She seriously reminds me of that girl from Tyler’s group Therapy, you know the pushy red headed one who had brown hair at the time. She never saw Cecil but he saw her.
I’m not sure whether Cecil is just upset that Cecil does not have all the cool stuff but only most of it or he has a legitimate complaint about Tyler being Revenant’s favorite.
Cecil has a more cool stuff but he only got the shrink ray from Revenant. He got the cloak by asking Maelafest’s mom and the cloaking device from Vance, and Vance from claiming the right object, Revenant did help him retrieve the ship but that was about Tyler and Ron needing help.
And the truth is I think giving Tyler more tech could be a minor way Revenant favors Tyler over Cecil. I mean there not brothers and don’t by any means have the same relationship with Revenant.
Yeah, looks like it’s Sarah – Messenger I believe theorized she was an adult superhero who got changed into a kid by psywarp, but it seems more likely she was a kid all along taking on an adult alter ego like Shazaam.
I would hope an adult chaperone wouldn’t go around referring to kids as “creepy” to their faces. She shows up to the party as herself in order to talk to Tyler et al about P&G, but she’s already scheduled to do a shift as her alter ego, so she runs off to the bathroom, disappears, and this heretofore unknown female character with red hair shows up.
But Sarah lost her shapeshifting powers. That’s what she was trying to regain from P&G. If she still has those powers, why would she need to deal with P&G at all?
My guess is that it is Sarah, but she hasn’t actually regained her powers. When she was at P&G discussing the “invoice” for what she wanted, nothing in the discussion would require the “price” to be something she brought in. It could be a service of some sort.
What if the price was to “be” someone else for a while? In this case, she essentially becomes one of the EDL folks, or some other super they brought in to help with the party. She had to run off earlier because the transformation was scheduled for a specific time, and she wouldn’t want to get caught transforming in front of everyone else.
For that matter, maybe it wasn’t a transformation per se, but a body swap. The super Sarah’s now impersonating may be walking around in Sarah’s kid body. Either way would be Twilight Zone-ish.
Just went back and looked at the start of this issue. At P&G’s first “customer”. The nose, the goggles – I think this woman is her. And I also think it’s Sarah – she mentioned in the therapy group having been a redhead. I’m suspecting she didn’t tell the whole truth in the session. She might be blipping back and forth between her forms, but now she has no control – it happens at a certain time of day whether she wants it to or not, instead of her being in control of it.
After thinking about it for a while, I think I might support this speculative notion.
Let’s say that Tall Curly-Hair Redhead is Sarah in one form (abbreviated TCHR), and the form we’ve seen her in therapy and later berating/trying to make a deal with Tyler and Ron with can be called Short Straight-Hair Brunette (abbr SSHB).
So it was her TCHR-form who was the Mysterious Disguised Customer we saw come up to P&G just as they opened up shop, and SSHB-form who later returned — and I guess was recognizable to P&G because she’d told them her problem?
She might be TCHR-form for 12 hours starting at, say, 6pm (Sarah-SSHB is in a panicked hurry at 5:49pm), and ending at 6am (so she’s SSHB at the early-morning therapy session). Presumably, PSWarp is the one who caused this change in her. I wonder if PSWarp maybe has more control over her, and might be using her to infiltrate?
This would explain something that bothered me about P&G: They seemed to be implying that Sarah was their only current customer when they talked about the “other” potential customer “ruffling Sarah’s feathers”, which was actually Ron unwittingly causing Sarah to jump to the wrong conclusion.
It might also explain why we’ve always seen Sarah-SSHB lugging around a carry-pack — she has a change of clothes of different size right before and right after the shape changeover.
Problems I can see with this notion:
1) Cecil was right next to Sarah-SSHB both in the therapy session and on the street later, and said nothing about sensing powers in her, which makes no sense if she has powers but can’t access them consciously.
2) Why is Sarah-TCHR in the EDL tower at all? Does the EDL have “pity” positions for depowered members? Is there a probationary period in effect where she can stay on while trying to reempower herself? Hm, actually, that last idea kinda makes sense. Being disempowered is a known issue for metahumans, and it can at least sometimes — most times? — be temporary. Which explains Sarah running around to get some sort of power back; she presumably only has so long until the probationary period is over and she has to leave the EDL.
There might be other objections, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
I’m presuming Sarah has gotten her powers back, on a contingent basis (or maybe they are permanent but p&g have convinced her they are contingent). This helps explain her sudden shift from anxious to cheerful – would she really be positive if she was on the same basis as before, where she might get her powers back, but someone else might acquire what she was looking at first? On that note, I think she’s had another meeting with p&g we didn’t see – that’s why she went from paranoid about even mentioning p&g to doing so openly in front of the other kids.
My speculation: she’s been pulled into a pyramid scheme. Sarah does not seem like the kind of person who would steal someone’s powers in exchange for her own, and even if she were I doubt she’d be willing to talk about any part of her plan with others. But if she thinks she’s merely recruiting new customers, she may see nothing to feel guilty about in what she’s doing.
This could also help explain her continued paranoia about knowledge of p&g – she suspects Tyler of being a competing agent, trying to poach away “her” prospects instead of playing fair with her.
I hope psywarp has already been dealt with, and this is the doing of villains unknown to the superhero community. If psywarp is walking around free, with control of a young girl’s mind, and she has no security measures in place (that we’re aware of) – again, some people have some explaining to do.
One issue with this theory is that Sarah did not know about the party until she picked up the invitation flyer dropped by Tyler.
So it’s unlikely she could register as a chaperone in such a short notice, much less be tasked with the EDL Tyler tracker.
Then again, Sarah was following Tyler earlier, so if the Redheaded heroine is Sarah, the tracker may be for herself so she could nab Tyler later.
It wasn’t my theory, though I agree with it. Sarah herself stated that a villain mind-controlled her into using her shapechanging powers to take on a human form that couldn’t shapeshift. Someone else here pointed out that such doesn’t make sense; that you shouldn’t lose shapechanging powers that way.
