O.K., I have been a faithful Sluggy Freelance reader for as long as I can remember (which is currently last week thursday, but i’m sure i’ve been reading longer than that)…
where was I? Oh yes. In today’s strip (Oct 30th, 2001) Dr. Schlock (Irving) is trying to get out of the party before Aylee Eats everyone and he meets up with Kusari. Now, the way the comic was written it seems like I should remember who the hell Kusari is…
But I don’t.
I also do not have the time to search the last 2,000 strips to try to remember… Is Kusari the Chick who fought the “i’m NOT a robot” girl the last time she showed up? It’s bugging me because I think that’s an older character that I just don’t remember.
Kusari would be a great excuse to shift storylines in an “introductory recap”, while he figures out where the hell to go with the “New Ailee” storyline.
Just a guess, 'cause I’ve no idea who the hell she is, either.
Yes, I considered that it could be a new character, but my guts are telling me that it’s not. And my guts had me win my football pool this weekend at work, so I think they’re working (11 of 14 picks correct :))
So is Oasis dead or not? Is she going to reappear during this Halloween season?
My personal opinion is that the creature everyone thinks is Aylee is not Aylee. How could Aylee transfrom from being the friend and protector of Torg to this evil creature bent upon destruction? There must be some twist coming.
And didn’t Dr. Schlock travel back to some other time period last time we saw him? I guess I’ll have to go look it up.
So is Oasis dead or not? Is she going to reappear during this Halloween season?
I like Oasis. I hope she’ll be back for at least a cameo sometime. Seems like we’ve been seeing a fair number of new characters recently, between the kitten girl coming back, Sasha, etc. No real complaints from me, it’s all good.
My personal opinion is that the creature everyone thinks is Aylee is not Aylee. How could Aylee transfrom from being the friend and protector of Torg to this evil creature bent upon destruction? There must be some twist coming.
Aylee adapts to her environment. Whenever she comes under some new stress, she balls up into a cocoon and comes out almost perfectly adapted to the problems at hand. This time, she became the head of an internet company during the dot-com bust. Big stress. Her body did what it does… and now she’s an evil, ruthless executive personified. As for eating people, Aylee’s always done that. She just usually refrains from doing it because other people didn’t like it. But for the whole “Punyverse” arc, there was nobody around to tell her not to.
Aylee will transform again eventually. Who knows what the stimulus will be. Hopefully her next morph will be back along the lines of snake-dragon, which is my favorite Aylee form so far.
-Ben
I’m pretty sure Oasis is now, sadly, an Ex-Parrot. Peter Abrams has a way of keeping dead people dead. There was no cliffhanger the last time, so I’m pretty convinced she’s gone. IMO I think he knew he would be bringing Angela (the ‘kitten girl’) back, and he would have just too many love interests flying around Torg.
But tha’s just a theory.
I forgot that at the end of the comic where Oasis died, there was a second Oasis (Sunday, April 1st, 2001). Of course, this was an April Fool’s comic, so maybe it was meant to be that she wasn’t dead, or that she was, or that she was a clone…
dear lord…
Do you people realise what this means? If she’s a CLONE, and the way Sluggy Freelance spoofs everything, then pretty soon we’re going to have an ATTACK OF THE CLONES series! NOOOOOOOOOOO! Ailee is going to morph into a JAR JAR BINKS!
She already did that for a Halloween party in the ‘snake-puppy/pretty flower’ form. She already looked pretty similar, so she just put on a vest and tied that frilly thing on her head back.
“Mesa Jar Jar Stinks!”
“That’s Jar Jar Binks, Aylee.”
“Not according to the kids.”
Has anyone else noticed that there’s TWO Howdy Kittens? One is with Dr. Schlock and used an all caps ‘Hello Kitty’ font, and turned out to be Kusari.
The other is on the other side of the building and down a floor* and uses the same font but in lower case. Unless Kusari is REALLY fast and Pete flubbed up the font (which he rarely does… especially if he bothers to give someone their own font) its a different Kitty.
