Templar: TM fuckin' I, lady!

Y'know, I can't be sure if Reagan is buying this or just having a laugh, but she's definitely eating it up with a spoon. I assume that the old guy asleep in the previous strip is Eugene's father, or at the very least his mother's current partner.

Breech birth babies were supposed to grow up to be great healers. I wonder is she thinks this about her son, or if her crazy stops at the genetic predisposition nonsense.

Oh yeah. Gene's got the heart of a warrior, there.

Also, Super Unagi is the best name for a computer or computer-like device ever conceived. Thank you, Spike.

Oh wow. For a brief moment I was horrified that the speaker was a man, and something had just gone *HORRIBLY WRONG* - so incredibly relieved to realize that the speaker is actually a woman.

And I just love how Gene's just ignoring the whole thing he's heard so many times before, just focusing on approaching his score of *blinks* almost a billion.

'nother good thing about Gene being the way he is, that he doesn't seem intelligent nor personally cruel enough to take this race theory to 'media cult' extreme status where things get totally fubar'd.

I'm guessing Super Unagi is a brand of videogame console. Yum!

Bee Hero? Super Bee Composer? Hornet's Night at the Apollo?

I'm incredibly curious how the controller converts the input into what we're seeing on the screen. Because, yarr, there bee a lot of notes on that there screen. (pun intended)

I'm incredibly curious how the controller converts the input into what we're seeing on the screen. Because, yarr, there bee a lot of notes on that there screen. (pun intended)

Gvidon Piece Ultra!

Heh, love the way the "classic" Unagi looks like the old Atari consoles. and for some reason, the super Unagi reminds me of that building in Sydney Australia.

As for Gene's Mama spouting the gospel of the Jake, I can't wait til she gets to the other two, I get hte feeling they'll be the ones recieving a less than sparkly race definition.

Well, looks like I was wrong about Ted-Haggard-With-Dr.-Phil's-Voice, but somehow this is even better.

Glad my mother never went around talking to strangers about my birth and their supposed racial characteristics.

Yeah, I'm struck by a morbid desire to know the tortuous control system happening there.

Anybody able to read that music? I'm betting it's "Flight of the Bumblebee."

so i guess that's where gene's tattoos and bangles come from.
man, breech babies are supposed to be crazy to deliver. in a hospital. with other people. gene's mom may be bat-sh*t-crazy, but i'm guessing she's go what it takes to get by.

I like how Gene is not only able to ignore the conversation while playing a musical game, but is apparently also whistling something else entirely while doing it!

Hooray! Glad to have made a difference ^_^ Congrats on becoming an internationally distributed publisher :)

Just reached RIGHT in there and pulled out Gene's foot. Damn, that's one FINE magician.

And Spike, you deserve this! Your comic is freaking awesome!

Er.. I don't mean to alarm anyone.. but I think Eugene's about to get his head shaved.

Oh I get it. Gene's crazy savant brain makes him the world's greatest Beatmania player. Or I guess Super Composer Bee-kun's Electro-Fun Symphony player.

1. Gene looks absolutely adorable in this strip. I just wanna hug him!
2. Please say she is just playing with it or going to braid it. I will cry if he loses those locks!

RE: "man, breech babies are supposed to be crazy to deliver."

In EMT-B training, we learned how to deal with a breech birth to keep the baby surviving on the way to the hospital. Specifically, when the baby's partially out, you stick your hand... up the patient... and kind of fold it around the baby's face to provide an air passage to the outside with your hand and arm. And then you get comfortable, because your hand is not exiting that woman's vagina until the doctor orders you to.

i still don't understand why theres a bunch of nekkid babies though D:

As far as the control system goes, I'd wager it's something similar to that of "Mad Maestro" for the PS2. ie: an analog stick to control the conductors baton, as well as pressure sense to get the exact notes (a bear on a controller, worn at least two out on a set up like that)

Of course, that's taking the point of view that Gene's the conductor, and not a player.

Huh, well I guess Gene would love a musical game....or I wonder that's what helped him discover that he's crazy-good at all things musical?

