Grrl Power #235 – The rad muncher!
Yes, Dabbler has a plush toy that eats radiation and even makes cute “nyom” noises while it’s doing so because why wouldn’t she? I made some assumptions about the nature of energy/dark energy annihilation (that’s a good word isn’t it? Annihilation.) and assumed it wouldn’t cause a massive explosion, since the particles are much more loosely packed in a lightning bolt, there’d be like 1/1,000,000th the chance for a chain reaction to occur. Apparently even in dense matter like Uranium 235, only about 1% of the matter actually chain reacts. Dabbler just had to react to the not inconsiderable amount (I assume) of gamma radiation the lightning/darkning reaction was generating. Oh, and here’s what made me pick on Garnier.
I found a new webcomic to read, you’ve probably seen it as they’ve had a banner up here on and off for a little while. It’s called 3 Minute Max. It’s pretty good so far. Less humor and more violence than Grrl Power, but it’s… technically in the superhero genre. Maybe very near future sci-fi action. I’m not sure, I just started reading it, but it has a pretty good premise. I suggest reading it at least until you understand why it’s called 3 Minute Max (about halfway through the second book.)
Armando Valenzuela who does Atomic Laundromat dropped some random Sydney fan art on me. She’s super adorkable! I can only imagine under that skirt she’s wearing opaque leggings or heck, just some sweatpants. I’m not sure she even owns any skirts to be honest. Well, no, I bet she has some from a cosplay outfit somewhere in her apartment.
Danielle Corsetto of Girls with Slingshots fame will be stopping by Zeus Comics in Dallas this Saturday, which is my regular comic shop BTW. From the looks of it on her website, it’ll be from 4-8pm, and Randy Milholland from Something*Positive will be there as well since he’s a Dallasite and they’re buds and all that. I will definitely stop by and hang out for a bit since I need to pick up my comics anyway.
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Just noticed something off about Dabbles straining-corset: the holo-pattern that runs around the top, it’s not there this time
I just noticed, for the first time, and only after reading this strip three times, that Dabbler’s lower legs are somewhat goatly in shape, and that she has hooves. Had this been established before?
Yes
ooo radiation…it can’t kill you instantly but it will slowly and painfully
It can if there is enough of it. Of course, that’s also true of water, and air…
radiation can certainly kill you instantly if there is enough if it, it will quite literaly fry your nervous system and knock your entire genetic code out of wack soo badly that growing a third arm would be the less of your concerns
PRAISE HELIX
Radiation is not an ethereal fluid that one can simply sop up with a sponge or shove out of the way with a forcefield. What part of “RAY” in “Gamma Ray” do people not seem to understand? Sorry Dave, I know it’s just a superhero comic, but you DO make an effort to try to be at least plausible with your science… You have some powersplaining to do!
Eh, I’m assuming “magic” otherwise it’s kinda hard to explain the whole “succubus” thing. I would like that clarified in canon though. so… seconded?
I was just illustrating what’s happening. I mean, you can’t see gamma radiation so any visual effect would be inaccurate, but I think it’s better than showing nothing happening at all.
I’d actually be really interested to see hairdresser guy join the team. It would be a nice way to show that they care about reforming villains rather than just punishing them, and it seems like somebody who becomes a supervillain because of peer pressure could likely be equally pressured into good with them on the winning side…
But more than that, a super hairdresser is an underserved concept! You could have him charging at Maxima’s hair with laser shears or trying to give Medusa a perm! A super hairdresser could face down super hair.
I would rather see him open up a hair salon in ARCHON’s PX district.
Btw, annihilating the two lightning bolts would give out more energy from just the fact that the energy of the bolt itself is ALSO released into the environment as pure energy.
All I’m saying is this would DEFINITELY have caused a massive explosion. But we can assume that this lighting isn’t generated in the same way normal lightning is and instead they have the ability to ionize air. They then use that ionized air to control where a lower voltage bolt will go (compared to normal lightning). That also sort of explains how they can aim it….
The gamma radiation sucking I’ll allow though… it’s crazy enough that as long as you don’t try to explain it everyone will be fine.
Also, you should really try to change the comment system to tell me when I get replies to my specific comment, not every reply in a thread.
Umm, that’s not what chain reactions are or how they work. Some atomic nuclei are naturally unstable and tend to break apart. Normally this happens by the nucleus breaking off a small piece and emitting it as radiation. This is generally a slow and not very spectacular process – it’s going on in your cat litter and granite countertops right now. Certain nuclei can be made to split more or less in half if you hit them with neutrons going at just the right speed – this is nuclear fission. There are a few special nuclei (like uranium 235) that not only split in half but also emit more neutrons with the right energy to make more nuclei split. So if you have enough of these nuclei close enough together, once one splits, it will make two others split, which will make more split, and so on. That’s a chain reaction, and that’s how nuclear power plants and atomic bombs work.
A stream of positrons will annihilate with the first electrons they encounter (probably the ones in Jiggawatt’s body) and produce gamma rays, but they won’t start any sort of chain reaction. A particle – antiparticle annihilation does not cause any further annihilations. What the effects of that stream of positrons will be depends on how many positrons you have. Google says lightning strikes typically involve something like 25 coulombs of charge. That translates to 1.56 x 10^20 electrons. If Jiggawatt produces that many positrons, that would mean we have 2.84 x 10^-10 kg being annihilated, That turns into 25.54 megajoules worth of gamma rays. I don’t know how much of that would get turned into heat (and then into an explosion), but if that much energy were all turned into TNT equivalence we’d be talking about 6.1 kg of TNT. So my guess is that the net result would be that Jiggawatt would turn her hand (or wherever she’s making the positrons) into a cherry bomb, plus a nice lethal does of radiation.
Good point about the chain reaction. Neutron-less particles wouldn’t have anything to fire off at other particles.
@Kessy Athena: Nicely said! I was gonna object to confusing annihilation with a chain reaction, but you covered everything I was gonna say better than I could have.
Assuming positrons don’t instantly annihilate as soon as they leave Jiggawatt’s skin, they presumably could cancel out the electrons Glowbug is shooting, either directly or by creating an electron debt in the intervening air.
Thing is, since positrons have an opposite charge from electrons, a stream of them traveling in the opposite direction to a stream of electrons would mean the overall current would be exactly the same as if the electrons were just allowed to go their merry way. I guess it just depends on how lightning-shooting works in your ‘verse.
the problem is that they would anihilate each other and indeed transform into gamma rays which is bad news for everyone in a 10 km radius since at the very least everyone not behind a lead wall has now had their chances of having cancer in the next 10 years risen considerably, at worse it would fry you like an egg
this kind of interaction actually happens all the time when two high energy cosmic rays crash against each other they generate a neutron and a positron that anihilate each other instantly, this happens even in earths atmosphere with a lot of consistency actually (yes while we are talking anti matter is being created and destoyed on top of our heads)
Energy/Dark Energy? You said Electron/Positron. That’s Particle/Antiparticle.
I like that Dabbler actually communicated the importance of stopping, rather than just pulling the usual fiction style of communication where she trusts/demands that he stop just because she said so, and refuses to explain why for some unfathomable reason.
I just realized something. Don’t the good guys also have a teammate who is a hairdresser and has a mohawk? O.o
Nevermind. I finally re-read far enough to realize I had my chronology mixed up, and it’s just the same guy who ended up at HQ because Dabbler used him to “recharge”.
That’s an Omanyte
All hail Lord Helix, our heavenly savior who shall deliver us from a ghastly fate of radiation poisoning.
am i the only one who thinks of omanyte when they see dabblers plush?