Hope you all have a great weekend, and a great Christmas if you celebrate it! No comic on Monday due to the holiday, we’ll be back Wednesday!
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Hope you all have a great weekend, and a great Christmas if you celebrate it! No comic on Monday due to the holiday, we’ll be back Wednesday!
The problem with playing expecting the opponents to always fight back; you have no idea what to do if they actually fold.
Apparently, what you do is throw another tantrum.
And what if they keep folding?
It’s okay, they can’t fold more than 7 times.
Mythbusters proved you can do more! You need paper the size of a football field and a steamroller….
That’s such a dumb myth anyway, since it obviously works if the paper is thin enough relative to its size. I don’t get why anyone would think otherwise, unless they literally just shove things into their brains without first thinking about them even a little.
Most people do exactly that. They hear a thing that sounds right-ish and run with it.
I mean there are police snipers and an alient-teleporty-superhero on standby so.
I wouldn’t keep trying that too long ?
Does ‘be careful what you wish for’ apply here?
No, Troll. I’m betting it doesn’t. And you know why? Because saving lives is more important than some grand self-image. If it prevents the death of even one individual then any ammount of personal defacement is worth it. There is a fan-fiction I have read where (and I won’t go into detail due to the matterial being so graphic) a female character allowed four males to “use her” while she was blind and crippled just to spare a child hiding under the floor nearby a similar fate. It may have hurt, it may have been an issue she carried the… Read more »
I would’ve gone with the Dark Knight. It is all too similar. A Joker type that is out to cause mayhem for the fun of it, in this case trolling to get a rise out of people. A Batman type hero as in trying to stop crime physically. Batman needs to give up his ego to make the city able to fight crime effectively. With Gotham thinking Batman killed their hero Harvey Dent they put in legislation that was able to clear the streets (despite going borderline Abu Ghraib no due process creepy). Batman put his own ego aside, having… Read more »
no, batman didnt do that. gordon compromising did that. and its not even that. before batman, the criminals did what they wanted when they wanted. then batman made his presence felt, and all of a sudden they were afraid to do what they did. it may not have stopped them, but it sure as heck slowed them down. until joker showed up. and the dent act the last 2 touched on, i like how they paraded it as the answer to their problems, while also pretending that no innocents suffered because of it. seriously, with all the lies required to… Read more »
Escalation isn’t the same as not slowing down. The crime was still very much present, if less. They show people running scared, but also that Batman is only one man. Thanks to this one man there is a bit less crime, but before the Joker arrives they are already ramping up. More cooperation, bigger weapons and things like dogs. We see all crime families working together as they are now being threatened. Sure the Batman finally is in a place to potentially take down the crime by tracking their finances at the start of The Dark Knight. But throughout the… Read more »
If only the police would ascribe to this philosophy as well.
Amateur Troll Time huh? What a lightweight
A Real Troll would take the apology and have a dubstep video remix complete with a stupid statement dance out on youtube by 2pm the very next day
Then he or she would double down on the campaign of harassment because they derive their pleasure from being actively malicious and evil
This “Troll” obviously hasn’t spent enough time surfing the webs
The difference is that those “professional trolls” don’t actually give a crap who they are trolling or why, they do it for the thrill of controlling people. For this troll it’s personal, and he has a very planned out idea of how it’s supposed to go and Ethan isn’t playing the game anymore. Because it’s personal he can’t just sidestep into more trolling because he feels like he’s being robbed of what he needs
The art of trolling is to have people waste their time over nonsense while, at the same time, not wasting the troll’s time. This troll has been doing nothing but be very active at being an angsty teenager. Didn’t troll anybody but himself. A troll is a master manipulator. Doesn’t appear in public, ever. Convince people to do stuff for them. Anyhow, the troll of this comics is mostly how the general public misunderstand internet culture. If you want to see real trolls, look at Meta and Twitter. The companies don’t generate content, the feeds are populated through statistics, people… Read more »
Yup. The Troll here acts as someone who is being trolled, someone triggered. I’d expect him to recover from this setback, though, and improvise. Perhaps, cut a video edit later twisting the truth and making Analog look pathetic rather than heroic.
But he might get an unexpected (unless she’s one of the hostages) opponent in the person of Lilah. Not responding to any of his antics, but just doing her job and reporting truthfully about what a hero Analog is.
Trolling the troll. Nicely done.
Well played, Analog – and a nice cliffhanger i guess ?
I guess more than a few law enforcement personnel tracking the situation are sighing in relief and perhaps having an imperceptible nod of approval. However this mess ends, if he doesn’t ruin it himself, he’ll have gotten some character credit among the rest of this community.
