Yep. It’s totally sane and professional for him to kill random people, to “send a message”, but unprofessional of them to take umbrage from said act. And going to the legal authorities with evidence of a crime, so unbecoming of them. Also, it’s totally professional of him to effectively blackmailing his employer into paying him to eliminate the problems he created by failing to eliminate the problem he was hired to eliminate.
Random? Killing Kaye was planned and quite deliberate, random seems like the wrong word. He stated specifically that he went for the one who was furthest from the others because he calculated that Shanna would go to the larger group. The professionalism of his targets is a non-issue.
Also, his employer effectively stated very much that they wanted to avoid lethal force if possible, to which JJ was amenable. Lethal force was a last resort only when all other options have failed. When all options had dried up, he contacted his employer and related the situation, apologizing for the fact but also stating that the job would now need to take a higher price tag, to which the employer agreed with the stipulation that it be done that night.
All other options? Don’t think so. The first “other option” that springs to mind is that he takes Kaye hostage, uses her as leverage to keep them quiet. He’s a big guy, she was all alone, he’s ‘professional’, which means he’d have access to drugs or techniques to keep her quiet without a fuss. And “Don’t do anything stupid or I kill your friend” works a lot better as a deterrent than “I’ve killed your friend, don’t do anything stupid”.
Second- he could have insinuated himself into the group. Claim to be someone also investigating the disappearances, then either throw them off the trail or guide them to a point where Shanna seems truly crazy (possibly doubting herself as well). Sure, he might end up being considered creepy or blow his cover, but he’d already be in a much better position to do something about it then.
There’s two other, nonlethal options that I thought of in literally seconds. If he’s truly a well-heeled professional in this field, then he should have dozens of others, or variants on similar themes, that he could have called upon, before and instead of ‘kill one to send a message’.
Well, rule no.1 of the professional is “don’t go after a target that’s expecting you”. So his pursuit of Shanna was decidedly risky from the start- his pursuit of the group suicidal.
And as you’ve said, his negotiation with the group was terrible. If you put a gun to somebody’s head and inform them that you can come back and do this anytime, anywhere, only next time you’ll pull the trigger- it’s gonna make them really want to agree to your terms and not get involved. But if you kill their friend, it’s personal. You’ve made it personal. And because JJ doesn’t understand that, one wonders how he got this far in his profession.
“The first “other option” that springs to mind is that he takes Kaye hostage, uses her as leverage to keep them quiet. ”
As a mean to get a hold on the others, yes. But I would disagree if you mean it as a long-term solution. Especially a non-lethal solution. Kidnapping is messy business – and a crime easy to prove as long as you keep the kidnapped – or her corpse – around.
JJ isn’t paid enough to become Kate’s babysitter for life. The end result would have been the same for a kidnapped Kate: murdered. If you are kidnapped and you saw your kidnapper’s face, consider yourself dead. And even if he keep his face hidden, don’t keep your hopes too high. You are the main witness to his crime. The same goes for anyone witnessing you holding someone hostage, to a lesser extent.
You have to be terrorists/rebels* with military control of your own territory to pull off these sort of stunts. See the numerous examples in South America.
* having a drug cartel or, more simply, the official government behind you also help a lot setting up a kidnap/hostage business. See Pinochet’s Chili.
@ bgrunge
Putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them you could be back only work if they stay where you found them. If they decide to bolt – as this group did – then your threats only make them run faster. Well, you can bet on them going into hiding on the other side of the continent and trying to forget the whole ordeal. It depends on how tight you want the leak contained.
Now, infiltrating the group, openly or just by bugging and tailing them, and figuring out what they know and which evidence to erase, that would have been indeed a non-lethal approach. But JJ is not much for subtlety or subterfuge, despite his claims. He is more of a raider – go in, get the target (evidence, data, clues or whatnot), get out. Xan and the comic book writer could testify to this.
now see, if they’d just been reasonable and agreed to stay quiet about the whole missing people thing, he wouldn’t have to murder them. clearly they are being unreasonable.
Yeah. He’s a bad person, but he gave them several chances. Some justifiable by minimizing complication, some just because he has a private code to live with himself.
The horrible thing is that his fury is righteous, by his own terrible code. He tried to let them walk away.
There’s an art-house theater in southern California that is currently holding a Studio Ghibli film festival. The Frida Cinema.
Not able to make EVERY showing, but I am taking advantage of their “buy four, get six” ticket punch card program.
I’m kind of ambivalent about where this is going. Starting to get the impression that some of the complaints/worries from the last update’s comment section may have been accurate ones. Up till now I had kind of had the idea that sepia-world shenanigans were pretty realistic, aside from HR’s occultism, and it made for a nice contrast from the game-world’s events in a way that I didn’t mind the whole “just a virtual reality” twist much. Now we’ve got edgy mustachio’d hitmen with crazy anime eyes. I’ve really enjoyed the comic so far, even after it drifted away from some of the earlier humor and towards this weird sepia-world plotline, but I guess the next few strips are going to decide whether or not I stick with it.
Yeah, anime eyes probably isn’t the right way to describe it. That last panel pose *does* look rather weird though. Mainly the guns pointing in different directions and all that, although that might just be a matter of perspective.
The right hand gun is oddly turned for the angle of the hand. No professional would hold a gun like that unless **EXTREMELY** unnerved – which I doubt JJ is at this time.
To make that gun angle work, his hand would need to be further to the left of his face (from our perspective). But that’d be putting it off the image – which I think the artist was trying to avoid while having a “camera is inbetween the two guns” look on the guns themselves.
“unless **EXTREMELY** unnerved – which I doubt JJ is at this time.”
IDK. All the yelling and self-rationalization seems to me evidence that JJ is very unnerved.
He was picturing himself as a master predator and just found out he has become a target. Worse, he has lost the little control he thought he had on the group.
Dood stick wid it? C’mon Sepia rocks. T Campell and Phil Kahn How do they think this shit up week after week. I am so impressed with every plot twist. Tolstoy got nothin these boys for plot twists. And hey Ill bet Tolstoy couldn’t pull off a web comic even if they had the www back then. Bravo hoo ray clap clap clap. (I got mad crush on Shanna)
He’s still wholly unhesitant to announce his intent to kill when he knows he is on live video, AND when it’s been shown the stream can be recorded and shared.
I’m pretty convinced at this point the moustache eyebrows, and maybe even the highly prominent cheekbones and nose, are prosthetics that he wears to conceal his face from everyone, even clients. As a last resort, rip off the prosthetics, go invisible. They’d never see him coming once they no longer know what he looks like.
Oh man there’s this show I like to watch called Dr. Jeff (he’s a vet), and he reminds me of this guy: huge build, big mustache, long flowing hair, a real striking character. So anyway, I tune in last Saturday mid-episode, and I don’t see Jeff anywhere, but I do see this older-looking, completely bald guy. It’s Dr. Jeff! Sadly he had been diagnosed with cancer and shaved due to the chemo. But my point is that he was (for a few minutes at least) completely unrecognizable.
As I said in my post above, the mask dropped. He at least pretended to be sane, as far as a guy whose job consists of intimidation and outright murder can act sane.
Maybe that’s the first time a target actually went so far against him and the fact that they outsmarted him pushed him far enough to stop pretending.
