Grrl Power #896 – Vive le testicules!
Enjoy this comic while having a happy Thanksgiving if you’re in a country that does that on this day and also if you’re so inclined. If not, then simply enjoy this comic, and bank my well wishes for the regional holiday of your choosing.
So, on the one hand, this is the most action Maxima has given a guy in a long time, so I guess Brüt can brag about that. On the other hand, this would be such a bad time to get a fear boner. At least the lights are out.
I’m not sure if catastrophic damage to one piece of the ground in NYC would knock out like 6 blocks as shown, but who knows, maybe Wench ripped up some massive bank of transformers, and not just a few pipes. One might like to think that major centers of business would have some redundancies in their infrastructure, given human stupidity, laziness, lack of foresight and wildly overstretched budgets, I would easily believe a single incident with a poorly planned groundbreaking is just as likely to knock out all the traffic lights in a 60 block radius.
Hey, speaking of books that were a trilogy for a long time and a 4th book only recently came out, the Good Intentions series by Elliott Kay is one of those. I prefer books in series I like to come out in a relatively swift and predictable pace, but with the last two series I’ve mentioned, it gave me an excuse to get all the audiobooks for them before diving into the 4th, because I knew if I didn’t refresh myself first, I’d be reading the 4th book and be all “Wait, who’s that again?”
Oh, and ignore the reviews for the 4th book complaining about how there’s a bunch of SJW stuff in it. I think those people were mostly complaining about the main characters getting away with punching out a bunch of nazis demonstrating at their college. (Which in my estimation tells you more about the people leaving those reviews than anything about the book itself.) I’d call that a spoiler but it’s a tiny section of the book. Given that the main character remembers his past lives, one of which was killed by nazis, him wanting to punch them out makes sense for more than just the usual reasons. This book is just as good as any of the others in the series.
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I move that we all start pronouncing Testicles like Hercules.
Wasn’t there a character called ‘Testicules’ in the Sorbo series? Or maybe the Xena spinoff?
Sounds like the sort of thing they would ‘slip in’ :side_eyes:
Nah, Testicles in Assasin Creed odyssey.
Never played it
Hmm, thinking of maybe changing name to “Guesticules”…
Absolutely seconded.
I’m relatively certain there was never someone on Xena called Testicules. The network censors would definitely have been paying attention to that. :)
I can just imagine….
Network Censor: “Testicules? HAHAHA That’s hialrious actually. Censored.”
Kiwi humour (and to a lesser degree, Aussie ‘humour’) is kinda… ‘odd’: it’s not British, and it’s not Yank, it’s sorta a blend of the two
Which Network are you thinking of? Down here, we had Sorbo doing a “That’s not Jim Beam!” ad on prime time TV, at the same time people in the States commenting on how they had never heard of the ad
Not sure about the early seasons of Hercules or the later seasons of Xena or Hercules (these were odd points), but there were plenty of moments in both shows that were odd like a king motorboating Xena and her rolling her eyes…and this was a Christmas…or Passover…it involved a crappy replica of the ark of the covenant, episode.
To be fair I stole the joke in my post from an episode of Animaniacs.
You’re probably thinking of Domesticles.
Alternatively, you somehow got the 1993 Australian comedy Hercules Returns mixed up with Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, as yes one of the characters is indeed named Testiculi, and the love interest Labia “a couple destined to always be together”… we made some weird comedy movies in the 80s and early 90s yes.
I really have to see this movie now.
Someone uploaded the whole thing to YT about 4 years ago. It’s not for everyone, but it definitely shows why you shouldn’t trust us with cameras and a film budget. ;-)
Nope, fairly sure never saw that comedy
Speaking of ‘weird comedy movies’, ever seen “Came a Hot Friday” or “Goodbye, Pork Pie”?
Not seen a lot of Kiwi movies at all unless we count stuff shot in NZ, or for international productions.
Those are both distinctly Kiwi :D
If you are going to watch “Pork Pie”, watch the original first
I can’t help but think there has to be a limit, or some variable that leaves her vulnerable in Hench Wench’s power. I mean if you want to be nasty the death of all her teammates would do the job, but what happens if the other members quit the team, not just surrender?
Also, if super-weaknesses are a thing in this universe, she’s got all of her boss’s too.
For some reason im thinking “he doesnt have every power, he has one power. Nemesis.”
Can someone or a group join her employees and gain the two thirds required?
I am thinking that Arianna could find the company and have it legally disolved. No more employ. And there is propably some loophole for this, given how new the company is, possible paperwork mistakes, involvement in criminal activity, etc.
Not a lot of supervillians can be defeated by a court order. But she may be the exception.
Upon close inspection, it is 2/3 of the Charter Members. So no late additions.
However, she only got Brüts invulnerability level here. And we all do remember how that one held up to maximas gun.
And maxima punches a lot harder then her gun hits – it is literally there so she can hold back.
