Grrl Power #1038 – Superion, PhD
Poor Maxima. Her job description mostly involves puching stuff, but as a Lt. Colonel, she also has to spend time listening to people talk. Presumably there’s some paperwork as well, but she’s been known to delegate that.
Deus hearing himself talk definitely isn’t his favorite thing, but he probably doesn’t mind it. He has been known to monologue a bit, I suppose.
Is it just me, or does Deus look a bit like Handsome Squidward there in panel 3? I can’t quite tell why. I’ve suggested in the past that I might be borderline face blind – sometimes I think that’s true, sometimes I think it’s just because my wife is, and this is a legitimate term I’ve recently learned, a “super recognizer.” Come on neurologists, that’s astronomer lazy. “No light can escape, let’s just call it a ‘black hole.'” Anyway, she’s the opposite of face blind. She could be watching some movie from 1946 and the instant some kid’s face appeared, she’d be like “I think that’s a seven year old Ian McKellan.” Whereas I see an actor from a series I’ve watched 5 times all the way through appear in another show with a wig on, and it takes me 15 minutes to figure out who it is. The whole time my wife gives me the side-eye like I’ve forgotten how to tie my shoes. On the plus side, if I ever get dementia, it will probably take a decade for anyone to notice. I don’t know if that’s a positive or not, come to think of it.
Anyway, the point of my little ramble there is that being borderline face blind and an artist is not a synergistic combination. It does unfortunately mean I’ll probably never be one of those artists that can just shit out a perfect finished drawing in an hour, cause it takes me 20 minutes to get just the pencils for the eyes looking acceptably non-wonky. It puts me in a position where I look at panels 3 and 4 and I’m like, those two faces look markedly different, but I don’t know how to fix it. Well, the nose is shaped differently, but I think it’s more to do with the eyes and the jaw? It might help if I could take a month off to study caricature, but that’s never going to happen.
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Deus *does* like hearing himself talk, but that is not the reason why….
One thing that might help is watching video/ animations if 3d shapes moving and rotating in front of a fixed camera under various lighting conditions. I find that relative scale is easier to keep track of when I know how things got from one pose to another and so can scale things accurately. For instance, max’s nose seems to get longer relative to the height of her eyes as the page progresses.
She should know he has a doctorate. It should be in his file, which she read, right?
she didn’t ask him how, but why.
He out of no where volunteered this information, like bragging. Just because someone may know you are a doctor, engineer, etc…doesn’t mean you won’t bring it up yourself because you are proud of it.
he is pulling a brush aside like, “yeah I said all that mostly because I wanted to share my thoughts and rarely in my line of work get to show off I can do things like this, I could have just handed you this paperwork with all of that written down in detail”
She asked, “Why did you share this stuff at all?”.
His answer was, “I’m a math geek.”
It’s a straight-up answer to the question.
Sharing the math with Dabbles and seeing the look on her face, and getting her some water, is probably the most fun he’s had since… that last time he had a lot of fun.
He said it because she called him Mister Superion just before. And he wanted it noted that he’s technically a Dr, not a Mr.
I am aware of this you two, I was answering Joe Guy’s question about Maxima already knowing he has PHd and asking him this and him answering like this anyway.
“He out of no where volunteered this information, like bragging. ”
Isn’t it commonly accepted that if you leave out someone’s doctor title and call them Mr, Ms, or Mrs then you are inviting correction from them; especially if you know they are a doctor since you are somewhat disrespecting them.
yeah, but this Deus. AKA a man who named himself Deus. Its hard to imagine him not talking about his shoe laces without bragging about it (bet they have gold aglets)
We assume he names himself. But… could Deus be an Acronym?
Doctor
E
U
Superion?
“and you are mister…?”
“‘Doctor’, actually”
“Mister Doctor?”
“it’s Strange”
“Perhaps. who am I to judge?”
What kind of creepy stalker do you think Max is, to abuse her position of authority, to read her ex’s file?
