SFP

Oakreef

I’m confused

Kid Chaos

Hi, Confused! I’m Flabbergasted, nice to meet you!
Marc Whipple

Good! Confusion is a part of life. As are vengeance, fear and love. All facets must be embraced.

Potatamoto

*sigh* You know, I was all set to think better of Furnace here. I really thought when he started to flame up and shouted ‘Mega Girl’ in the last page he was going to try and leap to her rescue. Ah well. I guess I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

I think I’ve been looking at this wrong. Furnace is a misogynist asshole. Moonshadow’s a sociopathic moron. Great power might entail great responsibility, but in the real world nobody really cares about that. People are always going to be just people. And people kind of suck, by and large.

If I were Allison, I’d be mighty sick of people, mostly holier than thou douches, telling her that she somehow lacks the right to weigh in on moral and ethical issues because she ‘doesn’t really understand what it is to be HUMAN.’ Humanity isn’t defined by the capacity to be hurt or killed. A roach can be hurt or killed, and knows to shy away from circumstances that can do that. Humans are soft, hairless and slow. Physically speaking, there’s a hell of a lot of other creatures that are perfectly capable of killing/hurting/maiming us with very little effort.

The only real thing we’ve got on all the other teeming organisms on this planet (especially beetles. Beetles man. They’re everywhere. Be afraid. This is the planet of the beetles.) is that we can think…Homo SAPIENS…and Allison can think as well as anyone else. In fact, separated as she is from the atavistic fears of death and injury, I’d say she can think a bit more clearly than most.

Luvian Blue

To give furnace just a smidgen of credit (though I don’t know whether it’s deserved or not) Mary did pump him full of drugs, so we don’t know how impaired he is from that right now.

Besides that, I think your points are pretty spot on. Also people say Allison doesn’t understand fear and pain and the human condition, but she has family and friends. She understands loneliness and loss and feeling helpless. Just because she can’t be stabbed and can lift a car over her head doesn’t mean she’s heartless. It’s like people think that just because she’s pretty resistant to physical pain, she can’t understand any pain ever. Which is stupid.
Verdant_Samuel

We’ve also got our Terminator level endurance in most land environments, excellent healing ability (yaay scar tissue), and a host of other pretty badass adaptations. Like, thinking is really just the icing on the awesome that is humanity.
- Moddey Dhoo
  
  You forgot the most important one. Our ability to metabolize theobromine quickly. Primates can do it quickly enough not to die, and most other mammals can’t. The only other mammals I’m pretty sure can eat chocolate without dying from the theobromine are small rodents, and that’s just cause the caffeine will kill them first.
  - Mechwarrior
    
    It depends on the type of chocolate. White chocolate doesn’t have any theobromine in it, while milk chocolate has it at low enough levels that a dog or cat would have to eat roughly their own body weight to get a dangerous amount. It’s when you get dark chocolate, baking chocolate, or cocoa mulch that you really start getting high enough theobromine levels that it’s a risk to your pets.
    
    But milk chocolate and white chocolate are still bad for your pets- all that sugar will give them cavities.
    - pendraco
      
      white chocolate isn’t, technically. there’s no cocoa butter or powder in it at all, just milk and sugar.
  - KatherineMW
    
    Note to self: do not feed animals chocolate.
- Graeme Sutton
  
  Lockable knees yo. It’s what separates us from the apes.
Graeme Sutton

You ever get roused out of several hours of unconsciousness by getting thrown into a metal railing gut-first while pumped full of scopolamine? it does tend to impair your ability to think straight.
- Kid Chaos
  
  Not scopolamine, sodium thiopental! It’s a whole ‘nother thing!
  - Graeme Sutton
    
    Darn. Well in that case go ahead and ignore what I said I’m sure it’s no longer relevant.
Kid Chaos

Have I told you lately that I love your turn of phrase, Potatamoto? Because I do. 🙂
- Thomas McMullin
  
  It’s a VGcats reference.
Jane

Moonshadow isn’t a sociopath. She just put herself in danger to save someone, demonstrating her ability to act on her conscience (something a sociopath doesn’t have).
- Throwawayfukdisqus
  
  It’s a jump to say that’s acting on conscience. ‘Do not kill until guilt is certain’ might just be a rule Moonshadow forces herself to follow, perhaps as a disfigured form of pride.
  