IIRC, the theory that commenter (I’m sorry, it’s been awhile, and I can’t look back on the previous comments at the moment) posited is that Sarah probably got some sort of mental block that prevents her from using her shapechanging powers.
Surely doctors/scientists would have examined her and confirmed she has physically changed, that it’s not all in her head? If the issue is that she’s walking around in unaddressed denial then her therapists have some explaining to do.
I’m not too sure of that. I both read a lot about psychology and have undergone my fair share of therapy. Believe me, it’s not as simple as you say it would be even for the simplest and most obvious of psychological problems. Heck, even for those of us who seek counselling without any actual diagnosed emotional problems, solving such is usually a long and complicated process.
Further complicating things:
11022011, Revenant: “Superpowers are still a mystery to science. Nobody knows exactly what causes them.”
It’s been stated in-universe that the cause and mechanics of most powers are mostly- if not completely- unknown. I’m pretty sure the neurological and psychological aspects face similarly bleak difficulties.
To make things even worse, the removal of Dynamode’s powers was very specific and mind-boggling in nature: “Reform your body into one that didn’t have superpowers.” As Mechwarrior pointed out, it’s “like an attempt to divide by zero”. It’s self-contradictory. It doesn’t make sense. If superpowers are already a huge chunk of unexplored, almost unexplorable territory, what Psywarp did was unknown and unprecedented within that.
Lastly, remember when Kevin was separated from his Emerald Gauntlet? He lost so much control over it that he was compared to someone who’d suffered a serious spinal cord injury. Sure, he got better, but only thanks to contact with the alien race he got the Gauntlet from (they rewrote his nervous system) plus a lot of dangerous experimentation by Alexandra Von Fogg. Prior to that, Mental Nucleus and Dr. Newby couldn’t do much.
All in all, I can’t blame any doctors and psychologists Sarah Bartlett saw for any failure if her problem is indeed psychological.
I dunno, man. We’re not talking about taking care to avoid prematurely rupturing protective self-delusions, defense mechanisms (although even there undoing those would be the ultimate goal of treatment). We’re talking about therapy designed to get bring the subject to acceptance of what is (in this theory) a false understanding of reality, one that causes personal distress and impairs personal function. More than that, there’s no evidence anybody’s protecting her from the truth, it looks like everybody simply believes she has been physically changed.
And the origins of these powers may be mysterious, but their manifestation doesn’t seem to be; you’ve got a whole society built on treating these characteristics as mundane aspects of their subjects’ performance. And even Cecil is capable of determining that a subject does not have powers (as opposed to, say, having powers and not using them because of a mental block) which is an argument for the “powers switching on and off” theory, since Cecil couldn’t sense powers in Sarah’s brunette form, but can sense them just a few minutes later in her redhead form.
The manifestation of superhuman powers may be mundane but that is not the same as an understanding of their mechanics. Without knowing how they work, how can anyone- doctors and psychologists included- tell the difference between delusion and actual loss of powers? Any test they attempt can lead to a false negative where Sarah Bartlett is simply unable to change shape, even if she still has the power. We, the readers, can question it because it seems nonsensical to us, but even we’re at the mercy of the author’s reasoning and revelation.
I’ve got to point out: we don’t know if the redheaded woman here is Sarah. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, but that’s not yet been revealed. We don’t even know where Cecil saw her before.
Not meaning to be a wise guy, but it’s not that Cecil didn’t feel or not feel any vibes off Sarah; it’s just that he didn’t say if he did or not. The only times he interacted with Tyler and could have told him if he did or did not either he immediately rushed off (2015-05-06- on the street after Sarah tore Tyler’s shirt, he ran to follow her) or the topic of the conversation went elsewhere (2016-07-25- after Cecil warns him that Sarah knows of the slumber party and Tyler talks about him being an unknown metahuman himself; he then again rushes off).
Of course, Cecil could have not mentioned anything because there wasn’t anything to mention (Sarah really was no longer metahuman; you are right in your assessment), but we’ll have to wait and see.
Note: interestingly, this is very much a mystery story as opposed to the usual superhero and adventure story PS238 has been about.
Shapeshifters getting locked into forms is a fairly common trope (if memory serves it’s called Shapeshifter Mode Lock), one of those is ordering them into a non-powered form. It works because if they have that level of control they shift into a normal human body, one that lacks the genetics or otherwise that provides the powers.
I should be going to sleep, but I found it. Mechwarrior made the comment, and he put it better than I did here. Go to the Ps238 update dated 2016-05-02.
Since I just reread that one story — Cecil didn’t ask Malphast’s mom for anything. She pulled at his coat and made those wings on her own “helpful” initiative (page from 07072010).
Cecil was 50 feet tall because of the energies being poured into the gate. Once the energies went away, he shrank.
His tentacles — and other unusual features — were because he traveled through the dimensions, and was affected by the entities there. He loses the when he returns to Earth, and they return whenever he goes dimension traveling.
I don’t seem him asking anyone about keeping the coat. He just does.
Its not that he needed permission to keep the coat but I believe that what he whispered to Maelefest’s mom when making the deal for a way home was he wanted her to throw in making it so his coat stayed awesome when he got back instead of becoming a normal trench coat again.
Having just read those pages as well, I can see this making sense. We don’t know exactly what he whispered — it might have been “Will the coat keep these awesome wings when I get home?” rather than making it part of the deal (her reply of “Of course!” works either way), but it does fit.
She works with Sovereign and Ultima, so it doesn’t seem like she just popped up this evening. She does look a lot like Sarah, has auburn hair, and a lot of the same mannerisms.
I’m wondering if she’s someone Cecil met way back when, like Malphast’s mom, or that member of the Dr. Positron android collective. But the former seems unlikely for various reasons, and as to the latter… I seem to recall that his power doesn’t respond to androids.
The ones the Revenant used to evaluate Cecil’s meta-detection powers? Not likely. Based on their conversation after knocking out the group that assembled to catch Kent Allard, Cecil realized they were all supervillains. I doubt a villain on the loose (compared to Lester) would have access to the EDL’s Wonderburg base, much less be one of its child guardians.
