He might not, in retrospect, it was obvious-ish for us, because we know Lucas is a super. Ben doesn’t know that, and hand reaching out like that is a somewhat normal reaction to something you’d like to stop from happening. Unless he was one of the cops that D-Pad talked to when fighting some, supervillain (Demolition Duke? Not sure), and Lucas didn’t pay enough attention to them, but Ben now adds two and two and recognises his voice. (or was just told about that by the other cops, possibly with D-Pad’s description, or saw a photo – photos especially might… Read more »
That Analog’s and D-Pad’s costumes really don’t hide their identities all that well with their hair being visible and their masks only covering a small portion of their faces.
no, they appear where he wants em to but he does apparantly have to make a gesture.
This gesture tho is what a lot of people would do in a response to “wanting to save the girl”. Even tho they’re not able to physically reach her, they will want to try and reach her by holding out their hand.
Now now, we don’t know what a 10-50 means. Could be calling in the accident.
GeorgeV
3 months ago
Internet says 10-50 is accident reporting, so thus far Ben seems to be simply doing his job.
Of course, there’s always next page to add information about the illegal vigilante nearby, and/or have painful conversations about secrets and keepings thereof.
Unless I’m mistaken (I live in Canada, and I haven’t been working in software for emergency dispatch, records management, digital mapping, and so on…for a few decades now), ten codes have some rough ‘standards’, but any individual LE agency (be it a far out sheriff’s office to larger city PDs) could come up with their own version. I worked with federal police across the country and several smaller police within different parts of Canada and I saw a range of different code schemes. The real basic ones were usually there (I’m gonna say 15-20 overall codes), but the rest were… Read more »
All true enough, but when the situation in the comic matches up this well with (what appears to be) the most common meaning of that code, it seems safe to assume it does indeed mean the same thing in this case. It could be something different for the various reasons you mention, but that’d be a very weird coincidence.
Also note Ben already had his phone out before noticing Lucas, presumably to report the accident.
US DoJ and CALEA, here in the US, push for all departments to drop 10-codes (and all other code schemes) because of just this issue. Confusion when working across departments/boundaries causes inefficiencies (and sometimes dangers) in the responses. The current “standard” is to use plain language. No code #s or even code words. If it was a traffic accident, you’re supposed to say “traffic accident.” It takes hardly any additional time to say, and modern comms systems are generally clear enough where radio reception issues are no longer a valid driver for using brevity codes. Then your inter-organizational-team aren’t having… Read more »
Darkstand
3 months ago
My Guess:
A) Ben is going to keep the secret
B) Lucas is going to freak and run before this becomes clear
On the one hand, I want Lucas to have some peace and a life as someone rooting for the good guys. On the other hand, if the GM rolled the ‘Secret Identity’ flaw, it’s a good time to put the team in trouble – either by the policeman or by him becoming a dependent NPC that could be captured, hurt or killed. (My Champions days are showing…)
Ben just saw a superhero power save a child. This is his opportunity to make his position on superheroes clear. He probably suspects it was Lucas, especially since he knows how uncomfortable Lucas is about law enforcement, and this clears everything up. Lucas likely knows this as well. Therefore whatever Ben says to Lucas next is going to decide the fate of their relationship. He would share his thoughts about “superheroes” but really he’s going to be talking about Lucas, and they’ll both know it. It should be clear shortly if he’s okay being in a relationship with a superhero… Read more »
Del Cox
3 months ago
Gotta give credit where it’s due, switching the hand gesture to a point was pretty slick, whether it’s effective or not.
He stuck his arm out well before he said anything, and I think he stuck his arm out pretty far, almost reaching for something. It doesn’t look natural, and someone as perceptive as a cop likely picked up on it.
But yeah, nice attempt at a save.
gnarph
3 months ago
Ive been stewing on this, given that they were instrumental in resolving a hostage situation wih the troll, and that got very public, I’m betting the police have been hoping they would be able to get in touch and get them to register to ‘normalize’ things.
It also may be an avenue to getting more resources to get to the bottom of if Ethan’s powers were destroyed or not.
Austin Mills
3 months ago
Ben’s not stupid. He figured it out. But he just saw Lucas save a life. He’s just calling in for paramedics in case anyone’s injured. Besides, he also doesn’t have solid proof Lucas was responsible for the arrow – nothing more than conjecture seeing the man pointing. They’re probably going to have to have a talk after this, but for now I’d honestly be surprised if Ben didn’t keep his secret at this moment.
