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00:00 RG3000, issue 4.
00:02 In a story with the title reminding me of Invader Zim,
00:06 RG tells his friends to go on his boat to picnic on an island of all places instead of the woods.
00:13 At least that's creative.
00:16 They wonder where the picnic supplies are,
00:19 and Dilton says they're all in the thing he's holding,
00:22 and they doubt it, even though it's the future.
00:25 And Dilton can still invent things.
00:28 He shows them tiny things and uses a growth ray on them,
00:32 which can alter the size of anything,
00:35 because it pushes the molecules in an object closer together or pulls them farther apart.
00:41 Would there be a consequence to making an object denser than it's supposed to be?
00:46 Making that bad?
00:48 Why even bother with the scientific justification of how it works that's easy to come up with
00:53 if it breaks the square cube law anyways?
00:56 He says his invention could make people able to transport more stuff into space.
01:02 And Archie says you could solve the parking problem because anyone could put their car in their pocket.
01:09 Reggie wants to enlarge food at their picnic,
01:12 and Dilton tells them to be careful not to break it,
01:15 since when is Reggie the clumsy one?
01:18 His reaction would only make sense with Archie, or Moose.
01:23 He naturally says that he saw him use it and it's simple.
01:27 Obviously, Dilton would relent at this point,
01:30 especially since the guy who can't be reasoned with is stronger than him.
01:35 Instead, he grabs it off-screen and Moose gets drunken.
01:39 And of course, Dilton can't return him to normal right away because the story was called "Mini-Moose".
01:45 So the ray blows out some circuit boards arbitrarily,
01:49 making the writing seem lazy as there's no excuse.
01:53 He says it'd take a year to make new ones.
01:56 Mitch cries feeling bad for Moose in a rare moment of actually expressing her love for him.
02:02 Reggie is smart enough to instantly think of the positives.
02:06 He says his parents would save a lot on food bills and on clothing because he'd have to wear dolls' clothes.
02:12 Why does he point out a negative of the situation?
02:15 He says he could keep in shape by throwing grapes into a soda can's pull ring.
02:20 Archie reveals that the shrink ray is only temporary.
02:23 Dilton's happy because it's good for Moose, though it means his ray's less useful.
02:28 So it can't be used to enlarge tiny food for more nutrition because it's shrinking your stomach anyways.
02:35 It's a very good thing we got to see what it'd be like to be tiny before he got back to normal.
02:40 And the writer shows the perfect guy to shrink.
02:43 Partly because he's usually big.
02:46 Mitch warns Reggie that Moose wouldn't like them snuggling, and he goes back to normal size and the story ends.
02:52 In the next story, Weather beats on a school holiday, so he plans to replace his sink by turning off the water supply.
03:00 Predictably, he screws that up.
03:03 He plans to use a micro-wrench to clamp the valve and open it, and it turns until he causes a leach.
03:10 And he tries to Skype call maintenance to get a robot for help.
03:14 Somehow all maintenance is off because it's the holiday, even though maintenance jobs were taken over by robots.
03:22 So what's the point if even robots get days off?
03:26 He lampshades that the writing is ridiculous.
03:30 He plans to call Svensson with a special school beeper rather than a cell phone he'd have by now, because I guess this is free.
03:39 Svensson was packing for a golf tournament for custodians, so he has a hobby and a social life now.
03:46 He goes to Weatherby and uses the console on the wall to stop the leach, turning off the water all over the apartment, so the other people there whine about worthless problems.
03:57 Even though split ends don't matter, and their chores could wait, the dog looks stupid.
04:04 Svensson tells Weatherby to turn the water on as the sink was hooked up, and he gets some instructions that he predictably gets wrong because it's been too long.
04:13 Why put padding before he tries to input them? We don't care about this.
04:19 At least I don't care because I always find it annoying how his accent is spelled out, so it's harder to understand what he's saying, and he's not a deep character.
04:29 So we see water coming out of impossible places.
04:32 At least the story ends with Weatherby looking happy.
04:35 In the next story, Archie's father heads for Jughead and wants some wrapping paper because he somehow waited until the day before Archie's birthday to try to wrap his gift, and the stores are closed for no reason.
04:49 His gift is a universal translator that's misspelled, because Archie has a pen pal in the Martian colony who doesn't speak English.
04:57 It's past the year 2900, and there's only one Martian colony?
05:03 It turns out Archie was relying on a person to translate the 3D holomovie graphs he sent his pen pal.
05:10 This came out before the term "video" is used, apparently, so there's the ridiculous word, and it came out before Google Translate, which they would've used instead of a person.
05:21 Jughead's out of wrapping paper, but says the card shop is still open, because since it's on a space station, they have three more hours of daylight.
05:31 That's interesting, but the plot's still boring because it could've just as easily been that one store on Earth was still open.
