I’d say it still IS. Revenant seems like the type to make sure things are built to last, and it doesn’t look too damaged. We haven’t seen the last of that jet.
That’s right, he wouldn’t have been able to reach the autopilot button, restrained as he is. It’s a good thing for Tyler’s health that she included the pilot’s seat in the hug, although I think the farmer won’t think so if he gets there before Revenant.
I think the plane probably had some “smart” elements that allowed it to automatically make a controlled crash landing if it sensed nobody was at the controls while in flight. Voice-activation of an autopilot would have allowed it to fly home and land safely (thinking comic book autopilots, here).
Today’s large commercial jets can auto-land at major airports under normal circumstances. You enter the landing approach and engage the auto-land and it communicates with the towers computers to get necessary info for safe landing.
Okay NOW the plane has impressed me. That with a totally dead stick (No pilot holding it) It not only came in level and right side up. But did not cartwheel, nose in or break up. Whoever designed it earned their pay on it.
Not really. That implies he’s pleasing a lot of girls, but really it’s just Julie, as far as I can tell. (Using her hero name here would not help make my point.)
No, Angie is the tech girl – the one who’s friends with the alien, Prospero? Tyler took shop class with them, and they ended up in space. I’m not sure if she has a hero name.
No, Angie is the slightly older dark-haired kid who talks like a 40 year old Brooklyn cabbie and invents stuff crazier than Herschel does. She usually hangs out with Propero, the alien who was going to blow up the Earth if they didn’t solve the invasion issue in a timely fashion. (She’s also a mascot for a brand of pre-made peanut butter sandwiches, but that one wasn’t entirely her fault.)
American Eagle is Tyler’s age, blonde, and… I think we’ve only seen her out of uniform, like, once?
Well, in addition to Angie, there are:
– Suzi, who is the first person to talk to Tyler at PS238 (first girl wins trope in play here), and who promised to protect him because he has no powers.
– Jenny, who Tyler saved from being maimed by Dax-Ra, and who defers to Moon Shadow’s leadership despite being conditioned by her handlers to be a leader herself.
Tyler also gets along pretty well with Ambriel, but she has much better chemistry with Zodon.
Tyler’s really gonna need to reveal his identity soon… If Julie is hugging him this strongly because she believes he has darkness powers and can therefore take the abuse, and she at some point hugs him somewhere OTHER than the plane…
I’m pretty sure that the PS238 faculty has taught Julie that not all powers give those that possess them invulnerability. As such, she wouldn’t expect Moon Shadow’s reputed “ultra-darkness powers” to make him (physically) invulnerable to her uncontrolled hugs. I’m equally sure that she hasn’t quite learned to control her *exuberance*, which is why Tyler is trapped in a crushed pilot seat.
Perhaps Revenant will take the opportunity to replace the crushed pilot seat with one that doesn’t require Moon Shadow to sit on a pair of thick phone books….
Maybe, but Revenant probably wouldn’t think it was quite as funny. (Plus I’m sure he uses it on a regular basis, too, and phone books can easily be moved out of the way.
There is such a thing as a height adjustable seat. Moonshadow probably just never installed one because though he tries to prepare for everything, the idea that a young kid like Tyler would be using it on a regular basis never crossed his mind as likely.
That is hilariously untrue. Fortunately “violence is a sign of affection” from both genders is gradually being phased out. That you are sufficiently unaware of it in your own culture to say that with a straight face is sort of a positive sign in some ways.
Looks like that’s shaping up to be a running gag or brick joke for the comic, although fridge logic leaves you wondering why she didn’t uncrunch the seat at least enough to let Moonshadow be able to get free.
In my mental “video” of the unshown scene, she jumped up, hugged him, and flew out without looking back nor realizing the seat got crushed. She also apparently didn’t notice the plane crashing.
Funny page, but I have to wonder where 84 disappeared to? Did she just crumple Moon Shadow into the seat and bust out of the canopy and fly away? Why didn’t she uncrumple the seat? Her action not only endangered Moon Shadow, but countless other non-supers when the jet was no longer under pilot control. This is not the same 84 that solved the Egg puzzle.
I kind of agree with you, but I kind of dont. See, back when 84 was asked the question about the card, I actually suggested “what are moon shadow’s powers?” would have made a great question (though in retrospect impossible to ask since the whole thing was televised) because of what that question would have required from Julie. See by now, Julie has seen enough of Moon Shadow’s tactics and arsenal that if she really thought logically about it, she could figure out that everything he did was gadget based, and therefor he did not have any.
But first she would have to knock the stars out of her eyes and see past any infatuation she has for him. As for why she didn’t uncrumple the seat, that’s pretty easy. That jet clearly has a hatch for exiting flyers, and Julie assumes Moon Shadow is this amazing super who can pretty much do anything, it didn’t even occur to her that he couldn’t unbend or otherwise get out of the seat himself.
Appropriate name for your last line, since Toby is an “amazing super who can pretty much do anything.” However, Tyler may want to get something that can unbend whatever Julie bends, and is voice activated.