  That said, I agree she’s not a sociopath. Realistically, sociopaths wouldn’t give a damn about rapists so long as they’re not personally affected, or at least not enough to dedicate their lives to their removal.
Travis Staggs

“I think I’ve been looking at this wrong. Furnace is a misogynist asshole. Moonshadow’s a sociopathic moron.”

And in saying this, you made me come to realize something: In addition to my thoughts that everyone is a psychic of some sort, you’ve expanded upon this in my mind. Maybe their powers are actually directly related to their innate mindstates. We have a girl who feels marginalized by the world who turns invisible. We have a man who can’t control his own anger that is a literal hothead. We have a girl who thinks her way is the best that can’t be stopped. We have a boy who was so much smaller than the problems he wanted to fix that can shrink, and we have a whole cast of people who think of themselves as monsters who have become monsters… so on and so forth.

So, which is the cause and which is the effect? Perhaps they’re actually intertwined fundamentally.

WizardJim

Furnace’s dickery… saves the day? My whole world is collapsing.

Skylar Green

The problem with a world in which any old shmo has powers is that… well, any old shmo has powers. And a lot of people are too dumb to have powers. I can think of, like, my entire family who shouldn’t have superpowers.

Pol Subanajouy

I for one WHOLLY admit I shouldn’t be trusted with superpowers. That’d be an awful idea! 😀
darius404

The problem with a world in which any old shmo has powers is that… well, any old shmo has powers.

A story that really plays to this concept is Empowered. It turns out when random jackasses get superpowers, they’re now just random jackasses with superpowers. The majority of super”heroes” you see in the comic are just as petty and horrible as normal people.
- Marc Whipple
  
  Shoutout to Empowered. It’s amazing.
Ian Osmond

Depends on the power. Someone recently suggested the superhero “Surge”, who can go into a room and instantly tell which outlets and lights are properly wired and up to code, and even which circuit breaker goes with which things.

There are more people I’d trust with that power than with a lot of other powers.
- Skylar Green
  
  Surge could only exist in her own world, though. She absorbs ambient electricity, something that even with her electric-storage gauntlets she occasionally needs to release or it will overload her very brain. Before that group of X-kids found her, Surge was using drugs to suppress her own natural abilities… and when they went to find her, one of the first things that happened was that someone used their powers on her without understanding the situation and because she had little capacity for her own rational reactions, she accidentally attacked one of them. Something like that would be hell for anyone to go through without the proper support.
  
  Problem in the SFP world is that “the proper support” is not a fully realized network. There’s a few shrinks and some researchers but the watchers and the watched are flying blind because everyone’s only had a few years to work out from scratch how any of this stuff happens.
  
  Sure, there are people who could be of use, be it matter-disintegration specialists who could help with the cleanup and removal of debris after a natural disaster, or empaths who could assist in psychiatric therapy… somebody like Superman would be a huge boon to underwater research since all you’d have to give him is a modified GoPro and he could easily put deep-sea exploration years ahead of schedule. There’s always alternative uses to powers, but you have to trust the people using them.

K25fF

Let’s see if we can mitigate the amount of murder going on, can we?

Ed D.

When Furnace leaps to the wrong conclusion, he really sticks to it. Impressive.

Pol Subanajouy

Like I saw saying in my post, I admire his dedication.

Rumble in the Tumble

Sodium thiapentol is a hell of a drug.

Bob

Sense. This makes none. Why not just let him die?
And I would think that he would assume that Mega Girl is the villain, at this point.

Nomac

That is what Mary is going for. She realizes that her whole interrogation setup flopped, so she’s going to Plan D, making Alison out to be responsible. She’s trying to avoid the blame to an extent.
Rod

He did… at first.

