My dream of a Shanna/Xan road trip is dramatically escalating! Assuming Xan survives the next few pages that is. Gotta keep those thoughts positively charged!
He’s definitely proving JJ right about the whole “can’t be reasoned with” thing.
In a sense, Xan’s playing the part of the folks here in the comments who are going “Well if I were up against a guy like JJ, I’d…”
Of course, what he did was just crazy dangerous for Shanna, being as she’s got a gun pointed at her head while this is going down, but he couldn’t really plan for that while he was enacting steps 1 and 2 of his plan.
I actually like the timing of this scene – I really get a sense of how nobody here has quite enough time for everything they want to do (including pay attention/change plans), simply because everything’s happening so fast.
Don’t worry, at that angle it’ll probably just graze her head… probably… ok, yeah that may have been a tactical error, but he can’t exactly do much from his current position
I know I have a knife in my hand I could just remove and stab into your wound … but behold, the awesomeness of my POWER STRIP!
(come to think of it I think a power strip is what they do at Chippendale’s)
Xan does not strike me as someone hard core enough to do that. Also, if you yank out a knife like that the wrong way, you can wind up doing more damage to you than leaving it in till a medical professional can remove it. Xan is a computer guy. The lest thing he needs is permit nerve damage to his hands.
it’s better to leave the knife in for the short term. He could bleed pretty heavily if he pull’s it out besides that gunshot wound is probably sensitive.
Actually, given that seconds count for this situation, bleedout’s more of a mid-term issue. Short-term is the potential for additional damage to the hand causing more pain. Depending on Xan’s pain threshold and how adrenaline’s working for him, that could delay him more than grabbing whatever was handy and smacking the big guy.
That aside, I’m a bit surprised that the power attack elicited that much of a response. Given that he was able to stand after the graze so soon, I figured it wasn’t that deep, obviously I was mistaken. Either that or he just wasn’t expecting any more pain and wasn’t braced for much more than what it took to stand/move the leg.
You just won’t bleed out from a stab wound to the palm, not unless you leave it unattended for hours. But I guess he couldn’t bring himself to do it and risk passing out from the pain.
I don’t see how that last panel makes sense, though. A blunt piece of plastic swung one-handed by a tiny guy on the verge of losing consciousness, struck against a surface wound over clothing… How much pain can that really cause? If we see JJ on his knees tomorrow, I’ll be severely disappointed.
Obviously you’ve never had the pleasure of being hit in a gunshot wound to the leg with a High Quality plastic power strip before? The good strips tend to have a decent amount of metal in them, possibly even coming at a whole 1 lb. Quite the Geek weapon.
I like all these cold logical discourses on how this gent thinks when knifed and presented with his killers backside. Totally justified in that he put wiping his system ahead of defending himself and his allies lives but that might have been more a response he has gone over countless times in his head if ANYTHING were to happen to his Bat Cave then actually being clear headed at this moment.
If my life were at risk I wouldn’t have sweated the extra damage and potential extra bleeding if the weapon most likely to save my entire life in the moment was at hand and my torturer/killer had turned his ass to me. The instinct to remove the knife (however silly by first aid standards) combined with the overpowering urge to save my arse would have been to difficult for me to resist.
If this guy is thinking that far ahead at a time like this then eh should be a nice counter to Shanna who just now started thinking of the consequences of her being here. Should be a great partner-ship.
That said if the guy took a bullet graze with a “ouch” and pops back up I don’t think whacking the wound with a light weight rounded object is going to make him loose control of that gun in any realistic universe.
My question is, just where is the stairs in all of this? I wonder if this will cause Shanna and JJ to fall backward to tumble down them and JJ to break his neck?
Anyone worth shooting once is worth shooting again. and again and again and again until it stops being a threat to you shanna. preferably before he walks up and puts your own gun to your head
Maaan. I wish people would stop talking about how easy it is to kill people. Unless you’ve killed someone, of course, in which case I’m genuinely interested in your experience to the extent that you’re comfortable sharing.
I haven’t personally complained about it, but my problem is this: If she can’t pull the trigger, she shouldn’t have a gun. If you run around with a gun but don’t have the nerve to use it, you are just making the world a more dangerous place. All it takes is one person getting pissed or calling your bluff.
Phrases like “shouldn’t have a gun” don’t really enter into it. This is a matter of necessity, not personal convenience. She got the gun because a multinational corporation wants her erased.
No its a standard statement made regarding gun ownership made by pro and anti gun advocates. One should not have a gun unless they are willing to use it on a target.
Not only is it pointless to waste money on a gun and not use it, but it could get stolen, it could misfire, etc. And most importantly, drawing a gun excites the target and makes them more violent since they now feel threatened. The target could also take the gun from you and kill you with it (like this strip).
As someone who doesn’t own a gun and has never shot anything stronger than a pellet gun, I disagree completely.
Shanna has a need for self-defense, yes. Thing is, there’s plenty of options aside from guns available to fill that need. Tazers, stun-guns and pepper spray/foam are all valid options and also lose a considerable amount of potential for collateral damage. If you buy a gun for self-defense and are not ready to use it*, you really shouldn’t have a gun.
Being ready to use a gun involves learning gun safety, learning how to fire it(being able to shoot what you’re aiming at, understanding the recoil of your gun, etc.) and finally, yes, mentally preparing oneself to shoot to kill. Failing to do any of those steps puts you and others at risk any time you hold a gun. Step 1 greatly reduces the chances of your gun going off when it shouldn’t, step 2 helps to ensure you shoot what you’re aiming at and reduces the potential for collateral damage, and step 3 means you have a better chance of actually protecting yourself instead of having the situation depicted in this page happen instead.
Something else to keep in mind when gearing up for self-defense is having a fallback for situations where using a gun isn’t a good idea, like say for instance, an apartment building. Even if you shoot whoever you’re defending yourself with, you can’t say for sure that the bullet won’t pass through and keep going, potentially through a wall and harm anyone else.
Yes, what you say about owning a gun is true; if you aren’t prepared to train & practice with it, then you’re better off not having it. Any trained soldier who endures actual combat can tell you, life-threatening situations like this gets the brain to go in all sorts of tangents…Something like “mental meltdown.” What keeps them going in those situations is the *training* that keeps them moving & doing *something* to stay alive.
