Jean AKA Jeannie AKA Jeanie is a film, book, and magazine reviewer for a national magazine. Most of Jean’s work is done through email, which means he doesn't have to go into the office.
On a trip to find a gift for his girlfriend, Jean found an empty Genie Bottle. Upon picking up this bottle, Jean became the bottle’s new genie-powered occupant. Not only was Jean turned into a genie, but the bottle turned him into what he believed a genie of the bottle should look like. Which, due to his fascination with a classic 60s TV show, turned him into a busty blonde woman.
So far, everything that they had done in the past seemed like it was pre-destined, and they were just along for the ride. Sartorelli’s getting shut down due to fraudulent money (from the future).
Jean getting drunk and not remembering prom properly.
Could still go that way, where she will end up going back to fix it, and everything aligns properly.
It certainly does look like it could be Natalie, and it explains the bottle being there. But if that’s the case, what happened to the original Neil in this timeline?
I also think that this is a teenified Natalie who got stuck in the past and had to live those 5 years over again. And once the 5 years were re-lived Jeanie’s bottle appeared in her current apartment since she is the only master left once Neil got poofed back in time.
Does anyone remember if Jeanie’s spell was of fixed time duration or were they supposed to remain in the past until she actively popped them back into the present?
My first thought was that was a grown up Natalie walking in the door.
But then she doesn’t appear on the cast page.
And we are back in a pandemic time frame with the girl carrying a mask
If you check the previous few pages, Jean isn’t mentioned on the cast page either. Yes, he and Jeanie are different versions of the same being, but they are separate people.
Although I feel pretty sure that is Natalie, is there any chance that could be Zoe? I suspect Natalie has been holding onto the bottle waiting for Jeanie to reappear to set things to rights, but I don’t see how that would be possible at this time. It looks like she has created a life for herself as Natalie in parallel to Neil’s life. Although, going to engineering school would have been a lot easier now as she would have already know the material. Plus she would know which stocks to invest in and bought a lot bit coin when it was trading at just a few bucks a piece.
Try a few fractions of a cent a piece. A 10,000 BTC auction was attempted in 2010 with a starter value of $50. It didn’t sell. If you could actually go back in time and invest in BTC when it was new, $100 investment in 2010 would be worth upwards of $100,000,000 today.
Can you give us a bit of a break down on the dates. The lady is holding a mask so presumably it is 2020 or 2021? It was my understanding that Jean has been Jeanie now for about a year and Jean and Neil had been about 5 years out of high school when that event occurred. If I have those times correct, their Prom would have been around 2014, but since the comic started in 2009, that is not likely. Things have gotten rather messed up.
I do suppose Jeanie has moved farther forward in time and it is even later than when Neil was last seen at his job and Natalie is around 30 years old.
Jeanie Bottle works on a sliding time scale, much like The Simpsons. So things that take place in “the present” in the comics are always taking place in the current time when the comic comes out, regardless of how much in-comic time has actually passed since the beginning of the comic. Which is about a year, at this point.
For this storyline, Jeanie and Neil went back in time “about 7-10 years”, since they are currently in their mid-late 20s in “the present”, and they went back to when they were juniors or seniors in high school. We’re intentionally vague about exact dates.
Oh yes, the sliding time scale aka “the timeline of comics doesn’t make any sense and we are not even trying to explain it”. Well, at least you don’t have characters which remain babies for ten years of in-universe time …
As Dr. Emit Brown would say, This time line spud into an alternate time line that is normal for everybody else. but, not for Jeanie and for possibly even Neil/Natalie. That Sports Grace Almanac Changed everything in the future that there currently in right now.
Teen Natalie all grown up? What happened to Neil in the past? If Jeannie poofed to the present, did anyone else? Or did the draw of the Classic Timeline hijack Jeannie’s poof? Does new-Natalie know Rodge? Are they dating? If Jeanne has been missing in time, what has happened to Anderson, Red, the Greeks, Guano, Melvin?
So many questions! CD, thank you for this bonus content because if I had to wait a week for the next comic I would be looking on eBay for LR missiles.
Oh great. Jean has screw up the timeline. First the Blue Djinn, now this. He has a knack for causing trouble at the cost of his own personal enjoyment.
Very high probability of “Jeanie is back in ‘The Present’, whenever that is.” Thanks to Fearless Ferret for spotting the mask.
