Grrl Power #217 – Dabbler, second best at swording
I feel bad putting up a page with only 4 panels. Normally with action pages like this I try and make them doubles, but the way the second half of this page played out, it was better to cut this page here and make the next one a double.
I don’t know anything about swordfighting or fencing, but I suspect the “you’re holding the sword too tight” right before the teacher knocks the sword out of the student’s hand trope is one of those chronically misinformed Hollywood things that everyone does because that’s the only thing that everyone writing screenplays knows about swordfighting, and they learned it from other movies they’ve watched. Heavenly told Dabbler her grip was wrong for the same reason you tell the guy pointing a gun at you that his safety is on. It’s to get them to shift their focus for a split second, which if you’re good enough you take advantage of. I’ve never seen the “your safety’s on” go wrong in a show or movie. I would really like to see someone try that, only instead of looking down at their gun, the gunman just shoots them in the arm. “Guess it wasn’t” Actually I’ll probably stick that in the comic at some point since the thought amuses me, but that page is likely a long way off.
Dabbler’s not an amateur with a sword. On my 5 point scale she’s a 2 which means she’s actually really very good at it, but Heavenly Sword is a 4. Not only good enough to fight and beat Dabbler, but also deflect the Arcane Bolts Dabbler keeps popping off at her at the same time. Normally it’s probably quite difficult to disarm Dabbler with her greater than human strength and extra hands, but on top of her skill advantage, Heavenly can reconfigure the shape of her force blade, and making the top all squiggly gave her the edge she needed.
As always I will be at A-kon this year (June 6-8 in Dallas) and, I’ll be doing a panel on Friday. Humor-Based Webcomics 1: Humor in Story. Be sure to stop by!
In case you missed it, my fifth Gynostar Guest strip is up! The current arc starts here.
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Is it me or is HS enjoying this WAY too much?
Not as much as Math and Jabberwokky anyhow. It seems that the amount of enjoyment is proportionate to the level of martial arts skill. Dabbler looks like she is not having much fun above. And Sydney was positively freaked out at the thought she had challenged Math. Let alone Jabberwockky bouncing off her force field.
But HS seems to be getting off on attacking Dabbler with a sword. A little Phallic maybe?
Everything can be ‘phallic’ if you are looking for a dick
And sometimes a banana is just a banana?
Seems kinda funny that Dabbler would enter into the style of combat that HS is best at. I would suspect Dabbler did that to draw HS into a trap of some sort. Basic rule of combat it to draw your enemy out of their style of combat into your own.
Why does Dabbler have both an artificial eye & hand?
Because she’s not as good of a swordsman as she thinks she is….
Sure, but she knows she’s not as good a swordswoman as she thinks she is, and she knows that HS knows it too. Judging from the orientation of her sword in that last panel, it looks like her guard’s pretty much non-existent, and Dabbler’s pose suggests an energy burst of some kind is about half a panel away.
I’m with Yam, her swordswomaning may be inferior here, but this was a trap.
Dabbler is clever, and was looking to bring her first match to a conclusion, so that she could get outside and start racking up the points. So she may well be doing that. You are winning me over to the possibility. She has fought, and lost, to superior sword fighters before, so will have hopefully learnt from those mistakes.
I’m wondering if there’s some sort of nasty enchantment on the sword that triggers on a disarm… or, alternatively, if HS has actually been fighting an illusion all this time.
My thoughts exactly.
Someone needs to buy Dabbler a copy of Sun Tsu’s “The Art of War” – I’m sure Maxima has a copy in her room somewhere.
Of course, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Dabbler has met Sun Tzu, in person. She might be extremely long-lived or even immortal, from her demonic heritage. Or sufficiently high technology (and magic for that matter) can sustain life indefinitely.
Plus, if faster than light travel is not possible in the Grrl Power universe, then any interstellar travel will suffer from extreme time distortion. Perhaps requiring deep sleep, to avoid journeys being too tedious. If this is not Dabbler’s first visit to Earth, her last trip might have been around Sun Tzu’s time.