If it’s like the previous time, Julie most likely just hugged Tyler then flew off without looking back, leaving Tyler to land the plane with his feet (or autopilot).
Of course, Tyler is the only one she’s endangering: In order to be alone with Tyler to talk about personal issues (and to hug him), she will always be the last passenger off the plane.
It might be a mini-meta power, not unlike Tyler’s apparent gift to seem unremarkable. That grey area between “Really really better than average” and “legally defined as ‘meta'”. Like the FISSes, such folks probably don’t get the respect the deserve, even though their contribution is perfectly valid and worthwhile.
That wording, “apparent gift to seem unremarkable,” feels disturbingly like a strong connection to Nodwick’s “become irrelevant” henchman power. That combined with the way they both have the apparent ability to be the reliable and observant type makes me wonder if they’re distantly related, especially since both of their worlds have been shown to be the same one.
That would be my headcanon, actually: that yes, Tyler and Nodwick are distantly related. Age and maturity levels notwithstanding, the two have remarkable similarities, including their common sense and punchline deliveries. Plus, if you REALLY want to get picky about it, they’re colored the same: Blonde hair, red shirt, and blue pants.
It probably wouldn’t be hard to tear that theory apart, but that’s the joy of headcanon.
I don’t believe so. I don’t recall seeing anything specific along those lines, anyway.
I dimly recall Aaron saying something along the lines of “Heh, that would be pretty funny” but not “Yes, that is totally the case”. Or maybe I dreamed that. I honestly don’t know.
In any case, I don’t think that Tyler *IS* Nodwick in any literal sense, just that he could be a distant relation and bears a superficial similarity, unsurprising since they have vaguely similar roles and were created by the same author.
I’m also only a little disappointed we have to wait to find out what the answer is (unless we have already bought the offline, bookshelf compatible version, ;)). But both in story and out of story, it makes more sense to hear the answer when Julie presents it to her group. Hopefully she’s wise enough to allow people to think it was her idea. I think Tyler would want it that way too.
If I’m not mistaken, these ones in color are when he made the switch to doing it only online and stopped doing print issues. Then again, I’m not 100% certain.
Aaron’s switching to just trades, since those apparently outsell the individual issues contained within [I]combined[/I]. Which is probably a very damning comment on how stores stock things.
Most of the individual issues are long since out of print, so it’d be impossible to complete the collection without a lot of money invested in eBay bids. So the trades are the way to go, since they get reprinted every so often. Check Noble Knight to see what they have available.
Anyone else getting the impression that when The Revenant was asking about the crunching noise, he was mentally crossing his fingers that Tyler’s answer wouldn’t be “My spine”?
If he’s a responsible adult who cares about Tyler’s well-being, which he’s been shown to be. There’s been almost nothing Revenant has instigated that Tyler wasn’t able to handle *OR* Revenant wasn’t able to help bail him out of. There HAVE been situations when Tyler did things Rev wouldn’t have approved of (Magnetically tethering his car to an escaping helicopter springs to mind) but I think he really cares about the kid, as a mentor and as a surrogate parent.
Anyone else getting a HPMOR vibe from 84 and Moon shadow’s relationship? It’s not all there, but there are some striking paralleled especially post chapter 111.
No, not at all. Tyler is not an elite rationalist dealing with an irrational world. And the only relationship in Chapter 111 is between Harry and Voldemort. And, after that, just denoument. Can you elaborate on what similarities you see?
Is it maybe that you think the Revenant is Tyler’s “wise old wizard,” and now Tyler is becoming one for Julie? But why didn’t you just say “the last chapter”?
I wonder if the guy whose cornfield Moonshadow landed in was the same guy who had a gigantic ball of putty bounce in his field back in the issue when Tyler, Prospero, and Angie went up to Angie’s space station.
*chuckles*
84 is so affectionate. ^_^
If this ship is ever to sail, Julie needs to learn more control, or Tyler needs to invest in force field technology. (Because hugging someone in armour is no fun at all.)
That’d probably be the joke, actually. It’s been one of the things they’ve been training Tyler for, in an inverted sense: To be able to handle himself on par with metas… though the teaching staff was thinking in terms of keeping him safe in fights and such, rather than aggressive acts of affection. ^_^
Considering Tyler looks to be the Expy of Robin, since he’s the trainee (NEVER call them sidekicks) of the Batman Expy he’s likely going to end up quite lucky with plenty of hotty super-babes once he’s older. Can’t really slot 84 into the Starfire expy role though.
Moonshadow is an expy of Robin, but I quibble that Tyler is. He’s less “boy detective” as much as “boy trying not to get killed”. That said, MS *is* rubbing off on him and Tyler is more willing to try to help when and where he can.
I think Tyler has already fully embraced the Moon Shadow identity: He is pretty much a hero in training now.
Tyler may have originally trained as Moon Shadow in order to not get killed. However, Sovereign and Ultima have pretty much replaced Tyler with Toby, so the original reason for becoming Moon Shadow (i.e. to survive his parents continually putting him in danger to “awaken his abilities” and “fulfill his destiny”) is gone.
