Grrl Power #1208 – Deus uses “Smug.” It’s super annoying
Deus has a Legendary class magic item that gives him a cumulative +1% to smugness that rolls over as long as he is a smug dick to someone at least once a day. He has used it for 4,571 consecutive days.
Okay, no, he doesn’t really have something like that. But he does have a lot of practice. Probably more than 4,571 days worth, if I’m honest, although possibly non-consecutive. Sometimes you gotta mix it up and swap out the smugness with weapons-grade facetiousness or sardonic… ness. Sardonism? Sardonicness?
Lorlara isn’t technically Deus’s bodyguard, but most people would be foolish to discount an Alari of her capabilities. I never said it in the comic, but the number of wings an Alari can generate is a sign of their status and power. Sciona made eight I think? Possibly eight plus two little vestigial ones. I don’t recall from when she got her body back. I could look it up but it’s thanksgiving eve and if you’re bored at home with the family you can track it down. I think Lorlara could generate four, shown when she joined Deus and Maxima for dinner that one time. The vast majority of Alari never gain the ability to generate wings, and even though two wings aren’t enough to fly on their own (they allow limited gliding and slow falling) someone with two is still treated like hot shit amongst Alari populations.
A “Late middle ages” vampire probably doesn’t need to be scared of Lorlara, but he should still at least be cautious, especially depending on what the dagger she always has strapped to her back is made of. Lorlara vs. Scarlett would be a much closer fight. The Scourger Demon in the fox hunter outfit there in the back could do terrible physical damage if it caught either of the vampires unaware, but Ingsol could still take it down with relative ease. Again, Scarlett would be a more even match.
The September vote incentive is up! Let’s call it the November vote incentive and just say I’ve still got two I.O.U’s, eh?
Well, Dabbler is doing her Dabbler things, and the Patreon version has a nude variant and a comic that… I don’t know, expounds on the goings on of the initial picture?
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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I love this comic! Guys will be guys – even ancient vampy guys. I like Deus. There is something about his combination of smug, capability and intelligence that just hits my ‘loving the anti-hero’ buttons. This comic makes me think that this is how he makes friends among the other semi-villains. ^_^
Dues loves to play the ‘I am too useful to get rid of’ card and they hate that he knows how well to play it out… Also he may have trained or marks the exact positions to stand for maximum light stand efficiency. Not everyone gets the benefit of bringing their own light source (probably magically produced at that) on demand for intimidation light focus.
I actually want to see some bonehead villan assume that Deus is bluffing, only to find out that he is far more dangerous than he looks.
its been done. did not turn out well for him. his son wears the crown now. also, the fool coddled his son, concealed from him the reality of how his power worked. made it easy for Dues to get the son to accept his fathers ousting.
That was Deus’ employees, not Deus himself. We’ve yet to see him in a confrontation.
That’s because being a mastermind is his super ability. That he can effortlessly recruit villains to his cause doesn’t say much for Harem’s moral compass
Harem has a moral compass? I’d go with ‘catlike love of comfort and interesting toys.’
She *has* a moral compass. It just points in different directions than most people’s.
“Harem has a moral compass? ”
I think they’re referring to this back-and-forth with Sydney and Harem.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-308-harems-got-some-splainin-to-do/
(panels 5 and 6)
Harem has stated that she would have been a master thief if she could carry more. Think that pretty clearly establishes where her Compass points.
Not necessarily. I think it’s a fairly normal thing for people to think about. The ‘what ifs’ of life, as it were.
I know there are only two things keeping me from becoming a Master Hacker… Fear and Common Sense. Well, maybe three, a suspicion that I might not be as good as I think I am.
That being said, if Elon Musk ever wakes up with a -$4.28 in all of his accounts and projects like Grrl Power are funded beyond their wildest imaginations, it wasn’t me, I had nothing to do with it, and nobody saw me do nothing!
Why assume Harem wasn’t sent to spy?
She was, and Maxi knows all about it (and that Daphne is sleeping with the douchemy)
if you recall it was made clear that arc knows what harem is doing and she is in fact a double agent for them. she’s feeding information about deus back to them as well. there is also nothing that says what kind of intell she gives.
