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Early update for August 21, 2026 (Patreon)

Published:
2026-08-20 03:55:01
Imported:
2026-10

Content

it's been specifically routed elsewhere

Files

Comments

Logibear

.... fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Does this put them in the Blaine Tier of bad people? Or somewhere north of that?

Andrea Andrew

I’m not sure what to say. Parents can often be very flawed.

Jamie (QueenofSodor)

well if you can't pick and choose which wars they're used in, then maybe you shouldn't be selling to warmakers period!!!

C

They've...definitely been having to justify the consequences of their company's support to keep from feeling the weight of the suffering it lead to. This is going to be a heavy conversation.

Ragtime

I haven't been so invested in a storyline since the return of Joycelyn.

Grace Serenity

"Just because SOMEONE is going to make weapons doesn't mean it has to be US!"

Andrew S

When someone's salary and lifestyle depends on them not understanding something, it is nearly impossible to get them to understand it.

Packy Anderson

No, Blaine knew that he was hurting people and didn't care. He was irredeemable. The Ruttens are lyibg to themselves because they don't want to think of themselves as bad people. They have a chance at redemption.

Jennifer Novelli

Anyone else picturing the ending of Petals on the Wind? (Christ, that's an obscure reference... LOL)

Andrew

“Carla, you’ve switched off your targeting computer, what’s wrong?”

Grace Serenity

How else do you square a genocide in your mind? I mean, other than just being a monster.

Lazuli

the tony stark argument

Logibear

Oh. I adore that you actually made a tier list.

NinjaZaku

They really gave her most canned nothingburger of a response they possibly could. Gods, you can see on her face that she is *distraught* seeing where their priorities really lie. Poor Carla.

GundamBradley

Not the first, or last, time that we've heard these arguments. It's the kind of thing people tell themselves, but the reality is that when you minimize the human cost on the side of the offender, you make them take less responsibility for the human cost on the defender.

voyager-ngc5195

It's about what I expected. Next we'll start talking about how the casualties are all because the enemy launches attacks from people's houses. We'd never purposefully participate in a genocide, it's merely incidental to what the bad guys did.

Andrea Andrew

They’re not homophobic like Becky’s dad, but they’re kinda bigoted.

Irene Knapp

they've heard all these arguments before, of course. it's not possible to be in that position and not have heard it all.

Kelly (they-them)

I imagine the Ruttech parents have been making justifications like these for a long time - or they distract themselves from thinking about the moral issues enough to not need to make any justifications to placate themselves.

Eric Barkman

It's kind of hard to compare. Blaine is worse in his actual views, but the Ruttens have further reach. So even if their views aren't as bad, their actions cause more widespread damage through that increased reach.

Amós Batista

That's way worse than I thought. Each panel worse the argument.

IAmDeltaS

Ooof, yeah that unfortunately tracks

JTFree

I struggle with this because a lot of you are going to say don't sell the weapons, or stop selling them while this happens. But someone is going to make the weapons unless you can prove they have a monopoly on the supply chain. By ensuring their company gets the money they could then funnel that money into positive resources and support for people as oppose to another less responsible company profiting and doing even more evil with the money. There's my idealistic world view I believe in where no one should support a war, and then there's reality under capitalism where we know someone will. In which case why shouldn't we try to encourage the right people to take control of those revenue streams and try to use the money to make positive differences where they can?

Simon Magid

I don't think Carla is about to back down here. This will be hard.

Jesse

Isn’t it possible to sell weapons through a contract forbidding their use in war crimes under threat of lawsuit or something? That said, I’m guessing the real issue is “But the money, though”.

Star Ringer

Is that the sound of a heart shattering or just a pedestal

Beck Chonigman

So what else does Ruttech make/sell? Bc if it's not just weapons, why not focus on those things? Or focus on making mass accessible tech that will improve the lives of those with lower income and ensure that they continue to have access to it. Yeah there might be some financial loss in the short term, but they seem like the people who both can afford that easily and don't mind the loss if it's being used to improve lives.

