2015-10-07
Posted on 2015-10-07 by Aaron

80 thoughts on “2015-10-07”

  1. Doughbelly

    Today’s comic made me think, when is Moon Shadow going to get a costume upgrade?

    1. The Key of E

      Hahaha, I thought the exact same thing!

      I like that the seats are way too big for them. This is an aircraft designed for adults, after all.

      1. JLF65

        Notice that he’s sitting on a phone book to be able to see out the window… the Yellow Pages it appears to be.

      2. Dahigi

        Indeed. Moonshadow is even sitting on a phonebook. Nice to know they still make those in thei continuum.

        1. Messenger

          Not the first time Moon Shadow had to fly the Revenant’s jet: November 2, 2009 update (11022009). Revenant had him do it for a good reason, and it serves the same now.

          I’m beginning to suspect that, aside from using the jet when travelling far (its obvious purpose), in-story the jet is going to continue to serve as Moon Shadow’s “office” whenever he’s “counselling” his PS238 schoolmates.

    2. With Respect

      It is a pretty spiff costume. I mean, look at the lines on that helmet.

      I’m more concerned that Julie’s going to have F.I.S.S. dress and act like Moonshadow..

      Imagine the confusion.

      1. Stephen R. Bierce

        You realize we’re still in the same school year as we were when the series began? It’s another few months to the next back-to-school sale! 🙂

    3. MattStriker

      Well, we know that at least one of his possible future selves still wears a modified version of the same outfit fifteen years later: http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/08222008/

      1. Miryafa

        Thank you so much for posting that! I was just about to go searching for it.

      2. Kaian

        Nah, that is Cecil. Everyone knows that in fourteen years Tyler has taken the Revenant mantle.
        😉

        1. trlkly

          Do we really want a Moonshadow that uses magic, though. Cecil has his magic coat. Maybe that would work with Moonshadow, but I don’t know.

          Plus, I don’t think the Revenant is the retiring type.

      3. Messenger

        I’m betting, though, that the visor of the helmet that replaces his current football helmet is going to be full of high-tech goodies.

      4. trlkly

        Key word “modified.” The silhouette is much better. The costume itself may just look better because he’s buff, but the helmet is definitely different. It doesn’t look oversized, and the mouth guard appears not to jut out so much. And it appears he has some sort of reflective eye-shield. It implies more of a motorcycle helmet look.

        It’d not be all that hard to keep it looking somewhat like a football helmet but being more functional as protective gear. And Tyler did pick it for protection, not aesthetic reasons.

    4. Prairie Son

      He’s had several gear upgrades, but they aren’t very dramatic. Mostly because they’re gadgets, I guess, but we know he upgraded to fireproof armor after the dragon thing.

    5. Jerden

      And I was just thinking about how cool it looks in colour.

  2. Stephen R. Bierce

    I wonder if Julie is going to get a good peek behind his mask.

    1. Berpol

      I think she is one of the few who will figure it out.
      I am not sure when, Aaron regularly surprises me with what happens and he even gave hints ten volumes earlier.

      1. Orion Fury

        I wonder if he’s still planning on doing something with ‘The Event’.

        1. Brendan

          IIRC, “The Event” was just the decision whether or not humanity would keep their metapowers or undergo a worldwide depowering. The time-travelling kid chose Tyler to make the decision, and Tyler interviewed people from across history to help him make the decision.

  3. Doughbelly

    “I’m not as cool as everyone thinks I am,” says kid who is flying a super advanced jet thingy.

    1. Wanderer

      And says it honestly, since everyone thinks he has amazing cosmic powers — and he doesn’t. Sure, that makes him cooler to *us*, but in-universe? Consider how most people think of Revenant as “not a *real* superhero”.

    2. Lucario

      Recall that the first time he flew it, he thought it was on autopilot, then was surprised when Revenant said it had been off. Evidently, this thing is pretty easy to fly.

      1. Gareth

        Not necessarily easy, Revenant could have been giving him pretty detailed instructions…

        1. Dave III

          Not really, Moonshadow said all he (thought he) did was pull the stick back and forth when Revenant prompted him so he’d look like he was doing something. We’re not talking about button mashing a video game, here, a jet is a complicated piece of equipment just to get it to taxi across they way, never mind actually flying. That particular jet must have been designed with the non-licensed/untrained pilot in mind.

