She’s out an assassin, but Shanna isn’t all that ahead in this game. With Berten dead they don’t have anyone that can confess to working for Hurricane. So it’s still their accusation against a very wealthy corporation. Of course if Carol panics that could work to Shanna’s advantage.
There will be a series of phone calls between JJ and Carol’s direct line, and the police WILL be following up on that, with at least two of their number at least dead. JJ… wasn’t likely to add any more testimony. I’m just a bit disappointed that the gang didn’t tease anything more evidentiary out of him on camera.
The police could trace the calls provided he left his phone unlocked when he died. If not that’s likely to another tech company’s civil rights dispute. Even if he did it’s not enough to make a case although it could definitely bring unwanted attention. There’s also the added problem that Shanna just killed a man albeit in self defense which means she’ll either have to stay and answer questions making it possible for another assassin to locate her or go on the run which could get her in trouble with the police for fleeing a crime scene.
The calls can be traced regardless of whether the phone was unlocked or not. Call history is recorded in the phone company’s billing records. It’s just the personal stuff stored on the phone that can be hard to get at if it’s locked.
Shanna will eventually have to justify it, but given the evidence for other murders, including being found at a crime scene after killing (?) several cops, I expect they’d show some clemency. While vigilantism is illegal for good reason there’s no way to mistake his intentions, even if they can’t yet prove to the authorities a respected corporation is pursuing them. Is there a technical term for this scenario, like proactive self defense?
I am not a legal scholar, but if somebody has just killed three other people, two immediately before the present, and is in the process of raising a gun at you after announcing on camera their intention to gun you down in the street, I think the technical term is just “self defense”.
Also, he’s on recording as having just issued credible threats to hunt down and murder the entire sepia crowd, gunning them down in the streets, and HAS a track record of tracking them down even when they go off the grid.
They were staying at one of the sepia gangs houses. Not too off grid and the hacker was using the internet so the range of IP addresses would have shown activity giving away their location.
To my understanding, lethal self defense is only legal when it applies to an immediate deadly threat to your person (not because someone threatened you and you then decided to shot them when their back was turned for example) or if the person is posing a threat to you in your home. So there might be some standing for it.
There is a gun in his hand after killing two cops. That is a valid and credible threat and can be used as self defense. The Dead Guy doesn’t get a vote on if he was or was not about to drop it.
brasca1: The issue is that the police tried to CRACK into the phone without calling for and wait for the company to unlock it, so the phone’s security feature kicked in and scrambled the data in it. The company will unlock IF the police/FBI provide a warrant. They merely refuse to unlock on anyone’s say so to protect privacy rights in general.
She wasn’t aiming at the center of mass. Remember his view from the last strip of both iron sites lined up both vertically and horizontally; that only happens when she’s aiming at his nose.
A nice late reply to this, but Shanna in Fans! was shown to have considerable talent for marksmanship, which was one of the traits that allowed her to elevate to amazing badassery by the midway point.
My browser actually did freeze and for a good 30 seconds I couldn’t scroll down. I loaded the comic on my phone before Chrome caught up with the program. I *really* need a new computer.
Good.
I thought for sure she was going to hesitate. I thought for certain she was going to think “I can’t do this. I’m not a murderer. I know how dangerous he is but I can’t take his–” and get a bullet in her heart.
Indeed.
Many people, fictional and real, seem not to appreciate that killing for self-defense, even against an enemy which is only most likely an immediate threat, is legitimate and not “murder”. Shanna was in mortal danger there, once things got to that point, and did the right thing by pulling the trigger .
Not dissimilarly, letting the mass-murdering bad guy live to mass-murder again because “killing is not what the good guys do” works well enough for (some) fictional characters, but in the real world, it’s morally imbecilic and dangerous to act like that; the blood of every future victim is partially on the hero’s hards.
I concur with that statement but there are some opponents that aren’t killing people of their own free will. There is always a chance a person can be redeemed but that I will agree is unfortunately unlikely.
“there are some opponents that aren’t killing people of their own free will.”
Out here in the real world, that is an unfortunate situation… where the lowest available body count is still usually to kill that person. Body count: 1 The only way to get lower than that is to stop them without killing them AND without them killing anyone else. The whole reason we’re even having this discussion is because of how unlikely success at that is – if such person was already subdued and in custody, then sure, no reason to just off them on the spot.
“There is always a chance a person can be redeemed”
Sure… but they’ll kill OTHER people in the mean time. What makes the killer more valuable than the killed? THAT is the crazy part of the whole thing.
“At long last, we have redeemed the Joker. He won’t kill anyone, and we didn’t have to kill him! See, I was right!”
“That’s great… I’m sure it helps the families of the 398 people he killed in the mean time feel SO MUCH BETTER.”
“Well… yeah, but those 398 didn’t have names in this comic, so they aren’t really important.”
That’s what it boils down to – so-called “heroes” in mainstream comics just don’t want blood on their OWN hands, but hey, the bulk of the nobodies the villains kill are created just to be killed by them, so they don’t really matter anyway…
How fussed people are about how many people he killed baffles me. So opposed to death on principle… but why? Death is the end of pain, and not among the actually cruel things he has done.
That has more to do with the fact major comics love recurring villains. Marvel has actually killed the Green Goblin a couple of times but keep bringing them back because they love using Norman Osborn as a foil for Peter Parker. Think the Red Skull has now came back from hell more times than the Phoenix (the cosmic cub is such bullshit) Why I rather read comics like the Guilded Age, Campbell and Kahn are not regurgitating a story that’s been replayed over 77 years (Batman will always fight the Joker because Batman has always fought the Joker) People will die in Guilded Age, lets see who’s next!
Headshots are a little silly. I would’ve preferred Shanna to have been REALLY practical and just put 3 or 4 in his chest, but it’s a fairly minor gripe. This was more dramatic, and I really like her lying in wait for JJ in the first place.
