Tom Sewell

Susan vs. Diane: Touchies in Canon Susan Jerry in Hammerchlorians Sarah in Identity. Sarah in Identity. Web-based hand-holding with Justin in Identity. Nanase and then Tedd in Playing With Dolls. Nanase's fairy (transformed to look like Susan) in Playing With Dolls. Susan's Fairies Sarah in Hammerchlorians. Nanase in Hammerchlorians. Susan's fairy hugging Nanase's fairy in Playing With Dolls. Susan's Grace fairy nesting in Justin's hair Wednesday after school. Diane Rhoda and then Grace in Sister II. Rhoda again in Death Sentence. Rhoda yet again in End of an Era. Rhea in Family Ties. Nanase in So a Date at the Mall Charlotte in So a Date at the Mall. So if we don't count fairies, Diane and Susan are even, touchy-wise.

Yes--but Voltaire also told himself that Plan A was going even better than he'd anticipated. The only thing we really know about Plan A is that Tedd is a key element in it. Whichever way things go, I think Tedd is going to out-awesome everyone else before the end of Sister III.

Maybe, maybe not. Has anyone considered the possibility that Voltaire might be in cahoots with Arthur Arthur? Even if not, Voltaire has some grand scheme and forcing magic to change and perhaps controlling that change could be part of it. Voltaire could be observing Sirleck at at any time, and he's a shapechanger and good at imitating voices. If he wants to subvert the vampires to his own purposes, I think he could do it. And since Arthur Arthur is in charge of things paranormal for Moperville and probably the whole Chicago metropolitan area, he would be an ideal tool for Voltaire to frustrate Edward and direct the other Men in Black under Arthur to act in ways that fit Voltaire's Plan CM.

I just had another thought about the instructions given to the vampire mercs. Why would destruction be encouraged? That's the kind of thing that can attact the authorities, reporters, gossip...in other words, people who can help expose magic. Who do we know who wants magic to change?

Yes, like in the climax of Painted Black. But the fairy Nanase didn't bring the cavalry back until after the battle was over. And unlike Susan, Nanase's real body is helpless while she's using her fairy, and she only has one. Both Susan and Nanase would be better off using their phones if they can.

If Adrian had an obsession with killing vampires something like his mother's obsession with exterminating werewolves, it occurs to me that he might have passed it on to Noriko, who seems to be able to summon magic swords at will. That's likely what she spends a lot of her time doing in Europe, if she really is in Europe: killing vampires. And maybe he decided to lay off actively looking for vampires after Noriko left Edward and Tedd.

The Kriegsmarine had the toughest ciphers and the best code security of all the services. Moreover, the B-dienst was almost always able to crack the merchant shipping codes easily, something the Allies didn't pick up on until the war was over. The real Achilles heel of the U-boat campaign was that it relied on the U-boats to send out so many radio messages, powerful transmissions that could be read at headquarters, which were in France for most of the war. The Allies equipped their destroyers with High Frequency Direction Finders which could sometimes triangulate on U-boats but which always gave them a direction and a rough estimate of the range. Huff-Duff was so important it often got the top-of-the-mast mounting instead of the radar.

Neither do I, but Diane can't fight vampires yet--unless she, say, got a mark neither she or we know about yet. Ground Zero now seems to be wherever Adrian will be tonight. It kind of sounds like the plan is similar to the wolf pack tactics used by German U-boats in World War II. The way this worked is that the subs would be spread out, and when the first one sighted a convoy, instead of attacking immediately, it would radio headquarters which would vector in the rest of the U-boats in its group for a massed attack. The flaw in the mission instructions here is ordering the vampires to raise hell along the way to create a distraction. This is not something Admiral Doenitz' gray wolves would be doing; they would be approaching as stealthily as possible. The more destruction they create, the more likely Adrian will be on guard, and, of course, the more likely they will draw in Elliot, Grace, Ellen, Nanase, Greg, maybe Vladia if she's his new girlfriend, possibly Rhoda and Catalina (picture Rhoda shrinking a vampire and Cat-alina biting it's itty-bitty head off), Justin, maybe Wolf and Cranium, quite possibly Edward... and they'd all tend to converge on Ground Zero even as such vampires who are still alive and on-mission also converge on Ground Zero. As for Noah's tonfas, their summoned magical weapons, and they would have been effective on a non-summoned bulldog dragon, something that seems tougher than any of the vampires we've seen so far. BTW, I also think Adrian's exploding crows could count as summoned weapons. Vampires should be fair game under the rules for acceptable half-immortal behavior. I wonder how many he's killed over the centuries?

