OOTS #560 - The Discussion Thread

[maxon]

It was a great strip though, only wish therkla had been able to stay with them, now she'll have to sweettalk her Kubota or else learn to live with the Orcs :(

"therkla smartest, prettiest orc chief grukgruk ever know."

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0555.html

[Thrythlind]

Personally, I think that if one of the paladins gets a Detect Evil off on the ninja, it might just read: "she doesn't even know what she is, how can I tell"

[Rollin]

Giant,

Now that you've introduced references to the show into an RPG-based webcomic, it has to be said:

You just gamed the Lost.

[Thrythlind]

Oh, Elan. Never change. I find his faith in Therkla's good intentions to be kind of touching and sad. I wonder what she makes of it.

Must ninjas always be evil or at least non-good aligned? I was getting the impression "she's a ninja" means "she can't possibly be good." Or was that just to deflect the "superhero" notion?

Mind, I AM now 100% satisfied THERKLA must be evil. It's her CLASS I've become a little unsure of.

Depends on the rules. The 2nd edition Ninja Handbook (one of those red faux-leather books) had rules and suggestions for Ninja clans of every alignment.

The Ninja prestige class in the Monk and Fighter book required a Lawful alignment.

The Ninja prestige class in the Oriental adventures book required a non-good alignment.

The Ninja base class in Complete Adventurer I believe required Lawful again.

[Lostboy]

Too many wild references. I'm not a comic book nerd, "Lost" watcher, or reader of Greek epics. So this one was pretty much a loss for me.

[David Argall]

Actually, I don't get the whole 'still not evil' bit. Is that just to ward off anyone who might've thought Elan was going over to the dark side, or is it foreshadowing for some great evil act on Elan's part?...

Elan has been scaned for evil at least once before, and likely a number of times. So the presumptive reading is that it is simply a reference to these past times.

Still, we do have a fair amount of foreshadowing in this strip. So maybe Nale and Elan are going to temporarily change alignments in a couple hundred strips.

[teratorn]

Too many wild references. I'm not a comic book nerd, "Lost" watcher, or reader of Greek epics. So this one was pretty much a loss for me.

Hey, us Greek epic geeks need our laughs too. But don't worry, these tend to be relatively few. I thought I saw one in the bandit camp arc, "arrow time" when the arrows hide the Sun. At the time very few people grasped it, though later, in "war makes boys of us all" people made the connection to the "300" movie, when it was in fact something much older.

The last panel in #560 really made my day (I used to read the X-man comic books too).

Now, if the Giant would make a Gilgamesh reference...

[Holy_Knight]

Loved the comic book references! The Odyssey joke was a nice touch, too. I've really enjoyed all the strips lately, in fact.

Elan has been scaned for evil at least once before, and likely a number of times. So the presumptive reading is that it is simply a reference to these past times.

Still, we do have a fair amount of foreshadowing in this strip. So maybe Nale and Elan are going to temporarily change alignments in a couple hundred strips.

I think you're right about the first part, but not the second. My interpretation was just that Lien was scanning where she thought Therkla was, but since Therkla had moved, the scan caught Elan instead--who, like you said, hasn't changed since he was scanned before.

[brilliantlight]

I agree.

Except I think that Therkla's alignment is in the 'Northeast' (or NE). She's going to turn on them, especially when she learns about Haley.

Emotional fall not fall from grace. She is clearly some sort of evil.

[TheNovak]

I'm concerned by the amount of people who posted saying they don't watch Lost. I mean...it's Lost.

Granted, at this point you'd have to watch 60+ episodes (some of which are two hours long), read a few Wikipedia articles, and have some lengthy discussions with friends about where you think the plot is headed just to catch up...but hey, the season just ended! You've got all summer to do just that.

And then you can come back, read this strip, and get the two jokes you missed. It'll be totally worth it!

[Old_Man]

This was a great comic.

But shouldn't at least one of Odysseus' companions be wearing a red chiton or did Cyclops already eat the redshirts on the away team?

EDIT:
BTW- the only thing more awesome than a ninja-pirate-robot-monkey is a Nazi-laser-shark-bear.

[PaladinFreak]

Good references. Good humor. Good comic!

[youareworthless]

Anyone who calls me a troll is just admitting that they KNOW I am right, and they are afraid of the truth.

[Kurald Galain]

Wow, I only just now realized what the comic title was referring to

[Coffee]

I don't normally gush; but this one was so full of win it feels like my head is going to explode with candy

Bravo, Giant.

[Murphoid]

Technically Cyclops is a mutant, not a superhero, Right?