Having and using employees well are a mastermind’s superpower, so as to speak.
it is clear from the context that they were acting under his direction. it was his plan. you are correct that he could not have done it himself. however, villain, hero, or something else Dues is a mastermind and sends his minions on ahead of him rather that always doing it himself. one of the keys to making oodles and gobs of money and thus power is to find the right people and delegate the right tasks to them. (it helps a lot to have parents who can loan you the cost of a house or nice car as well)
Deus has people for that.
On the one hand Deus pulling out some fancy magi-tech would make sense but on the other, not relying on such and instead making use of loyalty and charisma would set him apart from the other “hands on” types like Luthor and Xanatos *both ended up building battle suits*
I would make it “sardonicism.” It’s from a Greek root, and those don’t normally take -ness as a suffix. And since there isn’t a noun “Sardon” (like “Narcissus” or “[de] Sade”) you can’t just stick -ism onto the root; you need to start with the adjectival “sardonic.”
Although the -ism suffix isn’t universal in the case of a noun form. I once had the pleasure of correcting someone from ‘pedanticism’ to ‘pedantry’.
That sounds like a true pleasure. Especially if he was the one being pedantic at the time. Less so, if he was using it to call you, or someone else, out, though.
Less? Hardly. That would be a doubling down which demonstrates the utter lack of capabilities of the interlocutor.
is there such thing as an outerlocutor?
Yes, but they tend to get lost alot. As in “misplaced” rather than “unable to reach their destination”.
No, but there’s an intralocutor. That’s the voice in your head that questions all your decisions.
I would not, however, find “sardonry” a natural form.
Pedantosity.
I still think Vale’s a Small (maybe Medium) Old One, and she’s using her ‘boss’ as a mortal sherpa so she can interact with the modern world and not get bored.
Didn’t Vale look mechanical on the inside?
Does this look mechanical to you?
I’d love if Vale’s reason for working for Deus is something simple like he’s just fun to be around. If you were secretly an unknowable horror, slumming it with a megalomaniacal, genius, billionaire, with inside connections to the super hero, magic, and galactic community seems like an appealing way to kill time for a few centuries.
Totally yes. Also note that if you are older than universe, those few centuries are very short time.
Sounds like the reason for Puck being David Xanatos’s loyal assistant as Owen on Disney’s Gargoyles. :)
Kinda like the reason Dabbles continues to hang around Archon
I wonder if he was born with the whole package or if he started with one attribute and leveraged it to attain the others.
I love all the frames of Ingsol slowly deflating!
“Do not take me for some conjurer of cheap tricks”
“I can stand in front of a light too”
Those rows of teeth make me think they’re more like Hellsing vampires. This explains why Ingsol is apparently so strong at that age.
lol this page give me such a hotel transilvania vibe :)
yeah, I mean, Johnny’s backpack was even in one of the corners!
DAVE! I gotta address your rant on previous page about multiverses. I know few cases where multiverse is a justification for crossover of characters from 2 or more different franchises. I know this one book which does just that: a bunch of people from near as many different sci-fi series appear in a bar, and one says something along the lines: “Is this a multiverse thing?” It is. Full title is BOB’s Bar (Tales From The Multiverse Book 1)
Hang on, Lorlara? I thought “your bodyguard” was referring to Vale!
Also, Dave, small point of order: you forgot Ingsol’s accent, both on this page and the previous one. So shouldn’t it be “I am an ancient wampire, and your bodyguard is novhere to be seen”?
They are refering to Vale. Lorlara, his Alari secretary is walking right behind them.
Therefore “nowhere to be seen” can’t refer to Lorlara.
In the comic I assume they are talking about Vale but in Dave’s commentary below he says something about how Lorlara not technically being Deus’s bodyguard. Why would he feel the need to say that when we all know that’s what Vale is? That’s the confusing part.
YES! THAT! EXACTLY THAT! Where’s the accent? I pointed that out on the previous page too.
Shapeshifter impersonating him?
Can’t do the accent.
His accent is fake, he has said it himself back when he was introduced
It’s my impression that Ingsol has been around long enough to learn many languages at the “with no perceptible accent” level. Also he seemed to be annoyed at having people jump to the conclusion that he’d have that accent just because he’s a late middle ages^W^W^W^Wan ancient vampire.