Maxi in the last panel is looking particularly good, well done
HenchWench is the first grrlpower spinoff
As far as power outages Vs redundancy goes, all it takes is one ‘money saving’ councillor to turn a redundant system into an integral part of the main. And usually it causes cascade failures when that happens. Which is why we curse crows around here. Every couple of years one bridges a transformer fuse- And then 10 other fuses blow because of how power gets re-routed though already overstressed ‘redundant’ systems.
It was a squirrel at one place I worked. Climbed up into the transformer and shorted it. AND something in how it shorted ended up shorting/frying something in out backup power system and the flywheel (that takes over untill the diesel generator can kicking) backfed into it’s transformer and left 10 foot scorch marks on the (thankfully concreate) wall. So I came in the next day and my first task was run around the building and plugging in the routers that were only on the UPS circuit into the regular circuit as the UPS was still down.
Somehow I don’t think taking away what Max was occupied with was such a good idea. She was vaguely busy before and couldn’t really pay attention to you Hench.
Hench Wench has made herself the priority target as she is the greater threat both in abilities and instability. Needing to be stopped before she hurts civilians and causes even more property damage (I’ve seen smaller holes than what she just made in a city result in a sink hole thanks to destabilizing the mostly hollow sub-structure.
The most unbelievable part of the power outage is that there aren’t random buildings scattered across the entirety of manhattan island just going dark alongside that one spot given how nonsensical and outdate the majority of the power system is. Infrastructure built on patchworks of other infrastructure composed of patchworks built from yet other infrastructure; the place is like one of those hivecities in WH40K, it’s more tubes of various kinds and concrete mixed with groundwater then actual dirt and rock at this point.
Or wherever they are. I’m assuming it’s manhattan. Could be somewhere else in New York City. Not like I know much beyond how nonsensically weird it is underground.
They’re still in Times Square.
Supers being as they are you can’t really apply regular standards to their fighting moves.
But I gotta say. This is happening in a very public place. Tomorrow there are going to be pictures all over half a dozen papers and likely even in the evening news, of Maxima pointing that cannon of hers point blank at a guy’s balls.
Which may be a headache for Arianna, but it is going to get Max a lot of new adoring fans, of both sexes….
Somehow I think Arianna can easily spin this into a positive for Archon, given they were acting as the protectors against violent supers AND aliens in a very public place, and none of the damage was done by ARCHON. In fact, given how powerful Maxima is, all she’s done so far was use her firearm. Once. On someone she knew had invulnerability. Then used the mere threat of it to try to de-escalate the situation.
Arianna could use this to undo the headache she got from the initial press event on the tank, to show how restrained Maxima can be in even a very populated area.
And then…
No one will listen when they can spread crap on the internet instead.
At least until they go to far and get slapped with a lawsuit for slander anyway.
If only ARCHON had an epic hacker to handle internet viral situations….
Oh also it wouldnt necessarily be slander. :)
To quote JJ Jameson:
“It is not! I resent that! Slander is spoken. In print it’s libel.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcM1kTZm-nM
Maxima is fully justified in using lethal force here. (ANY use a firearm is automatically Lethal Force.) Brút’s actions clearly threaten the lives of various bystanders, and squishing some of them could provoke an interstellar incident. Given his high damage resistance and pain threshold, she had to get creative to make sure he paid attention.
Hench Wench is extremely powerful, stark staring bonkers, and violent. She just simultaneously freed Maxima up and rocketed to the top of the Priority Targets list!
Yep – completely justified to use lethal force. :) At the very least on Brut. And also on HW. I doubt she will, but she’s justified if she was to do so.
Brut did try to straight up murder Maxima a few minutes earlier. Or at the very least, committed aggravated assault on her, and she is a federal officer doing the duties of a federal officer :) And Hench Wench has committed multiple cases of attempted murder on more than one federal officer right in front of Maxima. (Heatwave and Mr. Amorphous).
And aggravated assault on 4 members – Mr Amorphous, Heatwave, Achilles, and Dabbler. With the apparent attempt to kill at least 3 of them, even if it didn’t happen. That’s why it’s ‘attempted’ (and with Achilles and Amorphous, she did not succeed simply because she was not capable, not because she was not trying – while with Heatwave, she didnt succeed only because Amorphous saved Heatwave at the last second.
Hench Wench is reminiscent of Halo. Some of her expressions and the things she says, anyway.
What exactly are Brüt’s powers? I mean, his name is derived from German, pronounced “bruit”, and there are several options:
Brüten = “incubating” (an egg: the most literary meaning)
Brüten = “brooding” (pondering over ideas, or just being moody)
Brüten = “breeding” (the whole process of bird’s procreation, from nestbuilding to feeding the chicks)
Brüter = “breeder reactor” (creates surplus radioactive material)
I think it’s more like Brute with metal Umlaut and missing an e.
Ohhhhhh.
Right, he’s stupid as hell then. Thanks, I didn’t make that connection.
His powers seem to be a standard brick so far – massive superstrength and some high but not Maxima-high level of invulnerability. Judging from how a bullet to the knee from a high cal bullet hurt, even though it did no permanent or significant injury.
And he didn’t even expect the bullet to hurt.