Had Tyler left his Moon Shadow identity dead, he could have lived as a normal kid attending Excelsior, albeit with a foster family.
In short, Tyler reclaimed the Moon Shadow identity not because he has to, but because he wants to. Moon Shadow isn’t rubbing off on him, he IS Moon Shadow.
Incidentally, I think Tyler is more like the third Robin than the first so Starfire wouldn’t exactly apply.
A pretty good description of things, we see Tyler making the choice to become Moonshadow when he could have walked away (he didn’t have to confront Charles after all, he COULD have reported it to the teachers to deal with but felt it was his responsibility), embracing his alter-ego when it clearly had nothing to do with surviving the insanity his parents were subjecting him to (it’s ironic that his clone replacing him actually gave him the chance of a normal, safe life only for him to CHOOSE that life for himself, or perhaps it’s actually fitting that Toby come into existence so that Tyler could choose between hero or mundane to show his growth and the heart he has).
@Nightmask: No, Moonshadow had to confront Charles. Because Tyler was not allowed to tell his teachers. I’m also not sure why you think the Charles thing is related to him taking Moonshadow back.
And, BTW, I don’t think he’s Robin. Robin was a sidekick. He did not go out on his own except to help out Batman. The Revenant helps out Moonshadow from afar.
Yes, Robin goes on his own in Teen Titans, but that’s only after he’s fully trained.
No trlkly Tyler did NOT have to confront Charles. What, you think some thug going ‘if you tell anybody then X gets it’ is particularly threatening when all his below-ground teachers are supers with a vast range of super-powers amongst them, and all he had to do was pick up a phone and call them about it like he did Revenant? That was Tyler actively choosing to adopt his Moonshadow identity rather than having it forced onto him as part of his training in order to stop a criminal, because he could have easily called the school, told them what was going on, and let them handle it (or heck called his worthless parents and let their super-team deal with it). He actively took up the Moonshadow identity after that point and went towards danger on his own initiative, and when he had a chance to retire it after everyone thought Moonshadow was dead he chose to take it up once again and embrace that as who he wanted to be.
@Nightmask: I should point out that Tyler tried to call the school and nobody was answering the phone.
Charles threatened to “splat” Tyler’s friends if he spotted Tyler anywhere near the school.
Also Moonshadow’s “death” had not occurred for several more chapters after one alien invasion/attempted retrovirus plague.
I think that a major part of Tyler’s character development in this series is from a kid who’s constantly at risk from metahumans to a hero in his own right and leader of his peers (albeit reluctantly). He’s gotten to the point where he has actually jumped off a spaceship to save 84’s life, without really thinking twice about it. So I do think he’s embraced his Moonshadow identity, and all the danger it entails.
@Nightmask He can’t call any of them. THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THAT STORYLINE. He couldn’t get a hold of them and if he was seen, his friends would be killed. And again, it had NOTHING to do with Tyler taking the suit back, since that happened much later.
If you aren’t even going to go back and check the old comics before saying stuff, why bother?
trlkly I remember things just fine, and Tyler would have had no problems contacting the teachers, her certainly had no problems putting together an entire super-team from his classmates that he managed to contact without difficulty. Seriously, you REALLY think Tyler had absolutely no way of contacting any of them? Of course he did, but he CHOSE instead to deal with things as Moonshadow, seeing it as something he had to deal with rather than hand it off to the adults.
So does anyone know how long this chapter is now? It seems really long, and it makes it hard to go back and find story lines since the switch to color.
We’re out of the regular issues now, so Aaron is free to run as many as he durn well pleases, instead of being limited to 16 to 32. The story *feels* like it’s wrapping up soon, but that’s just meta-thinking (sic) rather than any actual knowledge on my part.
Strictly speaking, there’s only been one chapter (story) since the change to color. I think the plan is to publish it all in one trade edition, similar to the Girl Genius model.
But my point is that it’s really hard to navigate. It’s bad enough that he uses dates for his titles rather than numbers, so you can’t go through 10 comics easily or anything. But at least, with the earlier comics, you could jump back. You can’t in this story.
And there have been quite a few logical chapters. You have one for before the egg, one for afterwards, and one for each trial within the egg. A chapter and a story are not remotely the same thing.
trikly, are you aware of the thumbnail pages? From the comic panel, drop down to the navigation links, then below those to the date, little calendar picture, and issue title. Click on the title (for this one, “Chapter 1: 84 and the Ones Before”) and it takes you to a page with thumbnails of every panel in the current issue (meaning, the issue that panel’s a part of).
I was not. Thank you. I wish it were more obvious. I’d expect this sort of thing to also be available in some sort of “archive” page, which would list all the issues and then you’d click on those to see all the panels.
