Grrl Power #184 – Battling the future with rocks?
Oh no! Now Arianna has to spend all evening after the press conference on the phone instead of… no wait, that was going to happen anyway.
I generally don’t think of writing as a big time sink as everything has already played out in my head. Usually it just comes down to breaking the dialog into balloons and sorting out the panels. Sometimes though it will take an hour or more to get it right. This page in particular was one of those. Most of the trouble came from wanting to have Max soliloquize a novel about predictions of the reaction to her little fireworks display, going on about “The fear mongering politician in a battleground district that uses this as an excuse to get his name in the news, the nature of the public discourse, the reaction of the supers, law abiding or otherwise.” and Anvil responding to Dabbler with “But are more predictable events preferable even if the outcomes are less desirable?” and a whole bunch of other stuff that got cut. (“I blew up a practice target on an artillery range, not an occupied passenger jet. The outcomes are manageable.”) Gah! Stop! I have no doubt if I tried writing a novel, the first draft would have 60 page chapters.
Here’s some random things I like:
Leftover Soup which I’ve pimped before has hit strip #500! It’s one of my favorite comics for all the tabletop and RPG talk, the single and double entendres, flat out sex talk, and I know this sounds weird, but the sociological analysis. Mostly this comes in the form of pointing out the absurdities of social mores, but that’s something I really enjoy. For instance there was a story I was reading (unrelated to Leftover Soup) where a group of anthropomorphized foxes were lamenting that English was woefully inadequate at describing the spectrum of scents they could differentiate, while noting that the nearly colorblind foxes had no use for words like periwinkle and chartreuse. You can probably expect a little of that from Dabbler at some point.
Also Kevin Hardman is offering his Kid Sensation series as a bundle, so if you haven’t jumped in, that will save you a few bucks.
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SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I’ll be honest, Max’s starting to piss me off with her “I can do whatever and you can do jack about it” attitude.
She is really starting to seem a lot like an entirely different character than the one who was introduced. Wasn’t she a stickler for rules and respecting the chain of command originally?
An extract from Maxima’s description in the cast list:
DaveB is keeping very true to his own brief. At no point does it mention anything to do with “stickler for rules and respecting the chain of command”. Clearly we have seen her enforcing the chain of command. Which she has to do, being a commanding officer. But in a very unorthodox way that throws the rule book out of the window (giving a subordinate a wedgie).
Everyone has personality flaws as part of their character. Any progressive, ongoing story which tries to create characters who are all likeable and have no flaws, will probably end up with a nauseous tacky feel. No one is expected to like the flaws being expressed in characters. For instance, do I like that Sherlock Holmes is a drug addict? No. But it is an integral part of the character, and needs to be expressed in the story.
In due course, she may develop and her character evolve. Or that may be pivotal to her self-image and keep creeping back in, even if she tries to suppress it. I think the latter is likely in this case. Everybody has something in their personality that they will not change no matter what others say or think. If forced to they might hide it, but it will still be there underneath, waiting for a chance to be expressed.
When writing on the back of the napkin with initial character traits, Sir Ian Flemming probably sketched down “ladies man, drinks”. Whereas Dave wrote “tactician, cocky”. Those things stick. In mind and in character.
Err, it seems I subconsciously knighted Ian there.
Flemming was not Sir? I believed it was too. Almost unfair.
I believe you’re thinking of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Ian Flemming wrote James Bond
James Bond is the alcoholic womaniser I was alluding to. I was going to list Holmes’s traits but they were far too varied to compress easily into a couple of words, so switched. But the “Sir” decided to stay apparently.
A tidbit I heard once.
Supposedly, Doyle based Holmes, at least partially, on Bell.
Alexander Graham Bell.
Close but no cigar it was his teacher at university Dr Joseph Bellfor reference see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Bell
They actually did a TV series on it called, if memory serves, Murder rooms.
One of my favourite bits of Holmes trivia is that he received an honorary doctorate for his pioneering work in the field of forensics. To all intents and purposes having founded the field.