And Maxima punches, even at a ‘balanced’ strength level, a lot harder than that bullet.
yes, the whole “What the hell kinda bullet was that?!”
Probably because police and the FBI tend to use 9mm (and sometimes .40), but Maxima obviously uses a higher caliber :)
Now I’m wondering what type of bullets her gun uses. Something equal or more than Peggy’s rifle or Hellboy’s .577 Boxer (the Good Samaritan), or something like the .600 Gilon.
Dave’s stated several times that it uses .577 Tyrannosaur rounds, in the comments, in the author blurb, and on a diagram of her gun.
Okay so I was close then :) .577 Tyrannosaur instead of .577 Boxer.
Never heard of a .577 Tyrannosaur – my brief googling only found .577 Boxer and .600 Gilon. :) And when I found Hellboy’s gun was .577 Boxer, I just figured it was the same as Maxima’s since the guns looked similar in how insanely big they were for handguns.
Also cool links Torabi!
also some sort of fazing power as seen on firetops shield and Maxima’s cloths
Maxi isn’t wearing a skin tight latex leotard (stop drooling in your sleep Dabbles!), and the shield could be like the ones in Dune: slow blade penetrates the shield (okay, if Dabbles is going to continue drooling, someone needs to put a pillow under her head, and move her into the recovery position so she doesn’t drown herself!)
I think it’s more like Brute with metal Umlaut and missing an e.
I wonder Halo will end up smacking her down soon. I don’t think she can copy her.
For a start, Sydney would have to employ Henchie, so none of what you said is going to happen
Would that really give HW powers though? Or would it only give her powers while Sydney was using an orb? Or would it give HW the ability to use the orbs as well? Or would it just give her no powers because Sydney does not actually have powers – she has an object that gives her powers?
All interesting questions to ponder. :)
The thought experiment would, of course, require Sydney to hire HW in order for us to know if she could copy the powers of the orbs. :)
4th book in the Good Intentions series is out? I am so there.
I still re-read the first book in the series on occasion and just skip the erotica to speed things up. The mark of a good book with erotica is that its still a good book when you skip the erotica.
Henchwench looking a lot like Ff7 Tifa there.
So that’s now -two- attempted murder charges. She’s either insane or very over-confident.
Actually three attempted murder charges.
First was Heatwave – who Amorphous saved from the pile driver of death.
Second was Amorphous – who only did not die because he’s all stretchy. But that was definitely an intended killing blow.
Third was Achilles – who also will not die from it, because he’s ‘annoyingly utterly invulnerable.’ :) And we all love him for that.
Bet Halo’s gonna make use of that stasis pod she got off the lizard dude.
If someone gets word to her to bring it back. But yes, that’s the most efficient solution to the Wench problem.
You mean, the pod that has had it’s power source removed? That pod?
What is Sydney going to do? Hit her with it?
Dabbler, removed the power supply!
Yep – the power supply is safe in Dabbler’s lab. According to her, it’s currently just a big, retractable container without something to power it.
That does mean Dabbler can just put the power supply back IN it to use against HW. But I’m thinking HW might be taking an intergalactic trip soon, if she loses her powers.
You know, Brute could solve this problem – assuming her durability and ‘super brick’ attributes come from him – by openly terminating his allegiance to the LLC. Then, regardless of his intentions to come back, she’d lose the piece of the puzzle that makes her a hard target.
I’d be surprised that Maxima hasn’t pointed this out – but she also doesn’t strike me as the type to be familiar with employment law.
To elaborate on this, the vote to remove personnel won’t be necessary, as resignation in most states is unilateral under the law. The company can’t veto a resignation, IIRC, in pretty much any situation, and there’s no actual minimum notice required by law (two weeks is a professional courtesy, after all).
Keeping in mind that resignations can absolutely be immediate and without notice under the law. Companies cannot veto resignations. It’s maybe the one (minor) upside of at-will employment laws.
I though HW was farting lighting when I first looked at this
Hey, sorry to barge in, French grammar doctor here, who absolutely loves the comic.
Regarding the picture overlay, it should be written: “Vive les testicules !” if supposedly plural :)
Also, here is a list of slang words for testicles: parties, rognons, baboules, chouquettes, kiwis, rouleaux, roues, burnes, échalotes, korza, figues, grelots, joyeuses, olives, prunes, valseuses, bijoux de famille, bonbons, bouboulines, boules, boulettes, bouliches, bulbes de puissance, burettes, chnolles, coucougnettes, couilles, glaouis, glinches, gosses, noix, noisettes, les deux orphelines, pompons du cigare à moustache, roubignolles, roupettes, roustons, réservoirs, triquebilles.
And thanks again for this amazing comic !
Wait, ‘kiwis’ is now a French word?
Kiwi is not a french word. It’s a Maori word. BUT…. the word kiwi in french is…. still kiwi. So in that respect, it’s a french word as well.
And an English word.
And a German word.
And an Italian word.
And a Spanish word.
It’s spelled slightly different in Japanese though (phonetically it’s Kiui, and キウイ if you’re going to use japanese letters).
