Any sufficiently hard blunt force trauma can kill, especially to the head.
Agemegos
Yes, and a punch, just one punch, can be sufficiently hard.
Do not do this for shits and giggles
BBCC
I am well aware, which is why I said it can be any sufficient blunt force trauma, not just a sucker punch. Don’t fuck around with throwing punches, especially to the head.
Agemegos
I am glad that we are in vigorous agreement.
BBCC
Yeah, fictional punches are fine. Real punches? Not so much.
Agemegos
Just so. This is a comic strip, where superheroing on the backs of speeding cars doesn’t end up with you going under the wheels of the car behind, and a smack-down drag-out fight between Amber and Sal on a flight of concrete stairs doesn’t end up with broken ribs, concussions, and teeth knocked out. It is even worth considering the stratagem of turning into a Utahraptor.
But out here in the real world? The common belief that punching someone in the head will at worst put them to sleep for twenty minutes, the game of sucker-punching strangers outside nightclubs because it’s funny to watch them twitch, besides demonstrating large-testicled manliness? Those things get people killed, or crippled for life.
BBCC
Yeah, real punches are not fun.
CJ
@Agemegos:
That’s a thing? People get more crazy ideas then I could ever imagine.
I always thought the ‘ oh sorry, I just punched once and now she’s dead’ trope was just one of the many lies guys tell to avoid responsibility. There are actually proven cases of that? Every story from the last ten years I can remember from German media where people died from fistfights involved more than one punch.
Bacon
@CJ
It happens. A couple years back in my town, guy went into a coma after being punched once in the back of the head while he was just sitting at a bar minding his own business. He hasn’t woken up and it’s increasingly looking like he just won’t ever.
All because this town has two football teams, and tribal mindsets make violence between supporters common.
Agemegos
@CJ Yes, it absolutely is a thing. Here is a news article about an event in Sydney some years ago. The main story is about a young man killed by a single punch and the ensuing fall. It notes that another man was in the same hospital the same night who had been punched 25 times in the head but who was discharged in the morning.
We had a case in Queensland (the state adjacent to the north of where I live) in which a fellow was charged with manslaughter after he killed his brother’s ex-wife’s father, who had come to collect his (the victim’s) grandchild after a weekend with their father. He claimed in his defence that he could not reasonably have expected one punch to kill a man, and was acquitted. So the victim’s daughter started a public awareness campaign, with the aim of making it impossible to succeed at that claim again.
The D&D model of accumulating damage is mostly wrong: people are not trees. When people are violently killed, it is usually because one of the attacks has caused a fatal injury. There is nothing to prevent the first, or the only, attack from being the one. Besides which, people who are knocked down by a punch sometimes strike their heads in their falls.
Blows to the head are especially dangerous. Even if the bones of the skull are not broken, the brain can be damaged by concussion if the head is either sharply accelerated or rapidly rotated. Also, there can be injuries to the neck, causing e.g. paraplegia or quadriplegia.
Freemage
Actually, the D&D model is actually pretty accurate for that–characters in D&D really have three health descriptors: Fine (“1 or more hit points”), Incapacitated (“0 hp, or maybe some negative amount depending on edition”), and Dead. Any blow that doesn’t knock you out at least (and which has a high probability of killing you if it does) is going to leave you largely unimpaired in the long run, but may make you more vulnerable to subsequent blows because of momentary fatigue. (Essentially, hit points are less a measure of how much damage you can take, as they are a measure of your ability to cope with lesser injuries, combined with your luck in evading serious damage.)
thejeff
Some what. Though it doesn’t really work as well when you’re mostly dealing with bladed weapons and things and they’re actually hurting you. And screws it all up by making non-magical healing treat them as serious wounds not just momentary fatigue.
Plus, while I haven’t been in serious fights, I’ve gotten hurt often enough to know there’s a lot of space between “Fine” and “Incapacitated”. Even minor injuries can put you at a serious handicap, without leaving you unable to act at all.
@CJ Every story from the last ten years I can remember from German media where people died from fistfights involved more than one punch.
You must have somehow missed this story, which was on every media after it happened.
CJ
@Amazi-Stool: You are right, I had forgotten about that one.
(Just proves memory bias, I suppose, i.e. we tend to remember things that match our world view better than those not fitting in).
