Every single time you have a blood test, have surgery, even have a tooth pulled, you’re giving consent for someone to access your DNA, it’s a fact of life, no privacy laws will change that. All those laws do is make it illegal to clone you…
Like any of us are important enough to merit the costs of that!
Why are people downvoting? Its not a mean comment. I’m sure it was meant to be funny. I suppose people aren’t a big fan of funny after the troll comic.
People aren’t big fans of trolling after reading a comic illustrating just how much all trolls ought to have intimate relations with the nearest bonfire? Golly, I wonder why!
So the counter is (currently) 12. Is that 12 Ups and 0 downs, 32 ups and 20 downs, or 1,000,000 ups and 999,988 downs? You can’t tell if 12 is a large majority or a piffling statistical irregularity without knowing the total.
So what? Is the goal to determine if more people prefer the new or old Ethan, or is it to determine exactly how many people the new and old Ethan?
Because if it’s the former, who cares if 12 is a large majority or a “piffling statistical irregularity”. It’s also not like there’s thousands, let alone millions,of people voting on comments in here to begin with.
Better story? Not even close, the last 2 years of the real Ethan when he slowly but surely became a real human, and through internal and external breakthroughs became worthy of the love of his life as an adult, not a manchild was one of the Internet’s great pleasures to experience.
And if we judged “old Ethan” part-way through his run, before those last 2 years, what would we have said of him? Kind of silly to compare a character that the author considers “finished” with one barely starting (relatively speaking) and then use character growth as the measuring stick.
i think Ethan himself has stayed more or less the same, its just the circumstances and writing style has changed
ethan 1.0 was serious when he needed to be, like with the miscarriage, his brother or
the time travel stuff
its just theres more of that now and less time for quirky “i built a giant torture gaming machine powered by locusts”
Come to think of it: old Ethan really didn’t have that much story time in total. A really big part were just one-offs that Tim now puts into non-Ethan/non-story comics.
I still like the old Ethan, whatever anyone says. Yeah the new comics have a deeper story that explors some ethical issues and more complex psycological states, but old Ethan was actually funny. Does anyone else remember that? When comics online could be funny and we didn’t have to deal with this “forced maturity” that’s everywhere? At what point does the switch get flipped and you’re told ‘sorry, you’re an adult now. You can’t enjoy silly fun stuff anymore’? Look, it’s Tim’s comic and I don’t begrudge him wanting to move in a new direction and tr something different. But… Read more »
Fartsy
6 months ago
The only way to know if the cure worked is to put it to the test, which ethan is understandably reluctant to do
I was going to say, “He can just cut off a finger and see if he respawns healed as a test”, but then I also remembered the time he broke the neck and was left paralyzed by Zeke, so that probably wouldn’t work, he needs to really die to try it.
This is the cruelest thing the Troll could do, getting into your head, have you sweat at night not knowing if your next death would be your last.
The suspension of the unknown fate ‘kills’ you from the inside out, causing very real lasting psychological trauma to Ethan even if he would respawn. He could lose his sanity and start trying to test out whether he’s still respawn:able or not. Whether he’s fine or not, this trauma will redefine Ethan in several ways.
I’m curious, is there a specific amount of time Ethan has to stay dead for the respawn to hit? If it’s short, he could be “killed” by a doctor and revived with minimal risk if the method is sound. If it’s something like his heart stops beating that could be a relatively easy test.
We have seen that the respawn timer doesn’t have a fixed duration, so we can’t rely on that. However if Lucas knows the longest respawn time Ethan has had, they could work around that and find a safe-ish test time. In most cases after about 4 or so minutes after the brain stops recieving oxygen permanent brain damage is likely to begin and odds of survival are low after 10 minutes. So if the longest respond time is like 1 or 2 minutes that might be testable. However odds are the Troll is just screwing with him. I believe we… Read more »
But it’s also The Troll, for all we know, that syringe could have been just water and green food coloring.
We can’t take anything the troll says at face value – because we can’t tell if he’s trolling or telling the truth.
And that’s the problem, Ethan might still have powers, or he might not, but testing his powers is… well let’s say you’re only failing that test once.
The biggest problem with that, is that the Troll KNEW about his powers, despite them being nearly impossible to experience. He’s rarely died on camera, after all.
You mean, they don’t have any way to know if it worked or not. I assume there is probably scientific or magical ways to determine it, but there is nothing to suggest they personally know anything about this sort of thing.
In a previous comic, he was taking his blood and putting it in jars. It would disappear after awhile because of his “power”. So, he could do that simple test again.
This trope is really tired. I hope Tim doesn’t let the story get bogged down by it because either one of two, maybe three things will happen. The first and most likely if the story is left continue with Ethan getingt pushed to save someone at the cost of his life and discover that he never lost his power. Lucas pushes him over the edge of the building and he respawns. The third is he grows old, dies and respawns to when he was the age he got the power. Damn, a scary thought hit me while writing this, imagine… Read more »
clone ethan and throw baby ethan off the roof. if he dies you save a life. if he survives you have 2 ethans…… oh sh*t!