In fiction, sure. Almost no real people trained in firearms would shoot anywhere but center mass. Cops routinely miss suspects entirely at close distances, adrenaline etc. I doubt Shanna has the level of expertise for that. And yeah, I think she knows he’s not wearing armor.
Add the detail that he’s obviously already taken a few hits to the chest and is still going. Adding one more might have dropped him, or might have just given him enough time for a shot of his own. Since she had time to aim a headshot makes the most sense.
Headshot are more likely to miss and hit some innocent bystanders. The center of mass is actually what professionals aim for. A headshot is many times the mark of ether an amateur or a personal killing. Also there have been extreme cases of the headshot not being fatal due to the bullet hitting at an angle or the brain not being fatally damaged due to mitigating factors. People have literally survived with half a brain after being shot in the head.
Now given that there seems to be enough splatter for this to be an instantly fatal shooting.
Yes. You all thought that was a jet of blood in the last frame, from shooting JJ in the forehead. Shanna really shot his mustache right between the handlebars, and that’s actually JJ’s liberated mustache hairs blowing away in the wind. As his glorious lip-tickler dies, so too must its host.
JJ’s a veritable post-modern mirror-alignment Samson.
TL:DR no, no they are not always critical or fatal. Sorry. Having treated a few gunshots over the years including headshots to the face. Uh, usually yes but surprisingly not always. Just like sometime the entrance would doesn’t look like a hole, it looks like an avulsion and the bullets did NOT leave the body. And yes everybody does have HP, what gets complicated is the vitality stat and willpower stat.
Even without a proper hat, his crown is well and truly broken.
Maybe one or more of his initials stands for Jack, and he was named after a hill-tumbling ancestor.
Oh! Well that ends JJ rather soundly. But somehow I got the sinking feeling it still didn’t kill him. Granted it’ll more than obvious shannon dropped him, but unless we see JJ’s dead body in the next page, he might still live. He’ll no longer be a threat, but prove to be a living witness to Shannon’s over all quest.
If he’s still alive, after metal went through one end of his skull and out the other he’s severely brain-damaged. His ability to be a threat to anybody directly is over.
“Guys? Shanna. I think it’s over. I blew the back of his skull off, but I’m not entirely sure he’s dead.”
“Shanna! It’s Xan. This is important! Do you feel an irresistible urge to repeatedly squat over his face?”
“OMG! Yes!”
“It’s over, guys… Shanna, that means he’s well and truly dead. Please record yourself squatting over his face, for my YouTube channel. It’ll get millions of hits, before they take it down… Wait! Is his moustache still intact?”
Panel 1. The fear JJ shows, after hurting Xan, killing Kaye, he made all those threats, he blew his cool, and he gunned down those cops, he walked out while still making more promises of violence…
God created all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.
I appreciate that Shanna didn’t have any parting words before she killed JJ like a dog in the street. A monologue or hesitation would have been too good for him. Cool, calm, collected. “What did you feel when you shot him?” “Recoil.”
This was a good ending for this character. Presentation and framing were on point. Bravo.
“If a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power over people and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
“So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”
Took me a moment to register what bugged me about that first panel. . . and then it registered. That is just… TERRIBLE posture for using a handgun. He’s raising it, along with his entire arm, at the shoulder like he’s threatening her with a sword or a magic wand. He can’t even use his sights like that, and he could hip-fire in half the time. Shanna’s hand position last page was pretty spot on though.
Doesn’t matter, the page is solid. That only bugs me because I’m me.
The Captain’s right; he looks so panicked because he knows his arm isn’t working the way he wants it to, or as quickly. It was his only chance, since that hand was the one the gun was in.
See the way he’s holidng his coat? That’s up against a wound that seems to be larger then the others, probably because it’s a more direct hit. The other wounds hurt but this one is bad, and it’s in a spot that’s compromised his physical ability.
He’s being ambushed by Shanna and is *reacting* to her. So yes, his posture is going to be a wreck anyway.
To steal terms from German longsword, he’s in the nacht.
If you’re balding in the front, you’re a thinker.
If you’re balding in the back, you’re a lover.
If you’re balding in the front and the back, you just think you’re a lover.
If you’re balding in the front and have a gaping hole in the back, you should’ve spent a lot more time thinking about being a lover. (and a lot less time being a hater)
Good point.
The slide on her gun is all the way forward, so either it’s already completed its cycle, or her gun wasn’t fired.
The shell casing could be hidden by her (or her hat’s) silhouette, or one was never ejected.
Her aim seems to be dead on, so either she recovered from the recoil remarkably fast, or there was no recoil. Or, the gun is still waving about, but just looks like it’s on target, at this instant.
I think the artist was trying to convince us both that she did and that she didn’t fire the kill shot.
From what I know about gun laws, this should be open and close self-defense. He was even lifting his gun to try to shoot her and she only fired one shot to stop him.
I’d debate the open-and-shut part.
Shanna does have reasonable evidence of JJ’s intent on record, but she’s still the one ambushing him. Presumably, she could have avoided confrontation altogether after the police were involved.
In theory, yes. In practice, self defense is a positive defense — that is, one the prosecution establishes in court that you did kill the person, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the killing was done in self defense. That means that it’s not enough that the guy was about to kill you. You need to be able to prove that in court.
… or, you know, talk openly to the police and convince them so you don’t get prosecuted in the first place.
You have to prove a threat to your life and a reasonable fear that the person was going to carry out that threat. He had a gun in his hand (which ballistics will prove shot the officers in the home) they have video of him killing another that they witnessed live via the internet and they have video of him threatening to hunt them down and kill them.
