So yeah, I had originally envisioned the comic taking a while to reveal that it’s a comic about super heroes, but when I built the web page I realized that pretty much gives away the game. Also when I tell people about it I say, “It’s about super heroines” – so I went back and added this little preamble. Now it’s on to some establishing stuff.
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Discussion (78) ¬
Huh. Corporal? The cast page lists her as private. Which doesn’t make much sense to me in another way as there appear to be far too many officers and ncos for the single lone private. Poor girl. Of course this is a specops outfit where everybody’s a master chief petty gunnery sargeant warrant officer first class with oak leaves and bells on or whatchamacallit, but still. It doesn’t make sense.
Yeah I need to sort that all out. Originally I thought all the supers would automatically be officers, kind of like some kind of inherited ROTC, the way I’m planning the story that doesn’t make sense though. Also there are other people on the team besides the supers, but we’ll get in to that eventually. I do need to go clean that up a little though. I don’t suppose you know a good resource that lays out what the different ranks actually denote, in terms of responsibilities, for instance on a police force.
I don’t have a reference handy, but I’m sure there’s plenty of material around. What you usually get is a list of ranks and, well, that’s apparently supposed to be clear enough already. A little more will give you organisational charts and how many men to a squad and suchlike. The thing is, I don’t expect that to be of direct help since this doesn’t deal with the usual grunt work.
I’m no expert but I can give you some ideas. It’s probably going to take you a bit of study though. My knowledge is mainly from reading Far Too Much military sf. Like, oh, Heinlein’s _Starship Troopers_, which incidentally appears to be required reading in the USA armed forces. And no, the movie adaptation is not a suitable substitute. The book is wildly different in details that are very relevant here. Also, baen publishes a lot of military sf, and has some material out for free — google for ‘baencd’.
It differs quite a bit between countries and forces, too, though there are rather strong similarities between similar service branches across countries. You always need people to shoot and people to direct them where to shoot and people to figure out where to go next and so on. A captain of a ship of a certain size has similar responsibilities in (most) any navy. It does vary a bit, depending on the local details, of course.
The Germans got hammered into a pulp way back when (well before the world wars, even) and to get over it they did a serious rethink, complete with theory and all that, followed by reorganisation and rebuilding the army. And yes, they succeeded. They were called Prussians back then. Worthwhile subjects for a structure study of general military. Compare and contrast with, say, the USA military.
As you’re looking for a military/police mixup, you might also look at the Dutch /Marechausee/, the Spanish /Guardia Civil/, the French /Gendarmerie/ or the Italian /Carrabinieri/; those are police forces with a military status.
If you’re going to take USAAF structure for a blueprint, there’s bound to be a field manual or two floating around the ‘web that will spell it out in excruciatingly dry prose. They document just about everything, so if you need to know what the right order of ribbons is on the number 1 dress whites, it’s all there in the manual. Then realise that, well, spec ops outfits almost never fit the mold anyway, and the details differ between various spec ops outfits again, sometimes a great deal. Might want to chat with some vets about it.
Though I’m sure there’s others, the only place I know about for that is http://www.arrse.co.uk, which is British but might be worthwhile anyway; there’s bound to be the odd ‘merkin around too. And perhaps enough of a sprinkling of THEM to help give you an idea about things like dealing with highly trained, powerful, and also quirky and unruly nutjobs. Just don’t ask about the colour of the boathouse.
Wow thanks for the info. I’ve done some research here and there, mostly on Wikipedia, right now the command structure I’ve penciled in looks like a mash up of the marines and the USAF, but I need to get that all sorted out before I start introducing the relevant characters, which is coming up pretty soon, well, in terms of the number of strips, not the number of days it’ll take before it’s posted. :P
I’ll definitely look into the foreign military police structures, as that’s essentially what the team will be. I’d make them straight military, except the Posse Comitatus act throws a wrench in the proceedings, so I’m thinking they’ll be DoHS instead.
You’re welcome. And sorry for the long messages. :-)
I was thinking, you’d have to flesh out who does what in the unit, including the blind spots that won’t be visible in the comic. Then you can fairly simply match them to the table of organization in the relevant field manual. That ought to give you an idea what sort of rank they would have, modulo quirks and history and whatnot.
The ranks and appointments to me are an as of yet undecipherable mishmash of responsibility, seniority, and tradition. But it’s important to know that to have your war be legal you need commissioned officers (that commission is the important bit) to give the orders to kill. For the rest they’re “general management”, but do look up the significance of a commission, say on wikipedia.
