Grrl Power #351 – Vertigyaah!
Sydney continues to learn about the orbs with her characteristic aplomb.
I’ve used the dolly zoom gag before, but it’s such a prevalent effect that I can’t help it. Some could argue it’s passed into cliche, but that’s part of why it’s funny to me. That and usually when you see it these days it’s being used for comedic effect specifically because it’s melodramatic. The problem for my given medium is that unlike a lens flare or a shallow focus effect, a dolly zoom requires motion to actually play correctly, so you guys get a nonomatopoeia in place of me spending days trying to figure out how to do the gag in animated gif form or something.
Sydney’s experience here is lifted straight from my own. Not the clinging to a superheroine part, but developing mild acrophobia from video games. I can tell you exactly when it happened, too. Star Wars: Dark Forces. The first FPS Star Wars game, and the first game in the Jedi Knight series technically, since Jedi Knight 1 has the same main character. (Which means the real title of the final game in the series should have been Star Wars: Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy) Anyway, even though Dark Forces was a PC game it used checkpoints to save, and they were few and far between. It could take upwards of 45 minutes to beat a level and if you died before then, you’d have to play it over again. Also, the game was true to the Star Wars universe, in the sense that there were no railings anywhere. Combine that with instadeath fall catwalks and crags on slippery glaciers. Oh, there was also an awesome gun that fired a ball of compressed air. It was basically a rocket launcher, only the explosion of air at the end didn’t do all that much damage. It was mainly used for knocking Stormtroopers off instadeath fall catwalks. It wasn’t so awesome when some bounty hunter used it on you though. Sliding towards a crag on an icy glacier or getting knocked into the air by some weapon while on a catwalk definitely gave me a case of the netherclench.
Incidentally, Dark Forces made me appreciate why the Stormtroopers can never hit anything. The blaster rifle they carry is crazy inaccurate. The Imperial Repeater gun on the other hand… It’s one of my favorite FPSs of all time, assuming you can handle the Doom II/Duke3D era graphics, (which I grant can be fairly eye piercing on 22-inch plus monitors), I’d recommend checking it out. Here’s a Steam link and one for GoG.
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I find it hysterical that Maxima has so adjusted to Syd that getting spider monkey’d doesn’t phase her in the slightest.
She is remarkably cool about it.
to be fair max had a hunch that letting go of the orb would bring the fear back. and she knows sydneys tendency react weird. so max didn’t know what would happen just that something would and its a lot easyer to not react when you know to preper your self
On the other hand if Max can catch bullets then Sydney running to grab her would be super slow-mo. In other words even if she was surprised initially she wouldn’t still be surprised at the end.
No, just groped and slobbered on the end :P
This brings an interesting question to mind, when Max powers up speed does she gain faster thought processing and reaction times or are her mental speeds always set to all for her to move at those speeds?
Given her ability to catch bullets, it is likely that she has some version of that, but as to whether it comes through her “speed” actually being her personal time speeding up or simply her brain becoming capable of processing information faster, we don’t know yet.
POWDERED TOAST MAX!
No. Don’t bring that here. Bad. That show gave me horrifying nightmares. Please stop. OH GOD THE IMAGE THIS IS ALL YOU’R FAULT.
Here…have a bowl of Lucky Chodes to get that image out of your head.
NO
Here’s a nice LOG to play with.
What rolls down stairs
alone or in pairs,
and over your neighbor’s dog?
What’s great for a snack,
And fits on your back?
It’s log, log, log
It’s log, it’s log,
It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.
It’s log, it’s log, it’s better than bad, it’s good.”
Everyone wants a log
You’re gonna love it, log
Come on and get your log
Everyone needs a log
log log log
LOG FROM BLAMMO
No. Don’t bring that here. Bad. That show gave me horrifying nightmares. Please stop. OH GOD THE IMAGE THIS IS ALL YOU’R FAULT.
Sorry, something happened and I don’t know what.
I think if you google “cling tenaciously to my buttocks” you should be able to find it on youtube or somewhere. It’s from Ren and Stimpy.
“Both of them!?”
you know, at least for me, a way to cancel vertigo would really be nice, they should figure out how it works and bottle it :)
I freaking love Dark Forces. It’s possibly my favorite game of all time. I also freaking love the Stouker Concussion Rifle, although I’d like to point out that it didn’t appear in the game until the mission after the icy Robotics Facility. Not that I didn’t use the cheats to get it earlier…[cough]. On the other hand, the first mission where the Concussion Rifle appeared was Nar Shaddaa, “The Vertical City,” where everyone had knockback weapons and you could be bumped off a catwalk into outer space, where you would fall forever (gravity, how does it work) and eventually suffocate. Acrophobia: justified.