Well at this point, it doesn’t really matter does it? A threat to commit murder is not a charge that matters much when your on tape committing a murder. I don’t think bribed Pizza guy’s testimony is going to stand up to that. This might not even be worth prosecuting if he was taken in alive.
One thing he has done is not mentioned anything about who his employer is on camera, merely impliations that he has one. Actually, I don’t think he’s ever acknowledged who he’s working for off camera either, just what he wants them to stop doing. IN this, he has remained a professional. nothing he’s said can implicate anybody but himself.
That’s actually pretty clever and makes a lot of sense. His facial hair doesn’t really match the texture and color of the hair on his head—not that it always does with men, but usually when there’s grey facial hair gets hit first.
I dunno. I agree that getting rid of the mustache, eyebrows and even softening the cheekbones would help, but JJ’s nose and chin are pretty unmistakable, neither of which can be easily faked with prosthetics. Much like Jay Leno, JJ’s nose is a dead giveaway even if he were to grow a beard or sport a fake to hide the chin.
Don’t forget pushing a knife through Xans hand, even before he started killing. But I suppose you need to be able to rationalize your violent murder-spree somehow – and it’s far easier to blame the people you want to violently murder. If *they* started it you’re really not at fault, after all.
And, if I recall, without a archive dive, he was the one that suggested creative elimination as a cure for the reporter problem. Long before the order was given.
I think he means when he was trying to convince to simply be quiet about what they know. Or maybe I am thinking of when he was just following Shanna, before the others got involved.
It’s stated pretty clearly at the beginning of this whole thing that he would have much preferred to resolve this non-violently, a few verbal threats maybe but the point is that he did what he could to avoid escalation.
This, this! He didn’t want death. It makes everything more complicated and expensive. It’s unprofessional.
They didn’t do anything wrong, of course…
But from his perspective, he offered them a way out and they have refused, even (in his eyes) taken advantage of his generosity.
I think he believed (right or not) that he could have killed them all from the start, and he’s regretting that he didn’t. He did try to play nice, considering.
I don’t want to see our gamers dead, so I’m worried about JJ actually managing to fight through the cops and escape.
That said, part of me really feels that JJ’s going to end up doing a “suicide by cop”. There’s quite some satisfaction that with the previous update’s “The Reason You Suck Speech” (TV Tropes) about JJ rationalizing that he’s not that bad a person, he now faces how true it is in terms he can’t deny (being confronted by the fact that the only way out for him now that he can accept involves violence, including some done to him).
I would love nothing better then for him to kick open the door behind him… only for the cops to drop him like a sack of rocks. But I’m sure whatever happens, it will be fun to read.
I guess it’s too late to be saying how much I have admired Mr Berten’s professionalism up till now. He does a bad thing very well and is a credit to hitmen everywhere. It is a real shame he has resolved to tarnish his tarnished reputation.
The nerd herd seems awfully cocky right now. I wouldn’t start my gloating until that guy is actually behind bars. And maybe not even then, as his employer seems to have very deep pockets.
Normally I’d agree, but this is one of the few circumstances in which gloating is actually useful: using it to goad someone who is already thoroughly against you into making a mistake (like shouting about his crimes when there are cameras and police in the building).
Yeah. It seems to me they’re over the whole “take him alive” thing. At this point, it seems like they’re trying to goad him into dying in a hail of bullets.
They’re like, “Meh. We’ve got enough video to make trouble for Hurricane. Now, if we can make him go full Byron, instead of sneaking away, he’ll get himself shot. For Faye. And we won’t be guilty of murder. He’ll have brought it on himself… i hope the cops remembered their vests.”
Okay. That’s probably a bit over the top, but you get the idea. That bunch knows how to start a flame war, and they know how ugly they can get. I’m half expecting a “Hammers fall. Everyone dies.” situation in the house.
This page is a perfect example of a HUGE reason why the Sepia world storyline pales so awfully to the fantasy one: Phil and T just can’t seem to decide whether it is truly REALISTIC world or just a different ‘modern’ fantasy variant and that creates a sort of ‘uncanny environment-valley’ for the reader that is all the more apparent when the story lingers in Sepia for more than a few pages.
Here JJ just went from professional suave mountain of a hitman to a raging anime gunzerker over what again? That’s right, his prey going to the authorities and attempting to entrap him- which is ENTIRELY predictable and common for half-intelligent people fleeing from a bodybuilder-assassin. JJ acts way too irrationally for his character up to this point: pretending this was outrageous reprisal and that this somehow wasn’t made personal already by HIM after he brutally killed their friend in front of them.
It’s all just a sad excuse to setup more outrageous ultraviolence in an allegedly ‘realistic’ world. Also what ‘moral’ is this tale going to have in the end after JJ predictably manages to escape and kill one of the nerds in his super-mustache-saiyan state?? That’s right: they should have just set up a simple no-escape deathtrap with low collateral risk (ex: small remotely detonated nail bomb with Ricin-tipped needles/nails) instead of even trying to go to the inept Sepia legal authorities. Remember kids, only YOU can protect yourselves from assassins! The police are USELESS.
In the US, the courts have repeatedly ruled that the police have no duty to intervene in a crime or protect individuals. Their job is collect evidence and arrest the perpetrator after he’s done murdering you.
They’re not useless from a societal point of view, but for an individual… Well… When seconds count they’re only minutes away. It’s not their fault. They’re only human. They can’t be everywhere at once.
So far the level of violence in Sepiaworld is not at all unrealistic. We’ve had one stabbing, two shots fired, and one death. In most large cities (even in places where guns are supposedly forbidden) that’s probably not even enough to make a noticeable difference in the yearly statistics, especially given that only the murder was actually reported to the police. Sorry if that bursts your security bubble, but there are a lot of not-very-nice people in this world. I guess we’ll see if JJ’s escape rises to ludicrous levels of precision violence…
My post was NOT referring to the PAST level of violence but the unrealistic future gore-fest this page is conspicuously setting up for, even at the cost of essentially re-writing JJ’s character.
They didn’t rewrite anything. JJ’s an alpha-male type; he gets off on being dominant and in control, which includes himself. That’s why he seems rational- he feels that he can afford to be. It’s an indulgence. So things are always on his terms- when they’re not (as has been demonstrated here) he’s gonna feel way more unstable and will become violent to regain dominance/control.
Honestly your appraisal of him as a character is so far off the mark that I have to question your personal life experience. Have you seriously never met an alpha-male type guy? I work parking in a city and know tons of business execs just like that. They’re oh so friendly until you don’t recognize their position or otherwise do something that makes them feel less dominant and then the fangs come out. JJ’s just a sociopathic, exaggerated version of that, and he’s just been outsmarted, humiliated, and had his life upended by a bunch of what he considers omegas- bottom of the barrel nerds. Of course he’s gonna lose his cool, it wouldn’t make sense if he didn’t.
No I know that type and I really think they wouldn’t be making a sloppy ostentatious display like this. They’d more likely immediately go into ‘work-mode’ thinking “whatever, I can still get through this” and focus on ‘winning’ and in this case winning just means getting off-grid to continue wetwork somewhere else (possibly planning for payback at a much later date).
Even alphas can accept an occasional loss, it does happen after all and they tend to chalk it up to blind luck, circumstance etc. That’s what I’d see JJ doing, immediately bolting thinking ‘these assholes just got lucky and spotted me’ and perhaps planning to pay them back AFTER he ‘wins’ by getting away and changing his identity etc etc.