05:39 And Google Translate is already a thing here even if it's mocked, so it's not a very futuristic plot, which is never a good thing.
05:47 Archie's father just makes it too predictable by wondering if it's safe to leave the translator here, with a dog who could damage it, and they leave anyways.
05:57 So Hotdog finds out the machine translates his speech, which could make sense if it works by reading a person's mind while they're trying to talk, although you'd think it'd be incompatible with the differently shaped brain of a dog.
06:10 It only makes sense for Hotdog, because Hotdog's always been portrayed as a person.
06:16 It's interesting to see him talk at first, although him being able to have human thoughts is standard, so this isn't too engaging when no human can see this.
06:26 But it goes on too long with him trying to figure out what his best first words to humans should be.
06:32 Somehow he loses his voice because he was barking until Jughead got back.
06:37 The translator gets taken away, with neither of them finding out or even believing that it'd work for him.
06:43 And the story ends. At least it being a futuristic translator mattered, because otherwise we couldn't have a plot like this.
06:52 It's a sad ending.
06:54 In the next story, at first it's hard to care about the dialogue because there's no clue about who's talking, which is unprofessional.
07:01 People compliment that the carnival floats, and the dialogue makes fun of the characters because one says it breaks up the monotony even though it's normal for them to be high up in the air.
07:12 So how do they solve the problem where the higher up you go, the harder it is to breathe?
07:18 I have to assume that every human was genetically modified so that they're like the people who can breathe in high altitude.
07:25 They just put the thing that modifies genes in everyone's food.
07:29 CRISPR exists.
07:31 RJ heads for an arcade, and I wonder why the carnival wasted money on a robot whose only job is to announce that the show's about to start when a pre-recording over the intercom could do that.
07:43 Some creative looking aliens get seen, which are unfortunately stated to be from uninhabitable places, because they're really from other universe versions of those places.
07:52 And RJ and Betty shoot what I assume are just holograms in their VR game.
07:57 So far you can tell the story with any characters that don't have personalities.
08:02 So I don't see the point of even saying which characters experience what.
08:06 The only appeal is seeing the technology.
08:09 All of the main characters sit on a roller coaster car that moves around in a controlled environment at light speed.
08:16 Which couldn't happen because they don't have oxygen masks to survive this, so they have to be protected by the speed force.
08:24 And RJ expects me to believe that before you can blink, the ride is over.
08:28 Even though they had the time to say all that dialogue, and the ride wouldn't be that short.
08:34 The story ends with the spoiled main characters complaining that the rides and attractions are outdated.
08:40 Somehow Jughead looks surprised and fails to eat popcorn, even though he's from the future too, so he'd agree with them.
08:48 That's why even Futurama had better writing sense, by having Fry.
08:53 And what kind of a plot has no conflict?
08:56 It's better than the story being too dark.
08:59 But at this point you might as well have just had a few pages showing off only the technology with no dialogue.
09:06 The first story was by Harold Smith.
09:10 The second story was by Dan Parent.
09:13 The third story is by Harold Smith.
09:16 Well at the time it was written, it needed to take place in the future.
09:21 And the final story is by Michael Polosky.
09:25 I guess I'm just burnt out of doing summaries.
09:29 I usually make them too long.
09:32 RG3000, issue 5.
09:36 Dilton shows his friends his latest invention.
09:39 Stories centered around Dilton's inventions don't really belong in stories in a futuristic setting, because they could be done in regular RG comics too.
09:47 As opposed to RG simply buying an invention like this.
09:51 Not that regular RG comics are bad either.
09:54 Dilton hits the vase with a hammer, failing to break it.
09:58 Somehow Moose still thinks he could break it and doesn't want to try.
10:03 Because he says it's too pretty.
10:05 Dilton shows him a hover car and means to a laser saw.
10:08 Why does he wear a visor when using it?
10:11 When RG doesn't need one when looking at the laser.
10:15 This is going on too long when really nothing is going to prove to me that his invention is indestructible in a comedy.
10:22 And what if these things are only temporarily indestructible?
10:25 He talks as if moon rocks are especially good at breaking paint.
10:30 And RG gives away the already predictable twist that Dilton's invention will fail by saying you'll get rich off it.
10:38 Even though in a comic without continuity, or even with, there's nothing wrong with Dilton getting rich.
10:44 He could be written to spend it all on one charity to get things back to normal.
10:48 So he wouldn't be jealous of them for more than a second anyways.
10:52 His vase gets complimented so he lets Betty have it.
10:56 She thanks him and uses a machine to synthesize flowers for it.
11:00 And says that the great thing about this machine is she can make any flowers for any time of the year.
11:06 I'm sure it's still at the same stigma as plastic flowers though.
11:10 Where it's seen as not good enough because it's not plucked out of the ground.
11:14 She plans to fill the vase with water and it melts.
