Morning 2012-12-10

[Wapsi]

I can't believe NONE of you got the reference! =P

[Bathorys Daughter]

Somehow, I don't think Suzi likes her life.

Atomic, Suzi doesn't have "a life." She's undead, but of course you knew that. The vault is hungry. I do think Suzi isn't thrilled about her existance, though, but it beats the alternative.

Like someone else said, you hang deer upside down and pigs and when you gut the pigs you let the innards fall into a bucket... Suzi has gotten inured to this just like a slaughter-house worker, it's what she is. However, I'm wrong a lot of the time because Paul is good.

I don't think this scene is grisly just for the sake of it. It's letting us know a little bit about Suzi's existence beyond the fact that she's a agent/MIB. Sparkly vampires aside, traditionally vampires are terrifying and to anyone but our starring cast dangerous as all get out. I do think Suzi has a conscience and that is one of the reasons she went to prisons to feed. So who is the unlucky redshirt and should we feel sorry or glad about this? later scene *radio: "... and his body was found in a dumpster behind his apartment building. The victim was a suspect in numerous disappearances of suspected prostitutes. There has been no reported cause of death yet. In other news.." ?

Actually, if she is feeding off found bodies, it would be much more likely this one would be one of the murdered hookers than the murderer.

Also, we need to remember, Suzi is more than your average vampire. She devours her victims, not just drinks their blood. This would make her a "goul" as opposed to just a vampire. She can just gut them and let it all drop out into the bucket. Best Bleeding Practices is not much of a concern here. In fact, it looks like she is lifting some sort of large organ out of the bucket now. Maybe she likes to cook it when she can, ergo the making the donuts remark.

It may be the MIB can justify supplying her with bodies if she limits her feeding to internal organs. The body can be returned for burial with no one being the wiser. The organs would just go to waste anyway, assuming they were unfit for transplants. Who knows, maybe she is actually putting uneatable organs (or animal organs, or blood soaked sawdust) back in before sewing the body up for return.

Also, I would say her feeding of prisoners is not a matter of conscience but one of rationalization. She can see it as being alright so long as she can convince herself she is actually doing good. The typical thinking of some of the greatest mass murders of all time. In fact if she had been killing since the 1890s she would be one of the greatest mass murders of all time, not counting maniacal country leaders like Hitler and Stalin.

[Atomic]

I can't believe NONE of you got the reference! =P

Well, yes! Of course! It's become a catch-phase for everyone who's stuck in a rut.

It may be the MIB can justify supplying her with bodies if she limits her feeding to internal organs. The body can be returned for burial with no one being the wiser. The organs would just go to waste anyway, assuming they were unfit for transplants. Who knows, maybe she is actually putting uneatable organs (or animal organs, or blood soaked sawdust) back in before sewing the body up for return.

I shudder to think that if that's the case, what level of horror is being dealt with by such a response, much less than it's being condoned by the powers that be! Possibly a mystical thugee cult of some kind? Now that would require extreme action!

[Boxilar]

I can't believe NONE of you got the reference! =P

I'd be willing to bet quite a few of us did. My aunt who makes donuts for a local bakery makes the joke all the time. Here in north Alabama, the last Dunkin Donuts closed down almost a decade ago. I still see Dunkin commercials but the only options within a 100 mile radius are Krispy Kreme, local bakeries and grocery stores.

Edit; also, the subject matter likely took precedence for most folks. I'm learning not to jump to conclusions and not everything is as it seems in the Wapsiverse

[BikerScum]

That's just... disturbing.

I know right? What kind of vampire hangs someone from their feet? All the blood's just pooling in his head. Hang by the wrists and cut the ankles, not the other way around.

We don't know that the donut HAS a head anymore... and referring to it as a donut is giving me a really weird mental mashup with "Red vs. Blue".


Aside to Paul: Good job on your rendition of her sidearm. Also good choice of weapon for a LEO, as the Glock platform is by far the most adopted by police agencies in the US.

[meisdadoo]

I said it before, and I'll say it again;
http://www.subzin.com/quotes/Beetle+Jui ... nd+weirder

[Leak]

I can't believe NONE of you got the reference! =P

Well, I blame me being on the other side of the ocean for that - we don't do donuts, we do Krapfen...

[Boxilar]

I said it before, and I'll say it again;
http://www.subzin.com/quotes/Beetle+Jui ... nd+weirder

I think it was always weird. I think Paul is just taking us further down the rabbit hole.

[Dave]

Mmmmmm, YUMMEH!

