These two panels make me sad and Iāve never been able to articulate it. Please tell me why Iām sad. Are you sad? It makes me sad. Sad.
Well now Iām sad š poor baby omfg
I think part of the reason why itās so sad is because how itās phrased. Like āNow stay down.ā is such an assertive command that you would expect a superhero to say to a supervillain, or even a protagonist to an antagonist. But then Dick follows it up with the āplease.ā that radiates sheer exhaustion, with his head in hands.
Itās like he physically and mentally cannot handle any more shit at the moment and just wants a moment of reprieve, to the point where heās resorted to begging an unconscious villain to not fight any more. I think it also highlights a lot of his anxiety and how it effects him, because even after the threat is eliminated, heās still worried about the future, about the possibility of her getting back up to fight him again and heās not sure heāll win.
And I mean obviously itās sad because we have context of what happens later on, and you could kind of view this as Dick begging her to stay out his life, to stop fighting him and interfering with his work, and you know that later on it just gets worse.
Iām also not sure whether this is intentional or not but it is a good juxtaposition for their morals/ideology as well. Like here is Dick, with a knocked out supervillain drawn in what I assume is a purposefully sexy manner (like the positioning of her body is just unnatural and is clearly meant to be sexy), and all he does is go āPlease stop fighting me ā¹ļøš„ŗā. But when Dick hits his low point with the murder of Blockbuster and heās freaking the fuck out, fully covered, and overall itās a moment where you would not look at him and think āwow you look sexyā but Tarantula still uses that as an opportunity to take advantage of him. I think you could argue that it makes the point that it doesnāt matter how you dress/look or what you do, people will rape other people because they are rapists and want to take advantage of you, because they have shitty morals and see an opportunity to be a predator.
Like I said Iām not really sure whether that was intentional or not but I feel like that is one of the ways this could be interpreted too.