Oh, by the way, don’t apologize for using the Dolly Zoom gag twice. The last time you did the Jaws Dolly Zoom, which is horizontal. This time you did the Vertigo Dolly Zoom, which is vertical. :) Come to think of it, I suppose Hitch used a crane, not a dolly.
That’s not what vertigo is.
But I love the “dolly zoom” effect!
Vertigo is having a malfunctioning inner ear, right? Making standing anywhere difficult.
My understanding of the word is that it is both symptoms and an illness?
When you look down from heights like that, it induces the symptoms of vertigo, but they vanish when you are ‘safe’ again.
Though yes, per definition I believe it is only the illness?
Ah, Dark Forces. And for that matter, the first Jedi Knight game. Good times, back in the ancient of days when level-design didn’t have to “make sense,” it just had to be possible (somehow) to get through it without using cheat codes (although in many cases players would get frustrated enough to resort to cheat codes anyway). I remember one case where the button that you needed to push to open the main door for an imperial fortress (that being the door where all the AT-STs and cargo stransports and ANYTHING would have to go through to get in and out) was hidden inside a secret room several floors up from the ground floor on a nearby tower. The only way to enter the room was through an air vent which was itself hidden behind a big set of computer racks that covered one wall, which you could just barely slip behind, but you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t view it at the right angle.
The games were full of crap like that. Design that makes you scream “NO ONE WOULD EVER BUILD A BASE LIKE THIS! These stormtroopers would have to be the universe’s greatest acrobats just to get to their duty stations every day!”
You know, the same principle as Doom level design, and old school Quake level design. Fun old days… that can be really hard to go back to if you’ve gotten used to more modern game design.
Actually lampshaded in Dark Forces 2 (if I remember correctly). When assaulting an Imperial base, Kyle makes a comment to the effect of “I bet the switch for the front door is up there, on the top floor.”
My problem with a lot of the older (Doom-era) shooters is that I get motion sickness after about 20 or 30 minutes, then have to go lie down for a while. I’m not *entirely* sure, but maybe it’s because I’m using a wide-screen monitor, combined with the old games having a narrow field of view (FoV).
MSpears, it can be downright brutal on a 60″ 4k HDTV that I use as my PC monitor and for cable TV (TV is only 1920×1080 but I play MMOs and games like Doom 3 in 4096×2160. I already have vertigo issues as a result of a TBI (Afghanistan 2005), so it’s particularly bad sometimes. So I’ve learned to play in Windowed mode (if possible).
First, thank you for your service. (I’m formerly Air Force myself; my dad served in Korea, and at least two of my uncles spent 20 years in the military, so I try to always thank people for their service.)
Second, I’d love to have a computer capable of that kind of resolution. My current monitor won’t handle it (1920×1080 is as high as it goes), and with my current video card, even if it *was* capable of that resolution, the frame rate would be in the single digits. I admit to a bit of jealousy. ;-)
And third… Yeah, I can imagine that it would be brutal. In my case, it’s only the older graphics engines (Doom, the original Castle Wolfenstein, etc) that do this to me. Any graphics engine capable of drawing large outdoor environments (Deus Ex, Unreal, etc) doesn’t give me vertigo, which includes all of the newer games. Some people are just more prone to it than others… I know at least one person who gets sick from the scrolling note charts on Guitar Hero!
They say that turning on more light will help (playing in a dark room is bad for your eyes anyway), or sitting further away from the monitor… but I don’t know if you have a room in your home big enough to get *far enough* away from that 60″ monster HDTV of yours. ;-)
It’s funny, I never had any problem playing Doom or Wolfenstein on my old 17″ CRT monitor in the 1990s, but trying to play them on any modern monitor makes me nauseous for hours.
It was an especially powerful source of nausea in the IBM-PC game, “Descent”, one of the 1st to boast “6 Axes of Rotation”. They strongly warned about the game’s ability to induce motion-sickness.
Oh yeah. I remember that game. Both Descent and Descent 2 gave me vertigo. (Descent 3, oddly, did not.)
