The Young Protectors: Engaging The Enemy Chapter 5—Page 4-5

November 8, 2016 Alex Woolfson 149 Comments

Go, Mitch, go!

(This page is a double-page spread. To see the high-res version, please click here.)

Thank you to everyone in the U.S. who voted today (or early!) You are all rock stars. 🙂

So! Looks like Flyboy’s wasn’t kidding when he said he’d been thinking up ways to use his powers in a fight! Will he be able to keep Laampros’ forces from “controlling the air”?

Tune in this Saturday to find out! Hope to see you there! 😀

Liked it? Take a second to support Alex Woolfson on Patreon!

149 Comments

That was efficient!

Damn XD I accidently clicked a link when trying to click Post. Had to wait for it to appear, close tab and post. The same moment I did your post appeared.

Victory!!

Go Mitch!

Lookit Mitch!

Oh yes! YES! YES! YES!!!!!
and once more YES!!!

good work Mitch!

oh poo!
I keep closing the wrong window of the 10 that are open!
bad Dave! bad Dave!

I had the wrong address first, and then managed to click a link. My nerves are way too high for a hunt tonight.

Usually I can see my email and I see PATREON’s notices arrive but my email was behind something that I now lost. I can’t even remember what I had open.
bad Dave! bad Dave!

look at that throwing pose! you go Mitch, do the thing
what’s the next step, besides the obvious

Strike!

Get it, Mitch!

This page makes me feel better about the day.

Go Mitch!!

I had puppy duty. You’re welcome. 😉

oh, Mitch *can* do the grab-and-spin attack. Good.

Oh! just realised. Double page spread.

Ancient Proverb says: Don’t mess with The Mitch.

Also: WHEE!!!

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers just won Prop 64 in California. Keep on Toke-ing…
(nothing to do with our heroes)

I love you Mitch! Keep going! 🙂

Doki has comfort/stress brownies in the oven. She added orange extract to the mix and made a peppermint icing to top it with. Hoping they turn out okay. Will eat them anyway.

Sounds like an excellent idea to me.

Waiting for them to cool enough to ice

Float like a butterfly sting like a bee~~
Or like me, hmm along like a bumblebee ^^

Nice page, but I wanted more demon daddy!

In other news, stupid election. There’s a gorgeous man running for senate in my state, and he’s LOSING! Why did the women not vote!? Or the gay men!? This guy is model-sexy! I would watch senate debates if he was there.

Maybe it’s his platform. Just because he’s cute doesn’t mean his platform and ideologies are.

He was a democratic soldier who actually fought in Iraq and his platform was a lot of benefits for the disabled and veterans, especially. His opponent was a Republican who’s held office for 20 years. Missouri chose to go with the guy they had when I was 10 years old, still. Stagnate, Missouri, stagnate…this is why I want to move states.

Laampros is going to have a fit when he sees this.

I want to enjoy this…and, yes, it’s a great page…but right now I feel ill, sad and even a bit frightened. If the arrival of Laampros were are only problem! Sorry to be a downer…

Everything would be so much easier to bear if we knew that some Greater Good could swoop in and save us despite all difficulties. You don’t know how much I wish that that was the case 🙁

Ooof. Waking up in Amsterdam to the world news makes this page seem appropriate. Wish there was a real Mitch to fight for us all.

If you think a bit more of this, I hope that you will agree that fighting an election result with violence is a very disturbing thought,

Of course. I’ve never used violence in any protests I participated in.

Fighting an election result is, but fighting a racist, homophobic, antisemitic, misogynistic, child rapist pseudo-fascist (if not regular fascist) isn’t a very disturbing thought at all.

Trump not only declared that he is for LGBT rights, he got the republican convention to stand up and cheer at this announcement.

I would have prefered Clinton, but I do not think that Trump is nearly as bad as his opponents have painted him.

Trump claims to be for LGBT…. his VP supports “conversion therapy”, including electro-shock.