Yes.
She’s the commanding officer of the unit and primary contact with a major supplier / partner. She’d be seriously remiss in her duties if she didn’t read it. Including whatever Leon scraped off his social media presence.
Shh, trying to defend Maxima’s honour here.
I didn’t say she enjoyed it. :P
Pretty sure a white knight is the last thing Max would ever want in her life to be fair. But then again a lot of men find her scary or just wanna get a good bone in. Chance is there she might actually find it refreshing and even a little sweet.
I think she would have a lot of fans who would do exactly that, so probably not that refreshing.
Remember she is a celebrity with super powers and people love to white and black knight celebrities.
It could simply come from a bunch of dudes and girls who likes to argue on the internet.
Those people probably wouldn’t white knight or black knight were she in the same room, but that’s not needed for the same effect.
She knows he has a Doctorate, but is not calling him that because “Doctor Superion” or “Doctor Deus” is far to Super-Villain of a title. Deus, unsure if she has read his file or not, mentions he is Doctor rather than Mr, but then agrees it’s far too supervillian of a title to be called by.
This is the maxim of “It’s better to be told something you know than not told something you don’t” in play.
Dr Strange, Dr Fate, Dr Midnite, and the second Dr Light would be saddened that you think their educational accomplishments make them villainous. :)
All because of that one gd Dr Doom ruining it for all the superhero doctors :)
I do know some exceptions a few villains who have doctorates but don’t use it as part of their villain names like Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Scarecrow, and one who even has Mr in his villain name Dr Victor Fries calls himself Mr Freeze.
Anybody who has his own thunder emulator installed probably has “listen to myself talk” as one of his top five.
I think the biggest difference in Deus between panel 3 and 4 is his hairline
I am also somewhat face blind. I differentiate people based on their voices and way of speaking, since it is rare that I can identify someone based on their face. Even close family members (like my kids) are difficult for me to recognize based on their face. I also can’t trust my vision when walking anywhere, since what I see isn’t always physically identical to what is there.
I’m more name deaf than face blind. I can recognize people by the nape of their necks after not seeing them for years, but I think there are maybe 20-30 people I could dredge up the name of in a pinch, and that’s counting all my close friends, and a handful of relatives and co-workers.
I’m the same way and it is SUPER annoying
Same here. I can recognize someone just by the way they walk but the names of people I have worked with for years elude me.
But… swimsuits… and the shower after?
If only Max or Halo would make a joke about ‘dropping a deuce’ to get him off that high horse.
Super recognizers are rare and kinda startling to the rest of us ‘normal’ people. At 64 I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in 51 years (nephew of a childhood neighbor). Even though he had last seen me when he was 11 and I was 13, he not only recognized me (despite of the fact that I had no facial hair at 13 and my hair was red and I now sport a mustache, beard and grey hair), called me by the right name (I’m good if I can remember a name for 2 weeks), and reminded me of who he was and where we had last met.
According to his wife, he does this all the time.
I think a bit of a “ bling “ at the edge of Duex’s smile in panel 4 would have been…..Interesting
I too would like to find out how Kenya is coming along outside and how many phone numbers she received.
If that’s $ 4000 cognac, why the ice?
Deus is definitely an American.
I noticed that immediately as well. Store I work at has a bottle of Louis XIII on the shelf, it’s like $5000 here. He’s pouring a bare minimum of $300 of Cognac over ice. Frickin’ wild, dude.
No, he’s a douche, similar but not exclusive to being an American
Jeez I never understood the need for ice in drinks I can for beer but the best sipping whiskey’s are best warm!
Because some American salesman in the 1800s did their job so we’ll selling ice that it became indoctrinated into the culture even after ice became easy to make and no longer needed to be stored careful and treated as a fancy luxury
My question was: Does Deus own ANY alchohol that costs less than $4K a bottle?
… Of course he doesn’t. Stupid question.