High probability of “Adult Natalie just walked in the door.” Thanks to 50srefugee for noticing the green.
My current theory: Jeanie poofed and got drawn to her bottle in the present (San Dimas time may or may not apply). Natalie finished the prom, and couldn’t find Jeanie, and so had to come back to the present the hard way; possibly avoiding Jean and Neil to avoid paradoxes. Natalie may or may not be aware that Neil and Jeanie have left the continuum, or if she kept track of time she may have popped over to grab the bottle and put it on her shelf just in case. If she didn’t go get it herself, I have no idea how it got there, but it would explain the surprise on Natalie’s face. But in any event, it looks like Jeanie is now back in her proper time, as is Natalie/Neil, except (s)he’s physically five years older.
Problem with this theory: We still don’t know how or why they went back to page 383…
1 bottle was not taken to the past, if there is a auto recall to her bottle to recharge, than back to the “present”
2 Neil and Jean, and now Natalie, stumbled through life up to discovery of the bottle however Natalie claimed it and left it unopened?
1. That seems to be the case, unless this is actually some other girl who only looks like Natalie due to the artstyle.
2. The bottle technically already has an owner, it’s just that said owner was time traveling. I can’t imagine the massive paradox that would occur if the bottle ended up with two genies…
No, I’m guessing if this is the present, Natalie would have retrieved the bottle at some point after the time travel shenanigans and just had it for decoration waiting for Jeanie. Or possibly found it before Jean and Neil, in a desperate attempt to return things to normal and when Jeanie didn’t show up just made a new life for herself the same as everyone else Jeanie has screwed over. But then that would create a parallel timeline, in which Jean never found the bottle, and never became a genie and never created a parallel timeline and–oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed…
Yeah. The mask tells us it’s the present. First panel says Jeanie doesn’t know why she’s back in her bottle (i.e. she didn’t poof herself there).
My guess is their trip to the past twisted things around, but not irretrievably so. So we were still in the same universe. Right up until Jeanie ran off on Jean. That created an unrecoverable paradox. Virgin Jean (with gossip spread by the guys at the end of the hall) does not grow up to be a womanizer, so doesn’t find the bottle and open it while fantasizing about Barbra Eden).
Essentially the universe as we knew it blue screened. And when it rebooted, this is the universe now. Natalie never stopped being Jeannie’s master, so the bottle migrated over to her after the “reboot”. Probably poofed to her immediately after Jeanie poofed out of prom night.
Natalie being a smart cookie realized the bottle being with her meant it would be impossible for Jean to find it at the store, open it, and become Jeanie. So understood that the “universe-ending paradox” she’d feared had happened. And she’d have to hang on to the bottle if/until the Jeanie from prom night returned, so they could try to figure out how to fix it. But the reboot sent Jeanie to the initiation point of this whole mess (the moment she left the present to visit the past). No idea if Neil even exists in this universe. Neil and Natalie are the same person, so the reboot may have eliminated the duplicate, giving Natalie priority because she was Jeanie’s master so erasing her would create another paradox.
I wonder if the painting in panel 2 has any significance. It looks like a van Gogh, but I don’t recognize it. The boxes and folders imply some sort of legal, accounting, or actuarial work. But that contradicts the phone call about taking a shift, which implies an hourly job. So my guess is that instead of building a career, Natalie has been spending her time researching the bottle trying to figure out what happened to Jeanie.
There are to many unknown here to decide what happened here and they are
1. Our Jeanie poof back to the future and back to her bottle. But, are we looking at our Jeanie here of somebody else that picked up that bottle?
2. If that not our Jeanie that we are looking at, then who was transformed into a look alike Barbra Eden if it wasn’t Jean?
3. What happen to Natalie and did she become the Chase Champion over Danny Bishop?
4. Where are they right now, besides being back in an alternate future?
5. Is Zoey and Neil still together after they had punch and teen Neil got punched out?
6. The current girl at the door doesn’t need to be either Natalie or Zoey and if she isn’t, then who is she?
7. About the only thing that we know for certain is that we are in an alternate time line going somewhere that we don’t currently know about.
@ Makaira: It looks like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
I agree with your assessment on the books, but they could also be medical. Nurses and interns work shifts, and she might be still studying.
