This confused me for a moment because I was imagining the Ironside theme by Quincy Jones, which actually overlaps with some Morricone music during Kill Bill.
Ryek Hvek
(recently saw a symphonic version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, accompanied by film clips)
Rabisch
In the last panel Linda has the face of a person who has suddenly understood that she’s talking with another maniac. If really Linda is going to sue the church, I’m with her. Sure, Linda is a horrible parent, but Carol is probably worse than her.
HMH
They’re both bad for exactly the same reason. They just fuel their bitter narcissism with two distinct dogmas.
Is it bad I prefer Pour-Over cheddar? *munches cheesily*
Droewyn
Nono, this momfight requires the Good Stuff.
First, you crush some garlic cloves. 5-7, depending on size.
Then prep the popcorn popper. I use a 1:1 mix of duck fat and ghee, with salt and pepper. Add the garlic, and a single popcorn kernel. Cook on medium-low until the corn pops. This is to prevent the garlic from burning.
Add the rest of your popcorn and raise the temperature. Stir/shake vigorously as it pops.
As soon as the popping stops, quickly transfer your popcorn into a large bowl. Top with powdered parmesan cheese and nutritional yeast.
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Carol missing the fucking point and Linda still somehow being a pain in the ass despite being in the right and going after the right people for once.
Because the alternative is acknowledging that her actions were directly responsible for a situation that endangered the lives of six teenagers (including her daughter) and resulted in a man’s death.
And of course we can’t have that.
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
Far more often the cause of tragedies in human history, at their root source, than all the narcissism, deliberate wickedness, or any of the extremes of humanity at it’s most evil…
…. holy shit, I was *not* expecting Carol to dissonance into outright face value defense so quickly.
KJ
She has no where else to go if she’s gonna keep living in her fantasy land where bailing out the guy that kidnapped his daughter at gunpoint was somehow a remotely good idea.
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
Then aided in kidnapping *their* daughter along with several others, including The One Woman in this country who gets the One Vote to decide everything, and thanks to the guy they blindly trusted with paying his bail thumping him to death with a peen hammer, guess who’s accessible enough for Her to play “No One F#@%s with Linda Walkerton?”
Seriously, Blaine is both too busy with police charges and might not be an easy enough target. That leaves Hank and Carol….Possibly Joyce?
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
Forgot to include ‘the favored son of’ before ‘The One Woman in this country-etc etc’
Forget this thing doesn’t come with an ‘Edit’ feature.
And I look at it as Carol calling out Linda’s exaggerated accusation by merely stating the facts in rebuttal. Ross did NOT shoot up the school — or anyone else — once he had been released on bail; and even in the first incident he fired ONE single shot, and that was into the air.
bryy
Linda never said he shot anyone. Carol is the only one saying that. And he DID “shoot up the school” by firing a shot on school grounds. None of Linda’s comments are exaggerated. Carol is the one who instantly jumped to “yes but nobody died”.
Kensou
Also, a friendly reminder that bullets fired into the air can and sometimes do injure people when they come back down. Sometimes fatally. Toedad not shooting anyone that day ended up being a matter of chance.
He also did try to shoot at Amber/Amazi-girl when she gave chace- Well he “tried” but wasn’t successful.
deathjavu
Yes, any shots more than a few degrees off of absolute vertical can maintain ballistic trajectory and kill someone – it’s happened before when people celebrate by firing guns into the air.
Some Ed
I’m fairly certain that shots fired more vertically than that can also kill people. The difference is, if you fire it vertically enough, you get to find out who it kills. Unless, of course, you manage to compensate correctly for the Coriolis force and wind to do it fucking right.
Note that I’ve only once heard of someone managing to do it fucking right. But that someone was enough of a piece of work there was clapping involved in the reaction to it.
SeanR
It shouldn’t happen. I won’t say it can’t because my physics is too weak to be sure.
A bullet fired straight up will come down at whatever terminal velocity is for the bullet, so it shouldn’t be any more dangerous than dropping that same bullet out of an airplane. Bullet, not the whole cartridge (which is probably less dense, and less aerodynamic, than the bullet alone and would therefore have a lower terminal velocity.) A bullet fired anywhere near horizontally is probably going to come down still going, horizontally, about as fast as it was going, horizontally, when it was fired. Although, if the range is great enough, it may lose enough velocity to wind resistance to be no more dangerous than the vertical shot. Also, it’ll probably plow into the ground, or something or someone else, before it bleeds off enough of its horizontal velocity to be anything like safe.