Is the knot on Deus’ tie supposed to be spinning? Or did it get mirror imaged in panels 3 & 4?
IDK but I do know that the Trinity knot is for-real and from personal experience it’s great for waging psy-ops against stodgy hotel managers…
I just want to know what freaking knot Deus is using to get his tie like that.
It’s called a trinity knot and yes it’s a real thing.
https://youtu.be/MF4200GZp4U
Dr. Deus, Dr. Zaius… Could end up with damned dirty apes… (https://planetoftheapes.fandom.com/wiki/Zaius_(APJ)#:~:text=Doctor%20Zaius%20was%20an%20orangutan,Chief%20Defender%20of%20the%20Faith.)
We can’t be having Deus start wearing a cape. It would distract from Maxima’s grand entrance in her own magnificent uniform!
Heh I feel ya Dave, I am not a fast artist myself. Some things I can crank out with a quickness but most of the time its a laborious process to get things right. Im often amazed you can keep this weekly schedule with such quality. Most web comicers sacrifice their art for the sake of the deadline.
Face Blindness
They have a more medical/scientific name for it now, but I forgot what it is.
I tested at about 80% face blind, which apparently explains a lot.
To those that don’t know I’ll talk a small bit on how it is for me.
Yes, I can identify if something is a face, and can usually see a face in something that gives the illusion of a face.
Now remembering a face, or trying to break it down into specifics (like for a police sketch artist), I’m totally worthless.
I recognize the faces of people I know and see a lot, however changing things can easily throw me off.
However I don’t rely as much on identifying people by face, but rather by voice, movement, and other cues.
Twins have been annoyed at my ability to do that when even their parents can’t.
Overall when I encounter someone that knows me, but isn’t one of the few I can recognize, yet not describe, I wait until their voice or something else sparks my memory.
Watching shows where there are several very similar people with similar clothes, or changing wardrobes, can be murder for me. I haven’t known them enough to identify by the other means yet, and the tv/movie has actually lost a lot of the more subtle ques I rely on. Because of that I tend to prefer ones where the primary or otherwise important characters have something unique to identify them more easily.
That might be why I prefer things such as sci-fi/fantasy, and anime where the characters tend to be very recognizably different, as opposed to your standard sea of grey suits in a corporate setting.
So I don’t perceive people as having no faces, human brains are too heavily hardwired to recognize that something IS a face, rather it’s more that the processing and storage of that information is below normal. If you want someone with face blindness to describe what somebodies face looks like, unless you want super vague at best answers, they should probably be looking at that person or a good picture of the face when they answer.
Sadly there are some voice actors who get a lot of work on English dubs, but to me their voices are easily recognizable, and I am so sick of hearing certain people over and over when it’s supposed to be a different character.
As to Tara Strong, Mark Hamill, and Mel Blanc (R.I.P.), they are fantastic and have a multitude of voices that are distinctly different.
Well that’s enough babbling for something mostly off topic. Ok, more than mostly ;)
I thought face-blindness was only common with young men around shapely women/girls LOL
Ok that was mean but I have asked guys about hair color or eye color after meeting a lovely lady and always got the “I dunno” answer I made it a habit to look at the face/eyes/eyebrows first then look elsewhere.
I worked security at a football dome and on one occasion had to cross the field to get to a call and as I entered the tunnel I passed 3 of the cheerleaders just as i did one giggles and took a step back stepping on my in-grown toenail I let out a yelp and she turned and apologized and since she was taller than me to start with plus her 7 in high-healed tennis shoes second base was eye level to me I was in tears trying to not look at the valley presented to me while telling her it was ok LOL
Artist here – to practice faces the best is live drawing! Use a real human as a model – like your wife. And focus on seeing the shapes – NOT using the automatic “face processing software” the human brain has. If you can remember your characters as 3d collection of planes and angles it will help much MORE then remembering “what their faces look like”. One sketch of your art model per day is gonna improve your skills faster then you think.