About the safety thing. You could also have the person holding the gun reply: there is no safety on this gun. Seems like something Peggy would say if she has a sig sauer. Those pistols dont have safeties. I also like the line( and personal motto) I am my own safety ^_^
same here all of my carry guns have no safety and the guns that do are my range guns. A lot of people are worried when i tell them my guns don’t have safeties. I tell them the only safety you really ever have is your own trigger finger. I went so far as to throw my gun across the room to prove that modern firearms don go off unless you pull the trigger some of my friends dove for cover when i threw it lol
I am guessing you are not too old? Not that should be taken as a slur regarding mental age, or anything nasty like that. Simply that you will find, with the passage of time, that things get hooked up and snagged once in a while. If you are carrying a gun around with you a lot, then that will happen, sooner or later.
A trigger guard and good holster design will minimise the chance but, small though it is, it is a risk you will be taking every time you move. Those odds stack up when you do something a lot. I just hope that it happens to be pointing away from any of your body parts when it does. And that none of your friends are in the firing path, for that matter.
While I would definitely say not to throw your guns around, guns without safeties are largely revolvers and unless you’re going around with the hammer back they aren’t likely to catch on something hard enough to discharge.
Also drop tests are some of the first safety checks a gun manufacturer preforms on a gun; but seriously, don’t throw them, you’ll mar the finish.
Just in case Dave reads this I want to point out that a proper ‘butt stroke’ (melee with a gun, not stroking someone’s butt) doesn’t involve the butt at all but jaming your muzzle into the enemy, the smaller strike point makes for more damage, the gun is designed to take impacts (recoil) from that direction and you maintain the ability to fire. Same with a pistol whip, let the muzzle take the force instead of the magazine catch.
I love it when people get things right in fiction and Dave’s gotten so much right already. I hope he avoids the gun mishandling tropes.
Personally, if my life, or that of my friends and family, is on the line, and receiving expert advice, on the matter, I prefer to hear “cannot”, rather than “aren’t likely”.
Modern guns are indeed built well enough that they are unlikely to fire just from being dropped.
On the other hand, firearms are deadly weapons, and people willing to take risks like that are exactly the sort of people who should not have them.
Always, always, always treat a firearm with the respect and consideration you would give to anything else with the capacity to instantly kill you or someone nearby. I tend to think of them rather like poisonous snakes. Treated with proper respect and care, and you are safe enough. The moment you fail to respect the danger, it can kill you.
Poisonous snakes are not safe enough.
I shoot my Kimber FAR better than my Sig. It is also a bit thinner, so easier to carry. Thus…
To say there is no safety on a gun is a misnomer. All that means is there is nothing the shooter needs to fiddle with to start firing. Internal mechanisms, grip and trigger mechanisms, even external hammers on guns all constitute safety devices.
+1
So… I’ve practiced a fair amount of fencing and Katori. So, I have this to say. HS has been having her offhand too far forward when two handing her shinai and had her forward hand’s thumb in a position we are taught is good for losing your thumb in Japanese Swordsmanship. Although I can’t speak as well for her fencing, her grip is so loosely in the top panel that, unless her energy sword negates so much power from Dabbler’s swings that they’re negligible, her shinai should have flipped out of her hands. Also she is using a the hardest parry to stop any force with in a position that isn’t in that parry’s guard zone. Dabbler’s grip and posture have appeared markedly better than HS’s as well. I do love your comic, just had to comment on these.
I’d expect that recoil mitigation would indeed be one of the great benefits from having an energy-formed blade.
I bet that spell that HS swatted aside has longevity and heat seeking built into it like the magic missile of a boss in an end level battle!
You know, if you’re going to continue this, you might want to get a good grounding in the physics behind most martial arts. It’s something that’s going to really help with Cheetah, Math, and Heavenly Sword…plus, as into comics as Sydney is, she’s bound to have a pretty full collection of Japanese manga on hand (and has probably read them all), which means that she’d have some exposure to this, and quite a few of those seem to revolve around martial arts, just as quite a few American comics revolve around superheroes. And, to be honest, you (and Sydney) need to know something about what three of your major characters (as portrayed so far at least) can do.
