From start to finish, a very macabre and beautiful, if (understandably) bitter tale. It may not have the normal penile potholing/plot ratio, but this has to be one of my favourite things I've ever read by you! :3 Thanks for sharing it! :)

great comic thoughtful and engaging !

I'm glad this didn't end tragically.

It almost did! As I understand it it isn't all that safe to be throwing loaded firearms on the ground! ... or stomping them!

Also.. that gun looks like a piece of crap. A woman was able to STOMP IT TO PIECES. >_>

**Nods to that** That is true.

There it is, the stamp that says "Made in China".

After losing everything in her relentless pursuit, she ends up empty-handed.

It makes me wonder, if her life will remain bleak, or if she will build a new one out of the ashes that she had made of her old life.

Well, this certainly turned out completely differently from how I initially assessed it.... And I'm very glad to be proved wrong on all counts! This was a marvelous comic, with a throughly believable plot, characterization and as usual, phenomenal inking skills. :)

...Geez, what an asshole. He can't even connect the dots and realize what he's done to her, can he?

IF he did it. It was never confirmed if Savage shot Murray or not.

Nevertheless, it does make one think. Nothing and no-one exists in a vacuum. Consider how many thugs Savage has killed over the years.

How many widows has he made?

How many orphans?

How many mourning mothers?

How many otherwise innocent lives have known loss because Savage has acted as judge, jury and executioner, without being held accountable for his actions?

When a cop shoots a criminal, he is held accountable. He has to justify his actions, and if the death cannot be justified, he is treated as a murderer.

Who holds Savage accountable for his actions?

Apparently, not even SS. He heard her... but apparently he didn't LISTEN. No introspection going on between those ears.

When a cop doesn't shoot a criminal because he can't find the justification for it, or when no cop is there in the first place and a criminal goes free and kills someone.. who gets held accountable then?

Justice is a human construct, not an objective force, that was kinda the point of the series I thought.

"Grind down the world to the finest spwcs, and show me one iota of Justice, one atom of Honour."

Or something like that.

"Oh well - it takes all kinds to make a world."

Yeah....and some kinds we can do without.

I have a upcoming story in Carc & 'Slide. You probably don't know much about Carc's past, but at one time he was in a relationship with a wolverbabe when he was at the height of his pro wrestling career. All that changed when he saved a very young Vanessa from being hit by a bus, took the hit, wrecked his shoulder (as my shoulder was wrecked), and was fired from the wrestling alliance for violating his contract. Before Carc got home, his ladyfriend cleaned him the heck out and bailed. Carc came home to no possessions (she sold E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G), maxed out credit cards, closed bank accounts and creditors and recovery agencies with arrest on sight warrants.

Carc's former employer made sure Carc wouldn't work as a pro wrestler, so Carc had to travel to tank towns, doing cage or pit fights for gas and food. 'Slide and Sierra found him and brought him home. In time (and thanks to a couple jackpots at a slot machine), Carc has been able to have enough jack to get bWc Bail Bonds operational.

Hokay...to the future. A bounty comes in, but it's such a low bounty, 'Slide's about to throw it away. 'Slide and Sierra mention the name on the bounty and Carc has that parabolic hearing. He boils out of the office, grabs the fax and takes the case. 'Slide tries to caution Carc abput "gunning" for his former ladyfriend, but Carc isn't listening (in fact, it's one of the FEW times Carc and 'Slide are at loggerheads). Carc takes off. 'Slide rages about Carc's impetuousness and Sierra calls Whiteout and Prowl to follow Carc (albeit discreetly).

Carc arrives in Vegas and hits downtown hard, looking for his bounty. Yep, she has some rough puffs protecting her, which Carc (and later Whiteout and Prowl) eliminate. When he finally finds her, she's basically a burned out 'ho doing tricks in a no-tell motel. She's dying from just about any and all ailments, using her $$ for a hit of whatever to ease the pain, to get her through one more day. A dilemma for our hero who's bent on revenge.

Gee, way to plug yourself.

I have to. There's maybe less than a handful of others who'll do it.

Because you're a dick?

My...aren't you a li'l darlin'. Glad tidings unto you too.

Oh...... that ended surprised me a little. I'm not used to your things being so anticlimactic.

And I was sure it was going to end in sex. 83

I notice Karno has two very distinct and separate kinds of comics. This is the other kind.

Very nicely done. I have been following your work for a while now and I must say this is your best by far. All your work is good, but what I like best is when you put some sort of meaning behind it. I look forward to more.

Something tells me she really needed that scream.

Savage Squirrel is married?

I don't know if savage is married or not but I'd imagine that was an assumption on her part, another reason to stay her hand.

If he is, do you suppose he keeps his costume on when they're, you know..?

Not the happiest of endings, yet satisfying somehow. That's the ultimate realization that she had right there.

We like to believe that the world is completely under our control, and that we can find out all the answers to all our questions if we only try hard enough to learn. But the reality unfortunately is that we are all mortal and limited creatures made of flesh, blood and bone, and thus cannot possibly know everything about everything. Thus it ends, a bittersweet ending to a tale that could happen with varying degrees of reality in our world. The poor woman will never have closure, and the "hero" will continue to take lives in order to save others. No one can truly know anything for certain, only what others tell us is true, and what we learn from our own limited senses.

So it must be when your light shines only for a century, or less~

[clapclapclapclap] Excellent work, Karno. Excellent. I hope to see more like that from you :)

- Shado

Very good story.

"There's no justice, is there? Not one atom of it in the entire universe."



The only justice in the world is what we bring to it, or fail to bring to it.

She realized she was looking for revenge, not justice. She made the right choice.

Aww come on.. Do be so depressing hanging come on..

Besides she could still look where he got killed, Talk to people in the area?

>sigh<

Okay, I enjoy just about everything you've done but this one had me impatiently waiting for the next page. Loved it, even with the very ambiguous ending. I'm going to be thinking of the widow for quite some time and I really hope things pick up and work out for her (holy shit, optimism, from me??). I like her design too. Don't suppose she'll ever show up in any other stories even if just in the background?

what do you think Savage Squirrel does in civilian life?

I'm guessing he's an aerobics instructor like Richard Simmons.

Savage Squirrel is a real dick.

Well, heck that's about it. Life's unfair, it's a pretty fundamental aspect of it. (not saying this makes life bad, just saying that realizing it makes it easier to enjoy life) Justice is something really subjective in a lot of cases... When the word incorporates some kind of "eye for an eye" meaning. Maybe you can't get justice, but you can get closure.
Hard to tell if anyone's "right" here and I kinda like that.

Hmm... not so sure. It's a fair 'story middle'. It begins in the middle of her life, and winds up going nowhere. It's strange to think she'd abandon her quest after meeting up with him. I thought she would have questioned him a bit more. In the end, we're not completely sure her fiance was really involved in anything bad, or just an innocent bystander. I say this because all that we have to base his bad character on is Savage's commment 'I've never shot anyone that didn't deserve it.' In the end, he's unaware of the consequences of his actions, or if he's the one that did anything at all 'what a weird chick' -no name, no recollection of his actions. So it ends with him being unaware of who she is -simply shruggs off the hysterical woman who in turn is left to go home and resume her bout of depression or suicide.

that was a really good story. it was so well done the story could be made into a really good movie. Really i give u a lot of credit on this nicely done.

And then she develops into a potent supervillainess, and Savage Squirrel's biggest nemeses! >=3

What I like about this story is that there was no easy, tidy, pat answer to what happened to the raccoon fellow. I think the ambiguity really made the gal think about what she was doing. Perhaps if others didn't find pat answers to their questions, they might take a shot at thinking too.