Well I guess he wouldn’t want to step on Disney’s toes. I mean Doctor D is already taken.( for those who want to know Dr. Drakken was often called Dr. D in the Kim possible TV show by his lippy sidekick Shego) Since this uses real pop culture its a safe bet that disney is in this universe. They may have trademarked the name.
they litterally can’t trademark actual names.
Dr. D (could be an acronym for anyone with a D surname), not to mention characters like Dr. Druid
in fact they can’t even trademark Dr. Doom because there are real people with the last name Doom, including an actual doctor.
this is why character trade marks are seldom just the name but include their “iconic” look(s).
Yeah, it’s the look that’s trademarked (like clowns), rather than the name (specially considering how often they change the name of the character… )
So your saying he’s fine unless he gets blue skin and wears something like dr.d costume? (Blue hazmat suite without the head.probably close enough)
yes, and even then fair use parody can still get away with it, sometimes the trademark can be a bit nebulous or have varying grounds.
for instance right now Winnie the Pooh is public domain due to how old the books are.
HOWEVER
if you make a Winnie the Pooh with a little red shirt on without permission and royalties to Disney, Disney can sue you as that is their version of the character.
DaveB…Check out the older movie “Forbidden Planet”
1 style : Arrrggghhh. Beenpoking at yhis thing for 45min, and i’m hungry! F*ck it, get off my back !
1b (panel 3) light shadow on left jowel and left neck don’t have a source light (based off collar and background wall strip shadows)
2b(panel 4) his teeth are closed in both panels, but it now seems his face is either too narrow or his neck is too long.
3 see #1
Btw movie I mentioned was a cool older sci-fi cheesy check brain at the door and just grab the snacks and chill. However; DO check the credits for famous actors.
I cannot tell you how many times, I have watched that movie!!!
In panel 3, Deus’ chin and jaw look longer and rounder, in panel 4 a bit shorter and more angular or “chiseled”. Fwiw, 6mmv
Deus has this habit of speech: when he’s asked a direct question, he pauses significantly, and then launches off on a seemingly random tangent. At first, I thought he just doesn’t like giving direct answers. Now, I’m wondering if he considers telling the straight truth, and decides against it. It’s like, he just can’t WAIT to tell them what he’s really planning. They’re going to feel so dumb.
Also, Sydney be like: Let’s not get wrapped up in sexy shenanigans focused on ME, let’s get wrapped up in sexy shenanigans involving Kenya.
You know, it’s almost certain that Deus is about…75% wrong about this. Even if Sydney HAD found her orbs in the Florida Keys like she said–heck, even if he doesn’t know where she found them, and is just taking a wild guess–even a cursory glance at the logic should tell him what’s wrong with his supposition. I assume that Deus isn’t seeing the hole in his logic at least partly in an attempt to keep from wetting his pants in terror, because if I was in his position, and I saw the linkage I’m seeing, I know I’d be scared. Like, mind-numbingly scared.
Namely, that if the energies involved in supers are coming from those orbs, they should have had an effect on either Sydney herself, or on those around her. And even if we’re talking about something that takes thousands of years to have an impact…well, if that’s the case, than North America should have VERY distinct patterns of supers. Specifically, since most of North America’s population comes from recent immigrants, the local Native American tribes should have a MARKEDLY higher incidence of superpowers than anybody else, since they were in closer proximity, and thus should have been more affected by whatever energies the orbs are producing.
The logical solution is that superpowers are coming from something else, likely something buried in either Africa, that has been shifting human genetics for millions of years, or the Middle East, which has been shifting human genetics for thousands of years (or in Mongolia, where it has been shifting local genetics for thousands of years, and human genetics for hundreds of years. If it is in Africa, Deus is moving in the wrong direction–he needs to be moving north and west, so he can get to the Atlantic ocean through the Congo, rather than through Mozambique. Why? Because he has to assume, if he’s an intelligent world conqueror, that if he can figure this out, so can somebody else. And he absolutely cannot afford to let anybody else get this information, and act upon it, before he has at least neutralized any potential advantage that lots more supers could give his rivals.
