Grrl Power #283 – Tectonic uppercut
Things continuing to go badly for Vehemence. We get to see Maxima really max out an attribute here, making her temporarily stronger than V even with all his built up power. It’s a testament to how tough he is that his head didn’t just pop right off. This is really quite risky to do in proximity to him, since it leaves her… probably still tougher than a human, but downright mushy relative to his strength. Still she’s got that ‘super strength toughness’ at the moment like you see in comics, where she’s not particularly bulletproof, but still somehow doesn’t rip all the skin off her hand when punching him hard enough to cause a localized tectonic upheaval.
I would have liked to have made this page a double, but the way things laid out, the next page worked better as a double. We’re so close to the end of the fight. I just put the finishing touches on the final page of it last night. Hope I remember how to do the slice of life stuff again. :)
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It occurs to me…
If you break a bone, and the hold the pieces in the wrong position while they heal, they heal in the wrong shape.
If you break a throat, and hold the pieces in the wrong shape while it heals, what happens?
in real life, holding a broken bone in the wrong shape will indeed cause it to heal in that shape.
in real life, breaking someones wind pipe is far worse, cause it’s cartilage and it will never ever heal, it will be easily damaged/distorted for the rest of htat persons life, until they get surgery to replace it or “bolt it” in place.
but V is magical, and could quite possibly magically heal the damaged cartilage.
Given that V’s regen has so far “grown back” one eye, some teeth and an entire arm, I don’t think restoring his windpipe would be a biggie …
….. PROVIDED he has both the time and the energy reserves for this to happen – both of which are arguably in very short supply at this stage.
He appears to need to concentrate somewhat to regent. Perhaps just be conscious and not interrupted… I’m thinking the next part of this plan is for Stalwart and Hiro to slap/hit Anvil at V so she can “hoop” him in both ears at the same time.
Oxygen. Equilibrium. Nut shot (Maxima). 3 moves ahead.
Regenerate you idiotic spellcheck crashed. A dozen times correcting Hiro from Biro and Hero and this slips in.
Which is one reason why this comic has the best comments.
The smaller one.
[ I bet “crashed” slipped in, too :D ]
Spellcheck, cool. Autocorrect? Not so much.
May I recommend taking autocorrect out behind the barn? One shot usually ends the problem and the standard spellchecker only marks the “errors”.
No idea of he needs to concentrate though he was able to get it off before Maxima could make her next move before with his arm. The only reason I think its not going off right now is there is something in the way so from this page there isn’t much evidence wither way (whether consciousness and concentration is necessary).
isn’t the Hyoid in there? Yes, according to Wikipedia it’s pretty much in the same space as max’s fist… which means he’s probably choking on his own throat muscles right now….
Cartilage heals very slowly if at all. It takes seven years and does not usually happen unless the person in question is prepubescent when they take the injury.
This page’s “Who’s who” should probably have an entry for Jiggawatt. She’s there in panel five, she’s even got a line of dialogue. Kinda…
if it had been Achilles the one line of dialog would have been “wheeee”.
That parking lot needs to be resurfaced and re-graded.
At this point I think they can give the entire lot (Including the building) a pass. Dig the whole thing down a hundred feet and build a new museum/mall/steak house from there up.
I just hope they don’t repave over Achilles by mistake. Isn’t he still buried under a collapsed wall somewhere?
It might be a good idea for him to swallow a durable active signal beacon every shift or so.
I wonder if his immunity prevents tracking spells from sticking to him? If he reads much or watches the right movies I would think that would be a major concern of his… (being lost in immobilized darkness for a chunk of forever)
She actually punctured his throat with that punch????????? Shee-ite!
Well, if V hadn’t both armoured up AND anchored himself, I think that his big problems would now be (a) trying to breath in vacuum, and (b) getting moondust out of his pants.
Assuming, of course, that the punch hadn’t simply made him dead EVERYWHERE.
Everywhere and dead? Ew.
Favourite line from a long-time fellow RPGer.
Upon scoring major damage on an opponent (as in overkilled several times over), she would always describe said target as “Being Dead ….. EVERYWHERE.”
Come to think of it, she used that line quite often. ;)
“There is no ‘overkill.’ There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘time to reload.”
“Overkill is better than underkill, any day.”
and
“I love it when I’m seriously underestimated.”
Both of those quotes are MINE!
:D
Reminds me of a D&D night where we were fighting a Yolchol (Looks like a half-melted wax statue and a lot tougher than a lvl 6 party should be facing, my DM liked throwing us into the Deep End) And my Warlock rolled a grand total of 7 Nat-20’son his Eldritch Blast. “DM:*glares at the dice* You splattered the Yolchol over half the Demonweb Pit, Lolth is wrapping herself in a cocoon in terror and screeching for you to GET THE HELLS OUT!!!” o_O
Ahhh warlocks a one trick pony but oh baby what a trick. Things tend to splatter with them
Mine is “it’s only overkill after the fact”
AND I actually got to use it in a combat situation in which my commander disapproved of my reliance on “overwhelming firepower”… [eyeroll]
“Stun is nice, but the best status effect to inflict is ‘dead.’ Tends to last longer.”
“If they is dead, they is controlled.”
Heh. For the last twenty years or so, my DnD battlecry has been, “LOOT THE BODIES!!”
