PS238 by Aaron Williams
Ps238: The School for Metaprodigy Children
PS238 by Aaron Williams
Ps238: The School for Metaprodigy Children
PS238 by Aaron Williams
Ps238: The School for Metaprodigy Children
PS238 by Aaron Williams
Ps238: The School for Metaprodigy Children
62 thoughts on “2021-01-02”
Messenger
HAHAHAHAHAHA! XD I <3 <3 <3 this!
When something awesome happens, the explanation is either ingenious and ingenuous. This is the latter, and it's brilliant in its simplicity.
So P&G planned to give Tyler a sugar rush to make him think he got powers but Tyler saw their actual source of potions? HA!
Frosty the Pyro
I mean, they gave the redhead super self awareness in a party popper. Nothing really stops them from putting powers in a bottle of red bull, er blue ox.
Veritas
This, I think, is a big flaw in Tyler’s reasoning. It’s entirely likely that the stuff in his bottle is derived from Blue Ox, yes, but – as with the party popper – that doesn’t mean something else hasn’t been done with it first.
David Hughes
Or that the party popper was simply a placebo, as the lack of control over powers appears to have been purely psychological.
Veritas
The self-analysis was nothing she had any reason to expect, was at first debilitating, and has resulted in her being significantly better able to use her old powers than she was. The cracker might not have been *directly* responsible for Dynamode’s matter-altering powers returning, but it doesn’t seem to have been just a placebo, and was a link in the causal chain of getting her powers back.
Jaxad0127
Further more, she started self introspecting BEFORE she knew what it contained.
JoeMerl
If only Moon Shadow was here. He knows how to fly a plane and probably every other piece of machinery created by man.
Korith
I heard Moon Shadow can TURN INTO a plane if he wants!
Ed Rhodes
But Ron doesn’t LIKE Moonshadow. He’s “bad luck.” He’s not cool and understanding like Ron’s friend Tyler.
Xero
Moonshadow dosent turn into a plane, planes turn into moonshadow
Nacht-Jaeger
Tyler once again proves to be a detective-in-training: spotting the clue that’s in the open, that most people won’t notice, because it’s in the open.
TBeholder
Yes, but he ignored another clue: things stored in this building tend to be… more fun than they look like.
Nacht-Jaeger
I wonder if they have a case of Paul Bunyan pancake mix around?
Messenger
Oh yeah, ha ha, I also <3 the subtle reference of the Blue Ox brand of energy drink. 😉
TBeholder
It’s subtle?
The joke is pretty brütal. :]
Nealithi
First I love the beauty of the reveal on the ‘power’ juice.
Second. Guys! Garage doors! You can just you know, Leave?
Third, loving how Ron now wants the airbags.
Ed Rhodes
Can’t leave. Friends are still in trouble.
temperaryobsessor
I sort of feel like Ron stole Tyler’s lines.
Clown Science
Tyler’s grown a lot since the beginning of the comic, and remember that Ron recently became breakable. I think it’s appropriate that Tyler’s the one taking initiative.
temperaryobsessor
True
evileeyore
Okay, two thoughts:
One, I hate when something like this is done. When the “thing is solved” using clues the audience doesn’t have until after the solution is presented. However…
Two, I think Tyler is wrong. I think the Potion Bottle did have POWER(S) in it, it just happens to look like a spare Blue Ox energy drink ‘potion’ bottle. Power and Glory seemed to be dealing straight on that part, they were keenly interested in what he’d get. I think “Upper Management” is trying to destabilize something that Tyler, specifically Tyler, not having powers is being stabilized by.
Some Ed
You’re probably right about their motivations here, and about the potion not being as simple as it looks.
There’s also the old trope about artifacts and items of power that are disguised as lesser items, or disguise themselves as lesser items.
Whether what they provided would have had any more luck giving Tyler powers than anything Tyler’s parents tried is debatable. I feel like probably the strongest argument for it having had a chance to actually do something for Tyler is the fact that he chose to not take it. That said, as he’s had a lot of experience with people trying to give him power, I think him backing out of any of them that he has an ability to back out of is probably something people should expect by now. I certainly would, if I were in his position.
Robert Carnegie
Hmm… did Tyler’s parents move on all the way from triggering his hypothetical native super-powers that they were sure he had, to expecting or arranging an “origin” incident like unpowered people have? I think in between, they mostly forgot about him after Toby showed up…
TBeholder
Assuming that while Sarah had to retrieve Tyler, Lester was sent for the “Chaos Orb”? It looks like, the “Management” was trying to stop the Powers’ harebrained plan (to have Tyler chaos-balled).
Which also points at being more on top of the situation than anyone else, especially considering the timing.
Nacht-Jaeger
If so, then why the round flasks next to the energy drink bottles?
