Sidekick Girl

Saving the City: Sans-Spandex

Well, surely an unarmed person, not suspected of a violent crime, fleeing, would never be targeted with potentially lethal force.  That's just crazy talk.

You’d THINK that it would be kind of unrealistic to have someone show such callous disregard right after being reprimanded for showing callous disregard.  You might even think that perhaps we should infer that significant time has passed.  Maybe it has.  Or maybe this is a guy who goes right back to behaving badly because some people just don’t get it.

21 responses to “Interim XXII”

  • Kaian on July 13, 2016 at 7:06 AM

    From the ‘Apparently obligated to tell you to take a deep breath.’ part. I assume it is very recent. My question is his control. Can he not encase things in ice? For example only cover part of the body such as neck down? Then he has a pretty good non-lethal take down effect.

  • Sub on July 14, 2016 at 9:22 PM

    Well it’d have to be chest down because if you’re chest is encased in ice you won’t be able to breath in.

  • Chris on July 13, 2016 at 7:17 AM

    You do have a point. Kaian. Some of us have been saying, just ice the legs, but if he can only go all out, that might take more control than he has.

  • Black Rose on July 13, 2016 at 7:23 AM

    How did they artist achieve that graffiti look???

  • Jordan on July 13, 2016 at 9:16 AM

    *facepalm*

    Shiver, you JUST got reprimanded for doing shit like that! I mean, please go along with Agent Gray’s plan to find enough evidence to incriminate you, but damn! At least try to make it difficult…

  • Nightmask on July 13, 2016 at 9:19 AM

    He could easily create an icewall in front of her but obviously that won’t let him inflict suffering on a defenseless target and just as obviously people like this just don’t listen to warnings and go right back to the same bad behavior because he’s gotten away with it too often he’s sure that he’s teflon-coated and nothing will stick to him so why not just go back to business as usual?

  • Kogarashi on July 13, 2016 at 11:57 AM

    Not only that, but he’s one of those types who justifies bad behavior to himself as something the other person “was asking for.” “But she ran, officer! What was I supposed to do?”

    I’m not going to get political or anything, but there are way too many real-life people who justify bad behavior in reaction to supposed bad behavior on the other party’s part (or at least inviting behavior of some sort), and just won’t see (or admit) that there might have been a less lethal/violent/awful/whatever way to respond.

    “Aw no, don’t run. Bad idea.” Shiver needs to watch Minority Report. Everyone runs.

  • HakkyounoTenshi on July 13, 2016 at 3:13 PM

    There are lots of ways Shiver could minimize damage to the criminals he captures. He could make the Ice wall, he could just encase someone’s shoes in ice (at least if they were wearing decent ones. He could just put enough ice on the ground for the criminal to slip and fall. He just doesn’t because he’s a bully who likes hurting people and uses his job to justify it.

    The good news is that Shiver is playing right into giving Agent Grey enough rope to hang him. The bad news is that obviously people are going to get hurt while it happens.

  • Ragingagnostic on July 15, 2016 at 1:04 PM

    People HAVE gotten hurt and there is suspicion of at least one death. Val is on “damage control” but she has to start building a case against Shiver. So she’s forced to save potential victims from the injuries/death he’s prone to inflict AND gather evidence about his use of lethal force. She’s really caught in a bind here but I hope she’s able to save this girl. This particular perpetrator, at least, seems to have a real beef against superheroes. Maybe she’ll be willing to testify against him.

  • David Johnston on July 13, 2016 at 4:02 PM

    I’d like to know more about “Powerless”. That’s an interesting name for a super mercenary.

  • ReaderAt2046 on July 13, 2016 at 6:35 PM

    I’d assumed it was the name of some kind of anti-metahuman protest group.

  • Ned on July 13, 2016 at 7:08 PM

    The artist could be a nulifer. That would make for a nice scene of this icehole freaking out.