[KIDS]

Nice Batman and Spiderman references - "bitten by a radioactive ninja" = LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!! Supreme!

[LurkerBeneath]

Fellow non-Lost-watcher here. When I saw the bagua design, I read it as 0/1 7/24/365. I guess that's coincidental, though.

[brionl]

Technically Cyclops is a mutant, not a superhero, Right?

Mutant is a subclass of the Superhero/Supervillain set. You got your mutant superheroes like Cyclops & all the X-men. Your gadgeteers such as Iron Man or Hank Pym. Super Science/Radiation Accident, The Flash or Spiderman.
Martial Artists like Karate Kid. Marital Artists like Chuck Taine.

One of my characters in City of Villains was Ninjabot 2.0. Mastermind w/Ninja & Trick Arrows.

[malgg]

Since are people who don't get the references, try these links:

OK, I admit that I didn't get the references, but still laughed at the last panel. But having the references explained made the whole thing just that much more hillarious.

Who says that if you have to have it explained that it lost it's humor?

[Tedankhamen]

Is this a system change to Mazes and Minotaurs?? VERY hilarious episode!

[Tedankhamen]

You know your jokes are lame when someone has to explain ALL of them. I like that you included a wikipedia link for BATMAN, though. No one has ever heard of him. He gets no mainstream recognition.

This is the worst OotS strip EVER. Don't listen to the other people in this thread.

So, jokes that are so simple any idiot gets them are better? Why not read Garfield instead? I thought the charm of OOTS was precisely its out-of-the-way references to pop and sub cultures and the games/movies/comics they know. Criticizing because you didn't get the references or some people needed explanations seems petty, and is a reflection of the tastes and knowledge of the indivdual, not the quality of the comic.

[see]

It's even got a games geek reference joke that only got semi-mentioned above (via the TVTropes link) — the game Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot, by the incomparable Chad Underkoffler.

[ref]

Depends on the rules. The 2nd edition Ninja Handbook (one of those red faux-leather books) had rules and suggestions for Ninja clans of every alignment.

The Ninja prestige class in the Monk and Fighter book required a Lawful alignment.

The Ninja prestige class in the Oriental adventures book required a non-good alignment.

The Ninja base class in Complete Adventurer I believe required Lawful again.

Hmm... Or one could be a ninja without taking levels in any ninja class, you know...

Btw... is that... is that Kuno Kodachi???

[David Argall]

Anyone who calls me a troll is just admitting that they KNOW I am right, and they are afraid of the truth.

Such might be charged against those who only call you a troll and say therefore to ignore you. That is the ad hominem fallacy. However a number of your critics have more substantial arguments.

[Evik]

omg i love this one...i was lmao the whole time lol
cyclops on a greek island too funny :D

[CockroachTeaParty]

HA! It took me a moment to get the Cyclops joke, but I appreciate it nonetheless!

[DrivinAllNight]

"therkla smartest, prettiest orc chief grukgruk ever know."

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0555.html

true, but they also know after that panel that she is a half human too. And they didn't seem to keen on that whole thing, and then there is the fact that she hasn't lived like an Orc for most, if not all, of her life. So she may be accepted, but i doubt she would want to stay there. She has tasted to much of a seemingly more fulfilling life.

[Wixit]

Well, ALL of OOTS would be impenetrable and NOT funny if you couldn't understand English.

An extreme example of how you won't get a joke and that doesn't make it Not a joke, it just makes it not funny for you.

You aren't the world, you aren't the people....

Did I say I was? As Argall pointed out, this is ad hominem. You have no argument, because you could also say that if all the jokes would be about programming or written in a code, most of the people wouldn't get it. So what? How is that related to my argument? I ask again: how often have you seen more than half the comic taken by references to a single source?

To Faramir:

I never said the jokes weren't funny. I explicitly avoided labeling them and simply stated that they're lost on me. You've butchered my post, but I'll explain that sentence. The person I was quoting in that post claimed that having Elan slip on a banana peel would perhaps be dumb-funny, but wouldn't be related to the plot. I responded by saying that having a ninja-superhero discussion is Elan-dumb-funny and equally unrelated to the plot.

To explain one more time: I would not label this strip as "worst ever" or even "bad". Put words I never spoke in my mouth and you lose any credibility.

[maxon]

true, but they also know after that panel that she is a half human too. And they didn't seem to keen on that whole thing, and then there is the fact that she hasn't lived like an Orc for most, if not all, of her life. So she may be accepted, but i doubt she would want to stay there. She has tasted to much of a seemingly more fulfilling life.

Gah - you have no romance in your soul. She could become his snuggly green cutie pie.