Cecil is correct to use Sinclair and his skills as a resource, but the idea that he’s redeemed is laughable when he doesn’t even regret what he’s done and thinks it was all justified. It’s one thing to use dead bodies, even if it’s still very much a grey area if they didn’t volunteer when alive, but experimenting on living people is completely monstrous and shouldn’t be easily forgiven. If Sinclair really wanted to do good, he could’ve tried to steal a dead body from a morgue instead of taking the easy way, it would’ve been fucked up but significantly less evil than what he did.
Restorative justice is a good thing, but I think it can’t be applied in the same way regardless of the crime. Sinclair should be kept on a very short leash and subjected to psychological treatment until he realises that what he did was evil, full-stop, and that he must take responsibility for it. Until he stops trying to justify himself, he should be treated coldly and not allowed the level of happiness he’s afforded here. This would be both ethical and practical, as a truly reformed and apologetic Sinclair would be less likely to fuck things up than one who still believes that atrocities committed in ~bouts of temporary insanity~ can be worth it.
Honestly this page doesn’t seem super well-written, it feels like a rushed and artificial attempt at an epic Cecil pragmatic dunk that’s really not convincing considering Sinclair’s actions and attitude pre-capture. Show Cecil is at least openly disgusted towards the guy while still pragmatically using him, which I’m much more on board with.
Yeah I rarely if ever like plot points that run on “but what if the fascist dictator really made the trains run on time” logic, because it goes contrary to reality and has thousands of holes in it. Going “you made the world better but the price was too steep” is a mistake because it already gives too much credit to the autocrat.
The best thing to do is to have the characters point out that the world isn’t actually better when you cure cancer but also run a murderous security state, and that trusting a single individual to always make the right decisions is really not more logical than entrusting the fate of the people to the people themselves, even if the latter can also be unreliable.
The ending with the Immortal is just… bizarre. It’s like no one’s even thinking about genuine democracy as an option and the concept of a benevolent god-king is kinda taken at face value. And if we’re supposed to assume that this leads to the evil Immortal future, then that means the comic ends on a really ghoulish note for Earth, which is depressing and kinda makes you wonder what was even the point.
I hope the show version of the events will be more coherent on what exactly the message on autocracy is.