And it’s pronounced kivi in Russian so the russkies can’t take claim to the word. :)
I have no idea why I did that much research on something so dumb, but it’s the internet and I enjoyed myself so that should be enough reason, I expect.
Btw yes I know that Russian letters are not Kivi. That’s just how it sounds. The russian lettering would be киви.
In general foreign goods had the transliteration off foreing names.
But it’s not a rule.
For exemple in fencing sport – because fencing sport is basicaly french- you have epee
I know. I’m being annoyingly legalistic about it :) As is my way.
It was a joke, how most of those words seemed to be French, except kiwi (and olives, and… prunes?)
And the bird and the people are called ‘kiwi’, the fruit is ‘kiwifruit’, like ‘grapefruit’
Glaouis has an magrebine origin it’s a transliatration of klaoui (testicles) from the arabic كُلْويّ for kidney.
Olive is from the latin olivia, prune from the latin pruna.
Then of course is the perennial favorite of ranch-hands out in the prairie: Rocky Mountain Oysters.
As someone who works in a power disyribution company, a single cable could easily cut power to a few blocks as shown. All it would take is damaging the cable that leads to the individual transformers. Away from city centers like this, a single broken cable can cut power to a couple of neighborhoods.
Even in the city center, if she broke the 200k volts cables that lead to the company substation, it could trip the protections and cut power to almost all of NYC.
There are redundancies to restore power really fast, mainly feeding power from another substation, but you need to identify and isolate the problem first, or you just trip the protections from the new powerline.
I’m guessing based on how it works here in Brazil, but it can’t be much different.
And very few companies use generators, they are expensive, use a ton of gas, so you neet to easily fill them, are a BITCH to mantain, and can’t work at less than half their maximum capacity, or they break down really fast.
Also, there is no such thing as a bank of transformers, unless a single building has a MASSIVE load, and then the transformers are privately owned, and inside the building. Here in my state the regulations say the the maximum distance that the power cables can go from the transformer is 200 meters, because otherwise the voltage can drop too much.
So the transformers are spaced out as needed, and a cable leads a 13800volts cable to the transformers because they have a much lower drop in voltage due to distance.
Again that’s here, in Brazil, Minas Gerais, each place has variations, usually in voltage, distances and frequency, but it wont change much.
Voltage drop can be a pain, yes.
I told the story on the first page of comments-
Guy digging with a hand shovel hit a primary and busted it open somehow as I watched. He was part of a crew putting in a fairly big swimming pool in a backyard. Big house (mansion, actually). The backyard was 3 football fields long (@275 meters), so running a line the regular way wouldn’t have worked. Low power, rich owner unhappy. Transformer at the pole, transformer at the back of the house. Rich owner happy.
Zzzot! Add one idiot with shovel and the paperwork took hours even when everyone insisted ‘I’ did everything right!
They COULD have run a line from another lot, but that would also have been a steep drop off in voltage due to distance. So instead, it was all running through that one primary in an area that had been heavily landscaped again and again. Code says to bury any power cable at least 36 inches below ground. This one was @2 inches.
LOTS of people were named in the resulting lawsuit by very unhappy owner of house. ‘I’ was not one of them.
Sounds like the owner could have also sued for them not running the line in a safer way – not just suing because of the one idiot who took it all out with a misplaced shovel.
There comes a point where apprehending a villain alive is no longer worth the collateral damage.
Pretty sure ‘threatening to blow someones genitals off with a firearm’ falls under the sort of enhanced interrogation techniques that are frowned on almost globally.
mitigating circumstances. While she could twist his head off like a grape he was having trouble comprehending her threat to him, a gun is a universal threat, but for most of him her elephant skull cracking firearm would only be a minor bruising, targeting his weak spot however gets the message across immediately to stand down.
his knee is “a bit sore” I like how he can’t understand that he’s a 1 tank super going up against a X tank super. where x is how many tanks maxima can blast through, solve for.
Imagine being in a fight and the first person who can lightly hurt you makes you give up and go home, actually, that’s probably common for all the supers who haven’t found someone who can hurt them in a while
we were having a discussion about this last page how it is possible due to the public knowledge of Maxima that some supers may have mistakenly thought she was a glass cannon or not as strong as she claimed. The public show against the tank had her stand in her own fall out, but Heat Wave can stand in her own flames, so these supers may be playing by the rules made popular by Marvel comics of the metaphysical defense field where their own powers can’t hurt themselves. So any super familiar with this and seeing that would have shrugged it off.
the parkinglot battle. from a third party perspective through the news cameras the public wouldn’t know how strong Kevin was as while he got big he then focused his attention on Maxima, so it was an unknown variable vs an unknown variable;. Had he ground pounded some small earthquakes or thrown a bus or something a third party mighty know he was a lot stronger. So gauging off those is hard to tell.
the alien ship, the alien cops saw a lot, not clear how much the Earth news saw, but Earthlings have no idea how tough a Fel craft is, and what everyone would have seen in that battle, just like the parkinglot fight was Maxima standing back out of it and then coming in at the last minute; might give the impression she has to charge up, limited time, or is a glass cannon.
