SFP

Show Comments
  • zellgato

    Ah. So it is his subconcious, his old villiany subverting the current him who tried to be fairly legit due to Allison. Or seems as such anyway. Still voting the fracture is a result of him recieving a power up. Either naturally or via Max in some way.

    • Weatherheight

      Could also be his ambition to be remembered/resist death, his drive to control his destiny, his desire for power.
      So many ways this could break…

  • Weatherheight

    Yeah, the One getting off on being powerful wouldn’t be a fan of Alison, for practically every iteration of power is one at which Alison excels.

    This should be interesting…

  • Silenceaux

    I appreciate that here in his brain, Patrick has the ability to supply his own flashes of lightning during his dramatic monologues.

    • Mechwarrior

      He’s just brainstorming.

  • Kid Chaos

    “Release the Sentinel.” Somehow I’m picturing the Destroyer from “Thor” (2011). I’ve got a bad feeling about this… 💀

    • MrSokar

      Not the X-men Sentinels?

      • Kid Chaos

        Ooh, good one! For some reason I forgot about them. Well, similar concept, but the Sentinels are bigger. The Destroyer is more powerful, I think, and has self-repair capacity. I wonder which one we’ll see? 😜

        • Mechwarrior

          Sentinels are also autonomous robots with a tendency to turn on their creators, while the Destroyer is a magitech power armor that requires someone to pilot it and therefore isn’t capable of backstabbing you when you use it.

          • Weatherheight

            Well, Odin has given it a set of instructions and set it loose once, but yeah, usually it needs someone’s spirit to make it go.

    • 21stCenturyPeon

      My mind went straight to Liam Neeson’s “Release the Kraken!” from Clash Of The Titans (2010)

      • tygertyger

        That wasn’t just you.

        • 21stCenturyPeon

          But nobody went to Michael Douglas’s 2006 Secret Service thriller The Sentinel?

          • Kid Chaos

            Um…nope. 😜

      • David Claughton

        I was thinking … I not sure what good this guy would be in this situation … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_(TV_series)

      • Neeson’s just a wannabe, it takes Laurence Olivier to deliver that line properly!

  • Lostman

    So to any guesses to what he represents to Patrick? I’m thinking that either his wrath, or pride.

    • Walter

      I’d say generalized Id.

    • Elaine Lee

      Since we were in Jung territory only a page or two ago, maybe his shadow?

  • Lysiuj

    So is this his superego, or the center of it? Completely focused on purity of purpose and on not being brought down by other people or emotions?

    • tygertyger

      That megalomania seems more id-ish to me.

      • Weatherheight

        Super-Ego is about control, Id is about impulse.
        Megalomania is definitely Super-Ego territory (all aspects of self in subservience to a single idea or impulse).

    • Elaine Lee

      I could see that.

  • BadExampleMan

    Wewease Wogew!

  • Dave Noonan

    I was struck by “keeping me from our true purpose”.

  • Fluffy Dragon

    Is he talking about Alison or femPat?
    “from the very day she first came to this city.”

    I mean it’s possible he meant the first time he read Al’s mind…

    • Walter

      I think Alison, most def. He said that the Anima was not a priority in the last page, the way the conversation flows it seems like he is condemning Alison.

    • R Lex Eaton

      Huh. Interesting representation of the internal fear of someone making you question your own choices and morality…

      Even more interesting, to me at least, is that there isn’t any mention of the nameless cabal that was his stated reason for retiring the mask. Was that just another smokescreen to hide his intended mission? Did his reasoning change somewhere down the line?

      But most anticipated of all… Might there be a mental version of Alison? As herself, Mega Girl, or some kind of Patrick hybrid?

    • Markus

      > Is he talking about Alison or femPat?

      https://i.imgur.com/D5PqzLs.gifv

      • Markus

        Wow, the .gif resizing on disquis is terrible.

  • AustinC123

    And I thought Pintsize liked comic books.

  • Who was I to know that the inside of a supervillain’s mind would be so melodramatic.

    • A Stop Sign

      To be fair, that’s just the tip.

  • Walter

    “Keeping me from our true purpose”. Huh, seems like on some level this guy also knows he just a mental construct, and that he and the Anima are portions of the same person.

    • Tylikcat

      Well, this is the visual representation of himself that he chose when he was, what, fourteen or so?

    • Arkone Axon

      Or he’s talking about his goal of destroying the establishment he has always opposed, and which has oppressed his allies and most of humanity. Remember, from his point of view he’s the guy who decided to take on the United States government and its NATO allies and corporate puppetmasters, with all their military and economic strength, with only his wits, powers, and trusted and brave allies against the forces arrayed against him.