Why? As far as we know, Susan doesn't even know Adrian is Grace and Ellen's history teacher. Given that, the only way she'd unleash her powers to help Adrian is if someone else asked her or if he saw Adrian being attacked. Even Diane doesn't know that Mr. Raven is anything more than a cranky, tough old teacher. Grace and Elliot can fly quickly to wherever. Susan can't unless she's got a spell we haven't heard of yet. The only likely way I presently see of Susan intervening in the attack on Adrian in time to do any good is if Adrian is also in the mall tonight. The third weapon in Susan's First Vampire Killing Kit was a mace. And Noah broke the neck of the bulldog dragon during that fight. That would have killed it if it wasn't a summoned creature.

Having too few magic-capable good guys around would be worse. There's really been only one fight against multiple opponents in EGS, the one at the gym with the fire guys, and that one was very hard for Grace and Greg, two ridiculously powerful characters. We've only seen Adrian in a fight with one opponent and he lost that fight. Even with Noah, his chances against a half-dozen vampires at once don't sound good to me. Speaking of Noah, I'm wondering if those tonfas he uses are summonings. If so, he would qualify for the second bonus and could be targeted on his own. Noah doesn't look very threatening in his civvies. And if anyone digs me about the final fight with Damien and his thralls, that was really just two fights, one with Nanase and Ellen against Vlad, and then the fight between Damien and Grace. Maybe without Damien, Grace's brothers and sister have done some work on fighting as a real team, but they didn't show any sign of it in Sister I.

Look inside any power supply and you'll find some big honking transistors. For some electronics, size still matters. My Navy was still working with a lot of tubes in the 70s and 80s. I worked mostly on radios, and they were largely 1950s tech. One of the planes I worked on in Spain had a big old radar first employed on B-29s. We called the tubes in that one "jugs" and for good reason; they could have held a gallon or more. The transmitter module was a particular pain. It weighed 440 pounds, and it was installed under the floor in the navigator's compartment in the EP-3s we were flying. This was an electronic intelligence version of the P-3 Orion antisubmarine plane, which in turn was based on a less-than-successful Lockheed turboprop airliner called the Electra II which had a disturbing habit of falling out of the sky. Anyway, like an airliner, it had a center aisle through most of the fuselage, and the only way in and out was a door on the port side, more or less on the other end of the aircraft from the navigator's cabin which was right behind the cockpit. You had to manhandle that 440-pound monster back and forth on that aisle; no room for a forklift. Oh, even more fun was lifting it out. Remember when I said it was under the floor?

I just realized something that might shed different light on Magus. Magus knows from Sister II that Adrian is Pandora's son. But Sirleck didn't know that Adrian was a half-Immortal until Voltaire, playing the part of Abner the detective, called Sirleck from that miraculously-still-existing pay phone near the end of So a Date at the Mall. Magus promised himself to destroy Pandora. But he refused to make Edward kill Abraham for Pandora. I think maybe Magus doesn't know that Sirleck is targeting Adrian. Murdering a man simply because he's the son of his enemy doesn't strike me as Magus' style. His misgivings were about collateral damage. I think the instructions for vampire mercenaries were Sirleck's, not Magus'. After all, Sirleck is the paymaster here.

Maybe, but Pandora told Sarah just last night it would be "a few days" which kind of suggests more than one or even two. Pandora also told Sarah she wasn't going to tell her son about the discovery she'd made until Saturday--tomorrow, Moperville Time. Only if Elliot and Ashley go to the multiplex with Sarah and Sam. Remember that Elliot and Ashley are planning to watching movies in his room. Possibly they might be planning or at each considering doing other things in his room. And for that reason I think Ellen would plan to be elsewhere with Nanase just as she planned to be elsewhere with Diane on the night of Elliot's first date with Ashley, when Nanase made that "too nice" remark to Ellen after meeting Ashley. On the other hand, it's possible that Ellen and Nanase have also made plans to go to the multiplex without knowing Sarah will be there with Sam. And if Elliot forgets to tell Ellen about changing his plans for the evening, all six could wind up there. Say, that sounds like it would provide wonderful opportunities for complications of the Dan kind. You have a point, although I think it's credible for Diane to tell Rhoda and Lucy things she doesn't share with her family. But given how freaked out both Diane and Susan were at their last appearances, I think Diane and maybe Susan too might bring along a friend or two to the meeting. Susan would probably ask Ellen and/or Nanase, since they are the ones that persuaded her to meet Diane in the first place. I think Diane would ask both Rhoda and Lucy because she wouldn't want to leave either out. And, of course, Diane would tell them about the freaky stuff if she hasn't already. I hope Diane hasn't yet because I want to see a scene where she does spill the beans to Rhoda and/or Lucy. That would likely be the point where Diane and Lucy learn that Rhoda has magic.