Mike
6 months ago
If You think about it… is it really THAT easy to make a cure for such mutations? Just find one talented guy and “problem solved”?
I call BS on that cure, but it’s a nice addition to the story: the only way to find out would be to literally die – not everyone would be willing to take that bet.
Terry Pratchett: “Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
But what’s the point of that? We don’t even know if his powers are ‘cheatable’ like that. After all, if he can still be resuscitated he’s not actually fully dead yet, so he probably shouldn’t respawn. There’s basically nothing useful you can prove with such a test. If you do perform the resuscitation you still don’t know if his powers might’ve kicked in anyway, and if you don’t resuscitate you’re back to betting Ethans life on whether he respawns. At best it’s a life-risking procedure to confirm his powers are probably gone, and at that point it’s arguably safer to… Read more »
Looking back at some of his respawns, not all of them would be instant death. Looking at the events leading up to the Deathblood encounter. Many of the injures were body shots and could take a few minutes before he would die from them. Judging by how fast paced that fight was implied, it did not take minutes between each respawn. I am guessing he instantly respawns after taking any potentially fatal damage. Just have to figure out a way to “kill” him and have a high chance of bringing him back.
There might be a hidden “HP” mechanic behind Ethans powers, like if the damage his body received was 100% fatal in the situation he’s in, respawn kicks in. Like the body shots by criminals, he’s not going to get medical attention, he’s gonna bleed out and die. It’s a matter of when, not if, he’ll die.
Just like how it works in video games – you dont wait around slumped over bleeding out for 10 minutes (exception to multiplayer shooters with medics that can revive you), you get the you died screen, wait 5 to 10 seconds and youre back.
That is kinda the beauty of it; The Troll isn’t only trolling Ethan, he is also trolling us. How can we say “it’s BS”? These discussion boards has been full of “What if…” and “I think that…” The big gap though; How established is the “green goo”? Is that common knowledge? For all we know Ethan and Lucas didn’t even notice that they got splashed with the stuff before the lightning struck, and are completely unaware that their superpowers are tied to a green goo. That knowledge (or lack of..) is a quite important thing for Ethans perception of the… Read more »
Yup. The mind can play terrible tricks on the body!
I feinted once, while watching a training video for security, during a segment about people feinting from heat exhaustion. Got too far into thinking what it was like to feint (had actually done, from heat, as a kid decades prior), and I was just *out*.
Psychosomatic effects are a bi***.
Eodyne
6 months ago
My guess is that Lucas is ultimately going to agree to be injected with the cure to see if it cures HIS powers. Since his don’t require him to die to test.
The problem is the cure is specifically linked to Ethan and his DNA. If they made one for Lucas, it’d be with Lucas’s DNA, a completely different substance. While they would know if the cure made for Lucas worked, they still wouldn’t know if Ethan’s actually changed him.
They were originally exposed to the same substance (plus lightning) — but they got different powers. So it isn’t the goo alone (or with high voltage) that creates a particular super power, but some other factors as well. Ergo a tailored cure would most likely have to take those same additional factors into account. So there very well could be an Ethan-specific “cure” that doesn’t do anything to Lucas (or even imbued Lucas with some other power).
Robert
6 months ago
Ethan will live in fear for a while. But will die trying to save someone without thinking, not knowing if he’ll respawn. And then it’s either the end, or he respawns learning something.
This. It’s one thing to be a hero when you know you’re entirely invincible and will respawn if you’re killed saving someone. It’s an entirely different sort of heroism to risk permanent death to save someone else.
And just like old Ethan from the first series, this Ethan has that in him as well.
and tim will go on a 6 month hiatus of CAD right after the gunshot goes off with us having NO IDEA if he is alive.
Rune
6 months ago
Big question: would Analog regenerate from a death caused by some kind of wasting disease/poison? Troll could have injected him with flesh eating herpes that would take months to years to kill him slowly and analog has to make the choice of whether or not to hang on while they try to find a cure or attempt a respawn that might not even work anymore or might just bring him back in the middle of the illness.
Joe
6 months ago
While its almost a fact that he was just trolling, Ethan has never known if theres a limit for his respawns, so he shouldnt use them lightly anyway
That’s the thing I thought from the start. How does he know if he has infinite lives, or just a very big number? And what if the number is not that big, let’s say a thousand?
Though obviously not accurate, a theory that occurred to me is that it depends on him having quarters on him. If he’s ever without a quarter, his powers don’t work.
El_
6 months ago
This is a classic Schrödinger’s Super Hero Power situation.
Evo
6 months ago
If a “capable chemist” can figure out super powers in superhero DNA, then can’t an equally capable chemist figure out if there aren’t super powers in a DNA sample?
