Grrl Power #232 – Test your equipment before fielding it
Yeah, Heatwave’s probably going to lose that toe, and she’s definitely out of the fight, so -1 to Arc-SWAT. Heatwave isn’t one of the big guns but super powered battles can shift quickly. I guess they’re kind of like Magic the Gathering in that regard. Someone can be all “Ooh gravity powers, no more flying or projectile attacks, combine that with “Make it Rain Man” to wet the ground and “Lightning Dancer” and all your grounded teammates are shockstunned. Booya.” And then the other guy is all “Oh, thanks for supercharging my Man of Iron card, +10 Repulsive blast!” Someone ought to make a game like Magic but with superheroes. As as I type that I realize that given the popularity of Magic back in the day (is it still mega popular?) there’s almost no chance that there isn’t a superhero CCG. Probably several actually.
So, Glowbug wasn’t quite taken down by Heatwave on page 219. If you recall, Glowbug is a cameo for one of the Patreon big ballaz, Shana Hills, though honestly it’s questionable how good a likeness it is. Amusingly I had this page almost totally penciled before I thought “Hey I should email Shana and make sure she’s ok with kind of her face in a one woman wet t-shirt contest.” Luckily no worries mate. Did I mention she’s Australian? She tells me that really only the older generation that says Streuth! but hey I’m an American which means that 90% of what I know about Australia is the word streuth, barbie, dungarees, funky mammals, opera house, sheilas, shitloads of poisonous stuff and “that’s not a knife…” Oh, also, when I was in high school, someone told me there’s way more women than men in Australia for some reason so when soldiers get leave they always go there and they get mobbed by horny sheilas. Apparently that’s the sort of stories high schoolers come up with when they hear there are 100,000 more women in Australia than men, ignoring the fact that the country (currently) has a population of 22.7 million people, making for a 0.4% disparity.
Writing for comics can be weird. The last panel originally had Glowbug saying “of course” but with a long “of.” It’s one of those situations where there’s no great way to write it. If I write”offfffff” it looks like off, and if I write “oooooof” it looks like oof. Uuuuuv was the best way to make it read phonetically, but then suddenly switching to a phonetic spelling would throw some people. After I drew the panel I decided it was fine to leave out the text, so it worked out, but things like putting emphasis on words, and trying to write subtle accents can be really tricky.
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Glowbug’s Who’s who entry does make her look extremely grumpy. Wouldn’t panel 3, above, give a nicer-looking expression, albeit embarrassed?
Remains consistant with the other Villain “Who’s Who” Mugshot (except for Cree)
Only part of her redness is embarrassment. She also is slightly red due to Heatwave.
. . . .After I wrote that I realized it could be taken various ways.
two come to mind. Heatwave “soda canned” her or…well Dabbler could probably finish that sentence
Heh, Shana clearly doesn’t work in the mines, we still say it lots up here lol. INterestingly just 3 weeks back our national alt music broadcaster Triple J did a… what would you call it, ring in? poll? contest? To discern how we spell strewth, democratically hah. Was a good listen, probably in their podcasts somewhere if you’re seriously bored and an avid fan of dialects.
Last panel wise, yeah tricky one, I was about to suggest some other approaches and every single one looked R.S. so who knows. Synonym? ‘Sssssssure…’
meh, you went with what works best I reckon. And now I have a new job, patreon time!
Even though I can’t afford long-distance, international charges for the call-in poll & probably the poll is officially completed already, I’d vote for spelling it: s’truth
That’s pretty much it: It’s the truth
It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
– Andrew Johnson (although similar sentiments have been attributed to others, notably Mark Twain)
There is an Australian guy where I work, been over in the UK over 10 years now and still says “Crikey Mate!”, “G’day Mate” as well as “S’truth” so yeah the dialect is still around. He hails from Brisbane if it helps.
Only person I’ve ever seen say Strewth is freaking John Constantine, as I’m reading the old comics right now.
So, why not just melt the knife out or are her insides not fireproof?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/wp-content/themes/comicpress/images/ref/heatwave01.png
She’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but she may think of it eventually.
I wonder if her immunity to heat would mean the wound doesn’t cauterize, if she tries it?
Incidentally, about that Who’s Who?
