DUMBING OF AGE BOOK 9 KICKSTARTER UPDATE
Last night we unlocked FREE SARAH MAGNETS for everybody! And we’re working on the next stretch goal, which is SPACEFORCE CAPTAIN JULIA GRAY magnets unlocked at $40k!
what else does the future bring
Discussion (178) ¬
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The joy this strip brings will be paid for in future angst and DYW moments, but for the moment this is worth it.
I didn’t put in Amazi-Girl yet, but here’s the movie poster pitch.
(Note that I already gave Sarah a bat-centric name two days ago!)
FUCK YEAH. Sarah has a bat!
These guys are SCREWED now.
She beat the shit out of Rayn. These guys are doomed.
Ryan*
Beat him so hard she scrambled his name!
;_; What did I do to Sarah?!
Hopefully she’ll beat them within an inch of their lives and leave them begging for mercy. I won’t be satisfied unless these thugs end up with broken bones.
This is when the police arrives, isn’t it.
When the black girl is beating up a bunch of blond dudes with a bat.
That definitely makes Sarah’s earlier fears a lot more likely than when they were tied up in the basement.
Okay, so Amazi-Girl handed Sarah the bat, otherwise TOTALLY CALLED THIS.
Sarah has a bat, the fight is basically over.
Sarah being given a bat.
Arming Dina would be a mistake. Only the fact that her hands are bound is keeping anybody alive right now. The duct tape is basically Kup’s cy-car. Or that madness suppressing patch that the Creeper wears in his civilian identity. Or the muzzle on that one Road Rover.
Yes, I just referenced the Road Rovers.
The look on her face in panel five … all I could visualize was something like this.
Thanks now I have the Road Rovers theme song in my head, again! Also I think his name actually was Muzzle.
Don’t be a weirdboy.
Happy Birthday indeed, Sarah.
Well, I mean…
Her birthday was yesterday.
But that’s pedantic. Happy Birthday, Sarah!
She’s Bat-woman.
…. I’ll show myself out.
Bob. GUN.
Yeah, but she’s not gonna do what he did to Bob.
That was one of the movies that helped to read the book first.
Hm, is this the first time Ethan’s actually seeing Amazi-Girl fight?
Well, aside from when Amber was tussling with Sal.
Stabbing Sal in the hand with a knife is technically a one-move fight.
That was Amber. AG didn’t exist yet.
*girls lay into the bad guys*
Ethan: Should… should we be.. doing something?
Walky: Naaah, we’re lovers, not fighters. I found some popcorn, though!
Ethan: OOOH… *mounch mounch*
With what’s to transpire, it’s still unbelievable that it has only been less than 36 hours since the party.
Nah, alt-text, she STILL won’t allow it.
((also, there probably goes my guess that Battle Ready Joyce magnets would be up next))
Night-Guy magnets?
Awww, she remembered!
This does bring back memories
Fools, now Sarah has the power of the Old Testament God, who is also the Big Bad of Shin Megami Tensei. Sarah is going to use this divine force to do an Inglorious Bastards scene.
Also, for anyone who’s played Yakuza 0, Goro Majima’s Slugger fighting style.
Let. The. Ass. Kicking. Commence.
Hey, uh, Willis? Holy SHIT that is some good super-hero badass banter.
Seriously. Three separate amazing one-liners in maybe a minute.
Amazi-Girl’s hero-speak has pretty much always been on point.
Agreed
They say one way to become better at writing is to read a lot. That way you’re constantly seeing new ways to write a story.
Well, David Willis has read (and watched) a lot of Batman. Like, a lot.
Honestly, I kind of keep expecting Willis to do a curveball to establish that Amber’s superhero fantasies are not healthy and it’s still the real world. The cops showing up, the protagonists rescuing themselves, or Amber passing out before she can save anyone.
I really need to accept it’s not that kind of comic.
He kinda did that already, that time AG passed out and Sal dragged her to safety.
Sure, but does that really mean anything when he goes right back to doing it straight?
He’s shown that Amber/AG has trained hard to develop her skills. She isn’t superhuman but she is running on adrenaline and possibly caffeine. She’s also good at maintaining obsessive/determined hyperfocus on a goal (and between her fandom hobbies, gaming, and AG activities, she’s probably used to running on relatively little sleep. If Ruthless got her to take a 20 minute nap, she’s probably awake enough to last until she can safely clock off.