It would be interesting if some heavy action did take place in Deus’ immediate vicinity so that he would have to take defensive measures. He’s a buff guy and we’ve seen him working out, then there’s the adage that you are your own best self defense. Smart guy that is Deus must definitely be bad ass at hand to hand and I’ll bet real money he’s packing some serious heat.
As far as Sciona’s wings are concerned, she seems to have 8 large wings and two small ones at the bottom, at least from comics 599 and 607, although on 617 only 8 are visible. Admittedly this might be because she was wearing her armor at the time and was flying, so her large wings were extended and small ones might have been retracted. When she’s naked (in 607) it’s clearly 8 large and 2 small though. She also seemed to have more than 8 in the Black Reliquiry (in comic 572), but that might have just been from her initial transformation so I wasn’t using that page as a basis. Also when she does her spinning teleport thing it seems like 5 are spinning (so I’m assuming 5 on each side, meaning 10 in all).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-599-arch-off/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-607-a-magnificent-proposal/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-617-meet-violent/
Where is Vale anyway?!?
Kipper off to the 5th dimension to have tea with mystlspitlick probably. Lol!
(points in direction orthogonal to reality) there
Kata or anti-kata wards?
Deus did shopping on an alien mega-trade hub.
Do you think he didn’t trade for some personal gear?
Or hasn’t bought a McGuffin or two he can use defensively or offensively?
Also likely trained in combat arts and mental fortress ways that he and Math could talk shop evenly. Deus would start softening Math by showing him his personal book of best breasts he’s handled.
Be it hitech, alienware, techomage or artifact, Deus likely has enough options to fit into his chosen outfits for the day or events he attends.
Everyone has that table or bowl they dump their loose items into when they come home. Imagine Deus’s scene removing his tools. (DeusTo Sydney, “Yes i have considered a BatBelt, but shark repellent doesnt have enough uses to justify its usage daily. Your idea of exploding batarangs or carbon fiber laced with the stuff you put on eggs daily. Now that’s got me interested . So I out a team of scientists on it.” /Deus)
I bet trying to think like Sydney puts a crimp in his thought flow.
Do you think he’s s tried to tap her source of superhero savvy by having her comic shop source him all the best relevant comics ?
We need a scene of Deus reading in bed, latest female conquest zonked out next to him. Cover is some super rare annual xmen or crossover comic. Except he’s smiling and giggling. Woman gets up and sees inside comic. It’s a MLP comic sandwiched inside the rare superhero comic.
His face at being caught, and face of girl when she pans from front cover. To what he’s actually reading, would be priceless. Be a hilarious 3 panel incentive.
Ingsol doesn’t know Deus has been off-world. I expect Deus has also modified his diet to be completely unpalatable to vampires.
I mean, sure, the other stuff you said. But if Ingsol actually managed to bite Deus? He’d regret it beyond any ass kicking he received over it.
“Ingsol doesn’t know Deus has been off-world.”
I’m sure the Council suspects he has been, given how much he knows about extraterrestrials.
“I expect Deus has also modified his diet to be completely unpalatable to vampires.”
Extra garlic in the cannolis.
“I mean, sure, the other stuff you said. But if Ingsol actually managed to bite Deus? He’d regret it beyond any ass kicking he received over it.”
Also a bad idea since they seem to still be in one of the buildings in Washington DC from how the decor looks and the fact that the Scrounger demon is being forced to stay in his disguise.
You might want to look up what a cannoli is.
Oops I meant manicotti.
Although if I was a vampire I definitely wouldn’t want to drink the blood of someone who put garlic in cannolis either.
facts
Deus drinks sparkling HOLY water – blessed by the pope himself……..
With ice cubes from the Archbishop Of Canterbury’s freezer….
I am reminded of an episode of G.I. Joe called “The McGuffin Device” where the titular device was never shown, just a crate and a large heavy bag where the device supposedly was. I used to watch TV with my kids and that one stuck in my memory.
The Viper is Coming :)
I’ve come to vipe your vindows.