It’s the same when training in empty-handed martial arts: the training involves being in a safe, controlled environment while practicing to turn well-thought-out & rehersed actions into reflex responses. The more training & practice involved, the less of a chance of a *major* goof-up in an actual emergency situation.
If you recognize a NECESSITY for a gun, you have to recognize the necessity for it’s use. The two things are inseparable. Shanna brought a gun into a situation and wasn’t willing to use it…at least, not to effect. Now, instead of what would probably have been a savage beating, she has a gun pointed at her head.
Ultimately, Shanna’s just a fish out of water, here. She talks a big game about seeing this thing through, but deep down, I don’t think she really gets it, yet.
Regarding overpenetration: Hollow points address that issue. Its very unlikely a hollow point will penetrate a wall between apartments, as hollow points are designed to deform on impact, rather than penetrate. If you hit a person, it won’t even make it through, let alone a wall.
Sure, but my point is more that there’s recognising and follow-through, and they’re very different things. And I think uncritically saying “well, I’d have shot him” is maybe a little… something. It fails at the empathy that sepia world demands as a narrative, I think.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the characters in both. But the empathic engagement the story seems to ask for is different, I think.
tl;dr Don’t treat (fictional) life like it’s a (fictional) game.
What people seem to be forgetting here is her own thought process in the last page. “Shoot him in the eye”
Maybe she missed (acceptable, you see her hands) maybe she couldn’t do it at the last second and now that she’s actually shot find it’s even harder, I think people are forgetting that all the training at the target range is very, very different from what she’s doing now.
All the talk of “unwilling to use it” suggests forethought. I don’t think Shanna knew she couldn’t do this until right now.
PART of Shanna was saying “shoot him in the eye.” I’m sure the part of her that was arguing to run earlier was keeping a healthy “oh God what are you doing you’re gonna die” mantra going.
And then it’s easy to rationalize “I shot him once, I can deal with him now” from there. Silly, but easy.
As accurate of a criticism as this is, I’m still disappointed Shanna didn’t take another shot, since it’s looking more and more like it would have been an entirely justified action.
Movies portray it as a simple point and click interface. Bang, guy falls, move on to the next plot point. But it’s a movie and when it’s over it’s over and that’s the end of the thinking. A real life scenario however allows you time to think, reflect, play the “what if” game. My situation was a home invasion. A group of three had been hitting houses. First one was simple, tied up the homeowners. 2nd and 3rd were more violent. The fourth attempt was my own home. I guess they didn’t anticipate my rear door being as solid as it was and it took them 6 or so swift kicks. Could have been more, could have been less, I wasn’t counting at that point just paying more attention to the fact someone was trying to break in the door. Two ran and were later caught, one didn’t. I was hit in the right side but thankfully someone was looking out for me, missed the major organs, perforation to the intestine and a chip in the pelvic bone where the bullet lodged, drywall slowed it down else it might have been worse. Intruder wasn’t as lucky.
I didn’t think much during the situation really… It was the “what if” game that came after that was the biggest thing for me. Did I have to shoot? Would a warning shot have sufficed, did I have to kill? In the moment it happened I was 100% sure what needed to be done. Bleeding, right side was on fire, but the pain wasn’t horrible (until maybe 15 minutes later that is, adrenaline is a hell of a thing) It did feel like slow motion. He fired through the wall at me, when he paused I fired back. Simple enough. His friends cut and ran. Most robbers are surprisingly reluctant to get into a fight with someone who can fight back I found out.
The aftermath was the major shock to deal with. Crying family members calling me a monster for killing their son. Death threats, threat of legal action and civil suits, police investigations trying to figure out if I was “Right” in what I did. I remember being very angry while in the hospital. I was shot, someone tried to kill me, I returned fire to defend myself and now I had all these people saying that if the investigation showed I didn’t act right I’d be going to jail. I protected myself and pretty much all the people talking to me made me feel like I was a criminal, I was in the wrong, I was no better then the guys who broke into my home.
My firearms were taken into evidence. After I got out of the hospital I was pretty much home alone with nothing, all the while his two friends were still on the loose. Fear was a big thing “What if his friends came back to deal with me?” Luckily they didn’t and were caught but even now after 8 years those “bumps in the night” that everyone ignores usually send me into a near anxiety attack until I figure out what it could be. Unexplained noises are usually a prescription for no sleep.
Then there’s the psychological impact. Waking up every morning and walking down the hall to the bathroom. I pass the spot in my room where I was shot every morning and every night. And I walk over the spot where the person I shot passed away at least ten times a day. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at that spot in the house again and not pictured that night or that scene.
I’d like to say I’m the big tough guy the movies portray people to be after they’ve walked through a firefight and taken out an army of the enemy. Like to say it doesn’t bug me. But I can’t. Took me a good three years before I could talk about it with anyone. Own parents, girlfriend at the time, and most of my friends had no idea what happened (Why you limping? Motorcycle accident) until one of the Police officers (He was first on scene and gave me first aid, we still have lunch every Wednesday) told me talking about it might help. It has a bit, but not all that much. Just makes me have to relive it more every time someone asks what happened.
Well with that mess out of the way… Shanna… You fired once. Moment he started closing in on you you should have fired again. Threat mitigation means doing what is necessary until the threat is no longer a threat. The aftermath may suck to deal with, but at least you’re alive to deal with it.
Shanna… You fired once. Moment he started closing in on you you should have fired again. Threat mitigation means doing what is necessary until the threat is no longer a threat. The aftermath may suck to deal with, but at least you’re alive to deal with it.
This is what the “shoot him” and the “be smart about it” people are trying to say. Yes, killing someone is a serious thing. Yes, many people deal with the aftermath, no matter how right they were, for years afterward.
But many people who don’t, in a situation like this, do nothing afterwards but rot in the ground. Makes the choices pretty simple.
It took me a little less then 15 minutes to write that, but about 4 hours to push the post comment button. But I figured Mr Ak asked for something, and it’s one of the few times in my life I could supply an answer that’s rather unique to a subject.
“Most robbers are surprisingly reluctant to get into a fight with someone who can fight back”
Yep. “Criminals are a superstitious & cowardly lot.”
