![[0108] Moms In Black](/comics/2009-11-02-[0108]-moms-in-black.png "[0108] Moms In Black")
Special agents K and J “flashy-thing” an eye witness to erase his memory in the movie Men in Black
There’s an alternative version of this strip for readers familiar with the movie Men in Black in which I have exchanged Larisa’s line “wiping the memory” in the last panel with the term “flashy-thinging” coined by Agent J (Will Smith).
I felt the need to write an explanation for this strip so that some readers don’t misunderstand it. However, after nearly ten tries to summarize my thoughts and personal experiences I was still not able to come up with a text that would have not been in danger to be misunderstood by more people than the strip itself.
Also don’t miss the blog post about the TWCL and WCRC webcomic awards I wrote yesterday and consider voting for Sandra and Woo in the categories “Best New Comic”, “Best Art” and “Best Writing” at the WCRC Awards (you need to register at that website before being able to vote).
- Woman: Aw, look at those cute girls, they’re still so young and innocent.
- Sandra and Larisa: HAHAHAHA
- Larisa: Do you have any idea who’s wiping the memory of all those adults so that they completely forget all the stuff they did at our age?
- Sandra: Must be the Moms in Black.
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Larissa’s filling out as a character. I thought she was one of the weaker ideas about the comic when she first turned up but she’s developing well.
This strip was well executed, I enjoyed. The naivety of adults and the cockiness of teens nicely captured.
Nice! The look they exchange in panel two is brilliant!
We have seen a lot of Larissa recently. I agree that the character development is doing quite well.
Keep up the great comic.
naive does not equal innocence.
I remember MIB, but I don’t know if I would have remembered that line.
MiB (sorry…it was like that on the front cover of the comic books) is one of the more memorable movies for me (i’ve seen both mib movies several times) and yes, i definitely would’ve gotten the “flashy-thingy” reference…LOL!!!
Hey, it’s the strip after Halloween! That means I can finally post this:
BLACK HOLE CREATED BY COMIC THAT’S TOO FUNNY
By Frank Hightower, Fanfic news
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) has long been feared for its ability to create microscopic black holes. This morning (Central European Standard Time), they have succeeded in doing so. Except that it was done by accident.
Karl Pierrot, Junior Researcher at CERN, was starting a typical day, checking the news and the comics on his computer while sipping coffee. Something he saw made him laugh so hard, he spewed coffee over his keyboard. Before he knew it, the LHC was starting a non-programmed experiment! “The LHC is a complicated piece of machinery,” explained Pierrot to the press; “you can’t just shut it off it starts up by mistake.”
Pierrot managed to disconnect his computer from the network before further uncontrolled orders were sent to the LHC, but the particles were already accelerating to near-light speed.
Pierrot’s supervisors, Doctors Jason Hawkings and Steve Bekenstein (unrelated to the world-famous physicists), hurried to the scene when they heard what was happening. Before their eyes, the computer’s data showed the few sub-atomic particles that were being accelerated by the collider, being turned into something with apparently infinite gravity: a microscopic black hole.
“I wouldn’t say the black hole just appeared,” declared Dr. Bekenstein to the press. “It was more a matter of a transition from a tiny star into something that could no longer support its own gravity… despite being smaller than a grain of sand.”
The Black Hole managed to “eat” a detector from the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), whereupon it “grew” to what the Doctors call “macroscopic proportions”: about one ten-thousandth of a grain of sand.
When asked about what he was reading that made him spill the coffee beans, Pierrot replied. “Sandra and Woo; it was a pretty good joke… though I don’t think my maman [French for “mother”] would appreciate it.” Sandra and Woo is a webcomic. Like the famous Calvin and Hobbes, it’s about a young child who has a pet, which only that child knows can talk. Unlike Calvin and Hobbes, Sandra’s pet is not a stuffed toy, but a real-live raccoon.
