The Young Protectors: Engaging The Enemy Chapter 5—Page 45

March 24, 2017 Alex Woolfson 137 Comments

You tell him, Kyle!

So! Laampros got his own fireball right back at him, and into his last good eye. Then, as just reward for some whining, he got knocked back off his feet! And it doesn’t look like Kyle is done yet!

What will Kyle choose to do next with his power and “all the fire here on Earth”?

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

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137 Comments

Panel 1, now that’s what I call fire crotch.

And is that an actual fist made of fire I see punching him in the Shadowloins?

Blasted Lampros off his feet, yeah, now blast him back to hell Kyle.

Beat me to it.

Right in the good eye… And another to the body.
Knock him back through the portal, Kyle, knock him back to Hell where he belongs.

Very good. Just as Laampros tried to talk Red Hot into submission with a monolog, Red needs to talk Laampros into not noticing that he’s being pushed back through the gate.

Beat his ass

A giant baseball bat of fire comes to mind

Great Bats of Fire.

“Nothing more than an extension of my will”? Seriously? I’m not sure if I take that literally, or metaphorically (“I am the ruler of my domain. All creatures will do my bidding – if they want to live!”), or what. So far I’d pegged Laampros as thinking that Red had something that passes for free will, but also an Inescapable Dark Destiny(tm) and he would inevitably join him once Red saw that Laampros’ way was best.

Yay! And Lampy even did the classic ‘this is impossible!’ XD

I love how much YP manages to invoke the most traditional superhero moments and lines despite being totally nontraditional.

So next page we get to see Mitch awake and moving yes?

That depends. I’m expecting next page to be the big dramatic splash page where Lampros falls through the gate.
If you want Flyboy to jump up and help with the pushing, then sure, that works to.

This is an odd page.
Dare we hope the next page is a double page?

I hope a giant blast with Laampros falling back through the portal and it closing.

*squeals* go Kyle! Dang this boy is awesome!! 😀
Still not going to cheer in victory just yet, this battle has been one heck of a great rally, and until Laampros is for certain beaten….
Ooooh….just had a scary thought for the future….now to see if it should come to pass… *sits and waits in anticipation, quietly chanting “go Kyle, go Kyle…” *

Stick it to him, Kyle!

Just don’t overdo it and like, die.

Or worse, expelled.

The son is stronger than the Father…….NICE!

I wouldn’t say that. Kyle hasn’t done any actual damage, he’s just knocking his father backwards.

The “enjoyment is all OURS!

*additional observation……somehow I imagine Kyle coming out of this as an adult….his powers fully developed and under control…..I don’t “know” for sure but it seems to me to be the next logical step.

Kyle! You tell him!
The fire on this page is so wonderful and mmmm I do love the Kyle finally stands up against one of the men in his life.

Not done yet? No fork, then? (In answer to Alex’ comments on this and the previous page.)

You the big red guy back in your box

Damn, I missed camp. Somehow managed to set timer wrong. At least I woke by myself, registered that it was daylight outside, and that it was wrong – also because I have an apoinment later (luckily that is still a couple hours away).

Good luck with that 🙂

The element of surprise is becoming an advantage for Kyle. Mix that with a good deal of rage and protective feelings, and Kyle is making (temporary?) progress against Laampros.

Laampros showing up after 18 years, and expecting Kyle to just ‘roll over’ and do his will like a good pawn. How arrogant and typical power-centric.

Here’s a prime example of how the individual has its own mind, if it’s not indoctrinated (‘brainwashed’) from an early age.

Yay! Looks like things are gonna work out for Kyle:)

Finally! Now if you both could stop speeching? Although I do wonder how you create a son out of sheer willpower.

It helps if you have a green lantern ring.

go Kyle!!!
i love the first two panels, they really show the scale between the two of them, just how small Kyle is and in that way showing how powerful he’s become to be able to push this giant demon off his feet

Go Kyle show you’re dad-io how you do teen rebellion on earth

So, I’m guessing after dad’s shipped back to hell, Kyle’s gonna make an appointment with a manicurist?