Greg E Downing

…okay. Now I’m fucking confused. All of that, and Furnace is the one she saves from a bomb that she herself strapped to him? Because he lost control and immediately tried to use his powers in spite of the warning? A) DID SHE NOT CONSIDER THAT and B) what in the world does she want from Furnace so badly that she’s willing to risk death? I mean, she’s already admitted that she’d kill Alison if given half a chance. But *Furnace* is who she saves?

Either there’s something not being said, or Mary was out and out lying about some things.

Rod

I think the theories were right, he sexually assaulted her in the past, and she’s hell-bent on exposing him to the world for it.
- Marc Whipple
  
  She said she wanted a confession, and implied that without it she wasn’t prepared to kill him.
  
  I could be misremembering, but if that’s the case, it wasn’t her he assaulted.She’s already killed people for sexually assualting others even when they were found not guilty in court just because she thought their accusers had the stronger case. If she knew Furnace had assaulted anybody, including but not limited to her, he’d already be an ex-mysoginst.
  - Greg E Downing
    
    I was going to argue that she killed a lot of people without bothering to be sure if they were rapists and abusers or not. But… then I remember the very first kill we were privy to. She didn’t just kill those boys. She had to hear it from the girl first. All the others, we didn’t have that, but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen off screen. So maybe her pathology requires her to hear it before she feels justified.
    
    And yet, she did try to kill Allison. Maybe she was just being coldly practical, and it managed to fall outside her code. Or maybe Mary knew she couldn’t kill her no matter what she did, and was just looking for a way to disable her the whole time.
    
    Ugh. Brains and emotions are complicated.
- masterofbones
  
  She said that she didnt know if he had raped anyone, which is what the serum was for. So no, she doesn’t know.
Mechwarrior

She can’t just murder him, because that risks making him a martyr. She
needs to prove to everyone else that he’s scum that deserves to die
first.

Lostman

Well Mary there are actually three idiots in this dam.

Adrienne Herbst

Oh god though, aren’t they all like, nineteen years old? My mind is going straight to WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN right now :/
- Tsapki
  
  I am thinking maybe early twenties actually. I know Allison is in college now and if not past her first year, I expect that being a superhero probably slowed down her education for a bit.

GreatWyrmGold

Unexpected and unusual on a couple levels. Five bucks says it’s an illusion.

Gus Snarp

Faking her own death?
- Mechwarrior
  
  Provoking him into attacking Alison, more likely. Nobody is really going to believe that he blasted her so hard that she was vaporized without leaving any residue behind.
- Gryphonic
  
  Keeping him from attacking the real Moonshadow. Possibly using Alison as an unwitting decoy, if I’m reading the angles right.
  But… she’s also blocking out the sight of the arcing electricty. Which means that if drugged-and-disoriented Furnace goes after ‘Moonshadow’, he’s going to land right in it and die anyway.
Kid Chaos

You’re on!

∫Clémens×ds

Wait, why did Mary appear discontent of the fact that Furnace was going to explode? Wasn’t that the idea? The plan? Hello?
Also why is she bleeding? And not actively electrocuted, for that matter?

I am so confused by this sequence of events.

KatherineMW

So Moonshadow genuinely won’t kill anyone who’s not guilty of rape or abuse. Even at the possible cost of her own life. The folk who said ‘Well, she’ll jus decide Furnace is guilty of something, regardless’ were wrong.

It’s a good narrative choice, because it forces us – and Allison – to engage with Moonshadow’s actual position, not a strawman version of it.

Walter

Uh….she cut Alison’s throat a few strips ago.

Its almost impossible to strawman Mary’s position. She kills people she thinks are bad. How would you make “Might Makes Right” sound worse than it is?
- KatherineMW
  
  I think she was pretty sure that wouldn’t work; we all know Allison is invulnerable.
  
  It’s very easy to strawman Mary’s position. So far, she has only killed people on strong evidence of guilt of actual, serious crimes against women. If she started killing people on no evidence based just on her own assumptions, or started killing people who were only tangentially connected to those crimes, that would make her more obviously wrong and remove the audience’s need to think about her actual views and methods (which are approximately the same as the Punisher’s, just with reference to a specific subset of crimes that are rarely prosecuted or punished).
  