Tessea

Sadly it's like every other tool people make. Some asshats are going to hurt people with it. The reality is that they're being honest. And to be fair they are willing to put their money and effort into doing good things. It's honestly a hard position to be in. There are no easy answers. And we the readers will likely never get the full context of how the company behaves in other aspects of their business. But if the way Carla turned out is a measuring stick to judge her parents, they've earned a lot of benefit of the doubt from me at least. Imagine if the people who raised Mary were in control of Ruttech...

Maude Reads Things

Look, some of those arguments are true - as long as there are militaries, there are going to need to be weapons and the manufacturer can't realistically expect to have a say in how each is used - and do we really WANT them to dictate military actions? That seems like it could get pretty ugly too. We don't need zillionaires to have MORE say in policy. And yeah, sometimes losing a war due to not having weapons IS worse than the alternative. Look at what's happening in Ukraine where they have had to beg, plead and cajole endlessly for weapons and aren't getting near enough. At the same time, you can't really look away from what those weapons DO and how they ARE used either. The situation in Bulmeria seems pretty definitive and that's not something they should get to just wash their hands of and I don't think Carla's going to let them. It'll be painful but maybe she can get them to come around. Probably not in the span of THIS conversation, and maybe not even within the span of this comic, but if anyone can, it'll be Carla.

Maude Reads Things

It's a technology company. In this case, it's most likely that they create technology used in weapons like guidance systems.

Shane Wegner

“Sorry about all your children who have to die from unintercepted Russian missiles, Ukraine, but we don’t manufacture GPS chips anymore because they were abusing them in Bulmeria.”

Maude Reads Things

Okay, I am not American and not a lawyer so I am not an expert but from a short amount of googling - No, no they cannot. That's not how military contracting works. You must play by the government's (extensive) rules to even be able to BID for the contract.

Astariel

Panel 4 is pretty reasonable. Panel 5, not so much.

Jesse

Man, I gotta agree to stuff no one would realistically read to play some modern video games, but governments get to use missile launchers for whatever? Leverage is a bitch.

Gale Tazzin

pre-timeskip Hank tier until proven otherwise

Shane Wegner

Blaine never once used the phrase “minimize hurt”, but his reach was only 10^1 people despite his stated plans to actively murder people. Ruttech’s reach is more like 10^8 people, so even .5% harm is still pretty meaningful.

Shane Wegner

And point of order, it’s extremely doubtful Ruttech sold missiles directly to Colonel Evilnius the Childmelter, Bulmerian Armed Military Forces, in exchange for gold coins with pentagrams engraved on them. They probably sold crates of GPS chips to the US Government in some boring defense procurement acquisition, USG subcontracted those to missile companies, US State Department sold those missiles to Bulmeria under some treaty, quite possibly under a different, more stable regime or at least before whatever civil war type action started. The Bulmerian government almost certainly signed an agreement saying they would use all munitions in accordance with US Law of Armed Conflict and UN type rules. Then either the regime changed, or they branded the freedom fighters as enemy combatants and terrorists and claimed it was justified to use their US-procured munitions against them. (And their families. And everyone who supports them.) The Ruttens aren’t dumb, they knew this kind of thing was a calculated risk before, and can certainly see it happening after the fact. But what to do about it? Shut down their entire GPS line? Stop selling to the USG entirely because .3% of them ended up Bulmeria? Those chips have provably saved the lives of US service members, Ukrainians and others elsewhere.

Ellen N. K.

Getting high off their own supply i see, hmm, more innocent than knowing how the military-industrial complex works but betrays incompetence.

Jasmijn Wellner

Is it innocence or are they using their PR talking points against their daughter?

Jasmijn Wellner

If it's like any other tool, it's like if they kept selling chainsaws to chainsaw-wielding slasher villains.

Jasmijn Wellner

> By ensuring their company gets the money they could then funnel that money into positive resources and support for people as oppose to another less responsible company profiting and doing even more evil with the money. That is the trap that keeps unjust systems running. People thinking "well, if I'm here I can at least do something good". The system needs people like that to keep functioning.