He may not need to. Once daddy is gone, Kyle may return to normal.

Kinda hope so. Demon Kyle is scary. Other humans may not accept his help in the future.

Oh the possibilities!

But he keeps the ears.

I imagine there’s a few options. The simplest would be if Kyle now has limited shapeshifting ability to morph from and to his demonic and human forms at will. If that’s not possible, perhaps Spooky has some sort of magical remedy. And if magic isn’t helpful, Kyle might decide to exile himself in some way, possibly going to Hell on purpose, sorta like when The Thing decides he’d be better off at Monster Isle instead of with his teammates. Which would be horribly tragic, so I kinda doubt we’re heading there, but who knows. There’s still the business of repairing the interdimensional walls and maybe that’s best done on the Hell side of the wall.

The manicurist idea does amuse me though. Maybe someone could turn the idea into a piece of fan art?

YES!!!! OMG!!! YOU GO KYLE!!!!

The Force is strong with this child.

Kyle, I think you should make the fingerless glove thing a permanent change to your uniform. It’s quite appealing. The sharp fingernails aren’t, but the fingerless gloves are. (Random musings of recovering gastroenteritis patient.)

I’d love to see a new costume for Kyle when this is all over.

It may be the “dirty old man” in me but I would prefer no costume at all !

All the fire on earth. That is some power.

Please let Spook be okay!! ; A;

“Inconceivable!” 😀

You KNOW that word doesn’t mean what he thinks it means, right?
🙂

THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

psst, next buttons on pages 43 and 44 don’t seem to be working. Unless it’s just my browser cache playing tricks on me again.
Beautiful flames!

“All the fire here on Earth”…
I’m guessing Lava powers!! Can you imagine little lava pools and mini volcanoes sprouting up during a fight? *claps hands and smiles giddy grin*

That’s on the Earth power side of things not Fire, he wouldn’t be able to conjure up such things.

Haha, this is a highly rewarding page 🙂 Now, finish him and go check on your friends. I really hope the hapiness of victory will not be dampened by the death of one or several of the other team members. I want to see them all alive. I want to see the awkward discussion between Kyle and Spooky. I want to see Mitch going back to a worried-to-death Cory. I want hapiness and relief!

I don’t think Spooky will be bothered – or even surprised.

Probably not, but Kyle will feel awkward anyway.

I love the subtle shrinking of the spikes/spurs (?), the horns and the claws as Kyle’s control kicks in and he gains the confidence of his real family caring about him. The families we choose and make can be stronger than the blood kin that chose to disregard or shun us.

Are they shrinking or is it just perspective?

I see a marked difference in the last two, especially, and those are relatively the same perspective. They were drawn much bigger in earlier panels when his confidence is rattled and he’s concerned his “dad” is right about him. Yet, maybe it’s must my hopeful heart…

Hm. Could be, indeed!

The old flame-thrower to the balls trick. My, how Oedipal. At least, given Kyle’s predilections, he’s unlikely to go roger his Mom.

Awesome. So ALL the fire on Earth is at Kyle’s command, just like all of Hell’s fire was Laampros’ to command. He inherited some REALLY badass powers from daddy. I love Laampros shock when his son turns against him and actually hurts him with “all the fire on Earth”.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Kyle means that phrase literally. Maybe the next page will feature fire drawn from a thousand locations, leaping across the sky to fall upon Laampros with punishing force. I think the circle of bones will be the circle of bone-ash pretty soon.

And then the military should be able to find their location really easily. 🙂

You tell ’em Kyle!

Yay!

Hot damn. Literally. <3

With Kyle’s new demonic features, maybe he should change his name from Red Hot to Hot Damn!

See! I believed in RedHot, I did I did!

Kyle is too good to ever be bad, and he would not give up the Earth so easily. ^_^

Truth!