Also in real life I have been so tired that I have fallen asleep while riding a bicycle – and woke up quickly enough to not fall off. Microsleeps can be virtually nanoscopic!
Clock off? Or Punch! Out!!?
As the strip goes on I’m starting to suspect that Amber wins fits less because she’s super badass and more because everyone she fights just kinda sucks. I mean she’s been mainly fighting other college students who are presumably roughly the same age as her, and who most likely have little to no actual fighting experience. Which makes me worry that if the comic continues to escalate at some point she will try to fight a seasoned fighter like a full blown fully competent mob stooge and get her ass handed to her.
Forget the fights then and look at the stunts – the parkour stuff she does casually would get most people killed, even ignoring the car chase where we saw her push her own limits. The fights are no less believable.
She’s clearly super badass.
A last second rescue after the hero has saved the day is perfectly in keeping with comic book tropes.
The psychological fallout in the aftermath is where we see that it’s not healthy.
This thread kind of helps me pinpoint why I’ve been less and less engaged with the Amber/Amazi-Girl arc, despite it being one of my favorites closer to the start. I found the examination of how being a ‘superhero’ was a maladaptive coping mechanism that was only making Amber’s issues worse extremely interesting and well done, but like you say: we only see that criticism in the aftermath. The actual superhero sequences themselves require that they operate on comic book tropes and be taken at face value, or else they fall apart. But since the aftermath does explore the trauma these kind of violent situations can realistically cause, the fact that we’re expected to just shrug off concerns about what would ‘realistically’ happen in the middle of the sequence is jarring.
Basically, I can roll with suspending my disbelief for comic book tropes, and I can roll with a realistic examination of what those comic book tropes would do to a person reenacting them. I can’t jump back and forth between both, especially not when the consequences are generally very well-written and make me care about the characters, and the comic book hijinks keep escalating with no signs of stopping.
For me it works because the consequences are primarily psychological trauma, which doesn’t actually conflict with Amazi-Girl being able to pull off the stunts. The action sequences can be over the top without affecting the realism of the fallout for me.
This one isn’t working quite so well as some in the past and I’m not quite sure why. It’s been kind of hard to nail down exactly how seriously we’re supposed to take the threat – which wasn’t at all the case with Ross’s happy fun gun times on campus, even with a superhero fighting to stop him.
We still have two months left in this chapter.
Plenty of time for things to potentially go wrong.
The other shoe is still looming, just waiting to drop.
Some of that time will be spent with Becky and Ross, and maybe learning Mike’s fate. There will be fallout at the Brown household over this situation, but that deserves multiple chapters (if not books) of elbow room to play out.
OH MY GOD THATS RIGHT Becky is still coming? What the hell is that gonna turn out to be
Willis’ comics, while dramatic, are still pretty fundamentally comedy.
Not a complaint, love Willis’ stuff in every comic he does, just me needing to adjust my expectations.
Let’s see if it’s still comedy when Becky finds her dad in the basement.
I don’t expect Amber to come out of this unscathed; maybe she won’t end up being hurt, but this COULD reveal her identity to the wrong people… like Blaine’s mafia family.
And we still don’t know what that smoking guy who was Sal’s friend had to do with this… (I don’t remember his name sorry)
Asher was blackmailed into pulling the fire alarm so Blaine wouldn’t tell his grandpa he stole mafia money for tuition since he was trying to leave the family. Asher was also told that the plan was to save money, not to hurt anyone.
I’ve been mentally comparing this to the other Really Big Superhero Sequences for AG, since this is really not all that far escalated from, say, To Those Who’d Ground Me. (Straight up supervillain with mask is new, but it’s a reasonably close equivalent. There was a LOT of broken physics there, and the fact that AG caused that much disruption on a highway at midday but didn’t kill anyone was straight-up miraculous in a “yeah the Author is God, and God says Becky’s getting home safe in the coolest way possible, dammit.” way)
In other words, my assumption is that AmbG will have one hell of a comedown after the fact, probably including both trauma and being physically WRECKED, but adrenaline/Hero Time are carrying her through for now. It’s been a consistent pattern of subtext that the superhero fantasies aren’t really healthy, and that about nine times out of ten they hurt more than they help (say, random beatdowns of bike thieves)… but that tenth time, the only thing that’ll save the day is a kickass action sequence, and boy does that day need saving.