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who attacked someone else physically without having been attacked by that party first and it ends in the attacked person dying should be handled as murderer with at least 15 years. 3 years is a joke.
While true, look at the last panel closely – unless it got edited a bit afterward, it looks like he nailed him in the cheek, given the flush of red there. Definitely could’ve been “staged” a bit better if that’s the case, though.
Agemegos
Looks to me like he hit his from behind. But that doesn’t matter; a hit on the cheek that slew’s a person’s head around like that and knocks them off their feet can inflict fatal or crippling injuries to the brain or neck.
Agemegos
uggh, typos.
Terry
In addition, it looks like the punch threw him off balance. He appears to be falling. He is standing near steps, a low wall, and a whole bunch of concrete. If he falls and hits his head, that will cause added damage and can also result in death. Lots of solid things to impact as well as sharp edges.
Agemegos
I can’t tell which what Asher is facing.
Panels 4 and 6 of the last strip show him as having his back to Walky and Amber and looking over his left shoulder to address them, and that’s what I thought we had in frames 2, 4, and 5 here. And if that’s right Walky punched him in the back of the head or the neck, by surprise.
But I guess it’s possible that Asher turned back to face Amber and Walky, and then turned his head to the right while casting his eyes left to look at them sidelong. And in that case Walky might have struck him in the cheek. But that seems like a very strange thing for Asher to have done.
Agemegos
Dammit!
“which way Asher is facing”
OBBWG
Asher was 3/4 back turned to Walky. Walky either hit him in the cheek from behind (over the shoulder) or Walky stepped around and hit him in the face from the front. The position of the cigarette suggests the latter.
Though usually, its not the punch that’s lethal. The punch renders a person unconscious, and then they fall head first onto concrete that causes a fatal injury.
He _doesn’t_ deserve this. The incident was years ago, he was 13, and now he’s apologizing for it.
He may well turn out to be still a dickhead later in this storyline, but for now, as far as these characters know, he’s basically Sal.
He Who Abides
Until he apologizes to Sal, he abso-fucking-lutely DOES deserve this and more. Walky’s sticking up for his sister rather than being this asshat’s errand boy, and hopefully getting sucker-punched will knock some sense into him.
GoblinScribe
I think their point is that Sal only actually apologized literally, like, last chapter.
BBCC
In Sal’s defence, she only found out who Amber and Ethan were in that same chapter.
DailyBrad
Yeah, Sal was clearly remorseful, but you can’t very well direct an apology to someone without knowing who to give it to.
As for Asher, oof. He didn’t know Sal went to this college, I think, unless I am misreading his previous statements, so maybe he simply hasn’t had the opportunity to apologize, but he sure seems pretty blase about all this.
HMH
I mean, he comes from a background where he was knocking over corner stores as a pre-teen. It probably was a blase part of his life.
Bryy
He never apologized to Sal. He does deserve anger. He even basically just admitted that he’s not really sorry, only sorry that thirteen year old him did something wrong. Only it’s not a normal thirteen year old blunder, it is a huge Real World Thing.
Asher is a dude that thinks it was okay to do some horrible trauma because he was young.
Tan
I would take his apology more seriously if he weren’t smirking in panel 2.
Terry
I didn’t take it as a smirk. I thought it was more of a self-depreciating smile. Sort of “I was a dumb kid and did a dumb thing.” This is reinforced by his admission that the outcome wasn’t funny. He didn’t think things through when he was a kid and the end result was not what he expected it to be. He didn’t mean it to be malicious. It doesn’t excuse what happened, but at least the outcome wasn’t on purpose. And the way he appears to be acting, it may have been a wake-up call for him that turned his life around. He may come off initially as a cocky jerk, but that could be a defense mechanism for his feelings of regret.
Tan
Yeah, no, you don’t get to look back on the “dumb” (malicious, pre-planned, whole reason he gave her the knife, would’ve done whether she tried to rob another store or not) thing you did and smile when SOMEONE ELSE was the one hurt by it, unless you’ve already made amends
Terry
I didn’t say it was tactful, just not malicious. As I mentioned, he does come off as a cocky jerk.
Orange Lantern
If that qualifies as an apology to you, you really need to up your standards.
People have been losing teeth for less.
Blazing Ace
Oh no, Asher absolutely deserved that. there is no time limit on accountability.