If a “capable chemist” is able to so easily manipulate the expression of super powers, then they’d be beyond filthy rich by selling custom-order powers to Lex Luthor wannabes.
Well I might assume in tiers of difficulty it goes detecting super powers < “curing” super powers < creating super powers. But overall yeah, plot holes is the name of this game.
Psy
6 months ago
I think it would be funny if he now meets Zeke, Ethan tells him about the cure and that he’s unsure if he still has powers and Zeke, well… doesn’t hesitate and does what he always wanted to do! ? Win-Win!
Zodiac
6 months ago
Does he even leave DNA behind? Doesn’t all “pieces” of him vanish when he respawns? There shouldn’t even be anything to make a “cure” with even if it was possible.
We found in the series about him donating blood that if he waits long enough before respawning the blood doesn’t disappear. See https://cad-comic.com/comic/fundraising/ and the couple of comics after it.
radar
6 months ago
They should track down the chemist, assuming such a person exists, to find out how the “cure” was created.
My guess: the chemist is Zeke, who made a fake cure to mess with Ethan.
Lincolnshire
6 months ago
Is it a respawn of his body at the moment of death or is it a respawn of the moment the accident that gave them their powers happened? If it is the latter, then a respawn would bring him back with a body that didn’t have the ‘cure’.
I guess if he got a scar since the accident and that is still there after a respawn then his respawns are just his body at time of death. No scar, resetting to the accident body.
Sekhi the Vulpera
6 months ago
Hoo boy thats a thing though…
Its possible that the Troll is trolling him, its possible that he just jabbed him with a syringe full of Ecto-cooler or something. Its possible that its all a prank to fuck with his head…
… but there’s only one way to know for sure and if it turns out the Troll was telling the truth… well… yeah. Game Over.
Mstar
6 months ago
There are….safe’ish ways to die that you can be revived. Less dangerous than testing with a jump or a bullet. My suggestion to Ethan would be to try one of these. Hopefully Lucas or Scott will suggest this to him and help him test it and hopefully it is a successful test and he just respawns and doesn’t have to be revived. I feel like what the troll said was a gross oversimplification of what it would really take to examine Ethan’s DNA and just make a “cure” for his powers in the time that has passed. Thus I believe… Read more »
Smiffwilm
6 months ago
My money is The Troll didn’t actually cure him. (Not that I can blame anyone from not taking that chance.) Why? Because it’s the far crueler thing to do than to actually cure him. During this state of fear Ethan will be going through, there will be undoubtedly times where he could have helped people, but won’t take that chance due to the probable risk. Someday he will die for whatever reason, and when he respawns, he’ll realize all those times he didn’t help, he actually could have done so. Meaning the mental fuckery continues. For if he’s actually cured… Read more »
Christian
6 months ago
Shouldn’t he get the vile examined at least? Even if it is bullshit who knows what he actually did inject Ethan with.
foducool
6 months ago
yeah that’d be enough to give you a bunch of second guessings lol
GarryU
6 months ago
Are there any superheroes that can see briefly into the future?
Greevar
6 months ago
Like I said in the last one. There is no way anyone managed to develop a “cure” in such a short amount of time. It assumes he has the correct DNA, which there is no way to know. It would take a lot of research into the nature of what gave them their powers. Given that the genesis of their powers is a secret only Analog and D-pad know, that’s critical data the creature of the “cure” doesn’t have. It would take years to develop anything viable. Without any means to test it, there is no way to know it… Read more »
In Superhero logic, it’s not at all impossible. It’s, in fact, a pretty common trope that some genius can develop something that nullifies their powers or otherwise weakens them, and it is often employed to create tension for superheroes where otherwise they’d be able to steamroll any opposition. It’s a “nice” twist in this case that there’s no way to verify if it’s true or not except by dying. Even with Superman and Kryptonite he at least *knows*
Phaet
6 months ago
Just push him Lucas.
Techbender
6 months ago
I have drained you, drained you of the very thing that made you special. It is the worst of curses, and I should know. I have taken your very divinity, and drained you of your soul. – Chef Brian
Yakumo
6 months ago
Given what it means if Ethan’s powers really are gone, this nonchalance from Lucas seems out of character to me. His profile on the troll and even likelihood of what means scans, but bet Ethan’s and not even consider it a bet at all? That seems off. I expected him to initiate brainstorming a way to test without killing Ethan.
Troy Larson
6 months ago
Given the video game theme of their superheroing, now is the time for Ethan to “git gud” as the youths say.
Kevin Greenbaum
6 months ago
It’s unfortunate that there’s no safe way to test if he still has his powers, his only option is to die and hope it isn’t permanent
Do you think he could be temporarily killed? Like having his heart briefly stopped? It’s not exactly safe, but I think it could be done with fairly good chances of success.