Hmmm… there’s an interesting thought: we know what Julie’s hugs are like, so what does that say about the other person she’s hugged lately — namely, Phlogiston? She didn’t seem bothered by 84’s enthusiastic embrace, so she must be fairly tough, or there’s something about her plasma powers that means that she can resist the effects of super-strength (though not magic, as we have seen). I wonder if she could give Tyler a few hints, because I think Moon Shadow and 84 make a good team — kinda like GA/SA Superman and Batman — and it’d be nice if Tyler didn’t have to worry about broken ribs when his team-mate is happy. There’s a bad joke in there about “Is that a full-body plaster cast, or are you pleased to see me?” but it needs refinement.
She could become intangible when Julie hugged her, but she didn’t, so either Julie only hugs Moon Shadow that hard or Phlogiston is more able to resist an 84-hug by some means. And I think that, whether or not Tyler liked the hug, he wouldn’t have had time to stop Julie before she crushed the seat, and probably didn’t want to once it was too late. Stopping Atlas before he accidentally crushed his son was a quite different situation.
There’s hugs and then there’s hugs. Do you hug your Mom the same way you hug your boy/girl friend? Julie was excited to see Phlo alive and well, but Moonshadow has Darkness powers and is all awesome and stuff.
That flashbulb trick didn’t actually DO anything to Atlas, it just confused him long enough for them to tell him what was up. I think its usefulness is wholly dependant on his not expecting it and even then there’s only a limited amount of time that the effect will work. Imagine having a flashbulb go off in YOUR face; you’d be briefly stunned and confused, and your vision would be obscured momentarily. (At least one would hope. Don’t try this at home, kids.) If he was mad about something, this ultimately would have only made him madder.
I can just see how this could go down.
NTSB investigators:
– You sure this is where the farmer said the plane crashed? I don’t see a plane.
– I have a track over here! It looks like a small jet bellied in and scraped off in that direction.
– So let’s follow the track. This is a tight track; I would say the plane was intact even after impact.
– Tim, check with the local air-traffic control if anybody declared a Mayday.
– Got it. Hey, the ground here is showing less drag. The plane is definitely slowing down in a controlled fashion.
– Okay, this is the end of the track. You can see how the ground is compacted and only mildly scraped. So where is the plane? It is hard to investigate a plane crash without a plane.
Or maybe they do find it:
– Well, appears there was the pilot and a passenger in the plane. I think both were minors.
– The pilot was a minor? There was no instructor in the plane?
– Nope, at that point it was just the two kids. It appears that the boy piloting the plane was skilled and experienced.
– So what happened?
– It appears that the passenger incapacitated the pilot while he was in the pilot’s seat.
– What? He attacked the pilot?
– Actually the passenger was a girl, and no, she just inadvertently interfered with the pilot’s ability to control the plane. You can hear in the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) how she is telling the pilot “Thank you,” over and over again as she is probably hugging him.
– So he can’t reach the flight controls while she is hugging him and the plane goes down.
– Actually, it was the fact the pilot’s seat was damaged that prevented the pilot from reaching the flight controls. The local fire department had to cut him free of the mangled seat.
Good punchline (punchpage?). That plane was a sweet ride.
I’d say it still IS. Revenant seems like the type to make sure things are built to last, and it doesn’t look too damaged. We haven’t seen the last of that jet.
That’s right, he wouldn’t have been able to reach the autopilot button, restrained as he is. It’s a good thing for Tyler’s health that she included the pilot’s seat in the hug, although I think the farmer won’t think so if he gets there before Revenant.
I think the plane probably had some “smart” elements that allowed it to automatically make a controlled crash landing if it sensed nobody was at the controls while in flight. Voice-activation of an autopilot would have allowed it to fly home and land safely (thinking comic book autopilots, here).
It has homed in to pick them up before, though Revenant may have been piloting by remote then…
Today’s large commercial jets can auto-land at major airports under normal circumstances. You enter the landing approach and engage the auto-land and it communicates with the towers computers to get necessary info for safe landing.
You don’t need a fancy autopilot system to make a smooth landing with no pilot, just look up the Cornfield Bomber!
Okay NOW the plane has impressed me. That with a totally dead stick (No pilot holding it) It not only came in level and right side up. But did not cartwheel, nose in or break up. Whoever designed it earned their pay on it.
Well, it’s VTOL. The rest are details of fallback autopilot programming.
I called the plane crash but got the details wrong 🙂
It was a hug, not a kiss.
Aww, we still don’t know what the idea was.
Great page though. Tyler, you such a playa
Not really. That implies he’s pleasing a lot of girls, but really it’s just Julie, as far as I can tell. (Using her hero name here would not help make my point.)
Was I the only one that shipped him with Angie?
Angie is American Eagle, right? It gets hard to remember all the names and costumed identities after a while.
No, Angie is the tech girl – the one who’s friends with the alien, Prospero? Tyler took shop class with them, and they ended up in space. I’m not sure if she has a hero name.
No, Angie is the slightly older dark-haired kid who talks like a 40 year old Brooklyn cabbie and invents stuff crazier than Herschel does. She usually hangs out with Propero, the alien who was going to blow up the Earth if they didn’t solve the invasion issue in a timely fashion. (She’s also a mascot for a brand of pre-made peanut butter sandwiches, but that one wasn’t entirely her fault.)