Pretty impressive for a fictional character.
actually, a little armchair organizational behavioral analysis implicates Max in the… quirkiness of the team’s overall behavior. At the end of the day, a military unit will take on, in ways both subtle and gross, the overarching personality of its commanding officer. Max is arrogant and plays fast and loose with the rules, including in their enforcement. Can it really be surprising at the super-powered 19-yr-old in the unit does so also? Max gets in public disputes with her peer (Arianna), going out of her way to short-circuit her established operations already underway. Can we really be particularly shocked when the somewhat-dim former-vigilante physically threatens the previously mentioned 19-yr-old?
I’ve personally seen it over and over in my own organizations – the worker bees will emulate the observed behavior of their leadership. It’s one of the reasons senior leaders (Generals, CEOs, etc) tend to act so stodgy and by-the-book: they know if they’re seen slacking or being goofy, they can pretty much count on their front-line personnel doing the same.
The problem is, both of them are Alpha Wolves. Both of them are manipulative, cunning and believe “She Knows Best” on how to get things done.
Where they differ is that Arianna comes across as the Diplomat who is more interested in playing nice and looking good than accomplishing the goal (like many real world organizations that I won’t mention to avoid another messy flame war). She seems to be the sort who’d cut a member off the team if they proved to be too problematic to work with. Consider her statements about Sydney, and how the only reason she relented is because she knew she couldn’t win the fight.
Maxima however is the sort who looks at the situation from a more tactical position. She has her loyal troops, and those who aren’t loyal(yet) she’s working on. She then supplements that with the simple idea of making the “enemy” think twice about the simple idea of even taking the “safety” off their guns.
Think about the Cold War.
America: “Oh, you spent four billion on nuclear weapons? We just spent five and a half AND we added a new naval fleet fully stocked with Marines ready to land on your shores at a single phone call.”
The plan could have backfired, but it worked. They relied on the simple idea of making the enemy think TWICE about trying to go the distance.
This seems to be partially the hand that Maxima is playing. Make the potential threats out there think twice about doing anything overt and obvious.
America basically outspent the USSR and it didn’t help that a lot of the intel on the size of their actual forces were grossly overestimated. Not saying it was a bad outcome but it set a bad president. Now the Military contractors are so entrenched even the military can’t get them to stop making tanks which can taken out by single use missiles.
Actually the most plausible analysis of it I have come across is the thing that won it was agriculture. Because of central planning, when the USSR made a poor series of decisions regarding that, and all the crops suffered as a result, it compromised the entire system. End of the day lack of food is usually what collapses entrenched regimes. They cover their bases against invasions and internal rivals. But if they cannot feed enough of the population to keep things going then they risk collapse.
We should just be thankful that they chose to take the route of borrowing their way out of the problem and accepted aid. They could have taken the North Korea option and just let the majority starve, until there was sufficient food to feed the survivors. Although that strategy would be less likely to succeed in a country with modern communications. There is only so much that even ruthless censorship can cover-up.
Culture also had a lot to do with things changing. Gorbachev was friendlier towards US relations, combined with the youth culture liking our Rock music and blue jeans. Youth are the future of a nation and you can’t underestimate the power of future leaders. If it didn’t happen when it did, it was going to happen eventually.
Well, the Cold War plan also hinged and goading the USSR to spend and spend and spend and spend until they collapsed because they couldn’t compete with us economically.
Another analogy is concealed carry.
Tell a would be mugger, likely one of those people in the park there is carrying a handgun and has been trained to use it. Is it the older balding guy wearing an unstylish fanny pack? Perhaps the older woman with the large leather purse? How about the man over there in the thick leather jacket? Tell you what. Go ahead and pick one and see if you’re “lucky.”
Criminals may be lazy, and willing to victimize others, but generally that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. Well, meth heads might qualify.
