Grrl Power #363 – Where are they now?
Opal could try opening up a very small portal to slowly equalize the pressure or communicate with a cohort, but of course her cell is closely monitored, and the time it would take for her to decompress is multiples of hours, and they’re not going to let on how many atmospheres she’s experiencing at the moment.
Pressurizing a cell effectively negates several problem powers. Teleportation and portals, as well as phasing. It probably introduces a bunch of other complications, but in a world without alien or magic “Power-B-Gone” tech, or some peculiar substance like vibranium that phasers can’t penetrate (not Star Trek phasers… you know what I mean) you have to start getting creative. Of course there’s the induced coma, but as far as I’m aware there are significant risks to keeping someone in a state like that for an extended period of time. To the best of my knowledge, people can live in a high pressure environment indefinitely, it’s the decompression that’s the dangerous bit. Beyond that I’m not sure how else to incarcerate someone to whom physical barriers are meaningless. Maybe a poison that requires regular antidotes? A shock collar that activates as soon as their powers do is super risky because it would have to incapacitate them before their powers carried them beyond the effectiveness of the collar, and that assumes you can create tech that can determine when a power has been activated and doesn’t knock them on their ass every time they sneeze.
People don’t get to chose their names, and most parents don’t name their children by factoring in the possibility that they will one day become a crime lord, supervillain, or vampire lord, and will therefore need a threatening sounding name. That said there’s probably not a lot of mob bosses naming their first sons Mortimer.
I like the name Kevin for Vehemence because as names go, it’s humorously non-threatening. Apologies to any readers named Kevin who are looking to dominate the MMA world or become despotic dictators or anything. The most intimidating Kevin I can think of right off the bat is Kevin Spacey just because he can play some pretty intense roles, but really if you say Kevin to me the first place I go is Kevin Smith. After that there’s Bacon, Costner, Hart… uh, Nealon, Klein, Pollak… beyond that I’d have to start googling. None of whom really strike fear into anyone’s heart. Most major supervillains tend to have cooler or threatening sounding names; Victor (von Doom) Sebastian (Shaw)… also Sebastian the Crab so maybe that one’s a wash, Lex (short for Alexander Luthor). I try to not play that game when I can, or play against the trope like in this case. Deus is the obvious example of me breaking my own rule there.
This only applies to humans who become supervillains and not guys like Brainiac, Darkseid, Ultron, what have you. When it comes down to it, Brainiac and Ultron were given names by their creators probably with the intention of making them sound cool. Darkseid, well, we pretty much have to take his word that that’s his real name. I mean he might have been born Kevin McGeoghegan, but anyone who questions his current moniker get the Omega Beam express.
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to be fair on the bad guys having names that fit i have seen a few times that its not their birthname and they just changed it later or introduce themselves with the fitting name
And about Kevin being a non-threatening name? I wonder what the Wet Bandits think about that?
Kevin Nash. I think that’s all I need to say.
In the sequel to Jumper he’s wired with a device that requires a constant signal to not go off. If he attempts to escape the effects are unpleasant.
Pop goes the brain case?
Darkseid used to be known as Lord Uxas.
*Squees* Vehemence / Kevin is my all time favorite villain of the series so far. I really hope he pops up from time to time, or makes a future cameo.
In between this comic, Sin City, Cabin in the Woods, a few Loading ready Run bits and I’m sure a few more things I don’t remember off the top of my head, I’m beginning to find Kevin a very ominous name.
Rereading from the introduction of recruits-
“The most intimidating Kevin I can think of right off the bat is Kevin Spacey”
And three years later that Kevin became… well, ouch.
Decompression to vacuum, even explosive, won’t kill you that quickly. Hollywood generally exaggerates about this. 2001 is probably the closest to reality as Kubrick was pretty OCD about realism – at least for the parts where you could be realistic. The monolith is the monolith.
It is one atmosphere of pressure difference. You would likely end up with skin bruises, open wounds would be a problem, your eyeballs would quickly lose lubrication, eardrums would probably break, and holding your breath would cause problems. Eventually the rest of your fluids would boil off due to pressure difference, but that would take a while.
Of course, she likely doesn’t know that. So it’s a novel situation, panicking would be deadly, and she seems unlikely to be one to think everything out carefully before acting.
From what we’ve seen the portal just removes what she wants to another place, rather like a Star Trek transporter. So replenishing the atmosphere as it’s evacuated via portal likely won’t work.
Hopefully for Arc-Aegis she has some sort of limit like she has to know more or less where she is, or be in range of some known destination, or something. If that’s the case, then removing her to e.g. deep underground in Guantanamo Bay might work (assuming she’s never been to Cuba).
“as well as phasing”
I meaaaaannn… depends on the phasing and how much you get in the way of required secondary powers. Kinda its whole thing is dealing with high pressures, arguably. Actually, I just realized- for “slipping into other dimension” type phasing, how DOES the other dimension regulate pressure? Ah well, depends on the power I guss.
Bleh! Guess, not guss. Who’s guss?