I mean its simply unrealistically STUPID of him to not already have a contingency plan for this when he KNEW they had video of him murdering someone. For him to assume that he actually spooked them from attempting to go to the police displays idiocy that’s WAY out of character for him, alpha mentality or no. In fact most variants of alpha mentality would expect that ‘nerds’ would ‘tattle’ to the authorities since they’re too weak to handle ‘bullies’ like JJ themselves.
The trouble you’re having is that you basically bought a lie that JJ was feeding himself. He claims that he only wanted to talk things through and he probably even believe sit despite the fact that he was JUST internally monologuing to himself about studying the situation so he can track them down and kill them! People lie to themselves all the time in this world, hold contradictory beliefs, the end goal is always casting onesself in a positive light. That’s all he’s doing. Rationalizing his actions in a way that casts himself in a positive, or at least neutral, light.
I know he’s a rational actor rationalizing his monstrous career choice with jaded philosophy. What seems out of character to me is his sudden choice of emotional vengeance over just bolting and going off-grid and holding off for payback at a later date. He is little more than a bloodthirsty brute in the end I’m aware of that, but up until this page JJ HAS exercised a better sense for self-preservation than going berserk like this.
But he’s already shown himself to be sloppy- he’s pursuing targets which expect him which is a serious no-no for hitman work; also he killed kaye when threatening her would have been far more effective. And he did so on video- no hit man with a brain would ever do a hit around any kind of recording device. So obviously the guy IS stupid and sloppy at times, so making this mistake here is completely in character.
His decision to pursue aware targets (and ones in a group no less) is pure stupid hubris. Really, he’s lucky they weren’t waiting for him with a semi automatic shotgun and a hastily drilled murder hole; that would be the far more sensible solution.
I absolutely agree he has been sloppy and such an ambush could have easily occurred but I still think this is more, its suicidally sloppy; as in he just gave up caring about his future rather suddenly and it seemed out of character to me.
Those other instances were missteps that can build up to mistake sure, but this is like “bail bail bail! bail or get F’ed dude!” and he’s really going to try and kill these guys after giving them enough evidence to get insane levels of cop protection? That goes a bit beyond alpha dumb douche mentality and into American Psycho in my opinion. It was just kinda shocking- I admit that shock lead to my initial post being a bit harsh.
What do you expect? That bunch has spent two pages expertly trolling JJ. As an old-school criminal, JJ has no built up immunity to internet trolls. How could he not go postal, after that?
Of course going to the police is logical. That doesn’t mean he fucking LIKES it. You’re sitting here getting butthurt that a professional murderer is rationalizing his crimes. He kills people for money; he’s not the most normal of blokes on a good day.
H.R. is a fucking wizard who’s trapped people inside a videogame, murders his employees, and has his assistant dismember them and dump them in the ocean, and you’re saying that J.J. getting mad is unrealistic?
As for ‘outrageous ultraviolence,’ he’s literally stabbed one person OMG TEH VIOLENCES. Should I be thinking of the children?
HR’s powers and neurosis were always the ‘out there’ component of Sepia but the REST of this world has always been attempted to be ‘played straight’ by Phil and T.
There’s a thing called ‘character’ in stories, ok? JJ’s calm rational demeanor established over MANY CHAPTERS is now being completely rewritten in this page under the sad excuse of ‘this is how he really is deep down’ in order to set up a gory violent unrealistic climax with Shanna. It’s lazy storytelling at its worst, plain and simple.
Your barb would be accurate IF I was referring to JJ’s PAST violence, I’m not. I’m referring to the trite ultraviolence guaranteed to happen in the near future that this page is overzealously gearing up for.
It’s almost as if it was a facade from a killer who’s actually NOT the calm philosopher he pretends to be. Jesus, they literally said EXACTLY THAT on the last page.
But even if not so philosophical and gentle he is still supposed to be LOGICAL / RATIONAL. Everything we’ve seen of him until now shows a man who keeps his wits about him even when things get hairy and does not waste time grandstanding without purpose.
All of that development was thrown completely in the trash on this page. Now he is more than willing to spook his prey and tell them his plan because “Fuck logic and planning! I’m insanely pissed you did the most predictable thing people fleeing a hitman like me would do! Also I need to practice my ‘intro pose’ for a new Mega Man variation I’m green-screening for!”
He’s very likely pissed because now it is very unlikely he’s going to get paid for anything he’s done, here. Remember the part about the job being quick and quiet? His entire bluff up until now has been about scaring them OUT of going to the police.
There is no quick and quiet route out, now, which means bye bye to that fat paycheck he negotiated. He’s now a wanted man WITHOUT a payday. So, yeah, he mad.
I get that he’s mad. But he’s SUPPOSED to be capable and logical, now out of mere emotion he told his targets that he’s going to rush them and attempt murder no matter the cost to himself. He also gave them all the evidence they would need to give the police (specifically his VERY clear death threat on all of them) for a LOT of SWAT protection and, on top of all this, he is wasting precious seconds while the cops are imminently coming for him. This goes far beyond ‘sloppy’ for JJ.
It’s obvious he has completely lost his cool head to be setup for a cliche violent climax. If this was all JJ was going to amount to, it would’ve been better story-wise for him to never have been made a character in the first place…
I’d rather not. Look I don’t mean to cause any offense here and if that is the case for anyone then I apologize for the exaggerated harshness in my critique. I don’t wish to imply Sepia is crap story, just not up to the bar Archerra sets IMO.
Dude, he’s not mad that they tried. He’s mad that they succeeded.
This isn’t just a setback, or a lost paycheck. Like Xan said, this isn’t like one of those past setbacks where if he kept his head, he could still recover the situation. The moment Xan told him the cops already had everything, he knew his whole career was gone, his future cast to the wind, regardless of what he does now.
So sure he cracked. Even as “rational” as you think he is, he’s by definition never faced absolute failure like this before. The best outcome he can hope for now is to spend the rest of his life hiding like Whitey Bulger, so why bother with restraint anymore?
I’ll admit that perhaps I just misjudged his character. For a more thorough clarification of my opinion without text clutter, please see the second paragraph of my reply to electricdawn below starting with ‘Holding a vendetta..’. Thank you.
EVERYBODY has their breaking point, and the longer they can force themselves to stay calm, the more spectacular it is when their safeguards finally fail.
Fair enough, but if JJ actually tries to go through with this threat its more of an absurd suicidal snapping point than a mere breaking one IMO. That was basically my entire point.
Totally agree with your assessment. If at all, it’s MORE realistic (because he shows he’s a real flesh and blood human instead of a robot) then what Danzin thinks he should act like (unrealistic, that is).
How is it unrealistic to expect a man who, up until now, has always acted in simple self-interest to continue acting in self-interest? I said that I understand the anger already, but actually going through with what he is threatening goes beyond realistic human anger IMO.
Holding a vendetta like this is not merely a poor decision its unrealistic suicidal insanity. JJ could easily instead prioritize his own safety and future focusing on his escape and/or establishing a new identity. If he had just immediately bolted instead of making this ostentatious display ON CAMERA he actually might have something of a future to salvage. Now he’s flushing it all down the drain on a tantrum after being established as a veteran professional up until this page.
