Well, try to look at it from his POV, not ours as the audience. We can see the sabotaged controls on the airlock. Nothing indicates that Schlock has seen that yet. It likely hasn't occurred to him that Kusari even has enough free will to attempt sabotage against him. After all, she's been completely obedient to him for years now, with the only exception being when Marcus Chen managed to briefly gain control of her by being reinstated as CEO.

Not that I give him a pass on how he's treating her. But I can see why the idea of her doing anything against him is unthinkable.

It's funny how two of the four items on Schlock's list are only failures from Schlock's point of view.

• Bringing Riff to the station
• Win a duel with a vampire / going after Sam
• losing all lives in the vicinity of Riff&Oasis
• Escorting Roberts

Maybe the other two.. specspecspec.

And for some reason, Frog drinking triggers some sadness. He may not be a sympathetic character but he is a fun character and him being so hurt that he lets himself fall into alcohol is just hard.

Regards,

TCC

Schlock has consistently been terrified of Kusari while she's in his presence and rightly so. This smells like bait - he's egging her on for some speccy reason that I won't go into here.

[edit] ...that said, one of the big failing of the Evil Overlord list that nobody ever mentions is that correctly following it as an evil overlord is HARD. It's a lot of things! And you have to keep them all in mind whenever you do anything! It's honestly easier to be a good person than to be an evil overlord who actually follows the Evil Overlord list

Top 10 reasons why Darth Vader was a good Project Manager.
https://www.geekwire.com/2011/top-10-re ... t-manager/

Schlock needs a role model. We can like the evil overlord list to a good project manager. Mostly simple rules to learn, indeed. But super hard to find a good one!

Schlock! You suck!

I wonder what a Kusari without a Hereti Corp would do. Or a Kusari as CEO would do.

While from our point of view, Schlock's tirade looks crazy and dangerous, I think he hasn't seen any evidence that Kusari is any less than completely obedient. I suppose he's seen her bring Riff on board, but he probably chalks that up to exploiting an ambiguity (and besides, old habits of how you think of someone die hard). Schlock has called her a "waste of resources" and said that her project "[would] be ending soon" (same strip) before with apparently no ill effect. Now that everything has gone so horribly wrong and Kusari certainly did not live up to his expectations, he is, reasonably from his point of view (if less than wisely), taking out his frustration on her as the one person who can't do anything about it.

Sasha's "let me be the harbinger" statement (rather than just "Harbinger" as a name) prompted me to look up the definitions:
According to dictionary.com, a harbinger is:
1. a person who goes ahead and makes known the approach of another; herald.
2. anything that foreshadows a future event; omen; sign:
3.a person sent in advance of troops, a royal train, etc., to provide or secure lodgings and other accommodations.
Yes, we know what Harbinger did in 4U city, but just thinking about the meaning literally, I'm thinking number 2 is the most likely here.

...and do you think her fist is clenching more in the last panel? That would certainly be a harbinger of her next action!

There are very many differences between Sluggy Prime and 4U City, but the main thrust of events keeps moving forward...

I wondered from the start why Pete chose that name for the "4U Oasis" ...

I still don't understand why it's so important to Schlock to have an O.A.S.F.S. instead of an O.A.S.I.S. Hypothetically I suppose a DFA might be better for rapid fire, if it takes time to recharge the firestarter cannon, but I haven't seen anything in the comic that supports that hypothesis, as far as I can remember.

Flux is quicker and cleaner.

As far as he knows. He doesn't know about the destruction of timeless space.

I’m not sayin’ this is the reason, but if Schlock could triangulate the satellite’s position from a small number of spontaneous combustion beams, he’d have every reason to believe it’s as flawed as using a visible satellite.

I think Schlock still have an ethical core, he is not a complete monster.

A firestarter cannon would kill billions of people, where a DFA would merely replace them into a different reality, where they would be allowed to continue living their lives.

And that is before mentioning all the side effects it would have to literally light huge chunks of the earths surface on fire, and how conventional bunkers might be able to resist the attack.

Her eyes certainly look much more sinister