*skips to the part where they all laugh*
I will skip to the part where they all laugh. then listen to the PSA about not watching TV all day.
Whatever Vale is, Deus is able to make her cry.
I wonder if Deus could stand up against Pixel, after all she can change reality and make him a drooling idiot, at least for a time. And if Halo jumped in after going without her meds for a day or so, could he survive her randomness with his sanity intact?
Deus power is to NOT stand up against Pixel or “randomized” Halo.
He probably DOES have some way to selfdefend, but being forced to actually USE it would already means that his original plan (or several) failed.
I think you mean Krona as the reality hacker.
Pixel is the multi-form were-jaguar with laser claws.
You’re not the first to mix them up, but I’m at a bit of a loss as to how it keeps happening…
That and peoples’ inability to spell Galytn (although much of that might be down to autocorrupt).
I can only guess that Pixel, being a computer term, seems like an obvious name for a hacker, reality or otherwise. But given that DaveB has already expressed his distaste for characters whose names match their powers, I would expect anything obvious to be intentionally misleading. But the average reader barely seems to read the comic pages themselves, let alone the author’s notes. I just wonder if they’re as forgetful about real people’s names.
“ DaveB has already expressed his distaste for characters whose names match their powers”
Admittedly he has less names like that than most vomics but there are still a few.
Harem
Maxima
Vehemence
Jiggawatt
Heatwave
Achilles
Mr Amorphous
Heavenly Blade
Chimyriad
Concretia
Specs
Marble Maiden
Gauntlett
Atomic Bombshell
Goon Squad
Admittedly most are not in Archon or were named prior to joining Archon also (or in Chim’s case – one of my favorite characters actually – are from patreon I think). And Goon Squad and Harem are still more subtle than DupliKate or Multiple Man or Triplicate Girl or Duo Damsel. So your point does stand. :)
I think he meant characters whose (real names) match their powers like having someone name Steven Volt with electric powers and not referring to their code names which make sense to match their powers as they make up their own code names after the fact.
But wouldn’t we expect “Pixel” to be a code name rather than the name her mother gave her?
(Especially if you don’t actually remember who she was.)
Her real name probably isn’t “Vera Jagwer” indicating that she’s a Were Jaguar.
no one said your code name HAS to match your power set or description, especially as sometimes its really a knick name *Pixel isn’t a public superhero or part of Archon* that could just be a knick name they picked up siomewhere and stuck whose context has not been revealed yet.
Sometimes you even have ironic ones like a tank named Slick.
that said, some parents will give their kids odd names, if Candy and Krystal pop up as names why not Pixel.
Pixel can actually be an actual name, according to the baby name dictionary. :)
https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names/details/pixel-1489510
Rhuen is correct in that I meant given names, not their professional names. Who’s Gauntlett?
“Who’s Gauntlett?”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-276-its-not-cheating-its-boosting/
(panel 2) – I can’t find where DaveB said it was Gauntlett but he did somewhere.
Also I forgot Terre (which apparently is short for Terremoto, which means Earthquake, and Terre is a geokientic).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1048-limitful-cosmic-power/
I forgot about her, but I think she’s only on three pages, and has two lines. It’s actually Gauntlette, mentioned only in the author blurbs on pages 228 and 276.
I just mentioned her because her name matches her powerset.
We in the comments have been calling Vale an “Eldritch” but in any given setting this can be almost *anything* sufficiently powerful. mysterious, or otherworldly, the word its self just means “elf land” (in the old tradition of a dangerous spirit like ethereal other worldly being that gets to ignore the laws of nature. Lovecraft misusing the word (as he so often did) popularized it as tentacle cosmic horrors beyond human comprehension *as defined by a sci-fi horror writer 100+ years ago at this point (may need to stop moving that goal post for Lovecraftian horrors, Cthulu back then is a Kaiju today if we remove the modern additions).
that said an “Eldritch” in any given story tends to be a extra dimensional or higher dimensional or sufficiently outside the normal laws of nature entity that can ignore most if not all the laws of physics and limitations of that setting (which can vary a lot if that setting has magic, gods, magical gods, advanced aliens, etc… in it).