Actual criminals are HAPPY to see more anti-gun legislation to come out of government…It means there will be an increase in *helpless victims* for them to terrorize. Just like the proverbial schoolyard bully, they’re reluctant actually do something harmful if they feel that they’re going to take some injury on themselves in the process. This is even true as a Law of Nature, when the predator has to take its prey with the *least risk to itself* as it can.
The big-timers, sure. It’s nice to know that you won’t get hit with a lucky pistol shoot while you’re reloading your black-market machine gun. No gun-control legislation is likely to affect the price or availability of guns that are already flagrantly illegal for civilian possession. But if the controls are put in place sensibly so they can actually do their job, the average criminal is going to find guns rarer and more expensive, and will be therefore less likely to possess one.
That power strip is a lot more effective because of where he’s applying it. Ugh!
I don’t know about knocking someone off, but it’s pretty easy to knock someone out (though not as consequence free as in the comic books). Also to leave them on the ground in too much pain to get up. The former was an accident I saw, the latter an accident I was part of. (It’s usually a bad idea to accept someone else’s willingness to take foolish chances.) I would never do that to anyone on purpose. It’s more a matter of where than how hard. I’m not going to say where, though. I’ve also seen a couple of really bloody hand injuries that didn’t cause anyone to “bleed out”.
This guy has a giant handlebar mustache and thinning hair pulled into a ponytail. As far as assassin/tough-guy-for-hire profiles go, that is pretty distinctive.
Blood conducts electricity pretty well (its the salt) Am I interpreting this wrong but that looks like the unpluged end of the powerstrip in the background. So basically it may as well be a stick that Xan is jamming into the wound. Also he has the flat side not the energized side pointing inward so if it was turned on i dont see how it could shock
h20 does not conduct electricity unless you add salt. Salt + water = electrolytic solution. If you don’t believe me, plug two wires into the socket (110volt) place one bare end in one side of a glass casserole dish full of water. run a wire from the other side of the glass dish to the tip of a light bulb. Connect the base of the light bulb to the other side of the 110 volts. The bulb is off. Add salt. Light bulb lights up. wear rubber gloves. Your sweat on your finger tips will f*ck the experiment up. Also the sweat will get you a potentially lethal shock. THIS IS DANGEROUS SHIT do not try this at home.
If I recall the number correctly from my studies, distilled water has an insulating capacity approximately six times greater than dry air. So yes, it’s all that messy stuff, not the water itself that makes humans conductive.
I was already willing my suspension of disbelief on Xan not being a proper paranoid. I mean, come on, I expected his room having at least mics and cameras recording what happens on his room, backups and a dead man switch that publishes the last logs on all social and anti-social media. Regular people do that, right?
His tinfoil hat was only cosmetic (strange, massed flies) after all.
I hope his team can do well in Highlander without their pyro tonight.
Better hope he isn’t, if character data is saved to the player’s hard drive instead of online somewhere. Because if that’s the case, and Xan WAS E-Merl, then he’s not anymore and E-Merl won’t be coming back. Probably.
Either way, he’d better step on the gas, before things get dicey.
I’m really hoping they don’t cut this scene short, it really stabs home the danger Shanna is in and the lengths with which HR is willing to go in order to kill any risk to his corporation.
You could almost say, it strikes you with a nearly concussive blast, and keeps you knocked off balance and teetering on one leg.
JJ still might have that piece of paper he wrote something down on. I kinda think it was one of the 4’s addresses. Someone might want to correct that! Like. By shooting him in the head. Or something.
I just knew one of the four might be in real-life serious danger after all that death talk a few pages ago!
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the greatest psychological pressure against shooting someone applied to that first shot? Doesn’t the first shot usually liberate people and cause them to empty the mag whether they need to or not?
I just don’t buy “Shoot him shoot him oh god SHOOT HIM DEAD” as her internal monologue if she then goes on to think “OK, that was just a warning shot, I guess, oh look, he’s standing up, what do I do now”.
she didn’t think that, she said “it was just a warning shot”, she was trying to bluff that she wasn’t a bad aim, she was just “warning” him, when she actually meant to shoot to kill, but failed.
Well yeah, but she stopped herself from firing again, which means she internally rationalized the first bullet as a “warning shot”. AFAIK, once people under pressure go over that first hurdle and pull the trigger, they tend to go all-out and blow their whole load whether or not there is an actual threat left. In Shanna’s case there’s obviously still a threat, and yet she managed to rein her MDK impulse in because PLOT.
I wanted this guy dead. Mainly so he wouldn’t appear any more.
Has anyone noticed how utterly annoying anyone with a moustache is in this strip? Daedalus, this guy.
I have no idea how long this strip will take to play out, but it is boring for the villain protagonists to win so easily time after time.
It only seems fair for Handlebar J. to die here. Just so evil loses one in Sepia world. Realistically Carol and Daedalus will just get another Rent-A-Thug, and we would have Shanna showing her chops as a protagonist.
Your hatred of him only makes him stronger & drags you to the Dark Side, where he’s already lurking…Staring back at you…Waiting for you to cross that line & join him…
Therein lay the proof this guy is a professional. Had he roared out, “I’ll kill you bitch!” and lunged at her, Shanna would have been more likely to shoot because it would be a reaction. Instead, he gave her time to think and to doubt. He made a threat of death, but did not give it any certainty. He offered a way out. Even if she win’t admit it, she had to at least unconsciously be considering the deal.
I disagree. I think JJ has shown himself a fairly honorable guy. I think if Shanna did as he asked, he would indeed leave her alone (while also subscribing to all of her blogs and reading every post and generally keeping tabs on her actions for a time: He’s not an idiot). He was hired to squash her investigation, not her skull. . At the same time, I think his threats, while masterfully not spoken, remain quite serious: Just cause he doesn’t want to kill her doesn’t mean he won’t kill the hell out of her if that becomes the most sensible course of action.
By JJ’s own definition of reasonableness, there should be a way to get him to back down, short of killing him. He’s a mercenary. If the costs of this job are too high, he’ll drop it.
You know, once you fire once, it’s a lot easier to fire again. And a “professional” would KNOW this, there is no way he would advance upon a woman leveling a gun on him after just being shot. That isn’t being brave or calculating, it’s just being very, very, stupid. In real life, he never would have done that, and if he had, she would have shot him MULTIPLE times. This page was poor writing; if you wanted to set it up so that xan and shanna go on the run, you should have done it differently in a somewhat plausible fashion.