Her trying not to kill him outright in this fight may have made him think she was closer to his level. He is wrong, I’d estimate him around a B class like Bane, Venom, and Sabretooth; while Maxima is a definite S class. But again he wouldn’t know that. In universe only Archon team members and Twilight Council know all she is capable of.
*although you’d think marching up a stasis field would give away how strong she is, but she is also the first and only person these mercs have ever seen (unfamiliar technology) being hit with it. Not exactly much to go on.
Maxima tends to try to do one of two things in her fights. Either handle it with the absolute minimum damage possible (ie, here so far, the parking lot battle pre-Vehemence, both fights with Sciona – although during the aerial fight she was very reckless the one time she did do an offensive action)…. or go absolutely maximum brutality to tryt to end the fight as soon as possible (post-Vehemence Parking Lot battle, the guy she was beating up when she found out about Sydney returning, which then quickly became a ‘minimum damage’ battle instead by just making a single threat of removing his head if he did not give up, the first Mannekiller battle).
It seems to be very rarely anywhere in between. :) Only time I can think of where it was in between was with the Super Mannekiller.
Actually upon further recollection, Maxima wasn’t even the one that beat the Super Mannekiller – that was Hiro who did that. Maxima looked like she was going to try the ‘quick and brutal method’ before she got mind-whammied by it and Hiro saved her by pulling off the thing that made the Super Mannekiller explode.
Aside from the legal holes that are being brought up over the last few pages to depower Hench Wench there is a possibility that given her power copying is both temporary and requires a constant outside source *having to stay employed and her employers having to stay her employers* there is likely some sub-space thread/chain connection that is held by legal contracts and broken just as easily by them, so likely uses some psionic connection.
Halo might be able to block it. There are two examples of Halo cutting off external interactions with powers.
Harem: while inside the shield. While Harem retained her quantum linked brain she cannot teleport into or out of the shield.
Vehemence: his aggro aura was cut off by the shield, not able to go into while up, and when placed around him and Halo, the aggro aura couldn’t spread outside of it freeing others from its influence.
So on this pattern there is a possibility Halo could extend her shield out around herself and Hench Wench and Hench Wench automatically be depowered as this astral chain is blocked *doesn’t pay to have such an esoteric/exotic power copy ability that requires a continuous connection. Now Halo can defend herself inside with Hench Wench, her own training, fire arm, the orbs able to fly about and smack her, as well as the darker option, if Halo keeps the rebreather in her tool pouch she can keep the shield wide and fly up so Hench Wench now fully human is stuck at the bottom of the field where she can’t reach Sydney while in flight *the shield looked like it could expand to over thirty feet, so as a sphere in flight and gravity, the radius is about fifteen feet so Hench wench is stuck at the bottom of a sphere in the air with the person in control hovering fifteen feet out of reach…and then Halo can just wait till the air gets thin and Hench Wench passes out.
There’s also a good chance she may have just ruined it herself in the heat of the moment.
Unless she somehow worded it to give herself control of the LLC while still remaining “hired”, giving unwarranted orders to a superior is usually a MAJOR breach.
There is something else nasty that Halo can do with her shield: start small and “embiggen” it. The field is airtight; double the size and the volume increases eight-fold, with a corresponding drop in air pressure. This tactic works better if Halo can figure out how to bubble someone else without including herself. Otherwise this can be hard on Sydney, but the rebreather helps a lot.
She cannot change the size without dropping it (possibly for that exact reason), and she cannot make it appear with her on the outside. At least yet – either or both of those may be an option with future upgrades.
the link Torabi provides implies through verbal context that she can shrink and grow it without dropping it. Never said anywhere she couldn’t. Only that when she does for “space magic” reasons the amount of air or pressure doesn’t change.
That’s true. She wouldnt have gone on her side-rant about how her ears did not pop if she had to first turn off the shield before changing its size.
I didn’t even think of that, but your argument makes total sense (normally I would have sided with Brichins on this if not for that little bit of logic).
The reason she had to drop the shield during the press conference was because she couldn’t just make it smaller with the shield up since Maxima was IN the shield.
She also dropped it to change size on Alar, but that was presumably because if she hadn’t, it would have shoved her teammates aside as it expanded, rather than encapsulate them.
Right, exactly.
Wait, where is this rant about ears popping? I’ve looked over the archives a couple times to look for size change clues, and this is the first thing I’ve seen in the comic or comments that would support dynamic sizing without a reboot.
If she can resize it, the airb should be able to equalize the pressure change.
it was provided a day before your post by the person I named, whose comment would directly below. But here is the link again in a direct response to you. Panel 2 and 3 https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-247-if-violence-fails-violence-harder/
Huh. That’s a pretty good indication she can change size without dropping the shield… Thinking back, I guess we’ve only ever seen her do it to include or exclude others. I think you’re on to something there; in absence of any WoD to the contrary, I guess she can embiggen/smallen it. 0_o
Except Sydney has already stated that it doesn’t work that way.
