Tom Sewell

We never got a good look at Big Mouth in human guise. Maybe Kangaroo Guy is Big Mouth.

If you think 'roos aren't plotting to do us in, you need to read more Tank Girl!

Ta-a-ke me out to the ball game... Double-header The Importance of good hydration Strike three!

I didn't cite Elliot as a non-flyer or weak flyer. Except Grace can't do anything else while flying at speed, or at least she couldn't when she was last seen sparring with Ellen under Greg's tutelege. The fact she showed up at the same time as Cheerleadra on New Year's Eve proves she can fly at least as fast, though. Where's the proof for that? She can float and move slowly. She did not fly when she was fighting Vlad, who was flying. More likely dramatic effect or those invisible hair fairies. "Prehensile" means "able to grasp and manipulate" like the tails of New World monkeys or the hair of Mistress Nine in the third season of Sailor Moon (and Sailor Moon in my fanfictions). Ditto. Besides, that's a non-canon NP strip. Noah's hair looks like wings in both of the pages you referenced, not tendrils. Wings aren't prehensile except for talking birds like Tweety, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, and, of course, Demonic Duck. Dan suggested Shadow Guy was Noah, but there's another character who could never be taken for a dude: General Shade Tail, who probably has a similar aura to Grace's. And Dan hasn't forgotten about Lord Tedd. BTW, how does Noah's hair stick out from under that hood when he's doing the Shadow Mage thing? That hood looks separate, but it has a short of cape that goes down to maybe the top of his shoulder blades. Maybe that's not Noah's real hair; could be part of his costume.

True enough, but Dan also enjoys throwing us curves. Sometimes Checkhov's gun just pops out a flag with "BANG!" on it. May I remind you that Noah went toe-to-toe with the dragon without getting knocked out. And Noah flies, apparently with ease. Seen Raven flying? Edward? Nanase or Ellen without burning out after a few minutes? Whatever the source of his power, Noah has lots and lots of it. Noah's ponytails have shown no signs of being prehensile like Archie's or Grace's antennae. Sometimes hair is just hair, even in EGS.

Grace is mixed human-uryuom-squirrel-(other), and the whole point of Drasvin's reference is that it would be fantastically hard for her to use human magic. Which supports my assertion that an extremely powerful user of human magic like Noah couldn't have significant uryuom genes. However, I've long had the suspicion that Noah is really another genetic construct, just not one not using any space aliens in the mix.

Noah can't be uryuom since he uses human magic. Still, he seems in many ways to be the Moperville analog of Archie from Ellen's Second Life. And while we're on the subject of Noah, wouldn't it be natural for Noah to be at the mall, maybe helping out Raven? Susan hasn't met Noah yet. Or Melissa, though of course Susan has heard a lot about Melissa from Justin.

Elliot's still the undisputed EGS champion of gender issues because he has four different sexual orientation: Whatever he has in his "normal" forms and three distinct ones for his three alter-egos. It should be interesting for Susan and Diane to get around this factoid they don't seem to know about as yet. I hope the girls don't starve to death before getting to the food court.

But was there really a better path to take? Just showing up without warning is pretty much stalking. The one best opportunity to see Susan/Tiffany without getting tagged as a stalker and without being seen by her daughter would be this one. It's not a perfect plan, but it's less imperfect than any other given the parameters. The way the woman looked in speechless horror at Susan/Tiffany catching her with Cheating Dad really fits in with the plan-gone-horribly-wrong trope. A variation would make Cheating Dad much worse. What if he knew the woman was Susan's birth mother and tried to extort sex from her for that brief look? I wonder if there's more backstory to why Edward called Cheating Dad a "cheating cheater who cheated." Sounds like Edward has a personal investment here. Does he actually know Susan's mother? Maybe professionally? We already pretty much know Mama Kitsune is a Q-wizard. I'm coining the term with a nod to the Q-ship, a nondescript merchant ship in appearance, but bristling with hidden weapons.

More than twenty years ago I was seduced into Sailormoonacy by a collection of character writeups I found on the web for Tuxedo Mask and the Sailor Girls for GURPS, a tabletop roleplaying game I still follow. I wonder if anyone is interested in translating EGS into roleplaying terms, maybe eventually leading to playing over the web. GURPS was being played on the Internet before there was a web; probably D&D and maybe Traveller as well (a sci-fi RPG that had the good timing to come out in 1977 when Star Wars new.) Some years later I saw in one of the official GURPS books, Wizards (which has the hands-down best cover of all GURPS books) a writeup for a magical girl character who was practically a clone of the fan-created writeup for Sailor moon created several years earlier. And, yes, there is (or more likely was) a licensed Sailor Moon RPG which, of course, sucked. (Star Trek has had at least three licensed versions by now, and Star Wars, two that I know of. If you don't do GURPS, my recommendations for roleplaying Sailor Moon and other magical girl/boy anime and manga series would be Champions/Hero System or Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM). Or if you want to go strictly for comedy, R. Talsorian Games' Teenagers From Outer Space (TFOS). These are also my recommendations for EGS. TFOS even has a Boy/Girl Gun on the basic equipment list in the core rulebook. GURPS has only four basic attributes which are purchased instead of being rolled up. All of them are set at 10 for the average adult human. Tsukino Usagi (or Serena in DIC-land) is a 14-year-old in her final year of middle school. IQ 9, a bit on the dim side, but experience could bring it up a bit. I remember she had the Attractive advantage, which costs 5 points and gives a +1 bonus for most Reaction rolls and a few social skills. She has, of course, a lot of points in her superpowered alternate form, Sailor Moon. The brainy Sailor, Mercury, or Mizuno Ami (Amy) was IQ 14, which is the same as the official GURPS rating for Einstein. If you care to test the GURPS waters without getting soaked for real money, there's a 32-page PDF you can download called GURPS Lite.