Which is why he’s acting the way he is, I know. But the thing is…Sydney’s orbs were found at/near the edge of a 65 MILLION year old crater. Which suggests either one of two things: either the orbs aren’t responsible, because they’ve been there for literally millions of years. Which is all kinds of bad news, since it means that somebody is DELIBERATELY granting humans superpowers through means and for reasons that are currently completely unknown and unfathomable. Option two is that the orbs are more recently arrived on Earth, which is, if anything, even more terrifying, because they represent a tech level that is simply beyond anything else the galaxy knows about. And since it beggars the imagination that somebody with something that advanced would just…swing by on a lark, and leave it behind like you or I would leave a pair of underwear behind…that means that whoever had the orbs, came to Earth ON PURPOSE. Which means, given the location, that they were probably here regarding that crater…and that they didn’t survive the encounter. Which means that whatever they found at the bottom of that crater? It’s likely still there. And it’s probably not friendly (and if it IS friendly, that means that there’s somebody who is likely to be very UNFRIENDLY still out there, probably looking for round two.
Now, HOPEFULLY, Sydney’s orbs came here at the hands of…I dunno. A junior researcher doing a thesis on something complex and unexpectedly dangerous, like a major manifestation of a dark deity, or something. And, hopefully, that researcher got surprised, but still managed to put it down (or, more likely, put it back to sleep), after which he crawled off and died nearby from his or her wounds. In which case, there is an entire race of beings who can take on cosmological horrors capable of triggering a planet-wide extinction event on arrival, and who are likely to want those orbs back, and maybe to study these Earthlings, to see why eff they’ve got superpowers, when nobody else does. Basically, the GOOD option is that Brainiac will be coming to wipe out all the humans except the ones he wants to study, and will then leave with no more humans, ever.
Then they get worse from there. Because if it wasn’t a researcher who got surprised, than there was a battle…and at that point, you have to assume that the battle CAUSED the crater, and wiped out the dinosaurs. And at least one of the participants of said battle is likely still out there, and may be hostile, and is certainly much more advanced than they were back then. And if it wasn’t a researcher, than they came loaded for bear, possibly with friends, and it wasn’t enough. Which suggests that any return expeditions…won’t be lightly armed.
key point error,
its not being suggested the energy is coming from the orbs, but rather the creators of the orbs and the creators of this new sub-field are the same beings.
so the orbs could be drawing power from the field as well just like supers are, or have in internal “battery” while the field is more of these Nth beings version of a wifi
on the rest though, yeah; given the orbs were on the surface the KT boundary event is probably a red herring, and the field isn’t just around parts of Earth but likely expanded well beyond the Earth, the whole galaxy at minimum considering their powers still worked on the Alari planet (no one described a loss of power and Harem’s were definitely working still).
It’s possible the field just propagated through the portal. Think of it as a logic worm at the level of physics, rewriting the universe’s code as it goes. It’s probably propagating through the universe at the speed of light, except when it’s offered some sort of shortcut to a new point to propagate from.
Got a random bit of story telling inspiration from this page and last, and not just in the “I should really work on the quantum physics side of explaining my insanely over advanced aliens*
no an actual short scene popped into my head based on these,
its not really fanfic (didn’t use any identifiable characters, or named ones at that) but the situation inspired this.
-a really short story (scene idea and rough write out of said scene)
Rhulan office trip
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Rhulan-office-trip-912563416
@DaveB pun time…
Sydney picks up a small triangular bottle. “What’s this?” She asks Harem.
“OMG! That’s Deus’s MIO.”
Deus: “I’m not going to give you a straight answer. But you should take it as a compliment”
Max: “Bull$#!%”
Doctor Zeus or Doctor Zaius?