        2. zaratustra

          Tyler’s secret power is that he can perform any feat as long as it’s funny

        3. Tarkas

          I think the jet is probably designed to be as simple to operate as it can be, and also to be autonomous in a lot of situations — like, say, when the Revenant needs to leave it in the middle of a chase or during a battle. That could mean that, for someone like Moon Shadow who has very little experience of flying, it does most of the work while he more-or-less just gives the orders, albeit via the conventional controls (yoke and rudder) rather than by voice — and that could be primarily because the Revenant wants him to get as much of the experience that he lacks as quickly as possible. Regardless, it’s a pretty cool aircraft.

        4. Me-me

          Point of order, maintaining a flight is the easiest part. Obstacles, turbulence, landing and launching, etc, etc, those are the difficult parts. It’s probably still a really advanced jet with user-friendly controls though.

        5. Cpt. Obvious

          It’s obviously highly automated. Think along the lines RC planes used for training where you’ve got a button on the remote that will cause the plane to recover from just about any situation to a steady flight as long as the plane wasn’t to low.

          Another example is RC quadcopters with programmable maneuvers such as do the loop, barrel roll, of just flip over. All of these maneuvers are possible to do manually but they do take a lot of practice to perfect. Some quadcopters come with these pre-programmed and are able to perform them with the push of a button.

          Both of these examples are toys! Building a system like this into a real airplane is possible, and with the backing of someone like the Revenant money isn’t really a problem. In the end you could have a airplane that goes in the general direction you push the joystick, just avoiding to over compensate, using an AI to predict what the pilot wants to achieve with the controls he applies and does it’s best to achieve that while staying within the limits set by aerodynamics, structural strength, and the pilots tolerance for directional G-forces.

          By varying the programming an airplane like this can be configured to be extremely easy or hard to fly. At one extreme it takes off and lands itself as long as the “pilot” can use a GPS. At the other extreme the flight controls are extremely sensitive and the computer doesn’t cut in unless the pilot black out.

          In this series I’m imagining that the Revenant initially had the plane quite dumbed down, allowing the computer to compensate for a lot of over compensation and jerky motions. As time goes by he’s probably slowly dialing down the safety features allowing Moonshadow to have more control over the plane. By the time MS discovers this he’ll probably be well on the way to learn hoe to fly one of these planes manually, something I doubt even the Revenant does unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  4. JDunk1971

    Just imagine the fallout when the kids find out that Moonshadow doesn’t HAVE any innate superpowers. Then he’ll need to have Revenant train him more on battle tactics and martial arts just to survive.

    1. Mujaki

      He DOES have an innate superpower. He is… a protagonist!

      1. podian

        Who needs superpowers when you have plot armor?

      2. Staredown

        “Tyler’s secret power is that he can perform any feat as long as it’s funny” thus spoke (typed) Zarathusa. I laughed when I read it (proof?), but now that I think about it he may be on to something. And remaining undetectable to Cecil is pretty funny.

    2. Skull the Troll

      I still think he does have one. There have been hints along the way. Plus some superpowers are deceptive. There’s that old argument that Batman’s superpower is that he is always so prepared that perhaps it isnt just being crazy good at what he does, that there’s a trans-human component to it.

      1. Lucario

        I got the PS238 RPG book a while back. In that, Tyler’s special ability was listed as “Lucky Boy.”

        1. E. Talon

          Maybe his power is link Bink’s in the Xanth books (wow, been a LONG time since I read those).

          It can’t let itself be known so it can be more effective…

      2. Shikome Kido Mi

        But Batman loses all the time. Often several times in a row before getting the win. Like in The Joker’s Five Way Revenge, where he fails to protect four out of five guys and only catches the Joker on the fifth. Similar set up in the Laughing Fish. Batman eventually gets the win on one of the rematches but it is not like he is unbeatable.