Trump has stated he wants to roll back LGBT protections, wants to allow gays to be fire. Sorry, he is as bad as he’s been painted.

Hate to bring up politics, but right now i’m just upset about the election. This page makes me feel a little better.

Focusing on the comics. Aside from how this scene is actually resolved (I fully expect that Mitch’s actions aren’t even a serious setback for the demons) am I the only one who detects a certain pattern here?

“Flyboy” really doesn’t do justice to the nature or scale of Mitch’s powers, and from what he himself thought in the side story a lot of it depends on what he thinks he can actually do (like if he gets hit with an object if he can “convince himself” that the object is actually “travelling with him” he can pretty much ignore its inertia) so it’s quite possible he’s nowhere near his full potential. Plus it could be the Jubilee case where his powers are still developing.

Fluke’s powers “aren’t really well understood”, basically he has luck, but he needs to charge it or deal with an equivalent “negative” charge, but then when he has bad luck it’s, sort of, good luck because his good luck is likely to compensate for the damage later? Does him having a streak of super-bad-luck is his power actually “charging” for the future, somehow “knowing” that he’ll need it soon? How is the equivalence of good and bad luck judged? I mentioned it before but the “luck based superheroes” can vary from just getting slightly better survival odds to messing up probability (and even causality) on a cosmic scale.

Kyle may or may not be a son of a literal god king of hell, which makes you wonder what magical potential or other tricks may be waiting to be uncovered. Like, could he command demons based on his heritage alone? (That last bit is actually something I expect to come up, with Laampross possibly overruling him) I will point out that he did manage to harm Anni with his flames eventually, even if under exceptional circumstances, who was surprised at this. Which I think is relevant because we were meant to believe Annihilator is an A list villain, not some kind of Luke Cage’s “really strong mobster”, so you’d expect he went toe-to-toe with A list heroes and knows the limits of his invulnerability.

Spooky is also an odd case because, if I understand it correctly, there’s
pretty much nobody in the world except for PP who could actually
measure his powers, or give him training. There may be some scholarly
types who know the theory of magic but aren’t practitioners themselves (assuming there’s a difference in this world)
and so didn’t go crazy but it’s still not the same thing.

What I’m saying is that all the “charges” of the group (assuming Spoky is actually a “charge”) seem to be at least a couple more levels above what they were led to believe. While this could be somewhat justified by them being considered kids, their powers still developing, being kept in the dark for their own good and so on and so forth… it is an odd coincidence that this should be the case with all of them.

Edit: Oh my, this ended up a real wall of text. I may or may not put way too much thought into comics. What can I say, I’m both an old and an old-school kind of nerd. So anyway, who would win…

Commander is using Mitch. It is very effective.

xDD

all good for now, keep it going Mitch!!!!

Oh, Mitch. You’re so amazing. You just need to be a tad older. 😉

I almost didn’t come here, because the parallels are too great, except that what is happening here did not happen in real life in my country. I am sick right now, and I can’t sleep, eat or think straight. My heart is palpating rapidly at times, and I have a true sense of fear for the future. I am a queer, black woman in a country that just elected a man endorsed by the Klu Klux Klan. I don’t know what is to become of me, and my safety, since I live in (I now realize) the Deep South. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go to school today; I have been falling behind because of the PTSD I’ve been having over the election, and it looks like that’s not going to stop anytime soon. I still can’t bring myself to watch or read the news since just before they called it last night. I hope this fight scene does not take too long; I need some monsters vanquished soon. *sob*

Please don’t give up or give in. So many people are here for you today. *hug*

I wish there was something I could say that would help. But I really don’t know what that could be.

Everything that has made America great has survived for more than 200 years. We’ll survive this. We have each other.

*Hugs* The important thing is to never give up. There’s still much to do, much improvement to fight for.

I’m not from the US and there’s a limited amount of comfort I (who grew up in Saudi) can offer for when it seems like your country is going to hell around you, or at least wants to send you there. I can’t even offer you refuge, because if you got over here my flat is too small for anyone else to fit. But there is something I can offer, I don’t know if it will help.