This is beautifully done. And not even a hint of guile in Ethan here, he’s genuine. He will give in for the greater good, and the Troll is desperately scrabbling for something, anything, to feed his trolling
I wonder if Zeke is aware of all this, think he’s watching the news?
Umm, did the troll just take his thumb off the button?
It’s not a button, it looks more like a dead mans switch/handle (check the previous pages for a better view). Think his ring/pinky are still holding it down?
No, the whole red side bit is the lever/button.
Most deadman switches are designed like this, because it is much, much, easier for your thumb to slip off a button if you trip or accidently bump into something than it is to completely open your hand.
The thing to note here is in all hostage situations the second the criminal runs out of hostages is the same second the criminal loses as they no longer have anything to bargin with. So you wouldn’t want that to accidently go off.
Indeed, with snipers in position and trained on him, he’s in a situation where he has to be okay with dying if he’s to let go of the lever, as that’s the only thing keeping them from shooting
You know what ?
THIS is very satisfying for me !
And what we’re seeing here, folks, is the Troll being defeated.
I’m surprised the Troll is cracking so quickly.
I mean, I guess if he was short term enough to show up in person, he’s not quite max level troll.
“of course make me angry, but people dying for my actions would make angrier”
Happy Christmas night. I think is too late to ask Santa for a monday update of the webcomic…
Few days early there bud.
Everyone commenting on the troll and I am just over here thinking…. so, Carrie Matheson is a thing in this universe as well? Maybe with jokes about how she would fall for Dr. Eldritch? ?
Well at least Googling Clare Danes cry face isn’t going to look as bad on my history after the whole armpit sex thing a while back…
Fun fact: He still can activate the bomb and Ethan will still feel responsible long, long after the event, for not act as been angry and please the Troll.
Illogical, no doubt, but people have incredible ability to feel guilty about disasters they could not prevent.
You’re presuming there are actually hostages. Of course, they can’t assume there aren’t any, but if there was any indication that hostages were actually there, Ethan and everyone else might be playing this entirely differently.
Merry Christmas and Happy New year Tim and family
Thank. God. I will be honest that I would like to see the Troll die, as I am not a fan of the concept in the slightest. However, I am glad that Ethan is handling it his way and that it is panning out how you would expect with a petty troll. I don’t consider this satisfying in a “The hero won!” sort of way, more like “at least we can move along now”.
Ethan just played an excellent Reverse Uno card.
But the Troll could have one of his own to play: demand that Analog give the apology sans mask, allowing the Troll (and/or his followers) to identify him and target him and his loved ones in the future.
To counter my own suggestion: it’s likely that the Troll has a bit of a Joker-like obsession with Analog the Hero, to a point that he doesn’t care (or actively wants to not know) about Ethan the Human. In real life, a lot of the most vitriolic and hateful trolls lose a great deal of their aggression when the masks come off.
Come to think on it, that actually dovetails rather nicely with what Lilah was saying earlier about how Analog and Ethan are, in a way, different people.
In the event Joker does learn Batman’s secret, he could easily be written to pivot his attention towards ruining the Wayne legacy. It’s a fine line that he actively avoids, but he would celebrate crossing it.
In Harley Quinn animated show, joker learns finds out Batman is Bruce Wayne… after tantrum of having his fun ruined, he turns to Bruce:
“WayneTech promised an electric car by this year! I put a deposit down! WHERE’S MY GODDAMN ELECTRIC CAR BRUCE!?”
Joker does know, and has always known, who batman is. He just didn’t care til he was tired of playing the game with him. Then joker war happened. then the game became fresh again thanks to harley making batman make it clear to joker that batman was ok with joker dying instead of being rehabilitated.
Merry Christmas to you and your family, Tim!
troll, look at the field where I grow my f*cks and see how barren it is
Merry Christmas to you and your family.
A deadman switch is easy to defeat, you simply remove the battery so the transmitter can’t signal the bomb. I kinda doubt he HAS hostages, maybe followers that wanted to play that roll to help the troll run off Analog for good. Even if he does, working Ethan’s anger until he kills both the troll and the hostages was his plan, he’s beyond caring about himself or his future, he just seen Analog his chance to prove that supers are NOT “super” and he just failed. The troll can’t understand why anyone would want to embarrass themselves to this level… Read more »
That depends. I was once thinking about it for a role-playing game scenario (the tabletop sort, not a cRPG), and thought to make a deadman switch differently – it’d be sending out a signal, that is telling the bomb NOT to explode. That way, if you disable it, boom. Of course, there still needs to be a way for it to be safely turned off, unless the villain in question intends to have the bomb explode anyway, like the Troll might – and if there is and the characters figure it out, they might prevent the explosion (or maybe talk… Read more »
Depending on the form of dead man’s switch, that would set off the bomb.