I used to play Descent and Descent 2 for hours and never had a problem. Oddly enough there was a game called “Hexen” that I could not play for more than ten minutes without getting sick. I think part of that was the game was in a fantasy setting and would simulate walking around by bouncing the camera up and down. Made me turn green…
Yeah, that’s actually a common cause of motion sickness. It’s called “head bob” or “camera bob”. Fortunately, the game designers figured that out, so a lot of games that have head bob also have the ability to turn it off in the options menu (or to disable it by editing a configuration file).
I used to play a lot of first-person shooters and this was my problem. I could somehow manage to get motion sickness even with the bobbing disabled, but thankfully nine times out of ten I didn’t get it at all.
Weren’t Hexen and Heretic made with the Doom engine? I knew a few people who couldn’t play them because of that.
Yep. Also one called Strife, and two GameBoy titles called Dark Arena and Cruis’n Velocity (although Cruis’n was a racing game and not a first-person shooter, it used the Doom engine).
Strife was awesome. It’s like the first FPS game that had RPG elements and a storyline with dialog choices.
Agreed. It’s available on Steam for under $10. You’re not the only person to think it was awesome, either. Strife is “93% positive”, which is pretty good for a game that’s a squirrel’s fart away from 20 years old.
Yep. I have the original one, on floppy disk in the box with everything (also have it backed up in a DVD archive). Was thinking of getting it on Steam though as well – just waiting for the next good steam sale.
….
I’m a little bit of a collector of retro games. :)
Part of the problem was also that monitors did not have quite fast enough refresh rates. The slight lag was not visible to the conscious eye, but the subconscious caught it.
Is that what is was, I thought it was because Hexen was a crappy game. :-)
I never got vertigo from playing Descent, but I did get lost in the 3-D maps a helluva lot…
Very bad when trying to escape before it all blew up…
I used to go out with this person and he couldnt stand those movies which made it feel like you were on a roller coaster or moving, when it was actually just the video that made you think it.
I LOVE those types of rides/movies. All the fun, none of the gravity.
Oh god, Descent. The only game that ever made me actually throw up.
Re: “…narrow (FOV)”…
I’m just remembering that the old DOOM documentation included details on a (very primitive) multi-player mode (4-players, maximum). The reason I’m remembering this is that they described a “work-around” for the FOV-issue. By “slaving” 3 of the 4 “players” together, you could control 3 POV’s from 1 keyboard, surround yourself with 3 monitors, & get a 270-degree wide-angle view…
…lacking only the eyes you might be wanting in the back of your head.
I could never get that to work. I had a LAN and 3 computers all running Doom, but couldn’t get them to slave together like they were supposed to.
If you’re thinking of the same lampshade I’m thinking of, that was actually in Jedi Academy (Dark Forces 4: Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Academy :P ). Kyle and the protagonist, Jaden, were trying to get into an Imperial fortress and found the maintenance door locked, and Kyle was making several pithy comments on the subject. The final one was “The console to unock the door is probably hidden in some room twelve floors up or something. How does that make sense?” I’ve always found that comment hilarious. :D
For such motion sickness, ginger is wonderful as a preventative measure (Google “Good Eats” + Ginger). I usually drink ginger beer (non-alcoholic) while I’m playing, and I haven’t suffered motion sickness in years, but you have to get the good stuff, because lame stuff lie Canada Dry and Schweppes have practically no ginger in them.
Thank you! You are a life saver. I am forever in your debt. Who knew something as simple as ginger could counteract my lifelong propensity for carsickness?
I loved the Dark Trooper project. One of the many weapons Palpatine was developing to fight the Yu-shan Vong but which everyone fought against because they didn’t know and because he used them to opress people. Still an awesome plot hook even if the graphics are dated. My friends and I have played several long tabletop campaigns in the Star Wars universe and as someone who’s studied a lot of the books I’m here to tell you THAT FRONT GATE SWITCH ACCESSIBLE ONLY BY VENT HIDDEN BEHIND COMPUTER STACKS IS TRUE TO IMPERIAL CONSTRUCTION. It’s twisty, but there is logic behind it. You see the guards at the front gate either have an electronic switch for the gate that they use on a regular basis or simply radio someone who does. That physical switch that is all but inaccessible is there for Vader. Knowing where it is he or another Sith can flip it to open the doors without destroying them for either effect or surprise. Such things were commonly designed into imperial architecture if you knew where to find them. In Sith and Jedi temples it was actually somewhat common to create locks that could ONLY be unlocked by someone who could sense the mechanism through a wall and use the force to trigger it.
Thats actually kind of ingenious. If I ever design an office building or supervillian lair I am SO going to embed some hidden RFID readers in random walls to operate some of the doors.