  I’m not saying she’s right. I don’t think she’s right. But I like that the comic is refraining from artificially weakening her position.
  - Marc Whipple
    
    [S]he has only killed people on strong evidence of guilt of actual, serious crimes against women.
    
    We don’t know that. All we know is that she’s killed a lot more people than anyone thinks she has, assuming she’s telling the truth. We have no idea what the circumstances of those killings were.
Some guy

You’re jumping to conclusions. Mary could have tossed the bomb away because he activated it while near her.

Though honestly, I would prefer it if you were right at this point.
- KatherineMW
  
  She could have, but running away from him would be less dangerous than running towards him and cutting the bomb off. Cutting his throat would also have preventing him from using his powers and thus prevented the bomb from igniting.
  
  Her actions only make sense if she deliberately wanted to keep Furnace alive now. That could be a point of principle, as I initially thought; or it could be that she wants to frame Allison in some way; or she wants to try to use him as a weapon against Allison.

zarawesome

I don’t understand the penultimate panel? She tossed the bomb over the edge and now she’s bleeding and she’s also on the water somehow?

Iarei

That’s Alison who was and is in the electric kiddie pool. Remember you’re dealing with an illusionist. Your object permanence has to survive sans visual continuity.
Sergio Le Roux

If she’s real, she’s bleeding from the shrapnel. No idea how she got down there in the water though, so she might be an illusion (the real one may be bleeding anyway).
Rod

Ah! You just made it click. Mary is fine. But she’s projecting the illusion of being hurt, because she STILL wants to get that confession.
Margot

I think that’s an illusion. Not sure what she’s trying to achieve with it, though…
Gryphonic

If the explosion had really knocked her off the platform, it would have been back past Furnace and not forward. I’m confident that’s another illusions, and whether he goes toward it to attack or save his ‘rescuer’, he’s going to get electrocuted. See, that water all around ‘Moonshadow’ looks perfectly safe, doesn’t it?

William Lancaster

Maybe I’m missing something, but why did Moonshadow just save him?

Nomac

Because she is trying to make Alison out to be the one who kidnapped him.
- motorfirebox
  
  No, because she hasn’t gotten a confession out of him. She’s doing this, at least in her own mind, for the sake of justice. Killing him without being positive he’s guilty doesn’t meet that criteria. It’s like how when a guy on death row has a heart attack, the prison medical staff still tries to save him.

Ian Osmond

…. the hell? I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

Bakkonator

That guy definitely has some anger issues. His immediate response to everything is hightened anger with a propensity for violence.

Some guy

I’m pretty sure that waking up after being tazed, kidnapped, and drugged in a strange place with unexplained violence going on around you is plenty of reason to be angry.
Mechwarrior

When all you have is a flamethrower, every problem looks flammable.
- Marc Whipple
  
  The meta-problem is, every problem is flammable.
3-I

Seriously, this is EXACTLY what we were all saying weeks ago when we were saying Furnace is a shitty superhero. This is ALL HE DOES.

Joshua Taylor

Okay now I’m all kinds of confused.

Pol Subanajouy

Mary had to cut off Furnace’s bomb, and she came out of invisibility stealth to do so. But then she followed up by placing an illusion on Alison so she looks like Mary as a bit of misdirection. I’m betting it’s going to lead to explosive results. Is that what you are confused on?
- Mechwarrior
  
  That’s my take on it.
  
  Coming out of stealth was deliberate on her part, since we already know that she’s perfectly capable of getting stabby without doing so.
- Nightsbridge
  
  I’m pretty sure that’s not what happened. We can see from Allison’s perspective, next to the fallen cable, and can look up to see Furnace. So we see that Furnace is looking away from Allison and toward something else with intense interest. This makes me think that Furnace is looking at the actual flesh-and-blood Mary right now.

