SFP

Ryan .

i never knew that the first component of an investigation is releasing the contents of the first few windows of a person’s computer

Sabriel

Moonshadow is vindicated. Or at least, she is consistant. How do people feel about that?

I am feeling ambivalent about the whole thing. I think it’s a worthwhile subject to explore (rape culture) but I’d kind of like to get back to reading about Menace and the biodynamic conspiracy.

Ryan Thompson

Is she? Did she know about his history before she killed him? Was she able to dig all that up in the hour or two after the video went viral? Was she coincidentally on to him already, and hence had more time to do her research?

Or did she sneak in, slit his throat, and only then open up his email account to find out she was right? She’s playing judge, jury, and executioner, but is she even doing it in order?
- Sabriel
  
  She had most of a day, and she might have contacts who speed up the research process somehow. I am assuming that she knew and that she opened those files on purpose.
  
  It’s still murder either way. What if she had killed Clevin? One of these days she is going to get her information wrong or kill a bystander.
  
  (“What do you mean there are two men named Jack Hooper?! Oh. Shit.”)
  - allium
    
    “What do you mean there are two men named Jack Hooper?! Oh…well.”
  - Classtoise
    
    Or worse. “What do you mean Jack Hooper only PLAYED a rapist on a cop show!?”
  - Ryan Thompson
    
    In a way, having Moonshadow get it wrong would be taking the easy way out narrative-wise. It would allow us to unambiguously put her in the “bad guy” column and sidestep the real issue of whether someone who does bad things to only bad people is good or not.
    - Random832
      
      Having her be right is still more of an easy way out than leaving it ambiguous.
- Some guy
  
  I wouldn’t say she was vindicated, just less bad.
  
  I kind of want to say she’s reckless and just killed the guy just based on the YouTube video. She did know about the PMC guys, but their wrongdoings were on the news, as were the group of kids at the beginning of the chapter.
  
  Also, Take THAT, Violet!
- motorfirebox
  
  Well, of her kills we’ve seen, she’s been on the money every time. We saw during the PMC kill that she’s capable of doing detailed research on her targets. It’s reasonable to assume that research is the reason why she hasn’t (that we’ve seen) select a target that wasn’t guilty.
  - Insanenoodlyguy
    
    I’d say Clevin counts though. Yeah, Allison was there, but it still could have gone bad. And no emergent details where he was culpable too so far…
- GaryFarber
  
  The blood hadn’t yet dripped down to the floor, so Mary had to have accessed the computer considerably before killing him.
  - Ryan Thompson
    
    I’m glad to say I can’t personally claim to know how long it takes blood from a slit throat to reach the floor. But it’s probably long enough to open up his email application and type “rape” in the search box. She might have done it after the kill.
    - Sabriel
      
      I’ve been thinking about this. Since the evidence was in his email, finding it could have been quick and easy. His password might have been guessable or she could just go invisible at watch him type it. Then, as you say, she could do a search for “rape,” and boom.
      
      Alternatively, it wouldn’t be hard to find out where Miles went to high school (facebook) and she could start by looking for information about his graduating class. Since Miles targeted multiple girls, it might not be much of a secret.
    - Some guy
      
      It takes literally a few seconds, unless the heart was stopped first, in which case it takes several seconds. Fresh blood likes to get everywhere. The lack of blood on the floor was probably more due to the art style of this comic rather than evidence to establish a timeline.
      
      Miles probably is just using Outlook or some equivalent with the password saved, and it was probably open to begin with. He also seemed like the kind of dumbass that would save easily searchable, non-privleged incriminating emails either in his inbox or in an Old Stuff folder.
      
      Or maybe he was looking at the details of his past, realized what a piece of shit he is, and was just about to turn his life around and begin making amends when his neck started hurting and he got lightheaded. Probably not, but I find horrible ironies like that amusing.
- Markus
  
  Couldn’t she have snuck in, stayed silent while he went to go shower or something, rifled through his email and then killed him? Invisibility isn’t just a good stabbin’ people power, it’s a solid research tool too.
- Perlite
  
  Maybe Moonshadow was looking through Miles’ stuff while waiting for him to come back or something.
  - Unillustrated
    
    Leaving aside the moral aspects for a moment, there’s been a lot of speculation as to whether Mary is more Sue Storm or Lamont Cranston. What if she literally knows the evil in a man’s heart as soon as she’s in his presence? In that case, the witness testimony scene we saw earlier would just be how she picks a target. She’d decide whether they decided to die or not once she was actually in their presence.
leoboiko

You know, I used to read a lot of Punisher stories. I’m against the death penalty, and I don’t think the real world needs Punishers, but even as the stories delved in sadistic, goresome detail, I never once empathized with the thugs he tortured. It was just mindless entertainment, a stupid power fantasy.