Safe to say that at least he will suspect something is up and chances are he will try to confirm it. Either by directly confronting Lucas or doing more investigation into it. Plus chances are Lucas is going to act super suspicious as he tries to defect attention away from himself. Especially if he over does it or try to confirm if Ben suspects something or not.
It also depends if the arrows fly out of his hand, or they appear out of thin air. I’ve seen frames where they fly out of his hand, and I’ve seen times where it just appears.
I’m not sure what happened in this particular case, but, considering Ben’s reaction, I suspect the former.
It will be interesting to see how he reacts once he’s out of emergency first responder brain.
Kef
3 months ago
To be fair, that gesture of reaching out your hand to grab something even though you know you won’t reach it because it’s too far is something I think is quite common. It happens to me sometimes when I see something about to fall, and I stretch out my hand as if to catch it (even though, logically, I’m too far away and can’t reach it). Maybe in this situation, someone without powers could also make that gesture, and in that case, the awkward thing would be the hand movement to point. What’s clear is that from his eyes in… Read more »
Unregistered supers aren’t illegal, so I don’t think Ben HAS TO report Lucas, legally.
(there was the encounter, where Analog and D-Pad worked with some cops to stop a supervillain, and then the Troll situation, when a registered super, his name was Phasar I think, was sent to work with them – in neither case the police gave them trouble for being supers or tried to arrest them, etc.)
Bwauder
3 months ago
Inner voice *Please tell me you didn’t see that, or at least you didn’t realise THAT WAS ME doing it*
Locke
3 months ago
Dramatic tension aside, all I want to see now is Lucas and Ben flying around on an arrow together, while a *legally distinct* version of “A whole new world” plays in the background.
Daniel
3 months ago
I’ve been reading this coming for so many years now I seemed to have forgotten for a moment that there is someone writing this and it isn’t just life happening (my heart dropped for a moment). – Thank you Tim!
Last edited 3 months ago by Daniel
Hinkeypinkey
3 months ago
Nice save Lucas. I love the Bens face in second panel 😆
Mike
3 months ago
With the way he’s looking at Lucas’ hand, there’s no way he didn’t make the connection.
Eodyne
3 months ago
So far all Ben’s done is call for emergency services/accident response (i.e. ambo and scene control/road closure).
He hasn’t called for “backup” which would be more ominous for Lucas.
I'm a human blanket
3 months ago
Oh man….that side eye in the third panel. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but it looks like a “I’m talking on the phone about one thing but I’m keeping my eye you about the other thing.”
Thomas
3 months ago
Oh man, something about the art or just presentation of this one hits hard. Very nicely done. That expression in the last panel..
Drew
3 months ago
I’m loving that Lucas is currently the MAIN main character. For so long he’s been the MINOR main character and all the shenanigans have been around Ethan. Yes, Ethan’s got his own drama right now, but he’s in the background while we’re watching Lucas go through this. Thank you for fleshing him out so much more for us.
Ben
3 months ago
Drawing his face that in the second panel is the funniest way to let us know that he definitely knows
J D
3 months ago
Ben isn’t going to say anything about it right now; he’s just reporting the accident and getting help sent. But he knows what he saw and this will come to a head later.
Alex
3 months ago
Here’s hoping Ben takes into consideration just what happened here.. Lucas just acted with no hesitation, on pure instinct, to save a child. No matter what he might think of unlicensed vigilantes, that’s got to earn SOME respect, right? Not putting his own secret above the life of an innocent.
And “superpowered” doesn’t mean “vigilante” by default.
Extreme
3 months ago
Well, at least 10-50 means “motor vehicle accident” and not “super-involved incident”. Assuming the police codes are the same as in the real world, of course.
Kevin Greenbaum
3 months ago
Welp, tried to give him benefit of the doubt because the previous page didn’t show he reached out an arm. GL with the explanation Lucas, you’re gonna need it.
Unfortunately this medium still makes it tricky. Do the arrows simply manifest where he points? Or do they shoot out from his hands? If they manifest then technically there’s nothing out of the ordinary with Lucas pointing. But that look on the cop’s face in the 2nd panel shows he figured out what went down.
Pyre
3 months ago
Look, unless the next words out of Ben’s mouth are “Also, can you put me through to Henry Gyrich?”, I would suggest that Lucas do what he is probably not going to do:
Don’t panic.
See how the situation plays out . Learn from Ethan and realize that outright lying won’t work but assess how Ben reacts BEFORE leaping into a bad course of action.
Kelibath
3 months ago
Right, Ben’s choosing to call in the accident rather than react, but what’s to come?