But, that said, know your backstop, and if you MUST shoot into the sky, or toward something that is likely to cause a ricochet, use a shotgun.
Bullets fired precisely straight up with absolutely zero variance will not be lethal
Any variance from perfectly straight up will put enough spin on the bullet to cause lethal force
Bullets are almost NEVER shot perfectly straight up
BarerMender
It takes a .50 call to kill someone by falling. Anything less is not very dangerous.
Simarilian
I have a friend whose brother did die on New Years by being hit by a bullet fired into the sky.
Heavensrun
Generally firing straight up is pretty safe. The terminal velocity for a tumbling bullet isn’t that high. It’s mostly just dangerous if you fire at an angle, so that the bullet remains aerodynamically oriented during it’s path.
Ntrovert60
Hyperbole much? While firing ANY gun on a campus is a bad idea because bullets can and do come down again), you seem to equate firing one shot into the air with firing fully automatic weapons in both hands, Rambo-style, at everything and everyone.
SeanR
Simply put, firing a gun into the sky, unless you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are the ONLY PERSON AROUND for about a mile and a half, is reckless. If you’re on a college campus, tucked into a small town, there are definitely people around within that 1.5 miles.
Frankly, it’s probably no more dangerous to others than you going into a crowd without a mask on, but you shouldn’t do that right now either.
bryy
No offense, but when you bring a loaded weapon somewhere and threaten violence, then “well he shot in the air” is a really, really shitty defense.
Sambo
Personally, I feel like it’s an exaggeration to say Ross “shot up the school”. Not that Carol’s in the right, but y’know.
Azhrei Vep
Well, he did shoot up. While at the school. So if one chose to employ bad grammar, they could say he shot up the school.
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
People like Carol use otherwise common expressive phrasing as an angle to play Roger Dodger with a conversation topic. It’s a bit of a manipulation tactic, often ‘learned’ monkey-see, monkey-do style.
They had their chance to do something more for Ross than simply let him go nuts then make verbal excuses for him when he got in legal trouble.
They had their chance to get to know this seemingly sympathetic stranger and even join him to pick up Ross so they could help Ross beat this “misunderstanding.”
They simply waited for things to work out in their favor on their own while making verbal excuses for his actions, and now Ross is both dead and got into even more legal trouble before he was killed….Legal trouble that now has one of those “soccer moms” they might of heard about a decade or so ago glaring at their church family with crimson crosshairs.
Might as well double down on refusing to admit it!
Yeah I’m honestly waiting for the “mixed couple” comments to come out.
Laladoria
Come out of Carol, to specify.
marcus erronius
Was that a thing with her? I don’t remember anything specific. Not that I’d put it past her or anything.
Nono
Given her comments about Sarah, I would honestly not be surprised.
Laladoria
Yeah that’s what I’m referring to. The whole “wait til the neighbors hear that our daughter isn’t a racist!” thing
thejeff
Using that as a reference, I doubt it would come out that blatantly. More an awkward about how difficult it must be or something.
Something she could think as well meaning, but so obviously rooted in racism.
I’m suddenly reminded of this page I saw from a DC/Marvel crossover where Joker realizes that Red Skull is actually a Nazi and not just talking a big game for the sake of sounding more evil, and declares that he might be a psychopath but he’s an *American* psychopath.
Linda might not be a great parent, but even she’s got to draw the line somewhere.
Some1
If I remember correctly, that particular comic came from an era where Joker was more of a regular goofy criminal than a crazed mass murderer. While Red Skull has pretty much always been a monster.
Nope, 1997. Well after stuff like Death in the Family, and about contemporary to when he was attempting to nuke New York in Birds of Prey.
(It was from a WWII-set Elseworld.)
Jeff K!
In case anyone is wondering, that’s from the Batman/Captain America one-shot by John Byrne.
It’s an Elseworlds set during WW2, and is technically in continuity with his Superman/Batman Generations series.
Down the rabbit hole I go. Tell my wife I love her.
Mollyscribbles
The main reason I didn’t name the trope was to avoid this. Linking TV Tropes when now, more than ever, people are desperate to find something to distract themselves from the world? None of us will ever emerge from there again.
Pagemistress
I read that one! That part is just hilarious! One of the few times Joker has standards.
