V23 – Pg25
Kill Everyone
“An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.” – Sun Tzu
And boom, there we go! The end of issue 24 of VANGUARD. The stage is set for a huge battle, with the city of London of as it’s backdrop!
I’ll be working on a comic for The Green Archer boys next, then either back onto Vanguard or Vyper… will see how the year plays out.
As always, you can find me talking comics each week on The Awesome Comic Podcast with the, Tony and Vince,
If you’ve enjoyed the comic so far, I post upcoming designs and sketches (inclusing whats happening next in the comic!) over on my Patreon page. Soon I’ll be uploading the previous issues in PDF format onto there. So why not help the creation of VANGUARD and throw a few quid/bucks into the pot? It all helps keep this comic going.
Dan. B
Apt Sun Tzu quotation for folks living in the US right now.
Yeah, the US is cleaning up from someone like that right now. It’s a horrible mess (with significant body count, though not on the scale as we have seen in this story, of course), but it’s getting better much quicker than I expected.
Hoo, boy!
so we’ll be waiting how many months for the next issue then?
This is where the comic ended on my first read through. Fantastic work, will be highly recommending it. Artwork, writing, story, ideas, all very interesting and well-expressed. Gritty and realistic without being grimdark. I love the realistic exploration of how different super powers interact – how come Spider-Man has never accidentally punched someone’s head off before? “He was wearing tights and a cape, I thought he had super powers.”
Okay people, we’ve got a wait on our hands so let’s make this interesting. I got twenty internet points on each of the following predictions:
Jordana – dies heroically, partly because of her Dad. All Seems Lost.
Malachai – either stays an ally until he gets his promised bloodbath in London and then sees an opportunity to bring back the Old Ones and becomes the Final End Boss, or is comi-heroically sacrificed along the way, to everyone’s relief. (this one pays out 2:1 because I gave myself an either/or)
Pendragon – his trauma has made him very easy to manipulate, and he’ll be even more traumatized than we saw him last. Hmmmm…. I’m calling “shows up to save the day, unsaves the day due to his PTSD, accidentally contributes to his daughter’s death, dies a tragic death.”
Luke – Max seems smart enough to get out of the AI’s way and it probably provided him with several really good contingency plans for Luke, who Max has been pretty obsessed with for decades. The AI would have made sure they were very good plans even though it can sort-of disobey (more on that later) because it knows if Max realizes he has been giving it lazily-phrased orders he’ll hire a logician to phrase his future orders. Luke tries to throw down one-on-one with Max but gets blindsided by a bunch of mooks with very specific powers, weapons and plans, tragic death, All Seems Loster.
Guy – kills the absolute F out of Violet and the crowd goes wild!
Woden – heroically sacrifices himself providing a brief Hope Spot that ends up being made irrelevant five panels later. Last words are “Herne… you’re such… a cuuuuuuun-”
Wight Witch – is being incredibly effective, gets distracted by Luke’s plight, and gets one-shotted by X-Bow, who’s been given arrows that can kill the WW. All Seems Losterer.
Maxina – guided into playing a key role in Maxamillion’s death by the visions she is having and her determination to be free of him. I hope she gets to kill him, but as of right now she doesn’t have the juice. She could kill X-Bow though, that would be pretty cool. Excuse me, Mr. Comic Book Author? If Maxina kills X-Bow I’ll give you all the internet points I win!
X-Bow – kills someone way cooler than her then dies, preferably horribly. Gets put into the insideoutatron? I’m on board.
The Douche Dogs (X-Bow’s psycho kids) – are about to do something horrible, their non-douche brother stands up to them and buys time for one of the grown-ups to come and put an end to their douchery. Non-douche dog survives but is maimed, rest of his “family” doesn’t.
Max – Dead man flying. Won’t be killed by Luke. His big weaknesses are that he constantly abuses his closest “allies,” he’s lazy, he’s greedy, and he’s not much of a lateral thinker. Okay, he’s killed, not by Luke, and his own character flaws are at the root of what gets him killed (this also holds true if Maxina gets to kill him). If Malachai is the Final Boss, just as it seems Max is about to win he gets one-shotted by Malachai.
Voilet – eats a bunch of orphans, kicks some puppies, then gets killed by Guy and the crowd goes wild!