With Miles, I find myself emphasizing all the time. Yes, what he was doing was evil and wrong, but it seems so much harder to think of *him* as evil – when compared with the proletarian criminals of The Punisher. I feel as if he just needed some education, and some time to think in an humane prison, and he’d understand that his “pickup tactics” are rape; as if he was just a hair’s width away from becoming a responsible person.

I’m not saying that I should support Moonshadow. What she’s doing is wrong, too. I’m highlighting how irrational it is that my gut reaction is to question Moonshadow and not The Punisher. I live in a developing country, and I’ve been mugged at gunpoint quite a few times, almost always by low-class teenaged males. The thing that stayed with me the most was the hate in their eyes. I wasn’t just a mark, I was *the enemy*. When I think of the extreme economic inequality and the social divide, I find these boys have better reasons to rob than guys like Miles have to rape. And robbery is certainly a lesser crime, anyway; the psychological scars of rape are much worse. So how come I instinctively want to find redemption in Miles, in a way that I didn’t even try with Punisher thugs? Because the lower classes are fully other, easily dehumanized? Because Miles (white, young, middle-class) hits a bit too close to home – if he’s a hair’s width from being a decent man, and I’m a decent man, then I’m a hair’s width from him?

To be fair, SFP’s portrayal of Miles is a lot more nuanced than the typical Punisher mafiosi who are evil just because they’re eeevil; but even taking this in consideration, the point still stands.
- smarmodon
  
  He’s really not a hair’s width from being a decent guy though- he is intentionally raping women who are too drunk to say no. It’s actually a fairly common tactic for rapists to target drunk women. His history of previously assaulting women (during boarding school, which could very possibly have been a similar situation) indicates that he’s done this before and would most likely have done it again- not that that really excuses extrajudicial murder. Don’t be fooled by the rape culture, slut shamey assertion that victims who were too drunk were asking for it, or that people who sleep with these women are just innocents who were too caught up in the moment to worry about consent. It’s an intentional ploy to repeatedly commit rape and then get away with it.
- impishacid
  
  First: no prison is humane.
  
  Second: there’s no reason to rape, no justification for it, period, under any circumstances; saying that survival-level petty crime just has ‘better reasons’ is far, far beyond understatement.
  
  Third: we need to end the idea that rapists ~just don’t understand~ that what they’re doing is rape, that their targets aren’t consenting. The issue is they don’t care. They see themselves as victimized by women* who don’t want to have sex with them. They see it as justified ‘getting back at’ women*. They see it as something they’re entitled to. They see women* as subhuman, objects, sluts, asking for it. They see it as a joke. They see it as an awesome story their buddies will congratulate them for. They see it as a victory. They see it as a macho act of dominance to be respected. They see it as a punishment to knock someone down a few pegs and put her* in her* place. They know they’ll almost certainly never face any repercussions, and if she* ever comes forward, the public will think just as little of her, and step in to abuse her* too.
  
  Fourth: why, exactly, do you still say Moonshadow is ‘wrong, too?’ I’m seeing a lot of liberal guilt about the fact that you are quicker to question her, quicker to sympathize with the rapists, slower to empathize with survival-crime ‘th*gs,’ but it looks like a lot of intellectual masturbation without actually changing your position on anything or even considering the possiblity that she’s right.
  I don’t support the death penalty either (because state power) nor real-life vigilanteeism (because real-life vigilantes, historically speaking, are a lot less pure, noble Moonshadow and a lot more fucking evil Klansmen), but if someone were to pull a Moonshadow on my rapist, I’d be fucking elated. I’d never do it myself, because I’m pretty confident she’ll never target anyone else, and I don’t want to throw my own life away for it, but there is zero doubt in my mind that it’d be justified.
  
  *(because it’s no coincidence that ~90% of rapes are against women/girls, and you can’t address the causes without factoring in the fact that violent misogyny is obviously a massive contributor, or else it wouldn’t.)
  - leoboiko
    
    impishacid
    : I think we come from different places and have a different set of values, and we aren’t likely to change each other’s minds debating here. At any rate, I’ll try to address your questions to the better of my ability.
    