Shanna is not a professional. I may be reading this wrong, but I think J J did what he did because he could see it in her face. She was scared out of her mind. Do you honestly think this is the first time he has been held at gun point? I have little doubt he has gotten himself out of situations like this by being able to tell if a person has the mentality and state of mind to actually shot to kill.
the “professional” referenced is JJ. And if somebody is scared with a gun on you it means you don’t do anything, ANYTHING that would startle them and cause them to pull the trigger. Like, you know, menacingly advancing towards them.
For the first time in Guilded Age history, I am banning someone from the comments section because they bring me down.
Guesticus, nearly all of your posts are shitty, negative comments. I have to force myself to read the comments section every day just because I might read yours. It was fun once.
I don’t see why I (and possibly others) have to suffer because you have to post this way. But it is over now. We warned you that you were starting to make us and others uncomfortable. This is about more than simply wishing death on characters constantly. This is about your overall tone, your negative attitude, and how much you harsh my (and T’s) personal buzz.
I would love to have worked this out with you personally, privately… but since you began posting, you have listed your e-mail as “not@chance.com,” thereby rendering that impossible.
Just in case there was any doubt, I’m thoroughly backing Phil here. I haven’t always been active on these boards but even I was seeing the problem, and gave Guesticus a warning before this. I’m sorry about this, but we have to keep this a nice space for the rest of you.
Glad to see you were reluctant to use the banhammer.
I know plenty of webcomic folk for whom it is the first and only resort to every ripple in their perfect plan.
.
Mr Willis of the Walkyverse comes to mind. Banned me for saying Thundercats is better than Transformers. But then I suppose everyone has to have a quirk.
The biggest surprise on this page is that Xan uses Google Chrome. It seems so out of character for him not to be using a more privacy-conscious browser.
Whilst Shanna failing to fire again should have been surprising the feel of the writing suggested she would not so it wasn’t even though I think a “real” Shanna would have. That guy is hella physically intimidating even if he talks careful and polite. I could see her totally freezing up and never firing in the first place but once firing. Well, anyway not surprising.
The banhammering in the comments SHOULDN’T have been surprising since it has had lots of foreshadowing but somehow it was a little I guess because I, for once, just couldn’t put myself in the author’s heads. I’m usually capable of seeing things from other peoples perspectives even if I don’t agree with them but some aspects of what I thought were the author’s personalities don’t jive with other demonstrated parts. So I was surprised and I suppose entertained by that surprise. (I’m thinking this is because I accepted some statements the author made about their nature and those statements are in fact false [which is totally OK. Just muddied my prediction abilities when I bought into it])
The story and the comments continue to be a great diversion.
I might have missed a few comments, but one thing I didn’t see anyone mention is that Shanna no longer had a (somewhat) clear line of fire, as of panel 4. Before that, Xan was lying down, and was at less risk of getting hit by a stray round.
Come to think of it, if Shanna was going for a headshot, her first shot might’ve hit closer to Xan’s than JJ’s. She might’ve been worried about hitting Xan with her second shot, even before he pulled himself up into her line of fire.
Panel 3 was probably the only panel where she could’ve been reasonably sure of hitting JJ and not Xan.
I think I just died a little inside at seeing how messy Xan’s desktop is with icons.
Not to worry, He just system wiped everything.
It deleted all the system.
He
accidentallyintentionally all his hard drives.He had four separate laptops there at least. Probably networked… but still…
Is that what that was? For a second there I thought that he’d decided to spend his dying moments gaming.
If Shanna hadn’t gone back he would have. Instead he’s going to spend his dying moments pwning.
No, he just has that many programs.
No, he just really likes desktop icons. Most of them don’t actually function.
That’s messy? Try needing multiple screens to display a single desktop.
I feel your pain, Xan; a knife in the hand is nothing compared to having to delete files. Ouch.
Could be worse. At least his TF2 hats are all synced to Steam Cloud.
He’ll still have to re-download any custom maps his favorite server has in rotation.
Mine is too, I never look at it anyway so I don’t mind it getting full.
inb4 this is phil’s actual desktop in the screenshot.
i dont see any mention of cyclops or pokemon. i dont think it’s phil’s
Killing everyone that wrongs you is moronic. Threats, bribes, blackmail and beatings leave a much smaller and less corspey trail.
It’s still evil.
…..your Point?
Still a much more practical alternative, in this line of work ethics will get you left behind
Not seeing the issue here.
My dream of a Shanna/Xan road trip is dramatically escalating! Assuming Xan survives the next few pages that is. Gotta keep those thoughts positively charged!
It might even be more likely now that Xan has JJ’s car keys.
Damn it Xan, stop being so idealistic.
He’s definitely proving JJ right about the whole “can’t be reasoned with” thing.
In a sense, Xan’s playing the part of the folks here in the comments who are going “Well if I were up against a guy like JJ, I’d…”
Of course, what he did was just crazy dangerous for Shanna, being as she’s got a gun pointed at her head while this is going down, but he couldn’t really plan for that while he was enacting steps 1 and 2 of his plan.
I actually like the timing of this scene – I really get a sense of how nobody here has quite enough time for everything they want to do (including pay attention/change plans), simply because everything’s happening so fast.
Don’t worry, at that angle it’ll probably just graze her head… probably… ok, yeah that may have been a tactical error, but he can’t exactly do much from his current position
note that she is the one with the finger on the trigger. JJ is holding her by the wrist.
I know I have a knife in my hand I could just remove and stab into your wound … but behold, the awesomeness of my POWER STRIP!
(come to think of it I think a power strip is what they do at Chippendale’s)
Xan does not strike me as someone hard core enough to do that. Also, if you yank out a knife like that the wrong way, you can wind up doing more damage to you than leaving it in till a medical professional can remove it. Xan is a computer guy. The lest thing he needs is permit nerve damage to his hands.
I’m pretty sure trying to remove the knife would actually cause more damage to Xan and put him at greater risk of bleeding out.
Although yeah: improvised weapon: power strip.
The knife really is still in his hand, as you can see in that panel. It might not be the easiest weapon for him to use at the moment.
it’s better to leave the knife in for the short term. He could bleed pretty heavily if he pull’s it out besides that gunshot wound is probably sensitive.