He still might try to escape… and then go on a wild goose chase to capture them. But yeah, I find it totally in character that he underestimated them and that cracks his pride. Thus making it personal.
Ok but that brings up another part of why this dialogue is like 90% insanity: he’s accusing THEM of making this ‘personal’ when he KNOWS he already killed one of their friends right in front of them. He simply has no real justification for his anger except frustration at his own sloppiness.
Because THEIR lives are not important. Oh boo-hoo, he killed one of them. He’s killed before, over and over. This is his job. They don’t matter. Their job is to go belly-up, or if they don’t go belly up, obediently die. Of course this makes it ‘personal’ for him.
You seem to be suffering from an odd idea that a character is made more realistic by flanderization. You want this singe, one-note facet of his persona to be his ENTIRE persona, and for some reason think it’s “unrealistic” when it’s revealed he’s just a smidge more complicated than that?
Dude, pretty much everyone has entire wings of their personality that they hide or fluff up for other’s benefit during daily life, whether in casual or professional contexts. Every human language has either euphemisms or even formal words for this. Most religions push reconciling the “masks” down into a single omnidirectional persona as a spiritual goal that can take a lifetime to achieve (or multiple, depending on the religion).
The compartmentalization of this is pretty much the essence of what we call professionalism, but even that has it’s limits. You can be a paragon of professionalism, but if you get a call out of the blue telling you your kid was just killed in a car accident, no-one is going to think it’s “unrealistic” if you to break down right there and need to go home.
The difference here is that JJ is a sociopath, so the stuff that hits him hard is egotistically defined.
And as Nightsbridge notes below, the whole “nothing personal, just business” double standard is pretty textbook sociopath logic. To the point where you could almost call it a sitcom-level dead-horse stereotype… if it weren’t something that actually does get used by IRL sociopaths all the time.
As for what he’s doing being suicidal, this guy’s a career criminal, implied to have a lot of experience with violence and covering his tracks. Even though his career is over, He’s still confident that if he can get away from the cops right now, he can still stay far enough ahead to find and kill them before going to ground.
Clamming up is only a strategy if he intends to let himself get arrested, then “escape” via the legal system. If he doesn’t want to get arrested at all, then he’s probably going to have to fight his way out of the immediate situation anyway (or at least, it’s enough of a probability to make going gun in hand a reasonable preparation), regardless of what he intends to do after. And since he’s already implicated on camera, and doesn’t intend to even get arrested, it doesn’t matter if he implicates himself further.
TBH if we had the ability to delete our posts I would have erased all of mine yesterday afternoon. I already admitted to you I could be mistaken about JJ, I can’t do much else to defend my past opinion then what I’ve already said many times in this thread. If there IS a way to delete our posts, please let me know how.
It’s probably also in large part the fact that his targets have taken his control of the situation away from him. Sure he’s able to project an air of calm and rationality while he thinks he’s holding all the cards (although his stabbing Xan, within seconds of meeting him, with a knife attached to his car keys suggests that he was never entirely either of those things). But now that he’s been placed in a desperate situation and been outplayed and laughed at by these pathetic couch potatoes he’s been stalking, the veneer of civilization has cracked a little.
And for Danzin, the trope at play here is the Villainous Breakdown, which usually presages the villain’s defeat, not their violent moment of glory.
If your prediction is correct I will retract my criticisms because they were based on my assessment that this seems like a setup for a villainous rampage that will then lead to breakdown then defeat etc.
Dropping out of lurk briefly to say that the sepia strips are the ones that keep me the most intrigued in the story arc. I like knowing that the stakes are high on both sides of the “reality line”, and the suspense has had me on the edge of my seat thus far. Can’t wait to see what happens next. :)
The situation has now slipped totally beyond JJ’s control, which is apparently not something he’s accustomed. Further, I’m guessing he’s managed to avoid any serious encounters with law enforcement before this. Now, *if* he makes it out of this, he will have either killed or maimed two cops. He will have carved MEGA bullseyes into his back, his forehead, the back of his head, bullseyes everywhere.
Nooo! Not the laptop! It’s still so young and innocent!
…
Ok. We MIGHT have used it to watch a little bit of porn occasionally.
Heh.
I mean, who doesn’t.
Ok, now THAT is a crazy take. Well done.
Indeed! He’s a Gunzerker!
And I thought JJ was trying to fit “Léon: The Professional”.
Gunzerker. Now I want to build a class archtype for gunslinger/barbarian with that concept!
The Gunzerker was one of the characters from Borderlands 2. That game had a great Fantasy RPG DLC. Anyone want to play Bunkers & Badasses?
Only if Tina and TORGUE are GMing.
Yeah, the final panel’s really great.
It really is.
My favorite was the alt-text, and the second panel. Chilling.
More cop-killing. Coincident, I know.
Are we sure the police can best a mustache this angry?
I know I’m not.
I mustache that question as well
Looks like the mask of sanity dropped.
Yep. It’s totally sane and professional for him to kill random people, to “send a message”, but unprofessional of them to take umbrage from said act. And going to the legal authorities with evidence of a crime, so unbecoming of them. Also, it’s totally professional of him to effectively blackmailing his employer into paying him to eliminate the problems he created by failing to eliminate the problem he was hired to eliminate.
Random? Killing Kaye was planned and quite deliberate, random seems like the wrong word. He stated specifically that he went for the one who was furthest from the others because he calculated that Shanna would go to the larger group. The professionalism of his targets is a non-issue.
Also, his employer effectively stated very much that they wanted to avoid lethal force if possible, to which JJ was amenable. Lethal force was a last resort only when all other options have failed. When all options had dried up, he contacted his employer and related the situation, apologizing for the fact but also stating that the job would now need to take a higher price tag, to which the employer agreed with the stipulation that it be done that night.
Professional.
All other options? Don’t think so. The first “other option” that springs to mind is that he takes Kaye hostage, uses her as leverage to keep them quiet. He’s a big guy, she was all alone, he’s ‘professional’, which means he’d have access to drugs or techniques to keep her quiet without a fuss. And “Don’t do anything stupid or I kill your friend” works a lot better as a deterrent than “I’ve killed your friend, don’t do anything stupid”.
Second- he could have insinuated himself into the group. Claim to be someone also investigating the disappearances, then either throw them off the trail or guide them to a point where Shanna seems truly crazy (possibly doubting herself as well). Sure, he might end up being considered creepy or blow his cover, but he’d already be in a much better position to do something about it then.
There’s two other, nonlethal options that I thought of in literally seconds. If he’s truly a well-heeled professional in this field, then he should have dozens of others, or variants on similar themes, that he could have called upon, before and instead of ‘kill one to send a message’.
Well, rule no.1 of the professional is “don’t go after a target that’s expecting you”. So his pursuit of Shanna was decidedly risky from the start- his pursuit of the group suicidal.
And as you’ve said, his negotiation with the group was terrible. If you put a gun to somebody’s head and inform them that you can come back and do this anytime, anywhere, only next time you’ll pull the trigger- it’s gonna make them really want to agree to your terms and not get involved. But if you kill their friend, it’s personal. You’ve made it personal. And because JJ doesn’t understand that, one wonders how he got this far in his profession.