So it looks like the man of the evening is hanging around for breakfast then..../

It does seem as if Suzi McBride has a somewhat different interpretation of the phrase "bucket list" than most of us do... and the common usage pails by comparison!

(*clink*)

[Fairportfan]

The original can be seen in a really disturbing horror-comic from the 70's (forgot the name. It was quite infamous at the time, The crypt-keeper rose from these comics), where exactly that happens to someone that gets into the clutches of some blood-drinker-cult.

Actually, Tales from the Crypt was a 1950s comic - one of the EC line published by William Gaines, and featuring the work of some of the best artists and writers in comics (and featuring a number of fully-authorised adaptations of Ray Bradbury's stories*).

The EC comics were pretty much the best of the horror comics, but they were also lurid enough (and popular enough) that Fredric Wertham and Senator Estes Kefauver (who was unhappy about being upstaged by Joe McCarthy, apparently) focused on them as symbols of the evils of comics...

====================

* A sufficient number that in the 1960s there was a paperback collection of them, The Autumn People.

Editor Harvey Kurtzman had published a story that was an uncredited version of a Bradbury short story. It came to Bradbury's attention.

Instead of ranting and raving and threatening to sue, Bradbury was apparently a bit amused, and wrote Gaines a polite letter saying, basically: "Dear Bill. I am delighted with the results of the adaptation of my story. However, I don't seem to have received the check yet."

Gaines, in his turn, was amused by this approach, and immediately had a check for Bradbury cut.

After that, the Bradbury adaptations in EC comics were the only adaptations of pre-existing stories that were both credited and paid for ... and Bradbury sometimes helped Gaines, Kurtzman and Al Feldstein on the adaptations with comments or advice.

One Bradbury/EC story, in particular, that stands out in my memory is "There Will Come Soft Rains", with art by Wally Wood.

(Hmmm. I had recalled the first panel as one of the last.)

[Wdot]

Hey Fairportfan , thanks for that info, it was very interesting to read.

@ Bathorys Daughter I was thinking more of Suzi being a serial killer of serial killers, kinda like Dexter, but of course more successful. If she had to eat somebody maybe she felt better to eat a known baddy.

@Atomic I like your take on the morning after

[Fairportfan]

Hey Fairportfan , thanks for that info, it was very interesting to read.

I have this twitch. When i know things, i like to share them.

If you wanna see what i can do when i really get revved up - here's something about the early days of Fairport Convention i put together back in my days on MOG.com (back when it was a viable music-blogging site). The research took a couple of days; the search for graphics and production took about three more, spread over a week (i originally posted it in something like three parts).

Periodically, i think maybe i ought to do a second such, covering the time from their 1985 reunion on to the current day.

Then i lie down in a dark room with a cold cloth on my forehead till the thought goes away.

Wanna know why?

Here's Pete Frame's "family tree" for Fairport for the period covered in the above article.

Remember - this only covers 1967 - 1979.)

The one he did for their big thirty-five-year retrospective box set Fairport unConventional (i can't find a copy online) was about half-again as big, just a crammed-full of information ... and omitted all of the side projects and connected bands. Based on some pictures i've seen, the original seems to have been about four feet by three.

And - quoting from my review linked in the previous graf:

He remarks at the end that it's current as of when he did it -- and says "...if you change the lineup one more time, you can find yourself another f***in' genealogist!"

(Actually, by the time i had the box in my hands and wrote the review, there had already been two more changes...)

[kingklash]

I can't believe NONE of you got the reference! =P

I got it, but I'm 43, and a TV fiend. For those who still might be wondering, it's just another way of saying, "Off to the salt mines."

[Bathorys Daughter]

It may be the MIB can justify supplying her with bodies if she limits her feeding to internal organs. The body can be returned for burial with no one being the wiser. The organs would just go to waste anyway, assuming they were unfit for transplants. Who knows, maybe she is actually putting uneatable organs (or animal organs, or blood soaked sawdust) back in before sewing the body up for return.

I shudder to think that if that's the case, what level of horror is being dealt with by such a response, much less than it's being condoned by the powers that be! Possibly a mystical thugee cult of some kind? Now that would require extreme action!

I agree. It would seem MIB is lacking in moral character if it supplies the grisly food needs of a creature who feeds on human meats to survive. It would seem such a being would be the sort of thing MIB would kill rather than nurture. Using bad guys/girls for the food source would make them no less amoral. What could be her value to them that would allow that degree of care?

Of course we may be (probably are) totally wrong on all this. Those legs look somewhat slim. Makes me wonder if this is how Lily sleeps and Suzi is about to throw a couple of hand-fulls of blood into her face to wake her up.