Poor Laampros, your son was NEVER an extension of your will, he’s always been his own man and thanks to you awakening him with your fire and giving him an awareness of just how powerful he REALLY is he’s going to burn that truth into you quite literally as well as figuratively. A very nice example of the ‘Nice Job Fixing It, Villain’ trope. If he hadn’t gone to the trouble of instructing and powering up his son his plans would have succeeded.

Laampros clearly never read any Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Thank you for sharing this, it’s beautiful. 🙂

Seconded. Thank you.

So children do not belong to their parents, but they do belong to some “Him”? How about they just don’t belong to anybody and shoot their own bows by themselves?

Poetry 101:
Given the time of Kahlil Gibran’s experience, referring to the concept of creation as ‘he’ was rather commonplace, and as such, he uses the ‘Him’ pronoun to generalize his thoughts on things. Also, since arrows cannot shoot themselves any more than children can SUDDENLY appear fully formed from the aether, the metaphor of the archer is a stand in for God, parents, Life, creation, etc. There is no literal ‘Him’ involved, just as there is no literal ‘archer’. But just like an archer crafts his arrows with care, choosing the wood and the feathers and the point, then nocks them and launches them towards an intended target, so too do parents (or God, or life, etc) give life to a child, teach it to the best of their ability, and then set them loose in the world, hoping that their child flies straight and true. But just like an arrow in flight, once you release a child, anything can change it’s course and it’s ending.

That said, if your takeaway from the poem is that the use of of the pronoun ‘Him’ is somehow the most important thing about this poem than the point that no one owns children, they own themselves…I just don’t know what else to say to you.

The Archer is life. Without life there are no arrows or any flying forth.

I attempted to explain that, but apparently, was too snarky, and so, my post never posted. Shame, since I never got into proper attack mode, what with me being sad at metaphors and symbolism flying right over her head, and all.

We miss so much when we get caught up in the knee-jerk response. I think this is a beautiful piece and I’m glad you shared it.

Yeah, sorry about that. Our political situation in Poland is so messed up and dangerous that we started to get knee-jerks about various things. When we have things forced down our throats, we start to see every spoon as a threat.

It sounds like a really tough life right now. I hope things change for the better.

Oh, so it’s about a life force, nature and so on. It makes sense then. Ok, I’m just used to nature being refered to as “she”, because in my bative Polish nature is she.
I was never good at understanding metaphoric poetry 🙂

I’d think of nature as a she too. He in English is supposed to be usable as either a male or a genderless pronoun and I think it was probably intended as genderless here, but it’s never worked very well.

I thought singular “they” was genderless?
In Polish we not only don’t have genderless pronouns, but all words are gendered, verbs, items and so on. She went: poszła. He went: poszedł. Book: she. Pencil: he. And so on.
I envy English this genderlessness.

Oh god, is someone about to get teabagged by demonic testicles the size of Central Park? Eeeew!

Ew would not be my first response to that situation…

It would be mine, followed by suffocation because DEMONIC TESTICLES THE SIZE OF CENTRAL PARK.

Yanno, one part of me would pay money to see that and another part of me wants me to bleach my eyeballs for even thinking about it.

{yikes, wink, wink}

Nothing worse than drowning in gallons of diabolic ball sweat.

Why bleach your eyeballs? Why not your brain, for thinking about paying money to see it? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrainBleach

hmmmmm,
Let me think about that!

The question though is ‘who gets to define better?’, after all from a demon parent’s perspective Kyle’s not being a better demon than his father but a worse one.

You’ve got a good point Laampros thought he’d be easy to defeat. Humans are weak, in his mind, after all. Even ones with powers. Can we say, BIG EGO?

I think Kyle could also be choosing not to be a more powerful demon. Maybe controlling it a bit more? He wants to protect his friends and family.

Who knows how powerful the guy can get? Is it like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets? Or is it there, super powerful, just waiting to be tapped? We’ve seen how powerful his dad is. Powerful enough to defeat the King of Hell. That’s pretty damn powerful!