One o y’all mentioned if Shanna just walked away here would be one bullet in jj that didn’t match the cop’s guns. Know what? There is only an exit wound. They’ll never find that spent bullet. If she picks up her brass, she is able to walk away. No evidence. This is my fave web comic.
It’s possible they could find the bullet, even though it’d be a ways away. That sort of thing actually does happen all the time in shooting investigations (the bullet from a shooting is a block away in a car or a cinder block or something, but still gets found, ’cause the cops know what cone of area to search in). More depends on what kind of ammunition she’s using, maybe.
But more to the point, since they’ve already sent the videos to the police, the gamer group’s identities are already known to the cops, and the only reason they were targeted was because of Shauna, so she’s known as well. IMO this wasn’t just about trapping JJ and ending the threat to their lives (though that is the most immediate motivation), this was also about going public with the hurricane investigation. Shauna doesn’t want to fade away into the night, because this isn’t about keeping things secret, it’s about blowing the lid off. The cops are going to be on this like a spotlight now, and that’s a good thing for her.
JJ was kinda screwing up all along. By pushing too hard, he provoked Sauna’s investigation to escalate three times, with the final one bringing law enforcement into the mix in a big way (this hit man killed several cops, so they’re gonna be SUPER interested in whoever hired him). Good Job, JJ, and by extension, Carol.
Wait a minute is that a silhouette of blood and viscera streaming from the exit wound? Or is it just a silhouette of JJ’s pony tail? Any way nice shot.
I guess it has to be the pony tail, because the bloodspray would not be on that side of the head unless he was already falling backwards… which seems unplausible.
His hair is tied lower on his head, and tight to it…it shouldn’t pop up that high. Even if the main mass is the hair, though, there’s plenty of obvious spray from the exit wound around it.
Actually… I think it was.
There’s philosopher JJ, the form he takes when he meets his clients.
There’s professional JJ, the form he takes while tracking his target and intimidating people involved.
Then there’s personal JJ, wherein he shows how he feels when not only does his targets defy him but also cleverly entrap him.
And now, lastly, we had bloodied JJ, indicating that he’s sustained enough damage to be finished off.
That was dangerous but i’m really glad he got to see who killed him, realize that they outsmarted him,and know he was completely helpless to it after all that grandstanding
JJ threatened her mother. You could see the look of shock on her face when he did so over the initial Skype. She protected what was dearest to her, and she did it in the only way that could make sure to protect her. So yeah. This was perfect.
And then she stays and explains to the police that he was hunting them, and, quite legitimately, that he was raising his weapon to fire. She’s in the public eye, everything she has to say is in the public eye, amidst a sensationalist story that will make sure EVERYONE is paying attention (Hunted Reporter Caps Contract Cop Killer!!!) and impossible for Carol to bury. And suddenly so many more people are digging and asking questions.
…is how this SHOULD go down from this point forward.
This. With the cops eyes shining hard on things now, this is her best opportunity to push things into the open.
Even if her info and testimony isn’t enough to cinch a court case, it’s enough to get the cops investigating Hurricane HARD. And even if it scuttles her ability to to write an investigative piece now (don’t think it does), she’s already got enough for a solid book deal down the line.
Before I started scrolling down, I just saw a little more blank space than usual under the first two panels, and I was like “What? Wait! We get a two-panel update? You pull a cliffhanger now? Is this the endofthechapterFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU–”
Nice one, Shanna. Head shots aren’t that easy, so she’s been practicing. Of course Mr. Moustache there was leaking quite a bit and movin’ kinda slow, but still, a fitting end for that roach. Yes, students, that’s brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid spraying from the exit wound which pretty much puts a -30- on that joker. People have been shot through the heart and continued fighting, but a headshot is forever. It’s a clear case of self defense, but if it was me, I’d just stroll away.
I did three years as an RN in a Neurosurgery Intensive Care Unit. We had an 80-ish year old guy who had gotten a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He got a second opinion and a confirmation. After that second doctor visit, he drove home, went into his garage, pulled out an antique Colt .45, placed it under his chin, and pulled the trigger. The bullet went through his skull and came out the top of his head.
He lived. Head shots aren’t 100%.
After a few weeks in ICU he got transferred to the floor. I understand he never woke up, but he did get to die of pancreatic cancer.
Pfff… silly people. She didn’t shoot him!
A swarm of “Lectric Mind-Bees” are boring into the back of his skull, so that they can turn him into walking hive and eventualy take over the world!
A brilliantly observed character: charming and grotesque, down to that wonderful vanity.
I’ll miss him, and that is a credit to your work.
Thank you for what continues to be a fantastic saga.
Just on an aside…it’s entirely possible she didn’t kill him. That kind of blood spray wouldn’t be all that crazy if she’d done something like annihilate an ear and part of the side of his head with a bullet. I’d be kind of glad if she did kill him though, it’d wrap up that part of the story thread far more neatly than ‘The Revenge of JJ”.
From a storytelling perspective, I don’t think the authors and artist would frame this moment like this if it wasn’t a final moment.
From a more realistic perspective, it wouldn’t matter that much if the shot didn’t kill him. He was already weakened, he’s starting to fall backwards, and he just dropped one of his guns (and wasn’t holding the other one). Shanna was fully prepared to kill him, and if she failed just now, she’d have a good chance to get in another shot before JJ could reach for his other gun.
Pain and blood loss can be pretty debilitating, so yeah, even if not an outright fatal shot, he doesn’t have a chance of getting a shot at her without her finishing him. And in his state, he probably would get to worry about death by exsanguination anyway (head wounds bleed badly, combine that with his shoulder and arm wounds…)
At that point he was desperately hoping she would miss, or hesitate, because contrary to Hollywood, to pull and aim your gun takes far more time than it takes to just pull the trigger.
She neither hesitated, nor missed.