I dunno. I think Maxima recognizes that there are areas she cannot influence, or at least influence in a way that other people would consider ‘positive’, but at the same time she feels/believes that some of those areas should know exactly what they’re dealing with. Let’s be frank: as one of, if not the, most powerful paranormals/metahumans/(what’s the term they use?) in the world, there is not a lot that anyone can physically do about it. Nor, really, is there reason for them to do so; she’s a military officer through and through, and I’d be willing to bet my tail that, powers or no powers, she worked her ass off getting to Lt. Colonel, which means that if – or when – General Faulk looks her in the eye and gives her a direct bleeping order, she will stand the bleep down.
Thou Hast Not To Like Thine Orders, Thou Hast Only To Follow Them.
Arianna is PR Manager and Lead Counsel – that’s what the sidebar even says, and that means that she’s the ‘good social gal’ of the team. That’s what she does, that’s who she is. She would love it if everyone on the team would just do things her way, because she wants to manipulate the press the way every other press officer in the world does. “This is the team, aren’t they wonderful, clap clap smile smile wave wave wave.” Says in the Cast notes that she wants to make the ARC-SWAT team ‘superstars’. She believes that ‘putting a good face on it’ is the best thing to do, and that the buzzwords that should be used for all ARC-SWAT are ‘wonderful, amazing, incredible, fantastic.’ She believes in velvet gloves.
Lt. Col. Maximilla ‘Maxima’ Leander is an active field officer for the USAF, has done things that Arianna doesn’t – and maybe can’t – dream about in her worst nightmares. Maxima doesn’t take any crap, and isn’t going to lie to people in order to coddle them or make herself seem more shiny/sparkly than she is. (Which, y’know, she literally is, but c’mon, work with me here.) She doesn’t mind all those buzzwords, and having a good face on things most of the time, but she is a firm believer that if you’re going to have an iron hand in a velvet glove, unless you intend on requiring each person to try something bad, taking the glove off first and showing them that there is an iron fist inside it will stop most of the people who’d try something just because they didn’t know.
Oddly, both of them want the same thing, and if Arianna would actually bother to talk to Maxima, find out what she wants to do/get done, and then work that into her plans, it would go a lot more smoothly for her. Maxima wants to get ‘Don’t Be A Bad Guy, ‘Cause If You Are, I’m What You’ll Have To Deal With’ out into the world. Arianna – stupidly, in my view, because she knows that Maxima is a very straight-shooting no-BS kind of person – is trying to make Maxima over, and trying to control her. She is not, however, Maxima’s commanding officer; from a light colonel’s POV, she’s a twerp, a twit, and an all-around pain in the ass who, just as soon as she could, Maxima would prefer to dispose of into Ye Olde Circular File. I mean, my God, man: Arianna is a lawyer. She’s, like, the polar opposite of Maxima.
In any case. I think it’s clear that Maxima is not so stupid as to believe that ‘I can do whatever and you can do jack about it’. She takes particular pleasure in telling a non-field-officer, non-commander, adjunt-at-best prissy bitch to go suck it, she’s going to do things her way, sure. But when it boils down to it, ARC has a mission, Maxima’s in charge of the open field teams, and Arianna is (to her) a sidebar – if Maxima’s a cop, Arianna’s not even the DA, she’s just the precinct’s public relations officer, someone you can ignore in order to get the job done.
Just happens that in this case, the job involved telling all the thinking-about-being-a-bad-guy people with powers to sit the grablix down, shut the grablix up, and don’t even grablixing think about it…
Plus, Maxima is just enjoying that, in the little alpha female competition Arianna and her have going on, she just scored. Every now and then, you just gotta gloat a little.
Well said.
You are rigth, however to realize that the most powerful being knowed alive, with leadership on the perhaps more powerful group of people, has her “own agenda” is something to think about.
Everyone (at least, those with a mind of their own) has an agenda of their own
Nice and clear annalasys.
The great thing about this relationship is indeed that they are polar equals, and more importantly, that Arianna does not actually have any authority over Max.
And Max likes to make that clear
Maxima’s show of power will have two major effects.
First is the quelling effect that is her stated reason for her light show. I picture it as saying ‘You think you’re bullet proof? We have a bigger gun.’