I really don’t think who she’s dating is the most important thing about her. At least drop it below the insult to her intelligence, eh?
http://www.grrlpowercomic.com/wp-content/themes/comicpress/images/ref/heatwave01.png
Hmm – well if there is a way to post an image, I don’t know it…
Agreed, no mention of her powers at all, it’s as though the only important thing about her is who she is dating and that she isn’t terribly quick on the uptake
You could try using the “img” tag, but it’s best just to provide a link so as not to overload the page too much
Because she’s immune to her own heat and has a knife in her foot
which if she did so, would mean she instead still had a deep, unplugged hole in her foot, as her heat immunity would prevent her from cauterizing her own wound
and this is ignoring the posibility of her heating itnup enough she gets molten metal flowing through her bloodstream, which is highly deadly
both of which would be much, much worse for her
Upper Deck has released Legendary Villians CCG to go with their Legendayr game.
This is based on Marvel comics.
Is it any good, though? ‘Cause the roughly half-dozen superhero CCGs I’ve seen over the years sucked sewage.
I still think the Versus System for Marvel and DC both was the best one out there. The Wildstorm CCG came in second. >.> I own way too much of both.
There’s a nice not-really-collectible card game called “Sentinels of the Multiverse” that’s pretty good. Well worth the moneys at least.
Crickey, that lightning is a bit stroppy!
I’d love to see her try that on Jigga.
Cor blimey gov’ner, that lighntn’n is stonin’ the crows! Bet it’l be rainin’ cats ‘n dogs soon.
Interesting point … water isn’t great at conducting electricity, its actually an insulator. However, it is great at dissolving things that are …
Shooting bolts of lightening is pretty hard to target as well – you don’t just generate a lot of potential and hope as it will earth at the closest point. You need something to leave an ionised trail from source to target to help guarentee delivery …
Anyway, shutting up now :-)
*is making Spicy goat Curry* COME AND GET IT!
Much like the previous ice situation which was explained here, Dave is aware. however, the fat water takes in huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge amounts of dust partivles and like means that 99% of the stuff in the world will carry a charge :p
because I promise you know, that water is not just out of a filer and perfectly clean :P
Specially consider the colour of the ‘water’
Guess you have never touched a live wire while wet (or seen the final of NCIS)
Salt water however is VERY good at it. And if you add water to a hot and sweaty Glowbug you get water with salt in it. (plus various makeup, skin cells, hair oils, etc, etc)
Tap water conducts just fine.
I have a little squee moment when i’m mentioned! And no i do not work in the mines, i work in a laboratory where i have been known to swear a lot at the computers but i have never said strewth in my life i’m not even sure how to spell it haha more likely to say bugger. The sunburn is spot on, i go lobster red when i get burnt (which is all the time thanks to hole in the ozone layer above my state).
Personally, by the sound her lightning makes I would have thought that Glowbug would be from Poland, not Australia. (runs and hides behind Adamas-proof shield)
i drove through a dry lightning storm a few months ago. it was beautiful and amazing and freaking scary as. i thought i was going to be struck. we get plenty of lightning here haha.
I believe he’s referring to the fact that the noise the bolt made “Krakow” is a city in Poland.
Doh! I should have picked up on that.
Mind you, I did get distracted by memories of some spectacular thunderstorms I have seen. Pretoria, in particular, has many hills around it. So storms could bounce around, off them, like ball-bearings, in a pinball machine.
And the storms could be extremely energetic. Far louder, with more lightning and way more devastation, than anything I have ever experienced in Europe. Or in America, but that is probably just down to having been there far less. Albeit in good thunderstorm and hurricane locations.
I do love them. Which was the other thing which distracted me. A nice one that came in when I was reading the thread earlier.
Funnily enough, the day after this comic was posted we had a fairly major lightning storm all over England, which is about the only exciting bit of weather the British Isles have had since the 1800s.
We had a Hurricane visit just a couple weeks ago named Arthur. The biggest problem we had was the moat in the front lawn.
well the hurricanes we had were impressive as well, remember Michael Fish and the “its just a storm” comment and seven oaks turning into one oak. though I was sitting in the garden with my dog last night watching the storm roll towards me with the lightning bouncing from cloud bank to cloud bank and it was rather impressive..
Also going on some of the comments here regarding the incompetent villains several points could be made that they are more used to pounding the average joe, or in some case could have only recently acquired their powers either through scientific, drug, engineered or empowered by another super means.
Yes, but are you as good at it as Halo? Halo vs, Glowbug swear-off, round 1….
I am surprised nobody else has asked yet. What kind of enhancement science are you working on? Chemical, biochemical, energy manipulation, technological/ cybernetic or are you just going for the traditional route and hoping to get your super-powers in a freak accident?