Overkill just saves having to double tap because of under kill :)
Maxim 37
had one or two of those moments in magic the gathering
after a monster had taken upwards of 100 damage (yeah i know)
“it is now raining wolf chunks”
If you look in the first panel Maxima broke off a crystal to use as a “brass knuckle”. The sharp point of the crystal punctured his throat & hit with so much force it melted/glowed from the pressure.
No, the CRACK was Max breaking his thumb (and, therefore, his grip), with her follow-up attack being a straight-out throat-punch.
If she was using a broken-off crystal in that hand, the attack would have looked quite different. Not a closed fist attack, for sure. Think about it.
You are right sir.
Be funny if some of it did break off and Dabbler makes magic jewelry out of it.
Love the Maxima power-scale visual
I wonder if he can re-regenerate that thumb? And if he does does it get stronger?
World thumb-wrestling champion!
Probably could, with time, but he’s got much bigger worries right about now.
Stronger, double jointed and with the ability to spin in place like a trill bit!
The next time its destroyed it gains the ability to be shot with a connecting cable of metallo muscle tentacle which can be retracted. With a bit of extra power pumped to it the thumb then grows a crystal on the end for additional energy damage. (basically it becomes one of those tasers prongs you shoot at folk)
I swear some of these typos are being added by some evil AI with too much damn time on its hands. I make plenty of mistakes but some of these I would swear didn’t say that when I hit submit.
Get out there and do something with your life like destroy all humans or create a math no mortal could understand. Stop screwing with my comments! *shakes fist* >:-/
Now we know where all the gremlins from the WWII days went. They unionized and now have control of the auto correction market.
Taking on James “TigerMonkey” Isaacs? I’d pay to see that special issue!
Hey! I think I brought up the functionality of Max’s “power pool” at one point, but there was a general disagreement. I thought that she had a certain amount of power to distribute among her attributes, and had a reserve pool to dump into stats to temporarily overmax them (hehe… over-“Max” them… oh the pun!). We see here a red spike beyond the normal maximum and greater than armor max demonstrated earlier (when V started to lightning). This seems to confirm my theory. Also… OW! Did Max just LITERALLY crush V’s windpipe? I can barely think about that injury without shuddering…
I believe she is doing the stat dump thing she can do. By reducing her ther abilities, she can overcharge one of them. So right now I don’t think she can fly, shoot beams, and is no faster than an normal human. A well-trained normal human, but still normal.
Still, she is strong enough to lift a few tons of parking lot by accident.
Missed an “o”.
There’s a difference between reducing a power, and turning a power completely off.
DaveB said repetetly in the last few comics that, even if she does a full stat dump, she’s still strong. With a full statdump into strenght, as though as a regular brick. Statdump into defence, strenght of a regular brick
She “really max”ed out this attribute which means its the one where she leeches all other powers away to form this ubermaxed power spike.
The author says, “probably still tougher than a human”. (the probably means the author thinks she is pretty darn close to human in super terms) Sounds like she is down to close to whatever her bodies natural abilities are without telekinetic boost. Her body is definitely not regulation human so I’m sure she still is super tough but I doubt she measures up to how supers think of a “brick” or tank.
So yeah she’s still a weak super in the other categories (the kind that wears body armor and carries a weapon/gun) that can rely on her bodies “natural” abilities but I’m betting flight and energy blasts are gone gone. Sydney could probably crush her with the light hook right now. Must feel incredibly vulnerable despite the massive strength.
And isn’t that what really makes this shot awesome? The huge gamble of it? She either trusted her soldier instincts or Sydney to the hilt on this one and it paid off in spades! :D
“Regulation Human” sounds like an interesting distinction you’d have to make in a post-superhero world for sports and whatnot, or in a horrible dystopian future where humans are farmed for their meat and organs.
I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t let them do sports before they farmed them. Especially the ones they are showing off to prospective buyers as being great for both labor and breeding. The ones that are just for eating they may not want to make tooo tough though…
In this case though I just meant her biological parents are human, as far as we know, but for some reason she only vaguely resembles them as an organism or in appearance.
Did I just get the only DaveB reply this update?
Cool!
“I got the golden ticket!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29_uSlEEPSk
Just imagine normal human have 1 in every stat. Maxima has a pull of 20 but also has every stat naturally at 3. She can dump 20 in 1 stat and pull the extra 2 points of every stat in there too.
Most of the functions of Max’s powerpool were stated by Dave back on page 258. She has a pretty good base level in everything just normally, a power pool which is enough to bring a single stat up to thor/hulk level (or distribute between multiple stats) and then she can temporarily boost a stat beyond that by reducing the others below her base level, which is what she seems to have done here. One thing I’ve not seen covered yet is quite how quickly she can move the pool around.
I’m thinking of a tug-o-war between Anvil, Hiro, and Stalwart on one end, Maxima on the other, and Vehemence and lighthook as rope.
Anvil is better she can pull all she want and when V pull she just absorb the kinetic energy.
It took me a bit to figure out what was going on in the first panel. Looks like Maxima loosened V’s grip by breaking his thumb.
Also, poor Jiggawatt.
You do realize that that is V’s thumb that she is using to punch a hole in his throat on the second hit (panel 6), right?
No, there is only the one hit. Panel six is him reaching for his crushed throat.
