And just think. Right now you could be doing your gloating over a corpse. Wouldn’t that be nice? Corpses don’t beat you into submission. Mostly they just decompose.

Good is dumb. Bad is more dumb.

Should be mandatory. They should teach it in school.

If I’d known about air vents back in preschool, I could have ruled that sandbox.

And you’re right, we didn’t really give you much background on Dynagirl’s plans, preferring instead to let it unfold more or less as Justice Theta sees it happening. I think in the end it made for a more sudden and visceral sort of feel, if a bit choppy here and there as we run into spots that might have been clarified by a cut away type scene.

One thing I’ll point out though, is that for all Iron Will’s bluster and attitude, there are exactly zero people on the planet that could match Justice Theta’s power level even before his powers started to scale up and out of control. Dynagirl was the second most powerful hero after him, and even though she gave him a run for his money at one point the general consensus was he was holding back. So taking him out under any set of preconceived plans was iffy at best. Dynagirl, very in love with him, was hoping for the best possible outcome and when that fell apart at the seams, she didn’t take it well, to put it lightly.

The point is more that the end result, the death of Justice Theta, sooner rather than later, was a proper course of action. Could he have been fully restrained? Maybe even healed? Possibly. We don’t have the years of background information on this continuity so that we can fly off the handle at how useless Reed Richards is being at any given point in time.

But as readers, we’ve been given very little information on whether or not legitimate plans for stopping Theta were made. All we’ve seen is “beat him up harder” and that has failed spectacularly on multiple occassions. At GREAT cost to life, I might add.

This goes back to my whole moral dilemma of “when is enough enough?” In any other scenario, I’d advocate the capture of Theta. Same with any other criminal. Put them through the justice system same as everyone else. Second chances all around. But Theta is a very large scale threat. Maybe he SHOULD have been given another chance. Maybe he could have been pacified till the end of his days. But this is a perfectly acceptable solution as well, and the plan with the least failure rate for actually solving the problem. It’s not pretty. It’s a nasty decision, and a sad ending. But it saved the day.

Not that I’m actually expecting Theta to stay down at this point.

Text text text I am a wordy bastard.

Sounds like Theta talking. I cannot imagine DG came in thinking Will would kill JT. So having been told he would restrain him, she sees her lover gutted because she betrayed him. And you expect her to be calmly saying thank you? I imagine a brief moment of shock(probably while we were off in the white world of the last couple pages) followed by insane rage. Just like we are seeing.

My only quibble is that the others are not joining in.

I’m still on Willie’s side at this point. He’s more or less the Big Damn Hero of the hour. Him and Simon the Rapist. I mean really. What was the alternative? CAPTURE him? Simon made it clear he couldn’t hold him, and we’ve seen how well the other supers have fared against his rampage. The odds that Dynagirl would have somehow done better are not worth gambling on. The people he just dismembered, those of them that are still alive, are a higher priority by far. Best solution was to subdue Theta then and there. As a reader, I didn’t see any better options being prepared.

Simon may not have been privvy to Iron Will’s “stab him dead” plan, but the fact of the matter is that it was a good plan considering the circumstances. They should be giving Will a medal.

And then carting him back off the jail of course. He’s still serial killer. Which would have led to this fight anyways. But Dynagirls current reason for throwing a fit just doesn’t sit well with me.

Granted our current process takes way too long and could be abused badly. Don’t forget that provisions for self defense would be included – if a criminal opens fire on a cop and gets shot in the head as a result that’s just what happens. The same would have to apply to our super heroes.

Then again since these things always devolve into a firefight, we come full circle to “why doesn’t the punisher just kill him?” This is actually a pretty interesting topic.