11:18 Sure it's inconvenient that someone brilliant enough to make indestructon who knows a lot about science by definition didn't know this would happen.
11:27 Even modern times has hydrophobic spray.
11:31 So it doesn't matter that it's hovercar melted at the end of the story.
11:35 As long as he also tells the patent office to combine it with hydrophobic spray, the indestructon would still be successful.
11:42 And why are there robots working at a car wash?
11:45 It just drives the unemployment rate up for no reason.
11:49 It's just the laziest way to portray a world as futuristic.
11:53 In the next story, Jughead suggests to his bored friends that they go anti-gravity bowling.
11:59 I don't know how that would work.
12:01 If there's a way to keep the ball from going above or below the pins, then it's just bowling that it's floating for no reason.
12:08 Maybe the idea is it allows them to have a lot more bowling lanes in one building.
12:15 Because you can have some lanes be above others.
12:20 Archie decides to have an old-fashioned picnic and his friends agree.
12:25 That's real interesting to look at.
12:28 Betty tells Jughead to program the computer chef because he's an expert on ancient Earth cuisine.
12:34 Somehow, fried chicken, burgers, and sandwiches are seen as weird.
12:40 There's no way they'd go to style.
12:42 Like in Sonic X, that doesn't explain what Mobius has and focuses on what it doesn't have.
12:49 It's lazy to do world building that just explains what they don't have and not what they do.
12:55 What are their mainstays if not these things?
12:59 Especially since I'm pretty sure Jughead had a burger in the first issue of this.
13:05 Anyways, Archie conveniently has his great-great-grandma's picnic basket.
13:10 A robot's packing the food for them as they wonder if he had an ancestor rich enough to buy it for him.
13:15 And he uses a weather scanning machine to see if it'd be good picnic weather.
13:20 They all get in his supposedly outdated jet car that's called too slow.
13:25 You gotta do something else to show us how outdated his car is because in a comic, you're not gonna be able to see how slow it is.
13:35 There's gotta be more creative and interesting ways to have its flying car look outdated.
13:40 He says he'll program the autopilot to home in on a good picnic site.
13:45 And it starts to rain anyways, making the weather scanner pointless.
13:50 Why is it even a thing if it can still be inaccurate?
13:54 I hate how long it takes for Jughead to finish saying the name of the force field generator Archie activates.
14:00 It's a miracle that someone who's supposed to be a loser thought to bring this when he didn't expect rain.
14:06 And being ultra prepared is not part of his character.
14:11 So the force field protects them from the rain and puts them in fake sunshine.
14:16 I already kinda saw this in the Jetsons comics, so whatever.
14:19 But Betty doesn't want to eat the sandwiches because ants got on the food when they left the basket on the ground for just four panels.
14:27 And sadly, it's not explained why the ants have tiny astronaut helmets.
14:32 There's no way someone would put a helmet on each ant because that's too much effort.
14:37 So I have to assume it's spiteful which made these astro ants.
14:40 But what are the chances they'd be bothered by them instead of regular ants, which would outnumber them?
14:46 I guess the witch made most ants astro ants.
14:50 More importantly, how spoiled are they that they refuse to eat the food just because ants walked on them once?
14:57 In the next story, Mr. Lodge tells his daughter, who already has too much that he has a surprise for her,
15:04 and takes longer than necessary to tell her he bought a planet from a space shipping magnate.
15:09 What kids comic reader knows the word "magnate"?
15:13 So he should have explained what it meant.
15:16 He bought it to have a vacation planet, even though he wouldn't need an entire planet for a vacation.
15:22 And I'm pretty sure he'd already have property to vacation on.
15:26 And he named it after her just because she's his daughter, even though I think he wouldn't like her.
15:32 Surprisingly, we see her pet poodle from an earlier issue, so I want to know what personality she picked for it.
15:39 The character's future slaying is another thing that rips off the Jetsons.
15:43 Veronica wants to bring Betty along just to make her jealous.
15:47 She assumes she'll be the queen of the creatures that live on planet Veronica.
15:52 Wouldn't Mr. Lodge be their king, if anything, because he bought the planet?
15:57 She wastes time wondering what unoriginal speech to make, and has her computer write the speech for her.
16:03 So this predicted AI writing.
16:05 All she sees on the planet are mountains, a lake, and a futuristic cabin.
16:10 She isn't impressed by the lack of discos, country clubs, and stores.
16:14 She plans to liven up the place, at least, by building a holographic entertainment center.
16:20 She must mean getting someone qualified to build it.
16:24 She gets talked to by a tumbleweed alien, which Betty's already heard the species name of, for a recently discovered planet.
16:32 Meaning that these aliens immigrated here from another planet.
16:35 She calls him handsome, and Veronica tells him to get everyone here to meet their new queen.