While the police may look to find who killed him, after shooting the cops, I don’t think they will look very hard. Heck, if the piece is licensed, she might well be able to just wait for the police to show up and claim justifiable homicide without any problem at all.
If he didn’t need his brain to run his autonomic functions, from his overall display of intelligence – or lack of it – I don’t think he would have otherwise missed it.
Looks like she had drawn a bead on his head and was tracing him allready at the point Just Joe raised his arm. I say justifiable use of deadly force would not be supprised if the gamers planted camerasahead of time.
I love the irony of his last expression. Likely the same expression of many of his victims. After all he’s done, it’s kind of obvious that it was both a justifiable homicide as well as self defense.
You know, that’s actually what I think I found the most interesting about that first panel. He’s always been sort of a hammy character with the big over the top mustache and everything, but with that stricken look, even with the ‘stache and everything, for a brief moment he looks human. Actually human.
Not a comic threat, nothing over the top, in his last moments just a man struggling for his life.
A life he reallllly doesn’t deserve at this point, so, you know, gets what’s coming and all of that, it’s just interesting things had to go this far to expose the person under all the attitude and bravado.
Your move, Carol. o__o
She’s out an assassin, but Shanna isn’t all that ahead in this game. With Berten dead they don’t have anyone that can confess to working for Hurricane. So it’s still their accusation against a very wealthy corporation. Of course if Carol panics that could work to Shanna’s advantage.
There will be a series of phone calls between JJ and Carol’s direct line, and the police WILL be following up on that, with at least two of their number at least dead. JJ… wasn’t likely to add any more testimony. I’m just a bit disappointed that the gang didn’t tease anything more evidentiary out of him on camera.
The police could trace the calls provided he left his phone unlocked when he died. If not that’s likely to another tech company’s civil rights dispute. Even if he did it’s not enough to make a case although it could definitely bring unwanted attention. There’s also the added problem that Shanna just killed a man albeit in self defense which means she’ll either have to stay and answer questions making it possible for another assassin to locate her or go on the run which could get her in trouble with the police for fleeing a crime scene.
The calls can be traced regardless of whether the phone was unlocked or not. Call history is recorded in the phone company’s billing records. It’s just the personal stuff stored on the phone that can be hard to get at if it’s locked.
Shanna will eventually have to justify it, but given the evidence for other murders, including being found at a crime scene after killing (?) several cops, I expect they’d show some clemency. While vigilantism is illegal for good reason there’s no way to mistake his intentions, even if they can’t yet prove to the authorities a respected corporation is pursuing them. Is there a technical term for this scenario, like proactive self defense?
I am not a legal scholar, but if somebody has just killed three other people, two immediately before the present, and is in the process of raising a gun at you after announcing on camera their intention to gun you down in the street, I think the technical term is just “self defense”.
Also, he’s on recording as having just issued credible threats to hunt down and murder the entire sepia crowd, gunning them down in the streets, and HAS a track record of tracking them down even when they go off the grid.
They were staying at one of the sepia gangs houses. Not too off grid and the hacker was using the internet so the range of IP addresses would have shown activity giving away their location.
To my understanding, lethal self defense is only legal when it applies to an immediate deadly threat to your person (not because someone threatened you and you then decided to shot them when their back was turned for example) or if the person is posing a threat to you in your home. So there might be some standing for it.
There is a gun in his hand after killing two cops. That is a valid and credible threat and can be used as self defense. The Dead Guy doesn’t get a vote on if he was or was not about to drop it.
Public service homicide? (Unofficial term, of course)
brasca1: The issue is that the police tried to CRACK into the phone without calling for and wait for the company to unlock it, so the phone’s security feature kicked in and scrambled the data in it. The company will unlock IF the police/FBI provide a warrant. They merely refuse to unlock on anyone’s say so to protect privacy rights in general.
Lucky shot or the gun bucked as she aimed for the center mass. Ether way, she hit him right in the Mustache.
She wasn’t aiming at the center of mass. Remember his view from the last strip of both iron sites lined up both vertically and horizontally; that only happens when she’s aiming at his nose.
A nice late reply to this, but Shanna in Fans! was shown to have considerable talent for marksmanship, which was one of the traits that allowed her to elevate to amazing badassery by the midway point.
Well, can’t say he didn’t deserve it.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person
That was sarcasm in case anyone missed it.
I approve of your sarcasm.
Mischief managed.
Actually, it’d be more accurate to say it probably wouldn’t have happened to a nicer person….
So you’re saying it COULD have happened to a nicer person?
Let’s not get into the Probability vs Karma debate here!
Wow, that’s a hell of a way to frame a page.
I sat there for a minute waiting for it to finish loading.
Me too!
This happened to me as well but only for about 5 seconds.
My browser actually did freeze and for a good 30 seconds I couldn’t scroll down. I loaded the comic on my phone before Chrome caught up with the program. I *really* need a new computer.
Same here.
+1
+2
Amazing framing!
Good.
I thought for sure she was going to hesitate. I thought for certain she was going to think “I can’t do this. I’m not a murderer. I know how dangerous he is but I can’t take his–” and get a bullet in her heart.
Indeed.
Many people, fictional and real, seem not to appreciate that killing for self-defense, even against an enemy which is only most likely an immediate threat, is legitimate and not “murder”. Shanna was in mortal danger there, once things got to that point, and did the right thing by pulling the trigger .
Not dissimilarly, letting the mass-murdering bad guy live to mass-murder again because “killing is not what the good guys do” works well enough for (some) fictional characters, but in the real world, it’s morally imbecilic and dangerous to act like that; the blood of every future victim is partially on the hero’s hards.
I give you The Joker. Every time Batman doesn’t kill him, he gets out and kills more people.
In ANY sane world, that guy would be dead. SOMEBODY would have offed him, even one of the guards or something.