“The first “other option” that springs to mind is that he takes Kaye hostage, uses her as leverage to keep them quiet. ”
As a mean to get a hold on the others, yes. But I would disagree if you mean it as a long-term solution. Especially a non-lethal solution. Kidnapping is messy business – and a crime easy to prove as long as you keep the kidnapped – or her corpse – around.
JJ isn’t paid enough to become Kate’s babysitter for life. The end result would have been the same for a kidnapped Kate: murdered. If you are kidnapped and you saw your kidnapper’s face, consider yourself dead. And even if he keep his face hidden, don’t keep your hopes too high. You are the main witness to his crime. The same goes for anyone witnessing you holding someone hostage, to a lesser extent.
You have to be terrorists/rebels* with military control of your own territory to pull off these sort of stunts. See the numerous examples in South America.
* having a drug cartel or, more simply, the official government behind you also help a lot setting up a kidnap/hostage business. See Pinochet’s Chili.
@ bgrunge
Putting a gun to someone’s head and telling them you could be back only work if they stay where you found them. If they decide to bolt – as this group did – then your threats only make them run faster. Well, you can bet on them going into hiding on the other side of the continent and trying to forget the whole ordeal. It depends on how tight you want the leak contained.
Now, infiltrating the group, openly or just by bugging and tailing them, and figuring out what they know and which evidence to erase, that would have been indeed a non-lethal approach. But JJ is not much for subtlety or subterfuge, despite his claims. He is more of a raider – go in, get the target (evidence, data, clues or whatnot), get out. Xan and the comic book writer could testify to this.
I think that’s random as in “does not have a personal connection”.
now see, if they’d just been reasonable and agreed to stay quiet about the whole missing people thing, he wouldn’t have to murder them. clearly they are being unreasonable.
Yeah. He’s a bad person, but he gave them several chances. Some justifiable by minimizing complication, some just because he has a private code to live with himself.
The horrible thing is that his fury is righteous, by his own terrible code. He tried to let them walk away.
Did he just turn into an Anime character?
Something about that pose screams “anime, but the not big eyes kind, the fight kind?”
I…have never actually watched anything but Miyazaki films. I really hope I’m coherent.
That last panel reminds of the anime Rorouni Kenshin for some reason, but I totally get what you’re talking about.
There’s an art-house theater in southern California that is currently holding a Studio Ghibli film festival. The Frida Cinema.
Not able to make EVERY showing, but I am taking advantage of their “buy four, get six” ticket punch card program.
I think he looks like Captain Hook in a cat-burgler suit, myself.
Also the impractical position of the right hand with the gun.
That not impractical. He’s just channeling the ghost of the great western gunslinger “Cross-eyed Larry”
And is it just me, or did he lose 50 pounds of muscle mass in that last panel, too?
You’re not the only one who thinks so. That last panel is very manga-style.
Well SHIT. More dead nerds before this resolves.
more like resolvers
I’m kind of ambivalent about where this is going. Starting to get the impression that some of the complaints/worries from the last update’s comment section may have been accurate ones. Up till now I had kind of had the idea that sepia-world shenanigans were pretty realistic, aside from HR’s occultism, and it made for a nice contrast from the game-world’s events in a way that I didn’t mind the whole “just a virtual reality” twist much. Now we’ve got edgy mustachio’d hitmen with crazy anime eyes. I’ve really enjoyed the comic so far, even after it drifted away from some of the earlier humor and towards this weird sepia-world plotline, but I guess the next few strips are going to decide whether or not I stick with it.
“Anime eyes”???
???
???!!!
Yeah, anime eyes probably isn’t the right way to describe it. That last panel pose *does* look rather weird though. Mainly the guns pointing in different directions and all that, although that might just be a matter of perspective.
The double underlugs does trigger my OCD a bit.
But still fond of the layout and buildup, overall.
Double underlugs…aw man. Now that’s all I can see.
I would take it as one gun to cover the door and a second pointed at the screen to threaten.
When he entered the room, he was looking at the laptop on the bed. He can’t look/point at the door and the screen at the same time.
My impression was that he was in the middle of a turn. But now that a look at it, it does look really janky. Maybe they will re-draw?
it’s a janky turn.
they will NOT re-draw.
Well, I liked it!
In a gunfight, NOBODY gets to re-draw.
Everyone can go home now. Mr Ak won the internet.
Wild Eyes. That’s the phrase to best describe it.
The right hand gun is oddly turned for the angle of the hand. No professional would hold a gun like that unless **EXTREMELY** unnerved – which I doubt JJ is at this time.
To make that gun angle work, his hand would need to be further to the left of his face (from our perspective). But that’d be putting it off the image – which I think the artist was trying to avoid while having a “camera is inbetween the two guns” look on the guns themselves.
“unless **EXTREMELY** unnerved – which I doubt JJ is at this time.”
IDK. All the yelling and self-rationalization seems to me evidence that JJ is very unnerved.
He was picturing himself as a master predator and just found out he has become a target. Worse, he has lost the little control he thought he had on the group.
Dood stick wid it? C’mon Sepia rocks. T Campell and Phil Kahn How do they think this shit up week after week. I am so impressed with every plot twist. Tolstoy got nothin these boys for plot twists. And hey Ill bet Tolstoy couldn’t pull off a web comic even if they had the www back then. Bravo hoo ray clap clap clap. (I got mad crush on Shanna)
BTW nice Shark avatar
Reality can be pretty fucked up. I mean human sacrifice is still a thing.
He’s still wholly unhesitant to announce his intent to kill when he knows he is on live video, AND when it’s been shown the stream can be recorded and shared.
I’m pretty convinced at this point the moustache eyebrows, and maybe even the highly prominent cheekbones and nose, are prosthetics that he wears to conceal his face from everyone, even clients. As a last resort, rip off the prosthetics, go invisible. They’d never see him coming once they no longer know what he looks like.
Oh man there’s this show I like to watch called Dr. Jeff (he’s a vet), and he reminds me of this guy: huge build, big mustache, long flowing hair, a real striking character. So anyway, I tune in last Saturday mid-episode, and I don’t see Jeff anywhere, but I do see this older-looking, completely bald guy. It’s Dr. Jeff! Sadly he had been diagnosed with cancer and shaved due to the chemo. But my point is that he was (for a few minutes at least) completely unrecognizable.
I think he’s just beyond the point of caring at this point. He’s never been as stable as he pretended to be, and this just set him off completely.
As I said in my post above, the mask dropped. He at least pretended to be sane, as far as a guy whose job consists of intimidation and outright murder can act sane.
Maybe that’s the first time a target actually went so far against him and the fact that they outsmarted him pushed him far enough to stop pretending.
Well at this point, it doesn’t really matter does it? A threat to commit murder is not a charge that matters much when your on tape committing a murder. I don’t think bribed Pizza guy’s testimony is going to stand up to that. This might not even be worth prosecuting if he was taken in alive.
One thing he has done is not mentioned anything about who his employer is on camera, merely impliations that he has one. Actually, I don’t think he’s ever acknowledged who he’s working for off camera either, just what he wants them to stop doing. IN this, he has remained a professional. nothing he’s said can implicate anybody but himself.
-gasp- The Ninja Final Defense! Everyone knows the mask, so when you truly need to disappear, remove the mask and blend in.
That’s actually pretty clever and makes a lot of sense. His facial hair doesn’t really match the texture and color of the hair on his head—not that it always does with men, but usually when there’s grey facial hair gets hit first.