There is a reason why Robert Sheehan had to wait until the start of the second season before he could declare that he had an A list power in Misfits. And why he never thought to “test” for that one. :/
Wildcard
6 months ago
I think this is a troll. If there was a cure for super powers the government or agency would have come up with it a long time ago. I also don’t think he really has the resources to pull this off. No matter what he says about knowing a chemist. It’s to perfect of a troll. Ethan’s power is respawn so you say you cured him and no one knows if it’s true because the only way to test it is to literally kill him. So who’s really going to want to take that risk. What I would love to… Read more »
Nova225
6 months ago
Calling it now:
Ethan (in a future comic) is going to run into glitchy robo-zeke, and get killed, and it’ll be a big “uh-oh” moment.
EchtoGammut
6 months ago
When your superpower is dying… kind of hard to test to make sure it still works.
BioYuGi
6 months ago
If anyone reads My Hero Academia, this is giving me similarities to Twice’s backstory. His power was he could create endless clones of himself. Unfortunately, he also had some severe mental issues, exacerbated by how often he copied himself. Inevitably it got to the point where he legitimately did not know if he was the original or not, and so was exceptionally careful to not get too harmed, because clones would die from too much damage.
Bryan
6 months ago
It’s a troll. Unless the black market got Ethan’s DNA before he became super, any part of Ethan that gets left behind, be it an arm or his head, disappear when he respawn
Last edited 6 months ago by Bryan
Ogrefade
6 months ago
Have we considered an AED that can stop the heart and restart it safely in a medical environment. Powers working he respawns.. powers don’t work they restart him. I have AFIb and they rebooted my ticker a little over a year ago. I was gone for a bit they did it under sedation.
Dashdragon
6 months ago
Any cure that works on Analog works on D-pad to some extent since their powers have the same origin and obviously his are much easier to test. I believe D-pad would risk it to literally save his best friend’s life.
Also there was plenty of it left on the syringe and the spill on his clothes that it could easily be analyzed to see if it is anything at all.
Thallone
6 months ago
T
he obvious answer is to get the sample, make sokme more of whatever ity is, and give it to Lucas. If the arrows go away, then bettter be careful. If kthe4y ldon’t, then lyou’re fine
Wasn’t that syringe spilling excess green goop everywhere?
Because they do happen to know a genius who owes Ethan a big favor still, surely a few tests can clear this up?
“Yeah, that syringe was 100% panera lemonade, some anxiety is to be expected”
Kaitensatsuma
6 months ago
So they’re telling me they had a teleporting Dr. Not-Manhattan and they didn’t bother to check the veracity of the threat before sending someone in who might have died.
Steve
6 months ago
Everyone keeps mentioning “Ethan can’t be sure if his power will work or not” but there has ALWAYS been some underlying uncertainty about his respawning ability:
Is he immortal? Is it the Konami Code, and he only got 30 extra lives total? (it’d be interesting to go through the archive and see where the count is at now…)
You’re right. It would more precise to say that the Troll claimed to change the current behaviour of the superpower, a behaviour which Ethan seem to grow more or less comfortable with, and this claim can’t be proven experimentally (since he can’t risk it) OR theoretically (since no one knew how it works in the first place)
bloof
6 months ago
I wonder if he could have his heart temporarily stopped and, if need be, restarted in a medically supervised environment?
DevMerlin
6 months ago
Unless this is the end of CAD 2.0, my money is that this is a “false” cure. It might affect him briefly, but there are too many unresolved threads. Tim created this power for Ethan for one reason: So he couldn’t kill him off again.
Acorr
6 months ago
We’ve seen Ethan drop from bloodloss when trying to donate large amounts. He fell over and respawned immediately. So he could do something that would technically kill him but leaves a good chance of being revived.
Then again, he has (had?) a superpower that literally works on game logic, where respawn happens immediately once he starts “dying”. Otherwise there would’ve been a lot of instances where he slowly bled out instead of STAB –> Respawn
Best not think too hard about it
Last edited 6 months ago by Acorr
GUNnibal
6 months ago
It’s good to see that Ethan appreciates the GRAVITY of the situation.
24
Damn, poor Ethan :(.
I just hope they actually have taken a sample of that thing in the syringe, so that they can run tests to it…
Because of the new privacy rules they can’t without explicit concent. DNA is very private!
Every single time you have a blood test, have surgery, even have a tooth pulled, you’re giving consent for someone to access your DNA, it’s a fact of life, no privacy laws will change that. All those laws do is make it illegal to clone you…
Like any of us are important enough to merit the costs of that!
Wow, I dont think ive seen so many downvotes on one comment before… Congrats.
Even assuming you’re correct, why wouldn’t he give consent?
Why are people downvoting? Its not a mean comment. I’m sure it was meant to be funny. I suppose people aren’t a big fan of funny after the troll comic.