I concur with that statement but there are some opponents that aren’t killing people of their own free will. There is always a chance a person can be redeemed but that I will agree is unfortunately unlikely.
“there are some opponents that aren’t killing people of their own free will.”
Out here in the real world, that is an unfortunate situation… where the lowest available body count is still usually to kill that person. Body count: 1 The only way to get lower than that is to stop them without killing them AND without them killing anyone else. The whole reason we’re even having this discussion is because of how unlikely success at that is – if such person was already subdued and in custody, then sure, no reason to just off them on the spot.
“There is always a chance a person can be redeemed”
Sure… but they’ll kill OTHER people in the mean time. What makes the killer more valuable than the killed? THAT is the crazy part of the whole thing.
“At long last, we have redeemed the Joker. He won’t kill anyone, and we didn’t have to kill him! See, I was right!”
“That’s great… I’m sure it helps the families of the 398 people he killed in the mean time feel SO MUCH BETTER.”
“Well… yeah, but those 398 didn’t have names in this comic, so they aren’t really important.”
That’s what it boils down to – so-called “heroes” in mainstream comics just don’t want blood on their OWN hands, but hey, the bulk of the nobodies the villains kill are created just to be killed by them, so they don’t really matter anyway…
Yeah, the real world doesn’t work like that.
How fussed people are about how many people he killed baffles me. So opposed to death on principle… but why? Death is the end of pain, and not among the actually cruel things he has done.
That has more to do with the fact major comics love recurring villains. Marvel has actually killed the Green Goblin a couple of times but keep bringing them back because they love using Norman Osborn as a foil for Peter Parker. Think the Red Skull has now came back from hell more times than the Phoenix (the cosmic cub is such bullshit) Why I rather read comics like the Guilded Age, Campbell and Kahn are not regurgitating a story that’s been replayed over 77 years (Batman will always fight the Joker because Batman has always fought the Joker) People will die in Guilded Age, lets see who’s next!
Imagine how shocked Shanna and her crew will feel when JJ casually respawns, Bandit-style.
Is this the real life,
Or is it MMORPG…
Headshots: Always a Crit, Every Time.
THEY’RE STILL IN A GAME, FOLKS!
But you need to double tap to make sure you know.
Headshots are a little silly. I would’ve preferred Shanna to have been REALLY practical and just put 3 or 4 in his chest, but it’s a fairly minor gripe. This was more dramatic, and I really like her lying in wait for JJ in the first place.
Headshots are the most practical if you have the aim for it. You never know whether your target is wearing armor.
Well, unless they’re shirtless.
Invisible armor?
Torso-patterned armor?
In fiction, sure. Almost no real people trained in firearms would shoot anywhere but center mass. Cops routinely miss suspects entirely at close distances, adrenaline etc. I doubt Shanna has the level of expertise for that. And yeah, I think she knows he’s not wearing armor.
“2 to the chest, face gets the rest” is the rule of thumb here, I think
Add the detail that he’s obviously already taken a few hits to the chest and is still going. Adding one more might have dropped him, or might have just given him enough time for a shot of his own. Since she had time to aim a headshot makes the most sense.
Headshot are more likely to miss and hit some innocent bystanders. The center of mass is actually what professionals aim for. A headshot is many times the mark of ether an amateur or a personal killing. Also there have been extreme cases of the headshot not being fatal due to the bullet hitting at an angle or the brain not being fatally damaged due to mitigating factors. People have literally survived with half a brain after being shot in the head.
Now given that there seems to be enough splatter for this to be an instantly fatal shooting.
To be fair headshots are pretty critty irl too.
Merely a headshot wouldn’t have brought him down. She shot his mustache off, the source of his power.
Yes. You all thought that was a jet of blood in the last frame, from shooting JJ in the forehead. Shanna really shot his mustache right between the handlebars, and that’s actually JJ’s liberated mustache hairs blowing away in the wind. As his glorious lip-tickler dies, so too must its host.
JJ’s a veritable post-modern mirror-alignment Samson.
It’s just a headshot wound!
Meh, she has no experience points. That attack would like 30, maybe 40 HP of damage tops.
Doesn’t matter, he had like 1 or 2 HP left anyway.
And she was able to add sneak attack damage. ;-)
Ban Shanna for killstealing
Given that people IRL don’t have hit points, losing 40 of them is deadly.
Sure they do! The math works if you remember the bleed debuff, which people always forget. It’s a really complex mechanic.
TL:DR no, no they are not always critical or fatal. Sorry. Having treated a few gunshots over the years including headshots to the face. Uh, usually yes but surprisingly not always. Just like sometime the entrance would doesn’t look like a hole, it looks like an avulsion and the bullets did NOT leave the body. And yes everybody does have HP, what gets complicated is the vitality stat and willpower stat.
Hats off to ya Shanna.
But, he wasn’t wearing a hat…
an he never will
Even without a proper hat, his crown is well and truly broken.
Maybe one or more of his initials stands for Jack, and he was named after a hill-tumbling ancestor.
Oh! Well that ends JJ rather soundly. But somehow I got the sinking feeling it still didn’t kill him. Granted it’ll more than obvious shannon dropped him, but unless we see JJ’s dead body in the next page, he might still live. He’ll no longer be a threat, but prove to be a living witness to Shannon’s over all quest.
Well, half his brain is out of the skullbox, I would be very surprised to see him coming back… Also the scene is epically framed.
Quite
Yeah I think they did an excellent job with the silhouette.
Cut off the head. Always cut off the head.
Then nuke it from space. It’s the only way to be sure.
If he’s still alive, after metal went through one end of his skull and out the other he’s severely brain-damaged. His ability to be a threat to anybody directly is over.
Shanna executed this with the cold, ruthless efficiency of a gamer.