I previously thought that she may have, but I am less sure now, especially since he’s not saying this in a way that implies to me he ever told her, and given the second panel, he was probably long gone by the time the cops got there, so the cops may have had no idea who placed the call, much less her.
He deserves a punch, maybe. I think that’s probably for Sal to decide.
Tell me, would you say that he has got his deserts now, and no longer deserves to be punched? Or do Sal, Amber, Ethan, the super-decent clerk, Linda, Charles, Blaine, and the management of the company that owned the convenience store get to line up and take their shots?
Walky is not authorised by the laws either of God or of Man to judge what Asher deserves and to inflict the punishment.
He might’ve survived had he not smiled at the memory. That’s not the face of someone who feels remorse over their actions. As is, people will take turns punching him.
I think it was a bit of a wry, “I was a dumb kid, huh?” smile, but yeah, you’re not gonna get away with a smile of any kind when you’ve got his current “audience.”
306 thoughts on “Trail”
Meta
😮
Meta
I saw “pow” and went oh shit is Amber gonna hit him? This wasn’t where I saw it going
Agemegos
Just in case anyone didn’t know:
Public service announcement
A sucker-punch can kill.
In Australia between 2010 and 2014, 91 people were killed in “one punch attacks”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucker_punch#As_a_crime
BBCC
Any sufficiently hard blunt force trauma can kill, especially to the head.
Agemegos
Yes, and a punch, just one punch, can be sufficiently hard.
Do not do this for shits and giggles
BBCC
I am well aware, which is why I said it can be any sufficient blunt force trauma, not just a sucker punch. Don’t fuck around with throwing punches, especially to the head.
Agemegos
I am glad that we are in vigorous agreement.
BBCC
Yeah, fictional punches are fine. Real punches? Not so much.
Agemegos
Just so. This is a comic strip, where superheroing on the backs of speeding cars doesn’t end up with you going under the wheels of the car behind, and a smack-down drag-out fight between Amber and Sal on a flight of concrete stairs doesn’t end up with broken ribs, concussions, and teeth knocked out. It is even worth considering the stratagem of turning into a Utahraptor.
But out here in the real world? The common belief that punching someone in the head will at worst put them to sleep for twenty minutes, the game of sucker-punching strangers outside nightclubs because it’s funny to watch them twitch, besides demonstrating large-testicled manliness? Those things get people killed, or crippled for life.
BBCC
Yeah, real punches are not fun.
CJ
@Agemegos:
That’s a thing? People get more crazy ideas then I could ever imagine.
I always thought the ‘ oh sorry, I just punched once and now she’s dead’ trope was just one of the many lies guys tell to avoid responsibility. There are actually proven cases of that? Every story from the last ten years I can remember from German media where people died from fistfights involved more than one punch.
Bacon
@CJ
It happens. A couple years back in my town, guy went into a coma after being punched once in the back of the head while he was just sitting at a bar minding his own business. He hasn’t woken up and it’s increasingly looking like he just won’t ever.
All because this town has two football teams, and tribal mindsets make violence between supporters common.
Agemegos
@CJ Yes, it absolutely is a thing. Here is a news article about an event in Sydney some years ago. The main story is about a young man killed by a single punch and the ensuing fall. It notes that another man was in the same hospital the same night who had been punched 25 times in the head but who was discharged in the morning.
We had a case in Queensland (the state adjacent to the north of where I live) in which a fellow was charged with manslaughter after he killed his brother’s ex-wife’s father, who had come to collect his (the victim’s) grandchild after a weekend with their father. He claimed in his defence that he could not reasonably have expected one punch to kill a man, and was acquitted. So the victim’s daughter started a public awareness campaign, with the aim of making it impossible to succeed at that claim again.
The D&D model of accumulating damage is mostly wrong: people are not trees. When people are violently killed, it is usually because one of the attacks has caused a fatal injury. There is nothing to prevent the first, or the only, attack from being the one. Besides which, people who are knocked down by a punch sometimes strike their heads in their falls.
Blows to the head are especially dangerous. Even if the bones of the skull are not broken, the brain can be damaged by concussion if the head is either sharply accelerated or rapidly rotated. Also, there can be injuries to the neck, causing e.g. paraplegia or quadriplegia.