    • Neither Punisher’s thugs, nor the people who assaulted me, are resorting to violence for survival reasons. Punisher’s thugs are just evil – always portrayed as reveling in cruelty, abuse, sadism – because the story demands evil punching bags for the Punisher to punch. As for the favela boys, they’re doing it for a lot of reasons which, if I had to oversimplify, boil down to a socioeconomic system that’s humiliating while also being inherently stacked against them. It’s not like they lack food or medicine (I was born low-class too, it’s still a step above from abject poverty; there are ways to make do). But every day they’re taught, with the latest and most effective of mind manipulation techniques, that they’re worthless because they don’t have brand clothing, cars, iPhones, or white-collar jobs – like those people over there right on the other side of the street. Couple that with a traditionally macho culture that says you can get respect through violence and material wealth, and you have our comandos. As I said, we the middle-class aren’t just walking bags of money; we’re the enemy. Just the other day, the bathroom stall of this very building had a graffiti like this: “When I get you out there, “playboys” (=rich boys), you’re all fucking dead.” (Incidentally, this culture of violence extends to gender issues, too. t’s no accident that my robbers have always been male. Crime culture around here trivializes rape and wife-beating, and trans women are downright executed for no reason.)
    
    • I disagree that no prison is humane. I mean, there’s a pretty friggin’ huge difference between the prisons of my country and, say, the Norwegian system (see the Breivik case). You may think that Norway prisons are inhumane regardless, just for being prisons; but, regardless of the adjectives one chooses to describe it, I have no doubt that crime rates would fall everywhere if the rest of the world would be as civilized as Norway and forgo notions of revenge and punishment, focusing instead on deterrence and rehabilitation (and, crucially, treating violent people better than violent people would treat us, that is, without violence.)
    
    • Why Moonshadow is wrong: I don’t ethically oppose murder just because it’s
    state power, or because vigilantes are not pure enough. I believe people
    should be fixed, or if they can’t be fixed, that they should be
    restricted for life.
    
    • A guy like Miles just don’t care about the damage he’s doing, yes. He internalized the values of a culture of sexism and misogyny, he has learned to dehumanize victims, and that’s directly implicated in his actions; I agree in all points. The point I disagree is whether he has a clear awareness of just how deep and long-standing is damage he’s causing, of the human *costs* of each “victory”. In other words, I believe he can be educated to see women as human; that the damage that misogynistic culture did to his brain can be reversed. I’m certainly no specialist in gender issues, but I know an anthropologist (Regina Facchini) who has worked in awareness-training of men steeped in violence, and from what she tells me, I don’t think this sort of feminist education is just a waste of time. The exact same rationale apply to the violent criminals I’ve met, mind you – they can be educated too – and I freely admit I was unfair in not thinking of that re: Punisher’s mafia, and that this unfairness likely came from unthinking gender/class/race identification.
Kid Chaos

Here’s my take: vigilante murder is still plain old murder. You can’t just go around killing people because you don’t like them. Maybe Moonshadow could switch to a vigilante Twitter campaign?
- impishacid
  
  “because you don’t like them”

Stephanie Gertsch

Clevin really is a decent guy. He thanks Allison for saving his life, and even though he’s struggling to come to terms with the fact his friend was assaulting people for years he doesn’t get resentful about it.

Is it the case that only Megagirl could have stopped his bleeding? Or is it just that someone was there and knew what to do? Either way, Moonshadow was extremely precise.

On an unrelated note, of course Moonshadow is cut out of the frame in the old picture.

Markus

Megagirl is definitely trained in first aid, and honestly it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s halfway to being a full on field medic by now. Without direct pressure and elevating the wound, he could easily have died of blood loss, even if their wasn’t any arterial bleeding.
Hibryd

Uh, if Alison wasn’t there, couldn’t Moonshadow have just slipped out undetected? She doesn’t seem big on killing innocents anyway. Alison’s the only reason he got slashed in the first place.
impishacid

Clevin sided with the fucking rapist, not believing the story of the girl he’d tried to drag off, assuming she and Alison were liars, until a massive trove of literally undeniable proof surfaced and public opinion was overwhelmingly against him. Without that deus ex machina of the emails going public, he likely never would’ve had that change of heart.

He’s an enabler at the very least. Friends like Clevin are a massive influence on rapists, encouraging and normalizing their behavoir.

(this isn’t saying he deserved to be stabbed, not at all. but he is NOT a good person, do NOT use him as a good example.)
- Dean
  
  How is Clevin a bad person? Aren’t we all more likely to trust someone that we know, or consider a friend, than a stranger? Clevin knew nothing about Miles’ history, and took him at his word when Miles claimed innocence. .
- Stephanie Gertsch
  
  I went back and read the party scene…the first time I read it I was pretty mad at Clevin too for not taking Allison’s side. But at this point in the story Clevin just seems like he’s trying to process that everything he knew about his friend was wrong. That’s very human.