People aren’t big fans of trolling after reading a comic illustrating just how much all trolls ought to have intimate relations with the nearest bonfire? Golly, I wonder why!
I think people take it seriously? Humour is a difficult subject. Adding levity to the situation can backfire I suppose.
Do y’all prefer the new Ethan or the old Ethan? Upvote if you prefer the new one and downvote if you prefer the old one.
Both. Both are good so I upvote and then downvote you.
And how are you planning to count the total number of votes?
With the upvote counter that is conveniently placed right between the downvote and the upvote buttons?
So the counter is (currently) 12. Is that 12 Ups and 0 downs, 32 ups and 20 downs, or 1,000,000 ups and 999,988 downs? You can’t tell if 12 is a large majority or a piffling statistical irregularity without knowing the total.
So what? Is the goal to determine if more people prefer the new or old Ethan, or is it to determine exactly how many people the new and old Ethan?
Because if it’s the former, who cares if 12 is a large majority or a “piffling statistical irregularity”. It’s also not like there’s thousands, let alone millions, of people voting on comments in here to begin with.
Hard to tell, new Ethan got better story for sure, old Ethan tho was hilarious on another level …
Better story? Not even close, the last 2 years of the real Ethan when he slowly but surely became a real human, and through internal and external breakthroughs became worthy of the love of his life as an adult, not a manchild was one of the Internet’s great pleasures to experience.
This Ethan is just a moody quirky moron
And if we judged “old Ethan” part-way through his run, before those last 2 years, what would we have said of him? Kind of silly to compare a character that the author considers “finished” with one barely starting (relatively speaking) and then use character growth as the measuring stick.
“Mark this day on the history books, for today, Lego Star Wars II hits the shelves.’
i think Ethan himself has stayed more or less the same, its just the circumstances and writing style has changed
ethan 1.0 was serious when he needed to be, like with the miscarriage, his brother or
the time travel stuff
its just theres more of that now and less time for quirky “i built a giant torture gaming machine powered by locusts”
Come to think of it: old Ethan really didn’t have that much story time in total. A really big part were just one-offs that Tim now puts into non-Ethan/non-story comics.
Both are just as attractive, ones just more into murdering random people
I still like the old Ethan, whatever anyone says. Yeah the new comics have a deeper story that explors some ethical issues and more complex psycological states, but old Ethan was actually funny. Does anyone else remember that? When comics online could be funny and we didn’t have to deal with this “forced maturity” that’s everywhere? At what point does the switch get flipped and you’re told ‘sorry, you’re an adult now. You can’t enjoy silly fun stuff anymore’? Look, it’s Tim’s comic and I don’t begrudge him wanting to move in a new direction and tr something different. But… Read more »
The only way to know if the cure worked is to put it to the test, which ethan is understandably reluctant to do
I was going to say, “He can just cut off a finger and see if he respawns healed as a test”, but then I also remembered the time he broke the neck and was left paralyzed by Zeke, so that probably wouldn’t work, he needs to really die to try it.
He doesn’t respawn from injuries, only death.
This is the cruelest thing the Troll could do, getting into your head, have you sweat at night not knowing if your next death would be your last.
The suspension of the unknown fate ‘kills’ you from the inside out, causing very real lasting psychological trauma to Ethan even if he would respawn. He could lose his sanity and start trying to test out whether he’s still respawn:able or not. Whether he’s fine or not, this trauma will redefine Ethan in several ways.
They’d need to find a doctor with loose ethics.
I’m curious, is there a specific amount of time Ethan has to stay dead for the respawn to hit? If it’s short, he could be “killed” by a doctor and revived with minimal risk if the method is sound. If it’s something like his heart stops beating that could be a relatively easy test.
We have seen that the respawn timer doesn’t have a fixed duration, so we can’t rely on that. However if Lucas knows the longest respawn time Ethan has had, they could work around that and find a safe-ish test time. In most cases after about 4 or so minutes after the brain stops recieving oxygen permanent brain damage is likely to begin and odds of survival are low after 10 minutes. So if the longest respond time is like 1 or 2 minutes that might be testable. However odds are the Troll is just screwing with him. I believe we… Read more »
I’m assuming there’s no markers or anything for his powers they could compare a fresh blood sample against?
I mean if the troll bought some of his DNA on the Internet they could get some too
But it’s also The Troll, for all we know, that syringe could have been just water and green food coloring.
We can’t take anything the troll says at face value – because we can’t tell if he’s trolling or telling the truth.
And that’s the problem, Ethan might still have powers, or he might not, but testing his powers is… well let’s say you’re only failing that test once.
The biggest problem with that, is that the Troll KNEW about his powers, despite them being nearly impossible to experience. He’s rarely died on camera, after all.
You mean, they don’t have any way to know if it worked or not. I assume there is probably scientific or magical ways to determine it, but there is nothing to suggest they personally know anything about this sort of thing.
