Grrl Power #501 – 1-Down
I telegraphed the checkpoint a little bit, so some of you saw this coming. I had considered obfuscating what Krona was doing a bit more, but decided against trying to be intentionally misleading. So for anyone who guessed it, collect your no-prizes on the table in the corner next to the nacho cheese fountain. I mean, it’s gouda cheese. We do fancy nachos here. It will definitely ruin the fountain though.
And importantly, for anyone worried that this breaks causality/ continuity/ everything and nothing has consequence anymore, dogs and cats etc, don’t worry, I got you boo. Not to give anything away, but… hm, actually I can’t really say anything without giving stuff away. Just hang out, I have taken that into consideration.
I wanted this page to be a little more explicit as to what was happening but I just didn’t have the space. I wanted a few more panels to show the exact sequence – it’s tough cause I picture all this as a movie or cartoon or whatever and I have to decide which freeze frames to actually draw on the page.
Anyway this is by far Krona’s biggest trick. At the low difficulty end is stuff like we’ve seen already like flipping bits. Armed to disarmed, locked to unlocked, etc. Hitting snooze on a bladder is the next level up. Making more of an extant thing is harder than that, for instance resetting the ammo counter on a teammate’s gun. She’s pretty handy to have around but she’s not a fighter herself. That’s not to say she can’t tie your shoelaces together without going anywhere for near your shoelaces. About 8 levels above that is the checkpoint.
If you haven’t checked out the fan art I got for page 500, or checked it first thing when the comic went up last week, look again, there’s a few more pieces now.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like. Share the comic with your friends, then compete with them to see who can contribute the most!
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The people who are trying to make this time trick series ending, are forgetting the most important issue – we don’t know what the limits on the reality hack are in general, and on Krona / the people she used it on in general. For all we know, you can’t use it to reset but once a year, or only when the moon is blue, or the ability gets locked while it “repowers” up. Even worse, what if there is some kinda drawback, like wounds suffered in the 1st timeline/save will still be applied later.
Most importantly I think this is more like one of those “hero moulding” kinda situations – yes, it will be used & the whole team will be there soon for showdowny type adventures. On reflecting though, I imagine maxima will make the point to sydneyabout Krona not being on the team & real life doesn’t normally get a 2nd chance, ect.
Ahh but it is fun, when confronted by a new super power, to point out all the ‘exploits’ that could be used to make it overwhelmingly powerful. Or just point out that it is that without any loopholes or tricks needed. When we find out limitations then we scale it down accordingly. Hence why, in my mind, Halo can poke the Moon, with her tentacle. Until we get something which hints as to whether it has a limited range or not.
And it does actually serve a useful purpose, in that it can point out to Dave where he may need to plug some gaps, if he does not want a power to be too hard to write. Mostly he already has it in hand, but nobody can think of all of the angles in advance. So sometimes he may have a character comment “nope, I can’t do that”, in response to a query or request – usually from Halo.
Mind you other times there is intentionally no limit. The character really is as frighteningly powerful, as portrayed. But this is a super hero comic. That is part and parcel of making it larger than life.
Yeah, that just made me imagine Sydney as…
“Sailor Tentacle Moon!”… very bizzare.
Mind you that is a Non-hentai visualization. Cause well, have to cut that off at the pass.
Hentai OK, Dressing as a school girl not OK. Check.
Mmm, maybe ‘Think twice before replicating Anime behaviour” might be safer in general?
Character motivations were a bit rough and different in the Pilot, and I don’t remember if Rose even came up. (Totes worth watching to see the different, more traditional art style BTW.)
You might be thinking of the goofier time travel episode later on, Steven and the Stevens, where they reuse the maguffin but change pretty much everything else. In both cases, yes, it’s a shame they didn’t make the most of the item’s power. Steven and the Stevens at least went the Man Who Folded Himself route, which I liked. (And both had some comedy gold moments.) Both episodes, I caught a vibe that Pearl and Garnet were more upset than they acted, but were working to channel it constructively because Raising a Kid.
(You could argue that just having two Stevens doesn’t really improve the Rose situation if you still have to murder one of the Stevens and cut the gem out of his meat to get Rose back, but I digress.)
Crap this was supposed to be a reply to Iarei on page 2 how do I fix/delete it?
Go back in time?
+1
Sadly any ‘whoops’ we make just has to sit where we made it, for posterity. The site lacks any user editing capability.
But don’t be too glum about that, it happens to all of us from time to time, so it is no biggie. Either copy and paste it where you want, or just make a comment there to indicate your reply is here.
If you click on the “#” symbol, which appears on your comment above, you will find that the URL in your browser changes to point at the post. You can then copy the address, to paste in your re-directing comment. Should you prefer to go down that path.
I am extremely disappointed by the recent development of the comic. I’m still giving it a chance, but really…it’s just not what it promised to be.
That being said – why does not Crona upgrade herself (or, say her equipment?) that should’ve been something squarely within the purview of her powerset, like, say, copying the properties of Maxima’s skin on her T-shirt, or something.
Because we don’t know if Krona can do that. Nor have we been shown that Krona didn’t upgrade her clothes to be bulletproof or something. We haven’t been given or shown much in regard to the full extend and limits of her abilities aside a very general ‘she can hack reality’ which is a very broad and vague description to me.
And before someone says ‘it is not vague it says hacking reality so that means X’, no, it doesn’t necessarily mean that. That is like taking the description on Sydney’s Who’s who where it says ‘Orbited by seven mysterious orbs that give her super powers’ and then say ‘Sydney should just use the super power of super speed to run real quick for help’. We know the orbs don’t give her any super power she wants/needs because we’ve been told and shown as much, which we haven’t yet for Krona, not to the same detailed extend at least.