> pull’s
Actually, given that seconds count for this situation, bleedout’s more of a mid-term issue. Short-term is the potential for additional damage to the hand causing more pain. Depending on Xan’s pain threshold and how adrenaline’s working for him, that could delay him more than grabbing whatever was handy and smacking the big guy.
That aside, I’m a bit surprised that the power attack elicited that much of a response. Given that he was able to stand after the graze so soon, I figured it wasn’t that deep, obviously I was mistaken. Either that or he just wasn’t expecting any more pain and wasn’t braced for much more than what it took to stand/move the leg.
Xan casts Power Word: Strip!
…But JJ resists and keeps his clothes on!
Good thing, too. Those clothes are the only thing keeping his chest hair from simply levelling the building with its might.
You just won’t bleed out from a stab wound to the palm, not unless you leave it unattended for hours. But I guess he couldn’t bring himself to do it and risk passing out from the pain.
I don’t see how that last panel makes sense, though. A blunt piece of plastic swung one-handed by a tiny guy on the verge of losing consciousness, struck against a surface wound over clothing… How much pain can that really cause? If we see JJ on his knees tomorrow, I’ll be severely disappointed.
Obviously you’ve never had the pleasure of being hit in a gunshot wound to the leg with a High Quality plastic power strip before? The good strips tend to have a decent amount of metal in them, possibly even coming at a whole 1 lb. Quite the Geek weapon.
In my house, I have several power strips with a metal casing. They’re heavy as heck. I’m guessing this is one of those.
FarleySwayze.gif
I like all these cold logical discourses on how this gent thinks when knifed and presented with his killers backside. Totally justified in that he put wiping his system ahead of defending himself and his allies lives but that might have been more a response he has gone over countless times in his head if ANYTHING were to happen to his Bat Cave then actually being clear headed at this moment.
If my life were at risk I wouldn’t have sweated the extra damage and potential extra bleeding if the weapon most likely to save my entire life in the moment was at hand and my torturer/killer had turned his ass to me. The instinct to remove the knife (however silly by first aid standards) combined with the overpowering urge to save my arse would have been to difficult for me to resist.
If this guy is thinking that far ahead at a time like this then eh should be a nice counter to Shanna who just now started thinking of the consequences of her being here. Should be a great partner-ship.
That said if the guy took a bullet graze with a “ouch” and pops back up I don’t think whacking the wound with a light weight rounded object is going to make him loose control of that gun in any realistic universe.
Shanna what did I tell you? Empty your entire magazine into the flesh golem before he can close the distance, damn it.
My question is, just where is the stairs in all of this? I wonder if this will cause Shanna and JJ to fall backward to tumble down them and JJ to break his neck?
Anyone worth shooting once is worth shooting again. and again and again and again until it stops being a threat to you shanna. preferably before he walks up and puts your own gun to your head
Maaan. I wish people would stop talking about how easy it is to kill people. Unless you’ve killed someone, of course, in which case I’m genuinely interested in your experience to the extent that you’re comfortable sharing.
I haven’t personally complained about it, but my problem is this: If she can’t pull the trigger, she shouldn’t have a gun. If you run around with a gun but don’t have the nerve to use it, you are just making the world a more dangerous place. All it takes is one person getting pissed or calling your bluff.
Phrases like “shouldn’t have a gun” don’t really enter into it. This is a matter of necessity, not personal convenience. She got the gun because a multinational corporation wants her erased.
No its a standard statement made regarding gun ownership made by pro and anti gun advocates. One should not have a gun unless they are willing to use it on a target.
Not only is it pointless to waste money on a gun and not use it, but it could get stolen, it could misfire, etc. And most importantly, drawing a gun excites the target and makes them more violent since they now feel threatened. The target could also take the gun from you and kill you with it (like this strip).
As someone who doesn’t own a gun and has never shot anything stronger than a pellet gun, I disagree completely.
Shanna has a need for self-defense, yes. Thing is, there’s plenty of options aside from guns available to fill that need. Tazers, stun-guns and pepper spray/foam are all valid options and also lose a considerable amount of potential for collateral damage. If you buy a gun for self-defense and are not ready to use it*, you really shouldn’t have a gun.
Being ready to use a gun involves learning gun safety, learning how to fire it(being able to shoot what you’re aiming at, understanding the recoil of your gun, etc.) and finally, yes, mentally preparing oneself to shoot to kill. Failing to do any of those steps puts you and others at risk any time you hold a gun. Step 1 greatly reduces the chances of your gun going off when it shouldn’t, step 2 helps to ensure you shoot what you’re aiming at and reduces the potential for collateral damage, and step 3 means you have a better chance of actually protecting yourself instead of having the situation depicted in this page happen instead.
Something else to keep in mind when gearing up for self-defense is having a fallback for situations where using a gun isn’t a good idea, like say for instance, an apartment building. Even if you shoot whoever you’re defending yourself with, you can’t say for sure that the bullet won’t pass through and keep going, potentially through a wall and harm anyone else.
Yes, what you say about owning a gun is true; if you aren’t prepared to train & practice with it, then you’re better off not having it. Any trained soldier who endures actual combat can tell you, life-threatening situations like this gets the brain to go in all sorts of tangents…Something like “mental meltdown.” What keeps them going in those situations is the *training* that keeps them moving & doing *something* to stay alive.
It’s the same when training in empty-handed martial arts: the training involves being in a safe, controlled environment while practicing to turn well-thought-out & rehersed actions into reflex responses. The more training & practice involved, the less of a chance of a *major* goof-up in an actual emergency situation.
If you recognize a NECESSITY for a gun, you have to recognize the necessity for it’s use. The two things are inseparable. Shanna brought a gun into a situation and wasn’t willing to use it…at least, not to effect. Now, instead of what would probably have been a savage beating, she has a gun pointed at her head.
Ultimately, Shanna’s just a fish out of water, here. She talks a big game about seeing this thing through, but deep down, I don’t think she really gets it, yet.
Regarding overpenetration: Hollow points address that issue. Its very unlikely a hollow point will penetrate a wall between apartments, as hollow points are designed to deform on impact, rather than penetrate. If you hit a person, it won’t even make it through, let alone a wall.