Cue teabagging in 3… 2…
I would laugh so hard.
In Shanna’s case, it wouldn’t be tea-bagging.
But it would be clam-slapping.
“Guys? Shanna. I think it’s over. I blew the back of his skull off, but I’m not entirely sure he’s dead.”
“Shanna! It’s Xan. This is important! Do you feel an irresistible urge to repeatedly squat over his face?”
“OMG! Yes!”
“It’s over, guys… Shanna, that means he’s well and truly dead. Please record yourself squatting over his face, for my YouTube channel. It’ll get millions of hits, before they take it down… Wait! Is his moustache still intact?”
“Yes? … I shot him right between the eyes.”
“Tens of millions…”
Glad to see Guilded Shanna retains her predecessor’s cold blooded practicality.
Hats off Shanna.
For JJ, it had been professional. Just good business in a capitalist’s world.
Unfortunately for him, Shanna is a Marx man.
That was terrible.
Well played.
Cringing and clapping can coexist. I know that now.
Brilliant
Hey now, ruthlessly eliminating the competition is the very ideal of capitalism.
And she’s Lenin in!
I think I’ll just Trotsky off stage after that one.
I’ll have to Lenin on you, laughing to hard. At least he didn’t make a hatchet job of the joke.
JJ sure was Russian for his gun
JJ has been Fired.
He was special, he received a red slip instead of a pink one.
Later they gave him a black toe tag to be remembered by.
In Soviet Russia, reporter shoot you!
Wait… That’s not right…
And that, students, is how you perform a front-to-back “tunnel” lobotomy.
I’d rather have a tunnel in front of me…
I haven’t been this relieved to see a long running antagonist disposed of in… hell, years? Awesome framing too. Brilliantly done.
So basically Shanna kited Bertrand through the city guards to soften him up and then slipped in for the final blow so she would get all the XP.
Excuse me, madame, but you appear to have dropped your ha– GOOD LORD, IS THAT A CORPSE?
“Yeah. I dropped him, too.” *blows across end of barrel* (Dang smokeless powder!)
Panel 1. The fear JJ shows, after hurting Xan, killing Kaye, he made all those threats, he blew his cool, and he gunned down those cops, he walked out while still making more promises of violence…
Priceless. :-)
Yep. JJ’s expressions as everything falls apart around him have been great.
God created all men, but Sam Colt made them equal.
I appreciate that Shanna didn’t have any parting words before she killed JJ like a dog in the street. A monologue or hesitation would have been too good for him. Cool, calm, collected. “What did you feel when you shot him?” “Recoil.”
This was a good ending for this character. Presentation and framing were on point. Bravo.
It also would have given him time, which from what we’ve seen of him, would have been a bad idea.
“If a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power over people and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat. They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
“So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”
Smith and Wesson, the first point and click interface.
Took me a moment to register what bugged me about that first panel. . . and then it registered. That is just… TERRIBLE posture for using a handgun. He’s raising it, along with his entire arm, at the shoulder like he’s threatening her with a sword or a magic wand. He can’t even use his sights like that, and he could hip-fire in half the time. Shanna’s hand position last page was pretty spot on though.
Doesn’t matter, the page is solid. That only bugs me because I’m me.
He has multiple bullet wounds and is in a lot of pain. He’s actually struggling to lift his arm.
One of those wounds being in, or near, that shoulder. So, yeah, that arm was not going to be responding properly.
I’m actually amazed that he could lift it at all.
The Captain’s right; he looks so panicked because he knows his arm isn’t working the way he wants it to, or as quickly. It was his only chance, since that hand was the one the gun was in.
His only chance was to immediately drop his gun.
Too bad that thought never crossed his mind.
The last thought that crossed his mind, as the bullet was crossing it, was, “Dammit! I wanted them to pry my gun from my cold, dead hand!”
See the way he’s holidng his coat? That’s up against a wound that seems to be larger then the others, probably because it’s a more direct hit. The other wounds hurt but this one is bad, and it’s in a spot that’s compromised his physical ability.
He’s being ambushed by Shanna and is *reacting* to her. So yes, his posture is going to be a wreck anyway.
To steal terms from German longsword, he’s in the nacht.
Just when JJ thought that bald spot couldn’t get any more obvious…
If you’re balding in the front, you’re a thinker.
If you’re balding in the back, you’re a lover.
If you’re balding in the front and the back, you just think you’re a lover.
If you’re balding in the front and have a gaping hole in the back, you should’ve spent a lot more time thinking about being a lover. (and a lot less time being a hater)
I wonder… we don’t see a muzzle flash from Shanna’s pistol – could someone else offpanel have shot him before Shanna could pull the trigger?
*looks at the white background of the last panel*
What color do you think the muzzle flash ought to be?
Tom Doniphon is the hero of the rest of the story.
So you’re expecting a gnoll on the grassy knoll?
Good point.
The slide on her gun is all the way forward, so either it’s already completed its cycle, or her gun wasn’t fired.
The shell casing could be hidden by her (or her hat’s) silhouette, or one was never ejected.
Her aim seems to be dead on, so either she recovered from the recoil remarkably fast, or there was no recoil. Or, the gun is still waving about, but just looks like it’s on target, at this instant.
I think the artist was trying to convince us both that she did and that she didn’t fire the kill shot.
I just realized:
http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-43-page-12/
“When I get out of here, I’m going to find you all. And gun you down in the God damned street.”
JJ just got gunned down on the street.
Well, F***. If that isn’t brilliant writing, I don’t know what is.
Why is the hat off?! He couldn’t have shot it off, then it must be that someone threw it at her from above.
Recoil or wind. There would have been recoil from that shot and it would have traveled through her body.
From what I know about gun laws, this should be open and close self-defense. He was even lifting his gun to try to shoot her and she only fired one shot to stop him.