I've never seen one, but back in the Eighties or early Nineties I read an article in a gaming magazine about averaging dice. They're six-sided, but instead of ones and sixes they have an additional 3 and 4, so the median result of a single die is still 3.5, but the range of results is narrowed. There's no proof that the dice actually existed outside of the author's imagination, but it was an interesting variation which wouldn't have been too hard to work with regular d6's and some practice. Any further tabletop gaming geekiness should probably move to the off-topic forum unless it really does apply to Goonmanji.

Dan hasn't specified what kind of dice. 2d4, 2d6, 2d8, 2d10, 2d12, 2d20, 2d30? (Yes, Virginia, someone really does make thirty-sided dice; I had one once.) Or maybe 2d3, which can be simulated with boring old cubes, dodecahedrons, or whatever d30s are called by using division or modulus.

Michael Palin was not available. Nudge, nudge, know what I mean?

Doesn't mean it isn't appropriate. Besides, Susan hasn't summoned the duck yet. I sort of agree, but her dad was caught hugging an almost naked young blonde in the only home Susan has ever known. If he did it once and got away with it, what are the chances he wouldn't do something like that again? Whether or not Susan's dad was her "real" dad doesn't really matter; he was the father Susan loved unconditionally until the moment she caught him cheating on her mom (doesn't matter if Mrs. Pompoms is her "real" mom, either). He didn't just score a penalty, he's been banned from the game, even if Susan does still feel for him. And if Adrian Raven does turn out to be Susan's biological father, Susan's going to be at least as angry with him as Dad #1 unless Adrian does some powerful good 'splainin'. The most acceptable explanation if in that case is that Adrian, believing he couldn't father children (or mother them if he can change his gender), has made occasional whoopee with various willing partners over the centuries, and that Susan and/or Diane are the result of a brief liaison 19 years ago after which the mother decided to put the result(s) up for adoption and not to tell Adrian. And if he blonde was Susan's real mother, her plan might have been just to wait until she was sure Cheating Dad was asleep to go up and look at her child sleeping before leaving.

I kind of think Diane is going to pursue the circumstances of Susan's kissing a girl in our next episode. Maybe Susan will summon the demonic duck? Which would be very appropriate because, after all, the duck was right there.' That leads to another question: What happens when a demonic duck walks into a bar?

Have all of you forgotten that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a cheerleader? I'd really like to see Diane's reaction to learning Susan's last name is "Pompoms" but that would mean that Diane would have to reveal her own last name and we can't have that, can we?

Also nice for someone who fights with swords.

Yes. I didn't say the floating was real. But the change was real, and someone could easily have come upon them while Elliot was changing with his/her eyes closed and Ashley was completely absorbed watching the change. And that doesn't really bear on whether or not the sparkles were real or, as I said, merely emphasis of how awesome Susan looks to Diane in panel 4. Remember how long it took Nanase to find out someone had picked up the missing doll? Nine months in Moperville time.

Maybe we'll find out in the next comic the sparkles were noticed by someone else. But, hey, nobody else noticed Elliot changing into a girl in the bookstore for Ashley.

Diane already knows Susan is a fully awakened magic user at this point. The herd wouldn't notice because their faces would, of course, still be in their phones. In a Wiley cartoon, they'd all get eaten by bears.

Ah, yes, the familiar Wind of Ass-Whupping.

Depends on what she'd be rubbing with her feet. And now on to a new question: Are the starbursts in panel four just to further emphasize how awed Diane is (for the moment), or is it Magic being dramatic again, like when Tedd glowed back in #874?

Nice spotting. I don't think it's Francine because a working janitor wouldn't be a teenager. But she could be "Francine" as in an Immortal taking that form, as some of us suspected the "janitor" might be. My candidate was Jerry, but I'm having second thoughts. Maybe Pandora? Of course, it could be that Dan just threw together some quick NPCs. The herd all wear similar winter jackets, all with the same zipper closing and the same flaring seam at the bottom, and all wear pants (admittedly the best choice for Greater Chicago in January). But Francine (or "Francine") is the only one with concealed eyes and without some kind of exaggerated facial expression. Heck, if it is Pandora, maybe the whole herd is Pandora. The herd kind of appears out of nowhere, doesn't it?

I'd give those bazongas in the last panel 3 points.

Whereas if all this had happened at Moperville North, the principal would have been Suspect #1.