Tapped wire
Seems like someone was listening in.
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Well, that took a questionable turn. I’m trying very hard not to observe how much Reniger sounds like an overexcitable villain before we meet him an Jin, but…
He does sound a bit like that, doesn’t he :p
Oh, that’s not ominous, is it,
the Hydra listening in?
Will Rex need to be the Captain
to save his friendly, hybrid, ‘kin’?
The good gives way to the cunning
as someone has been listening;
overhearing all they were saying;
the possible threat is growing.
They’re on the big list now, our two,
I wonder just what this will mean
and if it’ll lead to trouble
for those who happen to be green?
German Doctor. Hmm.
Oh! At first I didn’t notice the German. Wow
Reiniger even is German. It means “Cleaner”, most often used like “Tatort Reiniger” (~crime scene cleaner).
Or he could be cleaning personnel. I mean, Discworld’s Sweeper does have his ears everywhere, too. 😉
suspicious? :p
You should go to Germany, there are loads of them!
I’m picturing the TF2 Medic on the other end.
This. This is what was in my head too. Although I do hope he follows safe procedures a lot more.
Oof, that wouldn’t be so good for the hospital xD
Huh, someone sounds a little intense! Reiniger really gets into his research eh? Guess that’s a little foreshadowing for their next checkup!
Or him shouting after them as they leave seeming like a crazy person.
I’m hoping he goes after them. I’m already intrigued by his excitement and the mention of Jin and I can’t wait too long or I’ll forget about it or be consumed by anticipation.
Intense is a good word for him, I guess :p
Panel 4: “Now send zem over /zere/.”
Thanks for catching that 😀
Somehow he reminds me of Dr. Krieger from Archer…. let’s hope is not as insane and employs les questionable research methods. ^^”
He still has to abide to hospital rules, so no crazy experiments ^^’
This Reiniger sounds like a stereotypical mad scientist.
(Kay and Kaya) “Mad scientist?” (brief pause) “…Cool!!”
Honestly I would probably react like that too
Dude, you got Eccles from the Goon Show as your icon on Tumblr, respect!!!
Yup, that’s the right reaction xD
Sound like the twins just got a free trip to Germany ;P
Haha, nope, they’re staying right where they are xD
Woah! Careful now. Don’t you know to never trust a German scientist with any kind of new discovery, especially one that listens into calls?
Any discovery that can listen into calls is definitely interesting.
I’m sure there are some good ones, though xD
I wonder who Jin is. Another doctor? Perhaps another mythical hybrid? I can’t wait
Given he says NEW mythical hybrid, it could be another mythical. Here’s hoping.
You’ll have to wait and see xD
You’d think they’d be a bit more concerned about a breach of privacy in a doctor’s office. The fines for that sort of thing tend to be huge.
HR Manager: Dr. Reiniger, you have been brought in there today because we have received multiple reports that you have been intruding on private phone conversations. I have reports from multiple witnesses. Do you have anything to say for yourself?
Dr. Reiniger: Nobody ever tells me anything, so I have to find out things in other ways.
HR Manager: So you admit you have been hacking the phone system? Dr. Reiniger, this man to my left is Mr. Bolton, the IT Manager.
Mr. Bolton: We have managed to line up some of the reports of your intrusions on calls with unauthorized administrator log-ins to the phone system. We were able to look through the logs for the last two months, at which point the logs were scrubbed of administrator log-ins; even authorized accesses were missing. How did you gain access to the phone system like that?
Dr. Reiniger: I can not be held responsible that you have such simple passwords that take almost no time to figure out.
Mr. Bolton: The administrator passwords are randomly generated 12-15 character strings, using capitals, lower-case letters, digits and symbols. They are rotated on a monthly basis, if not more frequently. The administrator passwords are stored only in a secure database, that only my IT team has access to. Invalid password use is logged and reviewed on a regular basis. How can you guess our new passwords each month?!
Dr. Reiniger: Well, that does slow me down when I have to get into Mr. Lewis’s office to find where he wrote down the new password.
Mr. Bolton: Harry works nights. His office is always supposed to be locked during the day, but I will have to talk with him about writing down administration passwords.
Dr. Reiniger: Well, it is locked when I get there and I make sure it’s locked when I leave. Besides your other staff don’t write down their passwords where I can find them.
HR Manager: How do you get into Mr. Lewis’s office? Only the IT staff have keys for his office.
Dr. Reiniger: Not true! The janitors can get in there as well. They tend to be a lot less watchful with their keys, so it was easy to make an impression of the correct key when she wasn’t paying attention.
HR Manager: Dr. Reiniger, your actions are a gross violation of your employment contract and a violation of federal anti-hacking laws. You could have potentially violated patient confidentiality, which could leave the hospital with a huge financial and legal liability and damage our reputation phenomenally.