      (Also remember that everyone thinks they’re the hero in their own mind)

  • Callinectes

    “If she could be turned, she would become a powerful ally.”

  • JohnTomato

    Looks like a home grown insane AI with delusions of Shakespeare. Perhaps someone inserted the legendary Roswell Chip in his lizard brain. The square dialog boxes are an outstanding clue.

  • Some guy

    Poison seeping FROM a wound would actually be a good thing, Fake-Menace.

    • cphoenix

      Not if it seeps internally.

      • Weatherheight

        Sepsis, yes?

  • “In order to save the city, it became necessay to to destroy it”

    Seem to have heard that somewhere before.

  • “Release the Sentinel”

    “Release the kraken!” is more traditional 😉

  • Considering this is Menace, or an aspect of Menace; in that first frame, are we seeing a reflection of the city inside his visor, or is the city literally inside his head?

    • Weatherheight

      Yes.

  • Martin Cohen

    The visor is curved, but the reflection of the city is as if it were flat. Maybe it’s what is seen.

    • Mechwarrior

      It’s just a metaphor of a city.

  • OptimisticCentrist

    This suggests that Patrick’s friendship with Alison was totally sincere. You have to let someone influence you pretty deeply for them to be able to cause those kinds of cracks in your mind-city.
    From the first moment he got to know her (by reading her mind somewhat before they actually met), she motivated him to change some pretty fundamental things about his life and identity. And only partially because she would have literally killed him if he hadn’t.

    I’ve long thought that Patrick must find Alison’s sanity restful and delightful compared to the very messed up people he generally surrounded himself with. Alison has her flaws but she’s self-confident, self-reliant, responsible, altruistic and not scared of Patrick because she has no dark secrets to hide. I can see how encountering such a mind could have an effect on Patrick.

    • Nebty

      Which makes me even more confused about why he sabotaged their friendship like he did. That whole sequence in his office just baffles me.

      Maybe he thought Alison was making him too soft? And that he needed to go back to his old ruthless ways in order to take down the mysterious organization. But then why did he try to give her that gift at the end? Or send her that cheque?

      I mean, I get that Pat isn’t nearly as rational as he’d like to believe, but it seems so inconsistent. Maybe deep down he’s always just been a big confusing mess.

      • Ellie

        Maybe his feelings for (or friendship with) Alison terrify him because he’s been disappointed whenever he got close to someone in the past? After they visited Feral, Alison tried to hit on him, but he stopped her and there’s a panel that shows him glancing back at her with what might be fear/regret. http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-3/page-49/

        Maybe he was deliberately keeping her away from him because he didn’t want to read her mind? To hold on to an idealized version of her?

        Or maybe he’s a just narcissist struggling to choose between himself and Alison.
        It would…kinda explain why a version of himself hates her?

        • Arkone Axon

          Huh… interesting. Not just the earlier page you referenced, but the proportions seen in that earlier page. I’ve noted how the current art style has cleaner, more proficiently drawn lines, but the proportions of the characters depicted are that of children. This latest page is the first in quite some time that comes closer to the 7-8 “heads” in body length for a normal human adult (let alone the 8-9 for properly heroic proportions as traditionally seen in comics). But that earlier page has Alison drawn with the proportions of a young adult woman, not a young teenager as we’ve seen in the latest images.

          I’m hopeful that future pages will see a merging of the best of the earlier strips and the new stuff, the quality drawing of the current style with proper proportions. Heck, it could be that we’re about to see exactly that, given the nature of the current arc – this is definitely a situation where Alison can feel free to punch away.

      • Beroli

        Which makes me even more confused about why he sabotaged their friendship like he did.

        Right here in this strip, we have an entity that is as much Patrick as the woman she just rescued, saying that his response to the rot she’s caused in his mind-city is to want her destroyed to the point of being willing to level the city to do it.

    • R Lex Eaton

      And that, in its own way, is exactly the kind of thing Alison wanted to accomplish. People can always be better. Some just need a bit of help to find the way. Patrick probably needs all the help he can get.

  • Crow

    Oh yay, the Anima (the female part of Patrick’s personality) will be the redeemable character while his masculine traits are vilified. Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy.

    • Danygalw

      The Anima is supposed to be the suppressed subconscious parts of your mind. Also it’s all Patrick. Chill.

      • Crow

        Anima is Carl Jung’s term for the feminine part of a man’s personality. But beyond the definition of the term, it’s still a question of representation.

