PS238 by Aaron Williams

Ps238: The School for Metaprodigy Children
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2021-01-02
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2021-01-02

Jan03
by Aaron on 2021-01-03 at 12:48 am
Issue: Ps238 Volume 11

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Discussion (50) ¬

  1. Messenger
    2021-01-03, 1:00 am | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-07, 10:51 am | # | Reply

      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
        2021-01-09, 5:32 pm | # | Reply

        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
          2021-01-11, 7:45 am | # | Reply

          Or that the party popper was simply a placebo, as the lack of control over powers appears to have been purely psychological.

          • Veritas
            2021-01-20, 11:06 am | #

            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.

  2. JoeMerl
    2021-01-03, 1:05 am | # | Reply

    If only Moon Shadow was here. He knows how to fly a plane and probably every other piece of machinery created by man.

    • Korith
      2021-01-05, 9:27 am | # | Reply

      I heard Moon Shadow can TURN INTO a plane if he wants!

      • Ed Rhodes
        2021-01-18, 4:31 pm | # | Reply

        But Ron doesn’t LIKE Moonshadow. He’s “bad luck.” He’s not cool and understanding like Ron’s friend Tyler.

  3. Nacht-Jaeger
    2021-01-03, 4:20 am | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-04, 8:55 am | # | Reply

      Yes, but he ignored another clue: things stored in this building tend to be… more fun than they look like.

  4. Nacht-Jaeger
    2021-01-03, 4:22 am | # | Reply

    I wonder if they have a case of Paul Bunyan pancake mix around?

  5. Messenger
    2021-01-03, 4:59 am | # | Reply

    Oh yeah, ha ha, I also <3 the subtle reference of the Blue Ox brand of energy drink. 😉

    • TBeholder
      2021-01-03, 10:19 pm | # | Reply

      It’s subtle?
      The joke is pretty brütal. :]

  6. Nealithi
    2021-01-03, 7:42 am | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-03, 7:57 pm | # | Reply

      Can’t leave. Friends are still in trouble.

  7. temperaryobsessor
    2021-01-03, 8:32 am | # | Reply

    I sort of feel like Ron stole Tyler’s lines.

    • Clown Science
      2021-01-03, 11:32 pm | # | Reply

      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
        2021-01-04, 8:46 am | # | Reply

        True

  8. evileeyore
    2021-01-03, 1:31 pm | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-03, 5:29 pm | # | Reply

      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.

    • TBeholder
      2021-01-04, 8:11 am | # | Reply

      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
      2021-01-04, 3:04 pm | # | Reply

      If so, then why the round flasks next to the energy drink bottles?

      • Robert Carnegie
        2021-01-04, 8:27 pm | # | Reply

        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.

    • Hobgoblin
      2021-01-05, 12:10 am | # | Reply

      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.

  9. Melinda
    2021-01-03, 3:10 pm | # | Reply

    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…

  10. David Nuttall
    2021-01-03, 3:18 pm | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-04, 10:14 am | # | Reply

      I’m getting “Lobo” vibes from that bike.

    • Naldru
      2021-01-04, 10:17 am | # | Reply

      Perhaps the GI Joe Cobra Gunship http://generalsjoesreborn.com/reviews/2009/rise_of_cobra/vehicles/bravo/wave1/gunship.html

    • Marie
      2021-01-04, 2:02 pm | # | Reply

      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

  11. Xel+Unknown
    2021-01-03, 6:45 pm | # | Reply

    Loving this update.

  12. TeChameleon
    2021-01-03, 7:51 pm | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-13, 4:26 am | # | Reply

      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).

  13. LaughingDemon
    2021-01-03, 8:43 pm | # | Reply

    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.

  14. Stephen Bierce
    2021-01-04, 12:15 am | # | Reply

    *plays Styx’s “Babe” on the hacked Muzak*

  15. Mr. Casual
    2021-01-04, 1:51 pm | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-04, 4:19 pm | # | Reply

      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
      2021-01-04, 7:54 pm | # | Reply

      Around here, energy drinks are “not for kids”. The supermarket does an age check to buy them.

      • Mr. Casual
        2021-01-06, 2:50 am | # | Reply

        Ideally, titanic superpowered battles wouldn’t be for kids, either. X) Dire circumstances sometimes require breaking the rules.

  16. LookieLouE1707
    2021-01-04, 3:11 pm | # | Reply

    If red bull gives you wings, who knows what that stuff will do to you? Could turn you into the blue hulk.

    • KillerFish
      2021-01-06, 6:58 am | # | Reply

      So that must be the source behind Bernard’s powers!

      • whheydt
        2021-01-07, 11:11 pm | # | Reply

        Bernard’s father, maybe. Bernard appears to be like that all the time.

  17. 7eggert
    2021-01-04, 3:52 pm | # | Reply

    Maybe they’d thought that he’d not drink a not-an-energy-drink

  18. Kytross
    2021-01-06, 2:21 pm | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-07, 3:06 am | # | Reply

      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
      2021-01-07, 10:43 am | # | Reply

      “No one else has said it…”

      I beat you by three days.

    • Segev
      2021-01-09, 11:48 am | # | Reply

      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?

  19. Opus+the+Poet
    2021-01-09, 2:27 am | # | Reply

    The thing on the upper left looks like a desk fan I had back in the ’90s.

  20. Bear
    2021-01-10, 2:26 pm | # | Reply

    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
      2021-01-14, 4:12 pm | # | Reply

      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.

  21. Hocoloco8
    2021-01-16, 11:25 pm | # | Reply

    Sideways wheels? Isn’t that Inspector Gadget’s transforming car from the 80s cartoon?

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