so for this setting, we could have *true fae: as in ethereal beings made of magic from a higher dimension* or *true demons: as in actual ethereal horrors from an afterlife world*…and *true angel for that matter: be not afraid celestial nightmare fuel*
which those three options in this setting could fit under the Astral entities.
you also have introduced tier 3 civilizations (ascended beings that may act as guides or watchers), and tier 4 or above who can manipulate the laws of physics, at least to the extent of inserting another quantum force with specific unlocking mechanisms into the fabric of space/time.
so really it could be anything from *I am a true (fae/demon/angel) from a higher dimension privy to truths of life and death* too *I am a being beyond the universe, beyond even what you conceive of as the “multiverse” unbound by the laws of physics as you understand them, should I appear as I truly am your local reality may erupt into chaos or be annihilated around me*.
“Eldritch” – means ‘oblong’, doesn’t it?
(GNU PTerry…)
no, it means otherworldy and threatening,
Oxford Dictionary:
el·dritch
/ˈeldriCH/
adjective
adjective: eldritch
weird and sinister or ghostly.
“an eldritch screech”
Origin
early 16th century (originally Scots): perhaps related to elf.
(Merriam Webster Dictionary*
el·dritch ˈel-drich. : strange or unnatural especially in a way that inspires fear : weird, eerie.
etymology from Oxford
Old English *ælf-rīce (‘elf’ + ‘dominion, sphere of influence’).
-in toehr words, it has been grossly misunderstood over time to be narrowed to sea food space monster, when it can apply to everything from ghosts to faeries and beyond.
In fantasy we tend to say “Eldritch” as a classification mainly to describe anything clearly not bound to biological or even normal physical or possibly even normal magical rules. Which would be for such settings weird and threatening.
You’re clearly not a Discworld fan.
There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just disappointing.
Some people just don’t have any class. I blame the lack of decent knuckle sandwiches.
as one of the excessively bullied… please eat your own sandwiches. Have Sydney spice it first.
It’s a reference from the books. It is about foreign food.
I have plenty of class and I have read some and seen some Disc World content, however I don’t like people acting intentionally obtuse with me, nor was I going to bother looking too closely at a string of letters long enough to deduce their source, cite your sources properly.
It’s from the books. Commander Vimes is talking with his wife Sybil about being sent to Uberwald and only only half listening comments that he doesn’t take with foreign travel, you just can’t get a good knuckle sandwich (outside of the city).
Ah, yeah, too used to people being argumentative over the word Eldritch *so many Lovecraft fanboys will go up in arms about it*,
and it has been ages since I read Disc World stuff, seen the Christmas special a crap ton of times though LoL.
I never read much of Lovecrafts work, I found the writing style a bit too ‘hackey’.
Its horror targeted to an audience over 100 years ago at this point. There is a reason a lot of Lovecraftian lore and stuff today actually comes from writers that continued the settings after him. A lot of his stuff is either very racist, uneducated, uses themes we by now have seen so many times its not scary to us anymore (era specific. Like one story is a horror story about air conditioning *a new technology at the time…the equivalent of horror movies that were about the internet, tv, satellite dishes, etc..*fear of new technology*,
So yeah a person in 2023 finding a story from like 1922 all that compelling or scary is no different from a person in 1922 being enthralled by a story written in 1822, they’d have a hard time relating or roll their eyes at the differences in culture.
what Lovecraft and August Derleth after him tapped into was that prior the main horror was gothic horror and these stories tended to end with *and God shall protect us from evil* and the idea of the universe being an unfeeling void of chaos that couldn’t care less you existed was a new existential horror for people at the time, which is just a shrug today.
Its kind of like how talk of aliens would have caused panic in the streets in like 1950 but today barely earns a shrug from most people.
I enjoy plenty of older works. I am currently reading a translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh and I plan on rereading the Vinayas next. It’s not that I don’t like work that envolves ‘all of the tropes’, I read manga too, I just prefer well written sentences and complete ideas.
In D&D, eldritch is associated with Aberrants, greater things with links beyond the multiverse, which is a nice catchall.
that’s a good catch-all. In my own works the term has been used in a relative sense to the speaker to refer to entities from pocket dimensions, nightmarish horrors from “the far dark” (region outside the expanding universe in what remains of the previous universe), and further to beings external to the multiverse who by their very nature cause all sorts of chaos as they interact with the multiverse in various ways.
