Tom Sewell

Gee, none of you think Arthur's daughter is Sybil, the only person we've seen who seems to like him?

You remember Candid Camera? Or his movie, What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?

Arthur's face muscles may have gotten more exercise in this comic than in all his previous life. Who knew? And once again Ashley proves to be as good as Pandora thought she was back in Marker: She's concerned if Kevin is all right. She thinks of Kevin as a person.

Star Trek was pretty clearly inspired by a Fifties movie, Forbidden Planet, where a ship the size of the Enterprise does land on a planet. It only had to land on one planet. Nope. He's meant to be Darth Vader, the bad guy who turns away from the Dark Side. I haven't decided whether Voltaire is Palpatine or Snoke.

Actually, didn't I propose the pretty much the same restrictions in the paragraph right after the one you jumped on? If you haven't guessed by now, I'm largely a real-life version of Mr. Tensaided, an uber-nerd who has spent way too much of his life obsessed with sci-fi/fantasy, old movies and television series, wargaming, roleplaying games, and even a good bit of Trekkie-ness, although I've never cosplayed a Vulcan or a Klingon or written a Kirk-Spock slash fanfic. Anyway, putting the gates in the storyline implies a lot of things that Dan may (translation: inevitably will) write around later in the story and then comment on in his commentaries, on his blog, or in tweets most of which I will never read because I refuse to step into the quagmire that is Twitter. BTW, transporters are part of Star Trek because back in the Sixties Gene Roddenberrry didn't have the budget for the special effects necessary to have the Enterprise land on all the different planets it went boldly to. It wasn't until the fourth Star Trek series, Voyager, that a Federation starship would actually be shown landing, and then only once in the entire run of that series if I remember correctly. Once transporters were part of canon, all sorts of rubber science had to be invented to find new restrictions so that the landing/boarding party could be stranded, and, of course, loopholes in the restrictions so our heroes could get out of jams. I suspect a similar process will occur in EGS if it goes on long enough.

If I may make a crunchy observation, the only time we've seen anyone actually use a magical door before was when Nioi made her exit way back in Painted Black. This does imply that the people with Dad's Government Jobs have access to gate magic, basically giving them the same capabilities as the transporters in Star Trek. So, if they do, why did it take Tedd's dad so long to respond to the attack by not-Tengu in Family Ties? What, the magic doesn't work in a snowstorm? Well, maybe DGB magic isn't as unrestriced as Nioi's, who can make a door that not only crosses space but goes between universes. Perhaps the DGB gates have to be set up in advance, something like a sub-space subway system, or that four-way front door of Howl's moving castle (remember that four-position dial which showed where the door would open to?) Given that, Commander Jaguar and Specialist Steve might be on the scene by Friday's comic--or anyone, including Tedd's dad and/or Arthur J. Arthur. Or how about Nioi, Lord Tedd, and General Shade Tail? Yeah, my first thought was "Door Number One, Door Number Two, or Door Number Three?"

Most movies don't last, but some movies set memes that are so strong they trump reality. This isn't really limited to motion pictures. Shakespeare's Richard III almost completely obscures any and all conjectures about the actual king who reigned for only three years. The Godfather films have influenced the culture of the actual Mafia. Birth of a Nation inspired the actual revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States of America, and Triumph of the Will turned Hitler into a god long enough to do do evil to a goodly portion of the planet.

I saw Land of the Pharoahs too, during the four-day break in regular network programming following JFK's assassination in 1963. Because I was living in Idaho then, on Mountain Time, the end of network broadcasting for two nights. So one of the two stations (!) in southeaster Idaho (I think KID, which is still around) pulled a couple of sword-and-sandal Fifties epics out of the vault and ran them, commercial free. The first was The Silver Chalice, in which Paul Newman debuted as the lead in one of the most legendary turkeys of all time. The next one was LOTP, from 1955, which is a fairly interesting flick if completely unhistorical. Jack Hawkins plays Pharoah Khufu and Joan Collins plays a scheming younger wife who wants to be queen. She gets her wish in the end--she's sealed alive inside the Great Pyramid along with a bunch of priests who've all had their tongues cut out to escort Khufu into the afterlife. Large-scale human sacrifice doesn't seem to have been part of Ancient Egyptian culture, unlike Ancient China, Assyria, the various Meso-American empires, and probably some more I haven't heard of. The famous Terra Cotta Army buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang is an echo of earlier times, with sculptures substituting for soldiers (and the sculptures seem to have depicted individuals!). This enlightened approach from an otherwise extremely murderous tyrant (he was the first man to actually rule over all Chinese) may have had something to do with the wisdom of not having his bodyguards sacrifice him instead.

At least as far back as the American Revolutionary War.

