SFP

Samara2Q13

Oh. My. Why is she so cold/cool/calculated… I don’t want to think Moonshadow is cool.

adamsbja

Is that something you should just be telling people? “Hi, I’m a vigilante serial killer. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”

Mujaki

Of course you can tell people that.
Right before you kill them, serially.
- Pat
  
  But is she… super cereal?
Timothy Craig

What are they going to do about it? She just emasculated them with little to no effort; she’s already proven how easily she can kill all four of them if she wants to. This is one of those “We both know I could kill you, but I’m not going to. Work for me instead” moments

Insanenoodlyguy

Whelp

kaberett

AHHHH <3 😀

I continue to absolutely adore this comic, wow.

Maarrrrrrr

Well shit

Noni

…
Where’s all dat suspense gone ?
You know, I think the most interesting here (apart from real life issues about private military companies, which are, in fact, way more important socially but I am not a specialist so I would be to afraid to say something false and this sentence is way too long) is that, since now, we didn’t have much clues that some people happened to have the same “biodynamic abilities” (sorry I forgot how they are called exactly I am a bad, bad fan).
We had one super-strong, one kitty-wolverine, one teleporter, one telepath, one shrinker, and so on.
But those men assumed that two different people in the same “tiny” (I may be wrong about locations) area could have the same abilities.
So it must happen. Or they are that insane.
The idea is that it would be very, very dull to have two superpersons sharing the same powers, I guess ? World-building vs story-telling issues or something ?
(Well, I’m not honest, the punch-vs-punch and laser-vs-laser is common in stories. And the metamorph-vs-metamorph is too awesome for tears not to be shed.)
(Sometimes I wish I had ten teleporters in the same fight so I could get the pop-corn and watch the chaos. Never saw that.)
And nooow, I cannot remember where I was going with all my babbling ! I like talking about superpowers, I guess.
(Same as before : baby-talk = french person trying hard to be clear in another language.)

ohhhshtbtch

I think it’s more likely that since Moonshadow was thought of as a superhero and the “invisible slasher” is more of a bad guy they didn’t immediately make the connection.

I would guess that if there are a good amount of biodynamics there would probably be some people with the same or similar powers, but the ones we’ve encountered so far are just in the public eye.
Sabriel

We still don’t know exactly what caused the super powers, except for that bit about the biodynamics all being in the womb during a series of weird thunderstorms. Did someone engineer them on purpose? Is this evolution? Is it magic?

I don’t think we’ve ever seen two people with the same power, but I wouldn’t rule it out. I also wouldn’t rule out two people who have powers that are technically different but functionally the same.
- llennhoff
  
  You may want to (re-)read the opening issue of the comic, where Patrick/Menace talks about who knew about biodynamically enhanced people when,
  - Sabriel
    
    Yeah, but he says “maybe they expected us, maybe they even created us.” That’s not an answer.
EgilGB

There are some references earlier that there are several people with the same powers. Issue 3, page 38 is the most obvious.

As you can see there, Alison refers to “a teleporter” as if there are more of them. I believe this indicates the existence of multiple persons with teleporting abilities. Additionally there is the whole business of “tiers” which would be almost meaningless if people did not share similar powers in different degrees.
- Shino
  
  Both Mega Girl and Cleaver have super strength, but they achieve it differently (I think it was in alt text of some page in Issue 2). I’d say both versions are valid, personally – noone would bother to name biodynamic mutations if each was compeltely unique, but also possibly there are plenty of ways to achieve same effect (news broadcast mentions suspicions that ‘invisible slasher’ can be telekinetic, for example). So possibly there are people who are fully invisible, people who can make themselves invisible, people who can make objects, inclouding themselves, invisible; people with predator-like perfect camouflage, and so on.
Ben

Having the same effect isn’t the same as having the same power. Perhaps one refracts light while the other absorbs and projects. Perhaps there’s a hero who can telekinetically manipulate the vision of those around them. As long as the ways in which the effect is caused is different, powers could be duplicated without being duplicated, and small variations are, in many ways, the essence of mutation. In fact, genetically, it would take greater variation to create the same effect in different ways than different effects.
Shino

Mega Girl AND Cleaver both have super strength and near-invincibility (just Cleaver also get the knifehand and monster things). So we DID see people with same abilities.
Plus, more subtle/meta(?) – Allison wouldn’t write her essay about use of gifts at the beginning of this issue, on invisibility of Hades versus invisibility of Gygas, (obviously inspired by her life as a superhero and people who chose to be supervillains) if different people weren’t born with same superpowers.
Nor would they be trained against specific cases if each biodynamic mutation was unique (what would be the point of being trained in combat against ‘teleporters’ if only teleporter in the world was a fucking fashion designer?).