This goes to prove that neither of them can turn their job off.
I’d like to hope for better, but I think “right, THAT’S why you were ending it, I won’t turn you in but I can’t live with this under my nose and not report it eventually” is more realistic.
ThatGuy
3 months ago
Tim Buckley. Suspense master.
Monday needs to hurry up!
Rockie
3 months ago
Reminder that Lucas is unregistered, not illegal. He’s interacted with the police more than once. At worst unregistered supers are frowned on, not arrested.
MidnightX
3 months ago
Yeah, I’m thinking that Ben only has a hint of suspicion right now, later on he will most likely review footage of D-Pad (figured the PD will have archives of his heroics), put 2 and 2 together, and figure it out…
Nuclear Anomaly
3 months ago
10-50, is that a dead hooker in Ben Afleck’s trailer?
jack
3 months ago
im not sure what lucas is worried about. is there some legal issue with him being a super or something? and if so, would lucas really want to spend his time with someone who would take issue with saving a child anyway?
Well there are two issues: blowing his secret identity, and he’s an unregistered hero, which is technically against the rules. So he possibly outed himself to his cop boyfriend, and thus Ethan because clearly they’re besties, which is a problem. And if the cop realizes they’re unregistered then that could get them in legal trouble. All of this is assuming that his cop isn’t also a certain red hero that many on this forum suspect.
Deathblood? I had that thought too. But Deathblood seems to be a bit bigger? or?
Cliffhanger ending!
thesot
3 months ago
10-50 is the standard 10 code for motor vehicle accident. 10-50i is accident with injuries. Kudos to Tim for the realism!
Overcast
3 months ago
Plot Twist: Ben’s a super with a hero complex. He controls vehicles (like a kid playing with a Matchbox or Tonka). He makes accidents happen so he can save the day. And now he was just thwarted by D-Pad. Introducing… “Sgt. Vrooom”
Bloof
3 months ago
10- 50 is just code for a vehicular accident. No unregistered super code yet.
24
Smooth, Lucas. I’m sure he doesn’t suspect a thing.
He might not, in retrospect, it was obvious-ish for us, because we know Lucas is a super. Ben doesn’t know that, and hand reaching out like that is a somewhat normal reaction to something you’d like to stop from happening. Unless he was one of the cops that D-Pad talked to when fighting some, supervillain (Demolition Duke? Not sure), and Lucas didn’t pay enough attention to them, but Ben now adds two and two and recognises his voice. (or was just told about that by the other cops, possibly with D-Pad’s description, or saw a photo – photos especially might… Read more »
That Analog’s and D-Pad’s costumes really don’t hide their identities all that well with their hair being visible and their masks only covering a small portion of their faces.
His face! AHAHA
YES! I love it too 😀
Preeeeety sure he saw the Arrow fly out of Lucas’s hand. 😅
Wait do they fly out of his hand? I’ve never actually paid attention to that part.
no, they appear where he wants em to but he does apparantly have to make a gesture.
This gesture tho is what a lot of people would do in a response to “wanting to save the girl”. Even tho they’re not able to physically reach her, they will want to try and reach her by holding out their hand.
It’s because secretly we all hope to be jedi one day. Even people who have never seen Star Wars wants to be jedi
I jedi wave at automatic doors, so I think Scortch is right
BROTHER!
Do they come out of his hand? Doesent he just point and they appear
I wonder if this will turn out to be a nARROW escape.
Badum tshhh …
Are you here all day ? 🙂
Try the veal.
Now we will see which is his opinion about vigilants or… well, just superpowereds
He said it in the first panel when they met. He’s a bad cop.
Are you referring to the JOKE he made about oathbreaker paladin in BG3?
Now now, we don’t know what a 10-50 means. Could be calling in the accident.
Internet says 10-50 is accident reporting, so thus far Ben seems to be simply doing his job.
Of course, there’s always next page to add information about the illegal vigilante nearby, and/or have painful conversations about secrets and keepings thereof.
Unless I’m mistaken (I live in Canada, and I haven’t been working in software for emergency dispatch, records management, digital mapping, and so on…for a few decades now), ten codes have some rough ‘standards’, but any individual LE agency (be it a far out sheriff’s office to larger city PDs) could come up with their own version. I worked with federal police across the country and several smaller police within different parts of Canada and I saw a range of different code schemes. The real basic ones were usually there (I’m gonna say 15-20 overall codes), but the rest were… Read more »
All true enough, but when the situation in the comic matches up this well with (what appears to be) the most common meaning of that code, it seems safe to assume it does indeed mean the same thing in this case. It could be something different for the various reasons you mention, but that’d be a very weird coincidence.