My personal favorite on the subject is Kenichi, the Mightiest Disciple. You can find it at https://www.mangareader.net/337/historys-strongest-disciple-kenichi.html
I would hesitate to suggest japanese manga for a good grounding in the physics of anything, whether martial arts or breast support. :-)
Even teens have dicks that would make Ron Jeremy cry
Everyone is so adamant that Dabbles is leading Heaven into a trap, ignoring the more plausible explanation: Dabbles let her rage get the better of her and now she’s paying the price
Someone noted that there are so many bad guys that most of the team members are so busy that they can’t help each other out much. Which made me wonder: how did several dozen bad guys get in contact with each other and decide on a common attack in only a few hours? And without ARC-light getting as much as a whisper? Was there a pre-existing League of Bad Guys? A Bad Guys Website? A Facebook page?
Here are a few suggestions.
One delicious irony just struck me. In the whole knights versus Mongol horse archer debate. Something that is very relevant to the super hero genre. On one side you have guys tromping around in inch thick armour, made out of the finest steel that Europe could produce. Wielding whacking great spears, every variety of sword, polearm, warhammer and the like, that we have mentioned in the previous 400 comments.
And they get beaten by guys, on the other side, who are carrying bows and probably wearing silk pyjamas!
Despite what the history channel said, I don’t think the mongols were better protected by their silk shirts than the European knights. IIRC, the Mongols did wear armor, usually leather, or a form of scale mail, sometimes made with horn instead of metal. I would far rather have the silk shirt under European armor to ease the withdrawal of arrows that managed to penetrate the armor. For one thing,iirc the mongols wore their clothing til it rotted. Any penetrating wound with a FILTHY piece of silk in it was likely to cause serious infections. Thus, I would rather keep the arrows OUT of my hide. The Mongols were less heavily burdened, which would have been an advantage, but imo their main advantages were tactical and strategic mobility and manueverability. Their ponies were smaller, and probably faster over any distance than the warhorses of the Europeans. The fact that they did not NEED to get into shock combat, where their smaller, lighter horses would have been likely to be bowled over was a part of it. The fact that they were ORGANIZED, and not obsessed with individual glory helped too. The fact that their troops where very experienced and they were absolutely ruthless were other advantages…
Photographic proof has now emerged, from a Mongol body discovered in Siberia. It turns out that in addition to silk pyjamas, underneath their furry outer clothes, they also wore night caps!
Ignore the shill crying for a team death in their first combat. Also something to remember is Dabbler is no slouch in the shield dept either, being able to fend off blows from a rather annoyed Maxima, so I wouldn’t be too worried about her at the moment.
Never said anything about one of the Arc-ites having to die, but DaveB himself said that there will be casualties on both sides
Let’s see…On the villain side (so far), there’s that bug dumb lug that Anvil punched right out of the building. If his “resistance” isn’t very high, he’ll be in traction & maybe reconstructive surgery for a while. Then there’s Laser Brain, that Math consigns to the dentist’s chair for a significant amount of work…Also, the villain that Laser Brain hit when Math dodged. Included is Shadow Boxer, who will need to spend time with a Testicologist (the flip side of a Gynecologist). There may be a few injuries sustained when Maxima used Achilles for a throwing weapon, but there’s no real casualties revealed on the aerial front yet either, because the focus of attention has been inside the rapidly deteriorating building.
On the hero side, no one…YET.
None are *fatal* casualties so far, but the fight’s still not over.
The dictionary definition of “casualty” includes people who are missing and people who are “injured”.
Technically Sydney has been injured.
I note that we have not seen Mr. Amorphous since Concretia knocked him out of the building.
The most significant one who is missing is Jiggawatt. She was present at the press conference, but has not been seen at the Steakhouse. I find this especially interesting since she’s an official member of ArcSwat, but she’s had almost zero “face time” in the comic. We know almost nothing about her.
Which means nobody is all that attached to her character, and if she turns up dead, there won’t be all that much outcry from the Peanut Gallery.
In general usage & context, “casualty” also refers to someone who can no longer act. Take for example, that Achilles can be restrain or contained to the point of being unable to act, which would make him a casualty of the battle, even if he can’t actually be injured.
Sydney may have suffered a relatively minor injury, but she’s still quite capable of acting. Therefore, she’s not an actual “casualty.”
I’m sitting here wondering what happens if Sydney wraps the not-a-tentacle around HS’s energy blade and yanks.
Maybe not the ‘energy’ part of it, but the shinnai itself? Yeah, I’d think HS would be up the creek without a paddle there.