Like the finally of End Game I assume Neil and Jean continued along their chosen paths right up until their present. Jeanie abandoning Natalie in the past (regardless of the reason) would result in Natalie having to follow a new path, possibly never leaving Cincinnati. Your assessment that the bottle migrated to Natalie on its own because she is the “Master” may be spot on, but it’s entirely possible that Natalie doesn’t know it has arrived. That’s a very surprised expression.
I just knotted some, that girl who ever she is, is talking on a cell phone talking to somebody before she see Jeanie. So seeing Jeanie is a complete surprise to here. Based on that, I am going to make a prediction that Julia is Natalie and that Natalie picked Julia as her name going forward from the school prom. Assuming that Julia is actually Natalie, we still don’t know if there in Coco Beach or Cincinnati or someplace else even. We don’t know how she got the Genie Bottle or if she took a trip to Coco Beach and retrieved that bottle on some vacation maybe. At any rate, Neil has been a girl for 6 or 7 years now. As such, Neil has been a girl long enough that he is probably use to being a girl now. So what kind of time line mess is Jeanie going to have to unravel to straighten this mess out?
@Makaira & Mike: The print over the plant, next to the TV, is a section of “Starry Night”. Wrong aspect ratio, and the bright yellow moon in the upper right hand corner is missing. Natalie has chosen instead to focus on the foreground tree–and even that is cropped a bit to the left–there should be more sky.
The print next to the bookcase seems to be Mondrian’s “Composition C” (1935). I’m impressed by the breadth of Natalie’s taste in art. I am not myself a fan of Mondrian’s abstracts, although he did some interesting impressionist works too, like “Farm Near Duivendrecht” (1916).
Jean didn’t go back into her bottle when she was in the past before he found the bottle and became a genie.
Jean has gone back to the exact time she moved far enough into the past not to have been become a genie yet. She’s still a genie, and remembers all that has happened up until now–or she wouldn’t be puzzled about where she was.
This is the stranger’s apartment. It could be anywhere.
The other woman doesn’t know the bottle placed on the bookshelf is more than a pretty bottle. She could have bought it at the same gift shop Jean found it, or someone else gifted it to her. But that doesn’t mean her apartment is Cocoa Beach; many people who don’t live in Cocoa Beach or anywhere near it. Not all of them are I Dream of Jeannie fanatics.
The woman can’t be Natalie because in this timeline Jean did not become a genie and couldn’t have changed Neil into Natalie.
At some point, Jeanie will meet the Neal of the timeline she just created as he’s become since his humiliation on prom night: A pathetic looser.
And doesn’t this sound a bit like the plot of A Christmas Carol, only with a lecher instead of a miser learning to mend his ways? Well, some of them. This is Jean Nessman, after all.
The Blue Dijin restored her youth in the wine bottle. Has Rouyaa returned??? She and Neil/ Natalie are the only ones who know how important the bottle is. Or it could be Caley all grown up.
Caley has red hair. Youthful-Rouyaa had brown hair but a different shade, and her signature color seems to have been red although it varied. Also, there is no indication that Rouyaa actually knew Jeanie is now the occupant of her former bottle… not that I noticed.
If it is Rouyaa all she knows is that she is face to face with what she thinks is the Blue Dijin. But whoever it is, since she owns the bottle now she is Jeanie’s new master.
OK, then who Julia, that the women that talking on the cell phone to women hat just saw Jeanie and is surprised to see her too! If neither girl is Rouyaa alias Barbra Eden or Natalie alias Neil, then who got the Genie Bottle now and where are they right now, besides being in some apartment building and in what city is it also located in also. Is this our Jeanie that we are looking at or somebody else that look like our Jeanie, but, since Jeanie in the side bare, then if most likely our Jeanie that we are looking at, unless it was Natalie that picked up the Genie Bottle and became Jeanie herself. I don’t think so, but, I thought that I would throw that out there anyway. Does just one girl have this apartment or are there two or three or more girls sharing this apartment? Has Natalie already made her appearance or she hasn’t showed up yet and we are still waiting for her to make her appearance too.
Rouyaa worked at the lunch counter at Cape Canaveral which would explain the “shift” comment. Jeanie would look like the Blue Dijin to Rouyaa. Small problem convincing her that Jeanie is just Jeanie.
@ Makaira: There’s also a painting in Panel 3 which looks like it might be by Piet Mondrian, a Dutch artist who is not quite as long-dead as Van Gogh. Two works by artists of worldwide note tells me that the lady who just came eback to this place is one with educated tastes.