The figure seems wrong for Zoe or Oasis. It might be Flaky, but that would be pretty twisted of her.
Question: The snakedemon wrote ‘Mosp’ after hesitating when Torg asked her name, yes? There’s contention on the Sluggy forums that it was I/Osp or I’m Osp or something, but it looked like ‘Mosp’ to me. I would guess that Mosp is the middle part that doesn’t get to act except when the snakes are knocked out.
–John
*In the Sunday we see thar Riff and Sasha are on the second floor, but Bert was standing outside the window he jumped out of.
ModernRonin2:
[ul]
[li]During the whole “snake/dragon” phase (also my preferred Aylee phase), she didn’t eat people, but potatoes instead. See here.[/li][li]Aylee explains here that her transformations are to help adapt to her environment, but obviously the forms she takes in that week are more for humorous effect than anything. I’m still hoping that the “Aylee” were see now is an impostor. In any of her incarnations (except for her initial appearance) she didn’t attack the “heroes”.[/li][/ul]
broccoli!:
Oasis: the first Oasis seemed to have died here, but she came back only to “die” again here, is fatally injured here (as pointed out by VeraGemini) then dies but yet is seen alive when our friends leave the hospital, here. I think Oasis is indestructable or else is being constantly regenerated.
Yue Han:
[ul]
[li]It’s true what you say about the changing fonts with the creature in the “howdy kitten” outfit, but here we see the same character in two consecutive frames talking to the same person with the two different fonts, which would seem to indicate pretty clearly that the change in fonts does not mean a change in character. I would interpret it that once the “howdy kitten” is ‘unmasked’ as Kusari she stops disguising her voice, which would be the reason for the font change.[/li][li]in re Bert standing outside a second-story window here, I think that he’s supposed to be hanging on to the window ledge with his hands, not standing.[/li][li]Mosp vs. I/Osp: it looked like Mosp, but I think it was a drunk and injured monster trying to write I/Osp, and Torg calling the monster Mosp is adding insult to injury.[/li][/ul]
Barbarian - Good luck with your costume! Go-go-gofotron!
Hey! Let’s be real for a second… (as real as one can be while talking about an online comic book with aliens, witches, and talking evil rabbits)
We know that ONE Oasis died. Dead-died. And at the end of that strip there was another one. Unless she pulled off some kung-fu masta oppossum shit and just let Torg think she was dead while he was holding her hand on the bed. The only reason I can think that she would do this though is because she is letting him off the hook. He think’s she’s dead, so no more worries about her, right?
BUT if that’s the case why would she be in the lobby trying to track him down???
So, I stand by my first theory that the first Oasis is dead, and there are at least two of them.
Sorry broccoli! you will not get me to accept your theory. Actually, upon careful re-reading at one of the links I had posted above, I see that Pete, the creator of Sluggy Freelance, has himself given us the answer:
The hospital death scene? She didn’t really die, Torg thought she was dead, and then she healed really really quickly, which would fit in with the ironic humour prevalent in Sluggy Freelance - Torg leaves the hospital reflecting on his new-found freedom from the fear of Oasis while she’s at the information desk cheerfully asking where she can find Torg. Oasis did not consciously try to make Torg believe she was dead.
I wonder if Psieker saw today’s comic? The first frame had someone dressed as Ash from the Army of Darkness/Evil Dead movies. Would’ve been funny if the character had said some Ash-type line before being eaten by Aylee.
Did you know that those were the winners of the Halloween costume contest?
Hmm… back up…
Some of the more vocal and dedicated fans held a Sluggy Freelance Halloween party earlier this week. Pete Abrams and his, um, entourage (?) were there, and the winners of the costume contest were promised they’d be written into the strip. It was a tie, going to a couple dressed as the stars of The Avengers and the guy dressed as Ash.
Addendum: I just found out that the jester guy who doesn’t get eaten is “Joe Sunday”, the guy who colors the Sunday comics and who Pete routinely blames whenever the Sunday strip is late.
May a thousand llamas spit on your enemies.
