Annotated 43-13
We talked about various possibilities, including the “gas leak trap,” to be things that softened JJ up, but as for how he would die, I think we were pretty clear on that as soon as we started taking about it. That’s your poetic destiny rushing up to meet you, Just Joe.
I would probably give Shanna 1 in 4 odds even if JJ were fresh. One of the things this story gets into is that whatever else you can say about a gun, it’s a great equalizer. But doing it like this makes the moment feel more logical, more inevitable.
FB: “Awww… shoot. NO WAIT I MEANT SHI–“
I’d not give Shannah incredible odds in this moment, either because she’s never shot at people before, and probably hasn’t had too much target practice, either. Pretty high chance that he survives the first shot and returns the fire.
We don’t see if he has a gun in his hand, but I’d assume he’s still to professional to walk out of that building without considering that there might be police back-up coming. But then, he *does* look pretty worn out, and that look on his face betrays, for the first time, that he’s completely lost control of the situation, and he knows it.
Panel 4, he’s holding a gun in his right hand. I had to zoom in pretty far to be sure, but the silhouette is there.
Gun code n his right hand but also at least 3 bullet wounds in his right arm…
Spoiler: he raises his gun on the next page. The bullets are slowing him down but they made JJ a threat with only one course of action.
This seems contradictory. “Even if JJ were fresh” a gun she doesn’t know how to use would give her 1 in 4 odds, but two cars worth of cops with guns they actually trained to use were speed bumps.
OTOH he knew the police were coming, vs. getting surprised. And it’s not like taking on two cops was good odds for him.
The way he’s looking in the first panel they were a lot more than speed bumps, despite not having the element of surprise in the same way Shanna has now
Okay, I’m almost 100% certain that originally, there was a strip that showed some of the shootout. That’s certainly a HUGE jump between the last panel of the previous comic, and the first of this one…
No, there wasn’t.
I don’t know if you mean there was a drawn strip that we showed and now (there wasn’t) or that we’d drafted a fight we didn’t use (we didn’t).
This might sound a bit crass, but we didn’t expect you to care about a couple of nameless officers who had just shown up. We wanted to keep the camera trained on our heroes, here.