@ Mike: This lady could well be a medical student or a resident physician. At first I wondered what someone who seems pretty well off is concerned with swapping shirts; she hardly seems to be something like a waitress–or an engineer like Neil. Engineers don’t work in shifts. The well-ordered room with many books and documents reminds me that of a friend’s when he was in medical school and also working shifts in the emergency room. And that was in (drum roll, please), Cincinnati, Ohio.
I agree that this is Natalie all grown up, but consider what happened to her during those years. When Jeanie disappeared, she had no identity and no cash. How did she survive? She remembers her original life, but she obviously doesn’t have Neil’s job. She’s working at a job that has shifts. Her surprised expression at seeing Jeanie may be “Finally, you came back. Now you can fix things.”
My question is WHY did Jeanie time warp away from her prom to the present? And can she do the time warp again and get back to the prom?
Because, that where the Genie was, it was in the future and not the past. Anytime that Jeanie goes to her Genie bottle, she has to go back to the future where it is located, leaving Natalie in the past to live those 6 or 7 years as a girl.
@ Ellie: I made a sort of prediction on this happening, but I thought it might be Guano or the Genie Council doing the summoning leaving teen-Natalie to grow up into a woman. I did not expect nausea to cause Jeanie to return to her bottle in quite this manner and I expect, like the need for sleep, her disorientation caused her to return to her bottle in the present. How did she survive, let alone prosper? I’m sure it will all be revealed in the near future, but I expect those diamond earrings Natalie was wearing on pages 653-654 are the real thing and very, very expensive (because Jeanie doesn’t do things by halves). I’d expect they may have covered her expenses for quite a while.
@ Tom: You’re right, Mondrain painted a slew of art in that cubist manner. Having grown up without Jean as a hinderance Natalie may well have developed a more refined taste in art, and certainly a much better taste in clothing. I’m sticking with a medical profession of some sort.
I’m putting my nickle down on this being grown up Natalie’s apartment. and that Julia’s co-worker is Natalie herself.
Neil’s done fairly well as Natalie for several years now at least. She’s invested in her femininity, showing off her figure, and indulging a fairly extravagant ponytail. I’m pleased that she didn’t deny being female, like a certain girl racer some of us used to know.
I wonder if she’s had boyfriends, lovers, even.
I can’t remember if Neil kept art on his walls, although of course the art might belong to a roommate, possibly Zoey.
The bookcase is tantalizing. Are those manuals from her job. perhaps as a technician of some sort? Maybe Natalie keeps scrapbooks of the space program. Another possibility is that Natalie is putting herself through engineering school–adjusting to being a woman, and overcoming the barriers to female engineers, might have delayed that career course. We’ll see.
I hope we get at least a quick recap of the last few years.
Seems like my post vanished into the interwebs…
Neil’s apartment was filled with shelves well stocked with similar books (page 56) and his “art” consisted of beer and coffee posters (page 57). If this IS Natalie, her taste in art and fashion is definitely improved. And that is an awesome hairdo.
So my idea is that this all happened because Jean got humiliated on Prom night, as we saw in the previous comic. This is the change, leaving Jeannie with two bad choices here. She can go back and make Jean a winner on prom night, or return to this altered history.
I’m worried this “altered history” is unstable, as there is no Jeanie who would go back in time and re-do it. So she will NEED to go back. Quite possibly Guano will show soon explaining that to her.
Damn. And we managed to avoid the paradoxes for so long …
Also, I wonder who will explain her that she doesn’t need to actually sleep with Jean, just fake it somehow …
Think Jean left the past with Neil as Natalie, and this is the new future?
That feels like it would be…. unlikely.
So far, everything that they had done in the past seemed like it was pre-destined, and they were just along for the ride. Sartorelli’s getting shut down due to fraudulent money (from the future).
Jean getting drunk and not remembering prom properly.
Could still go that way, where she will end up going back to fix it, and everything aligns properly.
It certainly does look like it could be Natalie, and it explains the bottle being there. But if that’s the case, what happened to the original Neil in this timeline?
the original Neil was Already there, so nothing happened to him, it was Teenified Natalie that got stuck in the past.
I also think that this is a teenified Natalie who got stuck in the past and had to live those 5 years over again. And once the 5 years were re-lived Jeanie’s bottle appeared in her current apartment since she is the only master left once Neil got poofed back in time.
