Yay, Ft. Worth is mentioned! Wait...

Why not target Arlington? Rid us of that monstrous concrete and glass monument to Jerry Jones's ego. And I wouldn't have to come work on this damned assembly line anymore. That would probably destroy Six Flags as well, though...

Well, there goes any chance for a Schlock redemption arc.

[Please don't word things like that. Yes you are excited, but please express it some other way. -Z] That is really bad. Like super bad. LIKE THIS MAY BE THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.

Stay good, Schlock, stay good!

Ummm.... too late...
This seems like a case of everybody dies. (not spec, purely reaction!)

I'll try to argue the contrarian position: this may be schlock's redemption.

He murdered people, sure. This included murdering friends, threatening to kill people if they don't respond to his romantic overtures, attempting to kill the kusashis, etc.

He fully intended to use dfas to rule the earth, yes. He was a villain, a bad guy.

But today we may have found out that he won't murder billions of people *on purpose*. Maybe he'll do it accidentally. Maybe dor schlock did it Accidentally.

Chekhov's menu option.

I didn't take the scorched earth protocol as an accident. Wouldn't it make sense for Schlock to set that off to maximally frame all his enemies on the station?

If you rig up a bomb in an elementary school and walk away, and one of the kids accidentally sets it off, you are still 1000% at fault even if you didn't push the button. You are still a sick and evil person for planting the bomb in the first place. Regardless of any stories you tell yourself that somebody else "made you" do it.

Schlock's whole arc from the time hC made him the "work for us and/or die" offer has been the steady growth of his irresponsible and uncaring evil. The whole process of Schlock taking over hC and using it as his tool to take over / subjugate the planet has been a continuous demonstration that he has lost all semblance of humanity or forgiveability. We treat it light-heartedly because it's a comic, and Schlock started out as a pathetic foil for humor purposes. But IRL, anyone who did what Schlock has already done would be considered a major war criminal.

He is already guilty and unredeemable. Whether or not the machine he set in motion actually kills/fluxes billions of people, he is 1000% culpable.

Maybe he needs to be transformed by a squid on a stick and conjoined with Frog to find redemption.

He hasn't deserved redemption for a long time now.

Redemption is seldom (if ever) deserved. But yeah, Mosp just did something (massively, globally) stupid to try to save someone she loved.

And is it the AI's fault, or should we typo-warn Pete that it's "Protocol"?

Either way, carry on. Heck of a week, and I didn't realize there were so many strips -- so I had to go back and fill in some gaps!