PaRARGdox 75
A bad time for an abduction…: Like father, like daughter it would seem. Just as we saw old Nate bitching about Magellan folk keeping technology to themselves it seems Deandra is a chip off the silicon block.
Regardless of her beef (and paranoia), she picked a very bad time to take Magellan USA off the board.
That’s all we’ll see of Magellan USA’s predicament… for now.
Patreon: By the way, should it be a thing that interests you, my Magellan patrons over at Patreon have been getting full previews three updates ahead of schedule. And you can too for as little as $1 a month… 😎
Next update: Sunday October 25: A bad time for an abduction…
What a bitch. They’re not planning anything, the facts are clear that your dad is to blame for this alien threat.
These facts are clear to us, the readers, who 1) have information from the time-travellers and 2) got to see what happened in space. I don’t think these facts are clear to anyone on earth that wasn’t in the future intel meeting. On top of that, I doubt these facts would be clear to this CEO no matter how clearly or how many ways you presented them to her.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Applies to women too!
I’m pretty sure she’s aware of that, she just wants to make sure that fact is hidden to the public.
Never a good sign when the CEO of a mega-corp starts talking like a political YouTuber.
I’m drawing a strong correlation here: Deandra Dion is to her father as Charisma Epoch is to hers. Aggressive, angry, and with their own ideas how things should work.
I had a very similar thought. She inherited her dad’s opinion (about Magellan), but rebelled against his approach.
Evil CEO gonna be evil CEO.
Very, very much Countess Crey here. Only dumb.
Of course…
Because what are little things like an invasion by genocidal aliens or illegal abduction and imprisonment, compared to preserving and expanding your corporate interests? >_<
I'm sure her motivations are more complex than that, but this is a ****-poor time for Prometheus Inc. to put itself above the law and go black-ops. Again.
So let me make sure I understand this.
A group of very dangerous, super hostile, “willing to kill themselves in order to kill their enemy” aliens arrive and the only logical move is to hinder the heroes as a means to protect your monetary assets and deflect blame?
Assuming something changes the timeline or something prevents the world from blowing up, girl will be lucky if she doesn’t lose his all her money and ends up in jail for everything she and her late dad have contributing to this s@#$ storm.
Hello. Welcome to the human race. Are you new here?
#joking
“My plan is to ensure that you cannot frame us for the invasion by actually committing kidnapping and revealing that we have been engaging in construction of illegal weapons. Don’t worry, we definitely won’t murder you to keep these actual crimes a secret.”
Well, she might believe that at end of invasion THEY would be the ones writing the laws. Some people really have ego that big.
Oh so the Rarg weren’t the ones to develop the power-neutralizing beam that took out so many on Magellan?
Also… daddy? A grown-ass woman (a CEO no less) referring to her father as “daddy” is plain wrong.
It could be indicative of mental instability. Honestly, I don’t see the problem other than it being a childish sounding word.
I do hear adults using daddy and mommy/mummy… did always strike me as a bit odd (especially since I got teased, at age 9(!!!) by another kid my age for referring to my mother as “mummy”)… but you know, each to their own!! 😀
9 years old is one thing as one is still a child, but like I said this is a full-grown woman… at least physically.
Mental instability indeed.
I could see grown adult still refering to their parents as Mommy and Daddy, but… in private, with family and close friends. An adult calling their parents Mommy and Daddy when talking in public, with strangers is just… weird. I mean, if you want to say something less formal than “Father” there’s the perfectly serviceable “Dad”?
Daddy just has… connotations when grown adults use it.
Yuuuuup! Which could be the insinuation, or could be that she’s grieving his death. I honestly kind of read her monologue here in an emotionally broken warble, even if the visuals don’t necessarily conform to my headcanon.
Okay Wayne-Yutani
Maybe even Wayne-Powers?
I’m pondering exactly how little Deandra the apparently Dumb actually knows about this whole situation, and the Rarg in particular. Maybe she is more clueless than stupid, or even just in the dark. And I’m having a thought… can this be seen as another case of things going very bad because Magellan keeps secrets?
