Grrl Power #656 – Supervillain thrift shop
When The Baxter Building gets knocked over, or a SHIELD Helicarrier crashes into a mountain side, or some DC equivalent… uh, the Justice League watchtower crashes to Earth, that would be an insane security risk. Sure, whatever agency deals with that kind of thing will put some guards around it and start salvaging what they can, but in the meantime, the Moleman digs in from underneath and makes off with a time machine or the Infinity Nose Ring or the Omni McGuffin or whatever.
Basically, whenever a superhero’s HQ or a supervillain’s lair is catastrophically breached like this, it seems like a dozen organizations would be fighting over the scraps. Arc-SWAT and Arc-LIGHT will be busy securing this location for a little while, even as Maxima does everything she can to get back to Sydney. When they can’t find any of the artifacts missing from the Black Reliquary in the debris, they may start to suspect either this was some sort of a diversion, or there were third parties involved.
In the meantime, it looks like Deus may have a new toy. Hopefully he’s not dumb enough to stick it up in the display with the rest of his sword collection.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I wonder if this is the ‘Important’ news that Harem has for the team when they popped back from the portal.
RE: Vale, that is her, we saw a bit of a shot when was body guarding Dues from Sciona – When Sciona had damaged her shell (supposedly Dues makes the body shells)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2756
BTW this is not the first time we have seen this particular type of entity. This one seems identical, and it would make sense considering it came out of a splice in space due to the scythe type weapon(?) from the vault. (When Cooter/Wyrmil was escaping)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2711
At this point is it probably considered ‘stolen property’ and at very least ‘controlled extremely dangerous weapons grade material’
Depending on what Vale does with it, it could be a very sticky time for Dues if she gives it to him.
I wonder if Vale is a “arms” dealer with Dues. (wait for it…)
I don’t see it. ‘Trent’ doesn’t look like the same type of entity at all to Vale when she’s out of her shell in her weird green energy form.
Yeah, not the same type of entity at all. Vale is hellsmoke, the other is gibbering tentacles.
Trent is not ‘gibbering’, he was very well spoken and debatably highly intelligent (under debate due to being fascinated by reality TV, and a cooking show at that)
Well, I may be jumping the gun, but in the end we’ll see.
Now to be fair too. It definitely looks like Vale was using a ‘talent/magic’ of some sort. She also does ”solidify’ when entering her ‘human suit’. Trent also seems to be able use a suit similarly to Vale. Vale also seems to be familiar with the ‘SkySpliter’ artifact (nice craftsmanship) as well as it not being broken. The Scythe part was what cut ‘dimension(?) space’ for Trent to fall through
I also wonder if Vale wants it for her own reasons (return home maybe?)
Would love to see Vale and Trent meet. Wonder what happened to Trent too, did he want to go home?.
You aren’t getting Trent and Vance mixed up, are you? Trent was simply a mass of obvious tentacles wearing an overcoat, a fedora and fake glases, while Vance was the guy in her class her said he was a sentient mass of spiders in a spider-silk suit
Valeur was simply commenting on the extended handle that Sci built for the CC-O
it’s a brane-ripper. Brane is short for membrane, research M-Theory.
Trent was watching Alton Brown, which points to superior intellect.
Gordon Ramsey is awesome. I applaud Trent’s taste.
Vale just got more useful as an espionage agent. If Deus wants some information from his business or political rivals, he can use (and probably has used) her to get it. We see that her non-corporeal form can move solid objects. She can sneak into a building at night through any crack and go shopping for whatever Deus wants. I wonder if her phantom form could have picked up items from the Black Reliquary?
If there is a security or magical barrier keeping her out, Vale can just go into a building with Deus under the pretext of a meeting and sit down in a chair the lobby (preferably near an air duct). Then she puts on a pair of shades to hide her eyes and floats out into the building towards the room holding the goodies.
Now smash cut to Dabbler 2 months later finally ready to open the portal back to Halo. Dabbler and Max are standing infront of the glyphs and the rest of Arc Swat behind them prepared to rush into the portal and tackle and enemies like the giant ship.
The Halo appears behind them floating as Dabbler begins her chanting and pouring energy into the glyphs as everyone keeps quiet.
(All whispering)
(Halo) “Whats going on?”
(Max ) “Dabbler finally locked onto to Sciona’s home world, and we’re going to save Sydney.”