I dunno. I agree that getting rid of the mustache, eyebrows and even softening the cheekbones would help, but JJ’s nose and chin are pretty unmistakable, neither of which can be easily faked with prosthetics. Much like Jay Leno, JJ’s nose is a dead giveaway even if he were to grow a beard or sport a fake to hide the chin.
Maybe the nose is fake? Wouldn’t be too hard to do with some decent spirit gum.
I mean, sure, I murdered your friend in cold blood, but YOU guys are the ones who made it personal.
Don’t forget pushing a knife through Xans hand, even before he started killing. But I suppose you need to be able to rationalize your violent murder-spree somehow – and it’s far easier to blame the people you want to violently murder. If *they* started it you’re really not at fault, after all.
And, if I recall, without a archive dive, he was the one that suggested creative elimination as a cure for the reporter problem. Long before the order was given.
4 stars for a great update.
Bonus star for New York reload.
“All I ever wanted was to talk this through”
You mean that part where you were talking to stall for time and pick up more information on their whereabouts?
I think he means when he was trying to convince to simply be quiet about what they know. Or maybe I am thinking of when he was just following Shanna, before the others got involved.
It’s stated pretty clearly at the beginning of this whole thing that he would have much preferred to resolve this non-violently, a few verbal threats maybe but the point is that he did what he could to avoid escalation.
This, this! He didn’t want death. It makes everything more complicated and expensive. It’s unprofessional.
They didn’t do anything wrong, of course…
But from his perspective, he offered them a way out and they have refused, even (in his eyes) taken advantage of his generosity.
I think he believed (right or not) that he could have killed them all from the start, and he’s regretting that he didn’t. He did try to play nice, considering.
Didn’t he start out by stabbing Xan in the hand?
No, he started out by saying ‘Hey, don’t tell anybody about this.’
Yeah, that’s the line that got my attention.
It’s called rationalization.
No one is better at lying to you than yourself.
I’m coming for you. And Hell’s coming with me.
Told you he brought a 2nd gun.
can you gi berzerkerfied in sepia?Naw I don tink so.
https://youtu.be/DQX4cRAZExA
I don’t want to see our gamers dead, so I’m worried about JJ actually managing to fight through the cops and escape.
That said, part of me really feels that JJ’s going to end up doing a “suicide by cop”. There’s quite some satisfaction that with the previous update’s “The Reason You Suck Speech” (TV Tropes) about JJ rationalizing that he’s not that bad a person, he now faces how true it is in terms he can’t deny (being confronted by the fact that the only way out for him now that he can accept involves violence, including some done to him).
Also… Aw, his revolver’s weren’t 7 or 8 shooters like I’d said they could have been. Oh well.
Oh, you murdered their friend, but the called the police on you and NOW it’s personal.
I know, right?
It turns out JJ’s always been a fan of a different Hurricane game. And now his Ultimate is fully charged.
“Die! Die! DIE!”
Shhh! For legal reasons, they had to use the line “Perish! Perish! PERISH!”
Begin Ceasing of the Existence! Begin Ceasing of the Existence!
KILL
Wow I think Lia struck a nerve with her comment about waving his dick around.
His memberships at exclusive nudist resorts are none of
Her god-damn business.
Neither is his member.
Slightly touchy after recent events in Dallas. Hope the cops come out of this OK….
That seems somewhat unlikely at this stage.
I want him to win. Not because I am rooting for him. Just because it will be boring if this story ends with “and then he was arrested.”
Well, we could have “and then he was gunned down like a mad dog.” I could live with that.
I’d be perfectly happy with “And then he got arrested.”
I mean, what better way to showcase how arrogant he was than to show his mistakes catching up to him in a completely mundane way?
I would love nothing better then for him to kick open the door behind him… only for the cops to drop him like a sack of rocks. But I’m sure whatever happens, it will be fun to read.
Well, I mean, you can still talk. Just… to the police. Yeah.
Oh.
Just thought of something.
Shanna’s not with the other four.
She’s somewhere else.
With a gun.
I think this may still end badly for Mr. Berten.
Not unless she’s gotten better with a gun since the last time she tried to use one.
Only reason she didn’t kill him is that, instinctively, she’s not a killer. Now she truly knows what the stakes are.
It looked a lot like she missed her aim by about three feet, so I’m not sure that’s the only reason.
I’ve been thinking that ever since we saw her putting her gun into her purse last time we saw her.
I guess it’s too late to be saying how much I have admired Mr Berten’s professionalism up till now. He does a bad thing very well and is a credit to hitmen everywhere. It is a real shame he has resolved to tarnish his tarnished reputation.
The nerd herd seems awfully cocky right now. I wouldn’t start my gloating until that guy is actually behind bars. And maybe not even then, as his employer seems to have very deep pockets.
Meh his employer is better of hiring someone new not known to the police and paying someone to kill the current one in prison so he doesn’t talk.
Normally I’d agree, but this is one of the few circumstances in which gloating is actually useful: using it to goad someone who is already thoroughly against you into making a mistake (like shouting about his crimes when there are cameras and police in the building).
Yeah. It seems to me they’re over the whole “take him alive” thing. At this point, it seems like they’re trying to goad him into dying in a hail of bullets.
They’re like, “Meh. We’ve got enough video to make trouble for Hurricane. Now, if we can make him go full Byron, instead of sneaking away, he’ll get himself shot. For Faye. And we won’t be guilty of murder. He’ll have brought it on himself… i hope the cops remembered their vests.”
Okay. That’s probably a bit over the top, but you get the idea. That bunch knows how to start a flame war, and they know how ugly they can get. I’m half expecting a “Hammers fall. Everyone dies.” situation in the house.
This page is a perfect example of a HUGE reason why the Sepia world storyline pales so awfully to the fantasy one: Phil and T just can’t seem to decide whether it is truly REALISTIC world or just a different ‘modern’ fantasy variant and that creates a sort of ‘uncanny environment-valley’ for the reader that is all the more apparent when the story lingers in Sepia for more than a few pages.
Here JJ just went from professional suave mountain of a hitman to a raging anime gunzerker over what again? That’s right, his prey going to the authorities and attempting to entrap him- which is ENTIRELY predictable and common for half-intelligent people fleeing from a bodybuilder-assassin. JJ acts way too irrationally for his character up to this point: pretending this was outrageous reprisal and that this somehow wasn’t made personal already by HIM after he brutally killed their friend in front of them.
It’s all just a sad excuse to setup more outrageous ultraviolence in an allegedly ‘realistic’ world. Also what ‘moral’ is this tale going to have in the end after JJ predictably manages to escape and kill one of the nerds in his super-mustache-saiyan state?? That’s right: they should have just set up a simple no-escape deathtrap with low collateral risk (ex: small remotely detonated nail bomb with Ricin-tipped needles/nails) instead of even trying to go to the inept Sepia legal authorities. Remember kids, only YOU can protect yourselves from assassins! The police are USELESS.
In the US, the courts have repeatedly ruled that the police have no duty to intervene in a crime or protect individuals. Their job is collect evidence and arrest the perpetrator after he’s done murdering you.
They’re not useless from a societal point of view, but for an individual… Well… When seconds count they’re only minutes away. It’s not their fault. They’re only human. They can’t be everywhere at once.