I’ve seen the aurora, it’s a real thing. I’ve also seen “cyclops” skulls with multiple eye sockets as in one huge and two small, made from mastadon skulls. Unicorns are African antelope with close-set horns that look like a single horn from the side.
PB
I know the aurora is real, I was just strapped for what else to say is a rare unique sight other than a unicorn.
In some ways, this is how I feel about the upcoming election, bizarrely enough. On one side, we have a deeply conflicted and flawed individual who does awful things even when they think they’re doing well, and lends all sorts of accidental support to horrible situations.
And on the other hand, we have a radioactive dumpster fire transformed into a passing semblance of a human being.
It’s the worst-case ‘lesser of two evils’ scenario.
503 thoughts on “Maniac”
Doctor_Who
As part of the Criterion Collection release of Dumbing of Age, we proudly present the extended cut of this strip.
Ryek Hvek
(imagines Ennio Morricone music during the closeups)
Cattleprod
This confused me for a moment because I was imagining the Ironside theme by Quincy Jones, which actually overlaps with some Morricone music during Kill Bill.
Ryek Hvek
(recently saw a symphonic version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, accompanied by film clips)
Rabisch
In the last panel Linda has the face of a person who has suddenly understood that she’s talking with another maniac. If really Linda is going to sue the church, I’m with her. Sure, Linda is a horrible parent, but Carol is probably worse than her.
HMH
They’re both bad for exactly the same reason. They just fuel their bitter narcissism with two distinct dogmas.
Rose by Any Other Name
Bravo. Just bravo.
Savail
The single most important comment on this post.
Tandel
*KaneApplause.gif*
Bagge
The most epic of hatefucks indeed.
Ana Chronistic
MichaelJacksonEatingPopcorn.gif
Stephen Bierce
Today’s strip is sponsored by Orville Redenbacher’s Classic.
WikiDreamer
Is it bad I prefer Pour-Over cheddar? *munches cheesily*
Droewyn
Nono, this momfight requires the Good Stuff.
First, you crush some garlic cloves. 5-7, depending on size.
Then prep the popcorn popper. I use a 1:1 mix of duck fat and ghee, with salt and pepper. Add the garlic, and a single popcorn kernel. Cook on medium-low until the corn pops. This is to prevent the garlic from burning.
Add the rest of your popcorn and raise the temperature. Stir/shake vigorously as it pops.
As soon as the popping stops, quickly transfer your popcorn into a large bowl. Top with powdered parmesan cheese and nutritional yeast.
Eat with chopsticks.
Kilborn
Oh
clif
You left out the exclamation point. Also the explicative.
Newllend(henryvolt)
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Carol missing the fucking point and Linda still somehow being a pain in the ass despite being in the right and going after the right people for once.
BigDogLittleCat
Carol isn’t missing the point. She’s deliberately evading the point.
Nevermaker
Because the alternative is acknowledging that her actions were directly responsible for a situation that endangered the lives of six teenagers (including her daughter) and resulted in a man’s death.
And of course we can’t have that.
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
Far more often the cause of tragedies in human history, at their root source, than all the narcissism, deliberate wickedness, or any of the extremes of humanity at it’s most evil…
bryy
…. holy shit, I was *not* expecting Carol to dissonance into outright face value defense so quickly.
KJ
She has no where else to go if she’s gonna keep living in her fantasy land where bailing out the guy that kidnapped his daughter at gunpoint was somehow a remotely good idea.
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
Then aided in kidnapping *their* daughter along with several others, including The One Woman in this country who gets the One Vote to decide everything, and thanks to the guy they blindly trusted with paying his bail thumping him to death with a peen hammer, guess who’s accessible enough for Her to play “No One F#@%s with Linda Walkerton?”
Seriously, Blaine is both too busy with police charges and might not be an easy enough target. That leaves Hank and Carol….Possibly Joyce?
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
Forgot to include ‘the favored son of’ before ‘The One Woman in this country-etc etc’
Forget this thing doesn’t come with an ‘Edit’ feature.
Bicycle Bill
And I look at it as Carol calling out Linda’s exaggerated accusation by merely stating the facts in rebuttal. Ross did NOT shoot up the school — or anyone else — once he had been released on bail; and even in the first incident he fired ONE single shot, and that was into the air.
bryy
Linda never said he shot anyone. Carol is the only one saying that. And he DID “shoot up the school” by firing a shot on school grounds. None of Linda’s comments are exaggerated. Carol is the one who instantly jumped to “yes but nobody died”.