Personally I suspect that it may just be controlled by Hench Wench’s understanding of the situation. When she knows that contracts have been signed by both her and her employers she gains her new powers. Which will be limited to the ones she knows about her employers having (if not, employers with secret powers would would be unwilling to hire her, as she would replicate those powers automatically and may let the cat out of the bag).
Similarly only at the point where Hench Wench has been notified of her termination, and it complies with the contractual terms she agreed, would she depower.
So one handy trick she could employ is to make sure that there is no default means of terminating her after a set period, then go AWOL somewhere remote enough that news of her being fired never reaches her. Even if she suspects that all the employers who hired her should have long since died of old age, so long as she never gets official confirmation that the company has folded, or that she was actually fired at some point, she could keep her power set indefinately.
that wouldn’t be a power copier, even a weirdly exotic one. That sounds more like an Omni with some really weird mental blocks.
which fun fact: at one time the writers at Marvel stated ALL mutants should be able to use ALL mutant powers but what powers they end up with is due to their mental state and physical state at the time their powers manifest and due to the limitations of the human mind and body lock into those specific powers and block out all others. Justified by the X-gene being of Celestial origin.
-I feel they either retconned or forgot this (like so many thing) at some point.
That ‘fun fact’ deserves to have been forgotten
another forgotten fun fact: Charles Xavier explicitly stated early on his powers were a result of a mutation caused by his parents being nuclear engineers and exposed to radiation.
the X-gene wasn’t introduced till I think the 1980s *maybe late 1970s* when genetics started to become a hot button and gave them an easier excuse to expand how many mutants there were without some exposed to this or that excuse.
-of course not long after they went a little nuts and introduced things like the Gamma gene that caused certain people exposed to gamma radiation to become supers instead of get cancer; among other gene stuff that was later retconned or ignored.
the X-men power source stuff went through a lot of changes resulting in some convoluted messes…which they continue to muddle, trying to give a connection between the Phoenix force and mutants (rather than just Jean Grey), despite the Celestial connection already being there; and so on. Where the powers come from, why they are so metaphysical, why they seem to match a character’s personality so well; they try a lot of ways to justify this in book.
But I think my reason for bringing it up is that if they went with it then it would make a character like Mimic, not a power copier either, but rather that his power is what mutant powers are supposed to be “Omni” but he is limited to only using the same powers as all the mutants nearby…which if that old origin of mutant power were kept true would make him technically not a power copier but an Omni with a weird proximity mirror limitations.
So yeah, best to keep it simple, power copier. Even if a tad weird, leave Omni’s with weird blocks out of it.
“Charles Xavier explicitly stated early on his powers were a result of a mutation caused by his parents being nuclear engineers and exposed to radiation.”
I’ve NEVER heard of that and now my obsessiveness is making me want to know which comic has him stating that please. I don’t doubt you – I just dont know where that factoid comes from and would very much like to know. Thanks in advance.
I do believe it was in issue one. As in the very first X-MEN comic, or near that. Been awhile. as one might imagine things have changed since then
found it online:
https://i.imgur.com/im8svYz.jpg
My obsessive compulsiveness thanks you, Rhuen!
It looks like he’s saying he was born with his powers, but his parents were exposed to the radiation which altered their DNA enough to cause it in their son.
Which would still be in line with the idea that his powers are a result of the X-gene, and Professor X is a mutant. It’s just with him, his X-gene was turned on as a result of what happened to his parents. :) It wouldn’t be the first time mutations were the result of an external source (I think Beast found that out when he increased his mutation artificially).
If it had been directly caused by radiation, he would be a mutate – a genetic mutation caused after the person was already born (ie, like Sauron, or Spider-Man, or Scorpion, or most of the ‘mutant’ inhabitants of Genosha), instead of a mutant.
At least that’s what I’d assume someone would argue in order to keep Marvel stuff consistent. Although there’s a lot of Marvel stuff that isn’t remotely consistent. :)
So is there anything stopping Hench-Wench from taking a janitor job at Archon under a false name? (Well, Arianna, obviously, but…) Or having a day-job in a super-owned organization, then wreaking havoc in her spare time?
If there’s a hard “only villains” limit, and working for Deus doesn’t count, I get the feeling he will be horribly offended.
(Pretty sure Deus has *some* superpower. Either it’s embarrassing and he doesn’t use it, or it’s subtle and he’s using it all the time.)
Wold working for a corporation give her the powers of all the stockholders?
This may or may not be canon, but I’m pretty sure Deus is at least seven hundred years old.
That ‘X’ scar on his face is something that some Scandanavian and Danish people used to do as punishment for some types of crimes, when they were driving someone out of their communities. We remember that they didn’t use the death penalty and didn’t have prisons, but we don’t tend to remember how they handled exile. They’d mark someone, either with a brand or a knife, so nobody would ever mistake them for a good person again, and turn them out.
This being prior to the introduction of antibiotics, saying they didn’t use a death penalty may be just a moeity of interpretation.