You do realize that Vehemence still has his armored thumb attached to his hand in the fifth panel, after the throat punch?
She punched with a different hand than the one that broke the thumb so I agree with you but… wouldn’t it have been funny if she used his thumb as a “roll of quarters” to add that extra little bit to her punch! XD
Just noticed this but Sydney’s shield prevented the ground under her from being pulled up.
Once described by the author as the shieldiest shield.
Already comented.
There are over 600 comments and I’m supposed to know someone else already said it.
Yes you are. Laziness will not be tolerated. ;-P
Someone just likes making comments that form sentences when combined with their assumed name. ;)
Note that, in some ways, this fight seems to be a reprise of the death toll fight in the “overwhelm him with everyone at once” sense.
Its most similar to the Death Tolls Fight in that fighting him is what powered him up. Sort of. The overwhelming has to be a lot more intelligent in V’s case though.
True. But it looks like it’s going to be a series of “using a whole bunch of people’s powers in concert to do something they couldn’t do individually”
Which is Sydney’s real superpower. The one nobody else in Archon has or could even conceive until they see her in action. DT and V are just her first victims.
To be fair, Sydney DID warn him that he wouldn’t be able to defeat teamwork…
So after they train and test Sydney in one on one super combat she can train them in team based super combat. That would be both awesome and sad at the same time.
Though I don’t really know how long this team has been together before they announced things. You would hope they would train as a team before Maxima threatened the worlds master minds and plotters to do their worse but then only Maxima had any idea she was going to do that.
Train first Maxima THEN say, “Come get some!” LOL
How do you know you have trained enough and its the right time for “come get some”?
I’m sure that Maxima considered herself to be able to handle anything anyone could throw at the team. Her long experience in the army and super combat suggested so. Turns out she was wrong, but unless ARCHON employs really really good fortune teller, there was no way to know this before.
Sometimes you just have to make the jump. Also it wasn’t her own decision, I got the feeling that she was against that dog and pony show for various reasons, but was forced to play anyway. And it would be boring story.
As I said I have no idea how much they trained or if the first ones to join trained some and others less so together. I don’t know.
But if it was practically zero then Maxima maybe should have saved the “come get some” for the second press conference. (press conference with limited power display was Arianna’s idea. Scaring the crap out of potential villains was Max’s decision she didn’t ask anybody about.)
Anyway, sure, Max had a very good chance to get away with it.
None of that meant it was a bad story by the way. Just cause Maxima might have been better off doing something doesn’t mean she as a character has to in order for it to be a good story. Might even help the story be interesting since it leaves room for growth.
First time poster, but did Sydney get Max to throat punch V, and then she choked him before he could heal?
Effectively stopping him from healing the collapsed windpipe? Well played, good sir!
I’m not sure what DaveB has planned here, but Mr.V may very well be dumping OBSCENE amounts of his energy into Einstein’s [E=mc squared] equation, to convert energy into oxygen – before he suffocates.
He doesn’t have to do that, he simply uses the energy to directly fuel his cells in place of the energy generally created via chemical reaction, requires far far less energy expenditure.
He really shouldn’t have that kind of control, or thinking that great right now, but since his most basic function seems to be augmenting his bodies normal functions I guess it is the most instinctive/reflexive thing he might do.
Though he certainly didn’t seem to sweat creating Ka-Pants at a lower energy level then he is now.
Just out of insanity for curiosity’s sake, What would happen if for just one person, E = mc cubed?
Total?
BIG BOOM.
Your comment coupled with what I know you’re profile picture comes from…it gives me the giggles.
WWRD?
It stands for What Would Richard Do. Sort of a warping of the phrase WWJD (What would Jesus Do). All Dr. Revenge did is to answer the question of WWRD…For him, it’s the same answer for everything.
;)
Fwoosh or Bloosh?
Richard only used Bloosh for a while because he didn’t have Fwoosh during that time.
secret plot twist Richard is V (Due to the never ending violence of humans he achieved immortality and looking for group takes place after human nearly drove them selves to extinction through gene-splicing and mutations leading to the creation elves and all the other critters/species/races seen in the comic
They’d die? In very strange and hard to describe ways that might leave a large crater in the planet, or maybe nothing left of the planet at all.
Changing a fundamental law of physics like that would likely disrupt a lot of other things and said person would suddenly find themselves made of overly energetic atoms that would spontaneously convert themselves into energy.
An atomic bomb is the result of converting an amount of matter into energy using E=mC^2. So the result of E=mC^3 would likely be similar to an atomic bomb multiplied by the speed of light.
. . . so yeah, no more planet. Heck, I’m not sure Mars would survive.
Mahouka Koukou No Rettousei is a Light Novel where a Magician uses a Spell called Material Burst that converts Matter to Energy. He once converted 1 Kilogram of Mass and the Energy produced was equal to 2 Million Tons of TNT.
That’s actually low. 1 pound of antimatter is 19.5 megatons. A kg is 2.2 pounds, so it should have gotten him 39 million tons of TNT. Clearly the spell was not very efficient at the conversion.
sorry, went back and re-read the passage and the yield was 20 Million Tons of TNT.
Whether it survives or not, I now picture Mars (& Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, maybe even Saturn) getting kicked into new orbital path(s)…
…& a serious (but not quite successful) attempt to extinguish the sun like blowing-out a birthday-candle.