I think the fact that Cecil TOOK the band and attached it to Tyler himself is significant. I don’t think that band is on as “permanently” as it’s supposed to be.
Tyler’s parents are just worse and worse the more I hear about them. They don’t like Revenant much. Yeah, because they’re bigots against people who have no powers, culminating in how they act to their own son.
I feel there should be a joke that I should make about how Batman only really became a hero after his parents were murdered, but that would imply that anyone should care about Tyler’s parents or assume they were good parents in the first place.
Man, this comic is making me have harsh feelings 🙂
Well Ultima and Soverighn getting murdered by some random villain in front of Tyler has about as much chance to get Tyler powers as their other attempts did, unfortunately I’m pretty sure it also has about as much chance of killing Tyler as some of their more dangerous attempts did. So it doesn’t sound like a good plan but on the bright side at least if that attempt failed Tyler would still have mostly came out ahead.
Hmm… y’know, I think that people may be being harder on Ultima and Sovereign than they actually deserve. Part of being parents is doing the best you can, knowing full well that you’re going to screw up in some horrible way that you can’t even see yourself (at least at the time). From their (badly skewed) perspective, Tyler is disabled or sick. They were going all-out to try and ‘cure’ him, and put in a degree of effort that, if they were a normal family and Tyler, were, say, blind or some such, would be admirable instead of horrible. That being said, yeh, they’re screwing Tyler- and now Toby- up pretty bad. I’d be curious to see what their pasts were like- what shaped them to be like this.
I’d also be more than a little curious to see what they thought of the idea of everyone in the world having powers- I suspect that their answer would be quite revealing as to their fundamental character. If they’re as horrible as a lot of people seem to think, then they’d reject the idea emphatically, since it would basically ‘dethrone’ them as the elite of the ‘special people’. If, on the other hand, their character is trending the way I suspect it might be (although I’m *anything* but sure), then they’d be thrilled at the idea- from their perspective (which, again, I still think is weird, even if it’s a bit more sympathetic than the other way), it’d be sort of like being a caregiver in the Long-Term Care Unit in a hospital where everybody was suddenly fine and got up.
I dunno. If, in fact, they view themselves less as ‘special’ and instead view everyone else as ‘broken/incomplete’, then for me, at least, it would make them a lot more sympathetic without necessarily changing anything about them. Granted, they’d still need a bit of a wakeup call, but at least they wouldn’t be completely horrible in the interim.
Also, is anyone else a bit amused that thus far, the kindest and most empathic of the EDL that we’ve seen is the guy with the Cthulhu powers?
Also also, do Tyler and the other kids seem to be aging noticeably as time passes in-comic, or is that just art evolution? In comparison to his earliest appearances, he seems to be a full head taller.
No Tyler’s parents are every bit as bad as we believe them to be. They don’t look at people in general as being broken/incomplete they see them as inferior that’s why they feel that they shouldn’t make any effort to fix the world feeling it the purview of the elite with powers. It’s only their son, Tyler, that they see as broken/incomplete because they believe themselves to be speakers for the Will Of The Universe and that as a result their son simply MUST be destined to vast power in the cosmic scheme of things. Due to that they subjected him to potentially fatal events because as far as they’re concerned the events can’t possibly kill him because that’s contrary to their unshakeable belief in how special they are and therefor how special their son must be as well. Such an event can only cause him to become super-powered in their minds. His father’s recorded holo-message to Coach Rockslide was to treat his son in every way as if he had powers or be accused of trying to hamper Tyler’s ‘certain’ destiny. Any normal parent engaging in that kind of behavior would quickly end up in prison and their child in the Child Welfare system in order to protect him but because of their status as super-heroes they aren’t held accountable for their child endangerment.
Absolutely. They are truly terrible people, and they’ve abused Tyler his whole life, physically and emotionally, because he wasn’t what they thought he should be. They engage in willful denial, asserting that their ideal must be what “the will of the universe” wants. Even if they did legitimately believe Tyler’s lack of powers is a disability, putting him in physical danger … well, it’s honestly strange that he’s survived. Maybe we need to examine what caused that?
Well it’s a super-hero universe, it’s possible that Tyler IS protected by ‘The Will Of The Universe’ (Toby does mention how often he feels Tyler’s involved in pivotal moments due to his cosmic perceptions), it’s just that it wants Tyler to remain an otherwise non-powered human. It could be a pivotal thing that Tyler remain connected to normal humanity rather than part of super-humanity, hence why all attempts to give him powers fail (and when Toby tried it backfired so spectacularly it nearly destroyed the Earth). Since Tyler’s parents are convinced that anyone who doesn’t have powers can’t possibly be important or do anything of value they can’t conceive of their child being able to make the world better without powers like them so their delusion/arrogance actually puts them at odds with the actual Will Of The Universe.
But Tyler was literally the Will of The Universe when he made his choice at the Castle, wasn’t he? If his parents were somehow learn and grasp THAT, everything would change.
All quite possible. In fact, if there’s import placed on his connection with “everybody,” that would explain the exact form of the consequences of Toby giving Tyler powers: everybody who had them, lost them (except, apparently, Toby, but well, Toby’s…special), and everybody who didn’t, gained them. This would leave Tyler with exactly as much powers-related similarity/connection to everybody out there as he has under the current paradigm.
Does anybody else want to see a comic arc showing Toby’s not-so-hypothetical attempt that gave him such a specific idea of what “would” happen if he gave Tyler powers?
Also, Stephen Bierce, I don’t think even Tyler remembers that he made that choice. I’m sure his parents would be thrilled to know he had the role, but I’m not sure that it would be “enough” for them, unless they could spin it into a thing that publicly redowned back on them. At least, that’s my impression. Who knows? Maybe they’re not public glory-hounds, and are happy with smugly knowing how important they and their family are even if the world doesn’t. But…I don’t get that impression.
Replying to Segev, although there is no link to that…
Tyler DOES remember. Or at least, he did when he was puppeteering what eventually became Toby. The punchline on the last page of Issue 33.