Asher Freeman

Me, I’m kind of wondering what to think of Moonshadow’s actions myself. Should I treat it like DC does, where “killing is terrible no matter what”, or like Marvel does, where “killing is more-or-less-okay if you’re the Punisher”.

I mean, you have everything in the media saying that death is never the answer, and you just kind of accept that’s what every decent person thinks. Then one day you stumble upon a song by marines that REVELS in killing. It’s…jarring, to say the least.

ophidimancer

I think the SFP verse is a bit more nuanced that either of those takes, personally.
- Jerden
  
  I really don’t know how this story is going to deal with the question, and I suspect that it’s the sort of thing that the reader will have to decide. I was thinking that Moodshadow had gone too far by killing someone for attempted rape (not that I think that’s a minor thing, but more that that’s definitely not just something that utterly irredeemable monsters do), but then it turns out that that was just the latest in a long list of offenses, so we can trust that she’s definitely making sure that she’s only going after the guilty who are going to get away… It’s hard to condemn her, but I wouldn’t really want to live in a world where random people just decide who gets to live and die.
- Asher Freeman
  
  Yeah, you’re probably right. Which makes it all the more interesting to see how this is all going to wind up.

David Nuttall

So, as I said, this was hardly his first ride on the rodeo of sexual assault. A youth criminal record is sealed, but somehow, perhaps by talking to victims of sexual assault, Mary found out about this man and decided that being expelled from boarding school and a year or two in Juvenile Hall was not enough punishment. Hmm, maybe Mary was talking to victims of sexual assault from her own group therapy, where she is trying to recover from her own trauma. If Mary was a victim of rape herself, and felt that justice was not served in her own case, she might decide to bring justice for others by killing their attackers.

Emny

I was really hoping I wasn’t the only one who thought she must have suffered a personal trauma of her own. I know that is a tired trope, Elver, but it’s a trope for a reason. It’s true to some extent. She is going after these guys with such intensity that there must be a reason for it. She could have gone after any particular group. I mean, there are several class of lowlife, so why sexual assault perpetrators?

Pol Subanajouy

Losing the idea of someone can, at times, be just as painful as losing them I suppose.

motorfirebox

Dammit. Now I’m shifting back over to rooting for Moonshadow.

partgal

a murderer of rapist is still a murderer.
- Axel_Celosar
  
  But thousands of soldiers fighting and dying in a war is perfectly ok?
  - Mechwarrior
    
    When discussing something that’s morally wrong, holding up an unrelated event, regardless of whether it’s actually worse or not, does not actually somehow make the original point better.
    - Jerden
      
      Except we’re trying to put thing’s in context. It’s illegal to kill an innocent man on sight, unless of course you’re at war, in which case it’s against the rules to not kill him on sight.
  - partgal
    
    NO! God, no! War is a sick, horrible invention why’d you think it is ok?!
    - Axel_Celosar
      
      Because people time and again, and again, and again, and AGAIN think it’s perfectly ok to do.
- motorfirebox
  
  Sure. But I don’t accept the premise that all instances of a bad thing—murder, for instance—are equally bad regardless of circumstance.
  
  I think that there’s a pretty large hole in our system of law and order, into which many victims of sexual assault fall. I don’t think murdering rapists—even murdering rapists without accidentally murdering non-rapists, as Moonshadow seems to be doing—is a good answer to this. But I feel a lot less bad about it than I’d feel about someone who went around murdering at random.
  - partgal
    
    I can agree with how you think. I’d still feel kinda awkward rooting for someone who acts as a judge, jury, executioner, but i understand.
    - Shino
      
      Loosely related, but DAMN how much cooler it’d be if Moonshadow had full Judge uniform and a Lawgiver gun, and called rapists ‘creep’ before offing them.
- TheGonzoMD .
  
  A murderer of flamethrower wielding anti-mutant fanatics is still a murderer 😀
  - Markus
    
    So a person presenting an active, lethal threat to hundreds of people in the next hour is the same as one who presents a nonlethal threat to at most tens of people in the next year? Even without getting into how damaging it is to victims to treat sexual assault like its a sort of sexual or psychological murder, flamethrower guy has Miles beat on raw numbers alone.
  - partgal
    
    it’s not the same acting in self-defense. Besides that, i think the comic makes a great point in how they didn’t give Alison any shit about that. Perpetuating how most of society (college, government) just give her a pass on anything, because they are terrified of her.
    - Shino
      
      What self defense? Doctors were already dead, and Feral was always safe due to her healing factor. Noone was threatened anymore, it’d be just revenge if Allisson gone through and killed the dude.
      (also I nearly wrote ‘feeling factor’ which sounds like, uh, interesting superpower)
    - Liz
      
      We didn’t know Feral was alive until after she crawled out of the building. I think Allison thought she was either dead, or that flamethrower-man was killing her/everyone else in the room and she had to stop him. It’s also possible some of the docs got away with their lives (and severe burns) thanks to Allison’s intervention.
      