Sure, but my point is more that there’s recognising and follow-through, and they’re very different things. And I think uncritically saying “well, I’d have shot him” is maybe a little… something. It fails at the empathy that sepia world demands as a narrative, I think.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the characters in both. But the empathic engagement the story seems to ask for is different, I think.
tl;dr Don’t treat (fictional) life like it’s a (fictional) game.
What people seem to be forgetting here is her own thought process in the last page. “Shoot him in the eye”
Maybe she missed (acceptable, you see her hands) maybe she couldn’t do it at the last second and now that she’s actually shot find it’s even harder, I think people are forgetting that all the training at the target range is very, very different from what she’s doing now.
All the talk of “unwilling to use it” suggests forethought. I don’t think Shanna knew she couldn’t do this until right now.
PART of Shanna was saying “shoot him in the eye.” I’m sure the part of her that was arguing to run earlier was keeping a healthy “oh God what are you doing you’re gonna die” mantra going.
And then it’s easy to rationalize “I shot him once, I can deal with him now” from there. Silly, but easy.
“If I were in this situation, I’d act soooooo much smarter!”
9_9
Let’s be honest… if I were in this situation, I’d be a gibbering mess by now.
That’s exactly what I said! :D
Shanna already got farther than I would have, pulling the trigger and all.
If I were in this situation, I would shit my pants and hope the smell was enough to ward off the attacker.
…Or maybe laugh himself to death, thus sparing you the need to shoot…
If I were in this situation, I’d be in a different situation with some similarities but also important differences.
As accurate of a criticism as this is, I’m still disappointed Shanna didn’t take another shot, since it’s looking more and more like it would have been an entirely justified action.
Movies portray it as a simple point and click interface. Bang, guy falls, move on to the next plot point. But it’s a movie and when it’s over it’s over and that’s the end of the thinking. A real life scenario however allows you time to think, reflect, play the “what if” game. My situation was a home invasion. A group of three had been hitting houses. First one was simple, tied up the homeowners. 2nd and 3rd were more violent. The fourth attempt was my own home. I guess they didn’t anticipate my rear door being as solid as it was and it took them 6 or so swift kicks. Could have been more, could have been less, I wasn’t counting at that point just paying more attention to the fact someone was trying to break in the door. Two ran and were later caught, one didn’t. I was hit in the right side but thankfully someone was looking out for me, missed the major organs, perforation to the intestine and a chip in the pelvic bone where the bullet lodged, drywall slowed it down else it might have been worse. Intruder wasn’t as lucky.
I didn’t think much during the situation really… It was the “what if” game that came after that was the biggest thing for me. Did I have to shoot? Would a warning shot have sufficed, did I have to kill? In the moment it happened I was 100% sure what needed to be done. Bleeding, right side was on fire, but the pain wasn’t horrible (until maybe 15 minutes later that is, adrenaline is a hell of a thing) It did feel like slow motion. He fired through the wall at me, when he paused I fired back. Simple enough. His friends cut and ran. Most robbers are surprisingly reluctant to get into a fight with someone who can fight back I found out.
The aftermath was the major shock to deal with. Crying family members calling me a monster for killing their son. Death threats, threat of legal action and civil suits, police investigations trying to figure out if I was “Right” in what I did. I remember being very angry while in the hospital. I was shot, someone tried to kill me, I returned fire to defend myself and now I had all these people saying that if the investigation showed I didn’t act right I’d be going to jail. I protected myself and pretty much all the people talking to me made me feel like I was a criminal, I was in the wrong, I was no better then the guys who broke into my home.
My firearms were taken into evidence. After I got out of the hospital I was pretty much home alone with nothing, all the while his two friends were still on the loose. Fear was a big thing “What if his friends came back to deal with me?” Luckily they didn’t and were caught but even now after 8 years those “bumps in the night” that everyone ignores usually send me into a near anxiety attack until I figure out what it could be. Unexplained noises are usually a prescription for no sleep.
Then there’s the psychological impact. Waking up every morning and walking down the hall to the bathroom. I pass the spot in my room where I was shot every morning and every night. And I walk over the spot where the person I shot passed away at least ten times a day. I don’t think I’ve ever looked at that spot in the house again and not pictured that night or that scene.
I’d like to say I’m the big tough guy the movies portray people to be after they’ve walked through a firefight and taken out an army of the enemy. Like to say it doesn’t bug me. But I can’t. Took me a good three years before I could talk about it with anyone. Own parents, girlfriend at the time, and most of my friends had no idea what happened (Why you limping? Motorcycle accident) until one of the Police officers (He was first on scene and gave me first aid, we still have lunch every Wednesday) told me talking about it might help. It has a bit, but not all that much. Just makes me have to relive it more every time someone asks what happened.
Well with that mess out of the way… Shanna… You fired once. Moment he started closing in on you you should have fired again. Threat mitigation means doing what is necessary until the threat is no longer a threat. The aftermath may suck to deal with, but at least you’re alive to deal with it.
This is what the “shoot him” and the “be smart about it” people are trying to say. Yes, killing someone is a serious thing. Yes, many people deal with the aftermath, no matter how right they were, for years afterward.
But many people who don’t, in a situation like this, do nothing afterwards but rot in the ground. Makes the choices pretty simple.
I’m glad you made it out of that situation alive, bro. You did what needed to be done, and I hope you come to peace with it.
Yeah, no kidding. Thanks for sharing that one.
It took me a little less then 15 minutes to write that, but about 4 hours to push the post comment button. But I figured Mr Ak asked for something, and it’s one of the few times in my life I could supply an answer that’s rather unique to a subject.
sir, can I repost your comment, leaving you anonymous? I think something like that needs to be shared.
Anonymous is good, I don’t mind
Wow. Yeah. I didn’t actually expect anyone to do it.
Thank you so much for giving your perspective.
I’m with them. Thank you so much for sharing. That insight into a real gun fight is just…it renders me speechless.
“Most robbers are surprisingly reluctant to get into a fight with someone who can fight back”
Yep. “Criminals are a superstitious & cowardly lot.”
Actual criminals are HAPPY to see more anti-gun legislation to come out of government…It means there will be an increase in *helpless victims* for them to terrorize. Just like the proverbial schoolyard bully, they’re reluctant actually do something harmful if they feel that they’re going to take some injury on themselves in the process. This is even true as a Law of Nature, when the predator has to take its prey with the *least risk to itself* as it can.