American Eagle is Tyler’s age, blonde, and… I think we’ve only seen her out of uniform, like, once?
Although a bit out of date, there’s a fairly detailed Wikipedia page that lists students.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JQF/List_of_Students_in_PS238
I checked the PS238 wiki. It’s kind of sad, but they only have 2 character pages.
We’ve seen Jenny Adams out of uniform a few times, almost all of which were during the issue where she and Dillon Fillmore first appeared.
And there was that time the Ghost was telling people that she had eagle wings in he backpack.
Or the time she went off to fight the teleporter. (Which might have been the same incident, now that I think about it).
OK, OK, point taken… I just remembered her first appearance, is all.
Probably, but gotta admit it would be a great match, pairing up a gadget-using hero with a master gadgeteer.
Given Tyler’s experiences with Angie in shop class, that matchup might be almost as hazardous to his health…
Well Tyler is already Julie’s consort.
Well, in addition to Angie, there are:
– Suzi, who is the first person to talk to Tyler at PS238 (first girl wins trope in play here), and who promised to protect him because he has no powers.
– Jenny, who Tyler saved from being maimed by Dax-Ra, and who defers to Moon Shadow’s leadership despite being conditioned by her handlers to be a leader herself.
Tyler also gets along pretty well with Ambriel, but she has much better chemistry with Zodon.
I am laughing so hard that my face hurts.
…Lad, we’ve DISCUSSED this.
Uh, I assure you– This was the GOOD ending to the scenario. If Julie had left *angry*…
Tyler’s really gonna need to reveal his identity soon… If Julie is hugging him this strongly because she believes he has darkness powers and can therefore take the abuse, and she at some point hugs him somewhere OTHER than the plane…
I’m pretty sure that the PS238 faculty has taught Julie that not all powers give those that possess them invulnerability. As such, she wouldn’t expect Moon Shadow’s reputed “ultra-darkness powers” to make him (physically) invulnerable to her uncontrolled hugs. I’m equally sure that she hasn’t quite learned to control her *exuberance*, which is why Tyler is trapped in a crushed pilot seat.
Perhaps Revenant will take the opportunity to replace the crushed pilot seat with one that doesn’t require Moon Shadow to sit on a pair of thick phone books….
Maybe, but Revenant probably wouldn’t think it was quite as funny. (Plus I’m sure he uses it on a regular basis, too, and phone books can easily be moved out of the way.
There is such a thing as a height adjustable seat. Moonshadow probably just never installed one because though he tries to prepare for everything, the idea that a young kid like Tyler would be using it on a regular basis never crossed his mind as likely.
No, but he’s survived both hugs already, which probably weren’t at full strength, So she’s already got confirmation that he can.
At the very least, he needs to say he isn’t super strong.
So, how many people has 84 actually killed?
None. It’s not that kind of comic.
Though I suspect she has caused a couple of ‘really nasty boo-boos’.
Julie really needs to pay attention to other people’s property.
At least she’s not written as the “if she hits you she likes you” type.
Americans don’t do tsundere. ‘Round here we call that “psychotic behavior” and hospitalize people for behaving that way.
That is hilariously untrue. Fortunately “violence is a sign of affection” from both genders is gradually being phased out. That you are sufficiently unaware of it in your own culture to say that with a straight face is sort of a positive sign in some ways.
Let’s just say I make a point of avoiding people who are likely to hit me for whatever reason.
Oh yeah, ever watched hey arnold? Helga is that exact tsundere character.
It depends entirely on how hard you hit them. 😀
Looks like that’s shaping up to be a running gag or brick joke for the comic, although fridge logic leaves you wondering why she didn’t uncrunch the seat at least enough to let Moonshadow be able to get free.
Because Moon Shadow has Dark Powers and a simple crushed seat wouldn’t bother him at all. Everyone knows that, silly!
In my mental “video” of the unshown scene, she jumped up, hugged him, and flew out without looking back nor realizing the seat got crushed. She also apparently didn’t notice the plane crashing.
Her head must really be in the clouds.
(Pun intended)
Funny page, but I have to wonder where 84 disappeared to? Did she just crumple Moon Shadow into the seat and bust out of the canopy and fly away? Why didn’t she uncrumple the seat? Her action not only endangered Moon Shadow, but countless other non-supers when the jet was no longer under pilot control. This is not the same 84 that solved the Egg puzzle.
I kind of agree with you, but I kind of dont. See, back when 84 was asked the question about the card, I actually suggested “what are moon shadow’s powers?” would have made a great question (though in retrospect impossible to ask since the whole thing was televised) because of what that question would have required from Julie. See by now, Julie has seen enough of Moon Shadow’s tactics and arsenal that if she really thought logically about it, she could figure out that everything he did was gadget based, and therefor he did not have any.
But first she would have to knock the stars out of her eyes and see past any infatuation she has for him. As for why she didn’t uncrumple the seat, that’s pretty easy. That jet clearly has a hatch for exiting flyers, and Julie assumes Moon Shadow is this amazing super who can pretty much do anything, it didn’t even occur to her that he couldn’t unbend or otherwise get out of the seat himself.