Also note Ben already had his phone out before noticing Lucas, presumably to report the accident.
Yeah but almost all departments use the same basic codes to avoid confusion.
They’ve been pretty well standardized in general.
US DoJ and CALEA, here in the US, push for all departments to drop 10-codes (and all other code schemes) because of just this issue. Confusion when working across departments/boundaries causes inefficiencies (and sometimes dangers) in the responses. The current “standard” is to use plain language. No code #s or even code words. If it was a traffic accident, you’re supposed to say “traffic accident.” It takes hardly any additional time to say, and modern comms systems are generally clear enough where radio reception issues are no longer a valid driver for using brevity codes. Then your inter-organizational-team aren’t having… Read more »
My Guess:
A) Ben is going to keep the secret
B) Lucas is going to freak and run before this becomes clear
Why not both ?
Im guessing both.
Insert “Both? Both.” Meme here.
Run where exactly?
On the one hand, I want Lucas to have some peace and a life as someone rooting for the good guys. On the other hand, if the GM rolled the ‘Secret Identity’ flaw, it’s a good time to put the team in trouble – either by the policeman or by him becoming a dependent NPC that could be captured, hurt or killed. (My Champions days are showing…)
Ben just saw a superhero power save a child. This is his opportunity to make his position on superheroes clear. He probably suspects it was Lucas, especially since he knows how uncomfortable Lucas is about law enforcement, and this clears everything up. Lucas likely knows this as well. Therefore whatever Ben says to Lucas next is going to decide the fate of their relationship. He would share his thoughts about “superheroes” but really he’s going to be talking about Lucas, and they’ll both know it. It should be clear shortly if he’s okay being in a relationship with a superhero… Read more »
Gotta give credit where it’s due, switching the hand gesture to a point was pretty slick, whether it’s effective or not.
Yeah that was pretty smooth. If we didn’t all know he had powers, I would buy it that he was just pointing.
The “uh” at the beginning removes a few points of believability, but yeah, good move.
Not really. He could be thought to just be in shock.
He stuck his arm out well before he said anything, and I think he stuck his arm out pretty far, almost reaching for something. It doesn’t look natural, and someone as perceptive as a cop likely picked up on it.
But yeah, nice attempt at a save.
Ive been stewing on this, given that they were instrumental in resolving a hostage situation wih the troll, and that got very public, I’m betting the police have been hoping they would be able to get in touch and get them to register to ‘normalize’ things.
It also may be an avenue to getting more resources to get to the bottom of if Ethan’s powers were destroyed or not.
Ben’s not stupid. He figured it out. But he just saw Lucas save a life. He’s just calling in for paramedics in case anyone’s injured. Besides, he also doesn’t have solid proof Lucas was responsible for the arrow – nothing more than conjecture seeing the man pointing. They’re probably going to have to have a talk after this, but for now I’d honestly be surprised if Ben didn’t keep his secret at this moment.
Safe to say that at least he will suspect something is up and chances are he will try to confirm it. Either by directly confronting Lucas or doing more investigation into it. Plus chances are Lucas is going to act super suspicious as he tries to defect attention away from himself. Especially if he over does it or try to confirm if Ben suspects something or not.
It also depends if the arrows fly out of his hand, or they appear out of thin air. I’ve seen frames where they fly out of his hand, and I’ve seen times where it just appears.
I’m not sure what happened in this particular case, but, considering Ben’s reaction, I suspect the former.
It will be interesting to see how he reacts once he’s out of emergency first responder brain.
To be fair, that gesture of reaching out your hand to grab something even though you know you won’t reach it because it’s too far is something I think is quite common. It happens to me sometimes when I see something about to fall, and I stretch out my hand as if to catch it (even though, logically, I’m too far away and can’t reach it). Maybe in this situation, someone without powers could also make that gesture, and in that case, the awkward thing would be the hand movement to point. What’s clear is that from his eyes in… Read more »
Unregistered supers aren’t illegal, so I don’t think Ben HAS TO report Lucas, legally.
(there was the encounter, where Analog and D-Pad worked with some cops to stop a supervillain, and then the Troll situation, when a registered super, his name was Phasar I think, was sent to work with them – in neither case the police gave them trouble for being supers or tried to arrest them, etc.)