So far the level of violence in Sepiaworld is not at all unrealistic. We’ve had one stabbing, two shots fired, and one death. In most large cities (even in places where guns are supposedly forbidden) that’s probably not even enough to make a noticeable difference in the yearly statistics, especially given that only the murder was actually reported to the police. Sorry if that bursts your security bubble, but there are a lot of not-very-nice people in this world. I guess we’ll see if JJ’s escape rises to ludicrous levels of precision violence…
My post was NOT referring to the PAST level of violence but the unrealistic future gore-fest this page is conspicuously setting up for, even at the cost of essentially re-writing JJ’s character.
They didn’t rewrite anything. JJ’s an alpha-male type; he gets off on being dominant and in control, which includes himself. That’s why he seems rational- he feels that he can afford to be. It’s an indulgence. So things are always on his terms- when they’re not (as has been demonstrated here) he’s gonna feel way more unstable and will become violent to regain dominance/control.
Honestly your appraisal of him as a character is so far off the mark that I have to question your personal life experience. Have you seriously never met an alpha-male type guy? I work parking in a city and know tons of business execs just like that. They’re oh so friendly until you don’t recognize their position or otherwise do something that makes them feel less dominant and then the fangs come out. JJ’s just a sociopathic, exaggerated version of that, and he’s just been outsmarted, humiliated, and had his life upended by a bunch of what he considers omegas- bottom of the barrel nerds. Of course he’s gonna lose his cool, it wouldn’t make sense if he didn’t.
No I know that type and I really think they wouldn’t be making a sloppy ostentatious display like this. They’d more likely immediately go into ‘work-mode’ thinking “whatever, I can still get through this” and focus on ‘winning’ and in this case winning just means getting off-grid to continue wetwork somewhere else (possibly planning for payback at a much later date).
Even alphas can accept an occasional loss, it does happen after all and they tend to chalk it up to blind luck, circumstance etc. That’s what I’d see JJ doing, immediately bolting thinking ‘these assholes just got lucky and spotted me’ and perhaps planning to pay them back AFTER he ‘wins’ by getting away and changing his identity etc etc.
I mean its simply unrealistically STUPID of him to not already have a contingency plan for this when he KNEW they had video of him murdering someone. For him to assume that he actually spooked them from attempting to go to the police displays idiocy that’s WAY out of character for him, alpha mentality or no. In fact most variants of alpha mentality would expect that ‘nerds’ would ‘tattle’ to the authorities since they’re too weak to handle ‘bullies’ like JJ themselves.
The trouble you’re having is that you basically bought a lie that JJ was feeding himself. He claims that he only wanted to talk things through and he probably even believe sit despite the fact that he was JUST internally monologuing to himself about studying the situation so he can track them down and kill them! People lie to themselves all the time in this world, hold contradictory beliefs, the end goal is always casting onesself in a positive light. That’s all he’s doing. Rationalizing his actions in a way that casts himself in a positive, or at least neutral, light.
I know he’s a rational actor rationalizing his monstrous career choice with jaded philosophy. What seems out of character to me is his sudden choice of emotional vengeance over just bolting and going off-grid and holding off for payback at a later date. He is little more than a bloodthirsty brute in the end I’m aware of that, but up until this page JJ HAS exercised a better sense for self-preservation than going berserk like this.
But he’s already shown himself to be sloppy- he’s pursuing targets which expect him which is a serious no-no for hitman work; also he killed kaye when threatening her would have been far more effective. And he did so on video- no hit man with a brain would ever do a hit around any kind of recording device. So obviously the guy IS stupid and sloppy at times, so making this mistake here is completely in character.
His decision to pursue aware targets (and ones in a group no less) is pure stupid hubris. Really, he’s lucky they weren’t waiting for him with a semi automatic shotgun and a hastily drilled murder hole; that would be the far more sensible solution.
I absolutely agree he has been sloppy and such an ambush could have easily occurred but I still think this is more, its suicidally sloppy; as in he just gave up caring about his future rather suddenly and it seemed out of character to me.
Those other instances were missteps that can build up to mistake sure, but this is like “bail bail bail! bail or get F’ed dude!” and he’s really going to try and kill these guys after giving them enough evidence to get insane levels of cop protection? That goes a bit beyond alpha dumb douche mentality and into American Psycho in my opinion. It was just kinda shocking- I admit that shock lead to my initial post being a bit harsh.
What do you expect? That bunch has spent two pages expertly trolling JJ. As an old-school criminal, JJ has no built up immunity to internet trolls. How could he not go postal, after that?
Of course going to the police is logical. That doesn’t mean he fucking LIKES it. You’re sitting here getting butthurt that a professional murderer is rationalizing his crimes. He kills people for money; he’s not the most normal of blokes on a good day.
H.R. is a fucking wizard who’s trapped people inside a videogame, murders his employees, and has his assistant dismember them and dump them in the ocean, and you’re saying that J.J. getting mad is unrealistic?
As for ‘outrageous ultraviolence,’ he’s literally stabbed one person OMG TEH VIOLENCES. Should I be thinking of the children?
HR’s powers and neurosis were always the ‘out there’ component of Sepia but the REST of this world has always been attempted to be ‘played straight’ by Phil and T.
There’s a thing called ‘character’ in stories, ok? JJ’s calm rational demeanor established over MANY CHAPTERS is now being completely rewritten in this page under the sad excuse of ‘this is how he really is deep down’ in order to set up a gory violent unrealistic climax with Shanna. It’s lazy storytelling at its worst, plain and simple.
Your barb would be accurate IF I was referring to JJ’s PAST violence, I’m not. I’m referring to the trite ultraviolence guaranteed to happen in the near future that this page is overzealously gearing up for.
It’s almost as if it was a facade from a killer who’s actually NOT the calm philosopher he pretends to be. Jesus, they literally said EXACTLY THAT on the last page.
But even if not so philosophical and gentle he is still supposed to be LOGICAL / RATIONAL. Everything we’ve seen of him until now shows a man who keeps his wits about him even when things get hairy and does not waste time grandstanding without purpose.
All of that development was thrown completely in the trash on this page. Now he is more than willing to spook his prey and tell them his plan because “Fuck logic and planning! I’m insanely pissed you did the most predictable thing people fleeing a hitman like me would do! Also I need to practice my ‘intro pose’ for a new Mega Man variation I’m green-screening for!”
He’s very likely pissed because now it is very unlikely he’s going to get paid for anything he’s done, here. Remember the part about the job being quick and quiet? His entire bluff up until now has been about scaring them OUT of going to the police.
There is no quick and quiet route out, now, which means bye bye to that fat paycheck he negotiated. He’s now a wanted man WITHOUT a payday. So, yeah, he mad.
I get that he’s mad. But he’s SUPPOSED to be capable and logical, now out of mere emotion he told his targets that he’s going to rush them and attempt murder no matter the cost to himself. He also gave them all the evidence they would need to give the police (specifically his VERY clear death threat on all of them) for a LOT of SWAT protection and, on top of all this, he is wasting precious seconds while the cops are imminently coming for him. This goes far beyond ‘sloppy’ for JJ.
It’s obvious he has completely lost his cool head to be setup for a cliche violent climax. If this was all JJ was going to amount to, it would’ve been better story-wise for him to never have been made a character in the first place…
Tell me more about the story you would have written.
