Instead of checking this daily, I look at the Twitter feed on Nodwick.com. He always tweets updates on comics, although sometimes the tweet comes before the page goes live, in which case the link will be broken for a little while.
It may be important to keep in mind that the holes to make it a bowling ball are relatively close together and the skull kind of floated in said ball, so it could be looking any direction relative to said holes. As such, a single 2-D image of a ball with a skull in it which doesn’t clearly feature said holes could simply be of the ball oriented so the holes are on the other side.
Of course, it’s possible I could be thinking of an entirely different clear bowling ball with a skull in it. I don’t keep up enough with pop culture to know there isn’t another one.
Most likely we’re not thinking about this specific magic skull-filled crystal bowling ball, but I agree that the holes should be as hidden as possible from this view. Putting the holes on the eyes might work but it would be ugly and not nice to the skull.
I would put the holes behind, and slightly under the skull, so when I’m lining up the shot, the skull can see where it needs to go. I don’t remember if that’s what “The Bowler” did.
Going by images of her holding it, Carmine the Bowler’s ball (Bowler II being his daughter, Carol) appears to have its grip points (whether holes or simply divots, which is all some of the professionals need/use) roughly under his jaw (for the fingers) and at the cranial entry point for the spinal cord (for the thumb). 😀
“Stop it! Now, look! No one is to blast anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say ‘alakabla’–” (Fusilade of destructive firepower)
Or it’s to disguise the actual word that triggers it, so add in some parts to ‘blammo’ that’s the trigger to make it more difficult for people to use it.
If he’d said “self-respecting” instead of “actual” he wouldn’t have been contradicted in the next frame, but also it might have been more accurate. Notice that while the first use required “abracablammo” (as noted above), subsequent blasts apparently only required gestures or intent (including one accidental misfire), and now Cecil triggered it with “alakablammo”. Perhaps the magic staff is just another bored, self-aware magic item waiting for excuses to fire, without being too picky about the language involved.
Sometimes I wonder if Aaron baits us. It was ‘Abracablammo’ when the lady first used it (but of course the stave may simply store more than one spell),
Interesting choice of spelling. So, the summoning word some kind of mashup of the Fawcett Comics character and Hanna-Barbera’s most jovial genie? I would watch that show/read that book.
“I am…Captain Shazzan! Ho-ho-ho-HO!”
Maybe the two lost kids could turn into Captain Shazzan, Jr. and Nancy Shazzan? Do some chimerical blend thing with Talky Tawny and Kaboobie and have the children ride around on a winged tiger when they aren’t powered up?
There’s a fair few Captain marvel villains who’d fit it Toth’s animated fever dream nicely. When Mister Mind looks kind of run of the mill you know you’re someplace weird.
Alternately, I suppose “Shazzan” could just be regular Captain Marvel with an extra dose of Zeus and…I don’t know, Neptune swapped in for Mercury? Lose the super speed and gain stronger thunderbolts and the ability to talk to fish? There are a *lot* of Greco-Roman deities and heroes, I’m kind of surprised Billy’s never experimented with this idea… 🙂
Once upon a time, when dinosaurs wandered the Earth and I was but a young lad, the big adventure game on computer mainframes was called “Adventure.” Development people would port it to their new systems to test their hardware and compilers (or, at least, that was the excuse).
Fast forward a few years and a friend and I had a copy somebody had ported to the TRS-80. We’d played through to the last puzzle, which was an empty room we could move to either end of, armed only with what was described as a stick with a spot on one end. We tried one thing after another, nothing worked. My friend expressed his frustration by saying “Blast!” (This was before swear words had been invented.) In a fit of whimsy, I typed “blast!” into the console and… we blew up.
Dean was ready to throw the computer out the window until I pointed out that THIS WAS NEW BEHAVIOR. It wasn’t long before we figured out which end of the corridor we needed to place the stick of dynamite (which was missing its fuse) to open up the way out (with us cowering at the other end) and win the game.
I’m just glad whomever wrote Colossal Cave Adventure thought to include “blast” as a synonym to other commands meant to set off the dynamite. But this comic reminded me of that one time I just randomly typed what Dean said into the console because what the hell, nothing else was working… and it ultimately won us the game.
Holy Crap! A new page!!
Thanks, Aaron!
Remember, you are in a magic item shop. Be prepared for the items to be dumb.
More specifically, they are in an actual magic shop run by 12 year olds.
There’s no limit to the possible dumb.
Heh. Always the question with Cecil: Too much fiction, not enough…?
It’s fun to see where and when his beliefs run with or contrary to the truth ^^ Hopefully this’ll be a good lesson on observation.
Oh, it’s not dead! Today my daily check for updates is rewarded.
Instead of checking this daily, I look at the Twitter feed on Nodwick.com. He always tweets updates on comics, although sometimes the tweet comes before the page goes live, in which case the link will be broken for a little while.
This is why RSS aggregators are useful things. (Good for “The Order of the Stick”, too.)
Love my RSS feed!
OOTS also puts all updates on twitter so you can just turn on notifs for that
Oof, but that requires you to be on twitter.
Easiest is checking the Twitter feed on the right. Updates are usually prominently mentioned.
Is that Carmine the Bowler’s skull from Mystery Men?
I was wondering that myself, it certainly looks like a cameo/easter egg referencing the Mystery Men movie and The Bowler.
Is that Carmine the Bowler?
Huzzah!!! Thank you Aaron!!
This is why we keep coming back!!!
Skull ball… I don’t see finger holes making it a bowling ball. There is probably a few other things this can be a reference to.
It may be important to keep in mind that the holes to make it a bowling ball are relatively close together and the skull kind of floated in said ball, so it could be looking any direction relative to said holes. As such, a single 2-D image of a ball with a skull in it which doesn’t clearly feature said holes could simply be of the ball oriented so the holes are on the other side.