When asked if they were going to take legal action against “Sandra and Woo’s” creators, Doctor Hawkings responded, “Now, now. I think they actually did us a favor: we never thought we’d get micro- black holes this early on.” There is, however, the potential false advertising. “Sandra and Woo” claims to be safe for the workplace… ANY workplace.
If nothing else happens, the Black Hole is expected to disappear via Hawking Radiation by Thursday; when the next “Sandra and Woo” strip is scheduled to go up. However, fears that it may grow again rise everytime the Black Hole nears one of the four detectors in its journey through the collider. The Government of France is pressing Switzerland to admit the blackhole was created on the part of the collider on their side of the border. Apparently, the French Ministère de la Science et Technologie fears it may become a bigger threat.
“Threat?” asked Berkenstein when confronted with this possibility. “Well, the Black Hole HAS caused… er… considerable damage to the CMS, and that HAS delayed further experiments by another couple of years. However, black holes are inherently unstable, so the Black Hole will literally be short-lived. And the discoveries to be made from it far outbalance the near-impossible threat of it… er… getting out of the collider.”
The Government of Switzerland, on the other hand, is considering the evacuation of the area around the collider. It is also pressing “Sandra and Woo’s“ IRC chat to reveal the identity of Pokefan Frank and Birone, who on October 17 encouraged Oliver Knörzer (writer for “Sandra and Woo”) to publish “the strip after halloween” despite considering this possibility.
Before you say anything about my post, remember that I’m trying to be funny, breif, scientifically accurate, AND sound like a news reporter; all at once. I guess it helped that I couldn’t find how fast Hawking Radiation is supposed to be. And yes, we DID discuss it on October 17, as the absurdly worst possible backlash.
Great comic. I admit, I had to look this song up.
I guess they like country-western.
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/t/the-wreckers/lay/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YSsFQKD9Nw
@Frank: That’s about as good as today’s comic! Nicely done! (I like today’s comic quite a bit).
Hahaha! So true! I must document this effect upon myself as I age! *gets a notepad*
@Frank: Wow, I’m speechless! This is just brilliant. You’ve just made my day! I’m gonna be smiling like an idiot all day today (¡Yay!).
Great post, Frank; and as ever, great comic.
Cheers,
— Bironé
Ironically, I’ll remember what “flashy thinging” means until the day I die.
I have a 19 month old daughter… I’m scared to find out what kinds of trouble she’ll be getting into as a teen, complaining her “old man” doesn’t understand the complexities of being popular, school social ettiquite,etc. XD The rules chage so much that i’m afaid I’d be like those grownups in the comic. 🙂
I should have gotten the reference from the beginning.Nicely done though.
what song are they listening to???
“I felt the need to write an explanation for this strip so that some readers don’t misunderstand it. However, after nearly ten tries to summarize my thoughts and personal experiences I was still not able to come up with a text that would have not been in danger to be misunderstood by more people than the strip itself”
Dude Art (or any form of creative expresion) dosnt need explanation, thats since middle ages, Shakespeare said it a million times like in Summer Night between all de horny scenes, just relax man, seriously, You are doing it fine Dude
Hey uh… what is Sandra holding in the last panel. I know its not the Mp3 player, but i’m just a tad curious about it.
@ Blackqhat: Sandra is holding her cell phone in the last panel.
@Atan: The wreckers – lay me down. (See my post before for lyrics/video link)
At first I thought it was a Tool song. But I was wrong. And slightly disappointed. But no worries. Keep up the fantastic work on the strip.
Off the top of my head, the “flashy thing” in the MiB films was called a neuralizer.
I think the “wiping the memory” version works better; the phrasing just sounds more natural and less awkward, and it makes the “Moms in Black” punchline funnier because it’s not a double reference to the same movie.
Some friends and I were just discussing this at a convention last weekend. One of our long time members is guardian for her 16 year old niece. Some of us there are pretty open about our variety of alternative lifestyles, even if we don’t do anything directly sexual in front of the young people. (For instance: I may wear my collar and some people wanted to see some of my flogger designs, but we weren’t using the floggers in public.)
