page 1333 – Completely Expected Conclusion
Holy crap, Tabitha obviously opened a portal all the way to Christmas, because when was the last time we saw FRANK and company in a comic other than a holiday cameo? ANd before you ask, yes, this is basically the same gag as way back in page 291, but that comic was HOLY CRAP FOURTEEN YEARS AGO. Is that too spread out for this to count as the start of a running gag? Has it graduated to a full-on callback at this point? But yeah, all of this build up, just to drop a monstrous pile of food on top of Frank. Comedy. (And yes, I had to REPEATEDLY look up old comics to remember how to even draw these people)
Anyway, HOPEFULLY this week will finally have be back in something resembling a “normal routine” again. Just when I thought I was finally getting over the post-Otakon craziness, I wound up helping my sister’s family move. So, yeah, you can imagine that kind of threw a lot of things off for a while. I dunno, watch me finally get everything laid out for a totally regular productive week, and then we get slammed by a massive hurricane or something.
EDIT: New TWC Voting Incentive is up!
Let’s use the Frank Tag to find his last cannon appearance! And it was his appearance on TV on page 381. Unless his TV appearance in the 2012 Christmas Comics (where he was in the 2473rd Annual Holiday Parade Thing) counts as a cannon appearance, though I doubt it.
I’m not gonna lie, I went looking through the tag to double check things myself, and had a mind existential crisis when it sank in just how much time has actually passed.
Tbh, I fully expect that the kudzu chair seraph will cause more problems. Maybe it summons a kudzu chair demon to keep a balance, but “kudzu” and “demon” seems redundant. Either way, without a team of goats followed up by salting the earth 8 don’t believe that the kudzu is gone.
News report on a TV in the background a couple years from now will mention that “Local militaries continue their desperate battle against the unknown entity seemingly composed of kudzu and vending machine foods that has already expanded to engulf 9 planetary systems….”
That’s not going to happen, Ed8, and you know it. Because that would mean that Frank’s dead, and Blitz isn’t going to kill Frank. Using him as the cosmic dumping ground is too amusing. Hell, there’s even two possible cannonical explanations as to why this happens to “Frank, The Third Most Important Person In The Universe” so often:
1. Because “The Most Important Person In The Universe” & “The Second Most Important Person In The Universe” also find him annoying, and directs the universe to do this at every reasonable opportunity.
2. The cause & effect is the other way around, and Frank’s actually has the position of the Third Most Important Person In The Universe BECAUSE he’s the universe’s dumping ground for junk it doesn’t know what to do with. This suggests that the Cult’s Hierarchy is potentially determined by how much inexplicable weird things happen around them, with the First and Second Most Important People In The Universe being hidden away less because of their importance, and more to protect people from everything that’s always happening around them.
It could also be both of these at the same time, resulting in the Cult having a “shockingly” powerful military with the primary purpose is to keep the First & Second alive. And by “shockingly”, I mean “could entertain a Calm Stillez with combat for an hour or three” to “could forcibly give Stillez a bath”.
Possible alternate interpretation: The whole reason we never see the 1st and 2nd Most Important Persons is because they’re constantly buried under an avalanche of weird stuff (both metaphorically and literally) so they’re never in any shape to be seen. 🙂
Hmmmm….Ichabod seems to be a disaster magnet – is he secretly one of the Most Important People?
@ Ed8: No, the important part isn’t being a disaster magnet, it’s specifically being an INEXPLICABLE disaster magnet. Everything that happens to Ichabod has an explanation related to what’s going on around him. Sure, that explanation can be, quite frankly, insane, but in context of wherever he is, it makes some semblance of sense. Frank and Stillez (as well as Ichabod) are randomly on the same space station at one time? There will likely be some level of interaction there, and it’s expected to end badly. Being a disaster magnet only turns it from being “likely” to “certain”, and the end result’s worst case scenario from “bad” to “horrific”.
For the inexplicable troubles for Frank that we’ve seen:
1 – a random portal opened up in the room he was in, delivering a swarm of killer robots, and
2 – a living pile of once-food (potentially poop) that popped out of nowhere simply to land on him.
Neither of which had anything to do with anything he was doing. Hell, he literally wasn’t doing anything either time, and the first time he was literally at a random point in space. The fact that the killer robots were INSIDE the ship is weird &, well, inexplicable.
That wouldn’t mean Frank was dead – Ships always have Convenient Plot Devices installed, which is to say “Escape Capsules”, just so important characters don’t die in obvious-death type situations. Certainly any ship that carries the Most Important People probably has very redundant Escape capsules which each have their own escape capsules in case something bad happens to the first escape capsule, just to make sure these Important People survive if nobody else does.
And you know Frank is pushing everyone else out of the way to be the first on board the escape capsule.
I can see Frank floating around the universe for years trapped in a tiny non-propelled escape capsule because nobody actually wants to be the one to go pick him up.
He got drunk enough that the universe barfed on him. Let’s see the first and second most important people in the universe top that.
Macavity, they’ve been so annoyed with Frank, that the universe sent an army of killer robots as a punishment. Hell, that’s probably WHY he’s on the same ship as the fourth+ most important people, his ship was destroyed by the killer robots.
I feel like there’s an “In Soviet Russia” joke to be made here
You mean something like “In Soviet Russia, Universe pukes on YOU!”
I can’t think of much that doesn’t go beyond the joke’s parameters. Maybe calling it a “Drunk Universe”?
Well…the entire FOT universe did used to reside on The Drunk Duck (and parts of it still does!)
https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Far_Out_There/4990308/
*Although the duck does seem to have given up drinking.
Frank doesn’t seem to be very reliable, or competent, or cooperative, or useful – which makes me wonder just exactly what it is that the HH (Hoch’ren Honnee) expect the MIPs (Most Important Persons) to actually do in the event the Universe is in whatever jeopardy they expect it to be in according to their originating philosophy? I kind of expect that the MIPs haven’t actually ever been told what they would need to do by their HHHHH ruling council (the High Holy Honorable Hoch’ren Honnee) because it’s something extremely unpleasant, like getting tossed into the Universe-Restoring Furnace as fuel or something along those lines.
The official role of the Most Important Person In The Universe is literally just to exist in such a way that the rest of the universe gets to continue existing. The role of the Second Most Important Person In The Universe is to be a backup for the Most Important Person, and down the list it goes.
Basically, Frank’s current job is just to exist and hope the two people above him in the chain don’t die. Though, it’s also entirely possible that nobody below him has seen what the two above him (with it being reasonably likely that the Second Most Important Person has every aspect of his life strictly controlled, while the Most Important Person is literally living within a tube so that they can extend out his lifespan as much as possible), and so he’s living the most free life he can while hoping that he’ll get to die of old age before being forced into their position, or at least have a suite of good memories when he is forced into that position.
Normally I try to come up with alternate meanings for spelling errors so that they fit, but I can’t think of one for “down’t”…I thought maybe Tabitha just has an unusual accent from her home planet, but her home planet only has her family on it, so they probably don’t have a unique accent.
I’ll just assume the extra “r” in Franks ‘boring’ means he’s drawing it out for emphasis, or possibly slurring his words.