In the US military pattern (and others) an independently usable unit has a Commanding Officer (->wikipedia) who’s in charge and who obviously must hold a commission, and an eXecutive Officer (->wikipedia) who actually runs the show. If the unit is large enough the XO is an officer, otherwise an NCO.
In a specops unit I wouldn’t be surprised (but what do I know?) to find a small unit with two officers anyway, and fairly senior ones to boot (say at most one field rank; no flag officers), and a bunch of NCOs for grunts. Mostly because all of them will be senior (often need at least a few years elsewhere in the force plus a raft of other requirements to even get on the admission course) and highly proficient in probably several specialties.
One of the things that triggered the original comment was: What doesn’t happen or the command structure breaks down like a house of cards, is that the XO doesn’t respect the CO. He’s his right arm, so to speak, and public disrespect means the whole unit would disrespect the CO. He is the one who keeps the rest in line.
Dunno if you’d want to shove’em under DoHS since that’s more or less a mashup of some 49 or so dud intelligence agencies. A branch of the CIA might work if they’re sneaking around on foreign soil, maybe as a FBI branch if it’s national police-like work (think HRT, SWAT, etc.), or heck, as a special branch of the coast guard (they’re excempt from the PCA) or something. Or some DoJ branch like the DEA, but for supers. Military with special permission from congress appears also possible. But that really depends on what sort of mold you want to put the story in, like how supers came into the world and how the government dealt with it.
One way I heard things put for a submarine command … paraphrasing through about a decade of time by someone not in the services, so it may be a (huge) bit off…
The XO is the guy that does the yelling at the troops (kinda like Max) – becoming of necessity like the stick, the person a grunt needs to obtain the approval of, or failing that, not obtain the anger of.
The Captain is the grandpa like gentleman, becoming something like the carrot. Troops have a hard time with a difficult task in rough seas? He’ll be the one to call for a serving of ice cream at dinner.
The two may even discuss privately about things that need to happen, with the captain handing down ‘sticks’ to the XO to dole out, and the XO passing carrots up to the captain for him to act on. The XO will also act like a buffer between the captain and the crew (no easy access to carrots), while the captain will serve to place a check on the ‘excesses’ by the XO role of stick wielder.
This may sound a little silly, but it sets up a second set of rewards/punishments of a whole different magnitude – when the XO hands out a carrot, you must have truly impressed the grumpy bastard, but woe unto he who earns the captain’s wrath.
As a collarary, an officer should not issue an order they know won’t be followed – it being disobeyed cuts into the authority of the officer and requires punishment of the offender. Nobody comes out ahead when that happens.
“Pretty Soon”, huh?
Simple answer: most of the story we see after this is flashback, so she got promoted at some point we haven’t reached yet.
This is also a case of early installment weirdness, your going to see a boy more of this for a while but things will settle down
My interpretation had this page as a flash-forward. I think the comic reads better without this page—at least, without frame 3.
Hope you notice this… Found this comic about the beginning of June, and so far I really like it. Showed it to a few friends of mine, and one of them noticed that Sydney’s name is spelled Syndey on this page…
Whoops, geeze, I’ll have to go fix that.
And fixed.
Later on in the comic we see Sydney wearing that wrist thingy mostly on her right arm, but here it is on her left arm. Perhaps somewhere between #600-something and the “present day” portrayed here, she will switch it?
Okay, I guess I can somewhat retract that observation, because on page 353 /archive 1852 (and nearby pages) she is wearing the wrist thingy on her left arm.
I like it right off the bat. Not a gamer but read plenty of SiFi, comics and about Supers. Thought “The Incredibles” did the best job, at that time, of depicting a realistic version of such a world.
Yeah I loved The Incredibles, my only question about the movie is, what happened in the 10 (?) years between superheroes being outlawed and where we pick up with Bob at the insurance company? Wouldn’t the nation have fallen to crippling supervillian crime?
Maybe the supers were still sneaking in hero work like Mr. Incredible did; or maybe the villains just got bored.
They went back to their dayjobs as CEO’s of American corporations.
Plenty of room to explore that in a future sequel :-)
I believe the explanation was that the supervillans were actually either lying low (so as not to antagonize the supers) or working like syndrome. (who killed off a lot of supers. I believe some of them were villains even)
My thoughts exactly. Did the Feds secretly rub them out?