(So that Willis can draw those kickass action sequences, because they fucking love a good shit-kicking with deep interpersonal stakes. Remember, the previous comic universe ended with villains from the Captain Crunch comics invading reality as a metaphor for forced homogeneity. The cute slice-of-life relationship comic eventually brought in an alternate universes/time travel storyline with a finale that got so damn ambitious it took YEARS to finish. The wacky mostly gag-a-day toystore/nerd strip had a sequence where a, for all intents and purposes, random toy store employee ended up fighting an alien who had absorbed omnipotence, and even though she didn’t win, she managed to actually hold her own for a good few minutes there and deliver one of the most kickass fight scene monologues possible.)
“… and that about nine times out of ten they hurt more than they help (say, random beatdowns of bike thieves) … ”
You say that as if there was something wrong about it. I’ve had more than one bike stolen in my career as a cyclist and let me tell you, if I’d have caught whoever did it I’d have strung ’em up from the nearest tree or lamppost, just they used to do to horse thieves and cattle rustlers.
It’s the ‘wait, are we actually entirely sure this guy actually STOLE that bike? It’s a bit ambiguous’ that I seem to recall being an issue there. Beating up a thief versus beating up the owner of the bike who forgot to lock it (or whatever it was, I just remember it being one of those “wait. wait AG. wait a second there” scenes) are two very different things!
I don’t recall the bike scene. There was a scene right after she broke up with Danny where she beat up a backpack thief to work off her tension that a lot of commenters found ambiguous – though that was at least partly because we didn’t see the lead up to it.
That’d be it! I really need to do a deep reread one of these days.
Like, we have had bouts of Superhero Action (with bonus comedy) in the Dumbiverse before. Dina’s Clever Girl strip, for one. This one’s more explicitly superhero-y, but like. Escalating scale is definitely a thing that has happened in Willis comics, that’s for sure!
They’ve brought up over on the It’s Walky rerun site that they have periodic urges to bring Head Alien back in, this is WAY more easy to shift back to a relatively grounded status quo by comparison. (That said I will fully support the return of Head Alien, I love Head Alien, he’s so petty and wonderful.)
I think what you expect is already happening. Amber’s psyche is at her limit, AG couldn’t save Mike, she deprived herself of sleep trying to avoid AG’s appearance, she’s doing this because she’s forced to do it, cannot think clearly and it’s not doing a great job with it (except for her basic ability to punch and kick any kind of assholic thug).
Willis has admitted, in an interview, that sometimes he gets really angry and channels it into drawing Bad Guys Getting Punched. And he’s aware that it comes from a place that’s probably unhealthy… but he doesn’t really want to stop.
While I definitely understand that impulse to seek catharsis, I worry that indulging it might come at the expense of the other, more grounded storyline(s). Per Matthew, “No man can serve two masters.”
Hey this is just the pilot for a new fan fic I’m testing out. If you’re new to this comment forum, this is just kinda my thing. Sorry. If your not knew and your wondering what happened to my old unfinished fanfic, I don’t know.
Magical Wilcox. Part 1-A
Things were not going well for Danny Wilcox. He didn’t have a girlfriend, Ethan was with other guys, and he hadn’t been an important character in months.
Danny: Perhaps some soothing ukulele will calm my nerves.
As he played, a girl no older than thirteen ran by. She wore a plated skirt and a white blouse with a blue tie. Her tied up hair was pitch black and contrasted with skin light enough to nearly reflect light.
Girl: Where is it? Where is it?
Danny (stops playing): Did you drop something?
Girl: Listen. Have you seen a sort of ball with a pyramid suspended in it? It’s about yea big.
She holds her fingers and thumb about four inches apart from each other.
Danny: I haven’t, but I can keep my eye out.
Girl: Thanks…I guess. Listen, if you find it, no matter what you do, do not open it.
Danny: Why?
Girl: I can’t tell you. Just go back to playing your uke and forget you saw me.
The girl ran off, slammed into thud a continued running. Danny picked up his ukulele and continued playing.
That night Danny lay asleep. He dreamed of a ball, made of glass, with a world suspended in it. The world whispered to him, although he could non understand what it said.
He awoke in a cold sweat and laid in bed, listening to Joe snore. He felt something round and cold his hand. Slowly he removed his hand from the sheet and in the darkness peered at a round glass ball with a pyramid that seemed to hover in it.