        • Weatherheight

          Repressed / unaccepted is a big part of the definition. Once accepted, anima elements becomes synthesized into the “larger personality” (which term Jung would have a bit of a fit about, but…). It’s just that the personality aspects that are less socially approved by society at large for men to express tend to reflect “feminine” attributes, just as society frowns on women expressing “masculine” aspects.

          Jung makes note often that the animus is usually less troublesome for women since there is a greater range of behavior that women tend to be comfortable with than there is for men (remember, this idea of “what society will accept” is entirely internalized).
          This statement alone makes me have issues with Jung. 😀

          • palmvos

            which of the two statements- that women have an easier time because of a greater range of actions – (i’m a man and i have to look quizzical at this) or the idea that ‘what society will accept’ is entirely internalized (this seems obvious to me)

          • Weatherheight

            Many of the women that have passed through my life tell me they feel restricted by their internalized societal rules to a greater degree and with more frequency than do the men that have passed through my life.

            Jung suggests the opposite should be true. Which shows his personal biases, I guess. Or maybe mine. 😀

    • AmberWriter

      We don’t have Anima confirmed as good, nor this guy conformed as animus. He (it, they, etc.) could be a representation of id or ego or some other theory

    • Arkone Axon

      This has been my big concern. I’m VERY much hoping that we’ll encounter other aspects, and not just these two… because as it stands the first “good” aspect we see onscreen is female and the first “bad” aspect is male. And if this is the start of the pattern, then it’s not only sexist, it’s also… lazy writing.

  • Hiram

    Hover closer, you! I need my cape to billow far more dramatically than this!

  • Franklin J Gomes

    I just realize this: Patrick, despise his intelligence, is an immature man–child.

    If we took the dialogues of “Menace” in this last page and Patrick general behavior trough the narrative, we can conclude that he believes to be “smarter that anyone else” ,”have everything figure out” and “destined to do great things”, in other words, the attitude of a teenager (to the point of his mental self image is the persona he created when he was a teen). Worse, he had hold to these beliefs from a long time, because his powers allow him to easily get around those pesky adult life problems that make you mature

    Until the day Allison make him realize his incapacity to hear his own toughs, shattering his beliefs in a second.

    Since he have build his personality, goals and .lifestyle around those believes, he found himself unwilling to accept the truth but it cannot denied either, so he goes self-destructive

    But of course, the immature teenager part of his psyche is gonna do.what immature teenager parts of psyches do: put all the blame in the person that put him in this situation (Allison) and “everything will be okay once she is gone”.

    • R Lex Eaton

      Apt. It’s a good visual metaphor for that and so much else besides.

      Not a coincidence that the part of his personality resisting self refinement is the one associated with evil. After all, evil thinks it’s perfect as it is.

    • Arkone Axon

      You make an excellent point here. I actually ate dinner last night with a similar overgrown-child. He believes that “while climate change is an observable phenomena, so called “man-made climate change” is a total hoax based on people desperately wanting to matter, will rant while someone pulls out their phone and starts timing their rant, then after deigning to give them a chance to say something will interrupt them repeatedly because they just aren’t getting the SCALE of it… no he doesn’t have to let them talk because he understands how to be a good speaker, which means monopolizing the conversation and repeatedly saying they don’t understand the scale, and he will now offer an example that completely demolishes their completely idiotic and imbecilic disagreement (and it IS idiotic because otherwise they’d agree with him)… and then when they use his own example to prove he’s mistaken he will repeat it because clearly they do not understand the scale and they are wrong and he won’t shut up because he is a good speaker.

      Though I would like to add that “man-child” is not the best term, because this attitude is hardly limited to men. Gonads have nothing to do with this kind of fanatical egocentricity. In the case of the comic we see Alison resorting to violence when her beliefs are challenged, we see Mary becoming a serial killer who preys on acceptable targets… and at last night’s dinner, I saw a woman insist that just because one person was actually timed as speaking for five minutes straight for multiple “sermons from the mount” (it was actually longer, but she chose to round down) doesn’t mean they were monopolizing the conversation… because she happens to agree with that overgrown-child and therefore his methods are 100% acceptable and dissent is completely and utterly wrong. (And facts are even worse. How DARE you attempt to bring facts in to challenge axiomatic principles carved in stone! :p )

      • Franklin J Gomes

        I totally agree that been an adult with the mindset of a 15 years-old has nothing to do with gender and, as you point out, there is tons of parallels between Allison and Patrick in this regard (so much for “laying down the toys”). I just used “man-child” because the subject was a male character.