I’m white, I suppose, (the old world is rather more tribal than that) and I’m in a position of relative privilege. I feel that should be acknowledged before I say this. I’ve been interested in west African history and culture for a long time now. Years. And what that means practically speaking is that I’ve collected a lot of books. Because most libraries, even specialist ones, don’t tend to stock a lot of books. The easiest way to learn has often been to buy something, which puts a price tag on history and puts it out of many people’s reach. I’ve been meaning to do something like this (on a more local level) for a while, I was hoping to do it this October for Black History month, but I’ve been having some pretty serious mental health issues and I was in and out of doctors all October.

Would you like some books? Digital copies. Links. Because I imagine you are going to be told (are being told perhaps) that you have no history. That’s not true. And I can’t help you with your country’s politics but I can show you beautiful things that I know are hard to see otherwise. You deserve them.

Does your offer extend to non-Americans? I have a sponsor boy in Togo. He is an Ewe. I have not been able to find much about the Ewe people and their culture. Can you recommend anything?

It does extend to non-Americans and I’ve had the same problem. As far as I can gather from the books I have the Ewe had the misfortune of being stuck between two much more powerful Empires for a lot of written history. They had Ashanti in modern Ghana (and I think the modern spelling is Asante) to the west and Dahomey to the east. These were two powerful, organised military forces, Ewe may well have been caught between them.

But another possibility (that I’ll have to look into more) is that the Ewe came to that area later. A massive period of war and empire-building to the north in Mali and….quite a way to the east and west actually displaced a lot of people in western Africa during the 1700-1800s. It caused instability along the coast, led to the collapse of some Kingdoms and fed into and encouraged the slave trade. In the same way that a lot of Yoruba people fled south towards the coast for greater safety (the Oyo Yoruba even moved their capital city-) I think it’s possible that the Ewe might have moved to Togo to escape problems elsewhere.

Both of these suggestions are conjecture based on what I know of the wider area historically and the fact I haven’t seen any historical mention of the Ewe. Another, simpler, possibility is just that Europeans used to call them something different (happened a lot), or confused them for Dahomeans (I believe the languages are similar, Ewe and Twi).

I’ll have another look through what I have. But I’m afraid I don’t remember anything concrete.

The Ewe has always had the firm tradition that a chief rules only one village. That makes them less visible to historians than empire builders like the Yoruba.

True- although there’s a debate in their about different ways of viewing leadership within west Africa as well as outside it. I’m flipping through the book I recommended and finding references to multiple terms for Ewe people. Their current invisibility in my books might well be due to different people using different names. I can try and make a note and cross reference but I’m not sure how much I’ll find.

*hugs*

*hugs*
I’m not sure what to say other than this….
We are here to help you and support you!
Keep pushing forwards and keep your eyes open for a brighter future.

Keep your heart open and let in all the love that already surrounds you. Don’t let the hate get to you.
<3
*more hugs*

Kicking demon butt, and looking so photogenic at the same time… 😛

We tried to hold back Trump; we really did. But he came through the gate anyway. Hope you can save us, guys.

*sob* I was just thinking this after reading http://xkcd.com/1756/
*sniffle*

Hey, can we get Laampros for president? He might be a better choice. America’s going to hell, why not get someone who knows the place? To quote a Supernatural meme out there…

Why settle for the lesser of two evils?

A demon king…an orange creep…or a woman who looks like a dead-eyed robot…I vote demon king.

Who knew I could actually get excited about politics for once.

@ian_corral:disqus
This is me being …nice,
Gloating for Trump here, right now, isnt going to win you any friends.

Especially after you, in Contradiction to the words of our host , @alexwoolfson:disqus , tried to suppress the vote and actively discouraged turnout.

You are welcome to your own views, but people here are concerned about mass violence, being targeted for hatred, and having the civil rights stripped away. These are all legitimate fears.
They didnt go away, they blew up.

