Tom Sewell

Hmmm. Let's see, Catalina and Rhoda are at the mall. What could set off Catalina? Perhaps insensitive remarks about Rhoda by a pair of insensitive jerks who have also been seen in the same mall today? I wonder if Catalina's newfound power encompasses giant lion-bears. Talk about Code Spooky.

With pink hair, named "Elliot." Yeah, that will work.

I believe they are in Tedd's basement lair. Look at the stairs, the cabinets, and the cheap old metal-framed chair much like I saw around the world when I was in the Navy. It's the most logical meeting place since Edward, Tedd, and Grace all live there.

I think I suggested once before that Diane might actually be attracted to Justin, but he was always unavailable, first because of Melissa, and afterward because of his gayness. That could even provide extra impetus for her "Mongoose" reaction to Ronin's posting of Elliot's alleged gayness, and of her ambivalent reactions to her discoveries about Elliot here, here, and here. Diane isn't giving up on Elliot even after all the questions about his sexual identity--and Diane's--that are being raised. And an attraction to Justin would be yet another similarity between Diane and Susan. I'm really looking forward to when Diane discovers that Susan actually made out with Justin once.

Say, it really has been much too long since Rich got hammered. And since he doesn't know Susan has got her hammers back... Hmmm... Susan has supposed to have gotten her hammers back, but we haven't seen her use them since before Hammerchlorians. Does this mean Susan is doing her hammering off-screen? Or has she stopped hammering guys for inappropriate remarks because she knows the hammers have been encouraging more inappropriate remarks?

This is El Goonish Shive, not Mad Men.

I was thinking of Rhoda making Catalina smaller. Consider this sequence: Catalina becomes Cat-alina in the Mall, and Rhoda, in panic, instinctively shrinks Cat-alina, picks her up, and pretends that Cat-alina is a doll to others until they make their getaway. Bonus if Cat-alina is a TG'd Samurai Cat.

Didn't think of that one, but it sort of fits Tensaided's obsessions, and it's no more out-there than some of my plot theories. Or even some in-universe theories, such as Tedd's in Identity.

Aaand Marker ends showing only one mark we didn't expect to see (Good Tom's) and we didn't even get to see the mark. False advertising, if you ask me. So what hijinks ensued, and why do none of the Eight seem to know about whatever they were?

It was a Superman joke, although a crosstime vehicle would serve. While technological transdimensional travel has not been introduced as yet, we already have one world jumper, Nioi. Diane being a Susan alternate from a parallel universe is a viable option for EGS since parallel universes have been a feature from almost the beginning. Plus Elliot has seen Diane as being a mirror universe Susan twice: in Family Ties and then in Identity.

In this comic, right after Voltaire names "Elliot Duncan", what Tensaided actually says in Panel Three is: Between this and that girl being the one I saw him with earlier, could Cheerleadra really be Elliot?! You can see Tensaided with surprise-lines coming off his distinctive hair behind Elliot (as Elliot) and Ashley before they go into the bookstore. Tensaided wouldn't know Ashley, but he would have seen that Ashley was definitely not Susan. In the panel above Tensaided's mental dialogue Catalina Bobcat says "that girl is who I thought she was." That's ambiguous, but when Rhoda told Catalina to look, Catalina could see Ashley and the transformed (or maybe transforming) Cheerleadra.

Maybe they found her in a crashed rocket ship...would that be too far out for EGS? More mundanely, there are illegal adoptions.

Yup, but the USA hasn't been a matrilocal society for quite some time. We have a deserved reputation for wanderlust; one of the biggest reasons the American Revolution broke out was that Britain passed a law against moving west of the Appalachians. There's enough variation in mitorchondrial DNA for it to be used as a first step in DNA identification. No match here, no need to go on to the more expensive and time-consuming analysis of nuclear DNA.

Given the title of this chapter, Everyone Needs to Talk, maybe we'll see pretty much every character in EGS talking about last night. It could be a sort of comic Rashomon because each character will have a different take on what happened, and sometimes a different story to tell different people.

I guess we now know Susan didn't watch the news last night or this morning.

More like radioactive pepper spray. It comes from their homeworld: Kreepton. It's from Tatsuya Ishida's Sinfest, a webcomic that's been running longer than EGS.

Clouds of something, which might be like: Clouds, a.k.a. fog (obscuring but otherwise harmless) Tobacco Smoke (irritating to some) Cannibis Smoke (illegal to some) Tear Gas Kreeptonite (requires crossover with Sinfest)

Indeed. And maybe not just Susan. We don't know if her mom ever met The Other Woman. There's basically no getting around it, Susan is going to see The Other Woman in Diane whether or not she's prepared when she finally meets her. Seeing Susan and Diane begin to work out their relationship to each other is what I'm most interested in seeing in Sister III.

Could have been worse. Check out the New Madrid Earthquakes.

Doing a DNA comparison between Susan and Diane would be comparatively easy. Mitochondrial DNA is easier to check; it should show if they have the same egg-mother. Nuclear DNA comparison would show if they are identical. But if they aren't identical, the comparison will give only a probability. Diane should be co-operative with this, but if the tip-toing around bringing up the subject with Susan? Maybe her genetic sample can be CSI'ed from a toothbrush, hairbrush, disposable cup, etc. Want odds that the investigator will get the evidence without being caught? And to confirm that they were both adopted, a sample from Mrs. Pompoms (A.K.A. Ms. Maiden-name) would be needed. I'm referring to more-or-less real-world genetic testing. The equipment Tedd has in his lab likely can make the comparisons, maybe before even telling Susan. Which brings to mind a pretty neat idea: To get Diane into Susan's place and past Susan's mom, or to get Susan into Diane's place past her parental unit(s), Tedd can transform Susan or Diane into the likeness of any of the Gang of Eight familiar to the parental units in question. Some permutations of this: Two Susans or two Dianes in the same place Diane coming over to Susan's as Nanase, with a Nanase-fairy hidden in her hair to coach her. I've already brought up the sister-from-another-world theory. We'll just have to wait until The Shive finds a way to dig out of the "not-twins" hole he dug. Or maybe Susan and Diane will finally meet face to face, preferably by a large mirror.

How available is cross-universe travel? One very good excuse for Noriko to be unavailable is that she's spending a great deal of time in other worlds. A parallel universe also supplies a potential excuse for the apparently-identical-but-not-a-twin Diane's existence in the Moperverse. And imagine the roaming charges for cross-universal calls.

Is the DGB really part of the FBI? Yes, Wolf and Cranium have FBI badges, but they might be part of their cover. No civilian is supposed to know the DGB exists. Even if they are in the FBI, the DGB could be an organization they are detached or seconded to. Given that the DGB handles extraterrestrial matters, it could very well be a multinational organization--which could mean that Noriko is still a part of it even if she's really in Europe.

You mean like Sakura plotting to eat Natsuki's liver through most of Hyper Police?

But she didn't say that other immortals would be invisible to her. The promise she made to Disco Wizard suggests that she can see other Immortals when she looks for them, and Jerry's remarks about Immortal fights suggests she's not the only one who can do so.

Actually if Moperville is based on Naperville, IL, there are around 150,000 people in town. I do definitely agree with JustBecauseICantDraw about the danger.