Tom Sewell

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-160 I always thought it was more than a door... Further Thought(s) I assume everyone else wants to know who the heck is talking there many years ago. My guess is Noriko. It wasn't the strawberries this time; it was the cheesecake. (Cheesecake if you can figure out the movie reference.) Who do we know who can recharge her magic power with food? Nanase--Noriko's niece. Plus, it's in Edward's house and who would be the other adult living in Edward's house. Not confident enough, however, to add a "Noriko" tag yet.

Actually Curly began as a substitute Shemp. Larry was the Middle Stooge throughout, not as smart as Moe but smarter than whomever was Third Stooge. There were two mpre Third Stooges, Joe Besser and Curly Joe (Joe Dirita). There might have been another Third Stooge for a movie, but Moe died before that happened.

Mlooney, you need to bone up on your Stoogeology. Camdin is a Larry; he may think he should be the Moe. But Moe is the Moe. The Moe is the one Luke called after he fled Salty Crackers.

Camdin as leader? Well, no. Camdin is too much of a flake. The nameless person Luke called after seeing Grace's aura was focused and assertive; that's the person who'd be the leader. Most likely Camdin is the shaggy gross guy because he's made some unwelcome passes at Jay.

If Jay knows Matthew Cohen from working out of the same pizza place, even if she is AJA's daughter or granddaughter, I think she's more likely to have learned about Tedd's nebulous gender identification from Matt than from AJA. I just don't see Arthur casually sharing the intelligence he has on Tedd. Maybe Arthur slipped and used a feminine pronoun to refer to Tedd when Jay heard him. Jay is still going to MSHS, but she has to be eighteen and therefore a senior. Maybe she knows Luke, and is part of the gang looking into weird stuff? Luke got blackmailed into returning to Salty Crackers because he hasn't paid for all the pizza they've shared with him (last panel of this comic).

Theater Clerk likes being a pain in the ass, so I'm guessing if Tedd had asked for a boy's uniform, T.C. would have given him a girl's uniform.

You're right. And now I wonder if seeing Tedd at MNHS in that vest could have jogged Matt Cohen's memory, confirming that it was really Tedd Verres in that skirt-and-vest uniform he delivered the pizzas to.

But Tedd never wore that uniform in school.

Well, he has owned skirts for a long time, but only wears them when he's female. Note that when Elliot saved Tedd from Tony, Elliot said "Leave her alone." That is, Elliot thought Tedd was a girl before Elliot became Tedd's friend. So it's perfectly plausible that Matt Cohen and others who've seen Tedd over the years assume Tedd is a girl, maybe even a girl cross dressing as a boy--or even trans, like Sam.

Jay could have known Tedd Verres as "that weird cross-dressing guy or maybe girl Matt Cohen delivered pizza to once" for awhile and not learned AJA was interested in him until recently.

If Jay picked up on "she" for Tedd from AJA (Arthur J. Arthur), she would have to have picked it up after the not-change because Arthur was surprised by Tedd being a woman when they met the Will of Magic. If that's true, her knowledge of the Tedd goes back no more than fifteen days. Further back, Jay might have known Matthew Cohen from his days working at a pizza joint--if they worked at the same pizza joint. Matt doesn't know anything about Tedd's magic and there's no proof in canon I know of that he's ever spoken with Tedd except the night of Grace's birthday party, but Matt would have at least noticed that that purple-haired boy--or girl--was with Susan often in the last year, and could have told his fellow workers about that strange delivery.

Well, "Jay" does rhyme with "Rey"... "Jay" sounds more like a nickname to me, but it could also be one of those surnames like "Madison" that somehow became a girl's given name. And while there hasn't been a President Jay as of yet, there has been a John Jay, first Supreme Court Chief Justice and an extremely worthy choice for an ancestor of patriotic American Arthur J. Arthur.

The only mortals we know that knew about magical changes until the not-change happened were Sarah, Arthur, and Assistant Director Liefeld, so it's doubtful that Jay would have known. Jay doesn't know Sarah. Did she pick it up from Arthur or Liefeld? I think Jay looks kind of buff for a woman, so... maybe Liefeld?

The Rise of Skywalker. At least it had no broom boy.