In a previous comic, he was taking his blood and putting it in jars. It would disappear after awhile because of his “power”. So, he could do that simple test again.
you forgot the part that he needs to die for that simple test, which also means if it fails (or the cure works), he is perma dead
This trope is really tired. I hope Tim doesn’t let the story get bogged down by it because either one of two, maybe three things will happen. The first and most likely if the story is left continue with Ethan getingt pushed to save someone at the cost of his life and discover that he never lost his power. Lucas pushes him over the edge of the building and he respawns. The third is he grows old, dies and respawns to when he was the age he got the power. Damn, a scary thought hit me while writing this, imagine… Read more »
clone ethan and throw baby ethan off the roof. if he dies you save a life. if he survives you have 2 ethans…… oh sh*t!
If You think about it… is it really THAT easy to make a cure for such mutations? Just find one talented guy and “problem solved”?
I call BS on that cure, but it’s a nice addition to the story: the only way to find out would be to literally die – not everyone would be willing to take that bet.
In a world with superpowers, mutants, supergeniuses… all bets are off. Also, even if it’s one in a million chance.. would you take it? 😉
Cheers
Terry Pratchett: “Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
Well, there might be one way… you remember the movie Flatliners? They could “kill” him that way and get him back if he doesn’t respawn.
But what’s the point of that? We don’t even know if his powers are ‘cheatable’ like that. After all, if he can still be resuscitated he’s not actually fully dead yet, so he probably shouldn’t respawn. There’s basically nothing useful you can prove with such a test. If you do perform the resuscitation you still don’t know if his powers might’ve kicked in anyway, and if you don’t resuscitate you’re back to betting Ethans life on whether he respawns. At best it’s a life-risking procedure to confirm his powers are probably gone, and at that point it’s arguably safer to… Read more »
Looking back at some of his respawns, not all of them would be instant death. Looking at the events leading up to the Deathblood encounter. Many of the injures were body shots and could take a few minutes before he would die from them. Judging by how fast paced that fight was implied, it did not take minutes between each respawn. I am guessing he instantly respawns after taking any potentially fatal damage. Just have to figure out a way to “kill” him and have a high chance of bringing him back.
There might be a hidden “HP” mechanic behind Ethans powers, like if the damage his body received was 100% fatal in the situation he’s in, respawn kicks in. Like the body shots by criminals, he’s not going to get medical attention, he’s gonna bleed out and die. It’s a matter of when, not if, he’ll die.
Just like how it works in video games – you dont wait around slumped over bleeding out for 10 minutes (exception to multiplayer shooters with medics that can revive you), you get the you died screen, wait 5 to 10 seconds and youre back.
That is kinda the beauty of it; The Troll isn’t only trolling Ethan, he is also trolling us. How can we say “it’s BS”? These discussion boards has been full of “What if…” and “I think that…” The big gap though; How established is the “green goo”? Is that common knowledge? For all we know Ethan and Lucas didn’t even notice that they got splashed with the stuff before the lightning struck, and are completely unaware that their superpowers are tied to a green goo. That knowledge (or lack of..) is a quite important thing for Ethans perception of the… Read more »
Thats the thing though. There’s only one way to know for sure, and if it turns out the Troll wasn’t lying…
It’s a pretty common trope in Superhero comics/movies. that there are those “talented guys” out there able to do stuff like that.
I hope Lucas is right. And I hope they take that syringe with them and do some examination of Ethan to see just what effect, if any, it had on him.
Also, judging from Ethan’s reaction, I wonder if the green goo could actually be a fear toxin?
Ethan’s reaction was due to an unconscious consideration that his respawning powers don’t work any more, in which case a deadly fall is game over.
Yup. The mind can play terrible tricks on the body!
I feinted once, while watching a training video for security, during a segment about people feinting from heat exhaustion. Got too far into thinking what it was like to feint (had actually done, from heat, as a kid decades prior), and I was just *out*.
Psychosomatic effects are a bi***.
My guess is that Lucas is ultimately going to agree to be injected with the cure to see if it cures HIS powers. Since his don’t require him to die to test.
The problem is the cure is specifically linked to Ethan and his DNA. If they made one for Lucas, it’d be with Lucas’s DNA, a completely different substance. While they would know if the cure made for Lucas worked, they still wouldn’t know if Ethan’s actually changed him.
But Lucas and Ethan were subjected to the same green goo. So if the cause of their powers is the same, then the cure should be the same as well?…
They were originally exposed to the same substance (plus lightning) — but they got different powers. So it isn’t the goo alone (or with high voltage) that creates a particular super power, but some other factors as well. Ergo a tailored cure would most likely have to take those same additional factors into account. So there very well could be an Ethan-specific “cure” that doesn’t do anything to Lucas (or even imbued Lucas with some other power).