        Batman’s not omniscient, he’s just seen a lot of crap in seventy-five years of being a super-hero. And has some degree of protagonist plot armor but it’s not as bad as people make it out to be, most of the time. A few writers do take it too far sometimes, of course.

        1. Nightmask

          If Batman had a power it would be the obvious one, the ability to learn things and develop his body to a level no normal human being could, because he simply knows too much stuff on top of the level of physical training and skills he’s got to manage that in a normal human lifetime let alone the roughly 20 year timeframe from when his parents are killed and he starts his Journey to when he begins his career as The Batman.

        2. uaeoaeoeoi

          so you say Batman is a Thinker class 4

      3. trlkly

        Nah, I don’t think they’ll go there. The reason Tyler works is because he has no powers yet is able to work with those who do. They gave the subtle powers to Cecil, to make him different. (His jacket is really just a magical gadget, so his only real power is metahuman detection.)

    3. Adahn

      I think Tyler has superpowers, but he is unable to use them. There may be some mental block due to past trauma or other external force that is preventing him from using them (perhaps to keep him from becoming like Elemental Powers).

      Note that when Tyler was put into stasis and his consciousness occupied a clone body (i.e. Toby) which was controlled remotely, he was unable to use any powers. However, when Tyler and Toby became separate entities, Toby was immediately capable of using powers.

      1. Mike

        Also note that Toby is not an exact clone of Tyler. Back when Angie and Victor were discussing the cloning, they noted that Toby’s DNA didn’t quite match Tyler’s but had ‘anomalies’. I think that was foreshadowing Toby’s manifesting powers even though Tyler has none.

        Also, Cecil was still getting the “powers” vibe from Ron (Captain Clarinet) even after the aragonite gun took away his powers. It seems unlikely that, if Tyler has powers (whether latent, or dormant, or blocked, or whatever), Cecil wouldn’t detect them.

        1. Nightmask

          Except Cecil points out that Tyler could have a power that masks him from being detected as having powers, and he’s pretty sure given how people fail to see through Tyler’s disguise when he easily did that SOMETHING’S keeping Tyler’s identity concealed. So it can’t completely block Cecil’s power to prevent him seeing though Tyler’s ‘you don’t recognize me’ field but it does prevent him detecting him as a powered being.

        2. Mike

          I assume you’re referring to their conversation at the soccer game. Cecil came across to me as bantering or joking, not serious, as evidenced by his comment “Stop thinking so hard about this.” He seems to find the whole thing rather amusing.

        3. Nightmask

          That doesn’t make Cecil’s suggestion any less valid or somehow one that must be dismissed. There’s nothing that would require Tyler to only have the power of ‘you don’t recognize me’ and couldn’t also have ‘you can’t detect I have powers’. His clone, while having some ‘junk’ in his DNA that gave him access to obvious reality-warping powers still got those from somewhere in Tyler, so not that shocking that Tyler’s got a more subtle set of powers.

        4. Dave III

          Actually… Tyler could have *identical* reality warping powers, but not know it. Consider: How could “You don’t notice me powers” work best? Psionics? The people who look for such things knows what those are and would have spotted them in him. His powers could work like Ambriel’s Guardian, protecting him and insulating him, without a lot of conscious guidance.

        5. Mike

          What I’m saying is that I don’t believe Cecil made the “suggestion” seriously; he said it not because he believes it to be true (IMO, he doesn’t), but because he’s teasing Tyler and he knows that will “needle” him. And there was no indication that the “junk” in Toby’s DNA came from Tyler in any way; it’s apparently a mutation introduced during the cloning process, with the usual effects comic book genetic mutations have.

          Issue #3 introduced Tyler as the “Uncannily Incredible Perfectly Ordinary Average Boy!”, and I see no reason to think anything different. I think Aaron is just continuing to lampshade the comics trope of tissue-paper-thin secret identities.

        6. Mike

          Actually, if you want to find something “super” in Tyler, it could be in the tendency of supers’ DNA to mutate beneficently. We saw in the Castle Beyond Space and Time that Tyler has powers in a number of alternate realities. In this reality, the mutation in his DNA cancelled out powers instead of granting them, but the tendency was still there, and so Toby’s DNA mutated in the cloning process such that he gained powers. The tendency isn’t a “power” per se, so there’s nothing for Cecil to detect.