[jwhouk]

I can't believe NONE of you got the reference! =P

Pablo, of COURSE we got the reference. I'm just so used to using it in daily life that I didn't think it was worthy of comment.

[lake_wrangler]

Two ways to look at it then mates.

1) Wapsi was never all that "clean" when it came to gore in its comics. Pretty much ever since Bud had her first Monica-induced flashback years and years ago. Jin slashing generic guards to ribbons (not the priests, that other time), Brandi's memories of burning alive, Tina 1.0's death and Shelly Cycle-1's death. Violent death doesn't just happen to "bad guys" in Wapsisquare, not is it a recent trend.

That may be so, but all those other times, there was some form of distance involved, whether it was a flashback of some time long, long ago, or some newsprint articles, or it happened in a massive scale, or whatever... but in each case, they were never quite as explicitly gory as what we're seeing lately, as far as I can recall... Lately, it's been rather explicitly gory, and rather up-close-and-personal, in real-time, so to speak. That makes a big difference.

2) Consider the current arc's material. The animalistic nature of supernaturals, both to humans and one another. Phix's, Not-Brandi's and Not-Bud's dinner plans are going to be a prevalent in this arc, but probably far less in future arcs.

That is indeed a possibility. That would make sense.

Once the Monica-v-Phix and Vampire-introduction storylines resolve, I wager we'll see far less blood than we're currently seeing.

I certainly hope so, to be honest...

[Jabberwonky]

So gaze long into a donut, the donut also gazes into you? (it was very hard to not type glaze)

You can tell butter frosting zombies by the glaze in their eyes...

Gots the Yummies 1440.jpg (243.08 KiB) Viewed 12276 times

(you have no idea the friggin' trouble I had getting this picture up here )

[scantrontb]

AWESOME job coloring that!... but... Tina's eyes are Silver, not Blue...

[Jabberwonky]

I put the 'under' reflection as a tone of what's she's wearing.

[Julie]

Aaand that was part of why I was disturbed. I was having trouble deciding if it was McBride or Becky because of the donut comment.

The gun on the nightstand should have been a giveaway.

I was too disturbed to notice that kind of detail.

Again? I never thought Wapsi would go the route of constant bloody slaughter. Yet now we have what seems to be the start of yet another bloody murder arc. One blood drenched episode after another. And making this victim another bad guy won't make it ok. At least not to me. If it were just the bucket of blood, fine, that could be supplied by the MIB for their nourishment, but the hanging body seems to indicate otherwise. Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, I hope so. This is getting to be a bit much.

I actually feel similarly on this one (in spite of my strong stomach for gore and dark stories), but I've long ago learned to reserve judgement when reading Wapsi Square. Things are often not what they seem...and as shadowinthelight has already pointed out, she could be draining the body of someone who was already dead due to "natural" causes (and by natural I merely mean that the supernatural characters of this comic weren't in any way involved...not that it was a "died peacefully in their sleep" kind of thing).

Two ways to look at it then mates.

1) Wapsi was never all that "clean" when it came to gore in its comics. Pretty much ever since Bud had her first Monica-induced flashback years and years ago. Jin slashing generic guards to ribbons (not the priests, that other time), Brandi's memories of burning alive, Tina 1.0's death and Shelly Cycle-1's death. Violent death doesn't just happen to "bad guys" in Wapsisquare, not is it a recent trend.

2) Consider the current arc's material. The animalistic nature of supernaturals, both to humans and one another. Phix's, Not-Brandi's and Not-Bud's dinner plans are going to be a prevalent in this arc, but probably far less in future arcs. To be honest, given the stories OfficerTB has hinted in his past, I wouldn't be surprised if he made a cameo for some vore or otherwise gorey-service before the current arc's complete.

Once the Monica-v-Phix and Vampire-introduction storylines resolve, I wager we'll see far less blood than we're currently seeing.

I think lake_wrangler managed to explain it best. The previous gore situations were flashbacks mostly, so they weren't as shocking (thought they were frequently emotionally unsettling). I'd also like to submit that a lot of the previous gore and darkness was not to vividly colored. Paul has been adding touches of color more frequently of late, and it makes a serious emotional impact. I don't know about you, but when blood is drawn in black or dark gray, it's easier to maintain a level of emotional detachment than when you're forced to acknowledge viscerally that the brilliant red stuff being drained from the body of an unknown individual (victim or corpse...doesn't matter) is that person's life-essence.

I'm totally not put off reading the comic or anything. I'm just agreeing with Bathory's Daughter (minus most of her conjectures as to the nature of the situation) that the comic seems a lot more shockingly gory lately.