Don’t count on it. If HS can move fast enough she could yank Sydney off balance hard enough to slam her into the force field making her drop the orbs or knocking her out. Think of whip vs sword/staff. Untalented whip user (sorry Sydney) vs master class swordswoman.
Had a random thought wander by the other night.
I’ve been a bit disappointed in the fact that we’ve had all manner of energy beams and such being used, and people thrown through walls and ceilings, but the building is not on fire. It’s a restaurant. The kitchen was in use when the attack started. There’s hot oil, stoves, and ovens in there.
And then it occurred to me that if you had a group with federal authority, and they were smart folks, one of the first things someone would do at the scene of a fight is get hold of the fire department’s information about where the building’s main power breaker, gas main, and water main was. Shutting those things off would go a long way towards keeping the collateral damage factor down.
Hiro and some others escorted the restaurant staff and Arc Light out, probably by way of the kitchen. I’m sure he had someone pull whatever breakers were back there. There was plenty of time during the charge of the Lightweight Brigade. The lights were still on, but that doesn’t mean everything in the place was.
This is going to be the first post-fight (at least) interaction with the local police and emergency services crews. Hopefully, both sides have a plan. And the same plan for that matter.
I have to disagree. When they taught us bayonet techniques, there was a distinct difference between a butt stroke and a thrust. A butt stroke was a two handed bludgeoning attack, usually aimed at the groin or the head. The off hand held the forearm of the M16,the strong hand held the butt stock jueh a stroke, but it would hurt on the other end too. The thrust would usually be done with the bayonet fitted, though the Bayonet was imo too short to be very effective. ( Now an old Enfield or Springfield bayonet…) Using a thrust without the bayonet would still hurt quite a bit, and as you point out could cause a serious injury.
The Smash was another attack…
Unlike previous generations, we didn’t really get anything but familiarization with the techniques. IIRC we did not even get to strike dummies.
One final thought, as regards Samurai armour. This is pure speculation, but I think reasoned. Japanese feudal warlords had access to some of the finest metallurgists in the world, for their eras. Would such warlords have ignored the possibility that metal armour might protect better than lacquered? Is it reasonable to assume that a culture which could produce the katana and highly intricate lacquered armour would be unable to produce metal armour as well?
I find that implausible. Rather, I think it very likely that, probably more than once, attempts were made, but it was simply found that the armour produced was highly unsuited to the conditions. The people who would be wearing it were the nobles, and if it was found to be causing them to suffer unduly, impairing their ability to conduct command and control on a battlefield, due to heatstroke, then the experiment would have been discontinued.
Had it been practical, the early basic iron designs could have gone through the same stages of development as history saw with the katana, to end up with personal armour which rivalled that of later European knights.
Maybe there are even examples of prototypes already sitting in a Tokyo museum, or yet to be discovered in some archaeological site? I have every respect for human ingenuity in all societies, throughout history and even pre-history. There are various factors which would either contribute to it flourishing, or stifle creativity. However I think that limited resources and environmental conditions merely shape or channel that ingenuity, but do not prevent it from happening.
Impractical doesn’t need to mean that the armour was worse. Cost can also make things impractical.
I am late to this but I want to give a note to the author:
First off the “you have your safety on” just doesn’t work with swords, it barely works with guns. With guns it is only supposed to work with stupid opponents who juts got a gun and don’t know how to use it (best used by someone who got a gun suddenly and think they have won). It obviously wouldn’t work with someone who is at least basic firearm training. But in fencing time (ie, the time it takes for a fencing action to occur) HS wouldn’t gotten to finish her first sentence by the time she should have beaten Dabbler’s sword away. But it shouldn’t work with Dabbler as she (should be) trained and thus ignore what HS says (I am not sure you even CAN hold a sword like a warhammer, she would be holding the blade).
The second is that Dabbler isn’t really showing anything other than blocking off a low blow. I take it that they have been battling for a minute or so since two pages ago? It isn’t clear, I thought this was the first attack of HS (and she is in a bit of a strange stance in Panel 1).
