Joyce and Walky!

aw man, now they gotta fly home with cardboard taped over the windshield

This is basically the Superman/Batman matchup.  Two supernaturally-determined people, one’s trained well at fighting while the other’s not really, and one’s a normal human being while the other’s got friggin’ superpowers.  Unfortunately for Rumy, Superman’s probably gonna win unless she starts using her wits.  Quick, before you get thrown through a third window.

I’m really glad that David went the extra mile on this installment, because the original draft, assuming as it did normal-sized IW strips all the way through, would have been wildly inferior. I mean, just look at this, it’s beautiful.

Even had the ol’ webcomics pacing issue allowed for a longer battle, there’s only so long Rumy would last. As the caption voice-over implies she realizes, she simply cannot beat Joyce in a fair fight. Only by swallowing her pride and accepting this can she hope to achieve anything here.

Joyce isn’t even implied to be quite as strong as Walky or Tony and she’s certainly no better trained, but she lacks a weakness that Rumy could exploit in those other two, one that goes beyond strength or skill. Her centeredness gives her focus. What she did to Sal was no fluke. Rumy may use her own term for such inner poise, but she knows how to recognize it and not to underestimate it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Joyce gets to play on easy mode for the rest of the series. Events will conspire to destabilize her hard-won balance (one of them happened just six installments ago). But right now, she’s at or near peak effectiveness.