      It’s also possible that everyone was dead and Allison just wanted to kill someone. It fits with the message of this comic of, “Allison’s not a good guy, she’s just the best guy we’ve got.”
    - Some guy
      
      Most states have preventing arson of an inhabited building as an affirmative defense against prosecution for homicide. A sketchy guy fooling around with rags and a gas can is enough (legally speaking) for you to kill him.
      
      A guy with a flamethrower in a hospital is pretty much a ‘don’t even bother investigating the shooter’ scenario, and that’s for normal people, not Alison.
    - impishacid
      
      …”self-defense”? SHE IS LITERALLY INVINCIBLE. There was exactly zero threat to her from the flamethrower! Or any conventional weapon!
    - Unillustrated
      
      The standard for acceptable use of lethal force in most states amounts to (1) reasonable threat to self (2) reasonable threat to others (3) defense of property. I don’t actually think Megs was thinking rationally. That scene had rage kill written all over it. Nevertheless, her action (towards sparky, not the crowd) was justified. Even ignoring (3), a guy with a flamethrower in a hospital and the desire to use it is a clear and present danger to a huge number of people.
      
      Of course, that’s all from a civilian standpoint. The college girl who casually destroys private and public property because she’s running late to class and can’t be bothered to pay attention crossing the street and has a government status amounting to that of a free willed tac nuke fits into a whole other category.
  - Classtoise
    
    Except Moonshadow is killing people who never put her or those around her in danger. If a rapist went after Moonshadow and she killed him? Justified.
    
    Flamethrower Guy actively threatened Alison and those around her (even if SHE’S in no real danger).
  - Maka556
    
    Killing somebody who is armed with a lethal weapon and has just finished with murdering a bunch of people (those doctors and nurses are not going to regenerate) is much different from killing somebody who is not actively posing a threat to anybody.
    
    You might have an argument if Alison had snapped and massacred that crowd of protesters (and for sure, part of me wanted her to do that) but she didn’t.
    - Guru
      
      I don’t really agree with what Moonshadow’s doing? Killing people is wrong. But in her defense, a person who has committed sexual assault, particularly repeated sexual assault, IS a threat to those around them. If you’re okay with killing someone who just committed murder and is about to go kill someone else, the question is, “are you willing to kill someone who just committed rape and is about to go rape someone else?”
      
      The guys she’s killing here strike me as being at very high risk of being repeat offenders. The jocks in the beginning don’t seem to have learned any lessons, based on the snippet of conversation we got. The military guys she killed apparently consciously imprisoned a woman and raped her repeatedly with zero repercussions, and there’s no reason to believe they won’t do so again. The judge she killed was obviously going to continue to be a danger to his wife, and Miles here is apparently a repeat offender looking to keep offending. They’ve all been a threat to others, subtler than a jerk with a flamethrower…but frankly a lot more likely to survive a confrontation with non-biodynamic authorities and keep on hurting people.
      
      If you take it as a given that the justice system has not and will not protect people from these individuals, what alternative do you propose to Moonshadow’s behavior? Should she castrate ’em and let ’em live? Cripple them? She can’t just gather evidence and present it to the authorities, the law says they can’t be tried twice for the same crime once they’ve been found guilty, and anyway a staggering percentage of rape cases end without a guilty verdict.
      
      Moonshadow is trying to answer a very difficult question, one which I do not think anyone in history has ever answered with success. Frankly, “an invisible person who can uncover your deepest secrets with uncanny skill and will straight up horribly murder you if you do X” is probably about as effective a disincentive for a crime as I’ve heard of. I’m not sure, given her skills and power set, that I could come up with a better solution to the problem. She’s not exactly cut out for public awareness campaigns and political campaigning to change the system-she’s hard to notice, remember?
  - Unillustrated
    
    Well… Yeah. Even Megs said it was ridiculous that she got off Scott free. Though, from a utilitarian standpoint and assuming that her line about having literally saved the world wasn’t just hyperbole, letting Megs kill just about anyone she wants to is probably still a net positive for the human race. Assuming she doesn’t get to a comparable threat level herself of course, tough to do with just the basic brick power set.
Ecclectic Moose

Then just remember this. While the people she purposefully targets may be deserving, she also has no qualms with going after people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Clevin nearly died here because it was convenient.
- Jerden
  
  It was just a flesh wound. It’s not like you can die from a cut to the leg, right? Clevin was perfectly safe, surely?
  *Googles*
  You can! Why did nobody tell me! Damn, now I’m scared…

Non of the above

The envy in moonshadow’s eyes

Markus

I honestly don’t see it.
- Some Guy
  
  So you are susceptible to her powers then.