So, as Jay thinks to herself in the last three panels: "Meeting the wizard will have to wait." Does she mean Tedd? Because in the next panel Jay thinks she shouldn't show "her" the smoke spell she'd learned. I guess Jay could mean she shouldn't let Grace know, but if she means Tedd here, she expects Tedd to be a girl. But she's never met Tedd, and Tedd is only the Tedd to the paranormal community that Jerry spoke of so long ago--and then only because he's known to be Edward's son. In the last panel, Jay thinks that while Tedd doesn't go to MSHS, Diane and Grace do. Jay seems pretty determined, perhaps already considering plans how to learn more from Grace and/or Diane. However, who hangs around Grace and Diane at MSHS? Let's see: Justin (Awakened); Nanase (Used to float around openly); Rhoda (Awakened and then some); Ellen (Dragon power!); and Lucy, who hasn't shown any magic but looks almost as tall as Justin. Interesting possibilities. Earlier Diane offered to help with the food and Jay said "Good plan. This isn't even all of it." Although Dan didn't draw both loads, it's implied. Also, this is similar to what happened when Tedd accepted the pizzas from Matt Cohen during Grace's birthday party.

I'd put my money on "granddaughter" with her mom being Sybil. So is she spying for Arthur, or going rogue?

Gee, that would be as unthinkable as say Luke Skywalker being Darth Vader's son, or Rey being the granddaughter of Palpatine. I'm not really married to this theory, but it has potential, especially if Dan keeps on using Jay. Jay wouldn't necessarily know anything about her connection to an Immortal, since they all seem to be shapechangers.

How the heck does Jay know that Tedd Verres is the Tedd Verres? Well, as Mlooney said, she's a gamer. She thinks of Diane as "the Bard" and Grace as "the Druid", gamer clichés as old as the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I can picture Jay as one of the nerd girls playing a Xena game in the back room of the comic store when Susan and Catalina visited it during the last spring break in "Hammerchlorians". So, if she's a regular there, she could have started out seeing Tedd as a weird, possibly trans gaming nerd, and then witnessed some weirdness there. Or, if Jay really likes to gossip, she'd also like to snoop to pick up even more gossip opportunities. There was plenty of gossip about Grace at MSHS, so Jay could have picked up that "Tedd Verres" was supposed to be Grace's boyfriend. There's a chance, maybe, that Jay just wants to see if "Tedd" is a boy or a girl--and that whatever sex Tedd is, to see the person Jay and maybe most others at MSHS was imaginary. But Jay is a wizard by EGS definition: She can learn other people's spells. That's high-level magic. It kind of implies some high-level ancestry. Consider this: What if Voltaire wasn't entirely insincere when he told the other Immortals they should change the rules so they could protect their own families? What if Voltaire actually has family he wants to protect?

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-131 Nanase is mostly immune from mansplaining.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-129 Sorta... really... not OK.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-126 Dan got this one up early for a Wednesday comic. Dan talks about the cockles of his heart in his commentary, which brought to my mind this quote: "...in a dark, cold winter, it warmed the cockles of the British heart " That's from a speech Winston Churchill made on March 30, 1940 praising the crews of HMS Exeter and HMS Ajax for their part in the destruction of the German warship Admiral Graf Spee in an encounter known as the Battle of the River Platte. That battle had taken place the previous December off the coasts of Argentina and Uruguay. It was pretty much a gentleman's battle, more appropriate for the War of 1812 than 1939. Exeter, Ajax, and the New Zealand cruiser Achilles fought the much larger and more heavily armed German ship, got badly shot up, but managed to score a critical hit that meant the Spee would run out of usable fuel long before it could get back home to Germany or meet up with one of its disguised support ships. So Captain Langsdorff took his ship to Montevideo in Uruguay, hoping to make repairs there before the British brought in a heavier force. He should have gone to Buenos Aires instead; the Argentine government was much more friendly to Germany at that time. Forced out of the harbor after a few days, Langsdorff decided to scuttle his ship rather than lose more of his crew in what he thought would be a hopeless battle. Then he shot himself. His crew got to sit out the rest of the war in Argentina. Ajax and Achilles both survived the war, and Achilles would serve in the Indian navy as the Delhi until 1978. Exeter was sunk by the Japanese in March, 1942, and about one-quarter of the survivors died in Japanese captivity. The Pacific was not a gentleman's war.

Actually, the book in the movie never existed. Rommel did write a book on infantry tactics between the wars. If he'd survived the war, he probably would have written another book on tanks.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-124

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-123 Size matters (after all).

https://egscomics.com/comic/party-122 Grace does not explain it all. And Dan did keep his promise; Story and NP up on time!