My guess on how Dues got Vale to work for him? He beat her at Beer Pong while at college.
Gotta love when the old meta/superhuman is upset because he can’t intimidate someone. :p
It’s pretty funny to see a vampire pouting.
If Maxima carries Hiro around, can she fly without causing sonic booms?
A small 10 inches shorter than average vampire with a larger rib cage a big head and with Arnold Schwarzenegger chin could be a terror ,these physical characteristics are these of a Neanderthal and he will be at least 30 000 years -40 times older than Ingsol- at most 430 000 years – 513 times older than Ingsol -.
Even Cthulhu will change sideways if he encounter him.
There was a Homo Erectus vampire in the Anita Blake books
I’ll be honest. If I had the choice to gain one powerset from the GP-verse, it would be Deus’s.
Not for being able to openly tweak the noses of everyone and everything at will and get away with it, though that looks fun.
But because he has the ability to work to change things and make them better on a massive scale… and actually does so. He’s Reed Richards without the Reed Richards is Useless paradox in play.
… Ya know, I really wouldn’t put it past him to be screwing every one of his female villainesses regardless if they’re being employed by him or not. He does have that bookshelf after all.
Calling him “SmugD” in this comic would just be redundant…
Back when Vale threw a couple punches and got knocked a block away, she reformed and looked mechanical. Or am I completely misremembering that?
SHe’s kind of a magical cloud-thing inhabiting a stylized shell made for herself. The only part of her true self normally visible is her eyes… and you’re only seeing two of them.
Hacking on her shell naturally does nothing to her. She basically ignored its head getting cut in half.
I really do like Deus, it’s really hard to think of him as a ‘bad guy’ per se, because if you don’t mess with him, he’ll treat you pretty well. He’s really not into the whole ‘random violence and murder’ thing.
Anyone else been having a weird problem with the comments section lately? Not just the usual reload or go back a page and come back to see your own comments but like the comments lists a certain number of comments but click on it and that number drops by like ten or more, not showing a number of comments, but may come back when reloading the page.
Seems worse on a cellphone, mine keeps insisting this page only as 44 comments, so had to be on my PC to read comments fully.
That is the new normal: connected to posts not showing for a random amount of time
This is a known although surprising issue with long standing comment threads.
Fixable either with better hardware or better software.
The next step would be data corruption(only fixable with better hardware).
I would have expected that an organization like Gravatar would have abstracted it down with payment tiers(drive up the price of hosting before it goes southwards), but I was apparently wrong.
D has said he is a super. However he is smart enough to not show all his cards. What superpower does he have?
My guess is he is the first normal human modified into a super.
He’s the first super genius
I would correct that to the ‘maybe revealed himself super genius’. There almost have to be others, but if they are smart, they are keeping themselves very low key about their power, right? People can fear and admire strength, but super geniuses tend to terrify people who have a small idea of what having those smarts really mean.
Have we ever seen confirmation (or even hints) Vale is an ancient eldritch being? For all we know, she used to be human, is only 30 years old, and models her shell by how she used to look, or perhaps an idealization thereof.
Perhaps she had a run-in with a strange artifact that gave her eldritch powers and also changes her body, kinda like Maxima.
Or maybe she’s half human and was fathered by a visiting alien, and her human half determines her personality and what her shell looks like.
The only real hint was that Sciona declared she wasn’t a super, but “unreliable narrator” can be taken into account there as it is an odd assumption that even with her blood magic that the alien has a full understanding of what ALL supers are capable of and a gas-morph able to form a humanoid shell around her gas form wouldn’t be outside the possibilities for a super.
But there are other little droplets like Sciona maybe recognized what she is as when they next spoke Sciona backed down after referring to Deus as a “mortal” and Vale pointed out that Sciona is only slightly less fragile than a human.