Daniel Vogelsong

To recap, Mary stops the dude she was trying to make kill himself, from killing himself. Not that I’m sold on that actually happening, because we saw in a previous arc that he can flare to the point of MELTING BULLETS IN FLIGHT. But (ir?)regardless, Mary takes off the bomb vest and chucks it away… but she presumably is the only person in this room that could be killed by it. She wants him to die, hence the bomb vest, but now… I have no idea. It didn’t cause that much damage in the “Explosion relocation”, but it certainly wasn’t a dam-buster.
In other news, Mary heard my critique and made her illusion no longer have kneepads.

Nomac

She wants him to get angry and threaten to destroy the dam, forcing Alison to kill him (thats my theory)
Pol Subanajouy

There’s an off chance that Mary wanted to draw a confession from him first and if he died now the timing would have been all of. Again, off chance. Mary and Chris are nothing if not erratic people.
Lostman

She want to kill him but doesn’t want to die herself…
Walter

If I have to guess, Mary is trying to show Alison that Furnace will kill her without a second thought (as opposed to her, who didn’t kill Furnace when he was alive) using an illusion of her.

Furnace will blast the illusion. Alison will condemn him, but not do anything more forceful. Mary will have her proof that Alison only cares about murder when ladies are doing it. She’ll cut Furnace’s throat and peace out.
Jubal DiGriz

I don’t think Mary was thinking this through very. Allison has talked about how her training gave her all these preconditioned responses (“lock down the teleporter”). Perhaps Mary was reflexively “saving the hostage”.

It’s pretty clear Mary is fine with killing relative strangers. Perhaps all this staging was some effect of her building up the nerve to kill someone she knows?
Kiry

It was never *real* explosives, just shrapnel with tiny charges enough to propel them into a person. She didn’t want to actually explode the dam, but wanted to protect herself and scare him.

rpenner

“Explaining why someone is an idiot is a free action, isn’t it? No? Then I best get rid of this shrapnel-filled bomb before it explodes. I roll a 17, hows that? Good. What? OK, Saving versus death…. um, uh, oh.”

Liz

I think I speak for all of us when I say, “She’s… saving him? Whaaaaa?????”

Gus Snarp

Well, either she never intended to kill him and it was all about getting Alison on her side? Getting rid of Alison? A cry for help? I don’t really like any of those, or she thinks (or knows) that she can’t phase herself out of harm from a blazing inferno + explosion and is therefore saving herself? No, I don’t like that either. Let’s go with, she’s saving all the innocent people who ill be killed in the flooding if the explosion takes out the dam.
- Graeme Sutton
  
  Except that the C4 exploded anyway. There’s nowhere near enough to take out the dam there, even if it was atttached to something structural, which it’s not.
Tsapki

He’s no good to her dead. Easiest explanation I can put out there. That pack on him only had some shrapnel and wouldn’t have caused any damage to the damn. Furnace certainly could if he went full on crazy and busted the damn but that is about it.
- Kittenbot Doomypants
  
  Except it obviously did damage to her. Looks like she’s holding her throat. Shrapnel slit her throat? Ironic, much?
Geary

He can’t really make a confession if he’s dead, now can he?
Francisco

My impression is that Mary wanted him to know that it was her who caught him and she wanted him to know how powerless he was to stop her. When he didn’t stick to the script, Mary panicked (especially as it meant that the evidence she collected would be destroyed).

Gus Snarp

New nemesis established.

Dean

It’s OK, everyone, the white guy is about to solve everyone’s problems!

Lostman

Furnace explodes, everyone fries!

Kevin B.

Can Furnace die already? Being a tragic figure messed up by your upbringing is one thing, but being this dumb shouldn’t be allowed.

Iarei

Mary, oh Mary, so quite contrary,

Why does your vest explode?
These blasting caps and det charge shells,
And angry man all in our room,

When you see contrary Mary,
Tear it off, refuse to terry.
When all his crimes you know,

Why exonerate him, Mary,

Standing on death row.

Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary.