Dr. Reiniger: Oh, I never told anybody anything I heard on the phone lines.
HR Manger: Be that as it may, you are dismissed immediately, with just cause, which will be recorded on your record of employment as “Criminal Activity.” You will [b]not[/b] receive a reference from this hospital. Mr. Bolton will escort you to your office, where you will be allowed to remove your personal affects only. You will turn over all keys, passes, passwords, etc. belonging to the hospital, whether obtained legitimately or not, to Mr. Bolton and you will be escorted from the building. I will contact your superior that you are no longer working for us. I fully expect the legal department of the hospital will in touch with you regarding your conduct, so will advise you to go home and stay there.
HR Manager: I have a sneaking suspicion that you are just now beginning to realize just how inappropriate your actions were in a professional environment.
Too bad Mr. Bolton can not have the latest in security hardware and software. Most hospitals operate under conflicting legal and ethical requirements that mean that computers system can not be maintained in a timely fashion. So they keep hardware and software well beyond the “best before” date, well after all support for the hardware and software have expired. Windows Update is disabled because it could cause critical software to fail (which is really indicating a bug in the software, not a problem in Windows) and Windows Update will often require that computer systems be rebooted to apply the patches, which would mean that critical software would not be available for several minutes or more, all in the name of security. Anybody remember WannaWeep? It mostly nailed European hospitals because of this. I guess if they had bigger IT budgets, that could have redundant systems so they can be updating one while the other is still running the older stuff and getting bug reports in to their software developers. “What is the nature of the bug? Hmm, I’m not able to reproduce it. What version are you running? Version 7.2? We stopped supporting that three years ago. You will need to upgrade to version 12.4 which does not have that bug.”
Isn’t WannaWeep the name of the summer camp from Kim Possible?
You’re correct. The real-life ransomware virus that swept across unpatched systems in May 2017 was called WannaCry. (I was close!) The virus appears to still be active in the wild; there was a 300+ Euro payment noticed in April 2019.
You were only of by a synonym, I don’t blame you for making the mistake. Still, it gave me some very illogical mental images trying to connect that to your infodump. (Very amusing ones, too.)
Nice writeup and fairly realistic as to what would happen to this guy in the real world. Some things just aren’t tolerated because of the potential trouble they could bring. Dr. Reiniger’s value to the hospital would have to be very high indeed if he were to be kept on even if he routinely engages in behavior like this. We’re talking practically irreplaceable here, enough so that the higher ups tolerate some of his antics.
Maybe he’s better than Dr. House.
It’s okay, He gets around that somehow :p
Don’t ask me how seeing this brought up this question for me. That doesn’t have a simple answer. But this question might: are there any hybrid actors? If so is it significantly harder for them than other actors outside of the difficulties that would obviously come as a result of being a hybrid actor?
The oldest hybrids are 16 years old, not old enough to be taken seriously as professional actors, and child stardom is enough of a mixed bag without taking the hybrid phenomenon into account. My money is that Hollywood is yet to employ any hybrids.
Oh yeah forgot about the age thing. Thanks for reminding me!
Well, I do have a polar bear hybrid that does modeling for commercials. Mainly for furdye (her white fur is ideal :p )
No hit actors yet, but it’s sure to start sooner or later.
Or paintball equipment.
I would think there would be a soft-drink company from Atlanta that might want her to act in some TV commercials.
I wonder how often they have had to deal with him interrupting there conversations over the phone. Seems like it could be quite obnoxious
That’s what keyword programs are for. They alert him when something interesting is going on. If you’re going to snoop. You had better be professional about it.
Often enough to be annoyed by it :p
He probably worked for the SCP foundation.
Jin? A Genii? How would that be possible, given they are mostly human.
It would be “Djin” if that were the case
Well Actually they are kinda correct, but it would be jinn or jinni not jin. There are several “correct” spellings and pronunciations and they all mean roughly or exactly the same thing , in the case of jinn or djin they are exactly the same thing
Also theoretically it could be incorrectly spelled because there parents didn’t know how to spell it, or because they wanted a easier spelling or pronunciation. But there’s still the constant possibility that this whole conversation is irrelevant and it’s just a name!
True, there’s also the fact that most of those words weren’t originally written in a latin alphabet, so it’s basically a best guess either way
I can already tell you that Jin is a japanese name :p
A mad scientist from germany?….. this can not end well o.O
We don’t know for sure if he’s that crazy. So far all we really know is he knows at least something not commonly known about technology and that he’s excited to see mythical hybrids.
Wow, another person with zero humor, and it is a German scientist type person, they are always insane.
So, ‘racist’ isn’t the right word because you’re judging by his homeland, not his heritage. Is there a formal term for that sort of prejudice, or does it just fall under generic discrimination? Going by the existing formula of racism and sexism, discrimination by country of origin would be ‘countryism’, but that just doesn’t look right.