Second is throwing the gauntlet. She is clearly stating that ‘If you do insist on becoming a super-villain you will have me to contend with.’
She wants to make sure that when super-villains do rise they will have to come after her right away so that they can gain some measure of control of the situation (She is too powerful to deal with otherwise.) They can’t go after a ‘soft’ target because that will cause her to come after them and let her gain intel, choose her battlefield, set up tactics, and make a targeted strike. Any super-villain with half a brain does not want this. If they go after her first they gain all of the advantages of a surprise attack. Advantages they will need against her.
If they manage to take her down they have eliminated the biggest obstacle toward their goals. This all means that they have to come after her first. Maxima knows this and by throwing the gauntlet she is protecting all of the soft targets that would otherwise have been hit. She made herself a shield and is trusting her power, her training, and her mind to bring her through.
+1
Maxima has enhanced Taunt two steps from the basic level all Tank supers can use. Group-Taunt being the first upgrade. She has just demonstrated World-Taunt. Now she has to keep that aggro and soak up the damage.
The military in general, and special forces types in particular, usually don’t care much for the press. As for Max’s attitude, she’s actually pretty spot on.
If you think otherwise, I suggest reading Rogue Warrior by Richard Marcinko. Max has a lot, personality wise, in common with him.
I love that about Max. Cockiness is a wonderful thing to see in a woman!
Well, Max can do whatever she wants and as far as she knows no one on Earth can do anything about it, so that attitude makes sense to me.
I believe she has one strategic goal: Get as few people as possible killed in the superhuman fights for power and resources she expects in the near future. Thinking like a general whose military assets mostly amount to her invincible self, she would be trying to put the fear of God into as many would-be supervillains as fast as possible and provoke the rest to come to her, given that she can’t be everywhere. Her allies who don’t see it that way (well, Arianna) are not so much obstacles to convince or outmaneuver as bystanders; irrelevant to her goal.
She might not be nice or likeable, but her attitude seems entirely reasonable to me. Maybe she’ll have to adjust it to the degree that her strategy doesn’t work, but until you see any evidence that anything in the world can actually pose a threat to you, would you?
Suddenly I’m reminded of King Sombra. It seems he’s not the only one with a fetish for stairs.
I know it’s a ubiquitous trope; but when I look at Arianna’s shirt, I feel like I’m looking at a shirt-shapped portal to the rectangle dimension. If that’s all I can pick at, the art must be pretty consistent.
Her shirt or her waistcoat? I mean, her shirt looks pretty ordinary to me, but I can see what you mean if you’re referring to the waistcoat.
As for the art style… Breezing through the archives, I would say it’s pretty consistent – in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s consistently improving. :P
If that was the case, the ‘lines’ of the little boxes on her waistcoat would be going the same way in both panel 2 and 8 (they do not)
That line from Maxima bugs me. “You find stairs arousing.”
It reads fine, to us the comic reader, and we get joke (Dabbler’s low threshold for arousal).
However, I have to wonder that if someone actually said it, the homonym “stares” would be an equally valid interpretation, and more fitting of the context. Telling Dabbler that “You find stares arousing”, would seem to be a foregone conclusion for her. Not really a joke there, or much of a witty retort… if heard verbally.
If you look, you will find meaning on meaning in every page. Quite often there will be in-jokes, threaded in with the other humour and dialogue. The Dune reference on this page I got. The stairs one.. whoosh… over my head.
(get it? stairs, overhead…*badaboom*)
Also remember that table skirts were invented in fear that table legs would arouse men. So being aroused by inanimate objects that look nothing like body parts is a thing. Some people would get the joke as is. Dabbler is one of them.
Stairs? Never really thought about it, but –
When you are up, they go down.
When you go down, they go up.
They always have a riser.
All day long, all they do is go up/down/up/down.
From wikipedia.org: Stairs may be straight, round, or may consist of two or more straight pieces connected at angles.
So, yeah, I can see Dabbler’s viewpoint on this.