William

My guess…Furnace is meant to BE the bomb. Get him riled up enough…

Markus

Now we get to enjoy the fun possibility that Mary’s faking her injuries for some later ploy

Pol Subanajouy

I have to admit, I’m impressed at Furnace’s commitment to being angry at the wrong person. First angry at Al who is trying to save him, then angry at Mary who actually kidnapped him but the ~wrong~ Mary. That’s dedication, folks. Haha. Still, I have to begrudgingly admit that making Al look like Mary is a smart tactical move on Moonshadow’s part during this pivotal moment.

For me, the jury is still out if Mary just pulled that last minute save because she was still unsure if Chris was guilty of rape, or if she was just worried about the explosion hurting her.

lizasweetling

I don’t think that’s what’s going on. we’ll have to wait and see how this works out.
Kiry

I don’t think she made Al look like her?

Philip Bourque

Knowing he had a… reactionary personality, she straps bombs to him designed to be set up when he lights up and he’s the idiot?

Tsapki

“I’m an optimist.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“You’re both wrong. You’re dead.”

Kensey

Mary never got the confession she wanted out of Furnace, so she’s forced to NOT let him die, otherwise her goal ultimately fails. Though, shrapnel to the torso is a bit of a departure from her goal as well.
Panel #7: Allison disrupts the current from the power cable to the water? it looks like Mary is kneeling in the water in panel 8…or is that just dissolution of her projection?
last panel: are things about to get…steamy?
also, sharp knife is sharp! (and non-conductive, having severed a rather large power conduit)

Mechwarrior

I’m pretty sure that “Mary” in the last panel is actually Alison.
- Marc Whipple
  
  It has to be. If Mary were in the water with the cable still live, under the Rules Of Cartoon Electrocution, she’d be dead.

Caliban

The explosives were a threat to keep Furnace from using his powers. “If you use your anomaly they will kill you!” Unfortunately, Moonshadow was close enough that they would also kill HER.

When Furnace started using his powers anyway, she tried to get rid of the bomb before it could kill them both. Not sure why she didn’t just run – maybe she thought it would trigger an even larger explosion if it killed/ injured Furnace?

Either way, she ended up being injured by her own bomb. Better injured than dead, although now that Furnace is about to lose his temper she may end up both injured and dead. Illusions don’t help much against large explosions or firestorms.

Liz Mallory

Aaaaah! Holy crap!

chaosvii

S-s-stupid hero reflexes!

Rod

What the…?! Um, I guess she really, really, REALLY wanted to get Furnace to confess first? (In which case, her vendetta probably is personal.)

Walter

Well, she didn’t kill him before he woke up. Very clearly her goal isn’t simply his death. Don’t need cameras and truth serum for that.
Nightsbridge

Or she really really REALLY think’s she’s the hero of the story.
- Tsapki
  
  Everyone believes they are the hero of their own story. People who admit to and openly embrace that they are in some way shape or form, bad, wrong or evil are quite rare. Heck, almost every dictator throughout history basically believes they are saving the people they oppress from themselves.
motorfirebox

I don’t think it’s necessarily personal. She’s spent all her adult life and much of her teenage years risking her life for other people. I think she’s simply got a set of principles. In her mind, she’s aiding the law; killing him without really solid evidence that he’s guilty is just murder.

Monkeymadness

Theory!

Mary is illusionizing (is it a word? Haha I don’t care) her injury. She’s just created a scenario where she’s saved Furnace from himself, and when Furnace (inevitably) responds by throwing a hissy fit, Alison will be on the scene to see (and hopefully react). This’d give Alison a visceral example of the extent of Furnace’s douchebaggery and Mary’s essential heroism/”heroism”, and suddenly Mary’s got Mega Girl on her side.

Alternately, and much more grim: Mary was Furnace’s victim, and she wants to hear him confess above all else. In which case . . . fuuuuuck.

spriteless

You can block a lot of heat from fire if you can block the whole light spectrum. Less so heat from convection, like boiling water.