Hi. I’m new to the comic and probably missed quite a lot as far as discussion goes. The military hierarchy as it goes exists because of the necessity of a plethora of ground troops creating a series of tiers, each larger than the last. For example, you have 2 fire teams that make up a squad, multiple squads that make up a platoon, multiple platoons that make up a company, multiple companies that make up a battalion, and so on. Officers are simply required to help maintain order and keep everyone on the same page, though it’s typically the non-coms (sergeants) who get things done in combat once orders have been recieved and relayed. If each individual super has the power of an entire tier, than the ranks as is are of no consequence. It’s simply used to establish a pecking order, wherein the most experienced has seniority and those beneath her can delegate tasks to specialists as needed. How you include specialists is up to you, but would probably be a good idea to keep them out of the military heirarchy altogether. That way, they are viewed as employees and possibly even friends rather than subordinates.
On the other hand, you can go the James Bond route. Bond was a member of the Royal Navy who held the rank of commander prior to be seconded to MI6. Though he was a secret agent thereafter, he still held the naval rank of commander. If each member of the group is of military or law enforcement background, they would still retain their given ranks even after being seconded to this new group. As such, the titles would be primarily ceremonial and the command structure would be more fluid, allowing for more casual interaction between superior and subordinate. As with much military fiction, it’s hard for a Captain for example and a Private to converse in any meaningful fashion as the needs of the job require that the private listen and the captain speak, regardless what the private thinks. This way, you get the chance for more banter and humor.
Just thoughts….
thats formal mission events or briefings, when doing more run of the mill ops pvt – spc will show respect in there speech while continuing to fuel the aircraft or whatever task they are doing. another possibility is if the officer or there superior has placed a standing order for soldiers to not to go through the formal soldier goes to attention officer sayes carry on or relax before soldier resumes normal behavior. lastly the location can change the standards off post in civies don’t draw attention to officers or senior comand (called sniper check and is considered a cross of assault and attempted murder).
Remember The Major? Motoko Kusinagi aka “Queen Kong” of Ghost in the Shell? Even though she must have had a higher rank in Public Security Section 9 she still was called Major. We see a flash back to a military action she was involved in. I think this was where she initially got the rank and the nick name.
You just named my favorite series of all time. Shirow Masamune rocks!
Humm…, could it be possible that the shirt Sydney are currently wearing have some kind of link with a movie named Wayne’s World ??
Is that from Wayne’s World? It’s been a while since I’ve seen that.
Sure it was, the most famous and hilarious scene, when he interview Noe vanderhof, the arcade game owner ^^
” – ‘Xcuse me, the sphynctere said what ?
– What ?
The sphynctere said what ?
– What ?
– that’s what I said ! ”
XD
Oh, when I drew that I was actually thinking of the overused joke “That’s what she said” only since Syd is a gal, her shirt says “That’s what I said”
“Got Cookies?” LOL
She’s already “Got milk”, I’d think…
Got super fortified hero cookies?
a few pages and I allready love this…
although I keep reading the shirts…. “got cookies” and “thats what I said” in said order and I can’t help but laugh for some reason…
Whats that thing on sydneys left arm? O_o
Some kind of wrist electronic gadget. We haven’t seen it yet in the back story. Something important to the ARC SWAT unit Sydney is part of.
Actually, those exist IRL. See for instance WristOffice (I don’t know if linking is allowed, but you can find them easily). They’re just standard smartphones with a wrist mount (assuming Sydney’s model doesn’t have special functions). I have to wonder if the artist knew about them, because the look is spot-on (though the straps in the comic are a bit thinner). From reading the archives so far, and comparing to standard RL uses, it’s certainly the kind of thing Sydney would wear.
Replying here since I also wear one, and I am curious to see how the device will come up.
It’s a Palm Pilot strapped to her wrist.
Rereading binge!
Anyways, the wrist thingy is a multi-function device. The design has changed greatly.
A retcon for the better.
Its funny because I am reading this through again and it’s just fun to know how it plays out. :)
Its like seeing all six of the Star Wars films first 4-6 then the first three and knowing what is going to happen to Annakin etc.
There are actually many other ways that sentence could end:
I don’t just play a super hero…
…I stalk them obsessively
…I shine their shoes
…I hunt and eat them
EEEW!
I agree. I mean, shine their shoes? Really? Do people have ANY idea what sort of things they have to walk through?
Is there a bigass scar on Maximas chest on this page?
It is nopt there laterin the comic/earlier in the timeline.
can see it now November 2207 one recruit sydney missfires the ppo hitting max and we find the limits of max’s resistance to injury as she gets a miner wound to the chest that scars. ha
I think it’s meant to be a reflection/shading effect of the curve of her boob and her shiny gold skin.