You know what? That makes sense now! Thanks! (Also, I agree with smilr. If I were an evil overlord, something like that would be on my list.)
Sydney reminds me of Pinky the cat. https://youtu.be/dR_LHlFwlhk?t=44
Guess Syd’s the only one so far to bite/cling to Max’s butt and live. XD
Not even any chipped teeth!
This comment section needs the ability to upvote posts.
As both of you would have garnered an upvote from me. Thanks for the chuckle.
Sydney is going to have to practice over and over and over her first reaction to vertigo, to retrain it to immediately summon the flight orb back to her hand again. Grabbing her CO in a deathgrip is not an acceptable combat reflex move.
It really depends on how bad it is for her, may be lucky for her even to stand on a chair or climb a ladder without clutching the Flight Orb
Why would she need to stand on a chair or climb a ladder when she has the flight orb?
Most lightbulbs require two hands to change, at least the hanging kind
Also, I love the graceful swoop of Sydney’s speech bubble link going under and around Max. It suits her current pose very nicely.
I have a copy of Dark Forces . . . on CD.
Go thrift stores!
I get some of that when playing video games as well. Most recently it’s been with Mad Max. To level up Max’s abilities, you have to talk to a guy who’s always on a clifftop. After the talk, I’ve nearly ran off the ledge a couple times and each time that happened I felt a total body clench.
After a serious Red Dead Redemption marathon I was took my horse on a quiet trail ride, heard a rustle in the bushes and I quite literally flinched and went for my gun, heart racing, thinking OH CRAP cougar! I’m sure my horse thought I was a complete idiot.
To top it off, I’m an Aussie, we don’t even have cougars (and drop bears only live in trees)!
This, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_dyOxAfEzI
Bonk from the buttocks thats a new one.
DaveB, is there a chance that we could get a closeup of Sydney’s balancing pose in panel 1? She seems so cute doing that. :)
Just watch DBZ, one of the Ginzo Force (or whatever that group of five losers who got their butts kicked by Gohan and Krilin on Namek was called) poses like that
Can’t say I’m a DBZ fan, but I’ll keep a lookout for the character with the pose.
The Ginyu Force posed silly.
Oh man, if the Archon squad had done that in the parking lot at the start of the big battle they could have ended the fight right there.
Either:
1) The enemy would have surrendered instantly due to their display of sheer awesomeness ;)
2) The enemy would have collapsed on the ground from laughing themselves unconscious
We need a Patreon incentive to get the team immortalized in that pose.
Thems the idiots
I so love this comic :) Was laughing out loud from this one.
I thought I was the only one to remember and/or care about the Dark Forces title discrepancy.
Can someone tell me who the ‘hero’ of “Dark Forces” was?
Never mind, it was Kyle Katarn (who flew a different model of Correlian Freighter to The Falcon)
Can remember playing one of the games on a console, during a Hoth mission you could lure some troopers into a room and release some of the Yeti creatures :D
Kyle Katarn…
I just realized he’s probably not even part off canon anymore…
*sob*
Yeah, the only Canon is now the trilogies and the CG Series. Disney pretty much decided to screw everyone with that move. While I liked the Clone Wars Series so far the ONLY thing I’ve really liked about “Rebels” so far is the fact that Ashoka is in it.
Yeah well, Disney isn’t part of canon, as far as I’m concerned. :P
I’ve been deliberately ignoring every bit of Star Wars expanded universe fiction that was written after Timothy Zahn wrapped things up perfectly with Vision of the Future. Nothing that’s been written since then is canon as far as I’m concerned, so I can completely ignore some arrogant all-consuming corporation coming in and trying to tell me it now gets to say what’s “real Star Wars” and what’s not.
Compared to ignoring the last 15 years worth of fiction, Dinsey barely even rates on my radar. :P
“..used to mildly be…”
So, is Sydney splitting infinitives on purpose (mimicking Captain Kirk) or is that kind of just a grammatical typo?
A quick re-read makes me think that it is meant to be “used to be mildly”.
Screw fracking ‘grammar’, some people actually do speak that way (and nothing… to do… with… Kirk)
You know I’m fairly certain that dabbler would giver her two right hands to be in that position.