Kensou
Also, a friendly reminder that bullets fired into the air can and sometimes do injure people when they come back down. Sometimes fatally. Toedad not shooting anyone that day ended up being a matter of chance.
Newllend(henryvolt)
He also did try to shoot at Amber/Amazi-girl when she gave chace- Well he “tried” but wasn’t successful.
deathjavu
Yes, any shots more than a few degrees off of absolute vertical can maintain ballistic trajectory and kill someone – it’s happened before when people celebrate by firing guns into the air.
Some Ed
I’m fairly certain that shots fired more vertically than that can also kill people. The difference is, if you fire it vertically enough, you get to find out who it kills. Unless, of course, you manage to compensate correctly for the Coriolis force and wind to do it fucking right.
Note that I’ve only once heard of someone managing to do it fucking right. But that someone was enough of a piece of work there was clapping involved in the reaction to it.
SeanR
It shouldn’t happen. I won’t say it can’t because my physics is too weak to be sure.
A bullet fired straight up will come down at whatever terminal velocity is for the bullet, so it shouldn’t be any more dangerous than dropping that same bullet out of an airplane. Bullet, not the whole cartridge (which is probably less dense, and less aerodynamic, than the bullet alone and would therefore have a lower terminal velocity.) A bullet fired anywhere near horizontally is probably going to come down still going, horizontally, about as fast as it was going, horizontally, when it was fired. Although, if the range is great enough, it may lose enough velocity to wind resistance to be no more dangerous than the vertical shot. Also, it’ll probably plow into the ground, or something or someone else, before it bleeds off enough of its horizontal velocity to be anything like safe.
But, that said, know your backstop, and if you MUST shoot into the sky, or toward something that is likely to cause a ricochet, use a shotgun.
Ana Chronistic
https://mythresults.com/episode50
Bullets fired precisely straight up with absolutely zero variance will not be lethal
Any variance from perfectly straight up will put enough spin on the bullet to cause lethal force
Bullets are almost NEVER shot perfectly straight up
BarerMender
It takes a .50 call to kill someone by falling. Anything less is not very dangerous.
Simarilian
I have a friend whose brother did die on New Years by being hit by a bullet fired into the sky.
Heavensrun
Generally firing straight up is pretty safe. The terminal velocity for a tumbling bullet isn’t that high. It’s mostly just dangerous if you fire at an angle, so that the bullet remains aerodynamically oriented during it’s path.
Ntrovert60
Hyperbole much? While firing ANY gun on a campus is a bad idea because bullets can and do come down again), you seem to equate firing one shot into the air with firing fully automatic weapons in both hands, Rambo-style, at everything and everyone.
SeanR
Simply put, firing a gun into the sky, unless you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are the ONLY PERSON AROUND for about a mile and a half, is reckless. If you’re on a college campus, tucked into a small town, there are definitely people around within that 1.5 miles.
Frankly, it’s probably no more dangerous to others than you going into a crowd without a mask on, but you shouldn’t do that right now either.
bryy
No offense, but when you bring a loaded weapon somewhere and threaten violence, then “well he shot in the air” is a really, really shitty defense.
Sambo
Personally, I feel like it’s an exaggeration to say Ross “shot up the school”. Not that Carol’s in the right, but y’know.
Azhrei Vep
Well, he did shoot up. While at the school. So if one chose to employ bad grammar, they could say he shot up the school.
DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership
People like Carol use otherwise common expressive phrasing as an angle to play Roger Dodger with a conversation topic. It’s a bit of a manipulation tactic, often ‘learned’ monkey-see, monkey-do style.
They had their chance to do something more for Ross than simply let him go nuts then make verbal excuses for him when he got in legal trouble.
They had their chance to get to know this seemingly sympathetic stranger and even join him to pick up Ross so they could help Ross beat this “misunderstanding.”
They simply waited for things to work out in their favor on their own while making verbal excuses for his actions, and now Ross is both dead and got into even more legal trouble before he was killed….Legal trouble that now has one of those “soccer moms” they might of heard about a decade or so ago glaring at their church family with crimson crosshairs.
Might as well double down on refusing to admit it!
Heavensrun
She IS the point.
