475: Further Boomerang Difficulties

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Further Boomerang Difficulties
An eternity later, the universe having turned out to have positive curvature and lots of mass, the boomerang hits him in the back of the head.
Title text: An eternity later, the universe having turned out to have positive curvature and lots of mass, the boomerang hits him in the back of the head.

Explanation

This comic is a sequel of sorts to 445: I Am Not Good with Boomerangs, as it deals with the same subject manner with the same panel layout.

The first strip shows Cueball throwing a boomerang, which doesn't come back. In 939: Arrow, a boomerang returns to Cueball, which can either be the same Cueball from this comic or another person.

In the second strip he throws another boomerang, which somehow manage to hurt the ozone layer (as indicated by an off-screen voice). This is of course not possible with a boomerang, as it is a layer of ozone molecules very high up in the atmosphere.

The third strip shows Cueball throwing something that appears to be a boomerang, but then Megan enters and reveals that it was their last banana - which she probably had expected to eat since she calls him an asshole.

The final strip shows Cueball throwing one last boomerang, which breaks the frame of the comic, already after two out of the four frames used in each of the first three strips. Then panning down we find the last panel, much larger and suddenly mainly black instead of white. It shows that this time he was actually inside a spacecraft (which resembles an Apollo Lunar Module in a very bad manner), and the boomerang has just broken out through the hull. We see the boomerang and Cueball tumbling out into space with the escaping air. To certain death...

The title text notes that, assuming a theory, that is no longer generally accepted, where the universe has a positive (closed) curvature and lots of mass, the boomerang would, after a (very) long time hit Cueball in the back of his head. This will happen because under those conditions the entire universe will eventually fall back on it-self in the Big Crunch. Before this happens everything will again get pressed close together, and it is during this process that the boomerang finally returns to his frozen but, quite possible, preserved head. (So at least one "success" in four attempts).

Boomerangs also became a main theme in the interactive comic 1350: Lorenz. The same format of multiple bad endings to the same starting set-up is used in 1515: Basketball Earth.

Transcript

[Cueball is throwing boomerang.]
[Holding his hands up.]
[Cueball waits for return; continual waiting.]
[Cueball is dejected, head hangs low.]
[Cueball throws boomerang.]
[Cueball waits for boomerang.]
Outside: Oh God
Outside: The ozone layer!
[Cueball is surprised.]
[Cueball throws boomerang banana.]
[Cueball waits.]
[Megan walks in.]
Megan: That was our last banana.
Megan: You're such an asshole.
[Cueball throws boomerang.]
[Boomerang breaks out of the panel box.]
[Boomerang breaks out of a spacecraft, followed by Cueball.]

Trivia


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Discussion

Wow, that's a pretty cool spaceship. How does he leave? Me[citation needed] 15:02, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I feel like he isn't leaning back in horror in the last strip. I rather think that, since he's in a spaceship with no gravity, the angular momentum makes him turn a bit. 162.158.222.45 22:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)