Yep, that’s probably it.
—
Horray for comment highlighting script :P
In Marvel, one of Spiderman’s oldest antagonists,was Kraven The Hunter.
Panel 1 Sydney Gedanken: “Mein Name ist Sydney, seit kurzem habe ich ein sehr ereignisreiches Leben.” nächstes Panel: “Ihr sieht ich spiele nicht nur eine Superheldin” nächstes panel: “Ich weiß, es gibt nur einen Weg den Satz zu beenden, richtig? Ja Ich bin eine”
Sydney: Hi Leute
Maxima: “Corporal”
Anvil: “passt auf, die grossen Geschütze sind hier.”
Sdyney Gedanken: “Ich weiß, ich sehe nicht aus wie eine, passt auf es ist kompliziert. Lasst mich ein arr Monate zurück gehen.”
… I want a shirt that says ‘Got Cookies’
Is that thing on Sydney’s wrist the transponder that she got in #156 – #157?
Because that’s a helluva a lot of forward planning.
Looks different though.
Yeah, same thing. Design is a little different though.
Is that guy in the back Stalwart?
Yup. The very first drawing of him ever.
Is there a bigass scar on Maximas chest on this page?
It is nopt there laterin the comic/earlier in the timeline.
No that was my early attempts to do shiny stuff on her skin.
Wow. I forgot that where the comic is currently is still technically a flashback! Those “few months” are taking a few years and I didn’t even realize. I mean I didn’t really think anyone was going to die, especially not the main character, but it just makes me wonder how Sydney gets to be a corporal in that amount of time, and whether or not she’s figured out the two mystery powers of hers. When will “a few months” finally catch up to the present?
Ah, also I know there were parts of the comic where it definitely showed stuff that Sydney didn’t see, so I guess that’s just a bit of omniscience-splicing in the middle of Halo’s origin-story self-explanation? I guess that’s probably typical for various comics.
Additionally! I guess it’s cool to know that even though in the previous scenes where Halo is probably by now a super-well known famous person given the press-conference and everything, she still has time to play some DnD with her pals and they just treat her like a regular friend!
Or maybe I’m just reading too much into this :p
I would consider just using the Marine Corps ranking system for enlisted personnel and commissioned officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:United_States_uniformed_services_comparative_ranks
Therefore Sydney would have achieved 4th rank of ArcSWAT (in this comic), or you cold just say that Maxima meant “Lance” corporal and then Sydney would have only achieved 3rd rank of ArcSWAT
you could have ended it with “I fight them” because you’re a supervillain.
re reading and just realized that anvil and Halos shirts read together have like quadruple entenre
I just realized, I was rereading this and Sydney needs her halo choker doesn’t she? I mean she’s supposed to always be waring it for the communicator to work right?
Not necessarily until she is ‘on the clock’. I will not link to the scene, as any discussion here, could create a spoiler. But there is a point where she is tugging at her chocker, due to it obviously being uncomfortable for her.
Looking at this scene though, as you can tell from their greetings, she is just arriving for duty. So she will probably strap it on shortly.
Just re reading for s***s and giggles and realized Max looks disturbingly like Vash the Stampede in this one. She just needs for her hair to go up and a little bit of a skin tone shift and it’s done. :P
Just wondering: will this page/pages be redrawn for style/design consistency?
I’d love to redo a lot of this old art, but that implies I have the time to do it.
Christ above your art got better. I mean, this is still leagues away from my “skill” but still.
Aah! Don’t make me look at it! It buuuuurns!
Think of it this way, the writing and worldbuilding is also a type of Art, and even back here you had done enough that people like me were pretty much hooked :D
A thought just occurred to me…….. Why is Sydney driving and not flying here?
I mean, later she will just fly around the town, to and from ACHON HQ and her Store/Temple.
Did she get grounded? Did new federal regulation come into effect prohibiting flight over a populated area? (That will now need to be taken to court to be overturned and will become an episode of “Super Law and Order”)
This page just raises so many questions to people from the future.
Can’t speak for in-universe. Out of universe, though? Dave probably didn’t wanna introduce the orbs just yet
Gods, Maxima looks so different now…
Literally the only difference is not flashing so much boob.
and here i go again… reading it all for the 4th time
Ah, the first official appearances of Max and Kenya.
Look awesome, even if the early art had some wonky proportions.
OMG, going back to the beginning to reread while waiting for the next page, you really notice how the art style and character designs have improved over time. If I hadn’t gone back to this page, I would have believed, the visuals had always been as good as the current pages.