Tom Sewell

There's at least one more cat in that bag. What's Susan's reaction going to be when she actually sees Diane, who looks pretty much like the woman Susan caught her dad with? As far as we know, Susan has never told her friends that she actually saw that woman.

It occurs to me that old geezers would be the core customers of Tensaided's video store because a lot them can't figure out how to use Netflix. Of course, their grandkids do know. They're probably watching R-rated stuff even as their grandparents look for age-appropriate videos.

Yes, maybe, although you could get a pretty good strip out of Lucy passing the amplified Rhoda, stopping, and then thinking (cue thought balloon): "Nah, couldn't be."

Maybe Tensaided will recommend Song of the South. Or how about Dumbo, with its charming singing crows? Hey, none of the geezers are African-American.

Enough to scramble up a tree even though she'd never climbed a tree before. Rhoda's clumsiness seems mostly due hesitation coming from her poor self-image. If she has to act before thinking, she might be able to do a lot better than she expects. And judging from her gaining new spells without a spell book and the way she's been acting in Escape, Rhoda has been gaining in both magical power and self-confidence. I'd like to see the taller Rhoda run into Lucy, who is the (naturally) tallest female in the cast so far, but I guess it won't happen back in October because Lucy would have blabbed to Diane by now--unless maybe Rhoda makes Lucy swear to keep it a secret.

My guess is Elliot & Ashley. But it could be any of the above, or others, such as: Good Tom & The Girlfriend That Talked to Matt Cohen Helen & Demetrius William & Gillian Liz & Still-Not-Named Boyfriend Diane & Lucy Those Two Wimpy Rentacops from the Mall Jeremy, Brownie, and Max sleeping Wolf & Cranium Ratt & (the other) Matt Raven & Noah Melissa & Noah Anything but Susan & Diane, because The Shive is stalling. Follow-up Okay, The Shive is bringing in Susan. But will Susan finally meet Diane? Tune in Monday, same Bat-time, Same Bat-channel! (Yes, I'm old enough to remember the Adam West Batman series.)

The same place Grace stores her extra mass. Hammerspace? Pocket universe? (Edward's storage closet has to be one.) Remember, the laws of physics in the Moperverse are more like polite suggestions.

Tedd didn't get a nose beep. No one but Ellen got one. That sleepy time dream doesn't seem like one Nioi would send even if she is keeping an eye on our Tedd & company; she's in love with Lord Tedd or at least very maternal toward him. If it wasn't just a nightmare, it might be one of Voltaire's little "gifts." I kind of think The Shive hadn't thought up Voltaire back then, but I wouldn't be surprised if He retconned this dream into being part of Voltaire's schemes. Voltaire might actually working with or through General Shade Tail. Getting Lord Tedd to try to eliminate all his alternates would surely fit into Voltaire's designs to neutralize our Tedd, the Seer. We don't have much evidence about what Lord Tedd has been up to or not beyond Edward's assertion that Lord Tedd wasn't behind the attacks on Elliot. I see that the likely factor in that is Nioi. Edward, who keeps so many secrets, may be in contact with her. Even if he isn't, Nioi doesn't like what General Shade Tail is doing to Lord Tedd and she might even have eliminated the General or at least gotten Lord Tedd to break with him. Whatever our Tedd can see as a seer, he didn't see Voltaire before Volty appeared in Sarah's room, even though he'd met Voltaire not too much earlier at his own home. But Tedd's just learning to use his awesome but obscure gifts. Voltaire doesn't want him to keep on learning. My guess is that Voltaire most doesn't want Tedd or any other mortal with the power to see him when he doesn't want to be seen.