Robert Carnegie
It doesn’t seem to be a real-world packaging for energy drinks. I think they pour Blue Ox into magic-potion bottles to give out to suckers.
On the other hand… maybe they do put something else in there as well.
I have a nasty theory: it’s a drug to make Tyler forget where he’s been and what happened. That way, Parole Guy can take Tyler back to the party, and Power and Glory aren’t incriminated, and they have the chaos goop. Of course, he didn’t drink the stuff, and Zodon got the goop.
Some Ed
Vitamin D capsules are mostly filled with liquid that’s not vitamin D. If they weren’t, the amount of liquid in a 2000 IU vitamin D capsule would be so tiny as to make the capsules impractically small. “I want just one of these? How do I get just one? Who’s the joker that decided a 10ml bottle was an appropriate container for 300 vitamin D capsules anyway?”
That doesn’t make the vitamin D capsules less important for those of us who don’t get enough sunlight. It’s just that pure vitamin D is potent. As must be many of the things they put in their potion bottles.
I stand by my statement: the biggest evidence we have that the potion could actually do something for Tyler is he’s chosen to not consume it. Otherwise, if he really thought it was just Blue Ox, and Blue Ox is something he’s willing to drink, he’d possibly answered from the perspective of whether he was thirsty or not.
Hobgoblin
They delivered a new power to Dynamode with a Christmas cracker, claiming “we use what’s at hand”, so I agree that the energy drink they gave Tyler would have delivered what they claimed. Tyler can be forgiven for not knowing this, since he was in the repurposed costume-changing device getting the chaos goo removed (and getting a new costume) when that exchange took place.
Darius Drake
While true, Tyler has also reacted badly to attempts to give him powers. For example, studying a magic book literally took at least a week of memories from him. Even if they were doing something else, like adding some active ingredient which would “awaken” Tyler’s Inherent Powers and didn’t have a bad reaction with the Blue Ox Energy Drink in particular, that doesn’t mean that he would react well to it. Also, we’ve seen an alternative timeline where Tyler having OP Powers turns all of humanity (apart from himself) into a hivemind, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tyler’s scared that something like that would happen to him, should he awaken “random” powers he has no idea how to control.
Hobgoblin
So you think he came up with a plausible excuse to discard the drink in case it would actually work, and he doesn’t want to find out what it does by drinking it? That would be perfectly in character.
Melinda
I love the mix of vehicle options. I don’t recognize all of them, but isn’t that the line-drawing bike from TRON… two jetpacks and a scorpion car…
David Nuttall
That bike in our bottom-left looks like it burst into flames if the right people (maybe Tyler) gets close to it. That ship in the top-right looks familiar, but I can’t place it.
ghostwhitehorse
I’m getting “Lobo” vibes from that bike.
Naldru
Perhaps the GI Joe Cobra Gunship http://generalsjoesreborn.com/reviews/2009/rise_of_cobra/vehicles/bravo/wave1/gunship.html
Marie
Yeah a ghost rider cycle and one of Capt America’s cycles too. I think the sideways wheels car is a nod to BTTF and the blackish at the bottom right is a nod to the ten thousand different batmobiles OR MIB. Not sure who drove a scorpion vegicle unless its a nod to Blue Beetle who had cool gadgets and went bankrupt
Xel+Unknown
Loving this update.
TeChameleon
Y’know, I could swear we’d seen that ‘Blue Ox’ gag before… inside this shop, for that matter… although it wasn’t a recent strip (checked back to the start of this incursion into P&G’s shop).
The bottom left bike isn’t going to burst into flames, that’s Lobo’s Space Hawg, not Ghost Rider’s Motorcycle. The bike next to it could be a Time Variance Authority hovercycle, but that’d be a pretty deep cut- the only place I can recall seeing it was a single issue of Walt Simonson’s run on Thor.
The orange bike(?) next to the scorpion-mech could be a Tron Lightcycle pretty easily, but I couldn’t put a name to most of the rest of the vehicles, I don’t think.
DaveM
Think you’re on to something with the Tron lightcycle, that’s what came to mind for me as well. The sideways wheel car beneath it is could be a BTTF reference, but to my mind a police car from Bladerunner fits better (“Have a better one!”). The second motorcycle on the bottom row I’m guessing is a Lawmaster from Judge Dredd (though it could be one of the bikes Captain America rode, he had a lot of bikes over the years).
LaughingDemon
Well, energy drink instead of soda. I was close. But I still need it to be a prank from management for full points.
The answer is: Whichever ones they left the keys in.
Stephen Bierce
*plays Styx’s “Babe” on the hacked Muzak*
Mr. Casual
If it’s just energy drink, no harm in drinking it, right? To test it?