The comic promised to be a super-hero comedy, which it has remained true to.
Although you do not hint at which changes you do not like, I guess the big one may be the introduction of the supernatural element and/or the veil hiding it. The former is actually standard fare for the big super hero franchises. You often see vampires, werewolves, witches and the ilk in them. So Dave is keeping to well-established traditions. He just introduced them wholesale, rather than bringing one element at a time.
Whilst the latter issue is simply a result of Dave wanting to have a world that looks just like ours, at the outset, barring the introduction of super powers. The Veil gives a mechanism by which that can be achieved, whilst still being able to draw upon all of the interesting creatures and trappings that go with legends of the supernatural.
Obviously if that does not suit your tastes, then that is a personal decision for you. Although I hope that you manage to reconcile yourself with the path the comic is taking.
Personally I am loving the emotionally charged story that Dave is giving us here. Going from the despair of Sydney being stripped of her powers, by simply grabbing her hands, through to the impending doom. Then straight into celebrating unlocking her achievement! So very Sydney.
Dave is making very good use of these extra elements, that he has drawn in, to give our protagonists a serious challenge, worthy of super heroes!
So.. Is it just me or does Halo’s eyes look… Dirty?
Looks more like red-eyed / tired to me. She was already nearly falling asleep at the restaurant, after that she got to meet the council and help deflect the attack on the sigil, and now here she (nearly) died and was brought back. Can’t blame her for looking half-dead at this point.
Well, on the plus side Sydney does qualify to lead the Necromonger’s now. If she can kill Riddick.
Geeze, reading some of these commits only reminds me of another trope:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2016/03/Comic-Book-Guy.png
Honestly: this is comic that in part about harpooning tropes, this is a trope that must be harpooned.
Time limit, costs, penalties, and maybe something about avoiding attention from beings who eat planets for this kind of thing, or something.
Because this is seriously setting-breaking. Repeatable maxro’d timelooping immortality /with superpowers as well/ …so, she cannot die or be injured/detained/harmed etc because she’d just timelooping or whatever, and she can apply this to others as well.
Kinda off topic but is the vote incentive the VDSD pic for this year?
Postponed, but not forgotten, due to pressure of work on the main comic.
A ret-con of 6 pages is pretty ok, IMO. I mean, we only confirmed that Sciona wanted to kill Halo about 2 panels before the checkpoint was revealed, so it’s not like there was a big emotional buildup that got thrown away. It would definitely cheapen things if the checkpoint was an ability that got used all the time, but if there’s any good way to introduce it, it’s this way, in a situation where the danger itself was pretty sudden.
Think they’ll add ‘teleportation’ to the orb description on the right hand side?
Whoops. Forgot to add this:
I hope we get to see more of what the PPO is capable of. ‘It felt like touching a star’ seems like it should be a teeeeensy bit stronger than cutting a piece of tank off.
That scene was meant to convey Sydney’s inner feeling at being in control of super powers. As opposed to being a reflection of the actual power of that specific orb.
But, you are right, it does have interesting potential. It rates three stars on the cast list. One other character with that blaster rating is Dabbler. Who’s rail gun is designed to shoot satellites out of orbit, and can punch a hole straight through a mountain!
This is not to say that the PPO will be able to do the same things, as it is an overall rating, rather than a specific power scale. The general versatility of the power can give it a higher rating. We may find out that it is good at attacking an area, for example, which is a weakness in Dabbler’s rail gun, which is clearly single target (or targets standing in a row, if she is lucky).
Jeez, Krona is overpowered. Coil from Worm has something weaker than that as literally his only power, and he’s still overpowered.
Overpowered only occurs if the author does not know how to balance or limit powers, in order to make the story interesting. Dave does actually know what he is doing.
Yes Krona is powerful. Vastly powerful. Cosmically powerful. But not over powerful Just the right powerful.
Yorp if you ever change your profile icon from a surprised dog I will be as surprised at the dog in that picture.
I’ve been able to relate to or follow Sydney’s train of thought throughout this series because I also have ADD, but I didn’t expect her to react in such a positive way to almost being killed. I personally would’ve been shocked for a little longer than that. Maybe she found it fun because now the danger is over and she’s already at the point where she can look back on it and laugh like we do sometimes with our own memories. So, the same as normal, it’s just the whole mental process was sped up.
I can relate more to Sydney there, thanks to her gamer and frivolous sides overlapping so much with my own. Whilst hers manifests differently to mine, I do see the real world through gaming eyes, at times. Since playing powermonger it is hard to see fluffy sheep, on a green hillside, without visualising a group of troops marching up and popping one of them onto a roasting spit!
Likewise using comedy to relieve moments of great pain, stress or emotional trauma. Last week I took my dog, Buffy, for her last walk. During which she perked up enough to look around at the birdies cheeping and the blossoms on the trees. Then sniffed the daisies. To which, I said “you better start practicing pushing those up!”
It allowed us, her loved ones, a momentary release, of laughter,, at the inappropriateness of the comment. Not the way that everyone would cope, but that certainly is a trait that I share with Sydney.
The last panel only shows 6 orbs orbiting Sydney’s head, instead of the usual 7, and her hands are clenched too tightly to be holding one.
I accept the possibility that the 7th orb is out of sight behind her hair.
7th orb is out of sight behind her hair. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-501-1-down/