The Nature of the Nuklear Beast

[Crucival]

First of all:
Great Webcomic, Mr. Cleavinger. I love it.
Pretty good book, especially once you get to the bit on the morning of Nuklear Man's birthday. I'm not sure if they were written at different chronological times, but your writing style matures a bit as you progress past the setup of the book. By the end, it's quite riveting.

Now, I'm going to try to address the ending from a way that I hope other people haven't done before. If they have, shunt me to another post.

Looking at another book I read recently and enjoyed (read: over the summer), Rushdie's Satanic Verses, I was thinking about questions, and how they relate to book themes. Rushdie asks about the nature of good and evil, about what we perceive as morally good and morally bad, versus how current religious ideology seems to define it. In the end, of the two characters you get really attached to, one ends up dead, and you're left with the question: "Who is the "good" guy? Who is the "bad" guy? Is it good or bad to try to change what you are, and are you happier, in the end, if you try to be "good" ?"

Now, to Nuklear Age.
The question I see popping out at me, with a chuckle, because it's you writing it, is something like "Is anyone really that super, anyway?" It's a general idea of humor and power and how people can and can't use it. Either they're stopped by incompetence, or by some sort of hilarious circumstances. But then I hit the ending, the food court, the apology, and so on. Rachel died, and I was sad, because even though she was one of the characters I enjoyed, she wasn't doing the fighting so much as...collateral damage. As far as the joke, I see the Author (dressed as black mage) standing over the characters with flames of apocalypse...itude in the background, grinning as he says "Did you really think you could save Everyone?" Or perhaps "Silly rabbit, fully intact love interest vitality is for kids."
Either way, I'm just wondering if you just started exploring an entirely different question after that whole...Rachel thing? No judgement attached to it, it just seems like more than "betraying", or saddening, or angering any of us, the main thing you did was shift theme, by a lot. Then again, I could be overanalyzing.

And finally, on an unrelated note: I don't mind her dying. It was a plot development. But did ya HAVE to do the dream and tease me like that? I was all "sh'wha-ressurection?" and it was all "psyche! Dream."

Ok, end of spoiler/rant.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far. I can be long-winded.
Cruc.

[Moridin]

I think what you were talking about was coming from the beginning, and I'll tell you why. In SECRET INK 9000!!!

Her death is aluded to in the middle of the book. During the onslaught of the cults, the depressed one says something like, "Relationships always end in tragedy, either with betrayel or death, so blah de blah de blah"

Even if you don't catch it at first, when she dies that scene might come back and hit you in the face, especially when Atomik Lad repeats those lines at the end of the book. Now, I can't speak for Brian on what he intended or not, but that scene leads me to believe that it wasn't a change of gears. Plus. he tells us at the end that it's all a great joke anyway, at least in that the mood changes so fast. Just my two cents. and that's when the world blew up from eating too many pitas! Phew. good thing I used secret computer ink for that one....