I mean, I could get if Tyler thought it was poisonous, or something, but just casually writing off what could be an actual source of power (especially given the place of buisness he’s in, as others have pointed out) just because he thinks it looks like a drink he sees on a shelf? Lame. Heck, he didn’t even open it up to sniff it.
Auric
I’m pretty sure that Tyler isn’t interested in getting powers from anyone because exactly zero people who have tried to give him powers have had *his* interests at heart. The only person who seems to actually consider his welfare (aside from his friends) is The Revenant, and even he seems to be on the side of ‘everything is dangerous, so might as well teach the kid to handle the danger’.
Robert Carnegie
Around here, energy drinks are “not for kids”. The supermarket does an age check to buy them.
Mr. Casual
Ideally, titanic superpowered battles wouldn’t be for kids, either. X) Dire circumstances sometimes require breaking the rules.
Some Ed
Most of the energy drinks I’ve actually looked at and read the ingredients have at least one ingredient and usually multiple that would have been controlled as a drug by the FDA of the 1980s. I understand that over the set of people who consume them, the risk of death is less than 1%, but they just don’t seem all that safe to me even for adults.
Of course, the opposite perspective on that is that today’s energy drinks actually have some merit to the term, rather than just calling something an energy drink because it has a little ginseng and sugar in it, and maybe a bit of ginger.
skullthetroll
Tyler has a long history of people trying to artificially give him powers, that so far, have have all ended with pain and misfortune. He’s well conditioned to run away from anything that’s supposed to “make him a a superhero”
LookieLouE1707
If red bull gives you wings, who knows what that stuff will do to you? Could turn you into the blue hulk.
KillerFish
So that must be the source behind Bernard’s powers!
whheydt
Bernard’s father, maybe. Bernard appears to be like that all the time.
7eggert
Maybe they’d thought that he’d not drink a not-an-energy-drink
Kytross
No one else has said it yet, so here we go.
It is not an energy drink. It is in a round bottle with a stopper. Blue Ox clearly comes in a cylindrical bottle with a twist cap. There happens to be other round bottles with stoppers on the shelf, but they are all empty.
Tyler is too genre savvy. He has done this many, many, many, many times before and doesn’t believe there is any way for him to get powers. Remember, all the prizes from ‘his’ party at the EDL tower were attempts to give Tyler powers.
Power & Glory have been straight with everyone else. Sarah got her powers back. Lester got the hammer of Hephaestus. Toby got his dark powers contained.
That bottle has power in it.
dornbeast
My impression was that the chaos orb was the price of what Toby wanted – powers for Tyler. They’re just presenting it as a freebie for some reason.
Lester didn’t get the hammer, just a temporary usage. As for what he’s in this for, he was offered his old life back. Precisely what that means, I don’t know. His life before the manacle, when he had freedom? His life as the wielder of the Manacle? He might not know exactly what he’s being offered.
evileeyore
“No one else has said it…”
I beat you by three days.
Segev
I think Tyler is assuming the fluid in the spherical bottle was poured out of a Blue Ox Energy Drink bottle to make it look “magical.”
What I’m unsure of is why P&G would engage in that deception. I’m drawing a blank on the overall motivation behind this whole arc, given the pieces we see. A few characters did get the epiphanies they needed, but why involve Tyler and Toby when this could have been done without them, and you’re going to deceive Toby about it?
Opus+the+Poet
The thing on the upper left looks like a desk fan I had back in the ’90s.
Bear
Oookay, so, Tyler … Maybe it is, in fact, Blue OxTM energy drink. Okay. But given that magic is operative in your universe, you can’t really rule out the idea that it might also be some kind of potion that gives people super-powers.
Basically; you don’t know what they did to it before they handed it to you. You don’t know what that bottle does to liquids stored in it.
And above all, even if that thing *is* enchanted in some way to give you powers? You don’t know whether they’re powers you want.
Prairie+Son
We know what happens when Tyler interacts with magic. One time he lost a couple days of memories. Not having anything to do with P&G’s monkey’s paw games is just an additional reason to give it a pass.
Hocoloco8
Sideways wheels? Isn’t that Inspector Gadget’s transforming car from the 80s cartoon?
Ie Yamof Ool
I believe it’s the flying car from Blade Runner.
Faust.
Im sure but cant find the page easily that it gives a random temporary superpower. The product was quickly discontinued and the entire stock was purchased and couldnt be traced. Maybe it was a Reverant and Tyler conversation.
Opus the Poet
It could be like the old commercial “Maybe she was born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.” except for super powers, that can be easily removed.
Tolrick
What everyone talking about Tyler missing out on powers forgets: Tyler doesn’t NEED powers anymore. He’s a Revenant-in-training. We even sort of saw that in a scene some time ago.
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