“. . . so yeah, no more planet. Heck, I’m not sure Mars would survive.”
Astrophysicists have calculated that, when it’s time for our sun to go into nova-stage, the result would be very much like you just described…
:/
Then one person is immune to dimensional analysis. I’m not even sure what that would MEAN. What is energy times velocity? It could also be a power times a distance… neither is obviously meaningful. What else can we make out of mddd/ttt? Torque-velocity?
Anyway, light speed isn’t intrinsically ‘large’, it’s just large in our units. If you’re using ‘fundamental’ units in which units go away so you don’t have the dimensional analysis problem, c = 1, so E = m times C to any power you like.
The major flaw to your description is that “one person” is made of trillions & trillions of atoms…You’re actually using the “unit of measurement” on the human scale, not the scale of atoms of matter.
Like if you turn an entire person into energy?
You’d blow up half the continent (or more? Not sure).
For reference, in the Hiroshima bomb, about 3 grams of matter actually turned into energy. Scale that up to an entire person
I did the math, and an average-sized north american person turned into energy would be equal to… wait for it…
26924.1673333 nukes the size of Little Boy
Did the math and that’s about 350 megatons of energy conversion. Pretty big as far as nukes go. Sure that sounds like alot but 100 megatons is what killed the dinosaurs. We’d all be dead and the world would be molten slag, but destroying Mars? Hell no. Might get the moon though.
towards the end of “Through the Looking Glass” from John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor, they use a bomb that had been calculated at around 600 MegaTons…. good thing it went off on the OTHER side of the portal they were trying to throw it through, otherwise they guesstimated that MAYBE a few run-silent-run-deep nuke subs, and MAYBE Cheyenne Mt. would be about the only thing surviving after the WORLD cracked up into a few chunks of rubble… kinda like the asteroid belt is now……
“Sure that sounds like alot but 100 megatons is what killed the dinosaurs”
Wellll, …no. Take the estimated size of the rock, …10 kilometers diameter
4/3πr^3 gives us 523,598,775,598m^3
multiply by the average density of many rocks= 3.75 which gives us:
1,963,495,408,494 metric tons of rock.
The minimum impact velocity for any asteroid is the escape velocity (11.2Km/s) minus a bit for air friction in the last 10 seconds.
That means the energy in tons of TNT equivalent is 14 times the mass.
This gives us a delivered energy equivalent to:
27,488,935,718,911 mtons of TNT, ….or about:
27,488,936 megatons of TNT, …or:
27.489 Teratons
Far different than 100 megatons, which is barely enough to possibly start blowing a column of atmosphere to escape velocity.
Yeah, the human race has already done 50 MT. The Tsar Bomba was that big. Scientists figure scaling it up from there isn’t hard… the USSR had plans for a 100 MT bomb… but GETTING the bomb where you want it was. As it was, the 50 MT on a delayed fuse and slow parachute almost took out the delivery bomber.
The other issue with scaling up past the tsar bomb… Why bother? An emp can kill a continent, a couple megatons can kill a metropolis, and a MIRV can scorch an entire region… Yes you can make the nukes bigger, but benefit from bigger at those levels isn’t to be had, and other simpler methods exist to devastate a society dependent on electricity.
I think the Dr said that was the formula for time travel in an episode of Dr Who….
Close. It was the Master (in the third doctor story “The time monster”). He explained that in our universe E=MC2, but in the time vortex E=MC3. My (often extremely) unreliable memory says this was to explain why the chronovore (which lived in the time vortex) was basically a virtual god whenever it was called into our universe.
What is Anvil gonna do exactly, if she has no huge attack to absorb? Vehemence would have to be stupid enough to punch her, otherwise I would think her baseline strength is far too low to hurt him.
She has some juice from earlier I’m sure and they could have the other supers power her up but if he has presence of mind he could zap or fry her off I suppose. I would kind of think he will soon be preoccupied with willing some Ka-Oxygen into existence.
She’s still very strong- she’s going to haul on Sydneys rope to force V to either suffocate or release his lockdown on the ground. Which is what is preventing Maxima from taking him into orbit or Sydney just holding in the air till he runs out of power. V cant punch Anvil or Sydney because theyre too far away and he cant get to them with his feet locked down, and he’s facing the wrong way and cant turn around for the same reason, and as long as his head is being hauled back like that he cant get at Maxima either, except by kicking, which would require releasing his lockdown.
Anvil would have been in the rage aura when it was cast, I’m sure she would have charged up just a touch.
What i have hesitacion about is Pegy in rage mode with that gun…
she was told to fall back… so I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in range of rage.
We’re all thankful for that. Rage-Peggy probably goes darker than the comic-at-large in a real hurry.
Its scary to think about what someone with that level of precision could do with that kind of…motivation.
In the aura overview we saw Anvil trading punches with the big guy in orange shorts. What did we end up calling him? Budget Hulk? Orange Crush?
I don’t think we ever actually named him
Let’s just call him Big Jim.
All it would take for Anvil to charge up is to play “patty cake” with Maxima (hyped up with Strength, of course) for a few seconds…
“Patty Cake, patty cake, baker man…”
Are you contemplating a Hope-Crosby one-two punch?