        • Arkone Axon

          I understand what you’re saying. My concern about using a masculine term is the same as my misgivings about showing Patrick’s “positive” aspects as feminine while his “negative” aspects are masculine. The idea that women are inherently morally superior is extremely sexist – to both men AND to women. If a woman is just “naturally good,” then she hasn’t chosen to be moral. It’s the choice to be good that makes us moral, and to deny that the choice is even a choice is to suggest that a gender lacks free will.

      • R Lex Eaton

        Aw, c’mon Double A! It’s not like people can’t grow out of that mindset! It took me until my mid-20s, but I managed to gain a sense of proportion!

        [/facetiousness]

        Okay, back to sensible talk. While I still don’t quite agree with you regarding Alison and her egocentric aspects, it still makes sense to me that such behavior is common among the capes in SFP. It’s kinda what happens when government officials try to coerce kids into doing their bidding by repeatedly telling them how special they are. Some have grown out of it in good ways, some bad, and some not at all… And at least a few of them are trying their best to make things right.

        Not for lack of trying on our scarred old teacher’s part. *grumbles about Gurwara and his absolute moral relativity*

        • Arkone Axon

          Agreed. That’s why I don’t see Alison as “pure evil” in spite of what some of her apologists have accused me of believing. She’s a child soldier. She is the product of her upbringing. She spent her formative years being taught to solve all problems by punching them – AND to do so without regard for collateral damage or innocent bystanders. There are a lot of people in her world who truly do despise her for what she’s done… even though she was a minor acting under the auspices of a government that sent children to engage in horrific ultra-violence as a big dog-and-pony show that distracted everyone from the crap that they’ve been doing. (Seriously, you look at the setting and you’ll notice the same issues in our world also affect theirs. The banking industry screwing people over left and right, the bombings of civilians in other countries to “fight terror,” the intolerance of differing opinions… now imagine all of that going on, but people are distracted because look flying teenagers throwing fireballs)

          She’s trying to fix things, but a huge part of the problem is that she has spent her entire life being lied to, sucked up to, and falsely flattered by people around her for at least half her life. She has to learn better methods and mannerisms, because “smashing everything and screaming at people who disagree” isn’t cutting it.

          • R Lex Eaton

            Character development~!

          • R Lex Eaton

            On a note regarding flawed yet likeable protagonists… I find myself wondering who Alison might be adjacent to in terms of morality, and I think I have an answer:

            Cole Phelps, from L.A. Noire. One of my favorite classical antiheroes in modern fiction.

            I’ll explain in greater detail in the future. For now, though, I’m off to think about an AU for SFP as California gumshoes!

          • Arkone Axon

            I’ve played that game! My biggest problem with it was the interrogation system. Not only were the facial cues confusing as hell, but both the notion of using threats and bullying to interrogate someone, and the notion that you can tell when someone lies based purely on watching them, have been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked (except in the eyes of would be vigilantes who think Jack Bauer was doing the right thing).

            That being said, I did love the whole “GTA but as a cop” aspect. I’d love to see more games like that. So far the only two I’ve been able to play were “Urban Chaos” for the PS1 (and Darci Stern is a REALLY awesome “strong female protagonist,” and one who didn’t need superpowers to kick all the ass), and “Sleeping Dogs” (available on Steam).

          • R Lex Eaton

            All in agreement with the interrogation system. It’s telling that the terminology used in it had to undergo constant revisions to make it clear what you wanted to do. Honestly, the story behind the game’s creation is probably just as interesting as the game itself.

            For me, the acting is the strongest part of the entire thing. It’s a testament to these people that they turned in such good performances given the massive restrictions in place to make the facial recognition software work.

            And oh, Aaron Stanten as Cole Phelps is my favorite of them all. He hits all the notes for me that Alison does. Prone to arrogance that led to tragedy in the past; trying to pioneer new methods of the field while everyone else pushes their own way; has a hotheaded ally/rival whose loose approach often gets better results, and the list goes on.

            (Btw, Feral as Jack Kelso is something I would pay to see.)

          • Arkone Axon

            As far as the gameplay goes, the part of L.A. Noire I enjoyed the best was the patrol missions. The same violence and action you get in a GTA game… but you’re one of the good guys. That makes a big difference for me.

            I very much enjoyed Sleeping Dogs and Urban Chaos for similar reasons – in “Urban Chaos” Darci Stern does everything from talk a jumper out of committing suicide to taking down a balrog with only her pistol and her wits (“Good job, Stern! Wait until the zoo gets a look at their newest exhibit. Giant panda my ass!”), while in “Sleeping Dogs” the martial arts mechanics were simply awesome (you really feel like a Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan type. There’s an even a DLC that parodies “Enter the Dragon”).

  • Scorpion nation

    For some reason Johny Cashes “Hurt” seems to be playing through out my head for this chapter.