I am going to be highly entertained if the next page shows the cops dropping JJ with little effort.
That would be an AMAZING anti-climax and something which I would whole-heartedly support.
I’d rather not. Look I don’t mean to cause any offense here and if that is the case for anyone then I apologize for the exaggerated harshness in my critique. I don’t wish to imply Sepia is crap story, just not up to the bar Archerra sets IMO.
Dude, he’s not mad that they tried. He’s mad that they succeeded.
This isn’t just a setback, or a lost paycheck. Like Xan said, this isn’t like one of those past setbacks where if he kept his head, he could still recover the situation. The moment Xan told him the cops already had everything, he knew his whole career was gone, his future cast to the wind, regardless of what he does now.
So sure he cracked. Even as “rational” as you think he is, he’s by definition never faced absolute failure like this before. The best outcome he can hope for now is to spend the rest of his life hiding like Whitey Bulger, so why bother with restraint anymore?
I’ll admit that perhaps I just misjudged his character. For a more thorough clarification of my opinion without text clutter, please see the second paragraph of my reply to electricdawn below starting with ‘Holding a vendetta..’. Thank you.
EVERYBODY has their breaking point, and the longer they can force themselves to stay calm, the more spectacular it is when their safeguards finally fail.
Fair enough, but if JJ actually tries to go through with this threat its more of an absurd suicidal snapping point than a mere breaking one IMO. That was basically my entire point.
Totally agree with your assessment. If at all, it’s MORE realistic (because he shows he’s a real flesh and blood human instead of a robot) then what Danzin thinks he should act like (unrealistic, that is).
How is it unrealistic to expect a man who, up until now, has always acted in simple self-interest to continue acting in self-interest? I said that I understand the anger already, but actually going through with what he is threatening goes beyond realistic human anger IMO.
Holding a vendetta like this is not merely a poor decision its unrealistic suicidal insanity. JJ could easily instead prioritize his own safety and future focusing on his escape and/or establishing a new identity. If he had just immediately bolted instead of making this ostentatious display ON CAMERA he actually might have something of a future to salvage. Now he’s flushing it all down the drain on a tantrum after being established as a veteran professional up until this page.
He still might try to escape… and then go on a wild goose chase to capture them. But yeah, I find it totally in character that he underestimated them and that cracks his pride. Thus making it personal.
Ok but that brings up another part of why this dialogue is like 90% insanity: he’s accusing THEM of making this ‘personal’ when he KNOWS he already killed one of their friends right in front of them. He simply has no real justification for his anger except frustration at his own sloppiness.
Because THEIR lives are not important. Oh boo-hoo, he killed one of them. He’s killed before, over and over. This is his job. They don’t matter. Their job is to go belly-up, or if they don’t go belly up, obediently die. Of course this makes it ‘personal’ for him.
You seem to be suffering from an odd idea that a character is made more realistic by flanderization. You want this singe, one-note facet of his persona to be his ENTIRE persona, and for some reason think it’s “unrealistic” when it’s revealed he’s just a smidge more complicated than that?
Dude, pretty much everyone has entire wings of their personality that they hide or fluff up for other’s benefit during daily life, whether in casual or professional contexts. Every human language has either euphemisms or even formal words for this. Most religions push reconciling the “masks” down into a single omnidirectional persona as a spiritual goal that can take a lifetime to achieve (or multiple, depending on the religion).
The compartmentalization of this is pretty much the essence of what we call professionalism, but even that has it’s limits. You can be a paragon of professionalism, but if you get a call out of the blue telling you your kid was just killed in a car accident, no-one is going to think it’s “unrealistic” if you to break down right there and need to go home.
The difference here is that JJ is a sociopath, so the stuff that hits him hard is egotistically defined.
And as Nightsbridge notes below, the whole “nothing personal, just business” double standard is pretty textbook sociopath logic. To the point where you could almost call it a sitcom-level dead-horse stereotype… if it weren’t something that actually does get used by IRL sociopaths all the time.
As for what he’s doing being suicidal, this guy’s a career criminal, implied to have a lot of experience with violence and covering his tracks. Even though his career is over, He’s still confident that if he can get away from the cops right now, he can still stay far enough ahead to find and kill them before going to ground.
Clamming up is only a strategy if he intends to let himself get arrested, then “escape” via the legal system. If he doesn’t want to get arrested at all, then he’s probably going to have to fight his way out of the immediate situation anyway (or at least, it’s enough of a probability to make going gun in hand a reasonable preparation), regardless of what he intends to do after. And since he’s already implicated on camera, and doesn’t intend to even get arrested, it doesn’t matter if he implicates himself further.
TBH if we had the ability to delete our posts I would have erased all of mine yesterday afternoon. I already admitted to you I could be mistaken about JJ, I can’t do much else to defend my past opinion then what I’ve already said many times in this thread. If there IS a way to delete our posts, please let me know how.
It’s probably also in large part the fact that his targets have taken his control of the situation away from him. Sure he’s able to project an air of calm and rationality while he thinks he’s holding all the cards (although his stabbing Xan, within seconds of meeting him, with a knife attached to his car keys suggests that he was never entirely either of those things). But now that he’s been placed in a desperate situation and been outplayed and laughed at by these pathetic couch potatoes he’s been stalking, the veneer of civilization has cracked a little.
And for Danzin, the trope at play here is the Villainous Breakdown, which usually presages the villain’s defeat, not their violent moment of glory.
If your prediction is correct I will retract my criticisms because they were based on my assessment that this seems like a setup for a villainous rampage that will then lead to breakdown then defeat etc.
Looking at panel 2, I just realized… just how many teeth does he have!?
All of them.
Dropping out of lurk briefly to say that the sepia strips are the ones that keep me the most intrigued in the story arc. I like knowing that the stakes are high on both sides of the “reality line”, and the suspense has had me on the edge of my seat thus far. Can’t wait to see what happens next. :)
*relurking*
You should post more often tbh.
JJ in the last panel:
http://www.raybendici.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/nerds1.jpg
The video version:
The situation has now slipped totally beyond JJ’s control, which is apparently not something he’s accustomed. Further, I’m guessing he’s managed to avoid any serious encounters with law enforcement before this. Now, *if* he makes it out of this, he will have either killed or maimed two cops. He will have carved MEGA bullseyes into his back, his forehead, the back of his head, bullseyes everywhere.
Revolvers? Seriously? I’m disappointed. No military-grade assassin is going to be using six-guns. Just saying.
I’m told they’re less likely to jam.
They don’t eject shells, which is convenient if you need to run with minimal evidence.
I’m just enthralled with the Mustache. That is all.
Oh no! He’s going to shoot them through Skype!
With deadly arguments!
He starts off in caps, then quickly gets very cold. That’s a nice touch.
(Not counting his furious threat at the end).
Seeing as he’s a “professional” killer for hire. Why would they even want him to remain professional?
Nooo! Not the laptop! It’s still so young and innocent!
…
Ok. We MIGHT have used it to watch a little bit of porn occasionally.
Heh.
I mean, who doesn’t.
Emotion leads to mistakes. This is his downfall.
Being a professional, he must absolutely understand that becoming a cop-killer only makes the bullseye on his back larger, right?
Dual-Wielding, eh? How’ll that work out for him?
Famous last words.