        7. Marie

          And having Tyler non-powered also lampshades underdog without power (rags to riches) trope that Toby and Will in Sky High live through. Tyler just does the same heroics without powers, and at this point gaining them would be a slap against all he has achieved without them. It’s like he can’t be a REAL hero without powers, the superset of the same prejudice Julie is dealing with for FISSes. Not a REAL __ is a terrible example of bigotry and even racism. He’s a hero who’s SUPER, more so than some of the adults in Vales challenge.

  5. Dave III

    I notice Julie is pulling her hair back again. She seems to do this when she’s less self-confident… And I notice she hasn’t been doing it hardly at all since she went into the egg.

    Subtle, Aaron. Very nicely done. ^_^

  6. Sock Puppet

    Oh, Julie…if you only knew just who you were talking to.
    On that note it’s going to be increasingly hard to NOT reveal who he is if say he wants to talk to Julie for anything (How would Tyler know what she and Moonshadow had talked about)…this could be REALLY funny very soon.

    1. Dave III

      Same way Superman and Clark does it.. but badly. The kid’s only 10, after all. Although Tyler’s “Cassandra” powers will probably kick in to help.

    2. Marie

      Actually, this feels like a lead up to her learning his identity. He knows hers, after all. And by explaining how assumptions and belief are their own power. She already has that belief as far as the FISS’s are concerned. FISS’s are as cool as people believ they are. Both Julie and Tyler have been named ‘cool’ without falling into the marketing/posturing that the other adults in the challenge let themselves be distracted by.

      People can spot posturing and BS, that is a finetuned skill for most people, These two are the real thing. (though I do agree Tyler’s going to need to be careful who and how he lets people know… his parents will go ballistic. But we seem to have seen an adult Tyler in the time loop story, so it comes out.

      Everyone believes he has those shadow powers and he has no one he can talk about it with in the school group, so this will be good for him too.

      1. Adahn

        Tyler can talk to Cecil about it (which he does).

        As for Tyler’s parents, I don’t think they care about what happens to Tyler now that they have Toby.
        That is sad because Tyler did save his father’s life, which is something not many superheroes can claim.

      2. Nightmask

        Unfortunately Marie Tyler’s parents no longer even recognize his existence, they’ve replaced him in their minds and hearts with the super-powered clone of him that is everything they dreamed of. The only thing they’d care about with regards to Tyler is that he’s an apparent normal daring to be involved in super-heroics and as Revenant noted they don’t believe normals have any business trying to solve the world’s problems even though the vast majority of people are normals.

        1. Marie

          When they remember him and find out he’s Revenant’s protoge, they will go ballistic. The specialness of the superpowered seems to happen less or be fought more the mainstream. This echoes the arrogance toward normals in Strong Femal Protagonist, too. Marvel has wars about it and ghetto registrations, DC leans toward libertarian inclusion. Separate societies cannot be equal and fair for long.

        2. Nightmask

          They won’t remember him though, the last time we see his father he talks about a background check on Tyler because he’s completely erased his son from his mind and forgotten everything about the creation of the super-powered clone and sees Toby alone as his son. Tyler’s just some non-powered stranger to them now that MAYBE they would think looks something like their super-powered son, but yes they would have issues with him as a costumed hero just as they do with Revenant due to their issues with thinking only supers can do anything to better the world.

        3. Segev

          While the Powers are offensively wrapped up in their own delusions about how the world SHOULD work being how it MUST (because they wish it), the active lack of memory of who Tyler is strikes me as being more than just their jerkishness. I have a sneaking suspicion that something Toby did had a rewiring of his parents’ minds and memories as a chaos-backlash.

          On the subject of Toby controlling his powers… I wonder if he’ll ever have reason to use chaos directly, leading to an order-backlash. Similarly, I wonder if he’ll ever figure out how to select his changes and power-uses such that there is an equal – or roughly equal – amount of order and chaos created by it.