Verdant_Samuel

I’m gonna assume everything on screen is an illusion until Mary exits stage left.

motorfirebox

Maybe YOU’RE the illusion! http://oglaf.com/illusionist/

(That one is SFW but most of the rest aren’t at all)
- Verdant_Samuel
  
  Holy crap that’s fantastic xD
Gryphonic

And even afterward, really.

S.I. Rosenbaum

guys you know I love you but I hvan’t been able to follow the action for pages now

motorfirebox

Mary had Furnace tied up and drugged, with a vest of explosives strapped to him. The explosives looked big, but were actually very small, just big enough to kill Furnace himself if he set them off. Mary planned to get Furnace to confess to committing some kind of sex crime, most likely raping his former girlfriend, and then kill him.

Alison shows up, grabs Furnace, and runs off with him. While verbally sparring with her, Mary cuts a power line and drops it into the water Alison is standing in. Before it lands, Alison tosses Furnace to safety. Furnace wakes up.

On seeing Alison, and despite Mary’s warning, Furnace flames on, setting the charges on his vest to blow. Mary cuts the straps on his vest and jumps over the railing with the bomb, so that Furnace won’t die (he hasn’t confessed yet). Before she lands, Alison manages to pick up the electrical line so that Mary doesn’t fry. Mary throws the bomb, but it does off only a short distance from her. The small charges appear to have done enough damage to her that Mary is now bleeding heavily, though that could be an illusion.

And then you posted, and then I posted, and now here we are! And now I’m writing this! And now I’m writing this! And now I’m w

Jeremy

Okay, Furnace is not a likeable person, but to offer a bit of balance, he was knocked unconscious and drugged, and just woke up after being slammed into a handrail. So it wouldn’t be unusual for him to be disoriented and confused. Of course, blowing things up when you’re disoriented is not a good idea…

For Mary, earlier it sounded like she wasn’t sure whether Furnace is guilty – so maybe she is staying true to her principles, and not killing someone who she isn’t sure is guilty. Even if she didn’t want the explosives to go off, she could have just stabbed him if she wanted him dead.

Of course, this kind of situation, where the violence is spiraling out of control, is an illustration of why Mary’s approach is so problematic.

KatherineMW

For Mary, earlier it sounded like she wasn’t sure whether Furnace is guilty – so maybe she is staying true to her principles, and not killing someone who she isn’t sure is guilty.

That’s my interpretation.

Reader

ok So I really need some clarification for this page. Which person is Furnace actually talking to on the first panel? Allison like everyone is assuming or Megagirl? is this the same person he’s talking too in the last panel? How the heck did Moonshadow end up off the rail, in the electrified water, and bleeding? I sort of missed the moment where she went from throwing the bomb away and bleeding down below. The transitions here are just extremely confusing and unhelpful to portray what’s going on.

motorfirebox

Mary grabbed the bomb and jumped over the railing into the water. Alison seems to have grabbed the power line, picking it up out of the water before Mary landed in it. Mary threw the bomb, but it only got a few feet before it went off, damaging her hand badly enough for her to be bleeding heavily.

Ian Osmond

I guess what I want to say to Mary is, “If you don’t want someone to blow up, you should consider not strapping explosives to them in the first place.”

Syncline

I feel fairly certain that Mary just had a moment of old superhero
reflexes kick in and screw up her plan. It’s totally contrary to her new
personality in the midst of the crazy, because:
1) anyone that ‘new’ Mary can imagine she wants to strap explosives onto is
2) someone who can keep the bomb vest after they activate it.

