Grrl Power #558 – Tennis elbow, Maxima style
So just a reminder, this was originally intended as a double page, so if it seems a little incongruous that Ingsol mentions the whole weakness aura thing, and then Maxima immediately starts dismantling it, imagine that it someone might mention it on the bottom half of this page, i.e. Monday’s.
Action pages are tough to comment on because not a lot happens in them. The comic book time dilation changes from “far slower than normal” to “one panel might cover a whole second if you’re lucky” Of course time is super relative in comics anyway. Action scenes in mangas tend to focus more on actual action, punches, kicks, straining neck muscles while they power up, whereas generally, American action comics tend to pack in a ton of dialog into fights. Spider-man is the most obvious offender, but lots of superhero comics have a lot of chatting and exposition. Well, manga has shitloads of exposition too, but they tend to pause the action while they do it. Sometimes they pause for an episode long flashback >cough< Naruto >cough<
I know, I know, some of you think Grrl Power has been in flash back since like page 6, but actually, those first few pages were a flash forward. Both of those things could be true to a time traveler. Think about that.
(I think it shrank since the last page. Drawing large things a consistent size is… not a skill I’ve mastered)
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The aura caused its own elbow?
Like many of you, I’m wondering what Can Man is trying to say.
hmmmmm?
Can Man miss-understood what happened, Maxi happened to it’s elbow
Can Man is pretending to be misled by Dave’s use of effected instead of affected.
It’s a joke about the text at the bottom of the page. DaveB misspelled “affected.” “Effected” means “caused.”
I looked it up and I was sure I used the right one. :/
Well, it’s fixed now.
It’s an absolutely infuriating bit of english. You can apply an effect to something, but that means you have affected it.
That affect has no effect on my affection for the language, effectively.
I feel like the Lighthook should have its own Who’s who panel for the comic scene
Well, to be fair, it already meets the criteria for not being mentioned in the Who’s Who panel…It’s already been introduced & we’re already familiar with it (some might be a bit more familiar with it than would be “comfortable” than others, but that’s beside the point), plus it doesn’t have a speaking role in today’s page.
;)
Neither does Maxima, yet there she is in the Who’s Who. Unless you count speaking with her fists, I suppose.
Why didn’t the bone golem get a who’s who? I bet his introduction would be all “grrrrr!!!” and attacks flying everywhere, but that didn’t stop them from chatting with For Whom the Death Tolls.
In which case it should have had an entry when it plugged the shop’s website.
It’s just Sydney continuing her habit of using the Henticle to protect people while she is shielded. Or to attack people while she is shielded, if Mr. shattered bones has anything to say about her habits. Basing it on total elapsed panels it’s more ‘protect’ than ‘attack,’ but I can forgive Mr. shattered bones for having a more personal perspective on the events.
Anyone wanna bet that Sciona was involved in making the bone golem? Golems seem to be her specialty.
I’m actually kind of wondering – let’s assume for a moment that Sciona was involved in making the bone golem. Maybe he put a back door in it and was able to take control of it remotely. Conceivably she took control of it remotely and had it trigger the alarm. This way, hypothetically, she gets most of the senior council taken out AND the vault opened for her convenience.
Which means there’s a fairly good chance that after Maxima and Sydney take out the golem and they start looking to figure out what Sciona took, Sciona herself will come waltzing in.
Sci-fright deals with blood, not bone
and in humans bodies at least… that’s where blood is MADE…
Doesn’t have to be human bodies, just ‘fleshie’ living bodies
Let’s amend the statement: In most mammals, blood is made in the marrow of the bones.
So what im getting from the authors comment is that like naruto, this flash back, erm i mean flash forward is all filer… When do we get the real story?
Bleach is even worse. In the fight between Ichigo and Grimmjow, there were what? Two entire filler arcs?
I had to go back and watch a whole bunch of episodes just to remember wtf was going on. Had to do that for more and more filler arcs that I just said ‘okay you know what screw this’ and stopped watching. Well, it was that and the fact that Ichigo won’t fight until he’s already been killed by whatever random opponent he’s got at the time.
That’s why Roronoa Zoro would always win. He takes himself and fights seriously, oftentimes without even having to be threatened directly.
Meh. Why rush to the story forward. She wasn’t doing anything but go to work.She was working on being a corpral i think or was it luitennant ben a long while sense i read beginning.