Appropriate name for your last line, since Toby is an “amazing super who can pretty much do anything.” However, Tyler may want to get something that can unbend whatever Julie bends, and is voice activated.
I think there’s a lot of people who deal with metas who would like such a thing. Not the least of which, world governments.
No it, giddy schoolgirl Julie hugging her super awesome and powerfull and cool hero.
If it’s like the previous time, Julie most likely just hugged Tyler then flew off without looking back, leaving Tyler to land the plane with his feet (or autopilot).
Of course, Tyler is the only one she’s endangering: In order to be alone with Tyler to talk about personal issues (and to hug him), she will always be the last passenger off the plane.
I’m always amazed at how well Revenant multi-tasks.
It might be a mini-meta power, not unlike Tyler’s apparent gift to seem unremarkable. That grey area between “Really really better than average” and “legally defined as ‘meta'”. Like the FISSes, such folks probably don’t get the respect the deserve, even though their contribution is perfectly valid and worthwhile.
That wording, “apparent gift to seem unremarkable,” feels disturbingly like a strong connection to Nodwick’s “become irrelevant” henchman power. That combined with the way they both have the apparent ability to be the reliable and observant type makes me wonder if they’re distantly related, especially since both of their worlds have been shown to be the same one.
That would be my headcanon, actually: that yes, Tyler and Nodwick are distantly related. Age and maturity levels notwithstanding, the two have remarkable similarities, including their common sense and punchline deliveries. Plus, if you REALLY want to get picky about it, they’re colored the same: Blonde hair, red shirt, and blue pants.
It probably wouldn’t be hard to tear that theory apart, but that’s the joy of headcanon.
Isn’t the fact that this is a future version of Nodwick just canon? Or is that some other comic?
I don’t believe so. I don’t recall seeing anything specific along those lines, anyway.
I dimly recall Aaron saying something along the lines of “Heh, that would be pretty funny” but not “Yes, that is totally the case”. Or maybe I dreamed that. I honestly don’t know.
In any case, I don’t think that Tyler *IS* Nodwick in any literal sense, just that he could be a distant relation and bears a superficial similarity, unsurprising since they have vaguely similar roles and were created by the same author.
Well, they did travel back in time and meet Nodwick and crew. So it’s the same world. Issue 39, IMS.
I’m also only a little disappointed we have to wait to find out what the answer is (unless we have already bought the offline, bookshelf compatible version, ;)). But both in story and out of story, it makes more sense to hear the answer when Julie presents it to her group. Hopefully she’s wise enough to allow people to think it was her idea. I think Tyler would want it that way too.
If I’m not mistaken, these ones in color are when he made the switch to doing it only online and stopped doing print issues. Then again, I’m not 100% certain.
Aaron’s switching to just trades, since those apparently outsell the individual issues contained within [I]combined[/I]. Which is probably a very damning comment on how stores stock things.
On the one hand, I’m sad because I wanted to start a comic collection with PS238.
On the other, I vastly prefer compilation books for ease of reading……
Most of the individual issues are long since out of print, so it’d be impossible to complete the collection without a lot of money invested in eBay bids. So the trades are the way to go, since they get reprinted every so often. Check Noble Knight to see what they have available.
Anyone else getting the impression that when The Revenant was asking about the crunching noise, he was mentally crossing his fingers that Tyler’s answer wouldn’t be “My spine”?
If he’s a responsible adult who cares about Tyler’s well-being, which he’s been shown to be. There’s been almost nothing Revenant has instigated that Tyler wasn’t able to handle *OR* Revenant wasn’t able to help bail him out of. There HAVE been situations when Tyler did things Rev wouldn’t have approved of (Magnetically tethering his car to an escaping helicopter springs to mind) but I think he really cares about the kid, as a mentor and as a surrogate parent.
“Its fortunate the ejection system didn’t activate”
Its awful when getting a hug from a girl leads to premature ejection.
Yes, I went there.
Seriously? Tyler’s eight years old. That’s not appropriate. Also, EEWWW.
Spoilers
Anyone else getting a HPMOR vibe from 84 and Moon shadow’s relationship? It’s not all there, but there are some striking paralleled especially post chapter 111.
You would need to be more specific about the comparison.
It’s a Harry Potter alternate universe fanstory, but I only know that after looking it up.
No, not at all. Tyler is not an elite rationalist dealing with an irrational world. And the only relationship in Chapter 111 is between Harry and Voldemort. And, after that, just denoument. Can you elaborate on what similarities you see?
Is it maybe that you think the Revenant is Tyler’s “wise old wizard,” and now Tyler is becoming one for Julie? But why didn’t you just say “the last chapter”?
I wonder if the guy whose cornfield Moonshadow landed in was the same guy who had a gigantic ball of putty bounce in his field back in the issue when Tyler, Prospero, and Angie went up to Angie’s space station.
Given the nature of super-hero universes and such it would certainly be a good possibility, maybe we’ll find out next page.