Ethan will live in fear for a while. But will die trying to save someone without thinking, not knowing if he’ll respawn. And then it’s either the end, or he respawns learning something.
My money would be his reporter crush. Take a bullet or something.
And that would be a huge bit of character growth; and a true hero moment.
This. It’s one thing to be a hero when you know you’re entirely invincible and will respawn if you’re killed saving someone. It’s an entirely different sort of heroism to risk permanent death to save someone else.
And just like old Ethan from the first series, this Ethan has that in him as well.
My money is on Zeke. But Blue Griffin’s theory of the reporter crush is a solid one that I hadn’t considered before. Maybe both at once! Who knows!
and tim will go on a 6 month hiatus of CAD right after the gunshot goes off with us having NO IDEA if he is alive.
Big question: would Analog regenerate from a death caused by some kind of wasting disease/poison? Troll could have injected him with flesh eating herpes that would take months to years to kill him slowly and analog has to make the choice of whether or not to hang on while they try to find a cure or attempt a respawn that might not even work anymore or might just bring him back in the middle of the illness.
While its almost a fact that he was just trolling, Ethan has never known if theres a limit for his respawns, so he shouldnt use them lightly anyway
That’s the thing I thought from the start. How does he know if he has infinite lives, or just a very big number? And what if the number is not that big, let’s say a thousand?
Though obviously not accurate, a theory that occurred to me is that it depends on him having quarters on him. If he’s ever without a quarter, his powers don’t work.
This is a classic Schrödinger’s Super Hero Power situation.
If a “capable chemist” can figure out super powers in superhero DNA, then can’t an equally capable chemist figure out if there aren’t super powers in a DNA sample?
If a “capable chemist” is able to so easily manipulate the expression of super powers, then they’d be beyond filthy rich by selling custom-order powers to Lex Luthor wannabes.
Well I might assume in tiers of difficulty it goes detecting super powers < “curing” super powers < creating super powers. But overall yeah, plot holes is the name of this game.
I think it would be funny if he now meets Zeke, Ethan tells him about the cure and that he’s unsure if he still has powers and Zeke, well… doesn’t hesitate and does what he always wanted to do! ? Win-Win!
Does he even leave DNA behind? Doesn’t all “pieces” of him vanish when he respawns? There shouldn’t even be anything to make a “cure” with even if it was possible.
We found in the series about him donating blood that if he waits long enough before respawning the blood doesn’t disappear. See https://cad-comic.com/comic/fundraising/ and the couple of comics after it.
They should track down the chemist, assuming such a person exists, to find out how the “cure” was created.
My guess: the chemist is Zeke, who made a fake cure to mess with Ethan.
Is it a respawn of his body at the moment of death or is it a respawn of the moment the accident that gave them their powers happened? If it is the latter, then a respawn would bring him back with a body that didn’t have the ‘cure’.
I guess if he got a scar since the accident and that is still there after a respawn then his respawns are just his body at time of death. No scar, resetting to the accident body.
Hoo boy thats a thing though…
Its possible that the Troll is trolling him, its possible that he just jabbed him with a syringe full of Ecto-cooler or something. Its possible that its all a prank to fuck with his head…
… but there’s only one way to know for sure and if it turns out the Troll was telling the truth… well… yeah. Game Over.
There are….safe’ish ways to die that you can be revived. Less dangerous than testing with a jump or a bullet. My suggestion to Ethan would be to try one of these. Hopefully Lucas or Scott will suggest this to him and help him test it and hopefully it is a successful test and he just respawns and doesn’t have to be revived. I feel like what the troll said was a gross oversimplification of what it would really take to examine Ethan’s DNA and just make a “cure” for his powers in the time that has passed. Thus I believe… Read more »
My money is The Troll didn’t actually cure him. (Not that I can blame anyone from not taking that chance.) Why? Because it’s the far crueler thing to do than to actually cure him. During this state of fear Ethan will be going through, there will be undoubtedly times where he could have helped people, but won’t take that chance due to the probable risk. Someday he will die for whatever reason, and when he respawns, he’ll realize all those times he didn’t help, he actually could have done so. Meaning the mental fuckery continues. For if he’s actually cured… Read more »
Shouldn’t he get the vile examined at least? Even if it is bullshit who knows what he actually did inject Ethan with.
yeah that’d be enough to give you a bunch of second guessings lol
Are there any superheroes that can see briefly into the future?
Like I said in the last one. There is no way anyone managed to develop a “cure” in such a short amount of time. It assumes he has the correct DNA, which there is no way to know. It would take a lot of research into the nature of what gave them their powers. Given that the genesis of their powers is a secret only Analog and D-pad know, that’s critical data the creature of the “cure” doesn’t have. It would take years to develop anything viable. Without any means to test it, there is no way to know it… Read more »
In Superhero logic, it’s not at all impossible. It’s, in fact, a pretty common trope that some genius can develop something that nullifies their powers or otherwise weakens them, and it is often employed to create tension for superheroes where otherwise they’d be able to steamroll any opposition. It’s a “nice” twist in this case that there’s no way to verify if it’s true or not except by dying. Even with Superman and Kryptonite he at least *knows*
Just push him Lucas.