It wouldn’t be admirable to take your child to many every back alley procedure to cure their blindness including many procedures which are more likely to kill the child than cure them, and if many of the procedures are pain full and have little chance of working and the child protests them. It would at best be sad. If the parents then refuse to teach him brail or make any commonly known accommodations because certainly he will be cured soon, and completely ignore him in all ways not related o curing him when he tried to live a full life in spite of this they are terrible parents regardless of intent.
Sovereign and Ultima did everything they did really believing it would work.
They live surrounded by metahumans. Every single person THEY know who fell into a vat of toxic waste emerged stronger. Same with those who touched a cursed item or were bombarded with exotic particles. Every last one.
And Tyler is *their* son. Sovereign and Ultima JUST KNOW that he’ll have powers somewhere, somehow, sometime. So he couldn’t possibly die or take permanent damage from any of these things.
They are living in a dream world, yes. But they really did think they were helping Tyler. They couldn’t imagine how they could be hurting Tyler. They are dangerous and incredibly emotionally difficult parents to have, but not inherently evil.
Then along came Toby. They seemed to look at the boys and decide they had two of the same boy — that he’d somehow doubled himself. Not an incomprehensible conclusion, seeing how Toby was made from Tyler.
But they still seemed to see both boys as the same person — they were mildly surprised when Toby wanted his own name.
Then Toby manifested powers. Their son — Tyler, now calling himself Toby, the only son they’d ever had — got superpowers! Clearly, Tyler had divided himself into two parts, one part of him had grown into his destiny and was everything they always knew their son could be (renamed himself Toby, funny kid, but that’s a side detail). And still had leftover parts of himself walking around under the old name, ‘Tyler’.
Toby insists Tyler is a different person… but he doesn’t look different, and Sovereign and Ultima have never been any good at listening, anyway. Is he a real second person? If so — well, this ‘Toby’ they spend time with is clearly the son they raised. He has so many memories from all those years growing up with them. He has the personality of the son they raised. He has the destiny and powers they always knew Tyler had in him somewhere. It’s him.
So who is this other kid?
Yes, it’s wrong. Yes, they are abusive parents. But like so many abusive parents, it’s not like Sovereign and Ultima woke up one morning and thought, “Let’s torture the kid for fun today and see how much we can mess him up!” They really thought — when they thought at all — that what they were doing was obviously right. Because surely they are never wrong about anything. Because they have superpowers, and that makes them better, smarter, more pure, and more right than other people.
Wrong on so many levels. But not deliberately, intentionally evil.
Sorry I was responding to the Chemelion but forgot to make it a reply. Its clear they are not torturing Tyler from pure sadism. They also don’t intend to be evil. They also are not doing what they do for Tyler’s sake. They whether they admit it or not are trying to fix Tyler for their own egos and value his powers more than him. Its not about what will make Tyler happy or helping him live a rich fulfilled life but the thought that Tyler not having powers makes them less special. Part of that might come from having developed no real identity for themselves outside of their powers.
By the way you do a good job of describing how they forgot Tyler in a way that explains it but doesn’t excuse it.
Deliberate, intentional evil or not it’s still evil. More than a few categories of evil cover people who’re doing evil but have convinced themselves that it’s all for the good of everyone when it isn’t. The villainous precursor race in Terinu felt that they were the most wonderful and advanced around so it was surely for the good of every other race that they serve them, if that meant blowing up their planet for daring to resist their divine rule well that’s just what had to be done, nothing evil about it at all. Except of course enslaving, modifying against their wills, and genocide are very much evil but they were convinced it was nothing of the sort. While Tyler’s parents aren’t remotely that bad they could end up that way, their attitudes would fit in perfectly on Atlas’ homeworld for example.
Yeah, they’re neglectful evil combined with a hint (for beings of their scale) of reckless endangerment.
Though your comment about fitting in on Argos is interesting. On the one hand, they certainly seem to have the “feel” of people with the FISS package, but they are so much “the dreaded” when it comes to people discussing how powerful they are that I suspect their powers extend far beyond that, and “merely” have the FISS package as a secondary suite or an easily-mimicked side effect. But they DO have it, it seems.
That would make them natural nobility on Argos…except that Argos fears “wild talents” so much they exterminate them when they crop up. Would Ultima and Sovereign Powers be “wild talents,” or seen as FISS nobility with amazing extra capabilities on top of it?
Obviously, as they are now, if they found themselves building a life on Argos, they’re so powerful that realpolitick would probably make it the latter. But I wonder, if they were born there, what the “natural” inclination would be, culturally.
Ultima and Soverighn would be seen as wild talents, its possible they could pass for FISS but they would have to hide everything else. Its just their attitude and their views on softies which would fit right in.
At least the School staff is trying to right by Tyler; they figered that, if his parents are bound and determined to put him In Harm’s Way, they could either make a court case of it, ( which is what would happen in the real world and probably with most other parents), or help him get the skills neccessary to survive at least, thrive at best, in his environment.
If they made a case of it, Sovereign and Ultima would have likely pulled Tyler from school and lept putting him through hell, regardless of what any judge would say, so they went with what they considered the lesser of the two evils so they could at least give Tyler a fighting chance.
So far, it’s worked well enough; Tyler has managed to survive and thrive and will probably continue to do so for a good while.
Ah, the joys of tech envy.
She seriously reminds me of that girl from Tyler’s group Therapy, you know the pushy red headed one who had brown hair at the time. She never saw Cecil but he saw her.
I’m not sure whether Cecil is just upset that Cecil does not have all the cool stuff but only most of it or he has a legitimate complaint about Tyler being Revenant’s favorite.
Cecil has a more cool stuff but he only got the shrink ray from Revenant. He got the cloak by asking Maelafest’s mom and the cloaking device from Vance, and Vance from claiming the right object, Revenant did help him retrieve the ship but that was about Tyler and Ron needing help.
And the truth is I think giving Tyler more tech could be a minor way Revenant favors Tyler over Cecil. I mean there not brothers and don’t by any means have the same relationship with Revenant.