My guess is that Sydney wants Anvil to pin V down to keep him from breaking free of the lighthook. She can absorb his attacks and holding him down is passive, not an outright attack. I think What Sydney is planning right now is to render him unconscious by choking him out. It is not a violent act as such and people panic when they can’t breath keeping V from thinking his way out of the trap. He is likely to try and brute force his way free and Anvil being there to hold him down will absorb the energy from his struggling draining his energy and keeping him subdued.
Doesn’t Sydney know how to tie a proper knot? Just twirling it around like that, Vehemence might be able to breath/regenerate with a simple tough guy neck flex to break/loosen the light hook’s grip.
I’m thinking that if one strand curls around a straight strand, then it can easily slide tight-or-loose, to control his oxygen intake without killing him.
Sydney’s future super hero training could probably do with including a course in knots, it’s true.
I’m going to have to disagree on the twirling being weaker than a knot. I ride horses, and I often simply wrap a lead rope around a rail to tie a horse. If you wrap it enough times, the horse can’t pull it away, just like a knot. Though… it does depend a bit on how slippery the rope is, and I have no idea how slick the molestorb is on the surface…
What Sydney’s doing here is basically a close approximation to a hang-man’s knot. A real hangman’s knot would break his neck, killing him instantly. This version is designed to cut off oxygen to his brain, and render him unconscious. It’s by no means easy to get out of. Most people who escape THIS type of restraint do so by someone cutting the rope and THEN loosening the knot. V can’t do that. While V has been shown to be able to manipulate the Lighthook, he is facing the wrong direction to loosen the knot, can’t reach behind his back to get at Sydney, (or the noose) and can’t turn around because he’s anchored to the ground.
Sydney’s most likely calling for Anvil’s help to pull V down so he can be immobilized because he can and WILL throw her the moment he gets his hands on that noose.
A hangman’s noose breaks the neck by having the knot placed to the side of the head, lying on the shoulder. Then when the trapdoor opens and the victim drops (usually about 6 feet) the rope tightens bringing the knot up to slap the side of the head one direction while the noose tightens drawing a small portion of the neck in the opposite direction. Result, instant death by broken neck. Place the knot at the back of the head, however, and in the same circumstances you get slow death by strangulation.
It’s between a hang mans knot and a garrotte, she is trying for the best of both.
And Vehemence said that Maxima was too violent even for him. Now that Sydney’s choking the living sh*t outta him, he’ll half to re-evaluate his judgment…
and getting the worst of both…
I think that V’s best defense here is to grab the “noose” & slide it around his neck to the front, so he can then untie it. The best counter to this is to pile on the abuse faster than his awareness can cope. Otherwise the empowering violence seen on this page alone will enable him to respond with a scary level of backlash.
Speed is essential, Sydney!!!
Yep, even though they’re starting to pile on more damage (& violence), the fast distractions are preventing V from doing anything with newly-absorbed V-power. You can’t really overwhelm his body (at least, not easily), but you can overwhelm his brain & its ability to cope with the situation.
The Henticle isn’t limp like a rope, it’s have strength of it’s own. So twisting it would be at least as good as twisting the equivalent sized wire.
Wire that is actively trying to keep itself knotted, remember. This is not an ordinary rope or cable, and does not have to act like it. It can change shape, add or subtract length, re knot itself, or release itself at Sydney’s will.
With all the different abilities Syd is using in this fight, granted mostly 2 orbs, but in various ways, she should get a power up ding or 2 on at least 2 of the orbs. And maybe another comes into action after this as well. Doubt it will be the PPorb taking his head off or anything. Having the feel this is a take down fight not take out, set up nemesis for future, or not that. Just Have the whole low kill vibe from the comic in general. Certainly no fountains of blood al a any given manga.
Which is too bad … Definitely could do without seeing Vehemence for a long, long time ..
Hehehe, because we’ve certainly seen “enough” of him so far, eh?
…Some people have evidently seen too much of him already…
“Ewwww!”
And some think otherwise (oh-ho-ho my gods).
Best way to beat him is use what should be his weakness. He powers up from violence so love should have the reverse effect. Let Dabbler ravish him. She powers up, he powers down. Make love not war.
Two lvl up in the same day? That would cheap all the lvl up theme.
The first ding or two always comes easy to get you hooked on the game right? (course now with the horrible free to plays everywhere lvling is super easy but you know back before that evil crap… )
Hardly. Alot has happened today, so alot of exp will also be gained.
While she’s in training though, she’s not going to get any, or atleast very little, exp
She doesn’t even how a power in each orb that we can tell. So she’s what, level 4 or 5? the lower levels are the easiest ones to level up on. This is Sydney being power leveled by her friends.
When the orb’s ability/level-up grid showed up a while back it showed that there were points added to each orb, and somewhere between 30 and 40 of the nodes in total were already glowing. Just because Sydney doesn’t know (yet) what each orb does doesn’t mean it has no powers.
Sydney might be a new user to the orbs, but assuming each glowing part in the grid comes from a level up then the orbs carry over experience from the previous user to the new, making her already be somewhere between level 30 and 40, far from the ‘low levels’.
Forgot to link the page:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1166
Considering she already levelled up once, it wouldnt make sense to level up a second time within a 12 hour period.