        4. Nightmask

          Segev unfortunately that’s just a lot of wishful thinking on the part of people who don’t want to admit just how bad as people the Powers happen to be. Indeed you forget one vitally important thing: Toby WANTS them to accept him AND Tyler equally, if his powers were actively changing things they’d be changing things to force his Tyler’s parents to accept him not the opposite. The last thing Toby wants to be doing is replacing the original remember? There’s no way he’d use his power to manipulate things when the bad effect would be what we’ve seen happening, so what we’re seeing is totally just how awful Tyler’s parents are as people. So delusional about things that they’ve had no problems replacing their son in their hearts and minds with his clone in spite of the clone’s efforts to remind them of their natural born son. So sadly it’s ALL on the Powers, NOT on Toby.

        5. Segev

          You could be right. However, the sheer level of “forgot entirely about Tyler” is…

          Well, they’d have to literally be insane. Not merely irresponsible, callous, or conceited: insane. Divorced from reality. Unable to so much as remember the difficulties they had that led them to send Tyler to PS238.

          And if Toby wanted them to accept them both enough to use his powers for that, specifically…they would. Toby’s powers are not balked by pesky things like free will; note what they did to his potential friendship with Cecil.

          I mean, honestly: Tyler and Cecil are good friends, and Tyler simply explaining the situation wholly to Cecil SHOULD be enough if free will is involved.

        6. Adahn

          Actually, it IS possible that Toby is responsible for the Powers not remembering Tyler given that the backlash of whatever Toby did caused Cecil not to recognize him. (i.e. Cecil’s memories were altered as a backlash; so whatever Toby did on purpose probably altered Sovereign and Ultima’s memories.)

          However, I believe that condemns the Powers rather than exonerate them:
          Toby most likely wished that his parents won’t reject Tyler for who he is and altered reality to make it so; however it seems that the ONLY way for the Powers to not reject Tyler is for them to not remember or know him.

          Wow, this comic is dark.

        7. Nightmask

          Since when have Tyler’s parents proven that they AREN’T insane Segev? They think that the universe expresses itself through them and that their child was destined to be a being of destiny and phenomenal cosmic power and routinely insisted on putting him at risk of injury or death totally believing that nothing could kill him and that instead it would simply lead to him ‘realizing his destiny’ and becoming empowered. Also why is is so easy to insist that they must be victim’s of Toby’s powers rather than it being who they are? He can tell when his powers create side-effects and would know if his powers had altered them, and seriously NOTHING about their behavior is inconsistent with what we know of them before the clone gained an independent existence, in fact it fits in perfectly with their previous behavior and expressed beliefs and attitudes.

          Meanwhile Adahn you’re missing some really key points, Toby DIDN’T make it so that Cecil didn’t recognize him, Cecil’s ability to detect super-powers made it clear to him he wasn’t dealing with Tyler who he never got his anxiety-inducing feelings from when around him. What Toby did was sacrifice having Cecil be his best friend instead of Tyler’s as the trade-off when he removed the curse from Cranston, meaning he can’t overcome Cecil’s issues regarding supers from his time spent thinking he was sensing dangerous aliens all around him. Cecil’s memories and such haven’t been altered at all.

          Really, people just have to accept how awful as parents and people the Powers are. They aren’t acting how they’re acting because of some mysterious force tampering with their minds or Toby inadvertently making them think that way it’s all on them and was laid out for us from the first time we see them introduced in the comic. Not everyone who puts on a costume and plays the hero game is actually a good person or really deserving of the label, and the powers might be great stopping alien invasions or beating down super-villains but they’re truly awful as people.

        8. Mike

          Actually, Cecil’s power-detection ability didn’t make it clear to him. When Cecil first met Toby, he thought Toby was Tyler and that he’d become “one of them now”. Later, when Tyler catches up to Cecil, Toby, Malphast and Alec, Cecil initially treats both of them as Tyler before it dawns on him that there are two of them. Then after the collapse of the gate, when they wake up in Cecil’s yard and Toby helps Cecil up, Cecil seems confused when he says to Toby “I … don’t know you.” It really does seem that he has forgotten Toby. Toby’s description of what he gave up doesn’t necessitate that Cecil would have been Toby’s best friend instead of Tyler’s, more likely they would have become a sort of “three amigos” group.

