Motivations, backstory, and process of a character is all very difficult to portray in a comedic sense. Here’s an entire explanation of how they time traveled and their entire process. The villain always has to explain their plan and this was the best way I could think of to do it in a comedic manner. Because in comics, brevity is wit and the villains motivations are anything but short and sweet. So I would either have to do a whole comic with LOTS of dialogue or do it piece by piece with occasional humor thrown in. So why not make the whole villain’s plan exposition the joke? It’s not my strongest strip but I think it completes the job well enough.
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As a huge time travel nerd I’m actually really interested in the exposition you inserted. I read most of it but it would have been really cool being able to read the whole thing. Although, it wouldn’t have been AS obvious he wasn’t listening, so I can totally understand why you overplayed his text bubbles.
I’m stoked you’re interested! Here it is: (disclaimer* I take no responsibility if you die of boredom)
“The Federal Allied Republic of Terrestrial Earths and Regional Space are a galactic bureaucracy who monitors, among other things, the timelines of developing planets. ‘Developing’ in this sense, referring to an ability to travel on an intergalactic level. The Federation is particularly strict when it comes to meddling with time travel.”
(the idea here is that more time passes so he sort of skips in between subjects between panels)
“See, the Automochrons act as watchdogs, activating upon any coronal energy fluctuation and apprehending the temporal interlopers before delivering them to the F.A.R.T.E.R.S. This obviously means the Automochrons are packed with the exact same coronal energy they monitor. And since time travel takes so much power we needed to find a way to harness it. That is where the resources of President Buttsmouthe entered the picture.”
(Since it is TWO aliens controlling Doctor Whoo, I imagine President Buttsmouthe took over the microphone now)
“The Aion Cavern Crystals on my home planet resonate slightly out of sync with temporal frequency. This makes them ideal conduits for harnessing the bounty of temporal force inside every Automochron. The crystals are quite volatile which is why the owl proved quite useful. He protects the crystal’s physical structure with his body. We originally hoped you or Ninja would eat it but were unsure if crystals were a part of the standard Earth diet.”
(Nothing really to add here. I just didn’t want to break pattern. Rule of three and what not.)
“And since the Automochrons hide in plain sight as statues and sculptures all we had to do was travel to a point in Earth’s history where there weren’t any before we killed you! There can’t be a crime if there aren’t any witnesses to report it, you see! That’s our plan’s brilliance! We use the very tools of the F.A.R.T.E.R.S. in order to get revenge on you! It’s poetic!”
Hope that satiated you enough, my friend!
Thank you! Buttsmouth and co. know that if they kill pirate at any point in the past, Dr. Whoo would have never been adopted, thus creating a time paradox – right?
No, that’s moving time through the character. Let’s say Pirate went back in time at a point in his life called point ‘C.’ For Pirate, he is now time traveling through the past at point ‘D’ in his life. From Pirate being born to traveling through time are points A through B. Those are remaining unchanged. Because Pirate point D is dead, that doesn’t mean Pirate point A can’t be born. It already happened for point D. It’s in his past. It’s in the TIMELINE’s future. I like to think of time travel along the lines of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or the Doctor Who episode “Blink” where you can’t change the past because everything that happens then has already happened for you. If it hadn’t happened then you wouldn’t have gotten to where you are now, but you ARE there so it DID happen that way.
I think time travel wouldn’t be so confusing if the english language wasn’t so gorram difficult to decipher at times.