Luke Blackwood

Am I the only one who got severely confused with the the three cursors on the screen until I realized two were part of the comic?

Ryan .

Modern cursors don’t have shadows anymore. Everything is much more streamlined.

Mechwarrior

Moonshadow might be precise. Or she just might have gotten lucky. Either way, she really isn’t showing a great deal of concern for collateral damage. I strongly suspect that she’s got a hatred of men in general and she might start to broaden her target selection in the near future.

Insanenoodlyguy

I’m betting actually that this is exactly the sort of thing Moonshadow is precise with. She probably trained a lot in hitting the right spots quickly and while moving, as that’d be exactly the sort of thing it’d make sense for her to train in.
- Mechwarrior
  
  The problem is that due to individual variations in the human body, unless Moonshadow has superhuman levels of accuracy that until now have not been reported to the readers, there’s no way that she can possibly stab someone that deeply without putting their life at risk. Alison could have slipped when she tried to hold Clive’s wound shut. Or the ambulance could have been delayed. Or he might still get MRSA or another infection in the wound. The moment she stabbed him, she declared that no, she didn’t actually care about his life.

TheGonzoMD .

Oh, come on. Close the finder, I want to judge Alison’s desktop.

Donald Simmons

I like the doc! (Hope she doesn’t ultimately turn out to be evil.)

Shino

Tbh the idea behind comics like Judge Dredd or Punisher is that protags aren’t GOOD – they’re morally ambiguous, grey. And considering so far no thing anyone did was explicitly condemned – everyone’s solution to world’s bad stuff, from Pintsize’s to Feral’s was shown as valid, and even Cleaver got some backstory and character development?
I think it’s gonna be in the same ‘grey area’ as with Punisher, honestly.

GaryFarber

It seems to me that where we left Feral was in an immoral situation. Her desire to use her talent to help as much as possible is admirable, but she’s no different from everyone else who wants to help. We don’t allow doctors to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year; it would be inhuman; nobody gets forced to work like that; it’s illegal and it’s slavery. Anyone who collaborated in working with such a system would be acting completely immorally.

A SANE approach to Feral’s desire is to say “Love that you want to help. Here’s how we’ll do it: from 8 a.m. to 6. p.m. five nights a week, and every fourth week off entirely to do whatever.”

And have the federal Biodynamic people enforcing the equivalent of child labor laws on not inhumanly taking advantage of biodynamic powers. That Feral wants to have no awake time is an opinion she’s allowed to have, but can’t be an opinion the governemtn should find legal. And Feral should have that put in forward of her, and given a life again.

I’d like to see this play out in a future storyline where Alison figures this all out and takes steps to get a movement going to get Feral released from her non-stop-organ-removal-non-life.
- Shino
  
  She decided to do that, though. Like, it is her choice, and she’s not even getting paid for it. How it is different from doing voluntary work, just taking the concept to extreme? And everyone else has excuse of there being others like them that could do the same (e.g. other doctors), but superpowers are rare and relatively unique.
  Feral can’t say that, because there are no others. If she won’t do it, noone will.

Francisco

i’m treating it as the actions of a disillusioned child soldier (i.e. wrong and she should be punished but that should be tempered with a lot of psychological help).

Asher Freeman

It would certainly be more of a chance than she’s given her victims.

Perhaps that’s the crux of her story arc. She half-expects to be treated the same way as all the murderers and rapists she’s condemned, but instead, Alison makes sure she gets prosecution and treatment, as an attempt to show her that the system works.

scottfree

Setting aside the ethics of murdering rapists for a moment, how does Allison get her hair cut? If her hair’s not invulnerable, does it sometimes get burned off?

thomas0comer

I’m guessing it either isn’t invulnerable due to being nonliving cells, or that her powers (which I recall being theorized to basically be touch-range force fields) don’t affect it if she doesn’t want them to.
- Lucy
  
  Probably the former; if it were the latter, what would prevent her from getting a tattoo?
Sark

I seem to recall that Allisons doctor said something to the effect that she has partial unconscious control over her powers anyway, she used the example that Allison doesnt crush her bed everytime she rolls over in her sleep.