I suspect that nobody in this comment thread truly gets the joke about Dabbler finding stairs arousing. I don’t suppose anyone here remembers George Carlin talking about banisters as female sex aids?
Don’t know about Carlin, but do remember a joke (or a cartoon/comic) about a newly married couple: the husband wasn’t interested in food for breakfast or lunch, he just ate out his wife, when he came home for dinner he found her sliding down the bannister, when asked what she was doing she replied that she ‘was warming up his dinner’
Here’s a thought that has been bouncing through my brain for a while.
1. We have seen (?) Sydney put a point into a branch of the comm-ball.
2. The comm-ball usually deals with acquiring information, either by scouting or by the true-sight.
3. Sydney was holding the comm-ball in her hand while looking (with a slighty surprised expression) at one of the unknowns on the last page.
4. Anvil is (also with a slighty surprised expression) potentially looking at something we can’t see right now.
So, what if the point Sydney spent unlocked an archive/manual thing? Something that would cause information on whatever she focused on (or just an orb) to appear, either in text form (maybe unlikely) or just directly into her brain (perhaps via a hallucination of readable text.)
Doubtful. Anvil is reacting to the obvious fury in Arianna’s face. While Arianna wanted to portray the Team as those who the public has nothing to worry about, Maxima’s Explosive Finish was enough to give Fear-Mongeror’s potential to undermine ARC-SWAT. Especially through Government Officials.
Again, Anvil is facing away from Ari’s fury-face: if anything, she is reacting to the sound of Ari’s grinding teeth
Could be but I am not so sure. They are sitting at the end of the table with Anvil at Max’s right ie facing 90 degrees clockwise. If Arianna stand behind Max they are something like:
Ad
M
A [ ] D
Then if facing Dabbler to look at Adrianna Anvil must look at her upper left, and is what she is doing.
Ops, it trimmed leading spaces. Try again:
. A
. M
A [ ] D
And trim repeated spaces :))) This reminds me about ASCII art far long ago :)
Ok, once more:
….Ad
…..M
A [….] D
Thought it was more
—–Ari
-A-
—M
-D-
or, diagonally between Anvil and Maxi (Ari is not standing behind Maxi, Maxi has turned slightly to make Ari face her back)
The sitting arangement is similar to the one at Hiro’s end of the ‘U’ (looking down from above {to ignore the confusion about whether to mirror or not} Anvil is in `Warts’ seat, Dabbles in exSeal’s)
If anything, Maxi may have scooted closer to Anvil’s corner (possibly to get away from the aroused Dabbles :P)
It is actually a (unwritten) rule in Theater that (except in rare instances) much of the character’s face is to be angled toward the audience. That way, the Audience may read emotion/facial expressions. As long as the appropriate angle’s are met (Anvil looking slightly to the left to acknowledge Arianna’s existance/emotion) the Audience still receives the emotion as clearly as possible.
Notice in Panel 3, Hiro’s face is turned at an angle toward the audience, but Maxima’s face is left at a right angle (same with Dabbler in Panel 5). Because Hiro is farther away, his face needs to be turned where his expression/emotion may be picked up easier. Maxima’s and Dabbler’s faces are left at a profile angle because they are close enough to where you can easily read their expressions.
Correction: Panel 6 on Maxima and Dabbler example.
Okay so i can’t count lol Panel 7. Final Answer!
… and on a side note, Maxima in panel 6? Hottest. Maxima. Ever.
DaveB, last panel, Arianna’s missing her jewellery i.e. earing and necklace as seen in panel 2.
Perhaps that is what Anvil is staring at, out of our field of view? The gaping holes left in the wall from the jewellery being flung out from the fury-incarnate Arianna! :-O
I want to give you my monies but I don’t have any sort of steady income due to not having a job…
Are there any other ways I can donate to you? =3 (Sorry if I didn’t see something somewhere I’m lazy and half-dead of exhaustion[thank god for this weekend. Only gotta survive one more day of school without sleep])
There is a Tip Jar button at the right side of comments section just over Collective of Superheroes ad. It opens possible ways to donate to Dave.