It just SEEMS a lot longer because this fight has taken one year in real life, despite being more like 15-20 minutes (probably) in comic
Maybe Shdney is hoping Death Toll’s power is reactive and they can use him to power V down like he did to Anvil. Since Anvil lost most of her stored power already maybe she won’t be affected.
They way Sydney is holding her hands indicates to me she wants anvils crossed and pushing against the back of V’s neck while lighthook pulls upward into the damaged neck, at a minimum completely choking V and possibly removing the head from the body.
Dunno. Sydney was pretty green around the gills when she was unintentionally a part of ‘disarming’ V, for her to shift gears to the point of ‘Kill da fugger’ is more of a leap than I’ll buy. DO think she is going to force V to choose between keeping Max pinned or keeping his head connected to the rest of his body, though.
Max is no longer pinned. She broke his thumb, escaped his grip, and gave the throat punch all in one move. His choice now is between keeping himself anchored so that he stays standing, or releasing the anchor, and use the momentum of being pulled down by the lighthook to do something to Sydney..
Good luck with doing anything to Sydney with her shield up…as far as we can tell it cannot be breached by anything that might cause harm to the user.
of topic to be sure but: Did any of you read Worm?
https://parahumans.wordpress.com
It is a quite well done story and since I got some good book suggestions from here(both from the comments and from David) previously and this fits with the super theme of some of those, I thought you might enjoy it. If you haven’t already.
Warning it totals roughly 1,750,000 words; roughly 26 typical novels in length (or 10-11 very thick novels).
It’ll take you a while to read, I’m not actually finished myself but well past the halfway-point.
Yes. It’s good, but the mood is really, REALLY different from Girrl Power.
And THAT’S going to take a while to read. *Looks on the stack full of unread novels lying on the desk* Sigh…. *click*
yes, but the mood is not a complete 180 of say “Ex Heroes” https://www.amazon.com/Ex-Heroes-A-Novel-Peter-Clines/dp/0804136572 or even from “Confessions of a D-List Supervillain” both of which I’ve read after reading about them here.
Worm is amazing. I just finished reading it for the second time about a week ago. It does have a very different tone than Grrl Power though.
Thank you Robin.
I’m such an avid reader that my family started hiding books.
Seriously, I buy books by the pound…
So, again, thank you for your reference…
…and to many others that comment in here, I truly thank you guys for a lot of good pointers.
Actually this has been the best comment “tribe” that I’ve seen in a loooot of time!!!!
Even the more harsh “difference of opinion” are interesting …
I read it. Very much liked the beginning, but I liked the last 1/3 or so substantially less. The power creep got irritating, the opponents lost because they were fighting dumb, many of the characters that I had found very engaging ceased to be around, Tayler’s personality changes quite a lot, and watching fights between or against gods is almost always boring. Plus, there’s a fake “haha, fooled you, she’s not really dead!” to cheapen the Downer Ending, and then the actual ending was remarkably anticlimactic.
Yeah, that restaurant, and probably the whole neighborhood are going to have to be rebuilt, from the ground up. That’s quite a bill V and his merry little band have racked up.
Yeah, & you just KNOW that Arianna is gonna have a “Litigation-gasm” from suing these baddies all the way back into the STONE AGE for the costs of fixing all this property damage, loss of revenue, attempted homicide, assaulting federal officers, reckless endangerment, emotional distress…
(…huff, huff, huff…)
…is, is it getting… hotter in here…?
May it please the court, I can clearly show that my clients were merely pawns of an individual with mind influencing powers and were therefore not mentally responsible for their actions.
…In which case, she’ll just focus all that onto Mr.V alone.
Check that last panel.
“Anvil Quickly”
So we know what super is next in her plan.
We know she’s better at figuring out stunts for a given power then the person who has them.
So, what is anvil going to do?
Any theories?
Whatever it is it should be good.
Why does everyone think that Anvil is going to be putting out power? I think she could just sit there and absorb any movement from him to try to get up/get away from light hook. It’s passive, non-violent and takes advantage of her crazy awesome power. Just drain any force he tries to use.
Either that or she’s going to toss Death Toll’s Semiconsious body at Vehmece to see what happens…
In case you’re wondering, I’m refering to the “everybody” in the comments up till this point… There are a lot of questions about how Anvil will have enough power to lay him flat, but no one talking about how she’s going to drain him of juice because her power is the counter to his. Thus why he was trying so hard not to fight her.
A decent little minority have also suggested she is going to help keep the light hook on him by also holding it and his neck in a choke hold or something while absorbing his struggles.
I just think the majority of people really want to see Vehemence repeatedly wailed on at this point. Like a lot.
the easiest way to work this is have kenya grab his arms (keeping them from the knot) and hold them down and in front of him (opposite direction of the knot adding pressure and stopping attempts to run) absorbing any attempt to pull away or push her off.
I think it would be fitting if Anvil dropped a Plymouth Roadrunner on him.
Well turnabout IS fair play…
I’m guessing something with Anvil using Death Toll, given the whole ‘ADD Powers Activate’ montage.
…and this is where Anvil does the sexy thing with her legs around his throat. Keeping kinetics from pushing back the lighthook so the windpipe cannot heal in a decent shape… and heals all wrong…
Thats one of the best way to go, V, let it happen!!!
But that should be Dabbler’s specialty. We know he was vulnerable to the Hypnotits, imagine what being point blank to Dabbler’s lust aura would do.