Drifting off-topic, but as someone who's been acquiring WWII trivia, I just have to expound on PT boats. If you even recognize what "PT boat" means without googling it, you probably got your impressions from one old TV comedy, McHale's Navy, and two John Wayne movies, They Were Expendable and In Harm's Way. All of these are pretty good watches, but all of them are completely bogus as to what American patrol torpedo boats accomplished during the war. One veteran of PT boat service who saw the John Wayne/John Ford movie (which was released just after the end of the war) said "They should have made the title They Were Useless." They weren't, but as torpedo craft, they pretty much were. They had three Packard engines, just about the best America produced at the time, but without maintenance, they lost performance quickly, and most boats had trouble making anything close to their rated top speed most of the time. And American torpedoes were really crappy for more than half the war, and without constant maintenance, which really could not be done by the tiny crews carried by PT boats, they performed even worse. Many of the boats had their torpedoes removed and replaced by small guns, the favorite being a 40mm Bofors autocannon. The boats sank a lot of motorized barges in the Pacific and along the Italian coast, but did not sink anything larger than a destroyer. Motor torpedo boats could be more effective; British MTBs operating out of Malta and German Schnellboot operating in the English Channel made some very deadly attacks against transports. The only battleship ever sunk by a motor torpedo boat was sunk in the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian Sankt Istvan. BTW, the sinking was filmed, and it shows up in any number of documentaries about WWII, showing you can't really trust stock footage, especially if it's so old it's in the public domain. And yes, I know, neither Austria nor Hungary has a coastline today. They lost theirs in WWI; it belongs to Slovenia and Croatia now. So far. It's changed hands an awful lot over history. And in yet another aside, for you Sound of Music fans, Captain von Trapp had been a submarine commander in the aforesaid Austro-Hungarian navy in World War I. It was natural for him; his first wife was the granddaughter of Robert Whitehead, the inventor of the modern torpedo. He sank thirteen ships.

If Sarah is that far along the Kinsey scale, Sam's prospects grow even worse.

Why are we discussing Bad Tom on an NP thread? BT has never been in an NP. Having served his function in Identity as an excuse to get Elliot together with Ashley and a distraction for Susan so she misses her chance to get together with Elliot, Bad Tom hasn't been seen or heard of since. So what happened to Bad Tom? We can be pretty sure he wasn't eaten by the Spider Vampire because Bad Tom would have been a pretty substantial meal. Did he perhaps stroll through that gate the griffins have been using and become a dragon's lunch? Did he have a personal revelation and go off to a monastery we see his picture on a milk carton?

Plus 1998 Godizilla was a chick! Remember, she laid eggs?

I'm thinking this could be a flash-forward to the last desperate days before Tenaided's video store finally folds. Susan's had some time to get more confident about herself and, probably, some coaching from Diane.

True. It was the time before Elliot spontaneously created another human being. Maybe Elliot doesn't count the kidnapping because he didn't leave town on his own that time?

An interesting "maybe." The girl in panel four could be wearing a badge on her shirt or hung on a chain around her neck. Or that thing sticking out could just be her other sleeve, although I wonder "where's the arm that goes with that sleeve?" Her outfit looks kind of like the work uniform Susan wears in the winter. Not really the same, but it suggests she's working at the mall somwhere. If she is Sam, why exactly is she giving the eye to Ashley and her buxom petite pink-haired companion? Is she, um, attracted? Or did Sam see Ashley together with still-a-dude Elliot? Maybe Sam works at the cookie place? Or the bookstore?

Look at the second panel of this flashback when Justin is telling his story to Susan during Grace's Birthday Party. Like me you may have dismissed the background characters as, well, generic background characters. But a closer look at the upper right reveals that the guy taking money out of his wallet is about to give it to either Diane or Lucy. And isn't that forlorn girl passing unnoticed to the left Rhoda before Diane changed her look?

I like the extra effort for strategically torn clothing that still covers the naughty bits.

I apologize for my earlier assertion that Rhoda doesn't have enough cleavage. Although Ellen probably has enough cleavage for Cat plus a fairy doll. Maybe more...

Ellen has quite a bit more cleavage than Rhoda.

So Catalina is now Barbie-doll sized. She's still too big to hide in any pocket, and Rhoda doesn't seem to have a purse. So I guess Rhoda will have to carry her like she is a doll. I remember a similar strategem in Midori no Hibi where the illusion was spoiled when the "doll" sneezed...

The joys of body-swapping have certainly generated a lot of plots and have definite potential for some pretty high jinks. And I'm wondering if Sarah having previously taken Grace's form might have something to do with a real body swap. Of course, even higher jinks might come if she swaps with Tedd...

Hey, new crackpot theory: Pandora is Writer's Block, which means she's Detective Block, which means she's Abner the detective.

Hey, if Sarah does her job well, she might be finished in time for her date with Sam next Saturday. Remember Sam?

And this pretty much conclusively identifies who made Dex's amulet with the jar emblem instead of a box, doesn't it?

I wonder if there are any shops at the mall that sell catnip mice?