Even if we hadn’t divvied this chapter up in a pattern of alternating four-page chunks, I would know this scene was one of mine, because Phil wouldn’t have someone go this hard against Bandit’s baseline character. We were agreed on the “honest thief” contradiction, but at times I felt like I was saying “Thief, Phil!” and he was replying, “Honest, T!”

In Bandit’s defense, it is complicated (and on the next page she’ll get to defend herself). She’s within her rights to complain that the old team, especially Syr’Nj, is treating her more distantly since their postmortem experiences, at least right now. But it is true that setting up a fresh team of Peacemakers in their absence was not quite as much “doing what my fallen friends would have wanted” as she may have made it sound, or believed herself. Bandit’s desire to belong sometimes affects her honesty.

Remember our tally of button images? This one’s a twofer: it has Scipio’s critical face in panel 2 and Rachel’s squeal in panel 5 (edited from “SQUEAL!” by Phil, who preferred to be as phonetic as possible with nonverbalisms like that, when he left them in at all). Only one button left, and it’ll be a while before we get to it, but we’ll get to the character whom it features a lot sooner.