You misunderstood, only the first few pages were flash forward, to a time Sydney is fully trained and part of the team. Everything since is her being spotted as a person of interest and learning how to do her new job.
Also, not all flash backs or flash forwards are filler, this IS the real story.
+1
Now is Halo going to catch the blade and use it against it, block or just pull Decollete out of the way? Might make for a funny tentacle joke, but I would prefer the badass attack.
Decollete was so startled by the bone golem going after her, she lost her glasses (that were seen on 3 and 4 pages back).
Maxima’s like awe man this aura turned me golden age. refering the power levels of superman through the ages. New 52 superman is her normal state, strengthened by that demon dave teased will be her silver age superman level, and this weakness aura turns her to the golden oldies.
Why does this kinda remind me of stone golems in Dark souls 2? They have that slow aura effect that is a pain in the ass, lol.
look’s like you went through allot of effort to design that “mini boss” for him to be pummeled on the second page
The guardian is an impressive powerful foe. Showing Maxima to be even more badass is worth the effort.
She’s going to have a bone to pick with their security managers after this.
and the security team are gonna have a lot of bones to pick up afterwards… or is that the janitors? seems to me a high-security place should have the cleaning crew knowledgeable about security too, so they don’t for example throw out some top secret documents without at least shredding them
The vault repair and maintenance crew are the ones who will have to repair and uncorrupt the guardian. They will have to pick if the ‘knee bone is connected to the hip bone’ and the ‘arm bone is connected to the shoulder bone’.
Page 1 through 6 looked more like a super hero role playing game to me. didn’t those events still technically take place before the events of the current pages?
Also WOW I never noticed it before but, I am so glad that there are backgrounds on all of the panels and not just blank pages anymore.
Yeah the art has come a LONG way in the 6 years of this comic.
The first pages was a super hero role playing game, as imagined by Sydney and her fellow players
No, those events happened after, couple months after in fact (note how Maxi referred to Sydney as ‘Corporal’ whereas right now she is still a ‘recruit’, with a way higher security clearance than any other recruit in the history of recruits, ever)
I can just imagine Decollete showering Sydney with hugs & kisses and exclaiming “My hero!” after this.
yep, and guess twice which succubus will take offense to that :P
Yep the golem is half to as third as big as it was on the previous page lol. I was just thinking that when I read your comment Dave. But hey we all have stuff we need to work on as artists. I was reading a comic recently where the protagonist hits someone with their right hand but in the very next panel is clutching their left as if that was the hand that got hurt in the punch. Couldnt believe I was seeing that sort of error in congruent panels like that.
We had a perspective shot from about halo’s shoulder height verses today above max’s height and can any of you say you don’t perceive height different from looking up to on a raised point away from the object
That light hook is one ready whip.
that pun begs for a topping.
the construct might have a bone to pick with Sydney and Maxima considering they turned it’s arm into a wishbone
i didn’t find that even slightly humerus. try again to marrow.
I’m hoping we get to see a non corrupted version of this thing. I’ve done a lot of D&D with constructs and I’m rather interested in what the original basis of the construction is in this case.
From the looks and size alone the basis for the construct is most likely a supremely over costed Shield Guardian, with custom setup for weapons rather than the standard 2-handed weapon to let it fight easier in the enclosed space of the vault.
I dunno. Looks like it could easily have originated as some variant of Iron Golem. Ether version looks like the majority of the materials have been switched out for… is that supposed to be tendons? Looks like a majority of connective tissues, but no actual muscles.
Iron Golems don’t really mesh well if you ad flesh and bone to them, heck even bone golems don’t mix well with flesh, could be a flesh golem with bone grafts and armor but that seems somewhat excessive
I feel as if I’ve been cheated, slightly, out of a teamwork training montage. Suddenly, here’s Max on the offensive, and Sydney pretty much picture perfect on wing man/shield bearer. Guess it’s from all that D&D they did in their youth.
Maxima has been Sydney’s training partner as they try to explore all the stuff the orbs can do, and Sydney’s last fight was still relatively recently. As far as team work goes, Sydney sending the Lighthook out, then realizing Maxima moved means she probably went to “guard the squishy people” mode since that was almost certainly what Maxima told her to do as a 1st priority.
(Just think about it, if you know Maxima’s attacking, odds are high if your defense is strong you have been told to protect people nearby from debris & such. Achilles has similar instructions since he is invincible for example, so Halo having those kind of instructions inside the Force Orb makes perfect sense)
Sydney has consistently been shown to be tactically on the ball. Combine that with the orbs responding instantly and with great precision to her thoughts, and you get the results that Sydney needs little training in this regard. She is a natural.