If it is, the farmer might be able to make a mint out of selling his story to the papers and/or charging people to view his “crop circles”.
or we get the black jet sequel product to the space girl peanut butter sandwich
Hmmmm.. Shadow-Power Popcorn? Black Jet Corn Chips?
Huh… I guess there’s a reason I’m not in advertising.
Narrative law states yes. Look at the Cabbage guy from Avatar.
*chuckles*
84 is so affectionate. ^_^
If this ship is ever to sail, Julie needs to learn more control, or Tyler needs to invest in force field technology. (Because hugging someone in armour is no fun at all.)
That’d probably be the joke, actually. It’s been one of the things they’ve been training Tyler for, in an inverted sense: To be able to handle himself on par with metas… though the teaching staff was thinking in terms of keeping him safe in fights and such, rather than aggressive acts of affection. ^_^
Considering Tyler looks to be the Expy of Robin, since he’s the trainee (NEVER call them sidekicks) of the Batman Expy he’s likely going to end up quite lucky with plenty of hotty super-babes once he’s older. Can’t really slot 84 into the Starfire expy role though.
Moonshadow is an expy of Robin, but I quibble that Tyler is. He’s less “boy detective” as much as “boy trying not to get killed”. That said, MS *is* rubbing off on him and Tyler is more willing to try to help when and where he can.
I think Tyler has already fully embraced the Moon Shadow identity: He is pretty much a hero in training now.
Tyler may have originally trained as Moon Shadow in order to not get killed. However, Sovereign and Ultima have pretty much replaced Tyler with Toby, so the original reason for becoming Moon Shadow (i.e. to survive his parents continually putting him in danger to “awaken his abilities” and “fulfill his destiny”) is gone.
Had Tyler left his Moon Shadow identity dead, he could have lived as a normal kid attending Excelsior, albeit with a foster family.
In short, Tyler reclaimed the Moon Shadow identity not because he has to, but because he wants to. Moon Shadow isn’t rubbing off on him, he IS Moon Shadow.
Incidentally, I think Tyler is more like the third Robin than the first so Starfire wouldn’t exactly apply.
A pretty good description of things, we see Tyler making the choice to become Moonshadow when he could have walked away (he didn’t have to confront Charles after all, he COULD have reported it to the teachers to deal with but felt it was his responsibility), embracing his alter-ego when it clearly had nothing to do with surviving the insanity his parents were subjecting him to (it’s ironic that his clone replacing him actually gave him the chance of a normal, safe life only for him to CHOOSE that life for himself, or perhaps it’s actually fitting that Toby come into existence so that Tyler could choose between hero or mundane to show his growth and the heart he has).
@Nightmask: No, Moonshadow had to confront Charles. Because Tyler was not allowed to tell his teachers. I’m also not sure why you think the Charles thing is related to him taking Moonshadow back.
And, BTW, I don’t think he’s Robin. Robin was a sidekick. He did not go out on his own except to help out Batman. The Revenant helps out Moonshadow from afar.
Yes, Robin goes on his own in Teen Titans, but that’s only after he’s fully trained.
No trlkly Tyler did NOT have to confront Charles. What, you think some thug going ‘if you tell anybody then X gets it’ is particularly threatening when all his below-ground teachers are supers with a vast range of super-powers amongst them, and all he had to do was pick up a phone and call them about it like he did Revenant? That was Tyler actively choosing to adopt his Moonshadow identity rather than having it forced onto him as part of his training in order to stop a criminal, because he could have easily called the school, told them what was going on, and let them handle it (or heck called his worthless parents and let their super-team deal with it). He actively took up the Moonshadow identity after that point and went towards danger on his own initiative, and when he had a chance to retire it after everyone thought Moonshadow was dead he chose to take it up once again and embrace that as who he wanted to be.
@Nightmask: I should point out that Tyler tried to call the school and nobody was answering the phone.
Charles threatened to “splat” Tyler’s friends if he spotted Tyler anywhere near the school.
Also Moonshadow’s “death” had not occurred for several more chapters after one alien invasion/attempted retrovirus plague.
I think that a major part of Tyler’s character development in this series is from a kid who’s constantly at risk from metahumans to a hero in his own right and leader of his peers (albeit reluctantly). He’s gotten to the point where he has actually jumped off a spaceship to save 84’s life, without really thinking twice about it. So I do think he’s embraced his Moonshadow identity, and all the danger it entails.
@Nightmask He can’t call any of them. THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THAT STORYLINE. He couldn’t get a hold of them and if he was seen, his friends would be killed. And again, it had NOTHING to do with Tyler taking the suit back, since that happened much later.
If you aren’t even going to go back and check the old comics before saying stuff, why bother?
trlkly I remember things just fine, and Tyler would have had no problems contacting the teachers, her certainly had no problems putting together an entire super-team from his classmates that he managed to contact without difficulty. Seriously, you REALLY think Tyler had absolutely no way of contacting any of them? Of course he did, but he CHOSE instead to deal with things as Moonshadow, seeing it as something he had to deal with rather than hand it off to the adults.