Does anyone remember if Jeanie’s spell was of fixed time duration or were they supposed to remain in the past until she actively popped them back into the present?
No, she poofed to her bottle, wherever it happened to be in the past.
Well that was unexpected…..I wonder if Natalie ended up together with Roger in this timeline?
This is one of the times I wish two comics were posted in a row…
lol you’re going to get another new page tomorrow. 😉
My first thought was that was a grown up Natalie walking in the door.
But then she doesn’t appear on the cast page.
And we are back in a pandemic time frame with the girl carrying a mask
Right on, I didn’t notice the mask.
It makes sense for her to not be on the cast page, though. It would be pretty spoiler-y otherwise.
If you check the previous few pages, Jean isn’t mentioned on the cast page either. Yes, he and Jeanie are different versions of the same being, but they are separate people.
This girl is wearing green, Neil’s heraldic color.
She’s also wearing blue, Zoey’s heraldic color.
Although I feel pretty sure that is Natalie, is there any chance that could be Zoe? I suspect Natalie has been holding onto the bottle waiting for Jeanie to reappear to set things to rights, but I don’t see how that would be possible at this time. It looks like she has created a life for herself as Natalie in parallel to Neil’s life. Although, going to engineering school would have been a lot easier now as she would have already know the material. Plus she would know which stocks to invest in and bought a lot bit coin when it was trading at just a few bucks a piece.
Try a few fractions of a cent a piece. A 10,000 BTC auction was attempted in 2010 with a starter value of $50. It didn’t sell. If you could actually go back in time and invest in BTC when it was new, $100 investment in 2010 would be worth upwards of $100,000,000 today.
Can you give us a bit of a break down on the dates. The lady is holding a mask so presumably it is 2020 or 2021? It was my understanding that Jean has been Jeanie now for about a year and Jean and Neil had been about 5 years out of high school when that event occurred. If I have those times correct, their Prom would have been around 2014, but since the comic started in 2009, that is not likely. Things have gotten rather messed up.
I do suppose Jeanie has moved farther forward in time and it is even later than when Neil was last seen at his job and Natalie is around 30 years old.
Very hard to tell at this point.
Jeanie Bottle works on a sliding time scale, much like The Simpsons. So things that take place in “the present” in the comics are always taking place in the current time when the comic comes out, regardless of how much in-comic time has actually passed since the beginning of the comic. Which is about a year, at this point.
For this storyline, Jeanie and Neil went back in time “about 7-10 years”, since they are currently in their mid-late 20s in “the present”, and they went back to when they were juniors or seniors in high school. We’re intentionally vague about exact dates.
Oh yes, the sliding time scale aka “the timeline of comics doesn’t make any sense and we are not even trying to explain it”. Well, at least you don’t have characters which remain babies for ten years of in-universe time …
Given what Natalie originally told Rodge her job was – perhaps she is working shifts as a librarian 🙂
“And the lie becomes truth”
Good call… I like it.
Great Scott… this looks heavy.
That means 2 Neil’s have been in the past now?
“Good Grief, we are in the kelvin Time”!!!
As Dr. Emit Brown would say, This time line spud into an alternate time line that is normal for everybody else. but, not for Jeanie and for possibly even Neil/Natalie. That Sports Grace Almanac Changed everything in the future that there currently in right now.
I’ll have to say that Jeanie did indeed mess up time! For herself and Neil at least.
Teen Natalie all grown up? What happened to Neil in the past? If Jeannie poofed to the present, did anyone else? Or did the draw of the Classic Timeline hijack Jeannie’s poof? Does new-Natalie know Rodge? Are they dating? If Jeanne has been missing in time, what has happened to Anderson, Red, the Greeks, Guano, Melvin?
So many questions! CD, thank you for this bonus content because if I had to wait a week for the next comic I would be looking on eBay for LR missiles.
I wonder if Natalie became a mom…
Oh now that I would like to see
Oh great. Jean has screw up the timeline. First the Blue Djinn, now this. He has a knack for causing trouble at the cost of his own personal enjoyment.
Very high probability of “Jeanie is back in ‘The Present’, whenever that is.” Thanks to Fearless Ferret for spotting the mask.
High probability of “Adult Natalie just walked in the door.” Thanks to 50srefugee for noticing the green.