Empress of Robots

Oh I see where Carla gets it from now. A more accurate missile to the face is basically the same as a more accurate pie to the face... /s

thejeff

It's not something they can wash their hands of, but it's also not something they can directly do anything about. If they're not selling directly to Bulmeria, at least. It's quite likely the same weapons with Ruttech guidance systems were being sent to Ukraine as well and they're not in a position to dictate where they're sent. They could get out of the business, but that cuts off both. Part of the problem here is that by focusing on the evil rich weapons manufacturers, we're ignoring the whole far more relevant government policy side of the problem.

thejeff

Well, war crimes are already illegal, so it would be like selling guns with a contract saying "don't use this to murder".

thejeff

Yeah, but that falls into the "if everyone would just" trap. If everyone would just refuse to fight in wars, we'd have world peace, but that's never happened and it's never going to happen. "Everyone is not going to just. At no time in the history of the universe has everyone just, and they’re not going to start now."

thejeff

Well, the Tony Stark argument is more "Now I realize selling weapons to the government is bad. I should make superweapons and use them myself." Which is actually arguably worse outside of genre fiction where it works.

thejeff

Yeah, this is all a much more complicated mess than how a lot of commentators are treating it. (Though it seems reading between the lines we've been given (and the parallels with Israel) that US support and thus munitions sales are continuing, rather than it being missiles sold to a previous government.) And it's very likely that Ruttech is doing something a bit more direct than just commercial off the shelf GPS chips, some of which were sold to missile manufacturers. From some previous hints, they're probably actually making guidance systems for missiles. But from there it's the big arms companies integrating those into their missile systems and the US government buying them and selling them on to other countries, as you say. And as I said above, the big issue here is government policy and reducing it to evil corporations because making weapons is bad doesn't work for me. I support sending more arms to Ukraine. I don't support sending more to Israel. There's no simple "stop making missiles" answer to that. The more interesting question on the military/industrial complex front is the extent to which the manufacturers shape policy. If Ruttech is lobbying Congress to allow weapons sales to Bulmeria so they can sell more guidance systems, that's another question entirely.

Tim

Did you know that Honeywell (yeah, the company that makes thermostats and smoke detectors) makes missile components, guidance & navigation systems, vehicle and jet engines, and an estimated 80% of the non-nuclear components of the US' nuclear weapons?

JTFree

Unjust systems are bigger than any one group. Change drivers often benefit from the unjust systems until their ability to change the system is possible. Real change most often comes from collective people trying to make a change, not from individuals deciding not to participate. A company like in the comic could do more good trying to influence those in power than they would by removing themselves from the conversation.

C.T. Phipps

They could be hardcore Bulmerian nationalists due to American and North Bulmerian propaganda.

Maude Reads Things

The government is the ones who set the terms, not the company. They put out contracts for companies (who meet their eligibility to get approval like having certain sales cycles numbers, complying with a VERY extensive list of rules, etc.) to bid on. There's no 'we're making weapons you want to buy, here are my terms' here, which is the difference between downloading a game and a government weapons contract.

Katrina Marie Paton

Yes, but if we stopped making chainsaws, what are we going to use when the zombie appocalypse arrives? And if we stop making weapons, how is Ukraine going to defend itself? Or South Korea, or Taiwan? Or Greenland come to that. Weapons bad so stop making weapons is a very simplistic way of looking at it. The manufacturer doesn't really get much of a say in how the government uses their products.

David M Willis

always interesting to consider which groups we deem acceptable to die in service of our own safety

Jesse

@thejeff And yet war crimes basically get enforced with strongly-worded letters.

Jesse

@Maude Reads Things That’s why I said leverage is a bitch.