Yeah, looks like it’s Sarah – Messenger I believe theorized she was an adult superhero who got changed into a kid by psywarp, but it seems more likely she was a kid all along taking on an adult alter ego like Shazaam.
I would hope an adult chaperone wouldn’t go around referring to kids as “creepy” to their faces. She shows up to the party as herself in order to talk to Tyler et al about P&G, but she’s already scheduled to do a shift as her alter ego, so she runs off to the bathroom, disappears, and this heretofore unknown female character with red hair shows up.
But Sarah lost her shapeshifting powers. That’s what she was trying to regain from P&G. If she still has those powers, why would she need to deal with P&G at all?
Could it be time travel? She knew the older version still with powers would be around so she needed to disappear and not be seen by her past self?
Someone else suggested she used to be an adult, I’m just adding a time travel component.
Alternatively she can some how change between forms.
My guess is that it is Sarah, but she hasn’t actually regained her powers. When she was at P&G discussing the “invoice” for what she wanted, nothing in the discussion would require the “price” to be something she brought in. It could be a service of some sort.
What if the price was to “be” someone else for a while? In this case, she essentially becomes one of the EDL folks, or some other super they brought in to help with the party. She had to run off earlier because the transformation was scheduled for a specific time, and she wouldn’t want to get caught transforming in front of everyone else.
For that matter, maybe it wasn’t a transformation per se, but a body swap. The super Sarah’s now impersonating may be walking around in Sarah’s kid body. Either way would be Twilight Zone-ish.
Wait a minute….
Just went back and looked at the start of this issue. At P&G’s first “customer”. The nose, the goggles – I think this woman is her. And I also think it’s Sarah – she mentioned in the therapy group having been a redhead. I’m suspecting she didn’t tell the whole truth in the session. She might be blipping back and forth between her forms, but now she has no control – it happens at a certain time of day whether she wants it to or not, instead of her being in control of it.
After thinking about it for a while, I think I might support this speculative notion.
Let’s say that Tall Curly-Hair Redhead is Sarah in one form (abbreviated TCHR), and the form we’ve seen her in therapy and later berating/trying to make a deal with Tyler and Ron with can be called Short Straight-Hair Brunette (abbr SSHB).
So it was her TCHR-form who was the Mysterious Disguised Customer we saw come up to P&G just as they opened up shop, and SSHB-form who later returned — and I guess was recognizable to P&G because she’d told them her problem?
She might be TCHR-form for 12 hours starting at, say, 6pm (Sarah-SSHB is in a panicked hurry at 5:49pm), and ending at 6am (so she’s SSHB at the early-morning therapy session). Presumably, PSWarp is the one who caused this change in her. I wonder if PSWarp maybe has more control over her, and might be using her to infiltrate?
This would explain something that bothered me about P&G: They seemed to be implying that Sarah was their only current customer when they talked about the “other” potential customer “ruffling Sarah’s feathers”, which was actually Ron unwittingly causing Sarah to jump to the wrong conclusion.
It might also explain why we’ve always seen Sarah-SSHB lugging around a carry-pack — she has a change of clothes of different size right before and right after the shape changeover.
Problems I can see with this notion:
1) Cecil was right next to Sarah-SSHB both in the therapy session and on the street later, and said nothing about sensing powers in her, which makes no sense if she has powers but can’t access them consciously.
2) Why is Sarah-TCHR in the EDL tower at all? Does the EDL have “pity” positions for depowered members? Is there a probationary period in effect where she can stay on while trying to reempower herself? Hm, actually, that last idea kinda makes sense. Being disempowered is a known issue for metahumans, and it can at least sometimes — most times? — be temporary. Which explains Sarah running around to get some sort of power back; she presumably only has so long until the probationary period is over and she has to leave the EDL.
There might be other objections, but I can’t think of them at the moment.
I’m presuming Sarah has gotten her powers back, on a contingent basis (or maybe they are permanent but p&g have convinced her they are contingent). This helps explain her sudden shift from anxious to cheerful – would she really be positive if she was on the same basis as before, where she might get her powers back, but someone else might acquire what she was looking at first? On that note, I think she’s had another meeting with p&g we didn’t see – that’s why she went from paranoid about even mentioning p&g to doing so openly in front of the other kids.
My speculation: she’s been pulled into a pyramid scheme. Sarah does not seem like the kind of person who would steal someone’s powers in exchange for her own, and even if she were I doubt she’d be willing to talk about any part of her plan with others. But if she thinks she’s merely recruiting new customers, she may see nothing to feel guilty about in what she’s doing.
This could also help explain her continued paranoia about knowledge of p&g – she suspects Tyler of being a competing agent, trying to poach away “her” prospects instead of playing fair with her.
I hope psywarp has already been dealt with, and this is the doing of villains unknown to the superhero community. If psywarp is walking around free, with control of a young girl’s mind, and she has no security measures in place (that we’re aware of) – again, some people have some explaining to do.
One issue with this theory is that Sarah did not know about the party until she picked up the invitation flyer dropped by Tyler.
So it’s unlikely she could register as a chaperone in such a short notice, much less be tasked with the EDL Tyler tracker.
Then again, Sarah was following Tyler earlier, so if the Redheaded heroine is Sarah, the tracker may be for herself so she could nab Tyler later.
It wasn’t my theory, though I agree with it. Sarah herself stated that a villain mind-controlled her into using her shapechanging powers to take on a human form that couldn’t shapeshift. Someone else here pointed out that such doesn’t make sense; that you shouldn’t lose shapechanging powers that way.
IIRC, the theory that commenter (I’m sorry, it’s been awhile, and I can’t look back on the previous comments at the moment) posited is that Sarah probably got some sort of mental block that prevents her from using her shapechanging powers.
Surely doctors/scientists would have examined her and confirmed she has physically changed, that it’s not all in her head? If the issue is that she’s walking around in unaddressed denial then her therapists have some explaining to do.