  • David Johnston on July 19, 2016 at 1:57 PM

    I don’t think Powerless is doing its own advertising. She’s probably a hired hand. And Powerless might not have sense of humour about its employees getting nearly killed.

  • Princess Puffy Pants on July 19, 2016 at 5:20 PM

    I think an awful lot of assumptions are being made here. So far super mercenary group, nullifier, and protest group have all been guessed at from one word painted on a wall. Now Powerless is an entity/organization who hires people to paint words on walls and will be upset over employees being harmed? And our only clue to this idea (which is very interesting, but a total shot in the dark) is that same word?

    It’s a lot more likely that this is one person painting a word on a wall. In the context of the story arc, “powerless” seems more like a commentary on how helpless ordinary people are in their dealings with heroes, especially with the “justice” on the other side of the overpass.

  • David Johnston on July 22, 2016 at 12:54 AM

    Not one word. 4 words. Powerless, Villain “4” Hire. That looks like an advertisement to me. So if she isn’t Powerless then Powerless probably hired her to do its advertising.

  • David Johnston on July 23, 2016 at 11:53 AM

    Although I suppose it’s possible that there’s a mercenary villain named “4”.

  • The Vicar on July 14, 2016 at 1:34 AM

    Well, dunno about this being unrealistic. Recidivism rates are high when punishment is effectively nonexistent.

    In the US and Canada, between one in three and one in four women will be rape victims, but the actual number of rapists is much lower, something like one in sixty — a man who commits rape and gets away with it (which is shockingly common) will usually go on to be a serial rapist.

    The financial institutions which were bailed out after crashing the market in 2008 by creating a bubble in the derivatives market have quietly been creating ANOTHER bubble in the derivatives market, apparently even bigger than the one which burst in 2008, because — from their perspective — the crash of 2008 was actually a financial success: they offloaded the risk onto a bunch of suckers who got bankrupted, and thanks to the taxpayers bailing them out they even got bonuses for the year they did it.

    This guy is clearly driven by ego. He hasn’t been punished at all yet, in a way which makes any difference to him.

  • The passing critic on July 15, 2016 at 7:21 AM

    *Facepalms* Goddangit Shiver!Could you at least target a non black person histime!?!Youre making it really hard for me to play devils advocate here! -_-; I guess this arch is going to be fairly predictable hereon…

  • Nightmask on July 15, 2016 at 8:55 AM

    Devil’s Advocate really isn’t applicable here, there’s nothing to really justify his actions as acceptable and the arguments to justify his actions just aren’t going to hold water when his actions are so clearly wrong. He’s announcing that he’s immediately going for his lethal suffocation attack when he could clearly stop her using non-lethal methods after he’s already been reprimanded for it.

    I am wondering how Sidekick Girl is going to stop him, will she take the ‘it was an accident’ route of somehow ‘accidentally’ messing up his aim or will she just outright stop him so we end up with him complaining about her not being a dutiful and submissive sidekick and perhaps icing her before icing the girl too after hunting her down.

  • JMWR on July 19, 2016 at 10:46 AM

    If he does ice Sidekick Girl he’ll have a problem. She can’t die. Not in any way that HE can kill her. When she gets thawed out she can give her full side and then he gets in trouble for kicking a fellow blue card. I don’t think he’s that stupid.

  • Nightmask on July 20, 2016 at 4:49 AM

    I think you’re crediting him with more intelligence than he rates JMWR, plus it’s less about being stupid and more about being too arrogant to think there’d be any consequences. Plenty of otherwise intelligent people have still gotten ruined by their arrogance making them go ‘well I’m too special for that to happen to me’. The leader of the KKK way back when they practically owned Indiana got away with a LOT, to the point he decided that he could get away with raping white women as well as black unfortunately for him and the KKK though that wasn’t the case and while the racists that were just fine with them abusing blacks weren’t going to stand for him doing the same to whites and it collapsed everything and ended the KKK’s rule over Indiana.

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