It's a possibility, but since Michelin Man was already damaged before he got crated up, I kind of think negotiations broke down about one panel after this comic if the flashback were to go on. Heka is probably more dangerous than most immortals, maybe more than pre-refresh Pandora and (I really hope) Voltaire. The fact that Michelin Man seems to remember nothing between the Library and waking up in a crate does support the idea that the ass-kicking he took happened in the Library. Is Michelin Man a golem? Only Dan knows; Kevin called him a golem, but Kevin doesn't strike me as the most reliable source. Why doesn't he have antennae? Maybe he does and he's just not deploying them. Why doesn't Elliot understand what Michelin Man was saying? Elliot hasn't heard MM at all unless he caught what MM was saying just before he hit the pavement like a football field away. Why did Dan say MM was speaking in a long forgotten tongue? Well, Uryuom being a species implies that they could have different languages, and even if they have had only one, languages change. Try reading Beowulf or even Chaucer now in the original. And Uryuom is a long-forgotten tongue from a certain point of view in that magic and the existence of the Uryuom among Moperverse Earthlings have been hidden for a long, long time except from the various Illuminati, MIBs, Top Men, et al. Or Dan trolled us again. Borrowing a Star Trek meme, the Uryuom in the flashback may be like Klingons: They might have looked different in the past for a reason they do not discuss with outsiders. Maybe Dan is doing a redesign? I understand the Klingons are undergoing yet another redesign so there's an excuse to sell new Klingon action figures to better fit the latest re-imagining of the Star Trek legacy.

Way to go Tedd! You got got the Will of Magic to restore all the features of the previous systems, which included the banning of Uryuoms from using Earth magic. So your girlfriend could maybe be a wizard after all! Also, the "golem" (cookies to everyone who noticed the resemblance to Uryioms, although where the heck are their antennae?) looks tougher now. Well, shouldn't be any problem for "Magus" Ellen the Battle Mage, right? Right? Question: since the Library is in Egypt, how come the "golem" is somewhere in the American midwest?

So, Dan has read Old Man's War?

Actually Liz had dibs. Remember Liz when she was in color?

Nobody has asked the really important question yet: Just how turned on will the Demonic Duck be by Ellen's new form?

I wonder what lame monicker the web is going to pin on Ellen now. Gargoil? Gargrrrl? Possible future dialog: Witness #1: Look! Up in the sky! Witness #2: It's a bird! Witness #3: It's a plane! Witness #4: It's a gargoyle! Witness #5: And surprisingly, wearing pants. Ellen: Hey! That's my line!

The gargoyle is Ellen. Look at the hair; it has those two tufts on the right side of her crown. Also, wearing pants. Apparently she has acquired the Teenagers From Outer Space knack of Monster Out. And the light green hair? Kind of like the light green color of the Dewitchery Diamond...

I believe that is what I was saying. Columbus could have pulling the old Rock Soup scam, beloved of many leaders who find ways around the rules, such as Patton's "reconnaissances-in-force" he used several times to sneak his entire army into attacks which he wasn't authorized to make. It's plausible that he thought he could talk the Spanish monarchs into funding further expeditions since he was already so close. Come to think of it, didn't he do exactly that?

Yes. Maybe it was sheer luck? Maybe, but we don't know a lot about the 15th century for certain, especially about Columbus. Was he really a Christian, for instance? A Catholic? He was supposed to be from Genoa, and Genoa had a sizable Jewish community. Or was he a secret Jew or Muslim from Spain or Portugal? Both of these communities were more literate than the standard from Christian Europe, and both had more experience actually trading with the Far East. Besides the Viking settlements, therre's some evidence that Cod fishermen were already using the Grand Banks off modern Newfoundland before 1492. Columbus might have known or had a reasonable hope that there was something out there worth the risk. Just finding an island large enough to act as a way station for further expeditions might have been his actual goal.

Either that or playing hide-and-seek like Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu.

Well, Sauron was a man,. Men don't ask for directions. It's in the man code. There's in-canon proof: Ellen, a woman no more than hours old, stopped to ask Phil for directions. Meanwhile, did either Tedd or Elliot ask for directions? For all we know they were in Canada by the time Hedge gave them a lift. And all this could been avoided if Tedd had remembered to design that belt to turn Elliot into a catgirl. Talk about a really stupid omission. Tedd should really do all his research as a girl. Maybe a catgirl, as long as there's no yarn or vacuum cleaners around.

As long as Vladia is okay with a boyfriend who cosplays Chun-Li.

She could try, but Greg is creeped out by attractive eighteen-year-olds. Actually pretending to be older would have a better chance of working, although it doesn't seem likely Hanma could pull that off for very long if the Hanma in canon is much like the Hanma in this longest NP arc ever.

Adrian is the only Elf we've seen in canon, but he isn't unique, which means that Immortal-human sex is allowed as long as it is consensual. Unless Hanma is posing as a fully adult human woman, Greg shouldn't accept her as his girlfriend. To his own embarrassment and shame, Greg is not a dirty old man

Funny you should mention lobbing off another body part. As well as the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there's another cinematic hook here, and one that's been referenced in canon: The arm Obi Wan Kenobi cut off in the Mos Eisley cantina that couldn't have belonged to either of the characters who were supposed to be confronting Luke. Anyway, Abraham's logical move is to chop off that glowing hand or its arm. And after that, he can say "What are you going to do? You can't even bleed on me, you're a golem."

You really want to see a smoking crater, don't you?