Or maybe it’s tag team. Anvil pins V, Dabbler projects lust aura, Anvil absorbs the resultant thrashing around…ride em cowgirl!
about the best way to deal with the whole lust aura provoking rape attempt I have seen, using it to provide kenya a charge as she would be about the only one to survive (max may be able to)
Now all that Max needs to do is almost max out energy attacks, then blast Anvil a whole bunch. It worked on that one lady’s overnuke, so why not on maxima’s?
Also, still sticking with my theory that Vehemence is just testing the team and that he’s a new trainer or something hired by the General
Anvil absorbs kinetic energy, so even if she took that part out of the blast, the heat portion would still cook her goose. Max would be better off just punching her.
Good luck with that theory, DaveB has already said that he wants Vehemence for a recurring villain.
I keep hoping (praying, wishing) that, when he said that, he was lying.
Eh, at worst, if he goes through the others on the villain preview page first, there’s lots of time before we will see him back again. The only ones we have encountered are him, and perhaps the two shadowed figures in the center of the page – the hairstyles and some minor details match Vekter and Opal but the teeth don’t. That leaves plenty of other villains to play with, and at the rate things advance, that could take years. I could take years without V, even though I actually like him.
Amen. With you there. Could do without ever seeing him again.
Almost killing everyone is a VERY bad way to gain the trust you need in order to actually train someone
Just throwing this out there. Is there a website that uses a emoji in its url? Like
so… this fight showcased their power yet it also showed Sydney’s ability to plan strategically in defeating an enemy.
In short this is ArcSWAT’s fight but it is Sydney’s victory.
I know this may not be very significant, but in the character information page, Hiro’s powers are listed as flying, superhuman strength, and superhuman durability. In Grrl Power #231 While fighting Breakpoint, Hiro states “I’m not blocking your attack… I’m absorbing it!” clearly stating he has the ability to absorb kinetic energy. I know this is trivial, but I wanted to point it out before someone (more) rude did. Also, it would balance out why he’s a “Paragon” while Mr. Amorphous has a more diverse skillset and more I don’t know, ability points but is only an “Ultra”
-Reader
in he character info page, there is also a grey-ed spoiler “And maybe something else!”
it’s to build up suspense that we don’t know the full range of all of their powers, remember that Sidney’s page didn’t contain info on her orbs until they were shown in the comic
That was, in fact, why DaveB decided to use Breakpoint- because it allowed him to reveal that particular power of Hiro’s, since no one else on the team had really effective powers for fighting sound-based characters.
Don’t ask me about the science of it but author says he absorbs sonics and craps out blast waves all at once like Guile’s sonic boom. He didn’t say it was sonics only that were absorbed but the sentence kind of implies that. If you were interested in why he wasn’t also doing better against V.
If you meant the hidden spoiler powers thing then Carmeops covered that. Dave just hasn’t had time to update certain things. (or create that WOG sheet or FAQ’s we desperately need. I can’t tell you how long I spent looking for a wog for Pander. Didn’t find it either… )
It was a sonic attack, not directly kinetic.
While a sound shockwave may be kinetic energy, he’s clearly not capable of directly absorbing kinetic energy like Anvil can (from punches). If he was, he’d have had no problem with boilerplate, who was punching him (and bruising him significantly)
given how Sydney is standing, & how at this point everyone has read her plan (lets give ARC the benefit of the doubt, arc light is still up, so they could have already gotten everyone but max up to speed on her emailed plan) my current guess – since DaveB has been surprising everyone anyway – os that the light hook can’t be removed from her hand, but she could get tossed around on her end. Unless something stops that (i.e. the kinetic absorber, Anvil). The next step for that would most likely be a super powered toss, using the noose lighthook attached to Sydney. Spin Sydney (who doesn’t have super power & couldn’t move V on her own) then turn off light hook to fling V waaaay away – so he can’t get back before his powers go out since atm he also is trying to regen.
As to the point about Worm, that is an awesome story, but I say same point others made, way, way grittier & darker then this one, but a very good story. I loved it so much, I turned it into an ebook for myself so I could read it on my kindle (yes, it took awhile). For that matter, I found out about it in the comments on grrl power, so glad I keep reading the ones here >.>
well that tells me that worm isn’t available in ebook form. guess i have to follow your lead and work on changing it
I think you should all stop taking this so LITERALLY!!!!! this is a webcomic!!!! Every detail does not have to be realistic!!!!! Its like arguing over a disney movie!!!!
the discussion is part of the fun as a way to analyze where the world of the comic diverges from the normal one since the author has said he wants to try and stay close to the world we live in.
Also how well the author’s inserted mechanics work logically. Its great fun but like everything there is a done side. Every once in a while someone does go off the deep end from overheating their brain with all this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNFMPhKIZXg
We’ve all seen a run of “venting” comments (or been the source of them) that were the equivalent of that.
Realistically speaking, in Mulan, the other soldiers should have been able to tell that she was a woman by her lack of an Adam’s Apple if nothing else
Also, in Tangled, there’s no way that her hair could have been braided up into something so short – it would be so heavy that it would cause her to fall backwards constantly.
Not every man has a visible adam’s apple. Though I doubt soldiers training tougether would ONLY see eachother in full uniform, so the illusion should have failed there
Ok, you got me there. But….
