Santa Skull Panda

To balance off the cuteness of Monday's strip, here's a special... something... from Rikk Estoban. We don't see much of Skull Panda these days, so it's nice to have a seasonal visit! Sort of.

Come back on Friday for our next comic. See you then!

-Sam Logan

DOOF

Merry day before Christmas!

As is tradition round these parts, we'll be briefly pausing our current story to run some seasonal comics, while I'm off doing the Christmas thing with my fam! Come back on Wednesday for the next holiday treat. See you then!

-SamLogan

Sam and Fuzzy Q & A:  Tar Edition
Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!

"If the tar damages inhumans, why are Brain and Hart able to touch inhumans and their memories without destroying him? I'm thinking about all the times Brain has grabbed onto Fuzzy and manipulated the minds of him and the various inhumans on the committee." -Ryan

Brain and Hart are what has been awkwardly referred to as "partially transmuted" tar. A better way of thinking of it might be "tar that's in control of itself".

Usually, the tar is a mindless, raw organic substance that unpredictably responds to ambient thoughts by transmuting into new kinds of life. The transmutation is complete, and the new life doesn't display any of the properties of tar anymore.

But Brain and Hart are different. They're tar that, over time, developed a mind of it's own. Their tar never transmuted, but they were able to pull it into a consistent physical form and take control of its thought-reading properties. (Mostly.) I try to write Brain's powers as a weaker, but more controlled version of what the raw tar can do, if that makes sense!

"When Sam revealed the grrbils and vampires to the world, did that lead to a "We're not alone in the universe!" moment for the above-grounders? Cause that had to have been groundbreaking. Not to mention the exosuit! And that just makes me wonder; are the werewolf people and all the others really all that earth-shattering?

I mean, demons, sure. A creature like that is mind-blowing even to an undergrounder! But werewolves, strong as they are, just don't have the physical strength to shatter the earth." -Lemma

Revealing the vampires was a big deal! It has huge societal implications that would definitely have been fun to explore in more depth, were this comic somehow even bigger and longer than it already is.

But the vampires, at least, are still recognizably humanoid! I think the reveal of talking animals and sentient robots and all the other weirdness of the Underground would still be pretty earth-shattering. (Although I'm sure the reveal of vampires got some people wondering what else might really be out there!)

As a side note though, I don't think the Grrbils and exosuits ever became widely known at the same massive scale as the vampires. Moments like this certainly shocked a lot of bystanders and resulted in weird press, but I think the Committee still worked hard to downplay and deny the reality as much as possible. Vampires, on the other hand, becamse so widely known that the Committee had to do the opposite -- go on the offensive, and actively publicize the existense of vampires as widespread and normal.

"Last week you mentioned in a Q&A that Buddy Bots, like all robots, have some amount of immunity to Tar because, well, they’re robots. But shouldn’t the robots produced by Retron 01 be more susceptible to Tar than the Buddies? Their cores are made of Tar, albeit in small quantities, so they are technically Tar-based organisms just like any other inhuman. What makes the Buddies unique is that they’re a completely different design, without any Tar involved. So when Sam referred to the Buddies as “less vulnerable to Tar than anyone” I assumed he was referring to the fact that the Buddies are the only sentient beings out there aside from humans that aren’t Tar-based, other robots included. Is that not the case?"  -Dawson

That's a good point! So good, it must be true! So yes, let's run with that for sure. I love it when a plan comes together!

We return on Monday with some special X-mas programming! See you then, team.

-Sam Logan