I was stationed in Spain in 1977, so I didn't see it until the next year after I came back to the States. I was kind of expecting pretty much everyone being at the mall for tonight's vampfest, but it looks like Dan is scattering his characters all over the place: Elliot and Ashley at Elliot's place; Sarah at the multiplex with Sam; and of course Diane and Susan at the mall food court. Grace should be working at Salty Crackers again, with Justin; maybe Tedd will be there too. So where will Adrian Raven be? At home? Since he's a powerful wizard, perhaps he's set wards, but otherwise he's in absolutely the first place the assassination team will look. Critical to Magus might be where Ellen will be. If she's home with Elliot, good for Magus. And perhaps good for Sirleck as well. But maybe Ellen will be at the mall with Nanase--not, of course, to spy on Susan and Diane. If either Rhoda or Catalina know about Diane and Susan meeting, they might be at the mall not-spying too. What about Abner the detective? Any detective still wearing a fedora wouldn't stop digging on a case just because his client paid him off.

Sam's favorite is a different song from My Fair Lady.

Getting a bit more serious for the moment, sexual identity and sexual preference are not identical. Does Sam really feel he's a man in a woman's body? Or does she feel she should be a man because she's attracted to other women? It's quite possible that Sam of whichever sex is attracted to men. I kind of think Dan is going to get around to addressing this later, although not necessarily today, Moperville Time. There's really not a lot we know about Sam. Sam's told Sarah he was on an allowance, like hers, so this suggests he's in high school like Sarah. He could even be younger than Sarah, although he's quite a lot taller. I've assumed that Sam goes to Moperville South, but he could go to a high school we haven't heard about, say in a nearby town. But maybe not. We haven't seen Sam dressed as a woman; she could look quite different. Contacts instead of glasses, hair worn differently, and maybe even a dress, and who would know it's Friday Night Sam? We don't even know if Sam is Sam when he isn't in his beard-and-pockets ensembles.

Could That Guy be related to Grand Prize Winner Some Guy?

)And now the most important question about today's comic: How long does it take Susan and Diane to dry their long hair after a shower? As far as we know, neither has a hair-drying spell. Hair fairies? I thought they were only in QAs. Seriously, even with Princess Vespa's megadryer (the one that takes up a whole trunk in Spaceballs) it would take a pretty long time to dry, brush, and comb all that long hair. Haven't shower caps been invented in the EGS universe? If they shower every school morning, that means getting up significantly earlier to handle all that hair care.

Sarah has never met Mr. Raven as far as we know, or Diane. I don't think there's anything in canon that says Sarah knows about Susan's doppelganger or that Grace told Sarah about that image of Susan she saw in Mr. Raven's mirror--although Susan does know Mr. Raven is a half-immortal. So things are still pretty open for Dan to pick his options here without stepping on any setups he left in his own canon. Given the title of the current Part 19, Family Gatherings, I wouldn't be surprised if Pandora checks up on Susan and/or Diane even if she doesn't show herself or talk directly with them. However, the way Pandora finished Part 18 suggests to me that Pandora is kind of expecting big trouble even if she doesn't know exactly what. I don't think she wants to give up that "almost clairvoyant" part of being a very old Immortal until she's sure her family will be safe.

Is it just me, or does Tedd seem hotter than she's ever been in canon?

It was a phial labeled Bon Voyage. Sabotage? Possibly, but also possible full-of-himself Magus didn't pay enough attention to the operating instructions, like maybe "Don't pop phial open with your thumb because you think it looks cool."

Magus knows a lot about magic, but strategy and tactics, not so much. Remember that the perfect plan that threw him into limbo was using a questionable potion to win a sparring match.

I wonder if there's another eye or six under that cap.

The plan is supposed to be Magus'. Sirleck would not be showing great concern for innocent lives, although he's smart enough to know that dead bodies draw investigators. Magus has two things he wants: get his body back, and destroy Pandora. I guess he wants to attract Elliot and Ellen to fight alongside Adrian, and once he gets his body and his magic back, fight Pandora. Edward did say that there were human wizards who were definite threats to Immortals. I don't think Magus really has a chance against Pandora, especially Pandora of the last panel of Great Fairy Godmother--unless he is empowered by Voltaire.

I think pretty much everything in this installment should be canon. The sparseness of their own culture could do a lot to explain why Immortals are so concerned with mortals. Collectively they could wipe us out if they all cared to do it. The sheer variety of human cultures offers interesting variations to discover for these sufferers of chronic boredom.