Let’s see, on Power Wednesday!

Fire-Lord Kyle!

Guess that makes Laampy the pheonix king.

He’s got at least air and water support, too. Just no earth bender in sight…

Oh, my gosh! I hadn’t thought of that!

Guys. I had a dream (perhaps nightmare) about The Young Protectors last night.
The dream was Alex posted the next page and it was just Kyle waking up in the hospital.
And then it just says “The End”
And I was like “What?!?! That can’t be how it ends!!”
It was kinda silly… Haha

But it did get me thinking… I’m gonna be sad when this comic comes to an end! I’ve been following it since the beginning!

Why does this have to be the end bud?

I am certain Alex has something up his sleeve. It may be another YP story arc. It may be something else entirely. But having buildt a following of avid readers, he will work to hold onto us.

I dreamed about the ending too… But it ended with sweet Spooky/Kyle kisses so I was happy. 🙂

Ends are also beginnings. I will bet that a master storyteller like Alex already has something planned for the Next Story. I can hardly wait to see what it is! 🙂

Uuu, you fry my tralala.
Mmm, my ding ding dong.

His weenie is getting roasted.

He is getting close to that gate.

Alternatively, the gate is getting close to him.
It’s sneaking up on him.
Waiting… Anticipating…

—
most recent hellsnake fanfic: 18th //disq.us/p/1hajexw

Reader plug: Fantasy comic Spindrift has just come back out of hiatus!

It’s got breathtaking visuals and an interesting twist on known fantasy tropes.
Highly recommended!
http://www.spindrift-comic.com

I love Spindrift. Great comic. Each page worth the wait it takes.

Absolutely!

I had maybe 3 hours of sleep this morning, so I am probably not going to be able to camp. I have a feeling that I am going to crash soon.

That’s a good reason to get some sleep.

Aw, poor Doki! I hope you get some good rest!

*quick hug*

*quick hug back* I’m glad I got to say hi before you left!

Happy snoozing to our Doki, and you can catch up at leisure tomorrow. I’m guessing it will be a spectacular page tonight.

GO KYLE, GO!!!!

Hello Campers,
I’m hoping Laampros falls back through that gate.

Same here!

Last night, I was so disgusted at some personal things that I turned the TV on and watched “Ratatouille” and “Monsters vs Aliens” back to back.

I actually haven’t seen either. Would you recommend?

They are both animated silly fun. Monsters is about an alien invasion and a girl (Susan) who becomes gargantuan on her wedding day. Dr House plays a mad scientist cockroach and Rainn Wilson is the alien.
Ratatouille is about rats cooking 5-star French food. Hence the name.
Both are fun.

Cool!

I like Ratatouille, haven’t seen Monsters vs Aliens

Patreon is rumbling early tonight

Looks like I showed at right time.

Hiya everyone.

Hi DanishWolf!

Hi Danish.

[peeks at email]
So many comments waiting to be made about this one.

I have arrived on the campgrounds!!
How is everyone?

Doing well, thank you! How about you?

I’m doing well! 😀
It’s always nice to be camping… a lot of times I forget, and totally miss it!

My biggest struggle has been staying awake long enough – sometimes I’m just too tired to keep my eyes open. But I’m always happy when I do manage to make it!

I don’t work tomorrow… and whenever that happens my body all of a sudden can stay up well into the odd hours of the morning… but if I have to work, I find that I can’t seem to stay up past 11:00 haha.
So I’m pretty confident I can make it tonight! Haha

New page is up http://webcomics.yaoi911.com/typ/ch5-page-46/

oh yeah, I forgot that

{blush}

YES!

STRAIGHT TO THE FACE

This is a great speech by the way

impressive mental expansion here.

Teen Titans

You know, now I’m just thinking about Kyle being the Prince of Hell and Mitch being the Prince of the Earth, at least according to Cory. I know Mitch’s was a joke, but… was it?? Was it truly???