Please consider your words carefully. ,

No they aren’t. People are blowing this out of proportion. But whatever happens, it doesn’t affect me.

When they’re done with the others, they’ll find a reason to come for you as well. Enjoy the luxury of your apathy while you can

See the thing about that is that it rarely happens. That’s the remark of someone who is unable to adapt.

Ian, making statements/assumptions about other commenters abilities is against the terms of our Comment Policy. Please review that Policy and keep it about the ideas from now on.

As for everyone else, the points in this thread have been made and I am now closing it. Let’s move on.

I want to leave this thought on politics:
I worked in the US Gov for 30 years and six presidents: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, G HW Bush, Bill Clinton, GW Bush — and then I could retire. The world never stopped spinning when administrations changed. The USA did not fall into ashes. I still get those damn little ants in my house every summer.
So that is it until the next presidential election.

This double page is spectacular — The action sweeps across the page. The figures move and it draws our eyes through it. The colors jump off the page and make the action more exciting. I perfectly presents the hidden portions of Mitch’s powers to affect all things in the air.

I hope you’re right. But on the other hand: once upon a time, in a land far from yours, but at least geographically identical to mine, there was a Politician collecting those who felt they got too little. He attacked minorities in ways not seen before, promised to make the nation big again, and claimed the political establishment to be corrupt. People thought, his bite couldn’t be as bad as his bark, and that office would tame him. They were so wrong.

Ultimately, I just don’t know what to do with the reality that the popular vote was so close, that so much of America voted for these men whose platforms are composed exclusively of hate and scapegoating, these men who stand against everything that inspired me about my country as a child. With the Senate, and the House Republican, I am afraid of how much they will be able to pass. But mostly I am afraid that the people who make up my democracy don’t believe in the country that I do.

This isn’t my story, it happened before I was born. My father’s country used to be one place. It’s a small island and it’s surprisingly diverse for it’s size. There was a history of racial tension but for quite some time everyone mostly seemed to get along. My grandfather grew up in a mixed town in the north. When my father was a boy politicians began standing on more and more bigoted racially based platforms. Gangs of people from my father’s ethnic group attacked people of the other main ethnic group. It ended when a near by country invaded the north, to protect members of their race.

A wall was built through my father’s country. I mean that quite literally. I’ve gone up to it. I’ve peered over it. I’ve never seen the other side. My grandfather died unable to go back to his childhood home and he cried telling me about the friends he knew he’d never see and the way politicians stole his country. He told me they are thieves.

My father and my uncle don’t really talk about it but they felt free to spew racial hatred throughout my childhood. They tried to teach me to hate the people on the other side of the wall and they didn’t want to talk about the empty shells of villages, the boarded up houses. I’ve never hated the people on the other side of the wall I do feel deeply sad about it though. That we are so literally divided by race. It isn’t right. It can’t be. My Grandfather knew that, I imagine a great many other people of his generation did. But it’s only in the last few years, in mine, that people have really been allowed across the wall.

I don’t imagine that is any comfort. But this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, it won’t be the last. There are other people across the world who have lived through this. Off the top of my head I can think of Biafra, Cyprus, Palestine, Poland. There are more. And their stories, the way they survived and held on to hope, that might help. I hope it does.

And it makes great wallpaper on my laptop.

Hm, that’s true with President who actually give a damn about the rules, which does not seem to be the case with this guy. He can do a lot of damage in very little time, plus he will also enable certain behaviors: sexism, assaults, racism. This kind of societal reversions need years to heal. And, there’s been numerous case of political systems overturned by one guy in time of crisis. I really hope to be wrong here, though.

Compared to what Germany suffered in the 1920’s, there is no crisis in the US. Back then people who had saved all their lives for their retirement found that their savings would not buy a postage stamp. The US constitution also has much more acceptance and support than had the Weimar republic, which was new and felt by many to be imposed by the victors of WWI. Yes, a Trump administration will be bad. Especially worrisome is that it is likely that he will get to appoint more than one supreme court justice. That will change the US for decades to come. And he will not spend one cent to fight global warming. But he is no Hitler. Even if he wanted to (and I do not think that he does) he would not be able to grab dictatorial power.