-on this same note it had been mentioned that Alari had been to Earth before and were among the species mistaken for angels, same breath had Dabbler mentioning actual angels-
so this goes back to Vale could be from an alien species that is little known, but given the gasseous nature could still fall under a tier 3 alien *some ascended end up as “quasi-ascended* where while they are no longer biological now they are some kind of living gas matrix (same category applies to thought energy that requires a host body (a trope that makes me wander if the demon like aliens with the bio-frames whose true form is the little flame icon on the head aren’t like a high tier 2 civilization that tried to ascend and ended up instead being little energy beings that still require a host organism to survive.
there are various possibilities, some could still be called “eldritch” in the more wide scope sense. I mean its not like ethereal fae that warp local reality and reside in pocket dimensions they created with their own power are on the same footing as “sealed within the sun for a billion years cosmic horror* or external to the multiverse their language alone creates chaotic ripples in the fabric of reality. But we can all them all eldritch beings
I mean a sufficiently spooky ghost technically falls under eldritch too.
In the last panel, Scarlet looks pissed at SmugD… he just made another enemy
It is the look a loyal daughter would give someone who is ragging on her dad.
Gotta be honest, Deus started out interesting but has progressively become more and more insufferable and boring to the point that I hate whenever he shows up. The thing about a smug villain is that at some point, they have to get beaten and humiliated. If you just keep building up that smugness forever, then it stops being “Wow, I can’t wait to see him pay for his pride,” and becomes “Wow, this guy is just a grating dick.” For as many years as this comic has been going, Deus has not even come close to losing or being one-upped. If the worst thing you can say about his success record is “He hasn’t banged Max yet,” that’s not really enough.
Bracing for people to post angrily at me for daring to say anything critical about this comic. I just want to see the antagonist fail or be humbled ONCE.
Is he an antagonist though? He seems to be a mastermind type character for sure, and if the comic had a whole team and able to have a quicker pace we’d probably have seen a few filler episodes at some point where some small scheme fails but he declares its an acceptible loss *all David Xanatos like*,
but don’t forget, his company also provides gear for Archon, and US contractors. From a political standpoint his actions in Africa are looking like one big merchandise display. Its not an excuse and his motives are probably not taken too seriously by most nations who have habitually ignored conflicts in that part of the world *you really think in real life its just two conflicts going on right now?*
It feels more a every person considers themself the protagonist of their own story.
the more outright antagonists have all been humbled in some way, even if some have come back, Vehemence, Sciona, The Ascenders, Those alien slaver mercenaries.
Deus is a too buried deep type to be as directly antagonistic to US interests, keeping in mind Archon isn’t like the Avengers, Justice League, Fantastic Four, etc…they are a US military branch with supers using the “superhero” pop culture image to help sell the idea of super domestic military force, to the public.
He probably is from the reader’s perspective.
We follow Archon with some focus on Sydney. Not the US government and not Deus.
He has goals directly opposing Archon’s goals.
“World domination” doensn’t match either “sustaining the status quo” nor “peace keeping”.
If he isn’t he isn’t because Sydney’s goals align with his.
Her goals are too unclear to me, to judge.
That’s the thing: if even a ‘loss’ is considered part of the plan, then how is it a loss at all?
And that just adds to his annoyingness
As Smoutwortel said: his plan is total world domination, so that makes him not a good guy, he’s just doing it in a subtle way but he still wants to be the one ultimately running the whole thing (even if he’s using puppets to deflect retribution on to)
Like, he is the one running Galtyn but by having the new King be his puppet on the throne, when (not if) retribution comes he can send it to the King while he Gates offworld keeping his hands ‘clean’ stating he was just following orders
I wonder whether more people think Deus is awesome or annoying. There have certainly been plenty of comments for and against him, so it’s not like the readers all agree, and the author can’t please everyone.
I think Deus’ role in the story, at least at this point, is much more ambiguous than “villain” or “antagonist”. He has a hand in a lot of events, but his actions help the heroes at least as often as they do the villains.
Might Vale still be doing this? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1051-crime-and-monologuing/
That’s what was keeping her away from Deus last time we saw her.
Deus is meeting with powerful dangerous paranormals and his bodyguards are missing, as is his super who can cloak other people.
He described this as “an obvious trap”. The way to bet is it is a trap. He’s not bluffing, he’s just setting up someone else who may or may not make a move.