Tessea

It's like I said, there really is no good answer to this problem. :(

The Balloon Animal

Carla's face in the last panel is one I wear very often: The utter heart breaking disappointment at looking at people who you thought knew better start justifying the death and pain of other people. It's a face I'm making right now as I read through comments here justifying war-profiteering. I've been a grown up too long to surprised by much, but it's always disappointing every time

thejeff

That I'd agree to. If Ruttech's lobbying arm works to convince the government to stop supplying Bulmeria, that'll have more effect than Ruttech getting out of the weapons business. OTOH, if they've been lobbying for more sales to Bulmeria so they make more money, then they do fall on the evil side.

Ria

I'm genuinely shocked at how many of my fellow commentators here are going to bat for military contractors. I think framing the broad argument against war, and especially against the complex socio-economic machinery of warmaking as it exists in 2026, as "weapons bad so stop making weapons" is pretty disengenuous. Imo there's just not any real standpoint from which we can say that we are currently, or will be any time soon, anywhere *near* a political situation where the US/Canada/Western Europe/Australia/etc. military-industrial complex winds down completely. The argumentation against Carla's family here is that they are BILLIONAIRE TECH CEOs who have made a significant enough portion of their BILLIONS OF DOLLARS from developing and manufacturing technology that helps explosives find human bodies that stopping is unthinkable, even amidst a genocide directly facilitated by said technology. In my view, to frame that situation, from Carla's perspective, as a question of whether someone else will step in to fill the niche in the market is to miss the human element of how she can sleep at night knowing that all the quality of life she enjoys is dependent on the maintenance of a series of mutually-beneficial agreements between her favorite two people in the world, the fascist government that controls the country she lives in, and the even more fascist government that is obliterating human lives on a near-constant basis overseas.

Maude Reads Things

Yeah, exactly. There isn't a choice where no vulnerable people get hurt, unfortunately.

C Bonesmith

Honeywell? The people who made my desk fan, Honeywell? Damn that's a trivia piece if I've ever heard one.

Maude Reads Things

Carla's argument is pretty much so far 'just stop making weapons' and others in the comments have said similar phrases. I don't think anyone actually thinks it's that simple and are reacting to the shittiness of the situation. It's one thing to be against war and the military industrial complex in general and another to have specific answers for what to do in a specific situation. Sometimes there just ISN'T a simple solution that doesn't harm anyone and I don't think anyone pointing that out is trying to 'go to bat' for military contractors. The human factor is heartbreaking on Carla's end because of course she doesn't want this to be true and she's not getting the answer from her parents who love her and yeah, I'm sure a good chunk of this is rationalizing their paydays. That's going to be extraordinarily painful for her as she grapples with it and I think everyone here acknowledges that.

NAtAyAZAlnAk

I think you are missing the point that loss of responsibility/accountability is the point of all those systems. Both the mechanical ones where people pressing the trigger don't even see the faces of the victims anymore through technology. And the social political and bureaucratic ones where who made the missile, who ordered it, who fired it is obscured and untraceable to a clear cut answer. The things we want are simple. Stop bombing children is a very simple thing to ask for. There are layers and layers of systems in place that make it look like a way more complex thing than it is. And yes because of this reality it's going to take a lot of collective effort and dismantling and big changes in the world for things to become better. But that was never because the issue was complex to solve to begin with, but because it's profitable and so it's been made to be unsolvable in a world where no one feels guilty of anything anymore. (didn't realize the comment is always put at the bottom. This was mostly intended as response to Shane)

NAtAyAZAlnAk

Making weapons can never be about minimizing hurt at least not in the world we currently live in. The lesser evil is a complete smokescreen. The worst people are the ones currently complicit. For the people currently being bombed it doesn't matter if the people making the bombs have a rainbow logo on pride month or if they are literal nazi. Worse people (aka people more identifiable as evil) will at least face more public opposition (although public opinion doesn't have much reach to power's ears those days). While tying warmongering and the death market with social changes and medical progress or any other for of "greater good" another attempt at green/pinkwashing and muddling already trouble waters in a long history of swamps. Long story short dismantle the military industrial complex. You will still have gay rights and hospitals. Most of the external enemies supposedly coming for them are made up. The people selling death are never protecting your interest no matter what they say.