Indeed, but there many other ways to be incredibly bad than becoming Hitler. I don’t think Trump wants to invade countries to make them his own for example. Germany was in a total state of decay after world war I The USA are not. Trump has much more power now than Hitler had when he was elected. Every political, military, economical decisions the US make have deep impacts everywhere in the world. Again, I want badly to be wrong and it may be just the shock speaking. But I also want people not to go back to apathy in the face of the rising of fascists and proto-fascists everywhere in the “western world”. We have to realise this is happening and move our little butts.

It’s only Day 2 and I’m already seeing reports of Trumpsters hurting gay people (usually while these creeps are operating in packs, the @$#!%^&@# cowards), Muslims, blacks and Latinos, all across the country. Let’s see how things look at the end of the week, after they really get going and lose what little fear of legal persecution they have left. So far, I’ve heard of no arrests. Stay safe, people, travel together and keep your phones handy. I’ve lost what trust I had in the goodness of my fellow citizens in the last 48 hours.

That is horrible.

Merely by signaling hes willing to look the other way,real damage can happen.

And it is about time that a President was elected that takes the ants situation seriously and has a proper policy to keep them out of our houses.

Trying to go for humour; because my country has several pollies that have stated they will refuse to work with the U.S. with Trump in charge and who even knows what is going to happen.

I live in Aberdeen, Scotland and have had to endure this slimey creep pretending he’s Scottish and annoying everyone by acting like the messiah. I hope he runs your country differently than he treats mine!

US people, we (the European people) feel for you. Those who haven’t vote for these guys have our full support, and the others too, because, aside from a small minority, most of them will suffer too. But we are also scared for ourselves, because of what could happen with this guy on command, and also because this might also happen to us. Elections are next year in France, and things are already going south in several of our member states (and in one of our soon to be ex member).

And the page is great, Alex, Adam and Veronica. Sorry for not being able to appreciate it fully today…

woohoo! go mitch!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Ice(is Mitch playing Angel or Spike?).

I see Mitch as a less-desperately-patheric Xander, to be honest.

So depressed about the election.

In my county, third-party candidates got 1300 votes, and Clinton got 4500. Why do people have to be so stupid?

This page is so beautiful in the full resolution, two page spread. I love how Mitch, who is so small compared to the monsters, manages to foil and confuse two of them into the ground. Sometimes being small is good.

I refuse to talk about anything political because if you’re disabled, well, yea, I’m not discussing it.

HOWEVER, I will discuss my horse stuff because that’s happy and awesome and MINDBLOWING. I stayed after my horse lesson to volunteer to help me feel better because horse’s are just balm for the soul (I swear, they really are.) We got three new ponies over the weekend who are seriously adorable, but what really interested all of us was Nick (my first coach) exercising Shooter, a bay OTT Thoroughbred who we found out (not too long ago) is a descendant of none other than the famed Secretariat. How close? Secretariat is his great-grandsire; Secretariat is American Pharoah’s great-great-great-great-grandsire by comparison. Yea. I’m still cackling in glee over this.

Who’d have thunk the great-grandson of Secretariat would end up at our little therapeutic center? Hee hee hee hee. I mean, really? (No, we aren’t giving him up. He’s in rehab currently.)

Mitch does seem to enjoy flying circles around those winged demons.

having a bad post election anxiety attack.
Had to reread the whole comic here again to calm down 🙂

You stay with us superheros 🙂
We need you so badly 🙂

*big hugs*
take good care of yourselves out there… and tell those calexit people, I appreciate their protest, but please do NOT leave the rest of us in the electoral college’s hands like that.
The rest of the Dems would be shot without California.
(queer, disabled, and female and a little frightened. but happily living in a once in a great while blue state :-P)

You know, several EU organisations supporting queers, immigrates, other minorities or women’s rights are trying to find a way to help and support their US counterparts if things go really bad. If any of you belong to such an organisation in the US, now might be the right time to build more bridges. Hoping they won’t be useful of course…

And of course, jedi hugs to you, Trish.