Slowloader

Drat. I *do* live near Bethesda, but won’t be able to make it.

mroden26

god damn it SFP, the wait is so tormenting haha. I must know what happens next.

EgilGB

This story is just a steady stream of surprises.

Frances K R

I mean, it’s not exactly a surprise at this point, but I confess part of my brain is going “waaaauuugh” very sadly.

Moonshadow scares me. This is awesome.

Donald Simmons

She’s either about to kill them or hire them.

Markus

Hire and subsequently kill them is my guess.
- Jerden
  
  It’s more effective than doing it the other way round, and cheaper than not killing!
Pat

By the third panel, I was like “Okay, this is where she reveals that she just wanted to build up a sweat before she pops invisibility again and takes them all out for some horrible past war crime.”
- Ken Gagne
  
  “and takes them all out for some…”
  
  … ICE CREAM!
flame821

Yeh, you don’t confess to something like that and let people walk away, not unless you can be certain they won’t turn on you. In this case that either means she’s going to kill them or she’s going to give them a job with a paycheck they can’t refuse. Or maybe, just maybe, she planted explosives on them and the detonator is in the box.
Thomas Klein

It could be she doesn’t see what she’s doing as wrong. Or she doesn’t think anyone can stop her.
- Timothy Craig
  
  Both, I would guess.

moriati

What’s in the box? What’s in the box?

JulietteF

Freeze Ray ice cream!!! YAY

motorfirebox

Uh oh…

Sabriel

I was taken aback with her for being so cavalier about breaking a man’s ribs.

But I guess if you’re going to kill them all anyways it doesn’t matter.

Very harsh, though. I hope they did something very bad.

WHAT IS IN THE TRUNK?

Timothy Craig

I don’t think she was cavalier, more like “You’re PMC commandos and you want to bitch about broken ribs? Really?”, which is absolutely the right attitude – who the hell becomes a PMC and whines because they broke a couple bones? Especially ones that heal relatively quickly?

I don’t think she’ll kill them, though. Every other victim of hers she hasn’t bothered speaking to; why start now?

Rascal_Face

Uh oh guys I have a crush on a cartoon character now.

Jerden

That’s not the disturbing part.
The disturbing part is that you announce it right after she reveals she’s a serial killer. That’s… creepy.
- Rascal_Face
  
  Nah it’s okay she’s only murdering abusers and rapists…. dem shorts tho.
  - RobNiner
    
    It’s ok I had a crush on Sveta from Worm – the girl who sounded like a librarian but consisted mostly of homicidal metallic tentacles. <3

Tofusmith

Here’s a thought… what if she’s going to kill them, but wanted to run a test beforehand on how easy it would be?

Potatamoto

I love this comic, and I’m so glad there are comments so that I can say so now!

As to the matter at hand…didn’t Sonar mention that Moonshadow was not only easy to forget, but somehow difficult to pay attention to? If her power’s more in the line of a psychic blank than actual physical invisibility (or perhaps it’s both), that might explain why nobody thinks of her when they think about the ‘invisible slasher.’ Moonshadow just…wouldn’t occur to anybody.

For that matter, it might also explain why she’s so cavalier about telling these guys her little secret. For the record, I think it’s most likely that she’s planning to kill them, but perhaps she has some other mojo in mind…mojo that, once this face-to-face is over, will just keep slipping their minds no matter how important it is.

Nom De Plume

Hmm. Sort of like Imp from Worm. I like that theory.
- Katrika
  
  Mmhmm! It also seems more versatile than just invisibility. Obviously her power doesn’t work quite like Imp’s, as the team was able to remember there was someone they should be training with in the barn, but a perception warp gets around some of the standard issues of invisibility, like just tossing something sticky in the air to track them. If it’s perceptional invisibility rather than physical invisibility, you wouldn’t be able to notice the sticky tracker, even if you could remember someone invisible was close by.
Timothy Craig

That would be a cool twist on “she’s invisible, the end” honestly. It would also explain why she started doing so poorly when suddenly everyone was paying attention to her; as in, it’s not just cause MG left, but also because everyone is expecting the special operative to be in the front lines when that is the last place she wants to be. Like sticking a sniper in a tank.
- Potatamoto
  
  That’s actually a really good point, and one I hadn’t considered. Bad enough if the opposing team knows that the main opponent is going to an invisible, but otherwise normal, squishy human. But if you know she’s coming, and her powers are based on some kind of psychic ‘don’t notice me’ signal, that could potentially make things much worse.
  