She probably has been, before Maxi knew her better (and not in the Biblical sense ;) )
There’s been a lot of talk about how they should have issued Sydney a spare battery or at least showed her how to recharge it, but it occurs to me that they probably did do that second thing – it just wasn’t “on camera”. Remember that Hiro took her aside after the big restaurant fight to show her the ins and outs of her pip-boy gauntlet thingamajig. The problem was that she was so distracted by the fact that he was still shirtless that she didn’t . . . or couldn’t pay attention.
Maxima’s got the right strategy here. Better to learn of these flaws NOW, under controlled conditions, than in actual combat, or in an emergency. No telling how many lives Max just saved right now.
And thus, Sydney learns how to instantly triple her heart rate…
Hmm, that brings to the forefront the idea that each power orb could have a secondary “protective” effect on the user. For Flight there is anti-vertigo. So for the PPO it might be a kind of enhanced vision (or just restraint from “impulse” shots). For the force field it might subtly enhance the sense of smell to know when the air is getting “bad”. For the Telepresence it might aid in image processing so she can handle the dual input channels without puking. The tentacle orb might enhance her ability to visualize 3d constructs while using it, nicely explaining some of the varied shapes she’s made when not actually looking.
Well, the PPO does have the safety switch
I think with the Lighthook the secondary ability might amount to a sense of the tentacle’s position relative to her, almost as though it was an attached limb. This might explain her ability to make unique shapes and such, the tentacle essentially feels like another limb to her. There’s also a good argument to be made for a form of haptic feedback on it, so she knows she’s holding whatever it is she’s holding.
Oh yeah I understand what you are saying about acrophobia and video games. I have the same problem, though the game that I play (Guild Wars 2) its only an issue with certain jumping puzzles (which are all optional side parts of the game). And the fact that my laptop is prone to lag doesn’t help in any way.
Woof, woof. Woof!
Settle down!!
am debating if Yorp is barking at ‘Cat’ or at the mention of ‘jumping puzzles’…
*throws stick*
Cat, duh….or maybe the mailman came just then. Could’ve been a squirrel by the window too…
*races after stick*
Yay, you’re back~! :)
Thanks :)
Many years ago,in the early-1970s, MAD Magazine ran a feature called Hawks & Doves by Al Jaffee.
Private Doves constantly pushed Major Hawks over the edge with psychical references to the peace symbol.
Now image Maxima and Sydney engaging in something like that-Sydney pressing Maxima’s buttons over her hatred of the peace symbol…!
Okay. A couple of things have popped into my head here. I noticed that Maxima’s “Flight” ability in the cast tab at the top if the page is 5 star and Halo’s is 4. But we also know from the first flying lesson Maxima had with Halo that Dave (if that is the author’s name) recognizes wind pressure from flight. Because of that Maxima can’t go all out in flight due to needing to allot some of her versatile points into “Toughness” while Halo just needs to grab her shield ball. So finally my question comes to this… is it possible that Halo can fly faster than Maxima?
Other than her basic points distribution, Max can dip into her reserves of power to temporarily use extra points.
The most significant thing we learnt from that flight test: Sydney didn’t even notice how fast she was going, so yes, it is possible that Sydney could out run (certainly out manoeuvre) Maxi, if giving enough warning (Sydney still has to grab both of her Balls , whereas Maxi just needs to move)
I disagree. Max has a certain level of natural invulnerability and probably doesn’t need to pump her defenses just for air pressure. Otherwise she’d never be able to use her full strength without tearing her own muscles in the process. She’s probably capable of reaching orbit with an oxygen tank.
Max has demonstrated an ability to move faster than a speeding bullet. The average bullet travels over 1700 miles per hour (speed will vary by muzzle diameter, powder load, and barrel length so a pretty wide range here). Syd and Max didn’t reach anywhere near that on their flight. There was a one hour break to bus the press in but it wouldn’t have been superspeed since the press couldn’t take the acceleration and they only waited a little bit for them to show up. Ergo being generous they probably traveled no more than 100 miles in about 15-30 minutes. That works out to a speed of 200-400 mph (which Max said they hit near the end of that flight btw). Ultimately though I guess that’s not definitively Syd’s top speed. It’s just the fastest she’s gone so far.
Thank you for that expanation
You skipped a step in the game’s full title.
It should be: Star Wars: Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III:Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy
I expect that little minuet between Halo and Max was captured by the security cams on the roof, and Leon is now considering who to release the footage to – Dabbler or Math.
and then remembering WHO the “most powerful member of the team” IS… yeah, right… i don’t think so… https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/395
Australian slang; Dag
1; a small piece of poo that typically hangs off a sheep’s anal fleece, tho can be applied to other creatures.
