Not that killing a critter isn’t often more practical then detaining it, but I don’t recall that sort of bloodthirstiness being a part of the superhero tradition. Just when did Wolverine become their team leader anyway? o_O
Yeah, they really don’t fit the “superhero team” mold, in that sense. I suppose that we’re really supposed to interpret them as a fantastical allegory for the police, in roughly the same way as the authors call H.T. a “Tammany Hall politician,” but he also works on the surface as a hungry tiger, and I’m not sure how well AG-I works on the surface as a superhero team.
Absolutely, Awgiedawgie! And I had these concerns back in “Can’t Catch Me,” too. I’m not saying they’re in any way inconsistent with their past portrayal in this story; I’m saying that they don’t act like a superhero team.
They think they’re superheroes. Really, they seem to be an unaware anti-inhuman death squad. I’d really like to know how much the Leland Frogs, the Jersey Devils, and other stuff were stirred up before their clash with AG-I. And who did it.
Their job is officially to act as heroes and rescuers. Their masters would set their actual goals as 1. wetwork, and 2. looking good while doing so to distract the public from 1.
I’m not too sure about that whole “looking good” thing. They’re dressed all superhero-y, with the spandex Dr. Dentons and everything, but I don’t know that I’d call it “good”. On the plus side, it is certainly distracting.
Of course, with the reality blindness, the public might not notice half of them — like Goose Girl or Cinder — at all.
This. The fact that we’re seeing it from a viewpoint sympathetic to the monsters is atypical, but smashing monsters without checking on their motivation is absolutely standard for the genre.
… I’m actually not sure that’s true, thinking back on old Fantastic Four comics.
Smashing robot mooks incapable of speech the Big Bad is sending at you to kill you, sure. But isn’t the normal solution to ex-human monsters to de-mutate them, and isn’t the normal solution to rampaging never-human monsters to try to figure out what’s making them rampage so you can make them stop?
Those would be ideal solutions, but I wouldn’t say they are normal solutions. They’re more the exception to the rule.
What man does not understand, he tends to fear. And what man fears, he tends to destroy. Superhumans may have special powers, but in the end, they’re still human.
Please, please make it an org chart that doesn’t put Sweetheart at the top. She is so much better at leadership when it is someone else who sets the priorities.
I don’t know – in this case I think it would be better to have Sweetheart in charge than these murdery AG-I bozos. After all, Sweetheart firmly and sincerely believes in the Skin Horse mission, and that generally involves some investigation before deciding that killing (or even resorting to violence) is the only sensible option. She seemed pretty appalled, and even outraged, at AG-I’s immediate resort to brutality against the cryptid: http://skin-horse.com/comic/well-worn/
Which, of course, is precisely why the murdery bozos would be against having her at the top of the chart.
Let’s face it, Skin Horse and AG-I are fundamentally opposed when it comes to dealing with threatening non-humans. AG-I’s first (and only) action is violence, and Skin Horse tries to use violence only as a last resort. Combining these two agencies with either one of them at the top is going to leave the other one unwilling to cooperate.
I say we put Bubbles at the top. After all, it’s her ship.
Poor Sweetheart, she just doesn’t understand bureaucracies. No one can be fired for incompetence, lying, or even banging a subordinate’s wife on government property (and by property I mean a desk in a government building. I’m not making this up). You need a “power chart”, showing who has acquired what the Russian’s used to call Blat (influence or power), not organizational authority, which only exists on paper.
There are obvious grammatical and punctuation issues in the above. I have no excuse except the inability to edit a post, drunkenness, atheism, and age spots. Oh, and Donald Trump. I’m only one scientific-accident-resulting-in-immortality from slapping everyone on this planet.
Bureaucracy is the one thing Sweetheart does understand, including the fact that rank is not the same as power. Rank is about responsibility and assigning blame, and Sweetheart knows how to work that system to her advantage. It is what she was created for, after all.
Sweetheart would be less successful at bringing the USA to its knees than the current situation. The current philosophy is to destroy any, including government agencies, that oppose the ruling oligarchy.
Rather than an org chart, I would say they first need to set what their objective actually is (ensure the Sea monster is not a threat). Then they decide on how they intend to complete it (which is their point of contention : AG-I want to exterminate the monster, Skin Horse wants to communicate with it I suppose). Only at that time they should worry about the technical complications.
An org chart MIGHT help if you decide wether Skin Horse outranks AG-I or not, but seeing how the two teams have opposite views, this seems to be ultimately pointless – they are just going to bicker on who should be the leader to impose their idea while ignoring the actual objective.
Aside from fulfilling Sweetheart’s deep need for hierarchical clarity, the org chart will also determine who gets the final word in shaping the objective.
You’d really need to consider the technical complications as soon as you have an objective of some sort. It doesn’t matter whether you want to kill the client or tie it up if you don’t know how to do either.
The org chart will help us determine who kills whom and in what order.
Four AG-I, three Skin-Horse. (Nick absent, the captain and crew of the Habakkuk excluded, Jonah Yu and Nera civilians.) I can guess what order.
[singing merrily]
“Four AG-I,
Three Skin Horse,
Two nerdy teens,
And a V-22 who can’t swear!”
Thumbs up!
Not that killing a critter isn’t often more practical then detaining it, but I don’t recall that sort of bloodthirstiness being a part of the superhero tradition. Just when did Wolverine become their team leader anyway? o_O
Yeah, they really don’t fit the “superhero team” mold, in that sense. I suppose that we’re really supposed to interpret them as a fantastical allegory for the police, in roughly the same way as the authors call H.T. a “Tammany Hall politician,” but he also works on the surface as a hungry tiger, and I’m not sure how well AG-I works on the surface as a superhero team.
