He might have simply handed over the wallet. He’s a peaceable guy. However, demanding Sophie’s laptop was a step too far.
Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, that thug was pulling out his gun when our hero clamped down on his hand and squeezed the trigger finger.
Still, nobody’s dead. Not even Max himself. For a change.
Hi-rez version on Patreon here so you can admire Max-The-Artist’s use of pretty fall colors.
More below!
Bobservations
Careful Handling
This is one of those pages where we had to balance our desire for brutal action with a certain amount of justification and humor. We didn’t want our hero to come off as sadistic, just pragmatic. He’s not giving up the laptop, and they’re not likely to let him leave with it, so a fight was going to happen. However, the thugs are mostly injured in response to their own actions, so they can always claim they fell on their own blades by accident. Won’t keep them out of trouble, but it’ll be less than if they admit to attacking someone who subsequently handed them their own asses.
For what it’s worth, Max-The-Artist actually tried dialing a smartphone using the corner of a laptop and it apparently works. I mean, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, where you’re trying to dial a phone without leaving fingerprints or DNA.
Not that you’ll have too much trouble these days, so long as you have a little time to prepare. I’ve noticed that even hardware store work gloves now come with the special conductive patches built into the index fingertips so you can use your smartphone without having to take your gloves off. You can also buy a special conductive liquid resin that can be soaked into the fingertip of any ordinary glove to make it smartphone-capable once dry. And I know that I myself never purchase a pair of pants without first checking that they have a pocket capable of packing my phablet.
It’s a new world. Entire industries spawned or changed by technology. Personally, I’ve been holding off on the new gloves, but only because when I do buy a pair, I want them delivered by Amazon Drone.
Took us a while to get this page finished, for which I apologize, but at least I was able to get some new blood effects done while Max-The-Artist was working. Naturally, I insisted on using a few of them on this page, because I have to have some fun. In a few cases the blood was simply thrown from a cup on a stick, but for the harder bursts and sprays I built this custom effects pistol; sort of a sized-down version of my larger air mortar. As you can probably tell, it was adapted from a Crosman CO2 pellet gun and retrofitted with some plumbing parts. Of necessity for camera work it has to be black, but I left the grips off in the hopes that it would be more clearly not a weapon. You never know, these days. There’s fancier versions of this concept available to hotshot Hollywood effects pros with bigger expense budgets than mine, but actually, this works pretty well and I’m pleased with it.
Loaded with stage blood and capped with black tissue, it gives a pretty good blood burst effect. As you can imagine, by the time a few dozen of these were filmed, the entire staging area looked like an abattoir. (PROTIP: When mixing your stage blood, be sure to include 1% non-sudsing dishwasher detergent for easier cleanup.)
Keyed, positioned, and subsequently tweaked and beautified by Max-The-Artist, it’s a small part of the overall page, but it was a lot of fun to do. And nobody called SWAT on me.
Yet.
— Superstitious Bob knocking wood like crazy
Well he just ruined their night………….
And all he wanted to do was get past too.
Particularly observant paramedic, shortly thereafter: “How did he manage to dial 911 with these injuries?”
A dragon (of the book wyrm variety) I wrote up as an ally to one (or more) of my RPG characters has to wear claw tips, both to protect the screen on her tablets and phones and to mimic the conductivity of human and meta-human fingers. ^_^
Remember playing with white glue (often called wood glue)? You could put a layer of that on your fingers. It dried to a clear layer, full heat+conductivity, and you don’t need to wear gloves in places where it would seem strange. Cheap too. One bottle was under $5 and provides hundred of applications. Not only that, when shaking hands, it feels like nothing more than dry skin. Smells a bit funny though…
Wow, a page! I hope you can get back to regular updates. Great page, as always.
“All injuries at scene appeared to be self-inflicted. By stupidity.”
— incident report
Ha ha! I hadn’t noticed the tiny yellow text when I wrote that! [I was reading it zoomed up]
The thug’s opening remarks to the 911 operator remind me of another call to 911 made in the second ‘American Pie’: “I seem to have super-glued myself to… ah… myself.”
