2147: Sly Cooper: Thief Of Virtue — Pages 374 Through Epilogues (Yes There Are Multiple Epilogues)

Title: Sly Cooper: Thief Of Virtue
Author:ConnorDavidson
Media: Video Game
Topic: Sly Cooper
Genre: None Given
URL: DeviantArt Gallery Page
Critiqued by: AdmiralSakai

Hello hello all you patrons, and welcome back for the final time to Sly Cooper: Thief of Virtue, which whether it in fact is a porno or is not a porno will still be ending today!

Last time we were treated to a vision (what else!) showing a young Lil Yachty Hookworm and his creepy be-fedora’d nutcase of a dad giving him a medallion with the Magical Mystery Crystals in it as a birthday present and subsequently running afoul of a rather pudgy, ill-defined Clockwerk. Clockwerk wanted to know where Dad Cooper was and Dad Lupus wouldn’t tell him, so Clockwerk killed Dad Lupus in front of his son and then Dad Cooper tried to adopt him but was also killed. Q-Tip Henipavirus then grew up and chased after Clockwerk himself, but discovered the bird was already dead, and in a fit of Edge over having had his kill stolen chucked his medallion into the lava of Clockwerk’s volcano and caused the Magical Mystery Crystals to somehow transmute into their current giant forms. Except he also says he doesn’t care about the whole kill-stealing thing and just wants to take over the world. So there was no point to any of that.

Back in the present Interpol was gearing up for a full-scale assault on Future Oesophagostomum’s castle, using the green Magical Mystery Crystal as bait. Fox Obnoxious, however, showed up and deliberately got himself captured, then used the crystal to mind-control Director Torus into making vague threats and recorded him doing so. Travis Scott Xuan Son Virus then showed up in person to recover the recording (which he believes will somehow cause the entire geopolitical order to collapse if released) and straight-up kill a bunch of Torus’s men. Torus and Ice Ice Baby then gave chase in a helicopter.

Also a character named “Sly Cooper” may occasionally have appeared and taken a peripheral role in observing the above happenings, but he wasn’t particularly important. We left off just as he was preparing for some sort of ‘final showdown’ with iSpy Cysticercosis.

Aaaaaaand it’s another three-poses-to-a-page Dilated Davidson Action Sequence™. With… kinda dodgy perspective, TBH.

What flashy personality??

I’m not cutting anything out, by the way. The comic literally just goes from a sword-and-cane fight to Tech N9ne Colorado Tick Fever having grabbed Sly by the throat and replying to a taunt that was never said.

And then he somehow manages to get his sword sord……. embedded in the ground?

And then Sly’s cane…. lightly grazes his cheek! BRUTAL!

Also these castle backgrounds compare unfavorably to Doom 2.

HELL YEAH! Come on, Torus, blast ’em to bits!

Or… just send out your Kai Leng knockoff to do it.

I am disappoint.

Ah. Torus sent out his Kai Leng knockoff to take on Kendall Morgan Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever so he could continue riffing.

Good on him.

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I love the random invocations of “PUP” in exactly the same font at exactly the same angle. Sort of makes it look like Cher Parvo is having his mental breakdown atop a thick carpet of bubble wrap.

Yeah, I’m with Ice Ice Baby here.

Director Torus must be a positive influence on her.

“My RICH, CHUNKY vindication!!!!”

Also thank you, Davidson, for treating us to that wonderful shot of Ice Ice Baby’s crotch.

Oh God, Sly, run while you still can! He’s going to do…. A STRIP NUMBER!!!!

Ice Ice Baby! What does the scouter say about his tryhard level?!

…

…

Crushed to death by a fursona’s enormous crotch-goblin. What a way to go.

No, it’s probably whatever chemicals are in those smoke grenades that Sly suddenly has and didn’t think to use to evade Torus’s men or the castle guards.

Oh, and why is Sly’s shirt getting progressively more ripped as the fight is going on? There’s not even anything that’s hitting him.