Inner voice *Please tell me you didn’t see that, or at least you didn’t realise THAT WAS ME doing it*
Dramatic tension aside, all I want to see now is Lucas and Ben flying around on an arrow together, while a *legally distinct* version of “A whole new world” plays in the background.
I’ve been reading this coming for so many years now I seemed to have forgotten for a moment that there is someone writing this and it isn’t just life happening (my heart dropped for a moment). – Thank you Tim!
Nice save Lucas. I love the Bens face in second panel 😆
With the way he’s looking at Lucas’ hand, there’s no way he didn’t make the connection.
So far all Ben’s done is call for emergency services/accident response (i.e. ambo and scene control/road closure).
He hasn’t called for “backup” which would be more ominous for Lucas.
Oh man….that side eye in the third panel. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but it looks like a “I’m talking on the phone about one thing but I’m keeping my eye you about the other thing.”
Oh man, something about the art or just presentation of this one hits hard. Very nicely done. That expression in the last panel..
I’m loving that Lucas is currently the MAIN main character. For so long he’s been the MINOR main character and all the shenanigans have been around Ethan. Yes, Ethan’s got his own drama right now, but he’s in the background while we’re watching Lucas go through this. Thank you for fleshing him out so much more for us.
Drawing his face that in the second panel is the funniest way to let us know that he definitely knows
Ben isn’t going to say anything about it right now; he’s just reporting the accident and getting help sent. But he knows what he saw and this will come to a head later.
Here’s hoping Ben takes into consideration just what happened here.. Lucas just acted with no hesitation, on pure instinct, to save a child. No matter what he might think of unlicensed vigilantes, that’s got to earn SOME respect, right? Not putting his own secret above the life of an innocent.
And “superpowered” doesn’t mean “vigilante” by default.
Well, at least 10-50 means “motor vehicle accident” and not “super-involved incident”. Assuming the police codes are the same as in the real world, of course.
Welp, tried to give him benefit of the doubt because the previous page didn’t show he reached out an arm. GL with the explanation Lucas, you’re gonna need it.
Unfortunately this medium still makes it tricky. Do the arrows simply manifest where he points? Or do they shoot out from his hands? If they manifest then technically there’s nothing out of the ordinary with Lucas pointing. But that look on the cop’s face in the 2nd panel shows he figured out what went down.
Look, unless the next words out of Ben’s mouth are “Also, can you put me through to Henry Gyrich?”, I would suggest that Lucas do what he is probably not going to do:
Don’t panic.
See how the situation plays out . Learn from Ethan and realize that outright lying won’t work but assess how Ben reacts BEFORE leaping into a bad course of action.
Right, Ben’s choosing to call in the accident rather than react, but what’s to come?
This goes to prove that neither of them can turn their job off.
I’d like to hope for better, but I think “right, THAT’S why you were ending it, I won’t turn you in but I can’t live with this under my nose and not report it eventually” is more realistic.
Tim Buckley. Suspense master.
Monday needs to hurry up!
Reminder that Lucas is unregistered, not illegal. He’s interacted with the police more than once. At worst unregistered supers are frowned on, not arrested.
Yeah, I’m thinking that Ben only has a hint of suspicion right now, later on he will most likely review footage of D-Pad (figured the PD will have archives of his heroics), put 2 and 2 together, and figure it out…
10-50, is that a dead hooker in Ben Afleck’s trailer?
im not sure what lucas is worried about. is there some legal issue with him being a super or something? and if so, would lucas really want to spend his time with someone who would take issue with saving a child anyway?
Well there are two issues: blowing his secret identity, and he’s an unregistered hero, which is technically against the rules. So he possibly outed himself to his cop boyfriend, and thus Ethan because clearly they’re besties, which is a problem. And if the cop realizes they’re unregistered then that could get them in legal trouble. All of this is assuming that his cop isn’t also a certain red hero that many on this forum suspect.
I don’t think he’s Deathblood. He’s just in shape, not overjacked.
Or was that the Crimson Crescent? What evidence would there be for that?
Deathblood? I had that thought too. But Deathblood seems to be a bit bigger? or?
Cliffhanger ending!
10-50 is the standard 10 code for motor vehicle accident. 10-50i is accident with injuries. Kudos to Tim for the realism!
Plot Twist: Ben’s a super with a hero complex. He controls vehicles (like a kid playing with a Matchbox or Tonka). He makes accidents happen so he can save the day. And now he was just thwarted by D-Pad. Introducing… “Sgt. Vrooom”
10- 50 is just code for a vehicular accident. No unregistered super code yet.
So a cliff arrow then?