Wednesday's comic!

[murgatroyd_666]

https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20210616

Amazing!

Still no sign of Krosp, though. Nor of the Bears.

Comments

[kelkyag]

So much for my thinking the one giant rat Monday didn't look hostile. But yeah, Thomas is a stealth and disguise badass.

[madfilkentist]

I guess we're supposed to believe that his ridiculous rat suit really did fool the giant rats. Sigh...

P.S. Just noticed that the rats have something which may serve as an opposable thumb, though it looks more like a "panda's thumb" than a true thumb.

[turbobeholder]

We don't know how good their eyes or brains are, however.
Anyway, he «tries to smell like them and stay out of their way». Which is quite sensible. And leaves visual camouflage as tertiary defense at best.
The rat fur may give “close enough” silhouette at long range, which is a good enough reason to keep the ears. But mostly — there's just nothing else to wear, because giant rats already ate everything else on this island.

[spectrum_09]

Rodents are VERY nearsighted but they have a highly sensitive sense of smell. As Mr. Crothers said, he tries to smell like them and stay out of their way. As long as he stays at distance and resembles a large rat, he doesn't arouse interest.

[madfilkentist]

To a highly sensitive sense of smell, a human wearing the skin of a dead rat isn't a good match for a rat. Violetta described the smell as one of "rotting wet socks." Krosp identified the smell as rats but thought there was "something really wrong with them."

I realize this comic routinely pushes suspension of disbelief to the outer limits, but I just don't think the Foglios played fair here. They introduced him in a laughably bad disguise. He claimed to be good at evasion after demonstrating his complete lack of skill at it, Now we're supposed to accept that he's not the obvious fake he seemed set up to be.

[spectrum_09]

One: He kept his distance from them.
Two: They seem to feast on any human unfortunate enough to find the island, which would cause the rats to have a a touch of "human" smell now and then.

Krosp's comment is really about THESE rats, not Crothers. Foreshadowing.

If he stayed quiet, he didn't draw attention to himself. I doubt the rats were trained to seek out human flesh as primary food. There can't be that many castaways finding this place. Our heroes are being noisy, as Crothers pointed out.

It's a story that animates reassembled dead people and has giga-amp batteries that fit in walking sticks.

[marycatelli]

Lack of skill? They didn't find him without the clank.

[murgatroyd_666]

I realize this comic routinely pushes suspension of disbelief to the outer limits, but I just don't think the Foglios played fair here.

Crothers must have spent most of his time on the island hiding in Hammerspace. He didn't have the keys to unlock Gil's Hand-Cranked Runcible Gun while he was in there, otherwise he would have been better-prepared to deal with the rats.