Collector’s Item – Chapter 8, Act 3, Strip 86

That seems like a very fair question to ask…and like a mere exercise in begging the answer. The funny thing being real life is actually opposed. In real life, a lot of people own stuff they have no intent of ever using – and that goes particularly for anything that has superlatives of the format “world’s largest/smallest/most expensive/rarest/” etc. attached to it. The owner of the world’s fastest car probably uses a different one when they go grocery shopping, and the owner of the world’s most valuable painting probably keeps it in a safe while something much cheaper actually decorates their wall. From that perspective, there would be nothing unusual about Gregory owning the world’s largest chainsaw and using a smaller, more handy one for his day-to-day slaughtering – with the ownership of the world’s largest chainsaw being justified by nothing besides the joy of owning the world’s largest chainsaw.

Fortunately, this is a comic, not real life – so here things make sense, and Gregory whips out the Mega-chainsaw when the chips are down and s**t has started hitting the fan.

And I didn’t have much choice, anyway. When it comes to Gregory escalating, a bigger, badder chainsaw is really the only way to go. Using anything that isn’t a chainsaw to escalate over a normal chainsaw would imply a ranking of appreciation where the top position isn’t occupied by a chainsaw, and that would simply be inconceivable for Gregory. It is much more conceivable that there exists a chainsaw to end all other chainsaws, and that Gregory owns it…and that he has been saving it for a very special occasion, even while struggling with the temptation to use it every single day.

Less plausible than that is his apparent ability to actually wield that thing. But if Snuka can carry the Death Star in his backpack, I guess Gregory could be able to some fancy fencing with an atrocity of a chainsaw constructed from a set of tank tracks. If I was required to come up with any sort of justification, I’d probably just point to Gregory’s fundamental nature as a chainsaw user. He can capably wield any kind of chainsaw, physics be damned, because he’s the heaven-sent child of chainsawing (Chensou no Moshigo). Or perhaps hell-sent, I’m not good with theology. >_>

More on Monday.