You can always vote for him. It helps. And spread the word others you know could have money to donate.
Just spreading the word about the comic in general does the trick. The more readers there are, the more potential donors there will be amongst them.
Turn off your addblocker and click on adds every now and than.
That way the advertisers pay him
Dave… That clip that dabbler has on her ear… I recognise it from your ‘other work’… The implications are disturbing to say the least…
Hmm. The senator probably wouldn’t be talking to Arianna. She’s just a civilian employee. If anyone is getting reamed by a senator, it would be the general. Now, the general might ream Arianna, but not in this case. In this case, he should be reaming Max, providing that she overstepped her authority and/or displayed behavior unbefitting an officer. Of course, if Arianna was the one that contacted the senator, then she deserves whatever she gets for bypassing the chain of command in this situation.
She’s not just a civilian employee: she is the PR face
Arianna might have gotten called by a Senator that put her in the job she’s in.
We do not have the chain of command structure for Archon yet, but it is bound to be complex, given that it incorporates civilians and military personnel in a police organisation. For instance, we do not know if she, as a civilian, falls under General Faulk’s direct chain of command. It is possible, as an example, that she is appointed directly by the senate, to represent their interests*, and actually sits parallel to the General in the command structure. Albeit more limited in her remit than him. Which would explain the call in more than one way.
But, regardless of which, in this instance the person in charge of the press-conference is Arianna. It is wholly appropriate that she field any press-related issues arising from it.
If there are military-related issues then General Faulk would unquestionably be the first point of contact. Likewise a senator might do so if demanding that heads should roll. Whether it is Maxima’s as the obvious culprit, or Arianna’s as the person in charge of press-liaison or the General as head of the organisation. In fact Faulk is probably spending the evening fielding more than a few calls himself.
* Such things can and do happen, that is not a casual example.
I’m glad there’s some plot this week. was starting to wonder if it’d be advanced. love the comic but it was starting to stall out a bit with the eternal press conference.
Good to see it moving!
The whole of Max’s action was pritty important for the plot though. The rest was setup. It’d be boring if we only get plot points
I’d like to see what Sydney would look like if she got put in a situation like a charity event of something and Arianna had Harem and Dabbler give her a makeover. Don’t know if she would loose the glasses or not thou for it doesn’t hurt her image any, but they could give her a different type depending on the style of clothes they put her in or how her image changes depending on that look.
od. That could actually be hilarious as hell! Sydney REALLY out of her element and feeling inadequate, even when dolled up, compared to her ARC counterpart!
So, I was wondering, Dave, if it might be possible for you to spend some time fleshing out the backgrounds of some of the side characters, like Joel, but only in text format, and only for the background page, or as incentives? It would be a great way to add dimension to Sydney’s story without having to go all wordy, or digressions in one or more of your strips.
Probably would only happen if Dave finds it to be important. While it would be nice to have something different to have a backstory on a lesser character, that is exactly the problem. Joel is a lesser character. Unless his backstory is relevant to the plot, I would see no “need” to explain his backstory. At some point it may be needed, but not right now.
Mostly I want to see how they know/interact with Sydney.
Found something new for Sydney to try on her food: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=351753161634624&set=a.213816905428251.1073741825.165169080293034&type=1
Topic change, another theory about the skill tree (sorry if it was said already, I could not catch up with the comments)
It occurred to me that the lines connecting two orbs could represent an ability to “instant swap.” I.e. without the drop and grab.
In the incident with the “shrapnel” of debris during the “attack” to the tank an instant change between PPO and FF would have avoided she almost being buried alive.
Currently I am trying hard to find something that be more standard among the different couples, it bothers me a little that other explanations that we have leads to such uneven and a bit odd new skills.
Nope, that is a new one. And an interesting suggestion. Which would cut down on the number of new powers she would gain, reduce the severity of the two-hands limitation, but without completely breaking it.