I’m not too sure of that. I both read a lot about psychology and have undergone my fair share of therapy. Believe me, it’s not as simple as you say it would be even for the simplest and most obvious of psychological problems. Heck, even for those of us who seek counselling without any actual diagnosed emotional problems, solving such is usually a long and complicated process.
Further complicating things:
11022011, Revenant: “Superpowers are still a mystery to science. Nobody knows exactly what causes them.”
It’s been stated in-universe that the cause and mechanics of most powers are mostly- if not completely- unknown. I’m pretty sure the neurological and psychological aspects face similarly bleak difficulties.
To make things even worse, the removal of Dynamode’s powers was very specific and mind-boggling in nature: “Reform your body into one that didn’t have superpowers.” As Mechwarrior pointed out, it’s “like an attempt to divide by zero”. It’s self-contradictory. It doesn’t make sense. If superpowers are already a huge chunk of unexplored, almost unexplorable territory, what Psywarp did was unknown and unprecedented within that.
Lastly, remember when Kevin was separated from his Emerald Gauntlet? He lost so much control over it that he was compared to someone who’d suffered a serious spinal cord injury. Sure, he got better, but only thanks to contact with the alien race he got the Gauntlet from (they rewrote his nervous system) plus a lot of dangerous experimentation by Alexandra Von Fogg. Prior to that, Mental Nucleus and Dr. Newby couldn’t do much.
All in all, I can’t blame any doctors and psychologists Sarah Bartlett saw for any failure if her problem is indeed psychological.
I dunno, man. We’re not talking about taking care to avoid prematurely rupturing protective self-delusions, defense mechanisms (although even there undoing those would be the ultimate goal of treatment). We’re talking about therapy designed to get bring the subject to acceptance of what is (in this theory) a false understanding of reality, one that causes personal distress and impairs personal function. More than that, there’s no evidence anybody’s protecting her from the truth, it looks like everybody simply believes she has been physically changed.
And the origins of these powers may be mysterious, but their manifestation doesn’t seem to be; you’ve got a whole society built on treating these characteristics as mundane aspects of their subjects’ performance. And even Cecil is capable of determining that a subject does not have powers (as opposed to, say, having powers and not using them because of a mental block) which is an argument for the “powers switching on and off” theory, since Cecil couldn’t sense powers in Sarah’s brunette form, but can sense them just a few minutes later in her redhead form.
The manifestation of superhuman powers may be mundane but that is not the same as an understanding of their mechanics. Without knowing how they work, how can anyone- doctors and psychologists included- tell the difference between delusion and actual loss of powers? Any test they attempt can lead to a false negative where Sarah Bartlett is simply unable to change shape, even if she still has the power. We, the readers, can question it because it seems nonsensical to us, but even we’re at the mercy of the author’s reasoning and revelation.
I’ve got to point out: we don’t know if the redheaded woman here is Sarah. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, but that’s not yet been revealed. We don’t even know where Cecil saw her before.
Not meaning to be a wise guy, but it’s not that Cecil didn’t feel or not feel any vibes off Sarah; it’s just that he didn’t say if he did or not. The only times he interacted with Tyler and could have told him if he did or did not either he immediately rushed off (2015-05-06- on the street after Sarah tore Tyler’s shirt, he ran to follow her) or the topic of the conversation went elsewhere (2016-07-25- after Cecil warns him that Sarah knows of the slumber party and Tyler talks about him being an unknown metahuman himself; he then again rushes off).
Of course, Cecil could have not mentioned anything because there wasn’t anything to mention (Sarah really was no longer metahuman; you are right in your assessment), but we’ll have to wait and see.
Note: interestingly, this is very much a mystery story as opposed to the usual superhero and adventure story PS238 has been about.
Shapeshifters getting locked into forms is a fairly common trope (if memory serves it’s called Shapeshifter Mode Lock), one of those is ordering them into a non-powered form. It works because if they have that level of control they shift into a normal human body, one that lacks the genetics or otherwise that provides the powers.
I should be going to sleep, but I found it. Mechwarrior made the comment, and he put it better than I did here. Go to the Ps238 update dated 2016-05-02.
Since I just reread that one story — Cecil didn’t ask Malphast’s mom for anything. She pulled at his coat and made those wings on her own “helpful” initiative (page from 07072010).
You’re right but didn’t Cecil ask to keep the coat after that which is why he still has the coat but is no longer 50 feet tall with a Chuthulu mouth.
Cecil was 50 feet tall because of the energies being poured into the gate. Once the energies went away, he shrank.
His tentacles — and other unusual features — were because he traveled through the dimensions, and was affected by the entities there. He loses the when he returns to Earth, and they return whenever he goes dimension traveling.
I don’t seem him asking anyone about keeping the coat. He just does.
Why would Cecil need to permission to keep said coat when it was his to begin with?
Its not that he needed permission to keep the coat but I believe that what he whispered to Maelefest’s mom when making the deal for a way home was he wanted her to throw in making it so his coat stayed awesome when he got back instead of becoming a normal trench coat again.
Having just read those pages as well, I can see this making sense. We don’t know exactly what he whispered — it might have been “Will the coat keep these awesome wings when I get home?” rather than making it part of the deal (her reply of “Of course!” works either way), but it does fit.
I think we’ve just met Sarah’s mother.
She works with Sovereign and Ultima, so it doesn’t seem like she just popped up this evening. She does look a lot like Sarah, has auburn hair, and a lot of the same mannerisms.
The joke is, Cecil’s talking space ship is messing with the Tower’s computers.
Nope, Zodon’s “son” is aiding his “father” in some Illegal Entry.
Both, IIRC.
I would have to go back a few weeks to check.
I’m wondering if she’s someone Cecil met way back when, like Malphast’s mom, or that member of the Dr. Positron android collective. But the former seems unlikely for various reasons, and as to the latter… I seem to recall that his power doesn’t respond to androids.
My guess was that it’s one of the people that Cecil investigated with the Revenant.
The ones the Revenant used to evaluate Cecil’s meta-detection powers? Not likely. Based on their conversation after knocking out the group that assembled to catch Kent Allard, Cecil realized they were all supervillains. I doubt a villain on the loose (compared to Lester) would have access to the EDL’s Wonderburg base, much less be one of its child guardians.