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll…. SPOUT STALE MEMES!!!”

You are assuming, my good Director, that he had an appreciable quantity of either of those things in the first place.

Aaaand then Ice Ice Baby has to go and fuck it up.

Wait, you have??? WHY??? You’d never even met Dominic Torus before today! The sum total of your interactions with him are dominated by the conversation you are having NOW!

And now we’re ripping off the ending of Madoka for some reason. Grand.

Good thinking, Skly, but unfortunately the Magical Mystery Crystals are protected by a dense and impenetrable layer of bullshit.

And how did your cane flip around mid-swing there?

If it seems like I’m just picking on tiny little continuity issues to the exclusion of anything else, it’s because there’s not really much else to this comic any more. These spaced-out action scenes are really getting annoying.

Huh. Looks like the Cooper Gang are actually doing the decent thing and fighting the castle guards, instead of what they were doing before what was just flee and let the castle guards straight-up kill Torus’s men.

Bonus points for Fox Obnoxious getting on the wrong side of THE MURRAY. Hopefully he ends up in interstellar space like that one rock.

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Also, Childish Gambino Gonorrhea’s fursona seems to vary greatly in size from panel to panel. Previously he was only about twice as tall as Sly, now he’s as big as a helicopter.

“Oh god… your breath…. it’s horrible…….”

And does Davidson really expect us to believe that a broken window is all that’s supporting the fursona’s weight right now?

“HEY! Werewolves Of London is a COPYRIGHTED song!!”

Actually, I doubt that. Give Director Torus a chance to come back with a few more of those freeze-gun choppers or some actual explosives and I don’t think this guy’d be able to put up much of a fight.

Good question.

Seriously, this has been going on for like ten pages already.

Also Ice Ice Baby might be dead or something I don’t know.

Suddenly, GHOST DAD EX MACHINA!

You know, this kind of revolving-door afterlife really kind of takes the punch out of life or death peril. Why worry if a character is going to make it when their ghost can just drop by for Sunday coffee every week anyway?

Not that I cared whether the characters in this thing lived or died before, of course. But it’s the principal of the thing.

Translation:

“Davidson couldn’t be arsed to have Sly sort out these issues himself without random exposition from beyond the grave, nor could he come up with a plausible mechanism to explain my absence from every single canonical source, so I pretty much just appear whenever I god damn feel like it.”

“No, actually I’m Cesar DeRoque hiding behind a retroreflective cardboard cut-out.”

“KNEEL before the impenetrable density of my MASSIVE WALLS OF TEXT!!!!!!”

By about 15 pages.

Ok so I guess ghosts are fireproof now in addition to being able to pick up and manipulate physical objects.

Really, if ghosts can do everything or nearly everything they did in life, and go wherever they want, and are also substantially more durable, what actually is the downside to dying?

Oh for fuck’s sake. This conversation is officially making me look back fondly on the halcyon days of better season 5 end!

And then the radio said “No, Drake, you are the Edge.”

And then Drake was a Clockwerk.

Wait, was Clockwerk supposed to be literally possessing the Magical Mystery Crystals the whole time or something?

Yeah, no. The second game already established that his consciousness was still present in his old mechanical body and pretty much took over Neyla’s when she tried to upload herself into it.

Also,

Hardcore.

“And right now what I am is really craving M&Ms for some reason.”

We heard you the first time…

And this sudden change of heart has caused Birdman Restonvirus to become… EXACTLY THE SAME ROIDED-OUT FURSONA HE WAS PREVIOUSLY!!!!

Wait, how did destroying the Magical Mystery Crystals restore his pants??? I could actually buy then just having stayed on the whole time since the fursona isn’t even that much larger, but Davidson explicitly removed them and then brought them back! And if his pants got merged into the fursona like a D&D polymorph spell, why was his shirt not likewise preserved?

Technically he was also crying just before he transformed.

