Tag: crabs

What’s Going On In Alley Oop? Why were the giant crabs pinching people? March – June 2021


The Chrabs were on an alternate Earth, Universe 881, not by their own will. They would pinch people to death as they could not bear being around arguments and had ended up in a most argumentative universe. It turns out to be Ollie Arp’s fault, for once.

This should catch you up on Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop to late June 2021. If you’re reading this after about September 2021, there’s probably a more up-to-date plot recap here. Thanks for reading.

Alley Oop.

28 March – 19 June 2021.

I last checked in with Alley Oop as he and the gang prevented the murder of Lady Worthington. They’d gone back in time a little bit to catch Clifford, her butler and secret criminal mastermind. They send Clifford to the universe where everyone is butlers “and definitely not all murderers!”. In her gratitude, Lady Worthington admits she had wanted to steal their technology, but what the heck. Also, she already has a time machine, “from a wild-haired farmer with a penchant for inventing”. That would be Doc Wonmug’s clone of Albert Einstein.

Ooola: 'We should get some clothes so we blend in.' Alley Oop: 'I'm on it!' (Comes back with a heap of Western duds.) Oop: 'Here we are!' Ooola: 'Thanks, Alley. Where did you find these so fast?' Oop: 'I found a ... store ... over there called 'Give Me Your Clothes, Or Else'. ... AND they were free!' Doc Wonmug: 'Wow! What a friendly universe!' Three guys in the background walk past wearing rain barrels.
Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 15th of April, 2021. So when I first read this I didn’t notice the guys in barrels, and just took it at face value that Alley Oop had robbed a general store. Yeah, the dialogue doesn’t support that but I read a lot of comics, I can’t pay attention to the words too. It’s a small shame we didn’t see Alley Oop getting the clothes since the eagerness of his victims to comply could have been a sign of what the gimmick this Universe was. But it’s not like it took forever to get to that point either. This was a quickly-told story.

The new, and just-wrapped-up, story began the 12th of April. The gang chooses to explore the mysterious Universe 881, an unexplored and locked universe. (Its password is “password123”.) It looks like an Old West themed world. Alley Oop gets some clothes by going up to some guys and demanding their clothes. They’re happy to comply.

It turns out everyone in this Old West town is happy to comply. Amicable. Someone accused of cheating a poker game denies they could ever value a game over their friendship. An actual showdown turns out to be competitive dancing. The locals don’t ever fight, over anything, because they don’t want to die. Also, on this Earth, if you fight, the Chrabs come out and pinch you to death.

Oop: 'Is all this business about the Chrabs true? It doesn't sound true.' Garnet: 'Now please don't go doin' *that*. You sound argumentative.' Oop: 'I'm NOT!' (A crack in the ground appears and a giant Chrab claw snaps out, trying to grab any of them. The claw vanishes.) Oop: 'I still say I wasn't arguin--- MFFFFF!' (Doc Wonmug covers his mouth.)
Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 29th of April, 2021. Garnet, the prospector-y type here, ended up being their companion for the story, and he survives through to the end even.

There weren’t always Chrabs. One day there was a flash of light and then anyone who got a little disagreeable got pinched to death. So Alley Oop and all venture into the City of the Chrabs, using a disguise that gets them arrested immediately. They’re taken to Queen Chrab. (Her name. She’s the democratically-elected president.)

Queen Chrab reveals they’re not from this universe. They’d been minding their own business. There was this flash of light, and then they were stuck in this universe. Doc Wonmug arranges to send the Chrabs back to their home Universe 7. It’s a bigger project than they planned: there’s almost a hundred million of them.

Queen Chrab: 'Thanks again for helping us get back to our universe. We never wanted to be in Univers 881, pinching all those cowboys. We're peaceful beings.' Doc Wonmug: 'See, Alley and Ooola? I've always tried to show you the core benevolence of all living things. It is the nature of life to be kind, and ... ' Alley Oop, being pinched in one of the Chrab's claws: 'Um, Doc.' Pinching Chrab: 'Oops, sorry. Old habits die hard.'
Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 1st of June, 2021. I felt it was too far off point to include but I enjoyed Queen Chrab’s complaint the 20th of May about Universe 881 not having the Interclaw. That’s “a global pinching network. Wherever you are, you can pinch anyone or anything you want!” Also the Chrabs’ whole deal reminds me of one of Jim Toomey’s Sherman’s Lagoon strips, in which Hawthorne the hermit crab gives a utilitarian argument for his pinching people.

