It took me three days to get through and commentate chapter 2, which is more than twice the length of chapter 1, a trend that will continue throughout the comic. So we'll see how long these posts can get.
This post contains (linked) references to Strong Female Protagonist by Brennan Lee Mulligan and Molly Ostertag, pages of Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Bendis and Mark Bagley, copyright, etc..
Tara Lynn, aka Feral, aka my favorite! I think this counts as a pretty subtle little twist. We get taken in by the claws and the cat eyes and wondering who this is and why Alison seems to be dressed like her nurse and it's easy to overlook the part that's the most revealing of Tara's character: She's smoking in a hospital bed.
P1
This is the stuff I love. Get a cut in your unbreakable skin and there's nothing to do about it but keep it clean and wait for it to scab and scar. Daniel's power being based on cancer is also cool, except for the horrible horrible death I GUESS.
2
If you keep getting free grades just for saving the city from devastation you're never going to learn the material, Alison! We have been over this.
Surprisingly there's not a lot of overlap in the jobs of punching out supervillains and repairing the infrastructure damage caused in the process. I think we've been over that too ,just a few pages ago.
And imagine if Rosenblum had just dropped it. Not like Alison and Tara are very close friends yet, there's not much reason for them to be involved in each other's business, and if not for Alison insisting they might never have been. And that's terrible.
3
They come from such different worlds, how will they ever find common ground? Okay but "Of course I need a gun because otherwise I can't shoot anyone" has to be some willful stupidity, admit it Tara.
Page Holiday Greetings (?)
Ha I just realized they have Christmas themed costumes.
4
The two toughies fight the supervillain and everyone else does everything else? Seems like a practical division of labor. Though of course Alison has to object to cooperating with crimes. (And the concept of cooperation.) Tara and her band of rogues are really being nice even bothering to stick around with the big city heroes. Maybe a certain amount of lady boners are playing into that decision.
P5
Hitting a guy with another guy is such a power move, but can Alison kick a guy so hard that the next guy over breaks his arm? Bruce Lee did that once, in real life.
6
Puking up your literal, bullet riddled guts could be a good combat move. (Yes super regeneration is super gross.)
Yer a loose cannon, Tara. With loose ammunition in you. Dang, the bullets would still be burning hot too.
7
Tara probably knows about her anomaly progressing and how it means she gradually gets a little bit better at regenerating all the time. (I figure outlaw biodynamics get medical amnesty in the name of science and most of them do want to keep regular doctor visits to get some ideas about what's going on with them.) So as far as she knows at any time she's in better health than she has ever been before. So when people see her get wounded and ask if she's okay (which has to be all the time) she can be super cute and tell them honestly "Never been better!"
Yes please let it be her catchphrase.
8
Ignomino should have gone into pro wrestling instead of crimes. "You will be punished for your insolence"pfft whatever you say chest club. Although, it seems he can independently move around multiple objects with a lot of precision. Even if it takes his full concentration, that's pretty impressive.
Whereas Tara doesn't need no motor control or frontal cortex to go "fuck you". It's like fighting the Man is pure muscle reflex to her. Very impressive.
9
I mean, here he loses because he can't do anything about a shoe while levitating Alison and a sword. What did you even get all those muscles and fancy words for Ignomino.
Procedure for assisting a regenerator with foreign objects stuck in their body: To minimize discomfort and hasten recovery, focus on dislodging the object above avoiding adding to their pain and injuries. It doesn't matter if you split her head in half gurl, it'll get better, but it won't get better as long as her brains are trying to grow around a length of metal.
(Regeneration just gets more and more gross.)
10
I like Tara's move of completely unnecessarily putting her foot on the pool table. The surprise kiss, not so much. I mean, I would if it was me, I desperately need people to show and tell me what they want out of me, but clearly she's just seeing whatever signals she wants to see from Alison.
The comments on the page here already have done most of my job for me. But I can add, I really like them bonding over how Alison is secretly super uncool.
12
Doing a mind reading on the US Senate, cool cool cool.
13
How do you have time to read a whole book Alison? I don't have work or school and I'm lucky if I get through 20 pages of webcomic in a day. Yes, this is the one thing in her life I'm jealous of.
I wonder if Rat and everybody would have been as fiercely loyal to Patrick if it occurred to them he never gave anyone birthday gifts or anything. On reflection, why wouldn't he? Must have been some dystopian, impersonal villain lair meetings.
How much of this road trip is happening because Alison can't drive herself?
14
Maybe he'd like Vocaloid music?
Hypothesis: It doesn't matter if you're the mind reader or the broadcaster, telepathy is more uncomfortable depending on who has the most shame.
16
That's a pretty juicy secret I think. Well, it would be if Patrick was going to get back to public superpowered fights, where keeping people guessing about what your powers actually do would be a sweet advantage. If he has no plans even slightly in that direction, and I really don't think so, and he's pretty much engineered a situation where Alison can't ever tell people he's even still alive, it seems more like an attempt at sharing something personal. "I had two younger brothers, one died." "Everyone thinks I used mind control to try to take over the world but I can't do that."
And yeah he is spooky. You never really know if he means what he says or just says whatever will get you to do what he wants you to do. Just like everyone else, but like, you're more aware of it. Might be harder to trust him if you're always thinking about it, and then going in circles cause you know he knows you're thinking about it and that's frustrating for him and unfair if he does want to be honest and now he's thinking about how you're thinking about that and now how could he possibly not want to do or say anything that will make you trust him and. . .