At some point I commented to one of my friends: I remember being 16. I know what activities I was up to by that point in my life. I also know that if for no other reason than to stay out of legal trouble, we have to pretend that they are all innocent lambs until they’re 18. There are places where if we even try to warn them about some of the pitfalls we encountered at that age, we could get in serious trouble!
It all gets covered up in the sands of time.
Fred wrote: At some point I commented to one of my friends: I remember being 16. I know what activities I was up to by that point in my life. I also know that if for no other reason than to stay out of legal trouble, we have to pretend that they are all innocent lambs until they’re 18. There are places where if we even try to warn them about some of the pitfalls we encountered at that age, we could get in serious trouble!
I’m not sure I really understand that, but I guess it has something to do with the bizarre age limits in the law of the United States.
There are some flaws in German law as well, but I think the whole juvenile law (age of criminal responsibility, legal age (for drinking, etc.), age of consent, …) is really well balanced and should be a prototype for other countries.
In Canada some of the age laws depend on the provinces. This leads to what can either be labeled as hilarity, or as outright stupidity. In… say British Columbia, the age of consent is more or less 16 (there are more rules about that though), a 16 year old can also begin the process of getting their driver’s license which they often finish by around 18, also the drinking age is 19. They trust you to drive a metallic Juggernaut capable of mass death and destruction responsibly by 18. But don’t trust you to drink until 19.
Also the voting age (which I believe is under Federal jurisdiction) is 18. That’s right folks, if you live in BC Canada and are able to vote, but are 18, yes they do trust you to decide the future direction of your country. They just don’t trust you to drink responsibly. Hmm. Wow. Though in Alberta the drinking age is 18 so they don’t have that problem… But still, kind of odd, eh?
And it varies. Ontario is 19, Quebec 18, Nunavut 19… most are 19. Messy. But on the subject of innocent children… You would have to be pretty naive to believe that drinking doesn’t start far earlier for many people. And I have to say I have heard good things about the German system.
Actually , the fact that they think they are sophisticated and possibly a little evil is a sign of how innocent they truely are.
Just recently stumbled over your comic and I love it! 🙂
Komisch, dass ich ihn all die Zeit über verpasst habe, obwohl er überall verlinkt war… na ja, besser spät als nie! 😉
“Flashy-thing” XD!
People have only ever asumed that little girles are innocent. Maybe that’s why they make the best demons in horror movies.
What DID all the other kids do when we were that age? o_0
@ CanadianBacon:
@CanadianBacon:
Either you haven’t met any young girls, or you don’t remember what they were truly like at that age.
Just as well you didn’t do the flashy-thingying version.
Not because of confusion. I’m sure we all would have got the reference… but rather it would have felt unnatural. When referring to things in the process of casual conversation, one typically starts the reference at the root and then works down to the details… rather than starting with the details and then referencing the root.
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Really… try it both ways and see which sounds more natural. You’ll see what I mean.
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As for the young girls being innocent… well, they are.
Perhaps not in the sense of the implied purity they take it for… The adults certainly won’t have forgotten what they got up to at that age. It is simply considered in the context of the more extreme things they did later in life.
It is in the nature of youth to believe it has seen and known most of what there is to see and know, and yet is always surprised at each new experience as it arises, as if it were never meant to be…
Frank wrote:
The information is all there on the Hawking Radiation wiki page, you know. For example, a three day black hole would mass about 15 thousand tonnes, and over those 3 days would release 313 million megatonnes of energy. And it would not have infinite gravity, the gravity well of a black hole is unremarkable outside its event horizon.
Wow, how ironic, that picture of woo holding the “look” sign pointing to an ad, it is an ad for an exterminator
For some reason, up until I was looking at the text, I thought that was Sandra and Cloud, with the music also serving as commentary that they didn’t care that those adults called him a girl. Somehow even missed the long, braided ponytail in the 3rd and 4th panels. Maybe that was just seeing those two with their Halloween fundraising efforts…
Everything is a conspiracy. That way, at least some of them will be true.
That’s a really great song.