Freemage
Actually, the D&D model is actually pretty accurate for that–characters in D&D really have three health descriptors: Fine (“1 or more hit points”), Incapacitated (“0 hp, or maybe some negative amount depending on edition”), and Dead. Any blow that doesn’t knock you out at least (and which has a high probability of killing you if it does) is going to leave you largely unimpaired in the long run, but may make you more vulnerable to subsequent blows because of momentary fatigue. (Essentially, hit points are less a measure of how much damage you can take, as they are a measure of your ability to cope with lesser injuries, combined with your luck in evading serious damage.)
thejeff
Some what. Though it doesn’t really work as well when you’re mostly dealing with bladed weapons and things and they’re actually hurting you. And screws it all up by making non-magical healing treat them as serious wounds not just momentary fatigue.
Plus, while I haven’t been in serious fights, I’ve gotten hurt often enough to know there’s a lot of space between “Fine” and “Incapacitated”. Even minor injuries can put you at a serious handicap, without leaving you unable to act at all.
Amazi-Stool
@CJ
Every story from the last ten years I can remember from German media where people died from fistfights involved more than one punch.
You must have somehow missed this story, which was on every media after it happened.
CJ
@Amazi-Stool: You are right, I had forgotten about that one.
(Just proves memory bias, I suppose, i.e. we tend to remember things that match our world view better than those not fitting in).
As far as I’m concerned, anyone who attacked someone else physically without having been attacked by that party first and it ends in the attacked person dying should be handled as murderer with at least 15 years. 3 years is a joke.
Stu
While true, look at the last panel closely – unless it got edited a bit afterward, it looks like he nailed him in the cheek, given the flush of red there. Definitely could’ve been “staged” a bit better if that’s the case, though.
Agemegos
Looks to me like he hit his from behind. But that doesn’t matter; a hit on the cheek that slew’s a person’s head around like that and knocks them off their feet can inflict fatal or crippling injuries to the brain or neck.
Agemegos
uggh, typos.
Terry
In addition, it looks like the punch threw him off balance. He appears to be falling. He is standing near steps, a low wall, and a whole bunch of concrete. If he falls and hits his head, that will cause added damage and can also result in death. Lots of solid things to impact as well as sharp edges.
Agemegos
I can’t tell which what Asher is facing.
Panels 4 and 6 of the last strip show him as having his back to Walky and Amber and looking over his left shoulder to address them, and that’s what I thought we had in frames 2, 4, and 5 here. And if that’s right Walky punched him in the back of the head or the neck, by surprise.
But I guess it’s possible that Asher turned back to face Amber and Walky, and then turned his head to the right while casting his eyes left to look at them sidelong. And in that case Walky might have struck him in the cheek. But that seems like a very strange thing for Asher to have done.
Agemegos
Dammit!
“which way Asher is facing”
OBBWG
Asher was 3/4 back turned to Walky. Walky either hit him in the cheek from behind (over the shoulder) or Walky stepped around and hit him in the face from the front. The position of the cigarette suggests the latter.
Risky
Also calling the cops on a person of color. Potential Death Sentence.
Solenoid
I know it’s not funny, but my mind leapt right to “One Punch Man!” as a response and now I feel like a heel.
Gojira
Though usually, its not the punch that’s lethal. The punch renders a person unconscious, and then they fall head first onto concrete that causes a fatal injury.
ValdVin
Wow, Walky!
foamy
That’s a helluva punch
jimbotherisenclown
Your avatar makes that comment read VERY differently, ValdVin.
ValdVin
Yeah, it’s not very attuned to today’s strip. Even less so if you know the source.
Danielle
DUDE
Ana Chronistic
Sal, later, unironically: “good job, bro”
Wizard
That is some quality sibling bonding.
Johan
Tbh I still see them reconciling somehow.
Shadowypenguin
they are guys and i think asher knows what he did to deserve this so i agree
Durandal_1707
He _doesn’t_ deserve this. The incident was years ago, he was 13, and now he’s apologizing for it.
He may well turn out to be still a dickhead later in this storyline, but for now, as far as these characters know, he’s basically Sal.
He Who Abides
Until he apologizes to Sal, he abso-fucking-lutely DOES deserve this and more. Walky’s sticking up for his sister rather than being this asshat’s errand boy, and hopefully getting sucker-punched will knock some sense into him.
GoblinScribe
I think their point is that Sal only actually apologized literally, like, last chapter.
BBCC
In Sal’s defence, she only found out who Amber and Ethan were in that same chapter.