Third, I am just confused how Dabbler lost her weapon. It’s actually very hard to beat a weapon out of someone’s hands, unless you are attacking the hands themselves. Plenty of disarms in old manuals by grabbing inside or using leverage, but not beating the weapon out. The only thing I can think of is that the attack “caught” Dabbler’s sword by the hilt and managed to pull it out of her hands. Or worse, Dabbler was just surprised by the power of the attack and let go. Instead of juts having the weapon rotate upwards around its balance point (her hands). Which makes her look like an amateur rather than someone very good.
But I’m an only a beginner with western longsword fencing, so don’t take the above with much authority. Just my impression. I’m sure some other commenter made a better analysis.
I did some research, holding a sword too hard actually DOES make you more likely to be disarmed.
Double Cross-Block? Seriously? ¬_¬
I don’t know enough about sword play to know what that is or if it’s bad. I may have to do some research before the next sword fight.
It is an unarmed combat term, in reference to the final panel, rather than referring to the sword-wielding also going on.
Personally I take it as being a realistic portrayal of what any of us would do, reflexively, in such circumstances. And a four-armed person would almost certainly do exactly what you drew. The named blocking move is actually just capitalising on using that instinctive response in a controlled way.
Although we would hope that a veteran fighter would be using the formal combat move (and possibly she may have been, as part of a bluff), we also know that Dabbler is not as good a sword-fighter as she might try to appear. Allowing herself to be disarmed, in this very scene, despite having the significant advantage of using three or four hands versus two, being sufficient proof of that.
Also, one of her arms is… space metal. With silky synth flesh on top granted, but more sword resistant that it used to be.
to be honest, while I don’t know much about kendo, Heavenly Sword’s power includes either some form of super strength or her energy blade can absorb force put on it/compensate for leverage/boost extra strength.
Lets assume dabbler has the strength of about 2-3 strong men, being able to wield a giant fourhanded sword with what seems to be relative ease (as much as heavenly sword’s bamboo stick (screw official terms, that’s what it is), weighted or not.
That means that with 3 hands and significant leverage, as well as the leverage advantage, Dabblers slash/block (not sure, position is for a block but swooshy lines are for attack) should have been enough force to knock heavenly sword’s weapon out of her hand EASILY, even if she has reached the maximum potential of the human body (the way Math seems to have done). The weight of a 4 handed sword (probably 5-10 Kg at least assuming space metals and stuff) combined with heavenly sword using 1 hand in a rather precarious position would mean even if she was as strong in 1 each hand/arm as dabbler, she’d still be severely disarmed.
Then again, you don’t know much about any style of swordfighting (shown by the fact of putting fencing in there alone, since its completely and utterly different from most swordfighting styles).
If you do any arc involving either Dabbler getting better or some swordfighting expert (like heavenly sword) training/fighting, please consider getting further into the art of it.
For european-style weapons (dabbler’s sword) I would recommend researching HEMA (Historic European Martial Arts), for japanese styles of course there is Kendo.
I guess this counts for all forms of martial arts, but unarmed combat and guns don’t fit scrutiny in comic-style visualisation the way the form of sworfighting I know does.
unarmed seems to be a lot more about the movement, about the action you take. Your pose matters significantly less than in swordfighting since you’re moving only your body, not a weapon. if in a fistfight you have a wrong pose, you can correct it easily if you’re fast enough compared to your opponent.
In a swordfight, correcting your pose takes a LOT more time, since you’re moving quite a lengthy object around and also need to take care not to cut yourself.
Not sure if anyone else got this, but I found a pun in the description hilarious XD.
“Heavenly can reconfigure the shape of her force blade, and making the top all squiggly gave her the edge she needed.”
Geddit? ^^ The ‘edge”?!
:-D
I see the point.
heavenly sword is too good of a character. you gotta keep her
Quick complaint: Unless Achilles has super-speed, a real swordfighter wouldn’t give him time to interpose even if she didn’t expect it. She also probably wouldn’t be able to disarm Dabbler considering the super-strength and the fact that she’s got more hands on the blade than HS does as well as a quicker and more maneuverable but lighter blade. She would deflect a swing or two and then within the next second Dabbler would be needing a prosthetic heart to go with the eye and hand. She might be saved by unfamiliar physiology that places vital organs elsewhere, but Achilles definitely wouldn’t be able to get in the way.
Real sword fighting is about speed over power, because the first meaningful blow will either win the fight or at least set the tone.