The big-timers, sure. It’s nice to know that you won’t get hit with a lucky pistol shoot while you’re reloading your black-market machine gun. No gun-control legislation is likely to affect the price or availability of guns that are already flagrantly illegal for civilian possession. But if the controls are put in place sensibly so they can actually do their job, the average criminal is going to find guns rarer and more expensive, and will be therefore less likely to possess one.
That power strip is a lot more effective because of where he’s applying it. Ugh!
I don’t know about knocking someone off, but it’s pretty easy to knock someone out (though not as consequence free as in the comic books). Also to leave them on the ground in too much pain to get up. The former was an accident I saw, the latter an accident I was part of. (It’s usually a bad idea to accept someone else’s willingness to take foolish chances.) I would never do that to anyone on purpose. It’s more a matter of where than how hard. I’m not going to say where, though. I’ve also seen a couple of really bloody hand injuries that didn’t cause anyone to “bleed out”.
Again, yuck!
This guy has a giant handlebar mustache and thinning hair pulled into a ponytail. As far as assassin/tough-guy-for-hire profiles go, that is pretty distinctive.
Cut/dye hair, shave moustache. Boom, basically new guy. Being a bit distinctive in easily modifyable areas can be a boon to escaping notice.
How does Xan have time for Arkerra AND WoW?
Well he did just prove that he is good at working a computer with one hand.
So obviously he plays both at once.
That icon goes off-frame. It actually says, “WoWILoveArkerra.”
Well, you see, WoW is what he plays to have fun. Arkerra is his job. He’s a professional gold farmer.
Clearly he only plays WoW to remind him how much more interesting Arkerra is.
*And* the Sniper Elite demo.
Blood conducts electricity pretty well (its the salt) Am I interpreting this wrong but that looks like the unpluged end of the powerstrip in the background. So basically it may as well be a stick that Xan is jamming into the wound. Also he has the flat side not the energized side pointing inward so if it was turned on i dont see how it could shock
Who said anything about it shocking?
Electricity doesn’t enter into it. He’s presumably clubbing JJ in his open gunshot wound with a hunk of plastic and metal.
It’s not plugged in. You can see the plug behind Xan’s head.
Actually, most of the human body conducts electricity pretty well – it’s not the salt, it’s the WATER.
Technically it’s the ions in the water, but moot point overall.
h20 does not conduct electricity unless you add salt. Salt + water = electrolytic solution. If you don’t believe me, plug two wires into the socket (110volt) place one bare end in one side of a glass casserole dish full of water. run a wire from the other side of the glass dish to the tip of a light bulb. Connect the base of the light bulb to the other side of the 110 volts. The bulb is off. Add salt. Light bulb lights up. wear rubber gloves. Your sweat on your finger tips will f*ck the experiment up. Also the sweat will get you a potentially lethal shock. THIS IS DANGEROUS SHIT do not try this at home.
If I recall the number correctly from my studies, distilled water has an insulating capacity approximately six times greater than dry air. So yes, it’s all that messy stuff, not the water itself that makes humans conductive.
If you happen to get a clump of nerves with a shot of electricity, that’s just an added bonus…
Team Fortress 2?
I was already willing my suspension of disbelief on Xan not being a proper paranoid. I mean, come on, I expected his room having at least mics and cameras recording what happens on his room, backups and a dead man switch that publishes the last logs on all social and anti-social media. Regular people do that, right?
His tinfoil hat was only cosmetic (strange, massed flies) after all.
I hope his team can do well in Highlander without their pyro tonight.
too bad hes not the spy. fragging useless in highlander.
he genuinely looks a bit like e-merl in that last panel, never noticed it before:)
Just imagine he IS E-Merl.
Better hope he isn’t, if character data is saved to the player’s hard drive instead of online somewhere. Because if that’s the case, and Xan WAS E-Merl, then he’s not anymore and E-Merl won’t be coming back. Probably.
Knifehand attack of opportunity WASTED, Xan. >:[
He’s the Horde drummer all the way.
“Wipe everything?”
What he should really have had is a webcam that periodically dumps its contents to a secure storage site.
Actually, he might have that too. And by wiping the local drive, he’s ensuring JJ can’t trace to it very easily.
Only if his drive’s encrypted. Which, I suppose, it might be. But then, turning it off would have been sufficient to keep him out.
Personally I’m disappointed. I was expecting thermite.
Hey, Xan’s got J.J.’s car keys. That could come in…handy.
Do you think he could turn the situation over?
Either way, he’d better step on the gas, before things get dicey.
I’m really hoping they don’t cut this scene short, it really stabs home the danger Shanna is in and the lengths with which HR is willing to go in order to kill any risk to his corporation.
You could almost say, it strikes you with a nearly concussive blast, and keeps you knocked off balance and teetering on one leg.
The question is whether he can work a manual transmission.
JJ still might have that piece of paper he wrote something down on. I kinda think it was one of the 4’s addresses. Someone might want to correct that! Like. By shooting him in the head. Or something.
I just knew one of the four might be in real-life serious danger after all that death talk a few pages ago!
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the greatest psychological pressure against shooting someone applied to that first shot? Doesn’t the first shot usually liberate people and cause them to empty the mag whether they need to or not?
I just don’t buy “Shoot him shoot him oh god SHOOT HIM DEAD” as her internal monologue if she then goes on to think “OK, that was just a warning shot, I guess, oh look, he’s standing up, what do I do now”.
she didn’t think that, she said “it was just a warning shot”, she was trying to bluff that she wasn’t a bad aim, she was just “warning” him, when she actually meant to shoot to kill, but failed.
Well yeah, but she stopped herself from firing again, which means she internally rationalized the first bullet as a “warning shot”. AFAIK, once people under pressure go over that first hurdle and pull the trigger, they tend to go all-out and blow their whole load whether or not there is an actual threat left. In Shanna’s case there’s obviously still a threat, and yet she managed to rein her MDK impulse in because PLOT.
I am so disappointed in you Shanna.
I wanted this guy dead. Mainly so he wouldn’t appear any more.
Has anyone noticed how utterly annoying anyone with a moustache is in this strip? Daedalus, this guy.
I have no idea how long this strip will take to play out, but it is boring for the villain protagonists to win so easily time after time.