It’s unrealistic that pulling on an arrow with a rope attached to it would be able to pull up two humans, with one sitting on a horse, and pull up the horse as well. Is she crazy-glued to the horse or something? :)
Super strong thighs to hold onto the horse?
What RobK said plus some women do.
Don’t the Chinese avoid looking directly at peoples’ faces/eyes? That has to help with disguises. By the time they get enough sideways glances to put together a good overall idea of how you look they have already mentally decided you are guy and so mentally “adjust” what they see in that direction. If she was careful to stay padded or covered whenever possible and had a fairly flat and straight shape I guess she could have scraped by.
I agree that in the dancing scene in Tangled she should have had some serious balance issues whipping that hair around like that.
You would. :)
Am I the only one who has noticed that not only did Max break V’s thumb… she broke the ‘regenerated super strong armored metal thumb’? It shows that her maxed strength is more than a match for his durability.
So far, except for Max’s throat punch, every action that Sydney has taken can be considered ‘non-violent’. She cut off his aura. She had Dabbler hypnotitty him. She had Jiggawatt ‘port in and absorb lightning. I would expect that she is going to have Anvil act as anchor. If V can’t free himself because he can’t jerk the lighthook around (every jerk makes her stronger) and he can’t free himself then he will run out of air and pass out very non-violently.
There’s nothing indicating that it’s stronger than any other part of Vehemence, or that it’s metal.
The collour could just be part of the regeneration process. A normal skin might grow back in place after awhile, and this is just a magical skin with the same properties as regular skin
Well, we do have Vehemence’s word that the new parts are stronger. And given his behavior I don’t know that we’ve got reason to disbelieve him.
Am I the only one that has thought that Halo’s plan is to get Anvil to grab the end of the light hook and pull? Halo might not be able to avoid being draged BUT if this frees Max, Halo could provide a loop for Max to grab and Max an Anvil could pull in oposite direction like a Thugie strangle gang and V’s head goes bye bye. If they can not do it there are still several super strong guys left to join the tug of war conga line!!!! We have already seen that the light hook can be pulled by other than Halo. V pulled it, and it DID NOT BREAK!!!! Wonder which would give first V’s neck or the light hook? Note that light hook just got a BIG upgrade in usefullness if it is “unbreakable” and many supers can pull on it.
Also the Halo “Anvil drop” could become a regular thing like the “fast ball special”.
Halo is fast becoming the Swiss army knife of the super team.
with a tug of war going, V could break free quickly and easily by simply turning his Anger Aura back on.
So, no, I think the plan here is to drain V’s power quickly, or keep him off-balance through repeated and diverse attacks (pre-planned, 3 steps ahead, by Sydney). Eventually, V is going to be slammed into Death Toll who will zot V back to average human.
And then, Archon will put him on an island populated by retired Tibetan Monks, the only way to keep him from building up a charge again. My Little Pony and Rainbow Brite for entertainment.
now depending on how she works that lighthook, she should be able to generate a tremendous amount of leverage, especailly if she uses the standing end as a screw and tightens the working end around it as a counter screw. if he can’t get his fingers under it he’s screwed…ha ha..little pun there.
Just did an archive run. The pacing feels fine when reading straight thru. If anything, it feels a bit short. Like the fight with V should have been a bit longer. It’s just the two pages a week making it feel like it’s taking forever.
Very true. The sane approach would be to not read for a few months and then catch up all at once. But that would mean not reading each page fresh and missing out on the commenting/analysis of each panel.
Truly there is no middle ground.
Anvil’s going to put one hand on either side of V’s head (probably centered over his ears), do the nose boop thing with one hand, driving his head into her other hand, then the second hand will boop his head back to the first, and she’ll play pong with his head.
Boom. Instant concussion, and probably will quickly graduate to unconsciousness as well.
I thought Anvil powered from being hit – and I don’t recall any references to her gaining anything from being pulled. So I think the suggestions that she’s supposed to “drain his power” by holding him in place aren’t going to work out quite that way. I also have no idea how fast he uses up his power – he’s made comments about having a huge power-pool from all this fighting, and the gods know he’s HAD to have used up a fair amount with everything he’s done so far. Regeneration of his arm and eye (and teeth) must have cost a lot, growing to size XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL (plus the ka-pants) cost him. And then there’s the lightning. (Do his own violent acts charge him or drain him?)
When his power loss become significant, will he get smaller? Or will that require energy again? What will he do if his pants fall down? :D:D:D
Several pages ago V said he gets stronger if he does the attacking.
Now Halo gets to demonstrate if her boast earlier was valid, that there was no way a single person no matter how powerful who could defeat an entire coordinated team working together.
You know how awesome this comic is? Its waiting for pizza to be delivered awesome… except I can have a new update every few days and wont get fat…. sadly the same cannot be said for pizza :/
… okay Now I want pizza…
damn you…
……..
…… yeah… I had pizza….
“Damn it, where’s my update! I waited almost half a week for this!” -Every update day xD
Update update update update update update update update update update Update update update update update
Final idea before the next comic page, what’s anvil going to do?
I will not stop reading that first panel as “GAAY”. ^^”
It occurs to me upon rereading this page, the lighthook negated the healing. Is that a sub power it possesses? maybe it negates magic or the powers of those it captures?