Of course, the plan had a glaring issue. What plan was Mary following here, exactly?
The
one where crazy people expect other crazy people to act as if they are
sane and have a sense of self-preservation? Furnace has been heading
towards a horrible end for awhile. This isn’t avoiding his awful and
inevitable end, it’s just dragging out the show and adding yourself to
the final body count. On the bright side, it solves the crazy Mary
issue.
- Jared Rosenberg
  
  I think its likely that Megagirl is going to save Moonshadow. I mean after all Moonshadow hasn’t seen the error of her ways yet. They always have to do that before they die. (trope)
  - deebles
    
    I’m not sure if that’s actually Moonshadow bleeding in the final frame, or Megagirl-made-to-look-like-Moonshadow. Illusions can be confusing 😛

Perlite

Mary’s got a bit of a skewed moral compass here. She’s all geared up to kill this guy at a drop of a hat (or a cable), but NOT WITHOUT PROOF! I’m not sure if Mary is faking her injury, her hand probably did get caught in the blast. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t actually making the damage seem less extensive than it actually was.
“You’re rigged to explode!”
“Huh, what? Did some say get your flame on?” *WHOOSH*
“Argh, what went wrong? This plan was fool-proof!”
Well, SOMEONE just had to kidnap a bigger fool.

Sage Catharsis

Nah, she’s projecting over Alison so FireAsshole shoots at our heroine. Sorry I’m not the best at remember non-Nick names.
- Jake
  
  No, I don’t think that’s it, she clearly has a real knife, and as far as I know, Alison doesn’t have one
motorfirebox

I don’t think that’s a skewed moral compass. Our own criminal justice system’s moral compass could use a little of that kind of skew.

Insanenoodlyguy

Oh my god. Furnace just possibly turned this around… by being a complete idiot!

Anna

I swear, it’s going to turn out that there were never any explosives strapped to Furnace and that it was all an illusion. Even that beeping is probably some little buzzer Mary is pressing. Nothing in this freaking dam is legitimate.

masterofbones

HAHAHAHAHAHA! This is fantastic Moonshadow. I love this. Brilliant start to finish.

Kittenbot Doomypants

Did anyone else almost break their keyboard slamming their head into it? Dammit Furnace. Though, Mary’s response was interesting. Though, I suppose him dying BEFORE he confesses is no good. And Mary’s act of heroism looks as though it went all vampire and bit her in the neck. Potentially jugular? Ok, let’s be honest, it might have sliced her throat. Maybe she’s got some shrapnel in her chest, maybe it’s an illusion. Dammit Mary, stop screwing with everyone, so they actually know if you’re hurt!

Zmm

Wait..
So is Furance now blaming Moon?
or is he now. Pissed at Allison assuming that she was doing this to him and that moon just saved his life and got hurt doing it–making him even more pissed at allison?

Its abit hard to tell..
I’m assuming he is now recognizing Moonshadow as the enemy though

but man I am not fond of his jump to the burning attitude. cocktail of drugs and ptsd will do that though…

Hum I wonder if this will end up with Allison accidently killing furnace to save moon, or moon to save furnace.
or just everyone dies except her.

Oren Leifer

Who says that both of those people (the explosives-setter and the explosives-remover) were the same person. Which of them was Mary? Because Mary doing what she just did doesn’t make much sense, if she’s the one who rigged him up with the explosives in the first place, and the characters generally seem to have enough common sense to not set up plans they don’t intend to follow through on.

Unless the woman who just pulled the bomb off him isn’t Mary. We haven’t seen any true shapeshifters yet… (?)

motorfirebox

Mary pulled the explosives off him because she hadn’t gotten a confession out of him yet. To Mary, killing him once she has proof is justice; killing him without proof is just murder. She doesn’t view herself as a murderer, she views herself as a vigilante taking care of criminals the law won’t punish.

Ross Van Loan

(Commentator whisper) Oh, a reverse deathtrap fumble! You see these with overly complicated plays like this, Bob! Let’s see how it plays out.

Stephanie Gertsch

Looks like Allison might be moving the live wires away from the water while the other two aren’t paying attention. That explains why Mary didn’t get electrocuted when she jumped into the water.

AlpineBob

Mary is thinking fast here. She has no chance against Alison, but Furnace, with newly enhanced powers, might. So she goes against her grain to get the vest off him, then fakes being injured in the explosion. Or maybe just the severity. Or maybe she miscalculated and actually was that badly injured. Hard to tell with her. Meanwhile Furnace takes on Alison and, if not incapacitated, Mary watches for a chance to exploit the battle to learn what she wants…