *eye* getting it off.
I’ll see all of your “EEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!!!’s” and raise you with an “EEEYYYYUUUUCCCCKKK!!!!”.
But…..but……but….what if that spider is the Nudge? Or………?????
Yeah, my first impression was that the spider was her animating spirit, returning to her body through the eye socket. But I guess the title implies it got fried.
I wish I could do that to any creepy-crawly that climbs onto my body! My cats excepted, of course.
If your cats are creepy-crawly, i think you seriously need to consider getting new cats.
Ahhh! creepy! not so much the spider as the smoking, but creepy!
Hey, we all deal with breakfast in our own way. Flambeed spider happens to be Tina’s favourite
Just a bit of curiosity from this simian, has anyone ‘hit’ on Tina? Aside from serving great brew, does Tina have any interests (aside from sprouting wings and doing psychiatry)?
No.
If they have, it’s been off-stage.
Almost 8 years later, this reply, but in the FanFic realm there’s a guy named Stan who’s been driving her around in a vintage convertible sporty-mo-car…
Meanwhile, Officer Tight Buns probably has smoke coming from him, too.
friction will do that…KaPOW!
S’okay, Shelly has a mechanical backgroud so she know the importance of keeping parts lubed!
I got the impression that the spider WAS Tina, or perhaps the physical manifestation of her ghosts, just returning home from a night out. At first it was like, “that spider just blew up inside her head!” But then I thought, “maybe that spider went into its shell and turned back into her soul.” (such as it were)
Michael
Yeah, that’s the same impression I got… The spider was(were) the demon(s)/spirit returning to the shell. “Eyes are the windows to the soul” and all that.
Except the title says “Smell of Burning Spider”.
Well, there’s no reason why the spider form, now no longer of any immediate use, needs to rattle around. After all, the Phoenix immolates itself to regenerate, and yet is reborn, why can’t a spider (obviously a ‘special’ spider) do the same?
God that’s freaky….I LOATHE spiders
hehheh, smells like….victory.
As I look at the progression of panels, it appears that the “internal fire” has started to glow well before the spider gets into her eye socket. What I can’t tell is whether or not it’s related to the rising of the sun or not, which raises (not begs!) the question of whether Tina functions at all at night.
There’s a lot about this person/lady/creature/legion that we don’t know yet, and I find it intriguing.
Either way, eye-socket incineration is an awesome power and I WANT it!
Tina’s been to the nighclub with the rest of the girls (golem and otherwise) so it’s not daylight-related, it’s just the way Tima gets her sleep-analog.
I think it’s possible that we are seeing light reflecting back at us. If it didn’t look as if the spider got into her eye, I would have thought that her eyes had a somewhat foggy glassy covering over them. In the last panel, her eyes appear to be reflecting light from her left and her left eye had a lighter color in the first 4 panels. If we were seeing an internal fire lighting up, I would have expected the light in her eyes to be more even.
Tina certainly is intriguing! There were 143 comments for Friday’s strip, and most of them were posted on Friday, already.
Yes, I meant to mention yesterday how it amazes me that a strip with so little action would merit such a plethora of comments…a testament to both Pablo’s ingenuity and our collective fascination with Tina.
I guess I got sidetracked by yesterday’s…uh…horizontal machinations, yuk yuk yuk…
Tina’s eyes remind me of panel 4 here.
(And thank all the gods that be, someone else who understands what “begging the question” really means, and doesn’t misuse it!)
She spent the night in a bar with M and crew, so I think it’s safe to say that she can function at night. I’d say that she can do so if she feels like it but usually shuts down at night because she’s got nothing better to do. Kinda sad but you could say that about quite a few aspects of her life.
Creepiest… comic… ever!
Like Tessa and others, I hadn’t really expected Tina to manifest many physical signs of her unusual nature (her eyes and teeth excepted). A motionless sleep and sudden burning eyes seem more in the style of the golem girls, who are magical killing machines in the guise of human women; Tina is ‘merely’ a group of demons living in a human woman’s body. Now I wonder what other physical world tricks Tina might be able to pull off. I still think spending the night in a bed is more her style, though…and so is being a morning person.
I’m beginning to wonder if Tina really was just a human. We think so, but is it certain? Or maybe she somehow got part of Jin in that accident, so maybe she is part golem now.
Well, Jin has a hole at her center, and TIna saw it immediately she walked into the shop…
Well, technically, they met at the Cerberus Club (officially, anyway) and Tina spotted the hole there. She saw it was filled again in her coffee shop, though.
I’m thinking Jin could have given part of herself to Tina. It might have happened exactly when Tina was killed or a little later at the morgue. I suspect Jin would have had to have done it intentionally. I think the girl could have slipped into the hole without Jin knowing in the temple, since there are special connections to the spirit world there and Jin was so out of it at the time. This is all only guessing, though.
I just stumbled upon this, too, but I don’t know if it fits in. Jin knew about Monica being committed, but I’m not sure how Nudge could have known about that before being part of Tina. I thought that Monica was committed after she ran in front of the bus. At most Jin would have known about what plans were being made a few days after the accident, if that was the case.
I got the oddest sense that the spider might not be JUST a spider and that it “got into the pilots seat” or as it were.
I thought the same thing, but BuckyCat pointed out to me that the title Is about the burning spider. Still major creeeeeepy, tho’.
ok, the teeth in the last frame on top of the suddenly incinerated spider have made Tina most seriously crrrrreeeeeeeeeeepy!
I TOLD YOU GUYS SHE WAS JUST A SHELL!!! (and the poor widdle spider…)
All we need now is the eerie ‘prickly’ music to go along with the spider on her face; EEEWWW!!!
Ahh… nothing like the smell of fresh arachnid in the morning to get the motor going! ^_^
I thought Katherine was supposed to be the spider girl – she’s certainly disturbing enough in her own right. Is Paul hinting at a connection here?
You obviously don’t want to know just how common it is for spiders get accidentally ‘eaten’ when they crawl in to people’s mouths while the person is asleep. It’s warm and humid in there, which many spiders like.
And yeah, spiders are Kat’s thing, but I don’t think there’s any unusual connection here. Just one wayward spider that got too close to the initial heat-pulse from Tina’s Demon-Reactor startup.
The question I have is is Tina’s body “Dead” or is it a living body where the brain/mind/human spirit/whatever has paid the bill and checked out but left it’s personal demons behind to keep the machinery of life running?
Oook.
Spider bites on the tongue!
Cankersores.
The itsy bitsy spider……..
Blow’d up good! It blow’d up rrrrealll good!
This energy surge in Tina may somewhat explain where she gets her bodily motivational force. It’s clearly something more than a simple biological process from eating food. An external force is applied. Perhaps something from the demons themselves. Something for which they use the sleep period to recharge in themselves?
Tina … an organic, humaniform robot operated from within by several disembodied intelligences. Didn’t Star Trek have at least one episode on this topic?