  Another thing…assuming any of these speculations are accurate, I have a feeling that the whole ‘easy to forget, hard to pay attention to’ thing might just be an aspect of her powers that she doesn’t have conscious control of. Like when she’s actually invisible, there’s a compulsion to just not notice her at all (even when she’s carving you up with a knife). But the rest of the time she’s just leaking this little signal that makes her fade into the background.
  
  Imagine how that might screw up any teenager, let alone a teenage superhero. No matter what you do, people just find it hard to pay attention to you. Did anyone ever recognize her on the street? I think the comic above *might* sort of reinforce that…she’s invisible, she uses a knife, she was very high-profile and had been on television who knows how many times…but nobody knew who she was until she drew their attention to her identity.
  
  “Oh, the Guardians? Well, of *course* there’s Mega Girl. Then there’s Pintsize and Sonar. And…um…uhh…jeeze, it’s right on the tip of my tongue! Lemme check Wikipedia…”
  
  That also might help to explain why she’s got a chip on her shoulder where Mega Girl’s concerned.
  - Timothy Craig
    
    Did you read the Wheel of Time series? There were these assassins that carried this… medallion I think? I forget. Point is, the entire point of them was that unless you knew for a fact they were there, light bended around; you would just ignore them and move on with your day. They weren’t invisible, but they were “unnoticeable” – I wonder if that’s her, here.

Nom De Plume

Hmm. I can’t see a reason she would kill them now unless she simply ENJOYS psychological torture, which of course is a possibility. But then again, wouldn’t it be far more satisfying for someone that twisted to kill people during what appears to be a non-lethal exercise? They’d probably exhibit a more satisfying panic as their comrades started actually dying around them during what amounts to little more than training, unless she’s more the type that prefers the whole “slow realization that we’re going to die now” thing, but that doesn’t appear to fit with the whole “silent, implacable ghostly terror” thing she seems to have going on. And I mean if she only lured them there to ice them, she definitely could have done that already. She didn’t need to pop the bags, really. She could have just as easily butchered them, and she doesn’t seem the type to really toy with her prey considering her past murders have all been within the space of however long it took her to slit the throats of all of her targets. She didn’t even taunt her victims briefly a la the seemingly similarly motivated DCAU villain Phantasm. I think the hiring theory is more likely, or something along those lines, though honestly, relying on their silence shouldn’t be that hard, as they are discreet professionals and, if necessary, she could always threaten a company-wide invisible throat slitting if she finds out that word got out to anyone.

TL;DR: If she wanted them dead, they’d probably be dead already.

Timothy Craig

She didn’t deliver any lines at all to the others she killed, except saying the name of their victim before taking them out; the fact she’s conversing with them seems promising for their life expectancy.

Jeremy

Considering how physically durable Alison is, If Moonshadow is really going to go after her it seems like she’ll need some help, and a heck of a sharp knife…

John Smith

I rather doubt that Moonshadow is going after Mega-Girl [God, I love these code names :)].

Zac Caslar

Panel 3: “dat ass!”

Hzid

I think she’s going to give them real weapons as a final test…

Timothy Craig

All the guys thinking she’s gonna kill them are nuts. She’s yet to speak to any of her victims past reciting the name to that gang rape group (Side note: I enjoyed the fact that they showed her kill the guy who clearly actually strongly regretted what he did. I mean, I don’t feel bad for him or anything, but it’s important to show that rapists are just people and not “monsters”); why start now? No, she’s definitely hiring them…

…Then maybe killing them later.

Sabriel

It could be that she wants some recognition of what she’s been doing. Her power might rely on her being unnoticed, but that doesn’t mean she always likes it. She might crave some kind of reaction from somebody. (doesn’t have to be approval.)

The other scenarios were ones where she could have been caught if she’d talked. This time they’re in the middle of nowhere.

You’re right that they’re not her “type.” At least, so far.

Those kids got her started. The judge was related, because he tried their case. What’s next for her? More rapists and abusers? Probably, but I wouldn’t be shocked if she picked a different kind of bully. A racist, a homophobe, etc.

And jumping ahead to what happened on the next page….

*spoilers*

Rape is a very common war crime.

hellostarling

I was hoping someone else had noticed the enthusiastic ogling!