I posted last Monday’s comic early last week. Why not do it again?
So, it looks like there might be quite a few new readers this week, as Collective of Heroes is featuring Supervillainous this week. If you’re new, welcome! Peruse the archives and enjoy!
We’re getting close to the end of the month, and Supervillainous is stalling out trying to get into Top Webcomics top 100. Let’s see if we can break through this week with a great big burst of voting! It would be such a great b-day gift to crack that top 100.
By Otaku Sun Mar 22nd 2015 at 9:48 pm
Yay! Early comic!
“Stays bought” or some similar code of conduct is great for “operatives” in this line of work, but there is a fine balance between “Realizes being easily bought off will prevent being hired at all.” versus “If I wasn’t for sale, this wouldn’t be my gig, would it?” Nice way to allow this to still go a variety of directions. 🙂
By Tre Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 4:27 am
Ha, the line between business ethics and the realization that your employer isn’t paying you enough for the trouble the job is bringing you. And since her betrayal would effectively remove those who would know she broke contract it makes the whole thing rather appealing to someone with questionable moral fiber.
By Jens Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 11:56 pm
Eeeeh, the problem with these kinds of things is that she could just as well just kill him and then take the gold afterwards. It’s not like it’s going to disappear just because he’s dead.
Anything that anyone has on hand to bribe their assassin with is something the assassin can collect while still doing the job they are there to do.
And anything you can tempt your assassin with as something that needs to be fetched or transferred is way too risky for the assassin to accept, since that means you’ll be given an excellent chance to slip away or call for help.
By dudemanbro Tue Mar 24th 2015 at 12:22 am
There’s one flaw with the line of reasoning that she could just kill him and then take the gold. She might not actually be ABLE to kill meat. She’s already gotten in a tussle with him, and he threw her off. She’s seen that he’s a good fighter, and that it’s plausible that he could best her.
Combine that with the fact that he actually wasn’t trying to hurt her (much), but merely get her off so he could bribe her. If she were to attack him now, he might take the gloves off and fight full throttle, which could very well end up with her dead.
Plus he’s got a bag of gold right now. Gold is heavy, it’s a much better weapon than a bag of bricks.
TLDR: Meat just demonstrated he was a good and dangerous fighter, and that killing him would be very difficult. Attack Meat, and the assassin would probably end up dead. Don’t attack, and cooperate, and the assassin gets paid twice, and gets to live.
By Otaku Mon Sep 7th 2015 at 5:53 am
There is also the potential of future employment to consider as well; not from those she might betray but from Meat/Claw. They’ve got a decent enough reputation and Claw did add “Count Fang” not too long ago. So she can risk a potentially fatal or crippling fight with Meat that even if she does win, might be a net loss and that if she loses, means she’s out everything… or take a pretty sweet bribe and have the potential for future work. Unless she’s high enough level that she’s actually being paid significantly more than what Meat is offering and if she was, we wouldn’t have panel #4. 😉
By Poetically Psychotic Wed Jan 17th 2018 at 7:28 pm
I think the implication is that if he has several gold bars as essentially spare change for emergencies, how much more money does he have elsewhere?
Slightly unrelated, but at a certain point accepting bribes is probably good for your business. If your target can pay you ten times what you’re making then a) you’re not charging enough, b) most people would consider you too stupid to hire for anything else if you refused this bribe, and c) maybe your next employer will be inspired to pay more to prevent the same happening to him.
By Aslandus Sun Mar 22nd 2015 at 10:58 pm
Wheee, gold party!
By FreshZombiePi Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 12:18 am
Hopefully you can break the top 100 soon, you’re pretty close
By Towering Barbarian Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 6:32 am
Heh. “Infinite gold” does have it’s advantages. 🙂
I wonder how long it will be before the inflation factor kicks in when the market gets flooded? Or if Claw and company will be wise enough to avoid doing that except on purpose? o_O
By Tre Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 2:27 pm
I suspect the only reason it hasn’t already happened is because they are hording it.
By e17o4 Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 2:44 pm
it just occurred to me… they should have grabbed more than just infinite gold. if they only grab gold yeah they’re flooding the market and will bring a crash. buuuut if they grab other valuables like say. diamonds platinum silver ect. then they have more variety and are less likely to crash the market…right?
By Alpo Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 3:58 pm
Or, instead of being paid NOT TO kill him, with one bar of gold, she could go ahead and kill him – complete her contract and keep her reputation – and take ALL the gold (looks to be at least three bars) with her.
By AceOfSpade Thu Mar 26th 2015 at 10:16 pm
Not that smart, a dude who’s casually walking around with gold bar like other people keep change? It might be worth it to listen to him. Three gold bar might not be all he’s willing to pay…
By RazorD9 Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 5:46 pm
Some guys are the type of people who bring brass knuckles to a fight. Meat on the other hand brings a duffle bag of gold bricks.
By Elihias Mon Mar 23rd 2015 at 9:57 pm
Yeah. Meats heavily into overkill here… after all, you only need a
sock full of pennies. So a whole bag of gold… well, unless I suppose
you plan to balance it over an open door and wait for someone to step through…
Hmm… that would work.
Eli…
By zappitcomic Tue Mar 24th 2015 at 1:13 am
Guys, I’m not going to downplay it. We’re less than ten votes away from cracking the top 100. Keep voting, because we’re gonna make it!
By CyborgJesus Tue Mar 24th 2015 at 3:48 am
If you kill the assassin more will come. If you bribe the assassin you might learn who employed it.