Went for a walk last night. Loving the windy cool sky and rustle of dry leaves.
I did two fill-ins for Audra and Scott over at Nemu*Nemu (featuring my character Vachel, because of his cameos earlier this year), so go read ’em (the second one I think goes up tonight, link is to the first one).
Got this month’s MAD Magazine. I’m in the majority of them these days, but I still get a thrill.
I did some more studio model drawings. A couple people have expressed concern for the NSFW details, since they read the comic at work. I believe 100% that art is SFW, but some bosses don’t, and I respect that. So, I’m just posting them over at baldwinpage.com now.
Well if the goons are gone now because they think she’s harmless tied up…time to share the headache!
Jesus, Christopher, did a girl named Emily insult your mother or something? Your characters spend so much time beating her up, I’m surprised she has any working brain cells. Now that I think about it, all your human women seem to suffer a lot of physical damage.
All of his men suffer a lot of physical damage, too. Yuri really suffered; do you think he hates the Japanese?
I’d take being beaten up over having Potty Bot refusing to let go of my junk in the middle of a firefight.
I thought Emily was the head of security or something. You’d think she’d have some kind of protection from gangsters and thugs. I mean, they didn’t even seem to have a clever plan, like they do in the movies. They just walked right in and threatened her and then grabbed her. As if she’s some kind of freelance investigator or something. Strange.
What Gillsing said. Unless that’s part of Emily’s plan…
ooh, contemplative thoughts here this morning. Thank you. 🙂
@Chaucer59, i think a lot about women’s rights and women’s role in media. it makes me sick that most movies/fiction still to this day rarely pass the Bechdel test. And I am not surprised that you mention this, I’ve re-examined the issue more than once myself to make sure I feel okay about it, but I feel I’m writing it correctly. The two issues I’d say are this:
1. There is a lot of beating up in general, especially in this supplemental story, largely due because I wrote it (somewhat) in the genre of old detective novels (Which is also kinda the answer to @Gillsing’s question too).
2. In most action stories, males take the lead action role and get beat up plenty and it would NEVER (probably) have occurred to anyone to ask if “he” was being beat up too much. The hero takes knocks, plain and simple. In Spacetrawler I’ve given the women the more predominant action roles. So yes, the women in this strip take a lot of damage, because they also have taken most of the lead action.
@Gillsing, so yes, noir detective genre is most of the reason. And I try not to bog down the story with unnecessary details, buuuttt, maybe I should in this case. The reason is unimportant, but that said, perhaps not giving a reason makes it stand out too much. I simlpy imagined that she doesn’t feel she wants/needs much protection. Also, as we’ve seen in Spacetrawler, there is plenty of administrative incompetence. So, yes, maybe I’ll have someone ask her how they walked in and dragged her out without problem, just to give it more grounding.
My guess is that the reason they managed to take Emily without opposition is that it’s lunchtime on a Thursday, and that’s catered lunch day.
What @Mic said.
I 2nd Gillsing’s question. Even if there is a buracratic ‘reason’, I have a hard time imagining that Emily, hero of Earth and friend of the many toothed governmental head if through Dimitiri at least, would not force through something reasonable in terms of backup or protection. It makes more sense to me that she ordered her backup to wait until the bad guy spills his story or at a signal from her, and that she put herself in harms way not wanting to order anyone else to do what she did not do herself. Still, if you lose conciousness, all the bad guy has to do is one more thing and you are dead, which seems awfull risky. Even in noir, the beat up detective has to get on top of the situation at some point. Again, putting yourself in a position to get beat up, without a plan, is stupid. I look forward to seeing her plan.
Hmm. I’m just sitting here wondering how only two thugs were able to take Emily. Is she having an off day or something? I mean, she’s really tough.
My take on why Emily seems to have suddenly adopted the role of “punching bag” instead of “killing machine” is her new relationship with Pierrot. She may be working very hard on suppressing her “coyote nature” out of respect for his views. Kind of like the T-800 in “Terminator 2” was able to be talked into kneecapping people instead of killing them.
It’s also likely someone who is long used to lethal force would be less skilled at dispensing disabling force.
@susan, well, she did get hit by that explosion hard enough to knock her out for a while, then was yelled at by King and punched by King’s guy, and hasn’t gotten any sleep aside from that period of drifting unconscious in space. Seems like decent justification for having an off day.
To be fair on Emily she did get hit by an explosion not too long before this. She is tough, but that coupled with getting rushed by two thugs twice her size is going to be a struggle for anyone to handle.
Chris: you get a thrill once a month when Mad comes out. Most of us here get a thrill every Monday and Wednesday when Spacetrawler is posted. Not me though. I defer my gratification till Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Why being hit by a chair or a fist do not make a CHAIR! or a FIST! sound, like being hit by an elbow or being kicked?
Sure, Emily gets beat up a lot, but she dishes it out too. That’s what makes her scary. She’s not easily intimidated. It’s the lifestyle she chose. In her young, weird and violent life, I wouldn’t be surprised that’s she’s found herself tied to chairs and threatened by bosses and goons a lot. She’s probably already plotting her way out of this situation.