The Goddess – (Assuming Malachai becomes the Big Bad) she merges with the AI and “saves” the day by using the thrusters of the satellite containing the AI to send it plummeting to earth to fall on top of the Big Bad in a massive Heroic Sacrifice just when All Seems Lostererest. I’ll also call this a win if it turns out the satellite already has orbital weapons and she just glasses two hundred square metres of London and survives. (If Malachai is not the Final Boss) “Killing the AI” works out like “possessing the Hollow Man” did – she thinks she is in control but part of the AI has merged with her and influences her perceptions/actions. At first she is the only reason they have a chance, but eventually she realizes she is being played by the AI, so she gets control long enough to use the thruster jets of the satellite to start a terminal descent, then jettison the remaining fuel. The AI takes over again but can’t stop the satellite from falling. It copies a bunch of ghestalts of itself onto the minds of the transhumanists before the satellite hits, but Malachai kills them.
Thade – does not get his happy ending. With how deep that guy is in, how can he think he can just drive away and that will be that? As an aside, it’s weird to me that a fictional character who has unrepentantly brought ruin for profit upon most families in the country is humanized by caring about *his* family. That shot is not at the artist, it is at our current conception of ‘justice.’
Cates – gets hacked by the AI, full-on this time, and weaponized against the good guys, killing a bunch of mooks and a name-brander or two. When the Goddess merges with the AI the first thing they do is put a ghestalt of the Goddess into the basically empty shell that is Cates, then going on to play a major role in Saving The Day and Rebuilding The World.
The Quirin – sees something shiny, ignores The Plan to go deal with it, then instead of dealing with it, starts monologuing to it, and gets killed. Causes The Plan to go sideways, getting others killed in the process. Is never called out on any of this.
Ginny – her show is hijacked and used to broadcast what happened to the world. After everything goes down, she turns to the camera and says “Can you believe I survived?” Just then, she’s crushed to death by fifty billion tonnes of falling rubble, and the crowd goes wild!
The “Responsible” guy “in charge” of Violet’s family – realizes too late just how f*ed his family is and provides a brief Hope Spot confronting Violet – who calls him out directly for turning a blind eye to the monster she has become. “You know I’m a face eater. You’ve known it for years. The only thing you’re upset about is that I’m about to eat your face.” /horrific shrieks and gnawing noises/ “Comeuppance never tasted so good!”
FINAL PREDICTIONS (drum roll, please)
If Malachai is the Final Boss, he kills Jordana, All Seems Lostererest, he’s about to bring back the Old Ones when he is stopped by a singularity created by a merging of the AI with the Goddess and the most augmented of the transhumanists.
If Max is the Final Boss he doesn’t get killed in a straight fight. Luke thinks he’s gonna get a straight fight but It’s A Trap! and Luke goes down. Pendragon shows up and, holy crap, it looks like he’s got a plan that’s gonna work!… but then his distorted perception of reality causes him to unwittingly get Jordana killed. He goes berserk and rushes Max, who boredly No-Sells several hits, then casuallsy backhands Pendragon all the way into space, where he dies, because he is not Batman, and he can’t breathe in space. All Seems Lostererest. Cates shows up, being “piloted” by a ghestalt of The Goddess and shoots Max with a techno-magic bullet that blows a fist sized hole clean through his head, and its revealed that the AI had already decided Max is Bad News and was doing everything it could on the side to get rid of him so it already knew how to make the bullet it used, and because Max is lazy and wasn’t as careful with how he phrased his orders to the AI as he thought he was, the AI had considerable freedom to act as it saw fit, provided Max never found out and gave it new orders.
Taking all comers! Big money! Can’t win if you don’t play!
“As an aside, it’s weird to me that a fictional character who has unrepentantly brought ruin for profit upon most families in the country is humanized by caring about *his* family. That shot is not at the artist, it is at our current conception of ‘justice.’”
Speak for yourself. That’s the “popular” view of it, yes (“compassion” is the for criminal getting his just punishment, not his victims or their families – makes me angry to even type that), but the supposedly “popular” view hasn’t been the actual common view in quite a while (if ever), or Trump wouldn’t have gotten more than 2% of the vote (like him or hate him, not relevant to this point). The “cool kids” aren’t actually popular with very many people – they just have the biggest stages to stand on and rent-a-mobs to make it look like people care. Gotten a look at their crowd sizes since their rent-a-mob budget was zeroed out?
Otherwise, fun predictions.
Well, it seems to me that Max just kinda sealed his own doom. AIs are typically VERY literal, and, unless he has given the AI a directive that excludes Max from the definition of EVERYONE, it is going to do its darnedest to take him out, along with killing all human life on the planet.