Or a time traveler :)
If HW took a job as a janitor working at Archon, she’d be working for General Faulk essentially. She would NOT be working for a super.
So the only power she’d have is the power to make glasses appear out of nowhere so she can take them off when she says ‘Mother of god….’
So better to be employed by ArcSWAT then, to get Maxima’s powerset.
Or Ariana could set up an employee owned merchandising company (ArcMerch)* including all the Archon supers (and key non-super employees like Peggy and Math). With easy Hench Wench firing contract conditions, needless to say.
With the added benefit of employee satisfaction, in that the heroes would appreciate retaining control over their own personal likenesses and getting an appropriate cut of the profits, rather than just a salary.
With whatever percentage kickbacks would be needed going to Archon/the government, in order to maintain the current financial status quo.
It’s scary that that sounds like something Arianna would consider.
She could get that same power working for half the people on Battlestar Galactica (the newer one). Never been able to find a montage, but they are constantly popping the glasses on and off for dramatic effect.
BTW Pander you must have finished a case lately, given the sudden burst in activity (and cheek) on this page. :D
Yeah most of my jobs are either pending a decision by TEAS (that can take a while sometimes) or I’m sort of stuck in limbo right now since open non IP cases are adjourned for months. Plus my office is currently sort of dead due to the lockdown in New York, so after I got done with any remote working I have from home, I have a lot of free time on my hands suddenly.
So they are teasing you?
Well we shall just have to keep you entertained.
Shall we dance?
*holds out paw*
You’re adorable.
*hands out Yorpie Snax*
pirouettes whilst delicately snarfing Snax
Working for Archon wouldn’t do anything for her. She gets the powers of her employer, not of her fellow employees.
Right. She needs to be the nice little lady who gets hired to clean Maxima’s house.
It wouldn’t work getting a job from Archon; her boss would be the government, or possibly the top ranked single officer pf the branch. oh… or possibly every single voting american… that would be problematic.
Henchwrench really is getting on Maximas Nerves.
And if you consider that she only got Brüts damage resistance – and we know how that one held up to maximas gun – that is not a wise plan!
Wish someone would liberate my balls :(
and the genie either makes you sterile or straight up cuts them as a loose interpretation of the definition of the word “liberate”
verb
verb: liberate; 3rd person present: liberates; past tense: liberated; past participle: liberated; gerund or present participle: liberating
set (someone) free from a situation, especially imprisonment or slavery, in which their liberty is severely restricted.
I think if I ever got 3 wishes from a genie, I’d be able to word the first two in a way so I did not get ‘bad wishes.’
Then for the third wish I’d give the genie their freedom, which is usually a thing they lament talking about when they say how they’re enslaved to the lamp or whatever they’re bound to…. if they didn’t screw me over on the first two wishes. If they do, I’d wish that i never used the lamp in the first place but also remembered all that had happened so as to not repeat my mistake. :)
Do you need a ‘bow chicka wow wow’ after that statement?
What’s that, Dave? That they despise criminal violence and support free speech even if they object to what is being said? They must be just terrible people!
Advocating genocide isn’t just expressing an opinion.
True. But it’s excessive to assume that just because these people publicly support policy X of a well-known regime, they also support its policy Y. Punch them out if they’ve actually done something to deserve it, not for the associations you’ve drawn on them.
A lot of regimes have (at least in claim) aimed for autarky, being able to supply the needs of their people entirely from the resources available within their territory. Few of them have taken the route of aggressively expanding that territory in order to provide lebensraum to meet that need – possibly even not as many as have endorsed genocidal violence against a designated scapegoat. (And note that those three sets – seeking autarky, territorial expansion, ethnic violence – are not concentric. Even in the crossover of all three, there are multiple examples.)
Of course, if they’re deliberately borrowing branding as well as taking the same policy position, that does tend to imply alignment on other policies…
I actually thought about 30 minutes before deciding to post this because it felt powder-keggy to me. But most people on this site are very reasonable in posts.
I tend to be of the mind that I want to know who have those types of ideas, so I can avoid them, or better yet, argue against them. If they are to attack physically, then I can attack back physically (or hopefully someone else will defend me physically). If they attack verbally, I’m more than well equipped to attack back verbally.
I’ve found that people with evil ideas, like nazism, also have very flawed reasoning (or no reasoning at all) which is easy to counter in a verbal fight – they usually just resort to insults because they don’t have an actual well-thought out argument. And when you can point out how badly formed their arguments are, at the very least, it makes them look like foolish idiots to everyone else who might otherwise listen to them (even if it was not already social anathema).
Usually when violence is used as a response against evil ideas being spoken, it doesn’t make the evil ideas go away – it just drives them underground, and that tends to make them do things which are a lot more violent than speech.
To quote from Inglorious Basterds:
“You see, we like our Nazis in uniform. That way we can spot ’em *snaps finger* just like that. But you take off that uniform, ain’t no one ever gonna know you were a Nazi. And that don’t sit well with us.”