“I mean, you broke the medallion I gave you as a birthday present; founded a criminal empire where your five underlings had to do all the work for you despite your ability to teleport and use mind control; got all five of those underlings arrested; tried unsuccessfully to frame a UN official for extremely mild misconduct; then hulked out and failed to destroy a helicopter. What more could a parent ask for?”

Wait, that explosion did nothing to harm Sly who was standing five meters away, and yet it somehow destabilized the entire castle?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What was stopping him from just teleporting to safety?

Oh. Right. She‘s still alive. And… apparently SECRETLY THE PRIMARY VILLAIN OF THE WHOLE COMIC or something??

What’s with this sudden emphasis on trying to avenge Snow, anyway? Snow was actively trying to kill her, and in any case Colonel Zahn was just as culpable for Snow’s death because he gave Snow the contract and the exploding gun but Ice Ice Baby didn’t seem to have anything special to say while she was arresting him…

Really, Director Torus would’ve been a lot better off if he’d just spent that portion of the R&D budget on some better weapons for his helicopter.

…

OW.

“We don’t have time for grudges and emotional breakdowns,” he says, after FOUR HUNDRED PAGES of nothing but grudges and emotional breakdowns.

“Tumblr powers… ACTIVATE!”

Well that was stupidly convenient.

 

 

 

 

 

Well if everyone was just going to fall anyway then what was the point of all that?

Yeah this is what I meant about the teleporting thing. Why didn’t he just do this, first?

And I guess this is supposed to indicate that Ned saved Director Torus from the helicopter crash. Although given that while it was damaged it wasn’t this beat up when last we saw it and Torus seemed to still have control of the thing, it’s equally plausible that Ned was in fact the one who crashed it with that grappling-hand gadget.

And they all lived crappily ever after.

You know the density of the comic has really just evaporated in this finale. There’s precious little actually happening in a given panel and it’s actually kind of refreshing compared to the walls of convoluted dialogue we were getting at the beginning of this arc.

Graaaaaah just kiss already!

Also those handcuffs aren’t really going to do much good given that he can FUCKING TELEPORT.

“I’ll always be a cop at heart… why is why I’m going to be openly working with the world’s most notorious master thief for an indeterminate amount of time!”

Also, good to know that Bubo reinstated both of these assclowns despite the fact that they were in fact aiding and abetting the Cooper Gang and Carmelita has stated a desire to continue to do so.

You know I will say that at least this comic does attempt to have something resembling pacing towards the end and actually create a sense of closure when most of the ‘fics we’ve had here just say “and then the good guys won” if they even have an actual ending at all and don’t just stop midway through. I just wish it tasted a little less like diabetes.

“I got an actual processed image this time instead of an MS Paint drawing!”

An image that is notably absent from every other shot of the room even though Bentley is in the same place…

Also, Carmelita just gave the Cooper Gang back their (stolen!) loot?

Standing up for fairness and justice, ladies and gentlebeings! Director Torus would never have let that happen…

Yeah, I’m with the turtle on this one. What’s so great about Rich Homie Quan Porcine Intestinal Spirochaetosis anyway? Even if he’s no longer a menace to the entire world he’s still a preening, insufferable prick who worked with the likes of Lady Venom and Colonel Zahn.

You know I am really beginning to think that ConnorDavidson does not like Bentley for whatever reason. Which is a shame, because he’s one of the things that originally drew me to the Sly Cooper games.

Technically Sly only saved Coolio E. Coli once but E-40 Emphysematous Cystitis saved Sly three times. Although all of those were kind of his own fault to begin with anyway.

So… what was the point of that conversation?

Bad guys like…. who, exactly?

Actually, Davidson, please don’t answer that. I don’t want to wade through any more goddamn villain bios.

Oh.

And of course he gets busted out of jail because HEAVEN FOWBID OWR PWECIOUS STU have to actually own up to any of the consequences of his actions!

Yeah because Dimitri would totally want to start a musical career with the man who beat him up so badly he ended up in the ICU.