(Halo) “About time, she probably rebuilt Acrhon out of rocks and a bunch of you guys all made out of sand and mud. Hopefully she didn’t starve.”
(Max: turning in anger.) “She’s a survi…. Sydney?!”
(Halo) “Heya, I took the long way back, Oh and Dabbler, a six armed, two headed, and eight breasted furry Lion thing said you owed her five Klepnars? or something, Don’t worry I gave her my rebreather in exchange, you all good now.”
I like it.
There were subtle hints on the page where Vale was attacked that suggests that vapor isn’t quite her true nature… one of those hints is repeated here. Can you spot it?
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Totally called it, except I got the timing wrong on when the explosives went off. Oh well.
I’m curious, did DaveB originally plan to show Vale doing this at this point or did it just follow from the previous events? I still expect that a considerable part of how she got the thing out isn’t being shown.
One thing which confuses me, but will hopefully become clear later: how did Vale get to the artifact before ArcSWAT? I assume (once she gets the “I know something you don’t knows” out of her system), Xuriel will cast a spell to find it, and it’s *out in the open*, not even buried. I don’t know how Vale could be there *so* far ahead of them. Unless Harem’s thing makes for a faster way to get to Sydney, and they’ve dropped the priority of reclaiming the artifact until Sydney is safe.
My guess is that Vale was standing by looking for an opportunity to snatch it throughout, so this is probably taking place while Max, Dabbler & Harem are talking on the previous page and she started looking for it as soon as the dust of the explosion had cleared.
Panel one seems to show a pair of spotlights to help in the Arc-search, so probably a little shortly after the Maxi tantrum (well, she was losing her cool)
Damint!!! Totally shoulda said “arc-lights” rather than “spotlights” :(
Yes, but the lights seem to be airborne. They are likely attached to the osprey, so it may not be too far after the conversation. The conversation may even be continuing (with Dabbler being catty/intentionally vauge towards Max) at this point.
“Arc-lights, are carbon arc created light.
Thought it was Sci reforming at first :(
This looks, to me, more like Valeur exited her ‘suit’ and searched for the Cosmic Can-opener and then re-entered after finding and then picking it up, because there is no sign of her ‘shell’ in panel two and no sign of the CC-O in panel five
My guess is that she was standing by looking for an opportunity to snatch it throughout, so this is probably taking place while Max, Dabbler & Harem are talking on the previous page.
Damn, this was supposed to be a reply to Joe just above…. {/grumble about no delete or edit option}
Goddamn, what *is* she??
Powerful. Obviously.
Beyond perfect. *imitates Deus*
Top 3 theories.
1: A super, only one with extremely rare almost Eldritch like powers such as mist forming and her body becoming a regenerating shell, or one who took on a mist like form that possesses constructs *similar to what Concretia could do only more specific, like possessing mannequin forms.
2: An Eldritch Abomination like the Wanderer in the Dark hold up in a shell.
3: Animated Mannequin, although this page puts this one more in doubt as those rarely have some external travel ability except between bodies if one is destroyed..
Sciona did remark that she wasn’t a super, however the trope where a character who can know does know everything and becomes word of God is…an unlikable one, it is fun when such characters are surprised how wrong they can be, but Sciona’s expression did seem to imply recognition as well…and fear as well, so that fuels the Eldritch Abomination category.
However seeing a 4th of being a soul container, but its not the Alari obviously, and would have to be something else (although that doesn’t necessarily dispute any of the above only a secondary *Deus made a solid body for you that you can walk around in; in exchange for working for him).
I think she might be one of the aliens that destroyed Sciona’s planet.
I see a Chinese-style dragon head at the lower right of panel 2.
I’m going with she’s “one of the somethings that inspired Chinese mythology at some point long ago.”
Hmm, I can see it, I kind thought it all looked like a Cthulhu skull face, but the going over the river one kind of moves against that image.
A good question here might be if the smoke was her whole body out of the shell, or a projection and the eyeballs and darkness in the shell is her main body, or part of her body remained behind.
Not surprised (saddened and slightly sickened, butt not surprised) that any mention of SmugD shortly boils down to discussions on how great and benevolent Lord Douche is and how everyone will be better off dropping to their knee before Him
Okay, now Vance HAS to be millions of sentient spiders co-operating within a super-silk human-skin.