Magical Wilcox Part 1-B
Danny ran out of his room. He stood in the hallway panting and looked at the ball that lay in his hand. It glowed a sickly green and chilled his hand.
Danny: air, I need air.
Danny stepped outside and walked in the cool autumn air. The wind was cool and he shuddered, wishing he had brought a jacket with him. Sitting on the steps, he peered closer at the sphere. Around its edge was a thin line, like it was sealed at the center. Suddenly, he remembered the little girl and her warning about the sphere and took his hand away from the seal.
Then he dropped the ball.
Danny froze as the ball bounced down the cement steps, each bounce caused him to wince as he waited for the worst to happen. Finally, the ball rolled to a stop and stayed. Danny sighed in relief as he went to retrieve his burden.
He reached down to pick it up, and the bottom fell off.
Danny fell on his ass as green smoke billowed out of the now half sphere. An earsplitting screech resounded.
Danny watched as the green smoke formed itself into seven shadowy figures. Which eventually took the form of seven figures:
A beautiful nude woman with long blonde hair, she wore a pair of thin spectacles that lay across her breasts.
A gigantic man, whose stomach seemed rounder than the sun and who hand a long chin with curly brown hairs running down it.
An eight-foot-tall woman with a massive chest and arms, wore black leather pants and boots, with blood red metal covering her breasts and shoulders. She held a gigantic sword and her black hair was cut short yet spiky.
A young girl with pigtails, she wore a sleeping gown and her eyes were covered with a silk sleeping mask.
A tall man wearing a business suit. Gold watches ran up his wrists and covered his entire arms. Jeweled necklaces covered his neck.
Finally, there was a tall figure dressed in a long flowing robe of red and gold. The figure wore a white mask with a golden hood and their eye’s betrayed nothing but darkness.
“I thank you” the figure said with a voice just as ambiguous as the rest of it. “my Envy”
Hey, things arw going better than expected. Now if Amazi-girl can disarm Ball Peen(and maybe bash his head with it a few times) and take these guys down then maybe this won’t be so bad.
Also, Sarah has a bat, woo!
AG has effectively muzzled and blinded Blaine with her cape, he’s unlikely to be an effective combatant for the next 30 seconds or so. That should be enough time for her, Bat-woman, the Savage Raptor, and the Dad-Puncher to take the rest of these goons out.
Did she tape his cape to his face?
No, just looks like she pulled it down over his head and wrapped a quick loop or two around the neck with the duct tape to hold it in place.
Gee, I sure hope she didn’t wrap that tape around his neck too tight…. ;^)
If he dies, he dies.
I don’t think he’s wearing a cape. I think she took off her own cape and taped that to his face
You’re right … he was following Edna Mode’s decree (“NO CAPES!!”). Amazi-Girl used her own cape to wrap up the garbage.
Probably the best use for a cape, duct-taping it around Blaine’s head.
Rip and tear, until it is reassuringly validated by your peers.
Sarah has a bat, all is well in the world.
So we have our super-team origin story:
Amber – Amazigirl (the Batman/Superman type)
Joyce – Righteous Fury (The Hulk)
Sarah – Bat-Girl (heh)
Dina – Dilophosaurus (because she’s tiny and stealthy)
Dorothy – Commander-In-Chief (The Professor X of the group)
So what’s Ethan’s role — Alfred the butler?
Boy Hostage.
Ethan is the Transformer consultant. Not essential, but very good at it.
Dilophosaurus aren’t actually tiny and stealthy, though. The one in Jurassic Park was, maybe meant to be young, maybe just inaccurate – which Dina would not possibly endorse.
On the other hand, actual velociraptors were quite small and speedy. Perhaps not stealthy, but speedy.
And Walky as Pajama Mask!
Ooh, I like that name for him.
*glances at TM meme*
“It checks out.”
So, if this is the formation of a superteam story, then we need the epic circle like the one in Avengers!
… and now I have the mental imagine of Joyce roaring…
Might I suggest a variation from a Tumblr post a few days ago?
Happy bat-day, Sarah
BAT! Go Sarah Go!
Also Go AmaziGirl, Dina, Dorothy, et al. Go!
Sarah’s good with a bat but boy am I now 300x more worried if cops show up
YOU CAN UNWRAP YOUR HANDS ANY MOMENT NOW, DINA
She fights better like this
a t.rex’s arm were small, but actually capable of lifting over 400 pounds.