Auch…
Still, self-inflicted by proxy would be my call. 🙂
to be fair, this is why anyone who owns a gun is told to keep it in the HOLSTER and not your waistband.
Idiots continue to be amusing to those watching on the sidelines.
If you’re not going to use a proper holster, at least learn to use the gorram safety.
I’d say something about keeping your booger hook off the bang switch, but when there’s somebody else around, who’s perfectly willing to pull the trigger….
Also, a perfect example of why you shouldn’t bring a gun, to a knife fight. 21 foot rule exists for a reason. Sure was fun watching it be enforced. 🙂
I have never understood why you see in films someone shoving an item with explosive material either down the back of or worse the front of your trousers? Unless its Darwinism at play and one can only hope they shoot their nuts off before they get round to contributing to the gene pool.
I’m pretty sure people do it in real life. At the very least dumb people do it because the saw it in a movie where the person doing it didn’t get their dick shoot off that way. It’s like the whole “shooting gansta style with the gun sideway” I don’t shot and even I know it’s shit shooting for a bunch of reasons, yet people do it.
Indeed. As has been said, they put the sights on top for a reason.
Only one type of pistol ever made sense to hold sideways: a full-auto pistol (the Shanxi Type 17 {.45 ACP} f-a variant broomhandle mauser is a good example). The extreme muzzle climb would normally be an issue, but users discovered that turning the weapon sideways turned a problem into a room-clearing advantage.
I noticed that today’s onomatopoeia weapons of choice were named “boot”, “shank”, and “pow”.
Look on the bright side, guys!
At least he didn’t dump you headfirst in a rubbish bin!
Frankly, they weren’t annoying enough to be worth the effort.
I like how the muzzle flash lights up the guy’s pants. That’s gonna leave a mark.
Yet.
I know this will sound stupid, but in all sincerity, this page was totally worth the wait. Max’s nonchalant handling of the situation just made my day. 😀
I hate to be a pain but a possible NSFW label on the vote link would have been nice. Some of us view your site in a library. Thanks.
Now this is where I don’t understand things in the world. A library considers blood, explosions, death, dismemberment, stabbings, having nuts shot off et all to be ok, but a comic character on a beach sunbathing just like you see ….well pretty much on any beach I guess to be NSFW? Lets face it, this comic from the outset has had graphic violence depicted and some previous cheesecake votes so you must have realised by now what you were looking at? Not trying to be trollish or rude, just making an observation.
The, errrrm, fact? that brutality or at least the gory outcome of it may be considered SFW but even mild (or even merely hinted) nudity may be seen as NSFW tells me something about human society at large as it is these days, and it’s something that feels wrong.
(I blame religions. Not just one but most of them.)
And a valid one. The truth is gore, death, and murder don’t raise parents’ up in arms, but the idea of a teen or tween catching even a glimpse of something like the sunbathing picture could (depending on where you are and library rules) get you banned for a while. Same with at work – I can read some comics in spare time at work, but I learned not to after a similar effect (no actual nudity, but a scantily clad scene in early Misfile comic made me not read any there anymore).
Looks like either that protection seal also works for the laptop itself or it was designed to be Very sturdy.
You should see my work laptop then, its as solid as a brick. Had it for years and with knocks, drops and whatnots its still ticking along with more coffee stains than scuff marks. Believe me, I know what would come off better if it was used like this.
Boot to the head!
and one for Jenny and the wimp!
Minor observation… anywhere ’round the county, I can imagine hearing the fellow on the ground, “YO dat ******-******* ***** shot me **** ***** ****** **** …” and several more paragraphs of swearing. There ain’t no way he’d ever finish his own sentence without cussing blue streaks, and no ******in’ way he’d ever take the blame for accosting a fellow, and having said fellow incapacitate him-and-his-two-friends. (Cussing is one of the ways people use to cover the loss of face. Lying is another, and he doesn’t even have to lie.)
And you are back with style! Love it!
I think I would have laughed more if the downed perp had said “I’ve fawww-len and I cain’t get up!”
Is it saying something strange that my first thought that it would be very difficult to work a touch screen on a cell phone with the edge of a computer. It doesn’t have the correct electrical properties. A better way would be to use the injured person’s own finger to dial the number.