Wow. I take it that's not SKYPE or FACETIME.

And by the hand signs, Phobos rolls with the Westside gang.

For the German impaired, Rosemary says "Where do you come from" and Inner Red replies "Where [or perhaps "How"] [Oden]" I don't have any reference for Oden other than the Japanese soup, which seems like a long shot.

Maybe its a bad connection.

Perhaps it means "Odin," as in the Norse god? I believe the Nazis were big on that sort of stuff. Code phrases? Corrupted memory? Needless poetry about its origin? Fascinating!

I definitely did not anticipate all of the elements of this strip, though they all make sense!

Oh, I think that's a "W" in front of the "Oden", partially covered up by static. Which would make it "Woden," which is definitely the Germanic name for Odin.

Or maybe not "Germanic" but... Gah, I am bad with languages. The only reason I remember the name "Woden" is because that's what Wednesday is named after, and I've always thought "Woden's Day" sounds neater.

After magnifying the image, I agree, WODEN. That does put a whole new spin on things.

Westward readers are more awesome than other people.

D'aww. :)

But now I am trying to figure out whether the skull inside the machine is a normal human skull, or whether it shows a bit too much similarity with the skull we see in the last panel...

Is that thing channelling the ghost of Hitler or something?

You're assuming Hitler is dead in the Westward Universe, doh-ho-ho!

Oh gosh, you're right. Actually, I thought the epiphany event "beamed" him to this planet where he became the covert zombie borg now communicating with Nazi spy Rosemary. Of course, it could be Goebbels.

Turns out I had completely missed the "Rico Ray" strip. Huh.

Ok, so Nazis it is. In which case: Those runes from the skeleton a little while ago are driving me crazy. They don't quite line up to anything I know.

Naturally, I accept the challenge.

Rosemary (or should we call her "Fauxmary") can't be channelling Hitler, because our intrepid chums are interacting with the mecho-skelly-pod nearly 200 years before the Third Reich. Now THAT's an interesting bit to ponder! A post-Nazi spy is communicating with a proto-Nazi, decades before Earth's Epiphany event. Perhaps she can tell her little friend to call off the "party" that would wipe out half of our planet...or give him the very idea!

Nah, I don't think it matters what year it "is" right now. I think Epiphany occurred at many times and places and chunks of 1945 Berlin ended up at all those theres and thens. So you can have "ancient" Nazi relics even hundreds of years in teh past.

So are the Octo-torti actually time traveling Nazi Hunters?

Time... One line, Infinite possibilities

A little more research, and what Inner Red says, "Woher Woden" can apparently mean "From Woden" as a response.
And Woden was a major deity of fury and a carrier-off of the dead in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon myth in the 6th and 7th centuries. As late as the 1700's, farmers "charms" or folk rhymes dedicated crop harvests to Woden to assure good results next season:
“Wôld, Wôld, Wôld”!
Heaven’s giant knows what happens,
He, looking down from heaven,
Providing full jugs and sheaves.
Many a plant grows in the woods.
He is not born and grows not old.
“Wôld, Wôld, Wôld”!

Nazis of their World War II escape earth in 1949 and caused the Epiphany then. At least two other planets they visited and settled also got the same blast treatment upon big launch. The anomaly is because the Escher drive they used sent them retrograde into times past. Hundreds of years at least. And over that time they changed. Certain elements remain but others have changed wildly.

Their technology was sufficiently advanced to make them cyborgs and even for a few to survive in modified form.