2; a friendly name for someone who’s done something a bit (or more) silly…
Interesting, Sydney kinda fits into both categories… :P
Wait, you saying that Sydney the person is liken to a piece of sheep poo? Or the city? o_O
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8alGtNE41-s
don’t be ridiculous. Sydney is nothing like sheep poo.
I mean, not once has anyone tried to turn her into paper.
https://sheeppoopaper.com/
My bad, I think Debris would have been a better choice of wording. Kids,m that’s why you don’t post tired…
Try this again… :P
Australian slang; Dag
1; a small piece of debris that typically hangs off a sheep’s anal fleece, tho can be applied to other creatures.
2; a friendly name for someone who’s done something a bit (or more) silly…
Interesting, Sydney kinda fits into both categories… :P
She is being a bit silly there, plus in her words she is “clinging tenaciously to her buttocks”. Yeah, close enough maybe…
I think for as hard as Max tries to look I really think she’s taken a shine to Sydney…
well, she does “finds [sic] herself continually amused by Sydney’s antics”, so yes. thankfully!!
So… she’s not Queen Victoria then? :P
I relate more to Grenade Jumping myself, usually over vent cores, while imagining taunts from Simulacrums.
“vertistop” is what happens at the end of a long fall. :-P
I think one of the best games to finding out just how acrophobic you are is Assassin’s Creed. It’s been a couple of years since I played it but that jump off the very top of the church steeple… yea. First time I did that my heart stopped for a second. I still tend to feel that little clench now whenever I’m playing Borderlands – no fall damage, but still the way you tend to accelerate a bit before hitting terminal in that game makes jumping off cliffs a bit more immersive than it should be.
Oh my god, once I took a closer look at how Sydney was clinging to Maxima in the third panel…
Like a freaking boa-constrictor, how is that physically possible! XD
Dunno, but it had me laughing all over again!
Been bingeing through this, but I had to stop temporarily ’cause I was laughing too hard at the Powdered Toast man ref.
Well played!
Somtimes, I’ve vertigone. But I always vertiback.
That must have been a fast dolly. It zoomed right by so fast we didn’t even get to see it’s zoom lines.
(Yes I know it’s a cinematography thing.)
I just realized, I have no idea how this:
“Email me when new comments are added” button works…
Does the system email you when you get a response or whenever the thread is updated? Hmmmm…
Well I guess I’ll just have to poke the button en-masse to find out!
*POKE*
Surely nothing response-like will come of this!
Nori to the rescue!
It advises you every time there is a new comment on the page, as opposed to the thread. So the message is misleading.
As such avoid clicking on it on a new page, at least not in the first day or two. You will get inundated with message advice.
But I do like click after that point, so that I can pick up new messages on the older comics. Likewise Dave gets notified of any update, in the comic.
I think most other folks just spot new comments if doing a re-read. And maybe not even then.
Ah, so if I fail to click the button on a comment that I actually want to reply to… I have to post again just to activate it? Mmmm. You will probably see suspicious and innane comments higher up the page or replying to myself in order to activate if said error occurs, as an attempt to cover my tracks stealthily.
Oh and by “Thread” I think it’s right -in the bulletin board sense-, as each of these comment sections don’t have dividers, so each comic opens a new thread. Or does it consider it by the “page” division labeled over there on the discussion button… and not the entire comic “page”? Uh oh.
It’s a bit more unwieldy than Disqus, but you can’t have everything on every site, and reorganizing the layout of a webpage that has hundreds of auto-procured copies can easily be a hellish mess… Plus you don’t want to erase the old comments. So many nice things there. To gently cackle at.
Oh it is usually easy enough to find something worthwhile to comment on. Just have a read through comments, until something catches your interest. Bear in mind that there are multiple pages of comments. This one is rare in only having the two, for example.
It would be nice to have a ’email me if there is any new message posted on the comic’ option though. Or, even better, ’email me if there is any new message posted on the comic EXCEPT on the most recent page’.
One other option, if you do not want to go through the whole comic that way, is just to use the “New Comment Highlighter”, which appears at the bottom of the sidebars (below the “Webcomics I like” section”). The one drawback being that you do not get an email telling you about such.
But when you are doing an archive trawl, or follow a link back to an older page, you will get to see the message telling you if there have been any comments since you were last on the page.
If, like me, you run an application to clear out cookies periodically, I would advise adding the comic to your list of exceptions. Otherwise your history will be lost, each time you do that.