As long as she remembers to combine an uppercut with her dinosaur facts this time.
Not that I’m complaining, but this story arc feels like it’s out of a different comic than the one we’ve been reading all this time. I love both, but yeah.
Similar feeling. This feels like someone pulled the Wackiness Tag.
….And yet there was Sarah hitting someone with a bat, a masked superhero beating up multiple attackers, and Dina attacking someone with a gun to a Jurassic Park line all years ago.
Well, yes, but like with other things: it’s different when the time span when it happens is much shorter.
That was also handled with more tension and threat. There hasn’t been any tension or threat to this part of the arc at all, aside from lingering elements related to Mike from the earlier part of the arc. So no, this is definitely more off-hand and “wacky” than the scenes you’re referencing. Though a better comparison might be when Walky and Dorothy were chasing Amazi-Girl, and she was doing crazy stunts and finished up by riding off into the sunset on top of a truck while giving them the finger. Then again, that was pure wackiness, meant only to be wackiness, while this theoretically is supposed to be a serious arc. So, yes, gotta agree, the vibe on this one isn’t really in line with anything we’ve seen previously [which mostly just alternated between pure wacky and over-the-top drama, while this one states itself to be the latter while only actually presenting itself as the first].
Takes will vary, I guess. This has felt reasonably tense to me, and I can remember the exact same sorts of things being said about Dina coming out of the bushes.
Yeah, I agree. Honestly, Blaine going full supervillain both makes this work for me on some levels – if he were competent and rational, he could’ve made a decent run at convincing the mob AG was a threat to him, or that Amber suspected things, and we’d have way more dangerous goons instead of these ones who have personal stakes because AG’s already beaten the crap out of them – and maintains his scary level since. Well. He has ceased giving any shits, whatsoever. The Polite Person Suit has come off.
I mean, it’s definitely a genre shift, but I also would be 100% okay if Head Alien showed up again and we went back to superhero hijinks full-time.
That was however a much briefer part of the overall arc – just a couple of strips with Dina being clever and then we were at Joyce breaking down as Ross threatened her with a gun.
The superhero action was over the top, but it wasn’t wacky hijinks over the top, it was played straight.
This may read better altogether, once we see where it’s going, but it’s been harder for me to get a handle on.
Capes are awesome and Edna Mode can bite me.
To quote My Hero Academia on this subject: You want to know why a hero wears a cape? So they can use it to comfort someone whose suffering. That’s why!
Note: Quote may slightly vary depending on Dub, Sub, or Official and Unofficial Manga Translations.
Vary in wording or content?
Varies in Wording. Pretty much all saying the same thing but some are more specific to the situation that the quote takes place in. And not having the manga on hand myself I simply went with the dub’s variation of the quite from the hero Lemillion.
There’s a piece of Superman fan art I saw where he’s with a 15 year old girl at an abortion clinic, and he’s got his cape wrapped around her shoulders as she’s trying to explain her position in life to him, and it is such a good piece because the artist gave Superman the expression of just pure caring and worry, but the cape around her helps drive it home.
Dollar Bill might disagree.
But now we have Velcro.
I just realized that at some point in this chapter, Ethan will be threatened with a knife.
I think you might be onto something there.
Blaine: NO! My boss will kill me!
Amazi-Girl: Wait, Boss!?
Vince McMahon: IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, AMBER!
Well, Blaine’s whole plan is starting to reach “Vince on a really bad day” levels of stupid…
Hh. I caught a bat like that once. Hope she’s wearing lined gloves or something. I wasn’t wearing any, and my hand was bruised really bad and about unusable for a week.
Better than not catching it.
She’ll be okay as long as the adrenaline gets her through the next half-hour or so.
I was gonna say, catching a bat swung with anything like full adult male force was straining my suspension of disbelief. What would I have believed more? Her catching his wrists with an implied twist disarm. But oh well, I can just drift into comic logic if need be. Maybe he’s a poser and swings like a wuss, maybe he’s unconsciously holding back and doing it half-heartedly because he doesn’t want to look like he’s backing down in front of the other guys.
It does, a little, make we want to go to a dojo or something with Willis and be like “Damn you Willis, I’m gonna swing this bat at you casually with about one-fifth of my maximum force, and you’re gonna catch it in your palm and decide if you still want to draw that panel in your comic. If that doesn’t convince you we’ll go up to half max force.”