Actually, that whole grim rant might be designed to paint himself as so cruel and manipulative as to remove all ambiguity, since he knows she'll go through something like the above thought spiral anyway. So he's helping her decide he's completely impossible to trust, just getting that out of the way, which makes him at least honest about being dishonest, so you see, he's not a bad guy, it's just how his power forces him to be, and do you see where this is going? We've just formulated an argument for letting ourselves be manipulated by a guy for whom manipulation is pure instinct.
Although, with all that in mind, I'd like to just choose to trust him.
17
See, look at that happy relieved face. Either everything he is is a deception, or nothing. So you can either decide to trust him or nothing happens. At all.
18
Now, did Patrick time that so Heather would interrupt him? That's just the sort of thing I, nope, gotta choose trust.
19
I mean, we could pick apart the several levels of deception coming from the well-meaning scared little mama here in her few seconds of apparence: Supporting her child's interest to hide that she herself really wanted to beg Alison to put the cape back on to hide how she presumably knows supervillains had nothing to do with baby daddy's death by sexual misadventure. It's not ideal but I'm saying it's silly to single out Patrick.
Really more sad for Alison feeling her personal life shrink and constrict under the unimaginable pressure of global fame. Sorry for your loss, unnamed bit character.
20
Now Patrick is the relatable one. Well maybe it's just me who gets impatient with conversations where you already know how it's going to go and can't resist being efficient and failing to think about how the other party might be put out when you say things they don't have anywhere to go with.
The only difference, if I was operating with the same information he has, is I think I'd have said "I don't think you can just be good or bad, it matters what you do. But I'm trying to do good things. I'm, and I always have, tried to make it so no one has to go through the things that I have."
Which, I think at least he thinks that's his real motivation, replacing the systems that let abusers like his parents and the Grand Conspiracy ruin lives. Probably some amount of bloodthirst involved there too but you can forgive someone not wanting to acknowledge that.
Aah, the ambiguity. Which could it be? We have seen Alison's dreams are nuts and also scary, and we'll see Patrick doesn't like the feelings Alison gives him, so both options seem pretty unlikely.
22
Passive aggression, meet massive aggression. Really the freak (meaning the bigot) could try a little bit to hide how bad she wants to murder biodynamics when she's in the middle of conspiring to murder biodynamics, this is like cartoon villain mentality.
23
Oh no it's getting scary.
And Patric, privacy is troublesome to navigate, really? I think he'd have to go to space far away from any other people to really respect anyone's privacy. At least never talk to anyone. So like, it's sweet that he's trying to find some reasonable compromise.
24
Cause it's not like Tara keeps to herself what her keen nose can tell.
Aww, they're friends. Just not good at keeping in touch I guess.
25, 26, 27
Tara's days of feeling better every day are certainly behind her, dang.
28
Everyone (well, Daniel and Tara) seem to put so much stock in Alison's word that superheroes are for babies. Maybe it was just that she said something all the biodynamics were thinking just as they were leaving their teens, or she's just that influential.
29, 30, 31
Before we knock down Alison for futzing around in school learning nothing for a year that Tara probably didn't learn in her first week on the road, remember Alison is the least incognito person in the world. (And a huge nerd.)
32
Why is Tara sick anyway? Some effects of experimental surgery and medication I guess.
33
Such reflexes. I'm imagining Alison has fought some super annoying teleporters and that's why Johnny Temple is the only person who gets her to react without thinking. Not especially motivated or dangerous opponents, just annoying.
34
He must be into fashion, his jacket pockets are useless!
It's too bad the movie Jumper was already made before this, they got to do all the really sweet teleporter party tricks. But at least we get the hilarious mental image of Johnny zapping into his own party and stealing someone's drink.
36
More than anything else the most genuine and unique artistic expression of American culture is superhero comic books. (Send tweet.) No but Johnny's question doesn't seem like it would be a big mystery; ol' Hector is definitely not the only one of the super kids in America who took All-Star Superman as an instruction manual.
37
Doesn't seem to be a lot going on here, just introducing Patrick's proxy evil CEO legitimate corporation's figurehead Duval and showing us he's still tracking down them "Closed" folders.
38
Just how much does Duval know about the company he's representing, I wonder. Say he's an actor hired for the full time job of appearing as the boss of Templar industries, famously Menace's old business front that now desperately needs an older white man at the front to give them respectability. It's not gonna be hard for him to figure it out if he knows the spooky detached kid who's the same age as Menace is the one who really runs the company.
By the same token it would take some very convoluted stories to keep the truth from him while somehow explaining why Duval needs to have this guy instructing him in his act and acting as his assistant, while nobody in the company knows who he, Patrick, is.
Makes more sense if Duval knows just about the whole truth. A two man con may be the simplest way the two of them can run Templar. It's just bold of Patrick to trust someone that much who isn't Alison.
39, 40
Have we mentioned regeneration powers are gross and get more gross the more you go into depth with them? Well, it's biology in general come to think of it. Just buttloads of body horror combined with nightmares of being restrained and tortured forever. And it's for the greater good and stuff.
Tara must hate herself so much to even come up with this, let alone go through with it. Maybe she wants to be punished for all the people she killed and the team she let down. Or maybe it's possible she just wants to help people this much. We don't get told enough about her in my opinion.
41
Sometimes the alt text helps you get through these pages eh.
I like this. Taking a whole page just to stop and process the intense feelings the characters are having. Terror and compassion and guilt and what else. We'll leave them there for now.
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