Consider for a moment how this could’ve gone if Magellan just inconspicuously informed Prometheus of the threat. Quietly publishing that they had discovered this Rarg colony and urging everyone to stay clear as their alien contacts are saying that the Rarg are genocidal maniacs, in the right channels so that Prometheus would see it but not feel targeted, while avoiding spreading the news to the general public (which might react aggressively to genocidal maniacs in our solar system, maybe it would be fine though). Catastrophy thwarted? Maybe not, depending on how bone-headed Nathan was, but certainly worth a shot.
Maybe this approach was in the works, just not executed yet, as Magellan believed they had more time. But somehow I doubt it.
The situation was already lost when Prometheus kept their expedition secret. There was no way to inform Prometheus without them feeling targeted – at least not when you want to skip general public. There are no “right channels”.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t caused by Magellan keeping secret. The fact that there is no legal way for private company to have some technology means they are forced to obtain it illegally. Granted, considering what they did with it the moment they had it suggest that they really shouldn’t have it, but that view is shortsighted: unless there is plan to ensure supers make majority of planet’s population, there needs to be some legal way for normal people to get to the top – or they will use the illegal one.
However, there is no easy solution for this, and definitely not any which would be possible to execute fast enough. It’s about the whole geopolitical situation.
I don’t think it’s illegal for private companies to have proprietary tech, just this particular bit of technology.
Surely there’s a reasonably obscure scientific journal on discoveries in our solar system or something like that, which would gather no attention but would make the notice turn up when Prometheus makes the research to get their project started.
Good point about non-super people potentially feeling very disadvantaged. I don’t think a significant portion of the actual world leaders and law writers are supers, though, so you may need some unfortunate circumstances to end up with that view.
I’m no fan of restricting information on how stuff works. Even for a dangerously powerful piece of technology or physics, say nuclear stuff, I think the more people who know how it works the better. Restrict the procurement, the handling of the materials, the facilities to build it. Then again this approach may not always work. Software, e.g., is a field where knowing how it works generally is the same thing as having the ability to put it into action (given enough time). Even so, freely distributing the info seems to make things better, not worse. I think the explanation for this is that a large majority of people are at least law-abiding or not evil, and the truly good people outnumber those that are both law-breakers and evil.
Oh geez. The first thing she does is start monologing to her captives. You never do that.
That’s how you know she’s a villain!
Someone needs to go put this woman into TV Tropes under “Idiot Ball”
“But where are my manners?”
Good question.
“I’ll work out what to do with you all after the situation in the pacific is resolved.”
Ah, so she has made no plan on how exactly these actions will help her avoid the wrath of whomever wins the fight between the Rarg and Magellan, but still pissed them both off anyway. That’s just great.
That said, I’ll give her credit for this: In a world full of the murderous supervillains we’ve seen these past few arcs, I agree that one group of supers shouldn’t have a monopoly on one of the few ways to hinder them. And lets face it, it wouldn’t have that for long. Governments would slip their spies into the ranks of the cadets or general workers ASAP to copy stuff like that. They’d be negligent in their duty to protect their citizens from the various super villains not to.
Judging from this and past strips, I don’t think Magellan has sole ownership of such tech. I find it highly likely that government and law-enforcement agencies in general would at least have access to such things even if they didn’t fully understand how it worked.
The issue with free information in this instance is that while legal entites would use such tech with at least a modicum of responsibility, this is an example of one of the least threatening ways it can go badly. Imagine if say… the Character Assassins got their hands on it.
And even beyond that, we have no idea what other effects there might be from overuse of dampening tech. While it appears to be the case that its stable and safe, who knows how ironclad that is. What if a poorly tuned field has other damaging effects.
You’re not wrong – and Deandra even notes that the effects of their field might be a bit “rough” plus the neutralising pulse cannon is clearly painful.
Ah yes, the old “If my power gets curtailed in any way then it’s bullying.”
By the way, did everyone else notice that Prometheus has effectively dismembered one of its prisoners, as in literally removing the arms and lower body of the Magellanite in panel five?
Even if they can be plugged in again without lasting damage, I’d say that’s one hell of a violation of the Geneva Accords.
I did notice. I assume it means that those limbs were not very real in the first place, they may be more turned off than chopped off.
That’s Battlestar, he’s telekinetic. Presumably his limbs are prosthetics.
Pretty much! 🙂
and i say again F*** that B***!
I could’ve sworn her name would be Karen.