However. All is forgiven if Amazi-girl’s hand is broken once the adrenaline wears off and/or fails to perform hand-like functions she wants it to later in the fight. Even more so if permanence kicks in and it’s in a cast for many weeks in-universe.
Eh I’m reading the half-hearted take now, all is forgiven.
Bat-man (heh heh) wanted to feel like a tough guy so brought the bat, but now that the chips are down he realizes he also doesn’t actually want to break anyone’s head open like a ripe melon.
He’s got his eyes closed, he’s not super serious about this. He doesn’t even want to see what he’s doing or believe it’s real. He also doesn’t want anyone to look over and see him like, not helping whatever so he’s half-assing it at a lot less than full strength and going through the motions. Hence why and how Amazigirl was able to catch and take away his toy.
was that person an adult going full force on you? Because IRL an impact taken like that straight down goes past risk of bruise and into risk of break your wrist.
The way she blocked it, the force is going into her arm bones, not the wrist, so it should limit damages to the wrists, but it would have been smarter to deflect the blow to the side then disbat him.
She appears to be wearing something like mechanic’s gloves; lined, with reinforced knuckles and back. Given that the bones of the hand and wrist can dissipate a lot of force (I’ve taken quite a few spills off a bike as an analogue) as long as her radius or ulna didn’t break she’ll just be really sore for a long time.
“… going to pretend I also planned this part.”
Oh, yeah….. Two thumbs, WAY up!
“Don’t call the cops and trust in Amazi-girl” represented like one HUNDRED percent of Dorothy’s plans up until “Oh we should run while they’re distracted”.
MAYBE she said “trust in Amazigirl” as a lie to calm folks down and misdirect from a more complicated plan. I’m willing to entertain it.
Well, there was also the “free our hands (and Joyce’s legs), but pretend to still be tied up until the right moment” part and the “goad them into turning on each other” part.
Aw hell yeah.
Also, I bet this will be one of Sarah’s favorite presents, retroactively.
Dina seems pretty happy with hers too!
Not quite as good as Other Jacob, but it’ll do.
I love this comic. I don’t believe in perfection, but occasionally I reconsider.
Yay! Superhero Team-Up!
Amazi-Girl, Bat-Girl and CLEVER-Girl!
this is the best of all answers
Kinda hoping…
Sal shows up “I’m no side kick dammit!!!”
Ruth shows up “I got enough femurs for everybody!!!”
Carla shows up “I’d take a Blowtorch to this place!!!”
Danny shows up “el Kabong!!!” (with his ukulele)
Marcie shows up (signs) “Gonna go all roller derby on someones ass”
Just say’n…
Plllllllleeeeeease let this season finale include a teamup!
And Billie all Alpha Cheerleader Head Bongo In Charge!
Becky and the ugg squad
It’s HER turn to save Joyce, dangit
i’m totes down for this impromptu justice alliance getting together.
Just to start…
Help me out here people…
Oh no! Duct tape. One of BallPeen(tm)’s many, many weaknesses.
Love the prey line and how fierce Dina looks 😀
She needs to lose her taped restraints and go dino-crazy on those punks.
I have to admit… amazi-girl is cool!
Hit some heads, Sarah!
Somebody needs to steal the Ball-Peen hammer. Blaine’s powerless without it.
Honestly, he feels pretty powerless as it is.
Toe Dad might disagree.
Whammf
Baammf
Thank you, ma’ammf
batter up, boys o3o
ITYM girls – the boys are spectating mostly, so far.
Unless you men the bad guys, in which case, yeah, you’re good.
Let’s add up the Consequences Bill-
Blaine- Could die if he has a fractured rib that punctures a lung. Legal- assault with a deadly weapon against Ross, premeditated murder one or two if Ross dies. Felony kidnapping. Being connected to Mike won’t help, although he could say Mike tried to tackle HIM off that balcony. If he gets booked by the cops, they could start looking into his Mafia connections. Mafia cops would obviously try to deflect this, but if a good one found out they’d have to fade back.
Ross- Could die from brain injuries. Internal bleeding could cause brain damage. (Not a ton to spare) Felony kidnapping while on bail.