I’m also trying with the double lined queue that all them have (actived only on the green one). No progress yet :)
Regarding to user interfaces I suscribe to if they looks alike then must works alike, so the “hands free” sounds more atractive that an unpredictable diverse both hands skill, but sadly I concur with the objections you have stated to that.
My gaming group referenced this today:
Scion of Coyote: “So last week we were at the funeral with all these Amatsukami and I managed not to accidentally piss anybody off or say anything untoward.”
Scion of Loki (me): “While I decided to play Maxima by saying out loud ‘No, Izanami is evil.'”
Scion of Coyote: “Yes! Yes you were!”
Scion of Loki: “I had a rock, I used it.”
Scion of Coyote: “Which I guess makes me Dabbler?”
Scion of Loki: “Except your not hitting on anyone really.”
Scion of Brigitte: “Can I step in here and call Not-Sydney?”
Scion of Coyote: “No, you’re more like Anvil anyway…the whole blacksmith thing.”
*you’re
I’m still of the opinion she was out of bounds. Waaaaaay out of bounds!
I’m A Gray Phantom and I have options on the internet.
Do you think it is sentient? Should we fear the rise of the robots? If parallel Earths’ have parallel internets, will they be able to do parallel processing? Will the robots they control be able to parallel park? Will parallel parking robots controlled by sentient internets be able to prevent invading Daleks from climbing stairs?
She’s a military official of rank sufficient to authorize detonations at a government bombing range, and the event was a firepower demonstration for the press. The fact that she was capable of generating the explosions she authorized is immaterial; by definition it was within bounds.
Maxima really needs to dial it back some. Cocky usually means stupid. As in do things you normally wouldn’t do just on a whim. Maxima really needs to dial it back to Minima now.
In a normal, untrained, civilian population; I would fully agree with you.
But Max is not untrained. She reminds me of a fighter pilot, highly trained in her skill set. She must have done thousands of hours training to use her powers. In the military, Cocky is good, but they are trained and disciplined not to cause disasters (outside of PR disasters anyway, lol).
Yep, that settles it. Max is definitely Special Forces.
Anyone who spent time near Special Forces knows that even the officers are this crazy. The only reason senior leadership allows it is because, well they get the job done very well. I can think of a few (fewer today then 15 years ago, but that is another matter) law-makers, that would be praising (at least in private) performance. They are the ones who were in Special (or close ties to Special) Forces.
Just a reminder DaveB that there is still a typo in panel 3, namely “quailing”. Which should read “quelling”. Although quailing could fit in there, contextually it is extremely unlikely that Arianna would be using it whilst trying to placate a senator. Whereas Maxima might boast that she now has the villains “quailing in their boots”, Arianna is attempting to indicate that the “villains have been quelled from taking villainous actions”.
Actually “quailing” is the word I meant. It’s a little uncommon to use it that way, but to quail is to show fear or apprehension.
Heh, that might help explain why the placating did not go as well as she might have hoped. Instilling of fear not being the usual desired outcome at a police press conference. But, point taken, it was an intended result of this conference, even if it was not Arianna’s choice. She may as well grab the positives she can salvage.
The last book in the Charlotte Powers series just came out. Its not only pretty dang good, its also pretty sad in some ways but ends on a somewhat hopeful note. It does however need to be taken as a whole with the other books from the first to the last of the series, without the others you lose perspective.
Dune ref FTW?
Yes, because she is the Kwisatz Haderach.
Just so long as this doesn’t result in those stupid sonic guns that weren’t in the book. :P
You know, I’m getting the feeling that Xuriel isn’t just poking at Max for fun. The pointed comments and innuendo she targets at Shiney are of a different flavour than those she throws around with everyone else- I’m wondering if maybe she’s actually truly into Max.
I’ve thought that and on this reread i can’t un-see it. I ship it tbh.
Man, this comic is humorously well written and visually pleasing. Well done sir! I may not stop until I am current!
Thanks, humorous and visually pleasing are my goals!
So what if she finds stairs arousing? So does (well, did) King Sombra. And Silverstream.