Most likely, Cecil saw within this story arc.
*Most likely, Cecil saw her within this story arc.
My money is still on Chandra. :p
I think the fact that Cecil TOOK the band and attached it to Tyler himself is significant. I don’t think that band is on as “permanently” as it’s supposed to be.
When Flea let him in, he was given a green band for access (which Flea acquired for his cockroach friend IIRC). I think Cecil swapped them out.
Tyler should have asked what that was all about.
Tyler’s parents are just worse and worse the more I hear about them. They don’t like Revenant much. Yeah, because they’re bigots against people who have no powers, culminating in how they act to their own son.
I feel there should be a joke that I should make about how Batman only really became a hero after his parents were murdered, but that would imply that anyone should care about Tyler’s parents or assume they were good parents in the first place.
Man, this comic is making me have harsh feelings 🙂
They’ve always been Toby’s parents, and Toby was always their only son. Everything contradicting their reality barely scratches their denial.
PS, reloading the captcha gives a 404
Well Ultima and Soverighn getting murdered by some random villain in front of Tyler has about as much chance to get Tyler powers as their other attempts did, unfortunately I’m pretty sure it also has about as much chance of killing Tyler as some of their more dangerous attempts did. So it doesn’t sound like a good plan but on the bright side at least if that attempt failed Tyler would still have mostly came out ahead.
You feel bad about Tyler’s situation + his parent’s attitudes towards normal people?
Welcome to the club. (Slides a drink towards Pander.)
Hmm… y’know, I think that people may be being harder on Ultima and Sovereign than they actually deserve. Part of being parents is doing the best you can, knowing full well that you’re going to screw up in some horrible way that you can’t even see yourself (at least at the time). From their (badly skewed) perspective, Tyler is disabled or sick. They were going all-out to try and ‘cure’ him, and put in a degree of effort that, if they were a normal family and Tyler, were, say, blind or some such, would be admirable instead of horrible. That being said, yeh, they’re screwing Tyler- and now Toby- up pretty bad. I’d be curious to see what their pasts were like- what shaped them to be like this.
I’d also be more than a little curious to see what they thought of the idea of everyone in the world having powers- I suspect that their answer would be quite revealing as to their fundamental character. If they’re as horrible as a lot of people seem to think, then they’d reject the idea emphatically, since it would basically ‘dethrone’ them as the elite of the ‘special people’. If, on the other hand, their character is trending the way I suspect it might be (although I’m *anything* but sure), then they’d be thrilled at the idea- from their perspective (which, again, I still think is weird, even if it’s a bit more sympathetic than the other way), it’d be sort of like being a caregiver in the Long-Term Care Unit in a hospital where everybody was suddenly fine and got up.
I dunno. If, in fact, they view themselves less as ‘special’ and instead view everyone else as ‘broken/incomplete’, then for me, at least, it would make them a lot more sympathetic without necessarily changing anything about them. Granted, they’d still need a bit of a wakeup call, but at least they wouldn’t be completely horrible in the interim.
Also, is anyone else a bit amused that thus far, the kindest and most empathic of the EDL that we’ve seen is the guy with the Cthulhu powers?
Also also, do Tyler and the other kids seem to be aging noticeably as time passes in-comic, or is that just art evolution? In comparison to his earliest appearances, he seems to be a full head taller.
No Tyler’s parents are every bit as bad as we believe them to be. They don’t look at people in general as being broken/incomplete they see them as inferior that’s why they feel that they shouldn’t make any effort to fix the world feeling it the purview of the elite with powers. It’s only their son, Tyler, that they see as broken/incomplete because they believe themselves to be speakers for the Will Of The Universe and that as a result their son simply MUST be destined to vast power in the cosmic scheme of things. Due to that they subjected him to potentially fatal events because as far as they’re concerned the events can’t possibly kill him because that’s contrary to their unshakeable belief in how special they are and therefor how special their son must be as well. Such an event can only cause him to become super-powered in their minds. His father’s recorded holo-message to Coach Rockslide was to treat his son in every way as if he had powers or be accused of trying to hamper Tyler’s ‘certain’ destiny. Any normal parent engaging in that kind of behavior would quickly end up in prison and their child in the Child Welfare system in order to protect him but because of their status as super-heroes they aren’t held accountable for their child endangerment.
Absolutely. They are truly terrible people, and they’ve abused Tyler his whole life, physically and emotionally, because he wasn’t what they thought he should be. They engage in willful denial, asserting that their ideal must be what “the will of the universe” wants. Even if they did legitimately believe Tyler’s lack of powers is a disability, putting him in physical danger … well, it’s honestly strange that he’s survived. Maybe we need to examine what caused that?
Well it’s a super-hero universe, it’s possible that Tyler IS protected by ‘The Will Of The Universe’ (Toby does mention how often he feels Tyler’s involved in pivotal moments due to his cosmic perceptions), it’s just that it wants Tyler to remain an otherwise non-powered human. It could be a pivotal thing that Tyler remain connected to normal humanity rather than part of super-humanity, hence why all attempts to give him powers fail (and when Toby tried it backfired so spectacularly it nearly destroyed the Earth). Since Tyler’s parents are convinced that anyone who doesn’t have powers can’t possibly be important or do anything of value they can’t conceive of their child being able to make the world better without powers like them so their delusion/arrogance actually puts them at odds with the actual Will Of The Universe.
But Tyler was literally the Will of The Universe when he made his choice at the Castle, wasn’t he? If his parents were somehow learn and grasp THAT, everything would change.
All quite possible. In fact, if there’s import placed on his connection with “everybody,” that would explain the exact form of the consequences of Toby giving Tyler powers: everybody who had them, lost them (except, apparently, Toby, but well, Toby’s…special), and everybody who didn’t, gained them. This would leave Tyler with exactly as much powers-related similarity/connection to everybody out there as he has under the current paradigm.
Does anybody else want to see a comic arc showing Toby’s not-so-hypothetical attempt that gave him such a specific idea of what “would” happen if he gave Tyler powers?