I’m surprised Ingsol can’t even stand while Maxima is not only able to move she’s able to zip in between panels and shatter that golem’s elbow in one hit, I’m guessing she’s simply unaffected by the spell, or the power difference between her and the other is just that overwhelming.
I think that the weakness aura was never intended for use one humans and supers. Just on the creatures of the Veil.
It’s my assumption the weakness aura is working just fine on Maxima.
It’s more like -10 to -15 strength aura means a lot more to regular str folks who only HAVE 15 to 25 scores in Champions terms, vs someone who ranges anywhere from 40 to 120 depending on where she’s set her power levels internally. 100- 15 is still 85, and on a scale where every five points doubles the amount of lifting power….
Or, for Mutants & Mastermind fans, a 3-5 point strength drain aura that works wonders on normals and low powered supers hardly even bothers someone who starts at 8 strength [which lifts something like six tons] and can range up to 24 Str [which can lift 400 kilotons]…. well, that strength drain hardly bothers her.
After the “disarm” punch, the next obvious one is “disable”.
If the rest of the golem is just as brittle as its arm, then a solid Maxima punch to its groin should basically shatter the hip area (it shouldn’t be able walk after that) and render it immobile.
If it’s a male bone-golem, then that should disable it anyway. At least for a short time.
“Bone golem” has just become my synonym for “glass jaw”
Whatever! Bone Golem has now replaced Moby as my manhorn’s pseudonym.
Just be aware that a glass jaw can mean that that you fail to come up to expectations, at the crucial moment.
In the last panel, Maxima’s butt is glowing a little.
That’s because of the Hentai-rope
Yea, the same thing, butt even brighter, is happening with Decolette’s arm.
I wonder if the veakness aura is the only aura it has? (Probably, to avoid the fight going on for too long)
I wonder if Decollette being able to stand indicates that she is not actually Decollette?
I wonder if the aura is subtractive (anyone with less than x strength is immobilized, but Maxima is far above x in strength level) or percentage based (everyone loses 99% of their strength, leaving Maxima ‘only’ capable of lifting a ton or so)? …I suppose the difference doesn’t really matter…
I suppose the aura could also be based on the Sigil network to identify targets, in which case ‘supers’ are immune. Which is a good reason to bring Maxima along, but she still should have been briefed on the thing’s capabilities.
More likely entities with their own aura-abilities are immune
You know, for Sydney being so new to this, that seems like a pretty good impromptu teamwork effort right there. (Maybe that’s also discussed on the other part?)
The last “battle order” Maxima gave Sydney during the Vehemence fight was to use her orbs to get in the way of things and to distract people. Plus has been spending time (granted, only a few days worth) training with Maxima as they explore what the orbs can do.
Which means with her ADHD level of reflexes and geek level expectations about the Black Reliquary opening up and seeing the guardian, its very very likely that she would be keyed up enough to act immediately as a shield for the squishy members of the party.
In short both the real fight she has done, and the working with Maxima lately make the reaction to toss out the light hook to grab stuff likely – then seeing Maxima moving to attack, Halo shifiting to being a blocker makes perfect sense.
(Granted it seems longer to us, but in Sydneys time its only been several days so the experiances are fresh, not the years between things happening its been for us reading)
One of the worse comics in a while. The constant worfing of the council to make Max look cool is getting a little grating.
Its not enough Max casually kill-steals the guardian. We do also need to first see how the entire council is more or less useless yet again.
Wow… your an idiot. To try to claim the comic is ONLY to make Maxima look good. Wow…. there just aren’t any words to express how dumb that thought is.
The council is proving to be pretty useless as a whole yes, but its entirely because they have been betrayed from the inside by people who are on the council themselves, and who have been planning how to betray them & stop the other members not “on their side” for ages. With that much inside information, and the time to work out all the nessacary parts for a plan, or multiple plans its more impressive the council is working as well as they are at all.
The fact that the “good” council members, as far as we know atm, were paranoid enough and smart enough to call in powerful outside help (Arc with Maxima in particular) only proves the council is a lot more focused on getting things done then just on their apperances.
