Man he just keeps calling her that, huh? What a jerk. He’s also pretty proud of those force fields, hiding behind them quite a bit. I wonder how that’s gonna work out for him in the long run? hmmm?
Looking back at this now, I’d probably add some SFX here and there. At the time I was really not very confident in the way most of my SFX were coming out, so I went with a more or less minimalist approach thinking that unless they rocked, they’d be more distraction than anything else.
I loved the dialog on this page as well. Back and forth banter in superhero fights has always been onf of my favorite things in comics. I mean come on! There’s no way a villain worth their salt isn’t going to brag about it. That’s just who they are! The facial expression in panel 2 was just awesome. Harold captured the moment perfectly I think.
Doesn’t look good for our girl here! Ouch!
Where did all the other Supers go while this happens? They just watched a murder and are just letting DG get beaten up?
They’re there, watching and pretty much staying out of the way. The power scale Dynagirl reaches is pretty far and away beyond what most other heroes can bring to bear, and this is something of a personal thing between her and Iron Will after he shanked her boyfriend. Check out the previous page and you can see them looking on, but no one is gonna interrupt the fight while she’s kicking his ass at least.
Don’t think we can really mock him for “cowardice” when the fact of the matter is that we could make the same comments about Dynagirl hiding behind her superhuman physical aptitude. When your opponent can crush boulders with her bare hands and not even break a nail? Forcefields. Totally fair game. Might be some deeper examination of why he developed forcefields as his technology based superpower, but that’s a different analysis.
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.
“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.”
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.
Theta has the right idea. Sort of. Theta’s problem is that he’s not at all right in the head and has no business judging the worth of someone elses life at this point. Iron Will’s not really better, and it’s pretty ridiculous to assume he didn’t agree to the whole thing just because he felt like murdering Theta. The Greater Good probably never even crossed his mind.
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.
All excellent points here without a doubt. Most of what you’re talking about was at one point or another hashed out in planning sessions we had between us and the editor as he tended to be the voice of reason amongst the chaos more often than not.
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.