C.T Phipps
Carol: I stand by a murderous kidnapper who put a boy into a coma and not the lesbian daughter who is still a faithful Christian.
Hank: Uh…um…uh
Carol: I bet you have CRIMINAL children too with your…relationship.
Linda: Huh?
Laladoria
Yeah I’m honestly waiting for the “mixed couple” comments to come out.
Laladoria
Come out of Carol, to specify.
marcus erronius
Was that a thing with her? I don’t remember anything specific. Not that I’d put it past her or anything.
Nono
Given her comments about Sarah, I would honestly not be surprised.
Laladoria
Yeah that’s what I’m referring to. The whole “wait til the neighbors hear that our daughter isn’t a racist!” thing
thejeff
Using that as a reference, I doubt it would come out that blatantly. More an awkward about how difficult it must be or something.
Something she could think as well meaning, but so obviously rooted in racism.
Newllend(henryvolt)
The hell, did miss something that indicated her as a racial bigot to? What did she say about Sarah?
Nono
‘Oh! Joyce! Your roommate is black! Now I can tell everyone on the street that we’re not racist!’ or something to that effect.
C.T Phipps
The bonus strip where the Browns speculate Obama is the Anti-Christ is also notable.
Rose by Any Other Name
… I am feeling very unusual right now.
I’m… entirely behind Linda in this scene. Linda is doing nothing wrong here. As a parent, I fully agree with her stance and actions taken/threatened.
That has never happened before. It may never happen again.
I must cherish this strange and unique moment in history.
C.T Phipps
MIRROR UNIVERSE.
Mollyscribbles
I’m suddenly reminded of this page I saw from a DC/Marvel crossover where Joker realizes that Red Skull is actually a Nazi and not just talking a big game for the sake of sounding more evil, and declares that he might be a psychopath but he’s an *American* psychopath.
Linda might not be a great parent, but even she’s got to draw the line somewhere.
Some1
If I remember correctly, that particular comic came from an era where Joker was more of a regular goofy criminal than a crazed mass murderer. While Red Skull has pretty much always been a monster.
Kamino Neko
Nope, 1997. Well after stuff like Death in the Family, and about contemporary to when he was attempting to nuke New York in Birds of Prey.
(It was from a WWII-set Elseworld.)
Jeff K!
In case anyone is wondering, that’s from the Batman/Captain America one-shot by John Byrne.
It’s an Elseworlds set during WW2, and is technically in continuity with his Superman/Batman Generations series.
Rabid Rabbit
Reference for those who need it: https://fuckyeahbatmanvillains.tumblr.com/post/22119773305#notes
King Daniel
That’s even the trope image for Even Evil Has Standards.
He Who Abides
Down the rabbit hole I go. Tell my wife I love her.
Mollyscribbles
The main reason I didn’t name the trope was to avoid this. Linking TV Tropes when now, more than ever, people are desperate to find something to distract themselves from the world? None of us will ever emerge from there again.
Pagemistress
I read that one! That part is just hilarious! One of the few times Joker has standards.
marcus erronius
She does reference Amazigirl as being half at fault, if you want to cling to a shred of normalcy.
marcus erronius
Actually, I misread; there is no normalcy to cling to here ?
deathjavu
Let me fix that for you: Linda was on the phone with the dean in panel 1, probably trying to get Amber expelled.
You may now resume your usual hatred of Linda.
Ntrovert60
Thank you, sir. But I never stopped, so.
PB
It’s like seeing the Northern Lights. Or a unicorn.
Opus the Poet
I’ve seen the aurora, it’s a real thing. I’ve also seen “cyclops” skulls with multiple eye sockets as in one huge and two small, made from mastadon skulls. Unicorns are African antelope with close-set horns that look like a single horn from the side.
PB
I know the aurora is real, I was just strapped for what else to say is a rare unique sight other than a unicorn.
paleotectonics
Cherish might be a bit strong.
SeanR
Did you ever hear about the time the U.S. Army fought alongside the regular German army, and a bunch of French POW’s, in WWII, against the SS?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter
Freemage
In some ways, this is how I feel about the upcoming election, bizarrely enough. On one side, we have a deeply conflicted and flawed individual who does awful things even when they think they’re doing well, and lends all sorts of accidental support to horrible situations.
And on the other hand, we have a radioactive dumpster fire transformed into a passing semblance of a human being.
It’s the worst-case ‘lesser of two evils’ scenario.
Makkabee