“Shoot first. Don’t ask questions later.” has kinda always been AG-I’s M.O.
http://skin-horse.com/comic/arrived-at/
You know that when your superhero team is more bloodthirsty than your zombie monster explicitly created to be a weapon, something has gone wrong.
Absolutely, Awgiedawgie! And I had these concerns back in “Can’t Catch Me,” too. I’m not saying they’re in any way inconsistent with their past portrayal in this story; I’m saying that they don’t act like a superhero team.
They think they’re superheroes. Really, they seem to be an unaware anti-inhuman death squad. I’d really like to know how much the Leland Frogs, the Jersey Devils, and other stuff were stirred up before their clash with AG-I. And who did it.
Their job is officially to act as heroes and rescuers. Their masters would set their actual goals as 1. wetwork, and 2. looking good while doing so to distract the public from 1.
I’m not too sure about that whole “looking good” thing. They’re dressed all superhero-y, with the spandex Dr. Dentons and everything, but I don’t know that I’d call it “good”. On the plus side, it is certainly distracting.
Of course, with the reality blindness, the public might not notice half of them — like Goose Girl or Cinder — at all.
Being very killy indeed against highly-inhuman monsters and robots seems to be within the scope of the superheroic tradition.
It works terribly in context of Skin Horse, of course, but then it often does in its native context too.
This. The fact that we’re seeing it from a viewpoint sympathetic to the monsters is atypical, but smashing monsters without checking on their motivation is absolutely standard for the genre.
… I’m actually not sure that’s true, thinking back on old Fantastic Four comics.
Smashing robot mooks incapable of speech the Big Bad is sending at you to kill you, sure. But isn’t the normal solution to ex-human monsters to de-mutate them, and isn’t the normal solution to rampaging never-human monsters to try to figure out what’s making them rampage so you can make them stop?
Those would be ideal solutions, but I wouldn’t say they are normal solutions. They’re more the exception to the rule.
What man does not understand, he tends to fear. And what man fears, he tends to destroy. Superhumans may have special powers, but in the end, they’re still human.
Please, please make it an org chart that doesn’t put Sweetheart at the top. She is so much better at leadership when it is someone else who sets the priorities.
I don’t know – in this case I think it would be better to have Sweetheart in charge than these murdery AG-I bozos. After all, Sweetheart firmly and sincerely believes in the Skin Horse mission, and that generally involves some investigation before deciding that killing (or even resorting to violence) is the only sensible option. She seemed pretty appalled, and even outraged, at AG-I’s immediate resort to brutality against the cryptid: http://skin-horse.com/comic/well-worn/
Which, of course, is precisely why the murdery bozos would be against having her at the top of the chart.
Let’s face it, Skin Horse and AG-I are fundamentally opposed when it comes to dealing with threatening non-humans. AG-I’s first (and only) action is violence, and Skin Horse tries to use violence only as a last resort. Combining these two agencies with either one of them at the top is going to leave the other one unwilling to cooperate.
I say we put Bubbles at the top. After all, it’s her ship.
Poor Sweetheart, she just doesn’t understand bureaucracies. No one can be fired for incompetence, lying, or even banging a subordinate’s wife on government property (and by property I mean a desk in a government building. I’m not making this up). You need a “power chart”, showing who has acquired what the Russian’s used to call Blat (influence or power), not organizational authority, which only exists on paper.
There are obvious grammatical and punctuation issues in the above. I have no excuse except the inability to edit a post, drunkenness, atheism, and age spots. Oh, and Donald Trump. I’m only one scientific-accident-resulting-in-immortality from slapping everyone on this planet.
Tiff, whatever you’re drinking, pour me a double.
This commenting system needs a like or upvote feature so I can use it here… 🙂
It was a double 🙂 Diet Pepsi and Three Olives vodka
Bureaucracy is the one thing Sweetheart does understand, including the fact that rank is not the same as power. Rank is about responsibility and assigning blame, and Sweetheart knows how to work that system to her advantage. It is what she was created for, after all.
But I thought Sweatheart was created to bring the USA to it’s knees…oh, nevermind, I get your point now.
Sweetheart would be less successful at bringing the USA to its knees than the current situation. The current philosophy is to destroy any, including government agencies, that oppose the ruling oligarchy.
I’m shocked. Sweetheart…is RIGHT. They’re going to need a clear chain of command, and fast. and it can’t be Unities.
And speaking of Unity, if they really want to eliminate the creature, just give Unity a rotomulcher and stand back.
Just tell her she can eat its brain, you don’t need much else.
Hell, just give her a rake.
I was leery at first too, but it looks like she was actually a couple steps ahead of Tip this time around.
Org Charts: the bureaucratic method of determining the pack Alpha.
Rather than an org chart, I would say they first need to set what their objective actually is (ensure the Sea monster is not a threat). Then they decide on how they intend to complete it (which is their point of contention : AG-I want to exterminate the monster, Skin Horse wants to communicate with it I suppose). Only at that time they should worry about the technical complications.
An org chart MIGHT help if you decide wether Skin Horse outranks AG-I or not, but seeing how the two teams have opposite views, this seems to be ultimately pointless – they are just going to bicker on who should be the leader to impose their idea while ignoring the actual objective.
Aside from fulfilling Sweetheart’s deep need for hierarchical clarity, the org chart will also determine who gets the final word in shaping the objective.
You’d really need to consider the technical complications as soon as you have an objective of some sort. It doesn’t matter whether you want to kill the client or tie it up if you don’t know how to do either.
Will Mr. Tentacles accept an org chart drawn up in his absence?
“Murder isn’t working and that’s all we’re good at.” -Nichelle Nichols.
The first speech balloon seems to be pointing at Unity, but it’s more in character for Sweetheart (who has her mouth open while Unity’s is closed).