Two ways to check: wave a black flag and ask if he wants to join in on a raid, and see how he reacts :P
Oooo, and introduce him to your good friend “Mortein” :D
Sigh. I really love this webcomic, but sometimes I get really confused. It always amazes me to read the comments and everyone else is nodding wisely and waxing eloquent on the event of the moment and I’m looking at the art and muttering “wtf am I looking at?”
My first assumption was that she was being formed out of the eldritch vapors, but they seem to be moving into an existing body, so that makes me hesitate a bit. I do note that her left eye (this time) has more than one iris/pupil – or is that Dave’s way of showing her eyeball “clicking” into place? Panels four and six are IDENTICAL except for the vapors, which supports the existing body remark…
I dunno. WTF am I looking at?
Ditto… Is she being possessed by the spirits or something? Panels 4, 5 and 6 seem confusing…
There are other theories, but it seems likely that some sort of energy/vapor is coming out of the mountain with the cosmic can-opener. Said e/vapor travels a bit to the “body” ( or ‘shell’ – Note the text at the bottom of the comic, directly under the 8th panel). This implies that until the e/vapor returns, the body is uninhabited, except perhaps by a portion of power keeping it in readiness (the glowing blue lines). Anyay, the vapor drops the doodad (unseen, but what else is gonna happen), coils in through one of the eye-sockets, and then can be seen in a slightly different form in the other. .Picks up the doo-dad with the shell hands, etc.
You’re welcome.
Vale’s body is a shell, as seen previously
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2756
She/it can exit that shell at will, which we did not know for sure before. Vapor-Vale exited her body, went and collected the artifact buried under the rubble, then returned to her shell, which she re-inhabited.
maybe she’s a shell that holds a few Alari?
I don’t think so. She looks more like eldritch abomination, they were more of a ghost thing.
Just putting this out there, but its still possible Vale is a super, just with Eldritch Powers, that would make someone like Sciona not recognize her as a “super” (I never take a character’s word as 100% accurate in a series, as realistically they can’t KNOW everything, after all Concretia’s power wasn’t far off just more solid ghost and morphing golem bodies out of material she possessed.
If any sort of power is possible here, there are more than a few that would make their users seem a tad inhuman. Like Mist-Shifting and Husk Morphing, combine those and you wouldn’t exactly seem all that human.
I always thought she was a super, and that hasn’t changed. :)
The Justice League Watchtower crashing to Earth would be a near impossibility… It’s in orbit and it’s absolutely enormous. The energy required to de-orbit it is phenomenal… The amount of energy required to do that would be… just… I can’t even begin to calculate it because I don’t have numbers for its mass or orbital altitude, but suffice to say it’s so much energy that if it were to occur, it would have to be an event that was intentionally caused. Nothing’s budging that thing from its orbit by accident.
Who ever said it would be an accident?
Just because it is in orbit doesn’t mean it is going to stay in orbit without help. Turn off the power source (or give Major Force a holiday) and Earth will suck that baby down faster than Jared at a Junior Subway eating contest
An orbit, at a high enough altitude, it will never come down.
If it is in orbit, it is still within the gravity well, which means, once what ever is keeping it in orbit stops, then it will fall
Momentum.
Momentum keeps it in orbit. The moon is in orbit too, and it isn’t crashing down.
Most satellites that are close enough to be skimming the atmosphere only need the occasional minor adjustment via ion drive, which is a *really* low thrust, high-efficiency drive. Wouldn’t even be able to lift itself off the ground if it was on the earth, only useful in space.
Assuming a high orbit that just barely skimmed the upper ionization layers, it would take years to decades before its orbit started to decay enough to start warming up and begin uncontrolled re-entry.
Assuming a lower orbit.. probably still a year or two at worst. You really don’t want enough atmosphere to create noticeable drag.
And… what happens when the momentum stops?
And again (again), no one said it would be an accident, in other (slower) words: it would be a deliberate act
If the laws of physics stop then we can’t predict what will happen.
Momentum doesn’t “stop” it’s the whole “keeps going until an outside force acts on it” thing.
What’s holding it in orbit is the fact that it’s in orbit. Satellites in orbit don’t need anything to hold them up. In fact, some force is necessary for them to deorbit. In a low enough orbit air resistance can apply that force.
Well if you had a perfect orbit yes. how often would you have a perfect orbit to start with?
Besides things change – The sun still produces solar wind. bits of stuff still whiz through space and could bop it at any moment. etc.
I’m not saying they will come down instantly, but they will fall into something sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time.