The other problem with labelling someone a nazi and using it as a reason to punch them is that, at least in the last 20 or so years, the word has been expanded so much beyond white/aryan supremacy, which dilutes how evil the actual philosophy is. Like how there have been activists in certain groups who have called people like Ben Shapiro (he’s a lawyer/author/debater who runs an online conservative/libertarian-leaning media company called the Daily Wire) a nazi, when the guy is an orthodox jewish man who’s happens to be a rather staunch conservative. Or someone like Dave Rubin (an online talk show host who is also jewish, plus gay, and is very Libertarian for the past 10 years, before which he was a staunch Democrat). People have also called Daryl Davis a nazi, which is rather odd, since he’s a black blues musician/pacifist who’s main claim to fame is that he convinced over 200 Klu Klux Klan members to give up being white supremacists by actually befriending them and convincing them through talking that their beliefs were wrong and unfounded.
Then again, I havent read the book DaveB has mentioned – so for all I know the people involved in the story are literal neo-nazis or nazis, or at least outright racial/ethnic/religious supremacists (which would make the moniker of nazi still appropriate), who were threatening to/were going to hurt people physically. I’ll probably give the book a read because I don’t want to argue something out of ignorance, and because DaveB has given the book a positive review. Plus nazis are a universally accepted villain – there’s a reason Captain America’s main baddie is the Red Skull. Nazis = evil. So are zombies usually. Doubly so for nazi zombies (like in that game, Nazi Zombie Army).
And hopefully no one will call me an apologist for this post. I’m not white, I’m not christian (and I’m barely religious at all actually), I’m just a huge supporter of the legal method and the Constitution, and I just tend to think using violence against speech, even offensive speech (especially offensive speech, actually), is not a really good precedent to set.
There are a few times where speech alone can be punished under the Constitution – usually involving the one legal definition left for obscene speech, or directing or inciting imminent lawless action, or false statements (ie, defamation) – but even then people are not allowed to use violence – then you just sue for money (or an injunction, or money and an injunction), or have the person arrested. ie, Schenck vs United States (1919) it was held that you can limit free speech if there is a “clear and present danger”, although this is limited by Brandenburg v Ohio (1969), which did say you can’t criminalize ‘mere advocacy.’ Like with other attacks, the possible violence from the speech has to be imminent (which is a pretty high bar to meet and exceedingly difficult to prove).
TL;DR – Nazis are evil, and racial/ethnic/religious supremacists in general are evil, but it’s best to combat bad speech with good speech, not with physical violence, because usually those types of people have crap arguments. Or use the law if it applies. Unless they physically attack first. And also Inglorious Basterds was a great movie.
Thanks for posting, as it pointed out that my post didn’t have its emphasis clear enough! I should perhaps have added some formatting and a parenthesis to the line about “Punch them out if they’ve actually done something to deserve it (as opposed to just talking)“.
For the sake of clarity, I agree that, provided the opposition is keeping it verbal (i.e. direct incitement to action crosses the line), there’s no case to escalate to physical force. And I agree that the accusation of ‘Nazi’ has been overused and devalued to the point of near-uselessness. Not only by its use in slander/libel as you mention, but also its use as a sort of ad-hominem-by-association attack on unrelated policies (as in “you know who else supported using state infrastructure projects to reduce unemployment? Hitler!”).
Based on observation of the UK’s own brand of Nationalist extremists over the past few years, I wouldn’t put it all down to faulty reasoning. Faulty input information, faulty reasoning, unrealistic weighting of conflicting factors – most tick at least two of those boxes, of which there are probably more, and reasoning may well be the least common of those.
If yours are still willing to debate, hear your arguments, and consider changing their mind, then you can count yourself lucky. Many of ours have long since crossed the line from “I call myself a Nationalist because I support these policies” to “I support these policies because I call myself a Nationalist” – even when the policies are diametrically opposed to what they were calling for only months ago.
Yes. Yes it is. No matter how abhorrent it is, and no matter how much you disagree with it, it is just speech. If it crosses any of the lines that the law has imposed, hate speech, yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater, etc, then you can bitch about it and the law can do something about it. But you can’t take it upon yourself to assault people because they cross that line, or you’re engaging in even worse behavior and you should be jailed for that, since vigilantism is a crime and so is assault.
If it does not cross that line then you’re setting yourself up as the arbiter of free speech, and that’s the exact opposite of the free speech guaranteed by our constitution.
And in
I’m just using this as an excuse to belt out some good quotes. :)
ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro said: “The First Amendment really was designed to protect a debate at the fringes. You don’t need the courts to protect speech that everybody agrees with, because that speech will be tolerated.”
Or according to attorney Alan Isaacman (in the People vs Larry Flynt case before SCOTUS): “Unpopular speech is absolutely vital to the health of our nation.”
Speaking of Larry Flynt, Larry Flynt said: “If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me, it will protect all of you.”
And most importantly, let us not forget the words of Captain Jean Luc Picard:
“You know, there are some words I’ve known since I was a schoolboy: ‘With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.’ Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.”
Think that “sounds of looting start” might be a bit bad right about now? Then again…sigh…it is NYC…and I do live in NY.