Of course, it’s possible I could be thinking of an entirely different clear bowling ball with a skull in it. I don’t keep up enough with pop culture to know there isn’t another one.
Most likely we’re not thinking about this specific magic skull-filled crystal bowling ball, but I agree that the holes should be as hidden as possible from this view. Putting the holes on the eyes might work but it would be ugly and not nice to the skull.
I would put the holes behind, and slightly under the skull, so when I’m lining up the shot, the skull can see where it needs to go. I don’t remember if that’s what “The Bowler” did.
Main reference would be the movie “Mystery Men,” but I don’t remember if that ball had holes in it or not.
Going by images of her holding it, Carmine the Bowler’s ball (Bowler II being his daughter, Carol) appears to have its grip points (whether holes or simply divots, which is all some of the professionals need/use) roughly under his jaw (for the fingers) and at the cranial entry point for the spinal cord (for the thumb). 😀
“No ACTUAL magic staff would go off if you said alakablamo!”
You sure about that?
To be fair, she actually said “abracablammo”, not “alakablammo”. http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2010-10-10/
“Stop it! Now, look! No one is to blast anyone until I blow this whistle! Do you understand?! Even, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they do say ‘alakabla’–” (Fusilade of destructive firepower)
As a fix-up, perhaps the staff will perform different actions if given different commands, as long as the commands all end in “-blammo!”
I note that “abracablammo!” resulted in a light blue sphere shooting out, while “alakablammo!” seems to have resulted in . . . something else?
Spider-in-a-top-hat-blammo!
/obscure reference
Perhaps even “blammo” can be replaced to infer other actions. Abracazap for lightning or alakazoom to speed something up.
“Hocuskadabra! Allakapocus! Walla Walla Washington! Newport News!”
Somewhere, a vampire sheds a tear…
Or it’s to disguise the actual word that triggers it, so add in some parts to ‘blammo’ that’s the trigger to make it more difficult for people to use it.
So just “akablammo” would probably work, but it’s not as easy to remember.
If he’d said “self-respecting” instead of “actual” he wouldn’t have been contradicted in the next frame, but also it might have been more accurate. Notice that while the first use required “abracablammo” (as noted above), subsequent blasts apparently only required gestures or intent (including one accidental misfire), and now Cecil triggered it with “alakablammo”. Perhaps the magic staff is just another bored, self-aware magic item waiting for excuses to fire, without being too picky about the language involved.
Sometimes I wonder if Aaron baits us. It was ‘Abracablammo’ when the lady first used it (but of course the stave may simply store more than one spell),
Thank you for the update!
Is that the Bowler’s skull?!
Just goes to show you should never give up hope on a comic that the creator hasn’t posted as on hiatus or completed.
PS238 is by far my favorite of the comics he posts! More, please!
Cecil, you really should know better by now.
An update?!? It’s a miracle! If I pray for more, will it continue?
Thank you, Aaron. This is a great page. I hope the comic isn’t ending anytime soon.
Thank you Aaron.
…shazzam.
Interesting choice of spelling. So, the summoning word some kind of mashup of the Fawcett Comics character and Hanna-Barbera’s most jovial genie? I would watch that show/read that book.
“I am…Captain Shazzan! Ho-ho-ho-HO!”
Maybe the two lost kids could turn into Captain Shazzan, Jr. and Nancy Shazzan? Do some chimerical blend thing with Talky Tawny and Kaboobie and have the children ride around on a winged tiger when they aren’t powered up?
There’s a fair few Captain marvel villains who’d fit it Toth’s animated fever dream nicely. When Mister Mind looks kind of run of the mill you know you’re someplace weird.
Alternately, I suppose “Shazzan” could just be regular Captain Marvel with an extra dose of Zeus and…I don’t know, Neptune swapped in for Mercury? Lose the super speed and gain stronger thunderbolts and the ability to talk to fish? There are a *lot* of Greco-Roman deities and heroes, I’m kind of surprised Billy’s never experimented with this idea… 🙂
Second Z would be Zephyr, to keep the speed. N could be Nox, for darkness powers.
Or Nike for Victory. Zephyr’s a good one.
Once upon a time, when dinosaurs wandered the Earth and I was but a young lad, the big adventure game on computer mainframes was called “Adventure.” Development people would port it to their new systems to test their hardware and compilers (or, at least, that was the excuse).
Fast forward a few years and a friend and I had a copy somebody had ported to the TRS-80. We’d played through to the last puzzle, which was an empty room we could move to either end of, armed only with what was described as a stick with a spot on one end. We tried one thing after another, nothing worked. My friend expressed his frustration by saying “Blast!” (This was before swear words had been invented.) In a fit of whimsy, I typed “blast!” into the console and… we blew up.
Dean was ready to throw the computer out the window until I pointed out that THIS WAS NEW BEHAVIOR. It wasn’t long before we figured out which end of the corridor we needed to place the stick of dynamite (which was missing its fuse) to open up the way out (with us cowering at the other end) and win the game.
I’m just glad whomever wrote Colossal Cave Adventure thought to include “blast” as a synonym to other commands meant to set off the dynamite. But this comic reminded me of that one time I just randomly typed what Dean said into the console because what the hell, nothing else was working… and it ultimately won us the game.
I think the Management is going to be teed off royally!
That depends on what that blast did. Punching holes in reality? Meh. Punching holes in the merchandise? Seriously ticked.
Is there any chance that Vol. 10 will be printed as a graphic novel?
By the time this ends, I bet that staff will be in Cecil’s collection.
Still need to update the operatives in the garage/basement. Last we saw they were stealing a vehicle.