ChronosCat

According to legend, foxes grow more tails as they grow older; some legends say it takes a century to grow a tail. So if you see a fox with only one tail it is probably less than one hundred years old (or hiding its extra tails - they are shapeshifters, after all). Only the oldest and most powerful can grow nine tails - some legends say they need to be a thousand years old. In theory, nine is the maximum number they can grow, though I seem to recall hearing about some fox god with dozens or maybe a hundred tails (or maybe it was a Pokemon). Grace has been naive due to ignorance, not due to a personality prone to naive thinking. She has always been observant and perceptive, and she is a seeker of knowledge; as such, over time we should see fewer and fewer instances of naivety from her.

Technically black holes don't suck, any more than stars or planets do. If your space ship has the power to get away from a massive star at a certain distance, then it can get away from a black hole of the same mass at the same distance just as easily. The "danger" is that the escape velocity rises the closer you get to it, so if you keep heading towards it eventually you'll reach a point where you can't get away again.

I wasn't expecting to see this referenced again after all this time! I look forward to seeing where this goes. For those who don't remember, Dan actually posted a few of these old comics before: https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2004-07-20 https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2004-07-22 https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2004-07-24 https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2004-09-08 (All but the last one are in a row in the archives.) The final one used to have more to it, but it was posted as multiple images, and the later images disappeared when EGS switched hosts from Keenspot to 910CMX back in 2009.

Panel 2 is Rich's imagination (it even has rounded borders), showing his interpretation of what Ellen said (or at least what he considers to be an accurate elaboration of what she said). Panel 3 has straight cornered borders, so he's presumably actually making that face. As for panel 1 being out of character, that was my first thought - but I could definitely see Elliot saying something like that. And while she may be more introspective than Elliot used to be, I've also gotten the impression that doing a lot of thinking is not something she particularly enjoys.

So, I watched the first episode with a cameo in it, and the cameo was there. So I was wrong about the blu-rays omitting them. (Technically I've only proved they have one cameo, but given that apparently my memory of hearing they had been omitted was faulty, I'm now going to assume they're all there.) So, sorry for unintentionally misleading everyone. I'm not sure if you said that for the sake of others who might want to watch it (or for the sake of explaining why you don't stream it), but as I said previously, I have the Blu-Ray collection, I just never watched all the way through it. Streaming actually isn't really an option for me. I live in the middle of the woods and have been unable to find any decent internet options that reach out here and are cheap enough for me to afford. My current internet is sufficient for web browsing, but I pay for data usage, and videos eat through that data far too quickly to watch more than one or two every now and then. Even if streaming was an option, I don't know if it would be worth it. I don't really watch a lot of TV either. Also, for any entertainment I think I might watch/read/play/etc. more than once, I prefer to have my own copy rather than relying on some "service" (which may or may not have it available when I want to go back to it in the future).

Unfortunately, what constitutes "fair use" is not always clear or agreed upon by all. Furthermore, not all countries acknowledge "fair use" at all. As a result things that ought to be protected by "fair use" sometimes wind up not being treated as such. (Perhaps the best example of this I know of is that reviews on Youtube of Godzilla and other Toho movies that include footage from the movies tend to get taken down for supposed copyright infringement.) It might be even worse than that. According to a quote on Wikipedia, some of the cameos were "uncredited, unpaid walk-ons"; it doesn't outright say it, but I wonder if there were any contracts at all for those cameos? That said, I may have been too definitive when I claimed the cameos were removed. I thought I remembered hearing it before, but now I can't find anything actually saying it. And while I do have the collection myself, I haven't watched all the way through it (I have a bad habit of starting projects and never finishing them). Looking it up, I haven't actually watched any of the episodes that would have had the cameos in them... All this talk of the show has gotten me in the mood to watch more, so maybe I'll be able to say for sure sometime soon.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dans-choice-card-68785333 Sketchbook: https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2022-010 This time around, I like the image, but not so much the story. In fact, with the question of when and how (and "if", assuming no one else intervenes) they can change back left unresolved, I find it a little creepy.

I was once very strongly "subs only (except for people with a good reason why they can't read subtitles)", but then I encountered the argument that "reading subtitles" isn't the intended way of enjoying movies/tv/etc. any more than "dubbed into another language" is. Expecting people to learn the original language would severely limit the audience, so I'm now of the opinion "whatever works best for you". I still prefer subtitles for anything live-action that isn't meant to be extremely silly (as I can never take a live-action dub seriously), but for everything else, so long as the dub is competently done and accurate (sadly, far from a given) I tend to prefer that, as that way I don't have to keep glancing between the action and the subtitles. (For some of my favorite movies/series, I'll even watch both versions; it can be fun to compare the different performances.) Anyway, the reason I said "translation" above was simply that for US releases, both subs and dubs are usually done in the US (or occasionally Canada).