My current theory: Jeanie poofed and got drawn to her bottle in the present (San Dimas time may or may not apply). Natalie finished the prom, and couldn’t find Jeanie, and so had to come back to the present the hard way; possibly avoiding Jean and Neil to avoid paradoxes. Natalie may or may not be aware that Neil and Jeanie have left the continuum, or if she kept track of time she may have popped over to grab the bottle and put it on her shelf just in case. If she didn’t go get it herself, I have no idea how it got there, but it would explain the surprise on Natalie’s face. But in any event, it looks like Jeanie is now back in her proper time, as is Natalie/Neil, except (s)he’s physically five years older.
Problem with this theory: We still don’t know how or why they went back to page 383…
1 bottle was not taken to the past, if there is a auto recall to her bottle to recharge, than back to the “present”
2 Neil and Jean, and now Natalie, stumbled through life up to discovery of the bottle however Natalie claimed it and left it unopened?
1. That seems to be the case, unless this is actually some other girl who only looks like Natalie due to the artstyle.
2. The bottle technically already has an owner, it’s just that said owner was time traveling. I can’t imagine the massive paradox that would occur if the bottle ended up with two genies…
No, I’m guessing if this is the present, Natalie would have retrieved the bottle at some point after the time travel shenanigans and just had it for decoration waiting for Jeanie. Or possibly found it before Jean and Neil, in a desperate attempt to return things to normal and when Jeanie didn’t show up just made a new life for herself the same as everyone else Jeanie has screwed over. But then that would create a parallel timeline, in which Jean never found the bottle, and never became a genie and never created a parallel timeline and–oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed…
We’ll just have to see lol
Yeah. The mask tells us it’s the present. First panel says Jeanie doesn’t know why she’s back in her bottle (i.e. she didn’t poof herself there).
My guess is their trip to the past twisted things around, but not irretrievably so. So we were still in the same universe. Right up until Jeanie ran off on Jean. That created an unrecoverable paradox. Virgin Jean (with gossip spread by the guys at the end of the hall) does not grow up to be a womanizer, so doesn’t find the bottle and open it while fantasizing about Barbra Eden).
Essentially the universe as we knew it blue screened. And when it rebooted, this is the universe now. Natalie never stopped being Jeannie’s master, so the bottle migrated over to her after the “reboot”. Probably poofed to her immediately after Jeanie poofed out of prom night.
Natalie being a smart cookie realized the bottle being with her meant it would be impossible for Jean to find it at the store, open it, and become Jeanie. So understood that the “universe-ending paradox” she’d feared had happened. And she’d have to hang on to the bottle if/until the Jeanie from prom night returned, so they could try to figure out how to fix it. But the reboot sent Jeanie to the initiation point of this whole mess (the moment she left the present to visit the past). No idea if Neil even exists in this universe. Neil and Natalie are the same person, so the reboot may have eliminated the duplicate, giving Natalie priority because she was Jeanie’s master so erasing her would create another paradox.
I wonder if the painting in panel 2 has any significance. It looks like a van Gogh, but I don’t recognize it. The boxes and folders imply some sort of legal, accounting, or actuarial work. But that contradicts the phone call about taking a shift, which implies an hourly job. So my guess is that instead of building a career, Natalie has been spending her time researching the bottle trying to figure out what happened to Jeanie.
There are to many unknown here to decide what happened here and they are
1. Our Jeanie poof back to the future and back to her bottle. But, are we looking at our Jeanie here of somebody else that picked up that bottle?
2. If that not our Jeanie that we are looking at, then who was transformed into a look alike Barbra Eden if it wasn’t Jean?
3. What happen to Natalie and did she become the Chase Champion over Danny Bishop?
4. Where are they right now, besides being back in an alternate future?
5. Is Zoey and Neil still together after they had punch and teen Neil got punched out?
6. The current girl at the door doesn’t need to be either Natalie or Zoey and if she isn’t, then who is she?
7. About the only thing that we know for certain is that we are in an alternate time line going somewhere that we don’t currently know about.
@ Makaira: It looks like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
I agree with your assessment on the books, but they could also be medical. Nurses and interns work shifts, and she might be still studying.