          Some of what happened there would also have been due to the influence of the gate and the cooperating/conflicting influences of the beings of order and chaos – I assume that would be how Alec gained his drawing powers, when he previously had none (Cecil had obviously never detected anything about him before).

          With Ultima and Sovereign, though, I think you’re spot-on. Granted, Toby’s “chaos power leakage” might have had some influence in them forgetting that Tyler was their son, instead of just highly favoring Toby over Tyler – Toby had helped Tyler by covering for his absence, and the “hamster incident” may not have been the only chaos-driven fallout for Tyler. Given the kind of parents they’ve shown themselves to be, though, Tyler’s almost certainly better off that way in the long run (which, come to think of it, kind of argues against Toby having anything to do with it).

        9. Dave III

          I have to agree with Nightmask, the Powers are just plain rotten parents. It started out as a joke and Aaron’s been giving it the same weight every time the story touches it, but taken cumulatively over the course of the whole series, they’ve gone from delusional to neglectful. It’s a miracle Tyler hasn’t started acting out, although his experience in the Mirror Room in Tom’s castle may be helping to reign that in. It would be nice if eventually someone from The Nuclear Family or better yet, Julie’s (perfectly normal and un-meta) parents, called them out on their behavior.

        10. Nightmask

          Mike when Cecil says to Toby ‘I don’t know you’ that’s the literal truth, he doesn’t know him he knows Tyler. Toby may look like Tyler and have much of his memories but Cecil doesn’t know him at all beyond being a clone of Tyler. So while Toby thinks he knows Cecil because of his shared memories with Tyler he doesn’t really, he’s running off of those memories of a friendship he thought he had but didn’t.

  7. Nobody

    It will be stopped by the same thing it always is, people not paying attention/wanting to believe.

  8. tremor3258

    Tyler really seems to have *something* for his identity, doesn’t he? I hope this ends with him taking the helmet off, though.

    1. Nobody

      Wouldn’t do much good, he’s got a mask on under it.

      1. Knug

        His mask speaks volumes, though. Tyler is the only one (that I remember, anyway) who’s eyes show through his mask. Anyone else with a mask has the coloured window effect. To me, that speaks to the fact that Tyler is a normal kid in a costume. Julie, when wearing her costume, IS the hero ’84’.

        1. Doughbelly

          Interesting and astute observation about Tyler’s eyes and his mask!

        2. Marie

          I noted that a couple days ago. I’m not sure that’s intended to be a separate posonality, ‘being’ the hero. Julie and ’84’ have no differences in personality, Tyler has more. He left more of his doubts go when geared up. Is it persona or just better armor? His ‘costume’ is literally armor to protect him, the helmet is SO obvious that the other students don’t absob that it is armor. They draw it in crayons but think it’s costume instead of armor.

          I think we see his eyes because he has no powers… he is plain old human, like us, and not separated or masj=king himself. Tyler has more secrets, but we see his eyes in the open so we trust that more. Cover someone’s eyes and people trust them less, as we read expression from eyes first.

          The window effect is also an artistic shorthand, and I’m all for shortcuts that speed new pages to us.

        3. Knug

          Of course, just to muddy the waters a bit, the Revenant doesn’t show eyes.

    2. Messenger

      While I’m a fan of shipping Tyler/MS with Julie/84, I don’t think it’ll happen *now*. It somehow doesn’t feel right just yet.

      1. Adahn

        Probably not going to happen for a while. Given the estranged relationship Tyler has with his family, his friends are all he has, he really can’t afford to lose any.

        Considering how Ron reacted after finding out Moon Shadow is Tyler and has no powers; fortunately, Tyler and Tom are the only ones who remember the incident.

        I don’t think Tyler will voluntarily reveal his identity to Julie or anyone else if there is even a remote chance of rejection.

        1. Dave III

          Plus, they’re ten. A close relationship for them is “Hey, let’s do stuff together.” Whether it be play video games or fight crime, they’re really just thinking of the Now as far as feelings and such. “Later” doesn’t really crop up until late teens at the earliest.

          But yeah, Tyler will protect the relationships he’s got, even if it means keeping Julie at arm’s length for the time being.

