"Wait, back to the enemy of the state
Is the Republicans or Democratic candidate?
When it come to this music we stay relentless
Pursuing all that's pursuable"
OutKast - The Whole World
For a comic which started out as jokes about furries eating beans, Endtown's been showing remarkable complexity now and then over its run. Sure, sure, it's not one of my favorites. The drawing style's not defined enough for my usual tastes, the individual characters often so sappy as to gag a honeybee and the author's main crutch for worldbuilding seems to be abusing the crap out of Clarke's third law. The spaceship that runs on feels was just inexcusable.
But hey, you can sometimes get away with the inexcusable if you compensate, and Endtown's true strength lies in the sociopolitical. When it's good it's good. The interrogation scene from last month delivered quite the harsh burn, all the harsher for not being directly targeted at any specific real-world group. "Victimhood becomes the relief" for "vicious, self-entitled mobs" who become "a hated, stigmatized subclass" being used to divert attention from the true villains? If you think you know who that's talking about, think twice. Both options and then some have probably been true at some point in history.
Ah, the freedom of speculative fiction. If you want to write about a dog-eat-dog world, your purpose might be served by a world of literal dogs literally eating other dogs. Free the concept from its tribal anthropocentric shackles and free your audience from its tribal loyalties and obligatory revulsion at having their unanalyzed assumptions questioned. They'll never realize they just learned something.
After all, it's just the funnies.
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