Like the finally of End Game I assume Neil and Jean continued along their chosen paths right up until their present. Jeanie abandoning Natalie in the past (regardless of the reason) would result in Natalie having to follow a new path, possibly never leaving Cincinnati. Your assessment that the bottle migrated to Natalie on its own because she is the “Master” may be spot on, but it’s entirely possible that Natalie doesn’t know it has arrived. That’s a very surprised expression.
I just knotted some, that girl who ever she is, is talking on a cell phone talking to somebody before she see Jeanie. So seeing Jeanie is a complete surprise to here. Based on that, I am going to make a prediction that Julia is Natalie and that Natalie picked Julia as her name going forward from the school prom. Assuming that Julia is actually Natalie, we still don’t know if there in Coco Beach or Cincinnati or someplace else even. We don’t know how she got the Genie Bottle or if she took a trip to Coco Beach and retrieved that bottle on some vacation maybe. At any rate, Neil has been a girl for 6 or 7 years now. As such, Neil has been a girl long enough that he is probably use to being a girl now. So what kind of time line mess is Jeanie going to have to unravel to straighten this mess out?
@Makaira & Mike: The print over the plant, next to the TV, is a section of “Starry Night”. Wrong aspect ratio, and the bright yellow moon in the upper right hand corner is missing. Natalie has chosen instead to focus on the foreground tree–and even that is cropped a bit to the left–there should be more sky.
The print next to the bookcase seems to be Mondrian’s “Composition C” (1935). I’m impressed by the breadth of Natalie’s taste in art. I am not myself a fan of Mondrian’s abstracts, although he did some interesting impressionist works too, like “Farm Near Duivendrecht” (1916).
And now for my theory.
Jean didn’t go back into her bottle when she was in the past before he found the bottle and became a genie.
Jean has gone back to the exact time she moved far enough into the past not to have been become a genie yet. She’s still a genie, and remembers all that has happened up until now–or she wouldn’t be puzzled about where she was.
This is the stranger’s apartment. It could be anywhere.
The other woman doesn’t know the bottle placed on the bookshelf is more than a pretty bottle. She could have bought it at the same gift shop Jean found it, or someone else gifted it to her. But that doesn’t mean her apartment is Cocoa Beach; many people who don’t live in Cocoa Beach or anywhere near it. Not all of them are I Dream of Jeannie fanatics.
The woman can’t be Natalie because in this timeline Jean did not become a genie and couldn’t have changed Neil into Natalie.
At some point, Jeanie will meet the Neal of the timeline she just created as he’s become since his humiliation on prom night: A pathetic looser.
And doesn’t this sound a bit like the plot of A Christmas Carol, only with a lecher instead of a miser learning to mend his ways? Well, some of them. This is Jean Nessman, after all.
Looks like Neil had to spend years as Natalie. I wonder if he’d even want to change back after so long.
Plot twist: Neal enters the room. “Honey, who is your friend?”
Wouldn’t that be an interesting twist.
This is a good lesson on making ripples in time and not waves.
Random observation… what happened to Natalie’s thumbnail on the cast page? All the pages, come to think of it. Is that a clue?
That’s unintentional. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll fix it ASAP.
Unintentional, a likely story… wink, wink.
Who has the bottle in the past?
The Blue Dijin restored her youth in the wine bottle. Has Rouyaa returned??? She and Neil/ Natalie are the only ones who know how important the bottle is. Or it could be Caley all grown up.
Caley has red hair. Youthful-Rouyaa had brown hair but a different shade, and her signature color seems to have been red although it varied. Also, there is no indication that Rouyaa actually knew Jeanie is now the occupant of her former bottle… not that I noticed.
If it is Rouyaa all she knows is that she is face to face with what she thinks is the Blue Dijin. But whoever it is, since she owns the bottle now she is Jeanie’s new master.
OK, then who Julia, that the women that talking on the cell phone to women hat just saw Jeanie and is surprised to see her too! If neither girl is Rouyaa alias Barbra Eden or Natalie alias Neil, then who got the Genie Bottle now and where are they right now, besides being in some apartment building and in what city is it also located in also. Is this our Jeanie that we are looking at or somebody else that look like our Jeanie, but, since Jeanie in the side bare, then if most likely our Jeanie that we are looking at, unless it was Natalie that picked up the Genie Bottle and became Jeanie herself. I don’t think so, but, I thought that I would throw that out there anyway. Does just one girl have this apartment or are there two or three or more girls sharing this apartment? Has Natalie already made her appearance or she hasn’t showed up yet and we are still waiting for her to make her appearance too.