Amazi-Girl- Should have a broken hand after this. Which would mean Amazi-Girl and Amber would have the same broken hand at the same time. If she gets medical treatment that should plausibly ID her. Her cover is pretty blown. The college would reasonably consider consequences for all her vigilante actions, which on some level involve running around committing battery on their campus. If they allowed it it’s only a matter of time until some beaten-up kid’s rich parents sue the school for the liability of allowing it. Maybe they’d consider a special leniency for helping rescue the kidnapped victims if she promises to stop. But all grown-ups should be saying “You should have called the cops and let them handle it.” AG has to slip away from this scene, if she gets caught, she gets ID’d, cover blown, she loses.
Students- probably get a pass on their mid-terms, being the victim of a felony kidnapping and all.
The minions- Any minion caught and ID’d by the police is getting expelled and felony charges along the lines of conspiracy/accessory to felony kidnapping. Any who slip away without being caught can probably deny being there and get away with it. Any minion injured enough to need ambulance treatment counts as caught because they’ll get ID’d. Maybe a corrupt mafia cop would let them slip away for a bribe.
Anyone- anyone could plausibly still be seriously injured in the random chaos of battle. IE, a hammer or even a fist the face isn’t going to be good.
I’m kind of looking forward to the aftermath tally!
How to go about this thing legally-
Booking and ID’ing everyone caught at the scene of the crime and not a kidnap victim (someone figure out what’s going on with the dinosaur girl) as a kidnapper suspect.
Try to get confessions from Ross and every minion as part of a plea bargain to save their ass. Find the students’ phones, get fingerprints off of those to further show premeditation, planning and participation by all the minions who helped.
Figure out whose van it is, who owns it, if it’s rented, who rented it. Blaine plausibly has fake IDs (another small crime against him.)
Figure out what hotel they stayed in, might have checked in under fake ID, get security camera footage of them checking in together (more premeditation). Get the records of Ross and Blaine involved in bailing him out, maybe that other kid too.
Get permission (ie, warrant) to forensically analyze Blaine’s and Ross’ phones. Texts, e-mails, maybe pictures. Similar get warrant to subpoena the phone company and maybe e-mail company for their records, for example texts sent and received. Build a nice log of Blaine recruiting all the minions and them willingly accepting. If it’s not too sci-fi, maybe the phone company has geo positioning of them all converging on the campus and/or the secondary location. Actually do the same for the phone of every minion captured.
Students- get their statements about what happened individually and see if they can ID Ross and Blaine.
Becky can further add her statement and phone records showing her dad contacted her about the kidnapping from the kidnapping site.
Goal- build a case for the planning and execution of this kidnapping, everyone involved, etc. Felonies for all the perpetrators, even if a lot of them are plea bargains. All the better to really nail down Blaine and probably Ross as the primaries. Also get further evidence against the mob via Blaine. Although there’s a good chance the mob now sees Blaine as a liability more than an asset and won’t cover for him, even with police mob contacts.
Asher- sent and received texts to Blaine’s phone at precisely the time of the fire alarm incident. Minor crime of false fire alarm, except now it was done as an accessory to the kidnapping. Not super strong, could slip through the cracks.
Congressperson De Santo goes on record saying that she did heighten the security regarding her campaign manager in response to threat intelligence regarding the recent release on bail of said campaign manager’s father after a reckless discharge firearms incident.
De Santo and her security staff had no comments in regards to questions about whether they had been successfully neck choked out by the thicc thunder thighs of a masked crazyperson possibly in relation to this incident.
It is my understanding that
1) cellphone companies do not keep records or transcripts of phone or text message content (privacy rights of the subscriber).
2) records pertaining to text messaging usually will be only date, time, and destination of message (if outgoing)/source of message (if incoming).
3) These records usually are not kept for more than a month or so, unless they have received a subpoena/court order to preserve them. Otherwise, the computerized records are overwritten, since saving a record of every text message sent by every customer for even a six-month period would require a building the size of the Pentagon to house all the servers needed to store that amount of data.
4) voice message information (again, date/time/destination or source of call, and duration of call) is retained for a longer period, but again it is deleted after a certain amount of time… I believe I heard ‘three years’ mentioned more than once.
30 days would still be enough if they get the requests in fast enough. And true, the server-side stuff is more likely to be metadata. If memory serves, Verizon might keep actual text content for 3-5 days, Virgin Mobile too for maybe longer.