Oh Tyler, it is. It really is.
So does anyone know how long this chapter is now? It seems really long, and it makes it hard to go back and find story lines since the switch to color.
We’re out of the regular issues now, so Aaron is free to run as many as he durn well pleases, instead of being limited to 16 to 32. The story *feels* like it’s wrapping up soon, but that’s just meta-thinking (sic) rather than any actual knowledge on my part.
Strictly speaking, there’s only been one chapter (story) since the change to color. I think the plan is to publish it all in one trade edition, similar to the Girl Genius model.
But my point is that it’s really hard to navigate. It’s bad enough that he uses dates for his titles rather than numbers, so you can’t go through 10 comics easily or anything. But at least, with the earlier comics, you could jump back. You can’t in this story.
And there have been quite a few logical chapters. You have one for before the egg, one for afterwards, and one for each trial within the egg. A chapter and a story are not remotely the same thing.
trikly, are you aware of the thumbnail pages? From the comic panel, drop down to the navigation links, then below those to the date, little calendar picture, and issue title. Click on the title (for this one, “Chapter 1: 84 and the Ones Before”) and it takes you to a page with thumbnails of every panel in the current issue (meaning, the issue that panel’s a part of).
I was not. Thank you. I wish it were more obvious. I’d expect this sort of thing to also be available in some sort of “archive” page, which would list all the issues and then you’d click on those to see all the panels.
And now it has. Thanks. (I specifically looked, so I know it wasn’t there when I said that.)
Hmmm… there’s an interesting thought: we know what Julie’s hugs are like, so what does that say about the other person she’s hugged lately — namely, Phlogiston? She didn’t seem bothered by 84’s enthusiastic embrace, so she must be fairly tough, or there’s something about her plasma powers that means that she can resist the effects of super-strength (though not magic, as we have seen). I wonder if she could give Tyler a few hints, because I think Moon Shadow and 84 make a good team — kinda like GA/SA Superman and Batman — and it’d be nice if Tyler didn’t have to worry about broken ribs when his team-mate is happy. There’s a bad joke in there about “Is that a full-body plaster cast, or are you pleased to see me?” but it needs refinement.
Phlogiston could become intangible which makes her practically invulnerable to anything physical she sees coming.
As for Tyler, he’s fully capable of stopping Julie from hugging him, which means that he probably didn’t mind the hug so much.
She could become intangible when Julie hugged her, but she didn’t, so either Julie only hugs Moon Shadow that hard or Phlogiston is more able to resist an 84-hug by some means. And I think that, whether or not Tyler liked the hug, he wouldn’t have had time to stop Julie before she crushed the seat, and probably didn’t want to once it was too late. Stopping Atlas before he accidentally crushed his son was a quite different situation.
There’s hugs and then there’s hugs. Do you hug your Mom the same way you hug your boy/girl friend? Julie was excited to see Phlo alive and well, but Moonshadow has Darkness powers and is all awesome and stuff.
That flashbulb trick didn’t actually DO anything to Atlas, it just confused him long enough for them to tell him what was up. I think its usefulness is wholly dependant on his not expecting it and even then there’s only a limited amount of time that the effect will work. Imagine having a flashbulb go off in YOUR face; you’d be briefly stunned and confused, and your vision would be obscured momentarily. (At least one would hope. Don’t try this at home, kids.) If he was mad about something, this ultimately would have only made him madder.
Great ending to the storyline. Can we please have a chapter break now? I have incredible trouble remembering where I left off without chapter breaks!
I can just see how this could go down.
NTSB investigators:
– You sure this is where the farmer said the plane crashed? I don’t see a plane.
– I have a track over here! It looks like a small jet bellied in and scraped off in that direction.
– So let’s follow the track. This is a tight track; I would say the plane was intact even after impact.
– Tim, check with the local air-traffic control if anybody declared a Mayday.
– Got it. Hey, the ground here is showing less drag. The plane is definitely slowing down in a controlled fashion.
– Okay, this is the end of the track. You can see how the ground is compacted and only mildly scraped. So where is the plane? It is hard to investigate a plane crash without a plane.
Or maybe they do find it:
– Well, appears there was the pilot and a passenger in the plane. I think both were minors.
– The pilot was a minor? There was no instructor in the plane?
– Nope, at that point it was just the two kids. It appears that the boy piloting the plane was skilled and experienced.
– So what happened?
– It appears that the passenger incapacitated the pilot while he was in the pilot’s seat.
– What? He attacked the pilot?
– Actually the passenger was a girl, and no, she just inadvertently interfered with the pilot’s ability to control the plane. You can hear in the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) how she is telling the pilot “Thank you,” over and over again as she is probably hugging him.
– So he can’t reach the flight controls while she is hugging him and the plane goes down.
– Actually, it was the fact the pilot’s seat was damaged that prevented the pilot from reaching the flight controls. The local fire department had to cut him free of the mangled seat.
Pretty sure Tyler asked the Revenant to completely fix it. There won’t be a trace.