To claim the council is “useless yet again” when the fact they brought Maxima with them to the super secret Black Reliquary site as back up & extra muscle actually proves the opposite is true. The council has gotten betrayed & screwed over, but is doing everything they can to find the end goal of their enemies, and even refuses to let pride or ambition stop or slow them.
Hi Tor,
I think you might want to consider that Sciona and her allies have been working very intelligently using a ruthless plan to destroy the council of twelve. They have carefully considered how the council will react to any situation and they have researched the weaknesses of council members and developed ways to destroy the council members and other opposition amoungst that magical community. Silver ball bearings in grenades, anti-magic golems, blood drinking swords etc.
They have not really developed counters against Max and Sydney because they came onto the scene very suddenly and unexpectedly and have not been factored into their plans – which had already started.
Lets say Lex Luthor built a squad of kryptonite kill-bots and sent them to Superman’s house, except he didn’t realise wonder woman was stopping over for tea at that exact time. Of course Superman would look ‘weak’ and Wonder Woman would ‘steal the scene’, it’s because Superman’s weaknesses are being targeted by the plan. I think the currently plotline is broadly similar which may explain why the council are not able to perform their best. Also consider their positions are basically political – they might not represent the best fighter from amoungst their kind, but the one best able to show leadership and command the respect of their peers.
DaveB. I love your comic.
This guardian(?) has a fairly similar appearance to the Undying hero from Dota 2 in my eyes. I am not sure if that could be a worry for copyright claims at any point, but i thought to point it out just to make you aware.
again, LOVE the comic.
How it might sound, in German, with the wrong lyrics. sung by a little-known group called the Beatles. I think these guys might just make it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qh9YJO5k4GY
this was meant as a reply to someone else.sorry.
I must admit, I hope this isn’t the end for the golem. I’d like to see Maxima have to actually struggle for a victory for once, as she’s been kinda ‘I win’ against basically everything. Even a superpowered rage guy being empowered by a full on superhero/supervillian brawl wasn’t able to match up with her.
It kinda pulls a lot of emotion and tension out of fights when you go in knowing ‘Yeah, Maxima will win’ and not even indirect stuff (Like weakness auras or mental effects) have worked on her yet.
I wouldn’t say that — Kevin had her dead to rights. There was no obvious or easy way for her to get out of the fix she was in at the end alone, and without Syd’s intervention in shorting the violence aura, nobody was going to be coming to help. She couldn’t escape, Kevin was drawing more power, and he *was* going to get strong enough to kill her. She would eventually have had to take the very dangerous risk of lowering her shield enough to bring strength or blast to bear, and just hope not to die the moment she did it.
Also, as others have pointed out, it doesn’t appear that she’s invulnerable to psychic attacks — she seemed to have been effected by Xuriel’s lust aura, and a popular theory is that the previous big-ass boss-golem didn’t succeed in mesmerizing her entirely because it had already taken too much damage. Max is stupid powerful, and no mistake — but she *has* been in situations where she was matched on the brute-force scale, and there have been hints that she wouldn’t be able to just shrug off a high-tier psychic or arcane attack.
tl;dr: I think we’re being taken on the same ride that ArcSWAT is: the belief that, no matter *how* hairy things get, Maxima will always be able to save the day. It’s going to be a very unpleasant surprise the day that isn’t true, for all of us.
Very true on all counts: people forget that Maxi was affected by Kev’s Aggro Aura, and the only thing that gave Sydney the time to save Maxi, was that Maxi dumped everything she could into defense, which left her unable to even move let alone fight back
As for the Wars-bot: again, Maxi was affected, but it was not as strong as an attack as should have due to the cracked lens, butt, whether that would have been enough for Maxi to have broken free on her own is something we may never know as she was saved that time by Hiro ripping out the crystal-chest causing the wardrobe malfunction (and showing that Hiro’s wood is stronger than concrete :P)
Another random point, but as an example – Imagine if Superman was given military training on how to deal with threats, in practically any situation, that training would take over & make them moving at a threat to put it down nearly an instant and natural reaction. It means that basically in any situation when you bring Maxima along, she is going to aim for destroying a threat ASAP.
(Before anyone gets all but-but-but about it, at the restaurant supers the threat wasn’t immediately coming towards her or a vulnerable team member – or we would have seen Maxima hitting 1st, instead of observing & leading the teams fight)
Yeah, the closest to ‘official training’ Soups has had, was when he was in the Boy Scouts
Butt, military training, includes strategic planning and threat assessment, which means Soups would no more have hit first during the Restaurant Rumble than Maxi did
Wait, “apparently” a wampire? I mean vampire?
yes, appawwently.