Also, Stephen Bierce, I don’t think even Tyler remembers that he made that choice. I’m sure his parents would be thrilled to know he had the role, but I’m not sure that it would be “enough” for them, unless they could spin it into a thing that publicly redowned back on them. At least, that’s my impression. Who knows? Maybe they’re not public glory-hounds, and are happy with smugly knowing how important they and their family are even if the world doesn’t. But…I don’t get that impression.
Replying to Segev, although there is no link to that…
Tyler DOES remember. Or at least, he did when he was puppeteering what eventually became Toby. The punchline on the last page of Issue 33.
Ah, I stand corrected on that, then. I had for some reason thought he lost all memory of it. Must only have been his “witnesses.”
It wouldn’t be admirable to take your child to many every back alley procedure to cure their blindness including many procedures which are more likely to kill the child than cure them, and if many of the procedures are pain full and have little chance of working and the child protests them. It would at best be sad. If the parents then refuse to teach him brail or make any commonly known accommodations because certainly he will be cured soon, and completely ignore him in all ways not related o curing him when he tried to live a full life in spite of this they are terrible parents regardless of intent.
Sovereign and Ultima did everything they did really believing it would work.
They live surrounded by metahumans. Every single person THEY know who fell into a vat of toxic waste emerged stronger. Same with those who touched a cursed item or were bombarded with exotic particles. Every last one.
And Tyler is *their* son. Sovereign and Ultima JUST KNOW that he’ll have powers somewhere, somehow, sometime. So he couldn’t possibly die or take permanent damage from any of these things.
They are living in a dream world, yes. But they really did think they were helping Tyler. They couldn’t imagine how they could be hurting Tyler. They are dangerous and incredibly emotionally difficult parents to have, but not inherently evil.
Then along came Toby. They seemed to look at the boys and decide they had two of the same boy — that he’d somehow doubled himself. Not an incomprehensible conclusion, seeing how Toby was made from Tyler.
But they still seemed to see both boys as the same person — they were mildly surprised when Toby wanted his own name.
Then Toby manifested powers. Their son — Tyler, now calling himself Toby, the only son they’d ever had — got superpowers! Clearly, Tyler had divided himself into two parts, one part of him had grown into his destiny and was everything they always knew their son could be (renamed himself Toby, funny kid, but that’s a side detail). And still had leftover parts of himself walking around under the old name, ‘Tyler’.
Toby insists Tyler is a different person… but he doesn’t look different, and Sovereign and Ultima have never been any good at listening, anyway. Is he a real second person? If so — well, this ‘Toby’ they spend time with is clearly the son they raised. He has so many memories from all those years growing up with them. He has the personality of the son they raised. He has the destiny and powers they always knew Tyler had in him somewhere. It’s him.
So who is this other kid?
Yes, it’s wrong. Yes, they are abusive parents. But like so many abusive parents, it’s not like Sovereign and Ultima woke up one morning and thought, “Let’s torture the kid for fun today and see how much we can mess him up!” They really thought — when they thought at all — that what they were doing was obviously right. Because surely they are never wrong about anything. Because they have superpowers, and that makes them better, smarter, more pure, and more right than other people.
Wrong on so many levels. But not deliberately, intentionally evil.
Sorry I was responding to the Chemelion but forgot to make it a reply. Its clear they are not torturing Tyler from pure sadism. They also don’t intend to be evil. They also are not doing what they do for Tyler’s sake. They whether they admit it or not are trying to fix Tyler for their own egos and value his powers more than him. Its not about what will make Tyler happy or helping him live a rich fulfilled life but the thought that Tyler not having powers makes them less special. Part of that might come from having developed no real identity for themselves outside of their powers.
By the way you do a good job of describing how they forgot Tyler in a way that explains it but doesn’t excuse it.
Deliberate, intentional evil or not it’s still evil. More than a few categories of evil cover people who’re doing evil but have convinced themselves that it’s all for the good of everyone when it isn’t. The villainous precursor race in Terinu felt that they were the most wonderful and advanced around so it was surely for the good of every other race that they serve them, if that meant blowing up their planet for daring to resist their divine rule well that’s just what had to be done, nothing evil about it at all. Except of course enslaving, modifying against their wills, and genocide are very much evil but they were convinced it was nothing of the sort. While Tyler’s parents aren’t remotely that bad they could end up that way, their attitudes would fit in perfectly on Atlas’ homeworld for example.
Yeah, they’re neglectful evil combined with a hint (for beings of their scale) of reckless endangerment.
Though your comment about fitting in on Argos is interesting. On the one hand, they certainly seem to have the “feel” of people with the FISS package, but they are so much “the dreaded” when it comes to people discussing how powerful they are that I suspect their powers extend far beyond that, and “merely” have the FISS package as a secondary suite or an easily-mimicked side effect. But they DO have it, it seems.
That would make them natural nobility on Argos…except that Argos fears “wild talents” so much they exterminate them when they crop up. Would Ultima and Sovereign Powers be “wild talents,” or seen as FISS nobility with amazing extra capabilities on top of it?
Obviously, as they are now, if they found themselves building a life on Argos, they’re so powerful that realpolitick would probably make it the latter. But I wonder, if they were born there, what the “natural” inclination would be, culturally.
Ultima and Soverighn would be seen as wild talents, its possible they could pass for FISS but they would have to hide everything else. Its just their attitude and their views on softies which would fit right in.
At least the School staff is trying to right by Tyler; they figered that, if his parents are bound and determined to put him In Harm’s Way, they could either make a court case of it, ( which is what would happen in the real world and probably with most other parents), or help him get the skills neccessary to survive at least, thrive at best, in his environment.
If they made a case of it, Sovereign and Ultima would have likely pulled Tyler from school and lept putting him through hell, regardless of what any judge would say, so they went with what they considered the lesser of the two evils so they could at least give Tyler a fighting chance.
So far, it’s worked well enough; Tyler has managed to survive and thrive and will probably continue to do so for a good while.