Most Anime and Japanese Giant Monster Movies are "outsourced" to Japan. And then there are Japanese Video Games. Of course, the English translations are often done in the US, so I'm not sure it quite counts as "100% outsourced".

That's a big part of why (I think) that scenario would be funny.

On Patreon now: https://www.patreon.com/posts/not-doll-68428465 Presumably on the main sight tonight with the address https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2022-009 There's a few details I'm not fond of (in particular I've never been a fan of thin high heels), but over all I really like this look. I wonder if it replaces her original Fairy Doll spell, or if she just accidentally activated the clothing-change sub-spell without entering "proper" fairy form. It doesn't seem to be what Dan's going for, but it also would have been fun if she had created a new human-sized body (with her original body still being there as well, as with her normal fairy doll spell), and when she returned to her original body she was left with a life-size doll of herself.

A romance between Dick Grayson and Selina Kyle? I don't think I've ever heard of that (except possibly in an "Elseworlds" tale); in the comics I read in the 90s and early 00s, the romance arcs around Catwoman were usually about the attraction between her and Batman. There was in fact chemistry and hints of romance between Batman and Catwoman in the 60s show. In fact, the one of the first episodes I saw ended with her letting herself be taken to jail in the hopes that when she got out she could be with Batman (or something like that; it's been a while since I saw it). Of course, by the next episode featuring her she'd changed her mind and had broken out of jail to return to her old ways. Unfortunately, those scenes have been taken out of the Blu-Ray collection, due to rights issues.

If I remember Dan's commentary correctly, he created the Space Turtle as an excuse to get Mr. Verres away from the meeting between Tedd and Arthur. Then once the Turtle had been introduced, Dan decided this would be the news the Turtle brought. So from a meta-sense, giving this info IS the Turtle's secondary purpose.

What's disturbing about it looking like a Muppet?

Back in the 90s and early 00s when I was collecting comics, Batman and Superman each had four monthly comics, a quarterly comic, and an annual (and that's just the stuff in the main continuity). Their publications were timed so every week there was at least one comic coming out staring that character. With Batman you could usually just pick one or two series to get (except during major "event" storylines, which were actually fairly common); with Superman they were treated as a single weekly series (there was even a number on the cover telling you the order of the issues) and you were expected to get them all. I'm not sure if Marvel did the same thing, but I'm sure there were multiple Spider-Man comics, and books about several different X-Men teams. Back when I first saw the Tim Burton Batman movies, I was looking for a grim and gritty hero, so I loved it. I also loved the similar version of Batman seen in the comics in the 90s when I started collecting comics. However, by the time I saw the Dark Knight Trilogy I was starting to grow tired of such stories. Some time after that, I saw the 60s Batman for the first time, and discovered three things: 1. That show was hilarious. 2. I actually rather like a Batman who isn't angsty. 3. Adam West was sexy. Which version of Batman I prefer these days depends on my mood, but Adam West is certainly in the running.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/tall-magical-68152554 I'm assuming this will be this weekend's sketchbook; if so the link will probably be https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2022-008 (but as of this writing it isn't up yet). I like Tedd's look (including the outfit) here. Also, yay for the star-filled background!

Uryuom origins are currently a mystery with conflicting information having been presented (even just within "Balance"), but the fact that the inhabitants of the Other Side of the World also think Uryuoms came from another planet at least maintains the possibility that Uryuoms are space travelers. That being the case, there could still be a planet they consider their "home world" even if the Emissary of Magic's revelation suggests it isn't really their place of origin. (It's also possible they really are from outer space, just the space on the Other Side, and what the Emissary of Magic meant was they weren't from "our" outer space.) As a side note, it has occurred to me that if the Other Side of Earth was really the Uryuom Homeworld Will was talking about, either he's been deceiving Mr. Verres for years, or Will himself was somehow deceived about the nature of travel/communication with the Homeworld. The problem gets even worse if other Uryuoms have had contact with the Homeworld in recent decades as well. Well, she was still looking for entertainment, but Pandora's primary goal at the time she gave Rhoda the spell book was making magic public. Not that giving someone a means to better control their magic is the best choice for that goal either.

https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2022-007 I wouldn't be particularly fond of this if it were just the image, but I like the story, and the image is a good illustration for it.

Ellen has pigtails, so unless that's a style she tried out "off panel" long before we first saw it, it has to be after Sister 3.

