Grrl Power #1097 – Completionist
Sydney didn’t read ahead in the script or anything, she just guessed that if a smaller country is going to have some supers passing through, they might have a task or two they could use help with. She didn’t consider most places would be fairly prideful and not want to admit they need help with anything, or would at least want to keep the assistance off the record, but sometimes you’ve got a to do list and you can never quite seem to get to the items that are like 7th or 8th from the top and then your big strong neighbor wanders by asking for a favor and you think “I have been meaning to break down that heavy ass swingset in the backyard that the kids haven’t played on in 5 years and it’s starting to rust…” So yeah, it’s like that.
Once America outed Supers and were like “They’re real and by the way we’ve got the first super cops,” most other countries followed suit. Many of them already had Supers working for the government in one capacity or another, but now most of them can actually attribute that line item in their budget to something tangible. Now many countries have a prominent Super Team of some flavor, usually at least one of whom is branded with a modicum of national identity. Some countries have split the load, putting out a highly prominent “PR” team of flashy-but-less-trained-for-crisis Supers that spend a lot of time on public appearances, and another team of certified low-key bad-asses. Obviously the working lunches when the two teams meet can be a little awkward. America is trying to have it both ways with a single team, but while Maxima is fine with delivering a poignant speech to the graduating class of the USAF Academy or other relevant and significant events, she has little patience for answering “Who are you wearing?” at red carpet events or movie premieres. As she is largely the face of the team, alongside Sydney, which was unplanned, and Harem (planned, but has proven to be undisciplined) and Dabbler (unpredictable), the PR team is still trying to ease Maxima into a mindset where she could go on late night talk shows without too much eye-rolling. Actually, the most reliable PR workhorse has been Hiro, though we haven’t seen much of that in the comic.
The October Vote Incentive is up!
Why did it take so long? I couldn’t tell you. Well, I hand drew the lace on Lorlara’s body stocking, so that took about an hour by itself. Anyway, it’s likely the next one will be single character, and hopefully it won’t be so late. Usually with fewer characters I can do more outfit variants but we’ll see.
So I have enough “Blue Babes” to do a theme. Eventually I’ll be able to fill in the whole rainbow of my own characters. I did a rainbow lineup previously for those who hadn’t seen it. I’d love to revisit that one of these days.
Enjoy variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Haven’t seen the $5 bet in while. Nice to see it again with, to me, kind of a change up. I mean, isn’t this the first time the subject’s something outside Sidney/team?
I’m shocked it was $5 all along, I was expecting higher with their salaries.
As I replied to someone else on the previous page, it’s not always about the money.
And it is also possible that is the maximum bet. It is not uncommon in the U.S. military for monetary bets or services between fellow military members to be banned, but that is no fun and money is one of the easiest things to bet so placing a low maximum just to let people have a little fun is a good solution.
Agreed, $5 gets a little skin in the game without having things escalate and ruin the team dynamic. Playing for real money instead of just a token amount could quickly turn into higher-paid (and therefore higher-ranked) members flaunting or leveraging their salary to put down subordinates with ever-higher wagers.
With high-powered people, it’s often the winning that counts, not what was won. I don’t think $5 counts as “skin in the game”… it’s a lot like the $1 in “Trading Places”…
It’s a token amount for sure, but requires crossing the threshold from just mouthing off to committing something tangible.
I take you’ve not seen the cinematic masterpiece that is “Trading Places”?
I’m pretty sure DaveB said at some point that Maxima decided to allow bets, but set $5 as the maximum bet to ensure that things didn’t get out of hand.
I’m surprised Dabbler isn’t checking the Balls for warning lights or at least icons that are different from when at full power. This is absolutely critical information, so it should show up SOMEWHERE as a strange icon.
She’s going to wait to examine Sydney’s balls until they have some privacy
Dabbler is relatively bad at checking the Balls specifically. Anything she could spot, Sydney can probably spot on her own.
Wait. Are we talking about the same thing?
Were you talking about anything? I don’t see any previous replies from you.
that reminds me, I don’t think its been established that anyone other than Sidney can even see the glyphs/buttons.
When Dabbler first examined them she couldn’t see anything, including glyphs.
Now Sidney may not have had one active for her to look at, and it would make sense this happened at some point if she can see them and at the very least Sidney describe or draw the glyphs so they can try to rudimentarily translate them knowing which glyph-buttons activate what in the orbs.
Welp that just happened.
Max is gonna be ticked when she finds out they somehow interpreted “play it safe” (re: the Sydney and the orbs) as “go shopping and extend Archon’s services to explicitly engage supers in a foreign country.”
Eh, Max has bigger things she’s ticked off about right now. The attack on Archon HQ, not getting to sit in on Darude’s interrogation, Darude in general getting sand in her panties, X-Boy in general getting on her nerves today… this probably is just barely a blip on her tick-dar.
If Anvil buys her lingerie for a follow-up visit with Deus, THEN she’ll be ticked.
Anvil did buy 3rd date supplies for Max and Dues, and there are some… negligible parts to it.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-832-free-shipping-with-glamazon-prime/
The attack, Darude, and Deus are all job hazards she signed up for, but her teammates are supposed to have her back – not ignore her directions and rush headlong into making her job/life harder by creating situations that will taunt Murphy into undercutting Archon on the world stage.
Bare minimum they need to call and run this by her and General Faulk first. But we know they won’t because it’s the away team’s turn to carry the idiot ball.
Nah. Anvil gets away with stuff that no one else would get away with with Max. They’re basically best friends. For that matter, Sydney gets away with a lot of stuff no one else would get away with as well. :)
I fully expect there to be 42 gangsters per that quest pop-up.
Maybe that ‘upgraded one tier’ quest bit will give a ‘upgrade UI point’. Getting something like ‘this is the name of the orb’ on the level up screen will help figure out the upgrades and such, depending on if it gives a different name than what Sydney is using for it (Kind of doubt that some of them would be too different). Especially if it applies to the sections of upgrades (Such as the ‘link between orbs’ as a whole, and the pie slices thing that Sydney has no idea what that actually does, other than maybe a ‘multi-point buy’ upgrade/unlock.)
And the only reason why I’m saying that limited is that I doubt that she’d get a name/description for the ‘unlocked for point spending’ options right off the bat. (Though purchased upgrades getting the name revealed would work as well. A somewhat meaner idea on that is if it only labels the ones Sydney has figured out. Which, at least it would be confirmation.)
…thinking on it now, I imagine some of those upgrades would be ‘recharge speed’ for power source/upgrading the power source in general. Maybe THAT’S the pie slice one, rather than ‘get new orb’. Outside of maybe ‘need enough power to support a new orb. Though how that pertains to exp to unlock features is a mystery. Exp being actually ‘optimizing power usage’ and similar?
I thought that Sydney could summon the skill tree.
A ‘State of Charge’ indication would be useful.
It might show that the orbs are slowly recharging from ambient energy.
So far, we’ve only seen her “summon” the skill tree when there was a point to spend – as far as we know, she hasn’t ever summoned it without the points.
Didn’t she manually summon it when they got back to HQ? When we first met Pixelicious (who Sydney liked because she was shorter than Sydney) and Specs (who Sydney didn’t like because she was taller… like 90% of the adult population, and 25% of the teenagers :P )
Wrong on all counts.
Moments like this are why I never finished playing through Dragon Age. (Also, I was trying to do all the female character romance quests, so that took up some time too…)
Nah Sydney didn’t need to read ahead she’s just genre savvy
And nobody mentions how Ariel-like Anvil’s hair is in panel 4. I love it so much!
Just for the record, Air Senegal has daily flights between Dakar and New York City.