Annotated 43-10
One thing for writers to watch out for: when you’re finally ready to turn the tables on a villain who’s seemed all but unstoppable, don’t flip the script completely unless the story justifies it…and it usually won’t. JJ is falling into a trap that’s both psychological and technological here, but he still has to make smart points and show some calculation appropriate to his profession. If he didn’t do such things, he wouldn’t be a worthy adversary at the end, and the satisfaction of bringing him down would be muted.
I especially like the phrase “smart targets.” It shows how JJ sees himself partly as a sportsman and is still underestimating the way he is now being moved into the crosshairs.
FB: “Hi, boss? I’m sorry, they got away. Somehow they talked me into gettin’ a Facebook account and my productivity just went right down the drain.”
JJ’s transformation from ‘operator’ to ‘monster’ was so well done in this story.
+1 – of all the bads, big, kinda big, and not-so-big, JJ definitely stands out as one of, if not *the* best written, most memorable, and most threatening.
+2 Hear, hear. I think I mentioned it already in the past, but exactly all of this.
Knowing that Xan and Chrissie will end up together has me looking for early indicators.
Panel 3 has a sparse moment that can be constructed as such.
Also a good thing: Chrissie interrupting the conversation with a very “human” remark, kind of ignoring the “professional” side of things, and making them look like significantly less smart targets. Her remark seems completely off topic, and not appropriate.
… but of course, the aim is to keep JJ wasting time, or to get him to admit a thing or two, which he already has, by quoting himself from an earlier video.