Me pokes thing in orbit with perfect orbit, just for giggles
Orbit is falling. The vector of the fall is such that the body being orbited is not intersected at any point of the fall.
Presumably Bruce Wayne’s scientists are aware of this, and put the JL satellite in an orbit that doesn’t intersect the Earth at any point, nor does it intersect the atmosphere, which would require no power at all save for station holding.
Due to the fact that the Earth is not a perfectly smooth and homogenous ball, any object that takes less than one Earth rotation to orbit the Earth will eventually (over very long periods of time) intersect the atmosphere and be destroyed, any object that takes more than one rotation to orbit the Earth will eventually (many billions of years) be pushed away and captured by Sol and orbit in a very similar orbit to Earth’s.
Batman crashes the Watchtower into a Thanagarian superweapon in one episode of the Justice League animated series. I know it’s not an accident, but the Watchtower is not in a high orbit to begin with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJ47V2pnUw
The JLA Watchtower crashing to Earth has happened at least twice — and I think three times — during the last five years, by our time-scale, due to enemy action (such as hacking into its manoeuvring system)… and three have been at least a couple more occasions when it doing so was only narrowly averted. Last time around, there was indeed a looting attempt. (Also, as it crashed into a country torn by civil war & ethnic cleansing, there were crowds of refugees flocking to its location in hope that the JLA would protect them from the current government’s forces…)
The Watchtower probably couldn’t be in a “perfect” orbit, because I’m sure that I’ve seen it described [canonically] as being “in a geosynchronous orbit over Metropolis” but in fact one can only have geosynchronous orbits over points on the equator…
Comic books ignore physics when necessary to the story. As for putting something in geosynchronous orbit over Metropolis, there’s ways to do that, but they are way more trouble that they’d be worth. Plus expensive.
Moreover, what is meant by “over”? Within 40 degrees of straight up? Straight up at all times? Wiggling around a bit? Above the horizon as seen from Metropolis tallest building?
Lot of latitude there.
To accomplish that orbit, you’d need tethers, long tethers and a lot of winding and unwinding – active tethers, in other words. Could be done, PITA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tether_missions
Or, maybe, simply stabilising thrusters to keep it in place
I think this is the first time in this series that I genuinely have no goddam clue what I am looking at. Vale wasn’t here before, right? So this is her…Teleporting? What is she doing and why? Why are the fourth and sixth panels nigh identical? The vapor entering the blank eyes and the mention of a “shell” hints that this is her true form, this eldritch vapor thing inhabiting what I assume is some kind of synthetic body. But…Why is it here, why was she out of it, what the hell is happening? Gotta admit, this feels kind of like a shoddy page, which given that this is the first one I’ve felt this way on I guess that’s a good thing, but still.
She was out of it because she was poking around in places she didn’t belong (again), looking for things that don’t belong to her (again)
Just because one does not understand what is happening, does not mean the page is shoddy
I agree, and was able to figure out the gist fairly easily, but enough people (3 who commented on this page of comments, at least), that some sort of failure to communicate is happening. Not that that is necessarily bad, but it is something to consider.
When I do get confused in a comic, I wait a page or so to see if more info is coming to clear up matters. I kinda expect Dave may have something like that planned – maybe a conversation with Deus about how waiting around Sciona’s lair was a tactic that paid off this time, or the like. Though how they knew where her lair is, is a conundrum. Knowledge is Power! Maybe Deus has a Infomancer on staff? Or maybe…he was the contractor who built it for her.
Personally don’t like it when an author explains everything all at once, it makes it seem like the readers or audience are considered too stupid to figure things out, plus, it removes the fun of trying to figure out what is happening :D
It think this is mostly a problem of pacing. Both in terms of irl time (it’s been like a year real time since we’ve seen Vale) and story wise (a lot has happened). To prevent confusion, the best bet (imo) would be to have had vale’s big/little reveal (to sciona when she stabbed Vale in the head) a lot closer to this moment.
It seems a lot of people have forgotten that scene. If there was ever going to be a second draft, this would be a prime issue to address. As for right now, maybe a dabbler science corner?
I’m going to go yell this at Dave, I think.
I think Vale was last seen on this page: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2795 which is only a little over 5 months ago (just to be accurate).
Wow, has it really only been that long?
Her Eldritch reveal was a little bit before that (to be more accurate ;)
Well even in the first ‘reveal/encounter’ with Vale, DaveB said he did not want to disclose too much about her.