Thinking of Heatwave’s foot, it is quite possible for the blade to go between the toes and get into the flesh between them. This is what happened when my dad was instructing some Scouts on the proper handling of an axe. He intended to swing the axe between his legs into the log he was standing on, but was a few inches to the right (which of course ended up being wrong). The axe cut through his rubber boot and sunk into his foot between the big toe and the next one. Good thing the first aid training station was the next one over. Dad still has all his toes, despite that weekend. I am pretty sure the kids learned a lot about what can happen when you get careless with an axe, but my dad has not repeated that particular demonstration.
That had been how I interpreted the knife position, when I saw it before, actually. It is only DaveB‘s comment that made it apparent that it was otherwise.
It may just be a similar case to the numbers of villains: it just feels like it is in the bone to Heatwave and she just thinks she will end up losing it
Had an almost similar result with an axe while on a school camp, but wasn’t wearing any footwear (fortunately the axe dug into the ground and stopped just at the webbing between the big and 2nd toes)
Well, apparently, the axe stopped when it also hit the log Dad was still standing on, so the damage was limited. I think it only penetrated his flesh about 4 cm or so.
Looks like somebody found something shiny to distract Halo with.
You beat me to it. I was thinking that the villain throwing sparkling effects at Halo could be a reaction to the other villains order.
Poor Glowbug…forgot to spend points on electricity immunity when she bought her electricity power blast power.
Well, it looks like she got the cheaper resistance. After all, she is not dead or unconscious, after having frazzled herself. Perhaps she plans on upgrading later, and is just trying to get the experience points to upgrade?
Anyone else think that the guy hanging out under the tree on the last page might have powers like marvel’s Mimic, and he’s taking the oppotunity of the super fight to collect some powers?
( See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimic_(comics) )
That is actually another super who tailed Glowbug from Australia to the states. He is currently in his disguise as millionaire Foster’s beer owner Wayne Brews. He is observing the fight and waiting for a chance to enter the fray as Australia’s greatest super hero: Wombatman!
(and yes, his utility belt has little boomerangs on it)
My apologies if someone has actually used that name somewhere before.
FYI: He likes the name of the little blond girl.
Yes, Wombatman is a character over in “Magellan”
Actually, I think he’s more the proverbial Mastermind / Detective type. IE “Gather information”
You know the type, he sees you tie your shoes and deduces somehow that giving you a rifle would be a bad idea unless he plans to drop you in the middle of the enemy and hope your poor aim hits SOMETHING before you’re taken out. The inverse of that of course is that he gives you a knife and you could storm Fort Knox wearing nothing more than a towel.
Out of curiosity, are you working in a new line of business, during the day. But at night you are actually a super hero, with the buisiness card “elSM”?
[Clark] Kent, District Attorney and [Cal-] el, Super Man. Or is there some Spanish or Mexican influence and you just go by El Super Hombre?
My alternate theory is that Superman is suppposed to be Jewish, since a lot of names incorporate the “-el” (meaning “God”) suffix- hence, Israel, Michael, Bethel (“Beth”, IIRC, means “garden”) , and so forth.
BTW, it’s “Kal-El”, not “Cal-El”. =OP
Wait, I thought Speedy-Guy used green-hilted knives. Why are they brown all of a sudden?
And they were wiggly before, too.
Cause… I need to fix that. :P
probably burned a bit by that flame aura, no?
Hey look! she has the same weakness as the aliens in signs.
Pretty much everyone has that weakness, everyone who is not Les
I feel like, at some point, the antagonists are just going to be “ugh, this is taking too long and is way too much effort. Let’s just call this a mulligan, okay?” and then everyone just goes home anti-climatically.
Is it just me, or is the RSS thingy broken?
I tried to subscribe, but all I get is an empty page.
you could have put “aaaaaaaaaaas EXXXpected” :P
For the “Of Course/offff course/oooof course” could you have utilized perhaps the three period pause? “Of…. course”. I know it puts a pause instead of extending the word but might allow for the same feel of sarcasm? Just a thought from a big fan.
Also on your Patron site, is there a “just pay him some monies” vs. Month to month?
A simple “Why me?” could work quite well as well.
there is a card-puzzle like game with marvel super heros its marvel puzzle quest and its free on steam
So has anyone offered the explanation for the statistically high number of villains available as a single real villain with the “power” to grant temporary powers to minions?