I admit I was ambiguous between message content and metadata. But you can see the actual content if you grab their phones and get in there forensically.
Even metadata is useful. Blaine can’t try “I’ve never met those kids before, they showed up on their own”. “Oh really, so when I enter these phone records into evidence in a moment here, there won’t be several texts sent to and received from each of those defendants, the night before and morning of the crimes, from those defendants’ listed phone numbers? Since you’ve never met them before? May I remind you that you are under oath.”
As for location, if your phone has a signal, the network knows where you are. (Otherwise, they couldn’t route your calls.) Exactly how precise that location info is depends on a lot of factors, but at least some approximation is always known.
You’re probably over-complicating, though. Just keep the various mooks separate once you take them into custody. Interrogate them individually, and I’ll bet money at least one of the dude-bros will quickly roll over. Even in the unlikely event they’re all smart enough to clam up and lawyer up, their attorneys are likely to advise them to cooperate for the best plea deal. They might bother with some of that other stuff just for corroboration, but this is how they’d most likely make the case.
Adding to this list: If Ross dies, Blaine and all co-conspirators (including Asher) get felony murder charges.
Also, too many people know about Amber now for an investigation to NOT uncover her alternate identity as Amazi-Girl.
Solid point. Head wounds are often trouble, and since Blaine was the one who walked up the stairs, Ross reasonably received more injuries. In fact, add to the least that we’re gonna need at least one ambulance on site. Points to Ruth if she suggests that and/or the police do it as a just-in-case response to a kidnapping.
There’s unlimited room for dark, messed-up results there. Like maybe Ross lives, but pressure on the brain leaves him wheelchair bound, and/or speech doesn’t work well, etc etc. So he can’t tell Becky that he’s sorry or whatever? DARK.
Maybe Blaine punctures that lung and starts bleeding out internally, the last thing he sees is AmaziGirl taking off her mask, revealing it’s AMBER MWA HA HAAA. Take that image with you to Hell, Blaine!
“Students- probably get a pass on their mid-terms, being the victim of a felony kidnapping and all.”
Oh, that’s why Walky’s smiling like that.
Her hand might be fine. Her gloves could be pretty sturdy and catching weapons actually is something you will learn in some martial arts
Plot hole- how did Dina even know which house to go to? Did she run after the van the whole way or what?
It looked like she noticed the others get nabbed earlier, so she might have just stealthily tagged along.
That’s also a callback to an early story, when the core cast took a bus ride to the lake. Dina was inexplicably among them when they got there.
She said at the time that she was kidnapped.
Dina’s talent is being invisible. She probably just climbed in the van
I just thought of another use for duct tape: a little game i like to call Howl or Squeal?
Step 1: Remove player’s pants
Step 2: Apply duct tape to testes
Step 3: Rip off duct tape. The more violently, the better.
Step 4: Do they howl or do they squeal?
She knows Sarah so well
Dina! Rip and tear!
*Freakin’ out by Death starts playing*
BEST BIRTHDAY GIFT EVER! I love Wally’s smile and Dina’s furiously.
*Dina’s internal monologue*
Ah, Amber’s warrior personality has arrived. Dorothy seems pleased, as does Walky. Should we fight or run? Ah, arming Sarah with a bat, sensible. Looks as if everyone is going to fight – i should follow social convention. Now, WWDD (What Would Deinonychus Do)?
But….
… how will AG solve capers when she IS one?
Sarah has gravitas.
I KNEW IT
THE SECOND I SAW A BAT I KNEW SARAH WORKS GRAB IT SOMEHOW
And here we shall see the wild Dinasaur, tearing into her prey savagely.
Amazi-girl handing Sarah a bat and saying happy birthday definitely ranks in my top favorite DoA fight scene moments.
Oh THAT’S what the capes are for.
DoA Book 10: Ooh.
(Balancing the excessively long title on Book 9)
Walky looks like his coping mechanisms might be crumbling.
Blaine’s gonna suffocate with his broken nose and duct tape over his mouth.
I’d celebrate, except it’d rebound on Amazi-Girl and Amber…
Let the butt-whuppage commence!
Eat prey, love
“Your ‘good’ days are drivel now. You have the bat.”
— Mirth, Mage: The Hero Discovered by Matt Wagner
All time favorite comic!
Just binging though this after coming back from a 2 week vacation. This is now my favourite page in the whole comic, and the last panel is the best panel of the page.