Hmm, that is true, she’s probably supposed to be pretty mysterious…
DaveB may have made some strategic omissions on this page to leave out more hints about Vale’s full capabilities. We aren’t shown:
-How she found the skybreaker
-How she dug it out, if it was buried deep
-How she moved it back to her “shell”
There are some gaps that could be shown more clearly, but we’ll find out later if there’s a reason for it. She’s got far more tricks than what’s shown here, no sense in revealing them so early!
Dunno about you, but this page makes it look like her eldritch self is not fully incorporeal. Panel two looks like the thing is being dragged over rocks. Vales body is standing in grass, and without walking she seems to have the thing.
The initial impression is that it can exert at least some pressure, but there still may be more to it than that.
On the other end, as I first saw panel 2, before the rest of the page was visible, I was immediately “holy shit is that Vale?”
However, I was fully expecting and looking forward to a page where Vale snatches the Skybreaker, so that isn’t really a good reference point. For what it’s worth I’m very happy with what I got. :)
The only part slightly confusing to me was the direction the vapor appears to be moving in panel 3, since it looks more collected together on the far side of the river as though that is the destination point even though it’s clearly the mountain in panel 1.
Dave, why are you so cruel?
I hope you end up running out of cliffhangers. :p
;)
I wonder if her shell is even anatomically correct.
You must be a guy!!! :)
Or a suicidal masochist :P
My main question is why the shell was doing the goofy half-slump instead of propped somewhere.
We can see the dangling hand and the angle of the back, so it’s doing this absurd bent pose.
Also, beginning the wait for Sidney and or co. to find one of the empty shells and have a NYYEAAAAAH reaction.
Maybe she just likes that pose
Her boobs are too heavy.
… Not if they are empty
If they were deflated, they wouldn´t look natural.
Didn’t say ‘deflated’, said ’empty’, that is a shell after all
A big shell whether is empty or not.
You saying she looks heavy in that shell? o_O
They are filled with green ghosts.
Now that we know just how eldritch/creepy Vale really is the fact Sydney managed to freak her out in the elevator is so much funnier.
Vale knows she can’t give Sydney the slightest detail about herself. If Sydney had even a inkling of Vale’s ultimate-level awesomeness, she would not leave her alone until she picked apart every last detail.
Its the bone cracking.
Yes! That’s the hint that also appeared earlier. :)
I thought of a solution to the space travel problem for Sydney. The forb in its default form is limited according to the speed of sound. The speed of sound in space is 0, ergo, she had just been sitting really high in the atmosphere not moving.
Limited to the speed of sound doesn’t mean it must be in some atmosphere to be moving at that speed.
just because in space, no-one can hear you scream does not mean there is no sound, only that it doesn’t carry very well without a medium in which to travel.
Now the question is, does Deus want to take the opportunity to loot a world with no occupants (or even rival claimants, if Halo does a good job), or does he have other destinations/uses in mind for the can-opener?
Well, Deus did say he knew what he would do with it. What he meant by letting Scoina “do the heavy lifting” is the question. A link to her homeworld, with it’s arcane-techno goodies, or somewhere else?
Forgot the link: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2795
I thought the “heavy lifting” was the task of making the brane ripper usable.
An odd thought, though: if it can make time travel wormholes, is he using the “send information to your past self” strategy?
I wonder whether Vale is related to whatever’s in control of the force that devastated the Alari homeworld?
Even for an Eldritch it would be a bit much.
“My summoner/contracted has requested I retrieve this artifact from an individual without being noticed by Archon, I see among he endless possibilities the perfect solution…I will raze an entire civilization and all life on a planet with mechanical constructs to distract Archon and demoralize Sciona, as well as set up one of my constructs to blast a hole in the portal so the mountainside is destroyed and I can more quickly find and retrieve the item than Archon”
I mean some parts of that would work, but for so little a task, the *raze an entire civilization would be a bit much…I would question in this theoretical context if that was actually the Alari homeworld and not an illusion pocket space created by Vale intercepting the portal if she is an Eldritch…but, evidence suggests we’re past the point of that being plausible..
Of course that just makes things further complicated, can’t have a simple solution can we? Just how are they going to get Sydney back then?
Also of note, in Vale’s last appearance many of us assumed her hair was still damaged, but panel 8 here suggests it just looks like that from this angle sometimes.
