Tom Sewell

Considering the mall cops have a "Code Spooky" a shockwave of cattiness might not even make the Channel Four news. Remember, Carol has had some trouble getting her weird stories on the air, and the local paper is rated a bit lower than the Weekly World News. In other words, it could happen and not break canon. Hey, you didn't think all the weirdness in Moperville involved our main cast, did you? BTW, I live in the Silicon valley and we have a more-or-less all-news Channel Four, KRON. It used to be owned by the San Francisco Chronicle, a paper you may have heard of (definitely if you read Mallard Fillmore or Zippy the Pinhead.)

I think Pandora is either resetting or rushing to have a talk with Tedd.

Look for the sequels to this adventure, The Amazing Colossal Rhoda and Attack of the 50-foot Catalina.

If Noah is a part-Uryuom mix like Grace, he would have the same limitations on using human-style magic that Grace has as exhaustively explained in the last Q & A. Damien doesn't seem to have had a childhood; he seems to have been made in some sort of "zoom womb." You know, like the contraption that cloned Leela in a few minutes in The Fifth Element or the tube that turned out Dawnie in a few hours recently in Sailorsun.org. Or whatever turns out the replicants in Blade Runner or the clone troopers in Star Wars, etc. As Edward pointed out, the project that produced Grace, Vladia, Hedge and Guineas didn't make economic sense because they had to be raised, educated, and trained. This implies that such technology isn't known in the Moperverse, or at least isn't widely available yet. Zoom Wombs, or (to use the jargon invented by Lois McMaster Bujold) uterine replicators with significant growth accelleration--hey, I just realized that Avatar has these too--could explain why Noah has no memory of his mother. If he has a biological mother at all, she could have been just an egg donor.

Don't forget those walking catfish. Are they in Georgia yet?

More of a slide toward third base. Kind of like what Susan may have been doing with Justin just before the light went out in the basement. And that was in canon.

Cue the Thundercats theme.

It's in-character for Noah to show himself to Adrian after Pandora has left (although as Sarah remarked awhile ago one is never sure she has left.) But I'm wondering why we have to see it now. Noah's been a strange fish from the beginning. The only real friend we know he has is Melissa. I'm pretty sure Elliot thinks of Noah as a friend, but exactly how Noah feels about Elliot isn't clear. Melissa is the only person besides Adrian who Noah hasn't concealed his magic from. Noah hasn't even told Grace, even though Noah's figured out that Grace killed Damien. Grace, on the other hand, might have figured out Noah--if she can tell Sam's really a girl just by looking, she can probably tell it was Noah at the dojo. Justin also figured it out, but he's not big on outing people. Getting back to the current plot, Noah's going to ask to help even if Adrian doesn't want him to. But again, do we really need to see that right now? It occurs to me now that the only other person who've we've actually seen working with Adrian on anything magical is Grace. In Death Sentence Adrian assumed that Grace knew nothing about his heritage or implied that to Noah to keep him out of things. But they already had worked together against Dex's summonings at the dojo. Maybe we're going to see another team-up here?

If you love math problems, try and figure out how far off the floor the viewpoint is in the middle panel. Is this the view of a miniaturized Pandora? A mouse's eyes might be that far from the floor--but the mouse would already be running away. After all, these are cat-munchkins.

Edited out by Starfleet Temporal Branch. (ref: the Tribbles episode of Deep Space Nine.) This could go into canon as a fantasy or naughty dream of either Susan or Sarah--or maybe Elliot, Ellen, and of course Tedd. Especially Tedd. Did I mention Tedd?

Diane hasn't met Catalina by the time of the Christmas break. However, Rhoda doesn't look like Rhoda now and there's no indication that Tensaided, Mr. Kitsune, Akiko, or Lucy have ever met Catalina. So maybe any or all of these could have caught the latest hijinks without disrupting established canon.

I suspect that An Unkindness ends with this comic, though. The Shive is wont to conceal plot points until later. Would it be blasphemy to suggest that The Shive hasn't figured out exactly what the chore will involve? We haven't seen Susan and Diane meet yet, and Elliot's meeting with Ashley hasn't appeared or been referenced since Everyone Has to Talk. And given that The Shive has been running the canon NP arcs Marker and Escape from the Mall simultaneously with Sister III, I think we'll be seeing the magically upgraded Catalina and Rhoda before the end of the approaching Hellstorm. Maybe there really will be a Part 23.