        2. Nobody

          But he also knows Ron was under a lot of stress and life changing events. He would probably assume Julie was much more stable.

  9. trlkly

    Adahn: I don’t think Cecil doesn’t recognize him. I think it was just him saying he doesn’t really know this superpowered clone of Tyler. I think the cosmic tradeoff wasn’t really a lack of memory, but that his best friend (as he rememberes him) wouldn’t want to be around him. Cecil thinks he’s just an imposter.

    That doesn’t mean I don’t think that Toby’s powers have something to do with why they seem to be forgetting about Tyler. I just don’t think Cecil actually forgot who Toby was. Because Toby is so powerful, the paranoia Cecil feels around metahumans is really strong, and it makes him kinda prejudiced. That explains why he was so mean.

    I do actually wonder if that’s the thing he wanted. He wanted to be accepted by his parents, so he lost his friend. And that acceptance may be taking the form of making them not remembering Tyler. Just like with the beings that gave him power, his power is nudging them the direction they were already going.

    They practically said as much: he says he used his powers to become Tyler’s brother, and then not soon after says he got something he always wanted but had to give up his friend.

    1. Nightmask

      Well first off the Powers AREN’T Toby’s parents, they’re Tyler’s parents. Toby is their son’s clone and while he’s identical in age and has most of his memories he’s not actually their son. So while he remembers them as his parents he knows he’s a clone of their actual son.

      You should also reread that part of the storyarc, Toby bargained with Cranston to have him arrange things so he could be considered Tyler’s twin brother legally and explain things to Tyler’s parents in exchange for lifting the curse. The negative effects were that Cranston lost his chance at Redemption and Toby lost the best friend he could ever have in Cecil. Toby ONLY used his powers to remove the curse, he’s made no attempt to manipulate the Powers since for one he’s too decent and moral to do anything like that he only asked for Cranston to intercede on his behalf (and for another knowing his powers have a negative effect he’d never do that because something equally bad would have to happen to someone and he’s actively avoiding that). What we see from the Powers is completely to be expected from their past behavior and how they reacted to the clone when he showed up having powers, they saw him as their dream realized and gave less and less thought to the idea that they had a son and a clone of him so that quickly faded to them just having a super-powered son and some powerless stranger that looks like him.

      1. Dave III

        I’d be willing to think that Toby *could* have manipulated them before he knew his powers came with a price, probably without even realizing he was doing it. The first few times he used them (back when Tyler was still “driving”) there didn’t seem to be any kind of deliberate conscious effort, things just happened. Kind of like not realizing you’ve sprouted wings and taking off for a few feet without knowing why.

        Consider this page (http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/12302011/) where he pulls his “Hrrnggh” face (That’s the sound I imagine he makes when he does that… he kinda looks like he’s pretending his sinuses are trying to implode)– we never learn what he did right then.

        1. Nightmask

          That’s the crazy face he made when the Chaos and Order imps messed around with him, it’s not an example of him manipulating anything including Tyler’s parents. While he theoretically COULD have manipulated them there’s no PROOF that he did, because ‘I don’t want to believe the Powers could be as bad as they look so it must be someone else’s fault’ doesn’t qualify as proof. It’s also not even remotely the only example in fiction or real life where parents have replaced an existing child with a different one and forgotten their actual child even existed.

          Toby is everything they wanted in a son (as shown in the very page you reference), he’s basically their son with super-powers and to them that makes him their ‘real’ son and the other of no importance (remember they are absentee parents who sent their real son off to a dormitory rather than keep him with them because spending time with their son was of no interest to them while he has no active powers in hope powers would ‘rub off’ on him). It’s totally within their character to forget they ever had a non-powered son running around who got cloned and see the clone as their real son due to their delusional nature. Which ironically Toby CAN’T be a being of destiny because of the cosmic nerfing he suffered and the original Tyler IS indeed the Child of Destiny they always believed him to be, the person who can change the world (and has on multiple occasions). But being so certain that only obvious supers matter and can do anything for the world they’ve rejected the child who is everything they dreamed of and more.

        2. uaeoaeoeoi

          Summery = Toby is a good boy

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