Pale rider, huh? I guess this clown doesn't know that horses were first domesticated by the ancestors of the Turks.

BTW congrats on the Diamond orders.

Aw he's fine - she's not holdin' scissors.

Unless the warrior man likes to chew hair off...

Grats, Spike. You deserve it.

More Saturday? Did I miss something? :(

What I find fascinating is that the "Five World Families" apparently are all represented by men (at least so far). We have Origin Man, Wisdom Man, and Warrior Man so far. Gene's mother even identifies herself as a "Warrior Man." Makes me even more curious what the other two families are supposed to be.

On that note, who's the old guy asleep on the couch from a few strips ago if he isn't the one speaking?

And Spike, CONGRATULATIONS! That's just sheer awesome and I'm glad you've pulled that off. Hopefully you can print off more for the other orders quickly. ^^ Now howsabout that review of my comic you promised all the way back in October? ^_~ I kid, I kid - I'm just happy for you!

I can't music at all. I was a violist for seven years and shitty at it. :(

This tells us one of three things, and given Spike's perverse attention to detail it's almost certainly one of them: music games caught on a lot earlier than they did OTL ([In] Our Timeline, a borrow from alt-hist) and this game is kind of retro; globalization and the development of the multinational never really happened; or the American economy is in such a disproportionately terrible shape that localization to English never really became important. (Either that or a Japanese occupation made it superfluous - but there's nothing to suggest that, so call it remote.) Previous references to live-fire exercises near Yakima by the Japanese Navy are intriguing, though.

My favorite possibility is a mix of #2 and #3; maybe the US actually suffered an occupation during WW2 (or the western parts), leading to an economic development parallel to Europe's. The lack of a powerful, increasingly predatory capitalist class means that the 60s aren't just a time of free love and freer pharmaceuticals, but there are probably active and well-armed insurgencies. In OTL our good friend Barney-boy would have been a member of the left fringe; in this timeline the powers that be lack the catchet to exclude and destroy him.

As a secondary result of that, nobody like Milton Friedman could possibly be taken seriously - so no creation of a new hyper-capitalism that pretends the richest .001% is what we should be growing. The economy and debate about it look like they did in the late 50s - modest but steady growth, with disagreements being administrative and social and a broad consensus on a generally Keynesian system. One primes the pump rather than stimulating growth, and the results are generally better.

The Soviet Union might still be alive, but then again the US still will be by 2050.

Incidentally: prior indications do seem to say that Templar takes place some time in the past. The year that sticks in my head is 1994, although the lack of anybody talking any appreciable amount of politics (even among the sort of scenesters who would normally be doing so) would kind of deflate that - more likely an odd year.

(Carter being President actually pretty unfortunately demands a Nixon; his strategy, which painted the whole Beltway as corrupt and untrustworthy rather than just the Republican party brass, did a lot of horrible things to American politics. Noble man, but a [i]monstrous[/i] campaign narrative.)

So that's why Gene's "special."

"Origin Man" sound like the superhero who goes around creating other superheroes.

Of course, there's been more than one of them. Golden Age Origin Man was badass, blowing up planets, gunning down wealthy parents in front of their kids, he was practically a villain himself. Silver Age Origin Man was a bit more indirect, irradiating spiders and training them to bite, that sort of thing. Their modern-day namesake just gets a job as an obstetrician, zaps kids in the womb to make 'em mutants.

So Jakeskins have a sort of Christian Scientist rule? No doctors or you're out? Or maybe it's just for births.

Also, "YOU CAN MUSIC!" is awesome. Apparently game translation still has a way to go in Templar's world. Or maybe people just decided they like bad translation better.

Spike, I know these Jake people. A whole family of them. They really exist. Not to the point of believing the "origin man" etc. theory, but they're paranoid and delusional enough to if they happen to come across it on the web. They already deeply and sincerely belive the world is going to collapse into anarchy. I have seen their cellars full of canned food and munitions dumps to back it up...

The theory gets even weirder when you introduce Triangle Man. ;)

Not to mention more violent...

Hey Sean, as long as he doesn't see Person Man, he's all right.