The media will still notch up another one to “OMGERD, VIDEO GAMES MAKE YOU VIOLENT!!1” but you know, who still watches the TV anymore?
Somewhat ironic, no? Given that Shanna IS the embodiment of that media train of thought.
I’d debate the open-and-shut part.
Shanna does have reasonable evidence of JJ’s intent on record, but she’s still the one ambushing him. Presumably, she could have avoided confrontation altogether after the police were involved.
Except for the part where he KILLED the police…
Which makes him guilty of murder. That’s quite separate from Shanna’s doings.
In theory, yes. In practice, self defense is a positive defense — that is, one the prosecution establishes in court that you did kill the person, the burden of proof is on you to prove that the killing was done in self defense. That means that it’s not enough that the guy was about to kill you. You need to be able to prove that in court.
… or, you know, talk openly to the police and convince them so you don’t get prosecuted in the first place.
You have to prove a threat to your life and a reasonable fear that the person was going to carry out that threat. He had a gun in his hand (which ballistics will prove shot the officers in the home) they have video of him killing another that they witnessed live via the internet and they have video of him threatening to hunt them down and kill them.
One o y’all mentioned if Shanna just walked away here would be one bullet in jj that didn’t match the cop’s guns. Know what? There is only an exit wound. They’ll never find that spent bullet. If she picks up her brass, she is able to walk away. No evidence. This is my fave web comic.
They’ll still know there was an extra shooter, and they’ll have the laptop and other evidence from the room.
They may not be particularly inclined to follow up on it, but they’ll definitely have evidence.
It’s possible they could find the bullet, even though it’d be a ways away. That sort of thing actually does happen all the time in shooting investigations (the bullet from a shooting is a block away in a car or a cinder block or something, but still gets found, ’cause the cops know what cone of area to search in). More depends on what kind of ammunition she’s using, maybe.
But more to the point, since they’ve already sent the videos to the police, the gamer group’s identities are already known to the cops, and the only reason they were targeted was because of Shauna, so she’s known as well. IMO this wasn’t just about trapping JJ and ending the threat to their lives (though that is the most immediate motivation), this was also about going public with the hurricane investigation. Shauna doesn’t want to fade away into the night, because this isn’t about keeping things secret, it’s about blowing the lid off. The cops are going to be on this like a spotlight now, and that’s a good thing for her.
JJ was kinda screwing up all along. By pushing too hard, he provoked Sauna’s investigation to escalate three times, with the final one bringing law enforcement into the mix in a big way (this hit man killed several cops, so they’re gonna be SUPER interested in whoever hired him). Good Job, JJ, and by extension, Carol.
Wait a minute is that a silhouette of blood and viscera streaming from the exit wound? Or is it just a silhouette of JJ’s pony tail? Any way nice shot.
I guess it has to be the pony tail, because the bloodspray would not be on that side of the head unless he was already falling backwards… which seems unplausible.
The implication is that the bullet went all the way through – that’s blood spraying from the exit wound (along with the bullet).
It could be a grazing wound. You know the comics rule, they’re always only mostly dead.
His hair is tied lower on his head, and tight to it…it shouldn’t pop up that high. Even if the main mass is the hair, though, there’s plenty of obvious spray from the exit wound around it.
OMG! They kited him w/ the cops.. and then she took down the weakened boss mob.
Welp, guess Mustache-dude got outbrained by those kids, uh ?
Yes, his brains are definitely out, no kidding.
The woman who shot Evil Mario.
So…Wario?
Wario’s not a woman.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Wah wah. I meant Evil Mario = Wario. Could have phrased it better, yes. :P
And now I can’t see JJ without hearing Wario’s voice.
WAAA!
I hope the Lenny face gave away that I was joking. I mean, of course I know that Wario is a woman.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Heh, I knew you were trol…I mean joking. Besides, if Wario were female she’d be Princess Warina, right? ;)
*slow claps* That wasn’t even his final form!
Actually… I think it was.
There’s philosopher JJ, the form he takes when he meets his clients.
There’s professional JJ, the form he takes while tracking his target and intimidating people involved.
Then there’s personal JJ, wherein he shows how he feels when not only does his targets defy him but also cleverly entrap him.
And now, lastly, we had bloodied JJ, indicating that he’s sustained enough damage to be finished off.
I’m sorry Shanna but you corporate hitman is in another dark alley.
Meant to reply to minando above ffs.
This way, oh Captain, my Captain.
I have your tea, Earl Grey, hot …waiting for you in your room.
Boom, headshot.
Sniping’s a good job, mate.
Challenging work, outta doors, and I guarantee you’ll not go ‘ungry.
As long as there’s at least two people in the world, someone’s gonna want somebody else dead.
You all win for continuity in referencing one of my favorite games (TF2). :D
Wish she had done that the first time she had the chance. Would have saved a lot of heartbreak.
That was dangerous but i’m really glad he got to see who killed him, realize that they outsmarted him,and know he was completely helpless to it after all that grandstanding
A+ title-text
JJ threatened her mother. You could see the look of shock on her face when he did so over the initial Skype. She protected what was dearest to her, and she did it in the only way that could make sure to protect her. So yeah. This was perfect.
And then she stays and explains to the police that he was hunting them, and, quite legitimately, that he was raising his weapon to fire. She’s in the public eye, everything she has to say is in the public eye, amidst a sensationalist story that will make sure EVERYONE is paying attention (Hunted Reporter Caps Contract Cop Killer!!!) and impossible for Carol to bury. And suddenly so many more people are digging and asking questions.
…is how this SHOULD go down from this point forward.
This. With the cops eyes shining hard on things now, this is her best opportunity to push things into the open.