She’d better be real confident everyone there is busy, because a trail of glowing bluegreen stuff is very conspicuous. If Sydney were in eyeshot of that river she’d probably pick it out right away.
Best get moving, else a wild Harem might appear. Or several hundred also-glowing hitchhikers.
Maybe those hitchhikers are already with her, and she’s actually talking to Sciona. It looks like there’s a sparse cloud of green stuff on the far side of the river in panel 3. That might point to why she did this the way she did. :)
I think panel #4 should have been a shot of the artefact being dropped on the ground next to her boots, before showing the eldrich vapour stuff re-entering the body. It was kinda confusing for a minute there, had to seek answers from the comment section :P
Clearly she keeps spare shells as display maniquins
I dont think anyones commented on this yet, but the Robotech reference was FUCKING HILARIOUS. That is all.
Ok….I admit to multiple mistakes on this comment….firstly, I put didn’t realize which page I was causing me to not see any robotech comments….oops, stupid.
Even more stupid however was not noticing the laugh that autofill was having before hitting submit….fun times to be had for all with this one :/
At first I thought it was Sciona’s soul possessing a Vale shell and commenting on the craftmanship of Vale’s body. But apparently the blueish fog threads is Vale’s true form?
But with the comment at the end about multiple Vale shells, maybe that’ll happen somewhere farther down the line.
Does the world really need an army of Valeur-bots? o_O
I was rereading some of the archives, and a question occurred to me regarding Harem while reading her more intimate exploits with Deus.
What if one of her got pregnant? How would that interact with her powers?
Since her bodies are functionally independant of each other, obviously only that body would be pregnant, and if that body teleports, the infant would travel with her (based on the fact that her clothes do as well). But if she put that body into “storage”, would that halt the baby’s development until it became active again (not that I imagine she would want to be pregnant any longer than she had to be).
Going further back, I sincerely doubt that she could use “storage” as a form of pseudo-birth control.
Or, as another possibility, would her mind instinctively “shut down” her powers for that specific body, so as to prevent exactly that kind of interference with the baby’s development?
I doubt this kind of thing will come up in the comic (and if it does, not for years down the road), but I was merely curious.
This page makes Sciona bitching about having just gotten her body back seem superfluous. I see this page and I go “And so what, Sciona?” to that earlier gripe. Also, her breast expansion seems to have gotten a little bit, or perhaps a lot, out of control.
Huh? Are you assuming that’s Sciona, or that this implies bodies usable by Sciona are easy to come by and she would know that?
I’d like to call something now, but would rather not say it right out so early. If it isn’t too much, I’ll leave my main theory about Vale here in encrypted form:
Ki6PHILgS/Bo9MOJm2+3+aNL26cnE8Q7WKh76CmfA4OAMJXKt5cez/Fnx8VC5eDtZI6J2P+nz6I2eceygHJNnH5SitFd5Uph1d3mvWMwrJnCjHbA292uhG4ocIPYsyNd
Also, she likes eating gummy bears. That’s my headcanon until proven otherwise!
Related theory that stems from the above, but no direct evidence exists yet:
7IlK8NP7CvU7GSKU2Ik0Y4yYYgwYAi7e9wgR15LElQCdc/MhFz6nwp78CkYLz89ew/MtkufPa7aDDXCn9LS6ZffM9VN5E+kJa0waJZubCV+DXFxI0ypJWiwEcku8ViT4
I could well be wrong, but if I’m anywhere near right I’d rather not spoil it!
I am surprised that no one mentioned she cold be working WITH Archon here. We don’t know how much time passed to organize it. There is no proof that Archon or Council doesn’t know what her powers are. Sydney had enough time to get to orbit and back down and mow many waves of drone fighters, for conventional propulsion that is several hours at very least (I know she can do much faster, but it’s still enough time to call Deus and ask “do you know anyone who could get incorporeal and help us locate and retrieve artifact from under about a million tons of rocks? It’s kinda urgent.”). Remember that he is on speaking terms with Archon.
Are those middle 3 panels in the right order? You’ve got a panel of her crouching, a closeup of the energy whisps coiling around the foot of a standing person, then the next panel she’s back to crouching but with energy whisps around her.
The angle of the upper leg appears to change, but I think it’s meant to be the same pose in all those panels.
Deus isn’t weak, he’s the (ironically named) devil. Of course he’d put it on the weapon rack, to tantalus us sinners!