John

The interesting connection for me between this killing and the other rapists killing was that both Miles and the other guys got off scott free from their crimes thanks to the legal system. Which raises a question: if the legal system is still broken, even with biodynamic lawyers and superhumans for bondsmen, is it even possible to fix?

Sabriel

I don’t think superheroes make any difference. The problem isn’t that we lack the power to enforce the law; it’s that the people in charge don’t want to. It’s a social problem.

Poor Alison. I know she wishes she could solve this with brute force.
- Timothy O’Brien
  
  Well, she could. There’s a very simple way to deal with the problem of Moonshadow…

Elver

That’s a pretty tired trope. I hope that the authors decide to go with something a little more nuanced than that.

Guancyto

Ah, Moonshadow. I love her so much.

I’m not rooting for her, but I love her so much.

She’s been a child soldier for both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. Since both drug use and terrorism are fundamentally social problems, Moonshadow’s life has been dominated by conflicts whose gameplan can be summed up as follows:
1. Kill or imprison an enormous number of people with very little regard for collateral damage
2. ?????
3. Social change!

Her one-woman crusade against the social problem of sexual assault is just the logical extension of that kind of problem-solving.

RobNiner

Problem? Murder! Witnesses? More murder!

Ken Gagne

Is that a Triforce pendant?! 😀

S.I. Rosenbaum

that IS the question, isn’t it

Jack Lostthenames Warren

I’m glad Allison’s doctor is back! The relationship those two have is so great to watch.

Lostman

When I look at this page I’m reminded that people are like icebergs; you can only the top part, the rest is hidden by water. You may know someone since pre-school but do you really know that person ; have you just seen the top or do you see the underneath with all the ugliest that it hides.
Right Alison wondering if she ever knew Moonshadow the quiet girl standing off to the side; was she always this violent or did something happen to make this way…

mc

MOSTLY REEDEMED. *pumps fist in jubilation*

Insanenoodlyguy

Yeah, her aim is starting to blur. What happens to the next inconvenient witness? Sure, she can rationalize Allison was there, and I’m pretty sure that was the point, but the fact of the matter is that Clevin did not fit her criteria at all and Clevin still got sliced with a potentially lethal wound. That’s probably cleared up any doubt Allison might have had if she had any to begin with that Moonshadow needs to be stopped.

Garrulous

Clevin got sliced purely due to Allison. An invisible person could easily have gotten past Clevin normally. But do you really think Mary had much chance to best Allison? Mary had to create a distraction. Knowing Allison she knew Allison would stop to administer First Aid if she caused a potentially life threatening. If the injury wasn’t severe enough, Allison wouldn’t stop to take care of it, and if it was a fatal injury it would just fuel Allison’s pursuit. But an injury that would be fatal without proper first aid? Yeah that’ll stop a hero from pursuit if there is no other first aid around.

Basically it was a very solid tactical choice. When you are faced with overwhelming force you need to come up with an alternative way of dealing with it. Such as a distraction.
- Insanenoodlyguy
  
  No arguments about it’s tactical effectiveness. Strategically it is very sound. Morally somewhat less so.
- Unillustrated
  
  No, Clevin got sliced purely due to Mary. She probably wouldn’t have done it if Megs wasn’t there, but that doesn’t shift the responsibility. That action was more than sufficient to move her off the almost tolerable vigilante list. She may have carefully calculated the blow to insure Megs could save him, but that doesn’t make it much better than a straight up kill attempt. What if he was a hemophiliac? What if he was on a track scholarship? What if Megs hesitated or just made a mistake in her CPR?

PrintHead1436

This comic just gets deeper & deeper. Respect & loud applause to its creators!
P.S. The panel consisting of a list of folders is my favorite comic panel in a good while.

paksenarrion-reader

First line of the newspaper. “Covering the crime scene.” It’s about the concrete dust, isn’t it?

Ryan .

Moonshadow killed plenty of people who deserved to die.

The issue is that now people don’t quite agree with her.

Lostman

But is the question why is she doing this as important if she right or wrong

Batman or The Punisher didn’t become heroes because they wanted too. they do it as a means to deal with the tragic events that shake their life’s.
Arthur Frayn

“But put your knife to a good ol’ boy’s throat, and watch as due process comes roaring back into the conversation, just like that!” – Moonshadow, Issue 5, page 47

Taylor

Yes. Yes it is.