Even if her info and testimony isn’t enough to cinch a court case, it’s enough to get the cops investigating Hurricane HARD. And even if it scuttles her ability to to write an investigative piece now (don’t think it does), she’s already got enough for a solid book deal down the line.
Play of the Game: SHANNA as Mcree
It’s HIGH NOON.
Heheh, JJ’s face in panel 1 = When you get stuck in a Junk Rat trap and hear “It’s hiiiigh nooon…”
That was for Kaye, you son of a bitch!!!
The alt text today is one of the best in the series!!!
P’TOOIE!!!
JJ {in StrongBad Stinkoman voice}: Ow! My eye! It’s in my eye! It hurts SO BAD!!
Shanna: Well folks, you know what that means. Now I do a dance {shimmies & shakes to 1930’s cheesy organ}
IT’S HIIIIIIGH NOON
Well, what’d he drop?
50 cents, a vendor trash gun, and the corpse of a killer. Somehow he didn’t have kidneys, so no progress on the “Chinese Black Market” quest line.
Guess you’ll need to run the quest again for the moustache drop.
1:22pm. Done
Before I started scrolling down, I just saw a little more blank space than usual under the first two panels, and I was like “What? Wait! We get a two-panel update? You pull a cliffhanger now? Is this the endofthechapterFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU–”
And then, all was well.
Nice one, Shanna. Head shots aren’t that easy, so she’s been practicing. Of course Mr. Moustache there was leaking quite a bit and movin’ kinda slow, but still, a fitting end for that roach. Yes, students, that’s brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid spraying from the exit wound which pretty much puts a -30- on that joker. People have been shot through the heart and continued fighting, but a headshot is forever. It’s a clear case of self defense, but if it was me, I’d just stroll away.
Enemies lessen with a Smith and Wesson. :D
I did three years as an RN in a Neurosurgery Intensive Care Unit. We had an 80-ish year old guy who had gotten a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He got a second opinion and a confirmation. After that second doctor visit, he drove home, went into his garage, pulled out an antique Colt .45, placed it under his chin, and pulled the trigger. The bullet went through his skull and came out the top of his head.
He lived. Head shots aren’t 100%.
After a few weeks in ICU he got transferred to the floor. I understand he never woke up, but he did get to die of pancreatic cancer.
Woo-eee-wooo-wuuuu….wah wah wah
woo-eee-wooo-wuuuu…..wah wah wah!
woo-eee-woooooooo…..wah wah wah wah
woo-eee-wooo-wuuuu…..wah wah
i hope she doesn’t go down for vigilantism. he did raise his gun though, and he was almost certainly a cop killer so im betting theyll overlook it.
RIP Evil Gordito. You won’t be missed.
Very well drawn. Impactful elegant understated powerful.
Pfff… silly people. She didn’t shoot him!
A swarm of “Lectric Mind-Bees” are boring into the back of his skull, so that they can turn him into walking hive and eventualy take over the world!
It’s..huff…it’sa..me..huff…Wario! Huff…Hurk!
A brilliantly observed character: charming and grotesque, down to that wonderful vanity.
I’ll miss him, and that is a credit to your work.
Thank you for what continues to be a fantastic saga.
Completely agree. Well said, sir.
Just on an aside…it’s entirely possible she didn’t kill him. That kind of blood spray wouldn’t be all that crazy if she’d done something like annihilate an ear and part of the side of his head with a bullet. I’d be kind of glad if she did kill him though, it’d wrap up that part of the story thread far more neatly than ‘The Revenge of JJ”.
From a storytelling perspective, I don’t think the authors and artist would frame this moment like this if it wasn’t a final moment.
From a more realistic perspective, it wouldn’t matter that much if the shot didn’t kill him. He was already weakened, he’s starting to fall backwards, and he just dropped one of his guns (and wasn’t holding the other one). Shanna was fully prepared to kill him, and if she failed just now, she’d have a good chance to get in another shot before JJ could reach for his other gun.
Pain and blood loss can be pretty debilitating, so yeah, even if not an outright fatal shot, he doesn’t have a chance of getting a shot at her without her finishing him. And in his state, he probably would get to worry about death by exsanguination anyway (head wounds bleed badly, combine that with his shoulder and arm wounds…)
At that point he was desperately hoping she would miss, or hesitate, because contrary to Hollywood, to pull and aim your gun takes far more time than it takes to just pull the trigger.
She neither hesitated, nor missed.
While the police may look to find who killed him, after shooting the cops, I don’t think they will look very hard. Heck, if the piece is licensed, she might well be able to just wait for the police to show up and claim justifiable homicide without any problem at all.
If he didn’t need his brain to run his autonomic functions, from his overall display of intelligence – or lack of it – I don’t think he would have otherwise missed it.
Looks like she had drawn a bead on his head and was tracing him allready at the point Just Joe raised his arm. I say justifiable use of deadly force would not be supprised if the gamers planted camerasahead of time.
I don’t know what add you all saw but I had a laugh with the Glock “Confidence is in what you carry ” add I saw at the top.
I love the irony of his last expression. Likely the same expression of many of his victims. After all he’s done, it’s kind of obvious that it was both a justifiable homicide as well as self defense.
You know, that’s actually what I think I found the most interesting about that first panel. He’s always been sort of a hammy character with the big over the top mustache and everything, but with that stricken look, even with the ‘stache and everything, for a brief moment he looks human. Actually human.
Not a comic threat, nothing over the top, in his last moments just a man struggling for his life.
A life he reallllly doesn’t deserve at this point, so, you know, gets what’s coming and all of that, it’s just interesting things had to go this far to expose the person under all the attitude and bravado.
Remarkable. One single gun shot gives you ato of comments. This explains so much…
a ton…
“The police & the court already have the evidence, your honor. The prosecution rests, even as the defense rests in peace.”
This may sound morbid, but from an artistic point of view: this page is my favorite.