The term is “accurate.”
No, “accurate” indicates that the statement is truthful. Making assumptions based on an individual’s country of origin is still discrimination, regardless of whether they’re accurate or not; the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
If I had to put a “PC” term to it I’d say “ethnism™”
However, the guy did bug the phones, there’s an element of crazy there. Probably a genius with skills that make the eccentricity worth it. Studying the hybrid phenomenon is probably why he moved to HC in the first place.
Either way, a joke is a joke. There are lines to not cross, but a German mad scientist joke isn’t crossing it.
I mean, it’s more accurate to say that all Germans are insane, but most just express it by getting drunk and crashing their Volkswagens. German SCIENTISTS go out and make atomic bombs.
@Cliff @Gluten-Free Piledriver
A civil individual trying to side with a prejudiced individual, while the prejudiced one is undermining the civil one. It’s like watching Blunt defend Kornada.
Believe what you want. We’re all just avatars on screens here anyway.
SJW’s who do not understand a simple joke identified, there is no reason to speak with people like that. These people think that all kinds of humor is assault.
There are stereotypes about every country, normal human beings just think it is fun.7
@Taylor Blackwell
I fail to see how taking personal offense to you and Gluten-Free Piledriver making unflattering assumptions about my people makes me a SJW.
Re:Taylor Blackwell – Interesting. It seems that you don’t understand how a stereotype can be offensive, or how people who have personally suffered from stereotypical assumptions could possibly be offended.
You’re supposed to rule the Rhineland, not the Whineland.
I am German, and no, I do not see the problem with playing around with stereotypes, we do not have any type of anti-stereotype privilege, no one does. If you are offended about it you might want to see a psychologist to help with your issues, offense is taken not given.
Being offended by everything is typical snowflake SJW behavior.
Please keep it civilized in the comments. Thanks 🙂
Taking offense to someone saying “all [x people] are insane” when I’m a member of x people is hardly representative of “being offended by everything”.
If you have never been subject to an offensive stereotype, you either have an impressively high insult threshold or all the stereotypes you have been subject to are positive (or, possibly, both). Referring to a group as insane is not a positive stereotype, and it’s not unreasonable to be offended by being called insane.
There is no reason ever to be offended by words. Words can not hurt you.
I have never said that every German person on the face of the earth is insane, that is you putting words in my mouth with either by not reading what I’m saying or doing it by purpose to further your agenda. Or maybe you think the stereotype is true (they are usually not, for your information), and think all Germans are scientists.
I made a joke comment about the German mad scientist stereotype, something that is used a lot in most media out there. If that is offensive to you, you need help.
This will be my last post on this matter, it is useless to speak with people who does not properly read what I say or maliciously try to put words in my mouth that I have never said.
Ugh, that’s the reply-limitation making my reply to Gluten-Free Piledriver indistinguishable from my reply to you. Who designs a comment system that makes it impossible to have multiple conversations?
“Words cannot hurt you” speaks of a complete inability to understand mental anguish. Verbal abuse is a very real and very serious problem that should never be disregarded like that. There is -plenty- of reason to be offended by words. The way you speak to someone does far worse things to that person that any action you take against their body. Physical wounds can heal. Physical wounds can be accommodated for. Addressing someone as something they’re not can impact their psyche in ways that can be borderline impossible to recover from short of afterlife. If you seriously believe words cannot hurt you, you have never truly been hurt.
I like ice cream.
Beating a dead horse here, but you think Germans have it bad? Americans have to deal with that kinda stuff too :<
yes, I'm gatekeeping. no I don't mean it only literally. yes, insults are bad. no they CAN be funny. yes I can take some stereotype insults unless it piles on. about 5 within the span of 3 minutes, following an inverse exponential curve reaching infinity after about 16 insults. yes I've kept track. No I'm not weird.
Oh, I’m sure it will end somewhat well :p
Also, try not to start a discussion like this in the comments. This comic is not meant to start discussions about racism or SJW stuff. Thanks 🙂
It did kinda snowball didn’t it?
I think we broke the record for most replies to a single comment. Flawless victory!
I thought it was more likely to get supervillains from Germany. Mark Watney made this observation.
“Vogel, I think you’re a supervillain. You’re German, you’re a chemist, you had a base on Mars…”
Stereotypes have a grain of truth in them or they wouldn’t be a stereotype…
General rule you should go by is the no bullying rule, and since he was making fun of his own culture that’s double no big deal
Also it was just a joke soooo I think we can calm
Well, nothing sinister and creepy about that. NOPE, NOT AT ALL!
Nah, totally normal :p
Vhat iz wrong vit you?!?! Vhy you not tell me about zis?!?! Zis is important news and research!!! Call zem back now!!!