I've been thinking Pandora might reset all the way to an infant. Given that Hell is about to rain on Moperville, it could turn out something like the third season ending of Sailor Moon where Sailor Moon comes back from the final battle with baby Sailor Saturn in her arms.

No, eyebrow fairies. They have a different union.

Possible, but I think it's more likely Pandora would have dealt with Abraham as soon as she found out his part in creating that werewolf, and Blaike was killed kind of a long, long time ago. On the other hand, if Abraham wasn't connected with Blaike's death, I don't see Pandora having a particular problem with him killing werewolves. In fact, helping Abraham kill monsters seems like something other Immortals would heartily approve of, or at least not disapprove of. And since Abraham was still an apprentice and not a full-fledged mage when he enchanted the Dewitchery Diamond, having Pandora or another Immortal guide and empower him into doing it seems to fit, doesn't it? And we already have proof that not all Immortal plans turn out exactly the as they would have wished.

Well, "Who's Noah?" wasn't my best prediction. But, hey, I can only be wrong. So I'm going to suggest that Adrian's last remark might score so much it might make Pandora reset. I'm also wondering if Pandora could have had anything to do with Abraham creating the Dewitchery Diamond in the first place, since it was supposed to be a werewolf cure.

A dog looks up to you. A cat looks down on you. But a pig looks on you as an equal. Not my idea, but worth repeating.

What's the only thing that gives Pandora pause? Caring for mortals (and puppies). What gives Voltaire pause? Nothing. He's never going to be in danger of not believing his own hype.

Pandora's plan isn't the real issue here; it's that Adrian believes his mother was behind Dex summoning that dragon. If Adrian had talked to Sarah, he'd know Pandora would have put a box on the amulet, probably because she knows that few people would connect "Pandora" with an archaic Greek word for a storage jar. Unfortunately, Adrian probably has no idea Sarah exists at all. Noah might know about her from hanging out with Elliot, or maybe by watching his webcast, but won't have any idea she's had contact with Pandora. Noah may have had no idea this woman is Adrian's mother until just now. It's also possible that the first thing Pandora says in the next installment is "Who's Noah?"

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2289

The background showing a hedge above a masonry planter is the same one Catalina and Rhoda were sitting in front of when they were eating (And the same one as when Ashley and Elliot are eating in So a Date at the Mall.) When they were eating, Catalina's head was more or less even with the top of the planter. Rhoda's head is around two inches lower, and the fillet around the top of the planter is maybe three inches high, Catalina's head as the artist's standard eight inches. In the previous strip, Rhoda shrinks a little more than the height of that fillet, so, she's around four inches shorter in the last panel than she was in the first. In the first panel of this strip, one of the points on Rhoda's jacket's collar is even with the top of the fillet; in the second, that point is more than an inch below it, meaning that Rhoda is about six inches shorter. Catalina looks to be about ten inches tall in that panel, not significantly larger than she was. If you're still awake, assuming Catalina started at 5' 6", and is 15 inches shorter sitting, the top of the planter would be 4' 3" off the ground. Because Catalina is getting closer as Rhoda is falling away in the third and fourth panels, I have less confidence in my guesstimates. I'd say in the third panel Rhoda is no taller than the middle of that filler, about 4' 2". Catalina's feet are about half the length of Rhoda's foot in the last panel, but she's closer to us, so Catalina has to be less than 25 inches tall. Call it twenty inches or about twice her height when she abandoned shirt? Averaging 25 and 50 inches, we wind up with 37.5, about halfway between a yard and a metre tall. Hobbit height. Say, if they're back by the food court, aren't they pretty close to that quartet of otaku?

Apparently Luke has seen Noah in action. What seems to be coming up is Adrian accusing his mother of manipulating Dex into attacking Elliot.

So are we going to end up with a pair of munchkins?

Will we see Adrian breaking the fourth wall to warn us it's not nice to think those thoughts about his mom?

My guesstimate of how old Tiffany was when she caught her father cheating was five. She was carrying down a book for her dad to read to her, probably a children's version rather than a big volume of the very grim Grimm's Fairy Tales. Four is a bit too young to understand the no-no of mommy or daddy getting naked with someone who isn't mommy or daddy, and Tiffany/Susan being very smart would probably have started reading on her own quite early--in fact, insisted on it as soon as she could. BTW, I read Moby Dick in Third Grade before anyone told me it was supposed to be work.