Appawwentwy.
“Be vewy vewy qwiet. Wampire twacks.”
What, human footprints or transformation smoke? That could be any animorph you racist :p.
maybe he’s found a teail of bodies with fang tracks in thier necks.
I would have gone with “a murder of bodies”, or maybe “a crimson of bodies” if wanting to emphasise a colour.
So long and fangs for all the mammeries.
I just realized… Sydney could be a killer battering ram with her shield and fly orb…
It’s a bit unclear how that works, or at least it hasn’t been shown enough to demonstrate consistency. Obviously Sydney can walk or fly through air without feeling any resistance against the shield.
But obviously that doesn’t apply to a liquid medium such as water, where simple buoyancy was enough to force her to move, and where it appears as though she is forced to use the flight ball in order to get past simple resistance to movement, as her dolphin imitation and trip to the Council’s underwater hideout demonstrate.
Solids are a different medium yet again, and she fell on her ass while in the force field when she was falling through rubble in the battle at Wars (or on Mars, take your pick).
It also appears that her force field doesn’t require constant tending by Sydney in order to keep it from hampering her easy movement through doors and such. Although I don’t think we have any canon panels demonstrating that, the force field orb would likely be “on the list” the 3rd time it caught her up while she was trying to simply walk with the FF up and a fire hydrant or parking meter or a person forced her to stop moving. Or sheared off the fire hydrant or parking meter, or knocked down the person, and caused the city to charge Archon for yet another Sydney caused civic damage, or yet another personal injury suit from whomever was knocked down.
So her ability to batter her way through solid matter, like a person or a wall, is fairly sketchy without Word of Author or some canon panel(s) to demonstrate that ability.
The only time we have seen Sydney moving in her bubble, has been either through the air (and she ‘fixed’ that billboard her first night flight) or through water, not counting that time Kevin was pulling her like a government mule
Well the billboard is a good example of her flying through something solid.
The fact that she didn’t even notice it at first could imply how powerful that thing can be. And I guess it also depends on how fast she’s going with the fly orb. She’s shown breaking the sound barrier on one of her test flights. So just imagine a nigh indestructible ball of doom coming at you at the speed of sound.
hmm while not idea how magic affect maxima i can see halo being fine we have seen her shield stops area of effect spells the nega guy from the first super fight likely was in there before the shield went up
Magic is one of Maxima’s weaknesses. In bouts where magic is permitted Dabbler can beat Maxima (or at least fight her to a stand-still).
Wait, wait, maybe the golem shrinking between pages is HOW the weakness aura works!
It makes EVERYTHING in the area weaker, including itself. But since it was absolutely massive to start out with, it doesn’t have to care if it becomes smaller.
He he. I will run with that.
I can just imagine Maxima and Halo silently betting on how long it takes to put the golem down, in the first panel.
“OK, but to get the full $10 it has to sleep for at least half an hour without crying.”
“What, no, I thought you meant to demean it!”
You know, does it have to be an X% weakness aura, or could it just be a flat rate? Like weighing you down an extra 300lbs or something?
Makes sense. As Maxima lacks debuff reduction, if she got hit by a 100% weakening field, she too would be on the floor. So it could not have been an absolute debuff, like that.
However a 90% weakening field would be enough to floor any muggle (they would not be able to support their own body weight).
Here we see both Ingsol and his big, tough-looking, companion, floored. Despite Ingsol being a elder vampire with great power. Which could have been achieved with a 99% weakening field.
Yet still leave him staggered that Maxima was able to destroy the giant guardian, even with the same degree of weakening.
However exactly the same results could have happened if they were being fatigued, as if by having the weight of a main battle-tank pressing down on them. So your point is good.
One could almost miss Sydney’s contribution to this action, but she’s just deflected a bunch of shrapnel away from Decolette.
Much later in the comic, when they meet in Decolette’s night club, this high-class succubus greets Sydney in a very warm and friendly manner, without a trace of the slight snobbishness she showed Dabbler (which MAY have given the audience a bit harsher impression of her personality than Dave intended; she’s not actually that much of a snob to most people… but she does bring that side out to “play rivals” with Dabbler. Looking carefully at that scene, Dabbler was meaner than Decollete was).
This moment went by very quickly, but clearly Decolette remembers who saved her ass today!