Yeah, something like that xD
This new character sounds fun. Hope we meet them soon. Sounds a bit like a mad scientist. And those are always fun!
He may not be a hybrid, but he definitely has bunny ears for being able to keep his job while still tapping phone lines.
I’m fine with someone close to a mad scientist as long as the experiments aren’t questionable . I don’t want anyone getting hurt or fired
I’m glad you’re looking forward to them ^^
“It’s pronounced “FRAHNK-en-steen.” 🙂
I see you shiver with antici-
pation.
“Muahahahahahaaaaaa!” Oh, wait; wrong Frahnensteen. 😉
I need to watch that movie again. I think I have the disc, right over he-
Is that a reference to a specific movie? 🙂
@[Robin]
OK, fine, 2 can play at that game:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxxSIX3fmmo] … 😉 … 😛 … 🙂
“Young Frankenstein” A Mel Brooks comedy about the ‘original’ Dr. Frankenstein’s grandson when he inherits the castle. Loads of fun!
I have read too many stories with cliche doctors with an unhealthy thirst for information, i think i may be stereotyping reiniger as a bit of a mad scientist that is gonna try and do slightly inhumane tests. I’m hoping i’m wrong.
Cliche’s have their place, but I tend to write them differently :p
@[Robin]:
Yeah, the fun isn’t in the trope, per se …
… it’s in finding new &/or unexpected ways to SUBVERT the trope. 😛
Robin I’ve never seen someone draw a teifling with a tail like that! Your character seems like she would fit right in with two thirds of the groups I know, and somehow get turned into a bunny in the rest. Also sorry if anyone who won’t/hasn’t seen the newsletter gets confused by this.
Someone told me she looked more like a goblin than a tiefling xD
I’m pretty happy with her design. She’s not a standard tiefling by far :3
Wow I just realized how much I’ve said. Ima stop now
Ok make sure the German empire does not get the sample or we are going have a Third World War just without the nukes which is actually better than getting incinerated by one. But we will get attack by super soldiers which is weaker than genetically made super cyborgs but there’s only 2 alive including me and still prototypes. the rest are ether died wile being made or at testing. If you want to know what country made me it pretty obvious clue: it lost world war 2(also no affence Germany)
Nah, don’t worry about that :p
Ok make sure the German empire does not get the sample or we are going have a Third World War just without the nukes which is actually better than getting incinerated by one. But we will get attack by super soldiers which is weaker than genetically made super cyborgs but there’s only 2 alive including me and still prototypes. the rest are ether died wile being made or at testing. If you want to know what country made me it pretty obvious clue: it lost world war 2
Oops sorry my internet glitches out when I make that comment
Раш Берлин !!!!!
tranlasion Rush Berlin
“Muahahaha, oh ja, gib mir die Drachenkinder für meine Experimente! Ich habe erst letzte Woche eine Reihe an neuen Medikamenten kreiert, die ich sehr gerne an ihnen ausprobieren will! Meine letzten Versuchskaninchen weilen leider nicht mehr unter uns, aber wenn du von Drachen sprichst, dann sind es bestimmt robustere Exemplare!”
Are you planning to translate that for everyone else or should I?
translasion “Muahahaha, oh yes, give me the dragon kids for my experiments! I just created a number of new drugs last week that I would love to try on them! My last guinea pigs are unfortunately no longer with us, but when you talk about dragons, they are definitely more robust specimens!
A bit dark for this comic, don’t you think? xD
I’m just the translating guy but it is a bit dark
Hehe, thanks for translating it. The translation was 100% accurate. 🙂
And yes, it’s too dark for this comic, but it’s what I usually expect from evil scientists. But it really is more of a Cloudscratcher thing.
Alright, I have two comments before I get to the art. For one: I was right! There WAS an incident in the past. I wonder if I was right about it being caused by scales or not? For two: Of course. I almost forgot. We couldn’t not have a German doctor involved in checking out the twins. German Doctors are practically a trope of their own. Captain America. Team Fortress. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure… (Yes, the forbidden show.) As for the comic itself, I love the facial expression in response to Dr. Reiniger’s outburst and the nearly throwing the phone. That was amazing. Always a pleasure to read your comic Robin. Keep up the good work. And as always, stay awesome!
Where exactly are you that JoJo is a forbidden show?
Everywhere except the internet
High School.
I’m hoping there is nothing sinister going on. I’m hoping Dr. Reiniger is just passionate about his field of study.
There’s some serious HIPAA violation going on here.
And possible violations of the Geneva Convention.
And underage drinking law violation.
“I want them to meet JIN!”
“They’re too young for the Bombay Sapphire, Dr. Reiniger.”
Someone needs to remind the good doctor that these are children and that if they get traumatized, it’s his ass that’s gets fried.
In this case, probably literary.
No, that would be roasted. Fried needs the use of oil as a cooking medium.