DailyBrad
Yeah, Sal was clearly remorseful, but you can’t very well direct an apology to someone without knowing who to give it to.
As for Asher, oof. He didn’t know Sal went to this college, I think, unless I am misreading his previous statements, so maybe he simply hasn’t had the opportunity to apologize, but he sure seems pretty blase about all this.
HMH
I mean, he comes from a background where he was knocking over corner stores as a pre-teen. It probably was a blase part of his life.
Bryy
He never apologized to Sal. He does deserve anger. He even basically just admitted that he’s not really sorry, only sorry that thirteen year old him did something wrong. Only it’s not a normal thirteen year old blunder, it is a huge Real World Thing.
Asher is a dude that thinks it was okay to do some horrible trauma because he was young.
Tan
I would take his apology more seriously if he weren’t smirking in panel 2.
Terry
I didn’t take it as a smirk. I thought it was more of a self-depreciating smile. Sort of “I was a dumb kid and did a dumb thing.” This is reinforced by his admission that the outcome wasn’t funny. He didn’t think things through when he was a kid and the end result was not what he expected it to be. He didn’t mean it to be malicious. It doesn’t excuse what happened, but at least the outcome wasn’t on purpose. And the way he appears to be acting, it may have been a wake-up call for him that turned his life around. He may come off initially as a cocky jerk, but that could be a defense mechanism for his feelings of regret.
Tan
Yeah, no, you don’t get to look back on the “dumb” (malicious, pre-planned, whole reason he gave her the knife, would’ve done whether she tried to rob another store or not) thing you did and smile when SOMEONE ELSE was the one hurt by it, unless you’ve already made amends
Terry
I didn’t say it was tactful, just not malicious. As I mentioned, he does come off as a cocky jerk.
Orange Lantern
If that qualifies as an apology to you, you really need to up your standards.
People have been losing teeth for less.
Blazing Ace
Oh no, Asher absolutely deserved that. there is no time limit on accountability.
newllend(henryvolt)
WORLDSTAR!
mrnoidea
*snicker*
Sam
I CALLED IT. I am vindicated.
foamy
Wish I’d logged my prediction that it was a troika & the wolves scenario, but yeah.
J
So like… I’m never a fan of violence, yadda yadda.
That being said… FUCK YEAH WALKY FUCK HIM UP. \o/
Viktoria
So, odds that Sal already figured this out and moved on?
DailyBrad
I previously thought that she may have, but I am less sure now, especially since he’s not saying this in a way that implies to me he ever told her, and given the second panel, he was probably long gone by the time the cops got there, so the cops may have had no idea who placed the call, much less her.
ADLegend21
BEAT HIS ASS WALKY!!!!!
Lia47
GET HIS ASS
William Leonard Reese Jr.
. . . Yeah he deserves that punch. Completely.
Agemegos
He deserves a punch, maybe. I think that’s probably for Sal to decide.
Tell me, would you say that he has got his deserts now, and no longer deserves to be punched? Or do Sal, Amber, Ethan, the super-decent clerk, Linda, Charles, Blaine, and the management of the company that owned the convenience store get to line up and take their shots?
Walky is not authorised by the laws either of God or of Man to judge what Asher deserves and to inflict the punishment.
Whiplash
Fuck the law
Anywhere
SNITCHES GET STITCHES, bongoES
Lia47
wait oh my god is the bongo filter actually still a thing
Jamie
why not
3oranges
SNONGOES GET STONGOES
Leorale
bongos get strong-blows, to the head, you see
Agemegos
I know! Soon we won’t be allowed to use any gendered slurs!
jimbotherisenclown
I’m curious if there are any other filters in place, but I don’t want to start spamming curses just to find out.
Marsh Maryrose
I think the Scongahorpe fillter is still in place.
Marsh Maryrose
It’s the name of a city in England, fer crying out loud.
Marsh Maryrose
It’s pronounced scun-thorpe for those who are wondering. Also spelled that way but without the hyphen.
Mollyscribbles
He might’ve survived had he not smiled at the memory. That’s not the face of someone who feels remorse over their actions. As is, people will take turns punching him.
TemporalShrew
I think it was a bit of a wry, “I was a dumb kid, huh?” smile, but yeah, you’re not gonna get away with a smile of any kind when you’ve got his current “audience.”