Well, I didn't know there was a comic when I first started watching the show. However, I was enough of a fan to buy several issues of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magazine", which occasionally had articles about the real-life origins of TMNT. I then went looking for the original comic, and instead found Archie's cartoon inspired "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures" comic; in retrospect I'm glad that was what I found, as it wound up becoming my favorite incarnation of the franchise (it captures the mood of the cartoon with much better writing, and most of the run had really good art). It wasn't until I started visiting comic shops in my late teens that I was finally able to find back issues of the (by then ended) original comic. I enjoyed them well enough, but they didn't resonate with me the way many other incarnations of the franchise have. I still consider myself a TMNT fan, though unlike when I was a kid I'm no longer rushing to consume every bit of TMNT media I can.

Huh. So I guess the showing I saw couldn't have always had the entire story in a day. Still, I definitely remember getting the entire story at least some of the time, and if they played episodes out of order I never noticed.

Voltron started life as two anime series, entirely unrelated other than being made by the same company and featuring a lot of similar themes, "Beast King Golion" and "Armored Fleet Dairugger XV". Some American TV producers decided it would be a good idea to combine the two shows with entirely new scripts (they didn't bother hiring a translator) and the worst of the violence censored. I don't know how much selling toys factored into this idea, but there certainly were a number of toys released. Transformers was indeed made to sell toys from the start; each episode was essentially a twenty-minute advertisement. Despite this, they managed to tell a lot of fun stories, and even occasionally managed something with a bit of depth. The original TMNT cartoon was also designed to sell toys, despite TMNT having started life as a (teen-to-adult oriented) comic book. However, they had so many more episodes than toys, that most episodes wound up not advertising anything in particular besides the main characters. In retrospect much of the series is pretty poorly written and animated, but I'm still fond of it. I've always preferred the characters in TNG, but I like TOS too - Shatner's acting and all. (When I first encountered TOS, the low production values and dated special effects bothered me a bit, but these days I consider them part of the series' charm, much like I enjoy the same qualities with Godzilla films and Doctor Who episodes from the 60s.) Oddly enough, I've actually seen a couple of episodes of the Animated Series; a Boston station was playing reruns of them when I visited my grandparents in Massachusetts one summer in the early 90s. I liked what I saw, and it is on the long list of TV shows I'd like to check out more of one day. I know they usually did multi-part storylines (I think something like four parts per story); luckily the station I watched it on played "episodes" that contained all the parts of a story (along with segments of other things, such as Peabody and Sherman). There wasn't any particular continuity between different storylines, was there? I was getting a little beyond the target audience age wise, but yes I did, and I loved it (despite knowing the vast majority of the things he was teaching).

A few decades actually (which fits with what I thought I remembered from other discussions); I was born in 1980. Now I'm a little confused by your saying you were "pre-teen or teen" when seeing Eisner hosting; as far as I can tell from Wikipedia his first hosting job was on "The Disney Sunday Movie" in 1986. Are the articles I consulted missing something, were you perhaps older when you saw him hosting than you remembered, or is there time travel involved? My earliest TV recollection is watching Mister Rogers' Neighborhood; I also watched Sesame Street at the time. At various points in my childhood, my favorite shows included Voltron (the first English version) , Transformers (the original cartoon), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (also the original cartoon); I also watched a lot of other 80s cartoons. My introduction to Star Trek was The Next Generation; it's only thanks to reruns that I've seen the original series at all. Incidentally, while I wouldn't count it among my all-time favorites, I used to love watching reruns of Rocky & Bullwinkle. (Another show from before my time I've always enjoyed was the original Scooby-Doo.)

So if you aren't much older than me, you can't have seen Walt Disney on TV when he was alive. Had you seen reruns of stuff he hosted? If not, how did you know Eisner was imitating anyone? Knowing what I know now about him, I feel a little bad about having liked him so much back then. But it's not surprising; as a kid I had a tendency to take a friendly persona at face value.

I saw some stuff hosted by Eisner when I was a kid (looking up the timing on Wikipedia, it would have been "The Disney Sunday Movie" and maybe some of the late 80s "Magical World of Disney"). I liked him a lot at the time (based solely on his hosting), and for many years he was the face of "Disney" (as in, the company) to me, perhaps more so than Mickey Mouse (who I've only ever seen a handful of cartoons starring) and definitely more than Walt Disney (who was before my time). I didn't notice him being "smarmy" but then I've never been great at reading people (and obviously I wouldn't have had any context to know he was imitating anyone). I do vaguely recall him being a bit stiff, but honestly that sort of person/character has always appealed to me.