When I watch action movies, I always wonder why people bother throwing their opponents. Or I guess I should say, when people get thrown in movies, it doesn’t look like an effective move because it’s one stuntman throwing another, and the guy throwing knows how to throw and the guy being thrown knows how to fall, and it just looks… maybe not gentle, but like no one could possibly be injured or knocked out by it unless they had already recently already suffered a dozen other concussions. Which to be fair, the average thug in any given action show probably has taken a few knocks, but it still bugs me when I see a thug get tossed over the hero’s shoulder and land “correctly” and somehow gets knocked out.

Really, the hero should throw someone, then yank their hair back or kick them in the chin as they go over so the thug lands wrong on their neck. Or the point of the throw is to launch them down an elevator shaft or over a balcony, or to throw them so the middle of their back connects with a jutting mantle piece or the corner of a piano. It would make the thug not getting up believable certainly, but obviously for stunt performers and TV shows under pretty severe time crunches to get scenes wrapped, it’s too much work to show them do that every time, so I get why they don’t show it. It just bugs me when a guy lands flat on his back and doesn’t get up.

Of course, I would also love to see a scene in an actiony type TV show like Buffy or something, where the hero gets into a fight with let’s say 8 thugs, and knocks them all out by punching them, only to learn later that 3 of them died from concussion related trauma.

If I had been thinking about that when I wrote the next page, it would be key point in Jabberwokky’s lesson, but this is actually the final page in Sydney’s training montage this time around. Maybe I’ll revisit it next time I show her sparring.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!