I think the dead man’s switch is a dud
I’m coming around to the idea that “there are no hostages” too.
Hah. Whether intentionally or not, Ethan clearly demonstrates that he could kick the troll’s ass, then he doesn’t do that since it’s what the troll wants. Awesome.
Wow I did not expect Ethan to handle it that well. Let’s just hope the Troll doesn’t decide to kill the hostages to just get Analog to snap and chuck him off the roof.
Have a great Christmas & Happy New Year.
Don’t forget the cylinder of goo everyone.
The other shoe hasn’t fully dropped.
That’s what I’m wondering about. The Troll has some sort of McGuffin. Wouldn’t it be interesting if he used it in a pique now, not even knowing what it would do, and it gave him the same powers as Analog? I.E. You can’t kill a troll, they just keep coming back.
I mean, he already looks like a troll, it’s entirely possible he has the regeneration. In which case he might’ve already cut off a hand or something and left it elsewhere in case he does die here (which seemed to be part of what he was trying to get Analog to do).
I actually don’t remember anything about it – what cylinder, and when/where was it talked about?
I found the goo strip https://cad-comic.com/comic/infernal-demons-p25/ – Ethan doesn’t know about it though, so he cannot prepare in any way (and doesn’t even know he should).
Judging by the color, it’s the very same stuff the troll fell into, and I doubt he understands or cares what Ethan’s powers are. Even if he dosed him with it, a simple “oops I fell off the roof” would reset him. I think if that was the case, when Ethan pops back up, completely normal, would break what little is left of the troll’s mind. We don’t know for sure if he resets his body back to when he first got the power, or just like a “quick-save” point from just before the death, but so far everything that’s… Read more »
Maybe that’s the troll’s plan? Get Ethan locked into a “save point” just before death as a permanent spawn camping kill streak…
To me it looks, like the color might be not the contents, but some sort of indicator, that the container is working (maybe it’s cooled, for example?) – it seems to be glowing, unless the contents glow by themselves, the light might be something like that.
Remember kids. Don’t feed the trolls!
So no one wins.
I wonder if there are really any hostages.
“the only winning move is not to play” troll 101, do not let them have their fun. they aren’t serious about a damn thing.
Did the 5th panel get changed?
It makes sense. There are few real trolls, in the real world. Most of them are just posers, who play the troll card when their serious claim is refuted or even questioned, because they wanna look cool and avoid admitting to a possible mistake. But the essence of REAL trolls, is that they don’t care. At all. They only truly do it for the lulz. For the thrill of being transgressive and annoying. So, when someone invests SO much of themselves into their “trolling,” like the troll does in this comic… It seems pretty obvious, that they care A LOT.… Read more »
No on can look cool by saying he is a troll tho.
I agree. But I never said they did look cool. I just said they WANTED to. Big difference. That’s why they’re a variey of the proud irrational, to me. Because it’s all about ego reaching delusional levels. You know the type. Makes some claim they fail to back up (often enough, because they couldn’t ever possibly provide solid evidence for it). Some fallacy, prejudice, etc. Then, when someone challenges that, they try to bs and weasel their way out. With more fallacies, evasion, etc. They WANT to look smart, right, superior, etc. They often even have a mocking, condescending tone.… Read more »
Don’t forget the Hero that showed up to help the guys, Judging by his name, I say phasing in and out would be VERY handy to take care of a dead-man switch wielding psyco, babble ranting and not paying attention to someone he didn’t expect to pop in and take away his only bargaining chip. I’ve noticed that the Troll was focused on a new super team that hardly anyone knew or cared about, and to prevent them from gaining enough notoriety that no trolling could effect, cooked up the “easy-to-do scheme” that backfired on him. So now it’s personal… Read more »
And much like when Terry McGuinniss proved that the Joker was actually a terrible comedian by heckling him, Analog does something similar and calls the Troll’s bluff, resulting in the same result: A villain who doesn’t know how to handle a taste of his own medicine.
Nothing says “fragile failure” like inability to take what you deal. Hipocrisy.
And a troll that doesn’t know how to handle an honest and humble reaction… Is also a complete failure.
Dude’s just another pyscho with a theme.
called it