Oh, hey, that’s the same weird abstract ‘rave’ background from the original turbo heist! Guess some things just always stay shit.

Yeah because it’s so hard to spot the one student who isn’t an exact copypaste duplicate.

So, basically, Kre’s disguise artistry is exactly in line with his other ninja skills.

Wait, what lawsuits? He was arrested on criminal charges, not challenged in anything civil! I suppose Interpol could have fined him or confiscated some of his money if they could prove it had been earned unlawfully, but was it? We don’t even know if his company was privately held or publically traded! Actually, for that matter, we don’t even know what it was CALLED!

I dunno, I figure having to go into work every day and perform for an audience of FACELESS ABOMINATIONS is more than punishment enough.

Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll find much more rewarding and meaningful employment here at RIFFCON.

An organization, once again, that employed the likes of Lady Venom and Colonel Zahn. And those same bloodthirsty psychotic guards.

And apparently also strippers because I guess all the edge and Magical Mystery Crystals and having sex with cannibal movie stars was still just too damn classy.

Although if he’s running the outfit with “his usual charm” I give him about three minutes before some infuriated gangster beats him to a pulp.

Yeah that does sound like the sort of thing that Judge Bubo would do.

I assume it’s only a matter of time before the sexual harassment complaints start piling up. Oh well, it’s not Torus’s problem any more!

This magazine cover confuses me. It’s got the red border like Time, the font is like Maxim, and the articles mentioned sound like a mix of what you’d find in People or Cosmopolitan.

And, again, what lawsuits? Did her butler sue her for something?

Oh yeah, and that bit about an egg?

Yeah, that would be this abomination of nature who appears multiple times in Davidson’s gallery.
And somehow, I doubt that Big Sean Pasteurella Dagmatis is paying child support, although really given his parentage I will be immensely surprised if this guy makes it out of adolescence in one piece.

I also own several of that exact same style of shirt.

Wait, why is Colonel Zahn- a mass-murdering arms dealer who ordered mercenary forces to fire automatic weapons at Interpol officers- out of jail at the same time as all the others, when Cesar DeRoque just tried to bribe one officer and Lady Venom was supposedly only able to be convicted of minor crimes?!

And there’s a random musclefur because of course there fucking is.

I hope he freezes to death out there.

Or, in an ironic twist of fate, his constant howling summons a massive number of regular non-anthro wolves who claw him to smithereens.

ALSO:

And that, all you patrons, was Sly Cooper: Thief Of Virtue.

It was not, in fact, a porno.

Mostly.

Riffing it was, however, certainly an emotional journey for me as a Librarian. There were times when it was so boring that I had to force myself to sit down and deal with it and could only handle it in small doses. There were times when it was so hilariously stupid that I was putting aside other projects and even my actual work just to have a chance at riffing more of it at once. And now that it’s over I feel, overall, immensely relieved.

Part of that, I am sure, is because I typically do not riff things which are this large and was kind of just getting tired of it towards the end. Bats? Taco? I have no idea how you guys do it. But part of it was that whether the thing bored me or amused me or pissed me off, never once did I feel like I was experiencing the comic the way ConnorDavidson intended for me to experience it. And after a little while that became kind of exhausting.

I’d like to rage at this comic. I’d like to talk about how its weird fetishes and constant philosophical impositions pissed me off and ruined the Sly series for me forever, but never once did it strike me as any more than tangentially related to the themes, concepts, and lore of the actual games. I can’t even really afford it the dignity of hatred; it’s just so obviously the work of a kid who’s been listening to too many Avenged Sevenfold albums and got exposed to the manifold dramas of FurAffinity without the necessary psychological distance.

I dunno, this thing wrapped up four-odd years ago and maybe Davidson has matured since then. His art style certainly has, even though most of what he’s doing now is just fetish commissions. If he ever does end up reading this, I hope he is able to take it as the educational device for which it is intended and maybe take the opportunity to get back to doing some original work with a fresh perspective. I, however, am moving on to shorter, spoopier things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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