That’s actually a good idea. Especially given Maxima’s assertion (I think it was her, I’m to lazy to check) that this was more combat-capable supers than they expected in the entire USA.
A small core of ‘real’ supers, and one off-screen who has the power to hand out powers to anyone that can come up with a unique powerset for themselves… (Therefore justifying endless cameos. ;) )
Could go even grimmer. Forget a super who can GIVE temporary metahuman abilities. DRUGS work wonders. The Ultimate Phlebotimum. You don’t need to say anything more than its an “extremely dangerous metahuman augmentation chemical with some …. side effects.”
A better “Wild Card” virus? But what would you do with the “Jokers”?
That’s easy to answer: Send the Jokers to Gotham City. The more, the merrier!
:D
Yeah, Bats could use the laughs.
Right, more supers than was expected in the entire USA. But not the world, right? We’ve seen one villain flying the Union Jack on her uniform and another (Glowplug) who is Australian. So right now we can’t be certain that the count of supers for the USA has been exceeded, since the villains have obvious support from outside nations.
True, but they have to be recruited and coordinated. It’s possible a few just tagged in after the press conference – worked out where the conference was, trailed the group until they were in a convenient setting to attack, met up with others who were doing the same, etc. But it’s unlikely that all of them did that.
So even if they are a worldwide team, someone had to have been doing the recruiting. And we can figure at least some turned the recruiter down. The power to make powers makes a good recruiter. ;)
Yup. But only click, for confirmation, if you want a shed-load of other potential spoilers too.
Bingo! Yorp had already mentioned it in fact. +1 +1
In a Champions campaign I was running, the main enemy could produce “buds” of herself which grafted onto a normal individual, both giving them powers and linking them into a communal mind. She was “Mom” (Mistress of Multitudes) and the only way to ‘save’ the normal was to fry them with electrical current to burn out the foreign nerve traces and cauterize the blood supply. The powers were semi random with the Superman-light being the most common of course. Basically it was all Amazons for the most part as they were a cult, based –well I was a lot younger then– out of Brazil. :)
The Buds could graft anywhere there was access to spine or brain so some were horned, while others had stubby tails. Only one had a collar that covered it wrapped around her neck –and that was the plant put into the recruits for the team.
This would explain the stupid chaff better.
Wet, captured Glowbug Vote incentive, please.
Pretty please?
With sugar on top?
Glowbug is the cameo of a patron. Namely Shana. And that is not something you ask a sheilla. Well not unless you taken her out to a couple of movie and meal dates. Or bought her a few tinnies, at the very least!
*takes a bow* I bet you did not realise I had fluency, in so many dialects? ,-)
Too bad I’m not. LOL. And once again, could be both sexy and respectful at the same time. I doubt the sheila would mind, she’s a reader too, after all.
yeah mate ya gotta crack open a few cans of fosters and stick a few shrimps on the Barbie before a Sheila is likely to get into that.
eurgh no australian actually drinks Fosters. it tastes gross. they are called prawns not shrimp. Paul Hogan has a lot to answer for.
At least Fosters isn’t XXXX :P
Are you telling us that movies like Crocodile Dundee and the Mad Max series are not in actual fact a true and accurate representation of Australia and Australians? My entire worldview has now been destroyed. :D
Apart from the language/lingo, they are acurate(ish)
Anyone else getting a “503 error” for this site the last couple days?
Yea. A lot. Mind you, I usually get a few, whenever my system is going slower than normal. But, recently there were a few times when it was happening consistently enough, when my connection was fine, and for a sustained time, that it was obvious there was a server issue. Probably Dave working on it, would be my best guess.
I was also getting an issue where, after posting a comment, instead of being taken to the finished comment, in situ, I was getting an error message saying that the server could not complete the process. Although, it happened enough that I realised the comment would be on the server, even if it was not displaying for me, at that time.
But, because such things are usually a result of my extremely slow basic connectivity, I do not bother reporting them. Most normal-speed users would not be experiencing a problem, if my deductions were correct. And that seems to have stopped now, anyhow. *crosses claws*
Figured (hoped) that it was just DaveB fixing whatever nasties got into the system and not further problems
Had a few moments where it said it didn’t go through but it did (can’t recall if it was this site or another)
One note here is that Heatwave may be unconsciously raising her fire power to stay up (conscious that is) due to the pain. It mentions in the cast page that she actually GETS BIGGER as she uses her powers –which may act to ‘lock in’ the knife as the bone grows around it. Like a tree growing around an object in it, just faster.