Some guy

You’re not actually allowed to kill innocents on sight in war, either.

You’ll usually get away with it, but it’s still against the ‘rules’.

Jerden

Depends how you define “innocent”. I’d class a soldier that has just been conscripted into an army as innocent, yet if I’d just joined the opposing army as a soldier, I’d be in serious trouble for refusing to shoot him on the battlefield.
You’re right that it’s against the rules of war to kill non-combatants, but apparently not if you’re a bomber pilot. Maybe “Collateral Damage” doesn’t count? As long as you pretend you were aiming for soldiers and factories?
I think the original point was that everyone has exceptions to what counts as “murder”. If we can accept war, then what else can we accept?
- That same guy
  
  If you’re going by ‘the rules’, then the ‘innocent’ conscript should ‘fight’ ineffectively and surrender at the first opportunity, and the opposing army is obligated to accept. It worked fairly well for the Iraqi soldiers during Desert Storm/Desert Shield.
  
  You’re technically a combatant if you are working in a factory that is intentionally being bombed. The employees may not be aware of it, or even willing participants, but war doesn’t happen as a best case scenario. Basically everyone stopped playing by the rules in World War 2, so that’s not really a great example to base either of our points off of. Collateral damage is a thing, but it’s not always the attacking force’s fault. You can’t hide a munitions depot inside an orphanage, and putting artillery on a hospital is a no-no. Most ‘civilized’ countries keep their military installations and militarily useful production facilities far enough from residential buildings that any reasonable attack shouldn’t cause meaningful collateral damage. This obviously isn’t always the case.
  
  “Murder” is a fairly narrow and specific thing that gets misapplied so often that it’s difficult to discuss it without stating which definition is being used first. “Deliberate and illegal homicide” is usually the best. Manslaughter covers non-deliberate/negligent but still illegal homicide pretty well.
  
  Basically what I’m getting at is that while I think you are right in spirit, I think you are wrong on the technicalities.

Some guy

She probably got her training from working as a volunteer firefighter. I doubt the Guardians would have bothered, as punching things was her main job.

impishacid

She easily could have just been going off of the circulating videos. I mean, there IS apparently footage of him at the party that night? If everything we saw was caught on tape, that’s plenty of reason to kill him (for Moonshadow, and in general). He’s probably far more of an imminent threat than any of the others she executed, at that.

Your guess that she personally knows the victims (and/or ‘met them in therapy’) is really stretching imo. We’ve only seen her go after high-profile rapists, who had a lot of media attention on them. And at the start of the chapter, she has to arrange a meeting with one victim/survivor to hear firsthand from her – hardly necessary if she’d already known her.

impishacid

If you think killing someone for justice for their crimes / to prevent them from repeating their crimes is legit, then what ‘problem’ is there? Or are you just pro-rapist?

Mechwarrior

The problem is that Moonie’s answer of going around stabbing rapists isn’t a long-term solution. It’s not even a short-term solution, since at the end of the day, even if she’s in the right with her actions, she’s still a single individual attempting to end a societal problem one knife-wound at a time. The truth of the matter is that she probably isn’t going to make a significant impact on rape-culture. And the people she’s targeting might decide in for a penny, in for a pound and start murdering their victims to prevent identification.

And there actually is a middle ground between not wanting rapists killed (especially without trial) to protect the public and being “pro-rapist.”
- impishacid
  
  He was obviously suggesting killing Moonshadow. ****IF**** you think “killing people who do bad things” is a legit course of action (obviously YOU don’t, and I’m not saying you’re wrong, but he’s suggesting it), then you have no reason to be criticizing Moonshadow or wanting her killed. Unless you see the people she’s targeting as innocents in a way that she’s not.
  
  THAT’S what I’m saying. Not that any criticism of Moonshadow at all is bad (i def don’t think she’s making a difference) – but anyone who thinks *killing Moonshadow* is a legit option definitely is.

Sabriel

No, I meant rape. Rape culture.

Ironically, trying to solve rape with brute force is what Moonshadow is trying to do.

Mystery girl

Oh no. I’m all caught up! That means I have to wait like a normal person! Noooooooo!!!!!

Luke Blackwood

My cursor still has a shadow on Windows 7….

Jeremy Douglass

Just saw this feature on Jezebel today, “What Happens When a Prominent Male Feminist Is Accused of Rape?” and it made me think of Miles (and of the first reactions that he had feminist cred).

http://jezebel.com/what-happens-when-a-prominent-male-feminist-is-accused-1683352727