Hell, I'm out of a job.

Anyone know if livestock can register for unemployment?

What an assinine thing for those aliens to do, eh?

No, I'm not Canadian...that just comes out sometime.

yeah, but which "the planet" did they blow up?

Well, that's inconvenient. Hopefully the Earth is like Diablo's head.

Ah... dudes, they just blew up earth. it said the end...

There was a guy on the mailing list that said that now the forum is up, that jon can finally kill off the comic strip.

Has the fortold become reality?

Or has jon just blatantly broken a big comic no-no without realizing it?

(Jon jumps on the net the next morning to look into the forums, sees in big letters 'THE END' and thinks to himself: 'I knew it! one day I just had to drink one to many IPAs' and then loads up a search engine to look for a local AA)

In Response to unFalln (#469):

My god. Jon! Speak to us! Tell me that you didn't just kill of the comic strip! Noooooo!!!

The new forums are really nice, by the way. Phillip, you did a great job!

(OK, I complemented you. Can I have my karma points now? :) <just kidding> <well, half just kidding, I'd still like some karma points!>)

In Response to j45rpm (#472):

Of course it's not the end.

We still have Guest Weeks coming up. :)

In Response to unFalln (#469):

Maybe Jon is doing like they did with "The Death Of Superman". He's doing this to drive up the collectability of Friday's Comic.

Then, your going to see 3 jons, and 3 phillips, and so on and so forth, that have to fight each other. Except one of the jons, phillips, etc., will have a very, very, gay costume.

so they're going to dress like the village people?

In Response to simon_moon (#452):

That would be pretty weak, though, wouldn't it?

Pulling off a switcheroo based on a subtlety of text?

Nah. I think I would be highly disappointed if someone did that.

In Response to jon (#495):

Is Jon hinting at something? Or is he just being mysterious for the hell of it?

I really hope this whole thing is just messing with our heads, or giving us something to talk about in these nice new forums, or setting up for guest week or something. I've been reading this comic for years and if it went away now I would be really really really really sad. Even more sad than I was when Lori got zombified. And that made me cranky for weeks.

Maybe we're supposed to think of cool ways to undo the end of the world...

I'm predicting that
1) everything will return to 'normal' on monday and this will never be mentioned again

b) this will turn out to be someting someone was just watching on tv (or dreaming....mmmmmm....beer).....see *1*

or thirdly that jon has some homage to hitchiker's guide the the galaxy up his sleeve....douglas adams did keep destroying everyone and everything to try to end the series...but it just didn't happen

ps. there's a very subtle movie reference in my post, did you catch it?

In Response to annabanana (#497):

that was great when lori got zombified, what the heck are you talking about??

In Response to annabanana (#497):

Ok, speculation hamster it is.

If you take a look though the archives, you'll probably notice a number of storylines that went on for a while, getting progressively more weird, until they suddenly were left dangling. Most of the would-be long-term effects of those storylines just disappeared. The only constants seem to be the major relationships of the main characters.

Now, blowing up the Earth and then going on with business as usual would be a bigger discontinuity than usual. I figure this is covered by the bigger-than-usual gap between the strip where the Earth blows up and the next business-as-usual strip, said gap created by Guest Week.

So that's my thoery. Well, either that or that the strip's over.

In Response to jon (#475):

And if blowing up the planet won't kill off the strip, a 12 day guest week oughta do it.

GOATS IS DEAD! LONG LIVE GOATS! HUZZAH!

In Response to BitterPainter (#484):

sort of like those worn by the geek patrol?

and of course we have evil jon to account for

In Response to Dynedain (#506):

The reference is in the ordinals you used. 1, then b, then thirdly. These are used by a meant-to-look-dumb teenage character (protagonist's older brother?) to list reasons for somthing-or-other, but I can't recall the exact circumstances, nor am I sure off hand what movie it's from. Gut instinct was it has something to do with Home Alone. Please tell me it's not Home Alone.

Diablo: "Anyone know if livestock can register for unemployment?"

Well, no, but I hear the Colonel is looking for a few good chickens.

(Yeah, it's sad, I know. Especially when you look at how long it took me to come up with it...)

In Response to mea37 (#536):

Well, in any other case, I'd expect Jon to just pretend the world didn't blow up, and ignore this whole "contiunity" thing (as most surreal comics do). But with guest week there as padding between storylines, one must be lead to think that there's something else going on, something more intricate than just blatent incontiuity. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's most definately something ingenious on Jon's part.

I knew I should have donated more.

In Response to mea37 (#535):

I don't think it was Home Alone, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

Well, with everyone now very dead and in hell, maybe you should consider asking the big 'S' for a promotion. I'm certain Satan could use the help with so many new souls to torture for eternity--try and beat that for job security! You've certainly worked long enough and hard enough to deserve a promotion, or at least a pension.

Thor, looking more Marvel-ish than before, has come to pick up Toothgnip?!? I guess Jon (or isn't it the guests now?) is (are) not done with this whole end of the world thing yet. Maybe it'll just be like the time Sex Dwarf destroyed the Pub, and they can go on vacation for a month or so and return to a rebuilt earth.

In Response to Evander (#594):

Ooh, I know! Maybe in the last few minutes, Jon found out that Philip is actually from a small planet near Betelgeuse, and they hitched a ride on the alien's ship, and...

Oh, wait. No. Been done. Never mind.

The thing is, Diablo, I always wanted to see you in a fight with Bun-Bun of SLUGGY FREELANCE. You're more evil and devious, and he's more bloodthirsty and violent. But if the Earth's blown up, I guess that'll never happen. Of course, if the Earth's blown up, I'M not happening, so this forum message was never sent.... ---Al of MINDMISTRESS [keenspace.com].

In Response to annabanana (#497):

Well, I've already put forth the proposition that it was all an alcohol induced dream of Phillip's, which makes perfect sense. Or perhaps all of the strip's characters managed to hitchhike off of the planet seconds before it was blown up, only to return years later and find that it was instantly replaced by a second Earth, and everything pretty much carried on as normal. Wait a minute, I think that one's been used. Okay, how about this: the fish saves the day through some odd power nobody ever mentioned that he had before. Or this: Satan, hating to lose his 457th favorite minion in Diablo, and mourning the loss of new souls for him to corrupt being created, puts things to right. Or wrong, as the case may be. I could go on, but I've probably bored most of you to death by now.