What about doiing the same with dady Lamproos, Mitch? Feeling up to the task?

I am back online.
About 2:30pm Thursday, the cable, internet, and email failed and despite all assurances by “customer service” reps, didn’t come back on until 9am Friday.
Comcast won’t say what happened but they either had a major server fail or some idiot farmer or other resident knocked an electric pole or dug their way through a big cable. I’m very unkind to people like that since one neighbor describe “vertical firewood storage.” (that’s a dead tree that eventually falls on the road, stops traffic, and rips out the power lines in the process. Many unkind words come to mind.)
Dave’s a bit surly this morning…

Almost didn’t comment—-the art is wonderful!

10 points for Mitch! 😀

(we’re still talking about the comic, right? :p )

Like picking up a 7-10 split.

Hello Campers,

Who is the next page going to focus on? Mitch and other flying demons? The question being do da demons learn fast?
Kyle? Now that’s a burning question?
Spooky? possibly a pregnant pause…
The Commander? Can Laampros be mentally addled?

I hope we get to see Kyle doing some heroics.

Throwing fire over the demons would be fun to see.

Or taking it all away from them. I wonder if he absorbed demon fire if it would make him stronger.

I hadn’t thought of his powers acting that way.

That would be really cool if that happened. Depending on the type of fire he absorbed could direct the way his fire powers worked

Hello dave!

Do you think we will see Mitch engage more flying demons?

Doki would like more Mitch showing off how awesome he is. ^_^

Maybe Spooky will surprise us next.
Or Duncan.

Hi Peeps.

hey, hey, hey

if u google that this comes up first
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1w2aASUpWQ

I remember it from “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” – Lizbeth Salandar says it.

Hello!

Esta um Trumpocalypse … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY

Yo!

Yo, double- dog squared

So a yo-yo walking the dog.

the dog with a yo-yo , walking the dog

Hello everyone. I’m ready for some more battle against hell.

Hi there…
I’m getting frost tonight. Doesn’t that warm the cockles of your heart?
😉

As much it can while the weather is below freezing here as well. I’m burried under my duvet.

So am I.

Morning Ms. Wolf.

It feels particularly early this morning. Was busy/not home almost all of yesterday, and couldn’t sleep. Good thing it’s saturday, so a nap awaits later 🙂

Has the time change happened for you?

Happened the week before in US.

It’s such a pain changing the time. I wish they’d sick with one or the other.

The time change? or the battle in Hell (our elections)?

Time change 🙂

Oh, the weirdness of a brain. In my apartment I have some cake, caramels, homemade caramelized almonds and lots of nice, sweet fruit… and since last night all my brain wants is some chips, or perhaps some icecream, but definitely something salty.

One half of me: I want chips.
Other half: too bad, don’t have any and can’t get any until monday.
One half: but we could order a taxi-bus and go get some.
Other half: we are *not* doing that just to get chips! It’s cold and it’s silly.
One half: but..but chips.

(Continues even now, though I’m not going anywhere xD )

lick the saltshaker

That’s the craving for chips

It’s typical when I can’t really go somewhere, I get a silly craving of what I don’t have. If I still crave chips monday, I may get a small bag.

Now you made me hungry for pretzels.
Crumbs in bed…

Did the best option I have. Got me some crispy bread with cheese on. Getting the feeling of something crunchy, and breakfast in one and the same 🙂

healthier than pretzels

hello good people

How are you tonight?

It´s oki here I guess. Tea time.

oops, forgot those time zone things

hello

Hello there.

Good morning, Ms. Berry!

Merry berry bo berry

😛

Hiya, sweet Berry.

Morning Sapfo berry ^_^

Page will be up shortly. 🙂

yay

woohoo!

patreon is rumbling with delight

page is up

here:
http://webcomics.yaoi911.com/typ/ch5-page-6/