I have drained you, drained you of the very thing that made you special. It is the worst of curses, and I should know. I have taken your very divinity, and drained you of your soul. – Chef Brian
Given what it means if Ethan’s powers really are gone, this nonchalance from Lucas seems out of character to me. His profile on the troll and even likelihood of what means scans, but bet Ethan’s and not even consider it a bet at all? That seems off. I expected him to initiate brainstorming a way to test without killing Ethan.
Given the video game theme of their superheroing, now is the time for Ethan to “git gud” as the youths say.
It’s unfortunate that there’s no safe way to test if he still has his powers, his only option is to die and hope it isn’t permanent
Do you think he could be temporarily killed? Like having his heart briefly stopped? It’s not exactly safe, but I think it could be done with fairly good chances of success.
There is a reason why Robert Sheehan had to wait until the start of the second season before he could declare that he had an A list power in Misfits. And why he never thought to “test” for that one. :/
I think this is a troll. If there was a cure for super powers the government or agency would have come up with it a long time ago. I also don’t think he really has the resources to pull this off. No matter what he says about knowing a chemist. It’s to perfect of a troll. Ethan’s power is respawn so you say you cured him and no one knows if it’s true because the only way to test it is to literally kill him. So who’s really going to want to take that risk. What I would love to… Read more »
Calling it now:
Ethan (in a future comic) is going to run into glitchy robo-zeke, and get killed, and it’ll be a big “uh-oh” moment.
When your superpower is dying… kind of hard to test to make sure it still works.
If anyone reads My Hero Academia, this is giving me similarities to Twice’s backstory. His power was he could create endless clones of himself. Unfortunately, he also had some severe mental issues, exacerbated by how often he copied himself. Inevitably it got to the point where he legitimately did not know if he was the original or not, and so was exceptionally careful to not get too harmed, because clones would die from too much damage.
It’s a troll. Unless the black market got Ethan’s DNA before he became super, any part of Ethan that gets left behind, be it an arm or his head, disappear when he respawn
Have we considered an AED that can stop the heart and restart it safely in a medical environment. Powers working he respawns.. powers don’t work they restart him. I have AFIb and they rebooted my ticker a little over a year ago. I was gone for a bit they did it under sedation.
Any cure that works on Analog works on D-pad to some extent since their powers have the same origin and obviously his are much easier to test. I believe D-pad would risk it to literally save his best friend’s life.
Also there was plenty of it left on the syringe and the spill on his clothes that it could easily be analyzed to see if it is anything at all.
T
he obvious answer is to get the sample, make sokme more of whatever ity is, and give it to Lucas. If the arrows go away, then bettter be careful. If kthe4y ldon’t, then lyou’re fine
Dear god I type bad this late
Wasn’t that syringe spilling excess green goop everywhere?
Because they do happen to know a genius who owes Ethan a big favor still, surely a few tests can clear this up?
“Yeah, that syringe was 100% panera lemonade, some anxiety is to be expected”
So they’re telling me they had a teleporting Dr. Not-Manhattan and they didn’t bother to check the veracity of the threat before sending someone in who might have died.
Everyone keeps mentioning “Ethan can’t be sure if his power will work or not” but there has ALWAYS been some underlying uncertainty about his respawning ability:
https://cad-comic.com/comic/drive-p7/
https://cad-comic.com/comic/deposited-p3/
Is he immortal? Is it the Konami Code, and he only got 30 extra lives total? (it’d be interesting to go through the archive and see where the count is at now…)
You’re right. It would more precise to say that the Troll claimed to change the current behaviour of the superpower, a behaviour which Ethan seem to grow more or less comfortable with, and this claim can’t be proven experimentally (since he can’t risk it) OR theoretically (since no one knew how it works in the first place)
I wonder if he could have his heart temporarily stopped and, if need be, restarted in a medically supervised environment?
Unless this is the end of CAD 2.0, my money is that this is a “false” cure. It might affect him briefly, but there are too many unresolved threads. Tim created this power for Ethan for one reason: So he couldn’t kill him off again.
We’ve seen Ethan drop from bloodloss when trying to donate large amounts. He fell over and respawned immediately. So he could do something that would technically kill him but leaves a good chance of being revived.
Then again, he has (had?) a superpower that literally works on game logic, where respawn happens immediately once he starts “dying”. Otherwise there would’ve been a lot of instances where he slowly bled out instead of STAB –> Respawn
Best not think too hard about it
It’s good to see that Ethan appreciates the GRAVITY of the situation.