BAM!
Okay, I kinda lied in the previous post about Baso struggling with his decision. Well, I’m sure he struggled a little bit, but probably not nearly as much as he should have.
I’ve been wanting to do a scene like this for a loonnnnggg time. It’s something that really irks me every time I see it in some other story when a character is seduced to the dark side and goes all evil, only to be talked back to the side of good with a few choice words about “soul searching.” That always seems to snap the character back, and in doing so, it kinda lessens the hold and power of the evil in my eyes. I don’t know. It just seems like a bit of a cop out to me.
For me, the biggest offender was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6, in which (spoiler alert!) the season builds to Willow going all evil witch, only to be talked down in the end by Xander. Overall, I really loved the entire Buffy series and when I say “biggest offender,” it’s only because the bar was set so high for that show in general. The writers almost always did something unexpected and certainly weren’t afraid to defy expectations and go the unconventional route. So I was fairly disappointed when they resolved that particular storyline in that particular way.
So Baso shooting Goshen is my deliberate attempt to “go the other way.”
As an additional note, I think Goshen’s death is especially tragic in that he dies thinking he’s lost Keyla as well. It’s just a misunderstanding on his part, but I like that it doesn’t get resolved and there isn’t time to straighten things out before he dies. It just makes his death that much sadder for me.
If Keyla toasts Baso with a KV flame staff, oh how delicious that would be.
Cember: “She did say he would burn for that…”
Bennesaud: “Shut up, Cember.”
Cember: “Just saying the girl delivers…”
Bennesaud: “Shut up, Cember.”
I am almost rooting for Baso to shoot Keyla simply because, to me, that would make him an actual monster beyond redemption and there are not enough characters like that. Especially if Baso survives and turns up in a KV party in the future.
On an aesthetic note, I genuinely love the angle of the top panel. It adds so much to the dynamic impact of it, as no doubt was the intent, but the entire scene from the blast to goshen’s arms/horn/braids just seem perfect.
Well you know if WIllow hadn’t been talked down it would’ve been the End Of The World, which she was fixing to make happen at the time. She had also become too powerful to stop by force (magical or otherwise), so basically talking was the only option left.
As for the comic, I thought Baso looked like he had made up his mind to shoot in the last comic page, and I agree with Exxos that you composed that art of that moment to make it as dramatic as it should have been, well done. And like Exxos, I’m curious to see if he’ll kill Keyla as well, since that would indeed make him a unsympathetic monster beyond redemption-which would be a nice change from all the sympathetic villains prevalent today, even ones formerly known as complete monsters.
Very powerful scene and build up. Good job as it really hit me.
The unsympathetic monster beyond redemption idea sounds nice, but by shooting Keyla you also lose the person that holds the biggest grudge against him. Well, there is Clem as a good second, but Keyla seems like a more rich source for future story lines.
I guess Baso could be a kind of mirror character for Bocce. Bocce could despise him for killing his own kin to join the KV. Although in this case it would help if he was present at the scene.
Or imagine this: Baso is set to shoot Keyla. Bocce rescues Keyla. At the end of this issue Baso is kicked out of the KV for not meeting the requirements. Baso hates Bocce for taking away his future and decides to hunt down Keyla in a desperate attempt to make up to the KV.