Question! Question! Question!
No, Answers! I only have Question here!
There no telling which way this is going to go.
Rouyaa worked at the lunch counter at Cape Canaveral which would explain the “shift” comment. Jeanie would look like the Blue Dijin to Rouyaa. Small problem convincing her that Jeanie is just Jeanie.
@ Makaira: There’s also a painting in Panel 3 which looks like it might be by Piet Mondrian, a Dutch artist who is not quite as long-dead as Van Gogh. Two works by artists of worldwide note tells me that the lady who just came eback to this place is one with educated tastes.
@ Mike: This lady could well be a medical student or a resident physician. At first I wondered what someone who seems pretty well off is concerned with swapping shirts; she hardly seems to be something like a waitress–or an engineer like Neil. Engineers don’t work in shifts. The well-ordered room with many books and documents reminds me that of a friend’s when he was in medical school and also working shifts in the emergency room. And that was in (drum roll, please), Cincinnati, Ohio.
I agree that this is Natalie all grown up, but consider what happened to her during those years. When Jeanie disappeared, she had no identity and no cash. How did she survive? She remembers her original life, but she obviously doesn’t have Neil’s job. She’s working at a job that has shifts. Her surprised expression at seeing Jeanie may be “Finally, you came back. Now you can fix things.”
My question is WHY did Jeanie time warp away from her prom to the present? And can she do the time warp again and get back to the prom?
Because, that where the Genie was, it was in the future and not the past. Anytime that Jeanie goes to her Genie bottle, she has to go back to the future where it is located, leaving Natalie in the past to live those 6 or 7 years as a girl.
@ Ellie: I made a sort of prediction on this happening, but I thought it might be Guano or the Genie Council doing the summoning leaving teen-Natalie to grow up into a woman. I did not expect nausea to cause Jeanie to return to her bottle in quite this manner and I expect, like the need for sleep, her disorientation caused her to return to her bottle in the present. How did she survive, let alone prosper? I’m sure it will all be revealed in the near future, but I expect those diamond earrings Natalie was wearing on pages 653-654 are the real thing and very, very expensive (because Jeanie doesn’t do things by halves). I’d expect they may have covered her expenses for quite a while.
@ Tom: You’re right, Mondrain painted a slew of art in that cubist manner. Having grown up without Jean as a hinderance Natalie may well have developed a more refined taste in art, and certainly a much better taste in clothing. I’m sticking with a medical profession of some sort.
I’m putting my nickle down on this being grown up Natalie’s apartment. and that Julia’s co-worker is Natalie herself.
Neil’s done fairly well as Natalie for several years now at least. She’s invested in her femininity, showing off her figure, and indulging a fairly extravagant ponytail. I’m pleased that she didn’t deny being female, like a certain girl racer some of us used to know.
I wonder if she’s had boyfriends, lovers, even.
I can’t remember if Neil kept art on his walls, although of course the art might belong to a roommate, possibly Zoey.
The bookcase is tantalizing. Are those manuals from her job. perhaps as a technician of some sort? Maybe Natalie keeps scrapbooks of the space program. Another possibility is that Natalie is putting herself through engineering school–adjusting to being a woman, and overcoming the barriers to female engineers, might have delayed that career course. We’ll see.
I hope we get at least a quick recap of the last few years.
Seems like my post vanished into the interwebs…
Neil’s apartment was filled with shelves well stocked with similar books (page 56) and his “art” consisted of beer and coffee posters (page 57). If this IS Natalie, her taste in art and fashion is definitely improved. And that is an awesome hairdo.
Asking the important question: who will initiate the glomp? I’m betting Jeanie.
Jeanie wouldn’t think there’s anything “gloom-worthy” going on here. She last saw Neil a few hours ago, at most.
So my idea is that this all happened because Jean got humiliated on Prom night, as we saw in the previous comic. This is the change, leaving Jeannie with two bad choices here. She can go back and make Jean a winner on prom night, or return to this altered history.
I’m worried this “altered history” is unstable, as there is no Jeanie who would go back in time and re-do it. So she will NEED to go back. Quite possibly Guano will show soon explaining that to her.
Damn. And we managed to avoid the paradoxes for so long …
Also, I wonder who will explain her that she doesn’t need to actually sleep with Jean, just fake it somehow …