It only seems fair for Handlebar J. to die here. Just so evil loses one in Sepia world. Realistically Carol and Daedalus will just get another Rent-A-Thug, and we would have Shanna showing her chops as a protagonist.
And above all, no more dialogue from this idiot.
I did not notice. In fact I think I’ve loved every character with a moustache, now that you’ve pointed this out.
Besides, he’s on team evil, your hatred only makes him stronger.
Your hatred of him only makes him stronger & drags you to the Dark Side, where he’s already lurking…Staring back at you…Waiting for you to cross that line & join him…
Therein lay the proof this guy is a professional. Had he roared out, “I’ll kill you bitch!” and lunged at her, Shanna would have been more likely to shoot because it would be a reaction. Instead, he gave her time to think and to doubt. He made a threat of death, but did not give it any certainty. He offered a way out. Even if she win’t admit it, she had to at least unconsciously be considering the deal.
Oh, maybe he ends up dead by accident.
…
Or in a glas tube.
Why does nobody ever call the police?
Police would take a while to get there and I don’t think JJ is the sort of person you give a lot of time. Also Shanna’s hands are busy.
Because none of the three wants the police involved.
Police don’t stop crime. Police show up after the blood is already cold.
Showing up while stuff is in progress makes them very nervous.
When seconds count, the police are minutes away.
No, seriously. Call for a pizza delivery, an ambulance & the police. See who shows up first…And last.
dudes car keys are on that knife.
also, he’s pulling quite the few words there. but he’s ofcourse still planning to just straight out kill her.
Most probably… but it sure would be nice is she told her editor that the story was a dead end and she was going on vacation somewhere unrelated first.
I disagree. I think JJ has shown himself a fairly honorable guy. I think if Shanna did as he asked, he would indeed leave her alone (while also subscribing to all of her blogs and reading every post and generally keeping tabs on her actions for a time: He’s not an idiot). He was hired to squash her investigation, not her skull. . At the same time, I think his threats, while masterfully not spoken, remain quite serious: Just cause he doesn’t want to kill her doesn’t mean he won’t kill the hell out of her if that becomes the most sensible course of action.
By JJ’s own definition of reasonableness, there should be a way to get him to back down, short of killing him. He’s a mercenary. If the costs of this job are too high, he’ll drop it.
The problem is that the cost of failing a job, to him, would be ENORMOUS – his reputation is what makes him well-paid.
XAN THE TECHNOMANCER has joined to party.
Involuntary spasm from JJ screaming in her face leads Shanna to having a severe head wound. JJ brings her in and they stick her in a tube.
Hijinx ensue.
ERBoH: JJ vs Old Spice Guy?
You know, once you fire once, it’s a lot easier to fire again. And a “professional” would KNOW this, there is no way he would advance upon a woman leveling a gun on him after just being shot. That isn’t being brave or calculating, it’s just being very, very, stupid. In real life, he never would have done that, and if he had, she would have shot him MULTIPLE times. This page was poor writing; if you wanted to set it up so that xan and shanna go on the run, you should have done it differently in a somewhat plausible fashion.
Shanna is not a professional. I may be reading this wrong, but I think J J did what he did because he could see it in her face. She was scared out of her mind. Do you honestly think this is the first time he has been held at gun point? I have little doubt he has gotten himself out of situations like this by being able to tell if a person has the mentality and state of mind to actually shot to kill.
the “professional” referenced is JJ. And if somebody is scared with a gun on you it means you don’t do anything, ANYTHING that would startle them and cause them to pull the trigger. Like, you know, menacingly advancing towards them.
For the first time in Guilded Age history, I am banning someone from the comments section because they bring me down.
Guesticus, nearly all of your posts are shitty, negative comments. I have to force myself to read the comments section every day just because I might read yours. It was fun once.
I don’t see why I (and possibly others) have to suffer because you have to post this way. But it is over now. We warned you that you were starting to make us and others uncomfortable. This is about more than simply wishing death on characters constantly. This is about your overall tone, your negative attitude, and how much you harsh my (and T’s) personal buzz.
I would love to have worked this out with you personally, privately… but since you began posting, you have listed your e-mail as “not@chance.com,” thereby rendering that impossible.
I don’t like you. Please go away.
Just in case there was any doubt, I’m thoroughly backing Phil here. I haven’t always been active on these boards but even I was seeing the problem, and gave Guesticus a warning before this. I’m sorry about this, but we have to keep this a nice space for the rest of you.
This was beautiful.
Glad to see you were reluctant to use the banhammer.
I know plenty of webcomic folk for whom it is the first and only resort to every ripple in their perfect plan.
.
Mr Willis of the Walkyverse comes to mind. Banned me for saying Thundercats is better than Transformers. But then I suppose everyone has to have a quirk.
The biggest surprise on this page is that Xan uses Google Chrome. It seems so out of character for him not to be using a more privacy-conscious browser.
He keeps that icon there ironically.
Whilst Shanna failing to fire again should have been surprising the feel of the writing suggested she would not so it wasn’t even though I think a “real” Shanna would have. That guy is hella physically intimidating even if he talks careful and polite. I could see her totally freezing up and never firing in the first place but once firing. Well, anyway not surprising.
The banhammering in the comments SHOULDN’T have been surprising since it has had lots of foreshadowing but somehow it was a little I guess because I, for once, just couldn’t put myself in the author’s heads. I’m usually capable of seeing things from other peoples perspectives even if I don’t agree with them but some aspects of what I thought were the author’s personalities don’t jive with other demonstrated parts. So I was surprised and I suppose entertained by that surprise. (I’m thinking this is because I accepted some statements the author made about their nature and those statements are in fact false [which is totally OK. Just muddied my prediction abilities when I bought into it])
The story and the comments continue to be a great diversion.
I might have missed a few comments, but one thing I didn’t see anyone mention is that Shanna no longer had a (somewhat) clear line of fire, as of panel 4. Before that, Xan was lying down, and was at less risk of getting hit by a stray round.
Come to think of it, if Shanna was going for a headshot, her first shot might’ve hit closer to Xan’s than JJ’s. She might’ve been worried about hitting Xan with her second shot, even before he pulled himself up into her line of fire.
Panel 3 was probably the only panel where she could’ve been reasonably sure of hitting JJ and not Xan.
I wonder if Xan will hit the car alarm button on the key fob.