The question of course : Did the Zot knock her out briefly? So will she fall out of the sky and lose the knife ?
On another note, the pile below her can’t be Achilles right? –waaay too many hands showing.
OOOh a squirrel!… and Sydney Lighthook’s her and reels her in. Be a chance to find out if one of the unknown is a “Heal” ball. After all, those two don’t play by the other balls’ rules, it could be proximity to damage while _any_ of the balls are active. It may not even require the “active” even if the damage is to the linked sentience or someone the sentience considers important.
It would be really funny –to the readers– to have it heal Brook _some_ and Sydney suspects but has no proof…
Dunno why Heatwave would lose that toe; it’s already been confirmed that they have a superhero superhealer in the infirmary. Not to mention, the knife went in parallel to the length of the foot, not perpendicular, so the toe may be split, but it won’t be chopped off…and Harem could pop her to an emergency surgical center to reattach a toe anyway. (If Harem doesn’t have a military-approved emergency surgical center memorized for insta-porting gravely injured personnel, then someone is not doing their preparedness job!)
Not speaking ill of a lady’s weight, but Heatwave is way over Harems carry limit.
not if she reduces to 1 or 2 bodies. Heatwave weight can’t be more than 3 times Harems
Harem can only carry about 25 lbs when she ‘ports. And that’s not directly cumulative. Even if it was, that would make a max capacity with one body of 125 lbs. Heatwave looks somewhat larger than that.
Her own body is included if she deports 2 or 3 bodies she can teleport the equivalent weight of those 2 or 3 bodies
Harem can just barely carry a large gun with her.
I don’t think a person (except maybe a small child) would weigh less than that.
Hopefully we haven’t seen the last of Glowbug, either.
Was just thinking: it’s a shame Glowb is a Villain, because even if she becomes a ‘regular’ like Heaven and Hex (heh, that would make a great team-up name: “Heaven and Hex/hecks”) we won’t see her ‘off-duty’ moments, would have been cool to introduce a kiwi character and see their banter: completely take the crap out of each other (specially with the accents: the number ‘6’ can sound like ‘sex’ or ‘seeks’ depending the country of origin) but have anyone else mess with either and you would see the true spirit of the ANZAC (ANZAC’s were birthed at Gallipoli, but came of age in the blood and mud of Paschendale)
Almost every time:
Script: https://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=ss_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=grrpow-20&marketplace=amazon®ion=US&placement=B00IH0KG1S&asins=B00IH0KG1S&linkId=J4IVN5EM3RZULY7C&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true:44
And I have to STOP SCRIPT almost every time for it fails to connect, connection time out etc. Hope this helps.
hey dave. i’ve found that the best way to do a two letter word like “of” drawn out, is to do equal parts of each letters. four ‘o’s, four ‘f’s, five ‘o’s, five cops, (sorry, bad joke) you get the point though. OOOOOOOF looks like oof, OFFFFFFFF looks like off, but OOOOFFFF looks like of.
So, Refresh button, we meet again…
“This comic would have gone very differently if the comic was behind an age gate.”
You know that certain touches of tasteful nudity are perfectly reasonable to include in a comic such as this without putting the whole damn comic behind an age gap, right?
*sighs* The western world and it’s perfectly unreasonable taboo on the human form. I’ll never understand it. Even if I was born here I’ll never understand how vast the scope of this culture-of-shame stupidity could possibly carry on even unto today. A body is a body, for christ’s sake. To shame the human form is to, in a matter of practicality, invite and endorse sexual deviancy, not combat it!
With access to a computer (and any amount of real conviction no matter the absurdly easy to trick parental protection) anybody who has access to your site won’t very well be struck blind by the sight of wet breasts and a camel toe.
Surely if those that insist on the sexualization of a nude body must be addressed then the phrase “Who wouldn’t want to see more tits and asses” should suffice, but I’m loathe to offer even that, as by the principle of the thing it really shouldn’t be so long before the sight has brought at least familiarity away from inappropriate-boner-ville.
Yeah, naked bodies are bad, but horribly mutilated bodies with lashings of gore is fine for childrens entertainment
In case it comes up in the future, you could try spelling it with a long dash in the middle: O—f course! (…It looked better in my head, and without the little spaces between individual hyphens)
How… How can anyone get through life without knowing that about white fabric?
Not all white fabric becomes see-through, if damp. If it did, The Dukes of Hazard would have needed a much higher rating!