16:42 He's happy about the idea of being ruled by an alien he just met, which could only be true if the native ruler is just that horrible.
16:50 And doesn't have the power to go against her because Mr. Lodge's technology would fend him off with nothing to fear.
16:56 Even then, I don't think that would make him want to rule over him either, because he'd rather have a leader that's a member of his own species.
17:04 Not happily agreed to be ruled over by, essentially, the equivalent of a colonist wanting to rule over natives.
17:14 So the story ends with Veronica not being happy at her subject just because of their looks.
17:20 Even though it makes her the best looking one on the planet.
17:23 And what's it to her how good looking aliens are? It's not like she'd ever want to date one.
17:28 But it is good to have the ending be chromatic.
17:31 Because normally her desire to rule over a bought planet would be given to a villain.
17:36 And despite how mean Veronica is, you still wouldn't expect that of her.
17:41 Because since when does she end up politics instead of clothes shopping?
17:45 In the next story, Jughead wants to get his name down in the history books by inventing what the universe has been waiting for.
17:52 Which is somehow thinks is yet another type of snack.
17:56 What makes him think he could do that?
17:59 They look around at the food market, and Archie wonders why people bother with the food when it's easier to use the food synthesizer.
18:06 The synthesized food comes out perfect every time.
18:10 Jughead explains that a lot of people like to cook as a hobby.
18:14 He should have already known that.
18:16 It'd only make sense if he did, but thought cooking was pointless.
18:20 Jughead says that someone still had to cook the original meal that the synthesizer matrix was made from.
18:26 Makes sense that someone who loves food would know a lot about it.
18:30 He cooked something off screen, and Archie tasted and enjoys it.
18:34 And says Mr. Lodge could be willing to bankroll him.
18:37 His snack isn't that interesting, because they have no idea what it's made from.
18:42 Archie wonders why he blurted out something rude.
18:45 Mr. Lodge loves his snacks, and says he could make a fortune off of snacks if Jughead sells him the recipe really cheap.
18:52 He wonders why he said that.
18:54 I'm not mad at him, because it makes it more realistic and relatable to not be 100% perfect and nice all the time.
19:02 And Jughead looks smart, because he already figured he'd have him do all the work so he can collect the money.
19:08 Which is intelligent of him.
19:10 Veronica says Jughead would only spend the money on something stupid anyways.
19:15 All he'd spend it on is burgers.
19:17 And that's not stupid. It's something he enjoys.
19:20 And since they're cheap, it'd mean that he'd keep most of his money for a long time.
19:25 Archie uncharacteristically stands up to Veronica by admitting that he hates one of her outfits.
19:31 And Mr. Lodge wonders what's going on here.
19:34 I figured this was the fault of the snacks.
19:37 Somehow they forced people to tell the truth.
19:40 Logically, they'd still make Jughead money.
19:43 It's just that they'd be given to interrogators instead of the general public.
19:47 So this isn't a proper excuse for him to fail to make money and quit.
19:51 I can see why someone would assume at first that truth snacks would be bad.
19:55 But hopefully we can all agree that the world would be safer if anyone who got arrested could get given these truth snacks.
20:01 Both because the evil would get in trouble by confessing immediately.
20:05 And because the innocent would instantly prove themselves innocent.
20:09 It sure saved the prosecution a lot of effort.
20:12 It'd only be bad in countries where the government would be both strict and brave enough to make it legal for everyone to get given these to be made to confess to crimes no matter how harmless.
20:21 And obviously the only way he could actually make a truth serum snack by accident is if he used the magic potion ingredient by accident.
20:30 Mr. Lodge says he'll have the ingredients analyzed.
20:33 And eventually Jughead says he should go back to the drawing board.
20:37 And somehow nobody stops him being too stupid to think of how useful the snacks would be to the police.
20:44 Later Jughead came up with a new snack again just days later and after eating it he's made to lie.
20:51 Mr. Lodge likes them.
20:53 This isn't as bad.
20:55 The story ends with Reggie being complimented.
20:58 Thankfully it ends without us being told that Jughead gave up on selling these snacks.
21:03 Someone could take advantage of them to find out what's a lie from someone.
21:07 Cheating people would have to either be made to say they aren't cheating or break up with a person.
21:12 Usually liars turn on the wrong anyways.
21:15 Except in the case of some white lies.
21:17 So maybe it'd be better if the snacks were on the market.
21:20 Of course it'd only be acceptable if the snacks had a warning on their package saying that they make you lie.
21:27 And it doesn't seem so bad because the characters are only telling white lies.
21:33 The first story is by Harold Smith.
21:36 The second story is by Michael Polosky.
21:40 The third story is by Harold Smith.
21:43 It was interesting.
21:45 Although it did squander the potential of Veronica being a ruler.
21:49 Because she never established how she'd actually run a country.
21:53 The final story is also by Harold Smith.