So the Chrabs are home. Universe 881 is free of the pinching menace. Everyone can go home. It’s a brilliant success, which is when Ollie Arp, of Universe 3 appears. Ollie’s there to explain what a stupid failure that all was. He sent the Chrabs there, because the Universe 881 humans were far too violent. They were on the brink of destroying their own world. Ah, but the reign of the Chrabs must have made a lasting change in their temperament, right?

Doc Wonmug: 'Things can't be that bad in Universe 881 since we left. I really think they learned their lesson. They seemed very peaceful.' Ollie Arp: 'Hmm. We'll see about that.' They ZANG into Universe 881, where everything is postapocalyptic ruins. Wonmug: 'We were here only an hour ago!' Arp: 'Something tells me you've destroyed universes faster.'
Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 12th of June, 2021. So I concede that dropping the Chrabs into Universe 881 was good for that world. But the setup does mean Ollie Arp went and kidnapped a hundred million people. Yes, you can forgive a crime committed in case of urgent need, but it’s also hard to have urgent need when you have easy control of a time machine and a universe-hopping device. I have to blame this mess more on Ollie Arp for a change.

Ollie Arp figures to try and save … whoever’s survived. He sends Our Heroes home, without charges, since they were trying to do good. And once hope, Ooola ponders whether they actually are doing any good.

There’s not much self-examination, though. From the 18th of June what seems to be a new story starts, with a trip to the 60s to see the Moon Landing. They arrived in 1969 last week. Might know by September how that works out for everyone.

Next Week!

I had just been wondering if we’d ever see Captain Savarna again! And now Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, is off to find her. We’ll see how we got to that point, and how it’s working out, if all goes well next week.

In Which Reuters Spoils My Weekend Plans


From the science news:

Crustacean revelation: coconut crab’s claw is stunningly strong

By Will Dunham | WASHINGTON

It may not be wise to get into a scrap with a coconut crab. Its claw is a mighty weapon.

Scientists on Wednesday said they measured the pinch strength of this large land crab that inhabits islands in the Indian and southern Pacific oceans, calculating that its claw can exert up to an amazing 742 pounds (336.5 kg) of force.

The coconut crab’s pinch strength even matches or beats the bite strength of most land predators.

“The pinching force of the largest coconut crab is almost equal to the bite force of adult lions,” said marine biologist Shin-ichiro Oka of Japan’s Okinawa Churashima Foundation, who led the research published in the journal PLOS ONE.

OK, so, I admit I was looking for an excuse not to wrestle any coconut crabs this weekend. Call me a coward if you will. I’ll be over here calling a Patagonian Cavy names until it starts whining.

But three things caught me by the end of that third paragraph. The first: next time I make a mind-bogglingly stupid science fiction move set in the dystopian future I’m going to name something in it PLOS ONE. Maybe the megacity everyone’s trying to escape. Maybe the computer-god-supercorporation ruling everyone. Maybe the spunky talking motorcycle the hero rides to save the day. But something.

Second: the dateline. Reuters wants us to know that Will Dunham reviewed PLOS ONE while writing for the Washington office, I suppose. It would have totally different connotations if the story were filed from New York, or Lisbon, or New Delhi, or Buenos Aires.

Third: “It may not be wise to get into a scrap with a coconut crab”. May not. May not. Dunham is willing to concede there are circumstances in which it is wise to get into a scrap with a coconut crab. He can’t think of any himself, but he’s aware of his fallibility. He grants there are people whose lives bring them to the point of scrapping with coconut crabs, which are ten-legged monstrosities as much as three feet long. And he’ll allow there are people for whom that is a wise and even good path for their lives to take. I appreciate the open-mindedness. Someone might look back on their life and say, “It all turned around for me when I wrestled that giant crab”, and wouldn’t you like to know how that came about? I mean, you don’t want to know that so much as you feel you feel you ought to find out how Norman Borlaug had the idea of ending world hunger. (“Well, what if people had something to eat? I thought that might help.”) But still you’d like to know. I’m still using the excuse to avoid Saturday’s scrap myself.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The Another Blog, Meanwhile index, the mainstream one, rose sharply six points today. And that would be fine and dandy except for once the alternate index did something different, rising only five points to 105 and that’s scrambled all the plans to merge the mainstream and alternate indices back together. Seriously, the two indices were doing the exact same thing for like ever and now that it doesn’t matter anymore it breaks? It’s not right, that’s all there is to it.

106

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