Grrl Power #643 – There ain’t no party like a landing party…
Considering some of the world bosses she’s taken on, it takes a lot for Dabbler to consider something “legitimately terrifying.” Most of that is due to a lack of information about it – also, the overall presentation of “terrifying alien megabeast” is probably intentional. You know, first impressions and all that.
Looking at this page just as I’m posting it, I’m not sure “beam” is the appropriate SFX for panel 2, since in panel 3 it looks more like they fired a mass driver at the ground. It looks like a beam, sure. Maybe it’s one of those weird mass drivers that just happens to sound like “beeeeeam” when it’s fired. But then, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a landing party, maybe that guy was sitting in a faulty toilet on the ship and fell out the bottom when he flushed and now he’s pissed off. (Yes, he’s one of those weirdos that sits on the toilet when flushing.)
![Tamer: King of Dinosaurs 5 by [Earle, Michael-Scott]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OTnNC6Q4L.jpg)
Oh, and Tamer: King of Dinosaurs #5 is out now. It’s my second favorite series after Star Justice. I’ve said it before, but this series is basically Ark: Survival Evolved the novel. I’d say minus the PvP stuff that plagues the game, but as the series goes on, it’s obvious there are other survivors out there who will increasingly be a problem for the main characters. Also, there’s a bit of a harem situation going on, but not in that kludgy, fall into bed because the author wants to stuff the book with sex scenes sort of way that lots of harem novels do it, but one where the relationships evolve pretty organically, even factoring in that everyone is an alien and has different ideas about sex and social structure.
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“Maxima secretly wants to try and beat that thing up.” There’s at least two things that could apply to.
It wasn’t meant to cause an explosion, it just landed on that barrel you can just barely see on the previous page.
I’m not sure that “secretly” is the right word here
personally, i think she wants to beat up the beast, with the beauty. not that I would want to see that, but call it a hunch.
I concur!
Ooh, interesting take.
Exploding barrels? Curse you, John Carmack!
Definitely looking forward to the first time I see Sydney’s “Faster faster faster.” face in the cast headshots up at the top.
I hope Dave gives us a public service warning before doing that though. It would be too frightening otherwise!
*wednesday bonus comic*
syd’s “faster faster faster” face as 1080p wallpaper.
Welp its launching an attack of sorts, but I’m sure that if it keeps it up Maxima will get annoyed enough she may just fly into it and smash it real good.
Annoyed, yes. Enough to be unprofessional enough to start an interstellar war? Probably not.
It would be really bad for a military officer to risk that, whilst there was any other option to protect the lives of her command. Even worse for that to be done whilst on a policing mission.
Technically they’re already shooting at her so… war on?
Possibly not. See shapeshedder‘s insightful comment above, as one example.
And officers in Maxima’s position have to see the big picture. Even though theirs is an extremely high-value unit, risking their lives is a small price to pay if they manage to avoid a war that could endanger seven billion lives. Just one shot, from one of those vessels, could take millions of lives in a Terran city.
Plus they have no plan and no way of estimating their survival chances. Which is where the fact that they are such a high value unit does become relevant. The USA and Earth is presently at danger from an out of control wormhole, which this team could stop. Without them it may, on its own, destroy the world.
Even if the Delta team manage to cope without them though, the loss of the Alpha team would halve Archon’s capability (if not more).
Then there would be the lost potential to mend fences with these aliens, and possibly gaining them as allies.
And finally there would be nothing to gain, except a reputation for violence. Which has its uses. But overdo it, against the wrong species, and humanity could be deemed a rogue race. See the Alari for the implications of that.
No one. Is shooting. At anyone!
Plus they’re not on Earth. Given that this is theoretically the thing that wiped Sciona’s race out, her “mountain shatter” punch might not even dent the thing. For all we know, punching it would have the same effect as us punching a steel door. (Did that once. To my credit, I actually put a fist-sized indent in the door. To my discomfort, while I didn’t have to go to the hospital, my hand was semi-useless for a week.)
Speaking of Sciona, I imagine that the clean-up crew just finished off the last survivor of her race. (Bye, Sciona. You were unmemorable.) Now that this is done, maybe the ship won’t launch any other attacks. This would be another good reason not to turn around and go on the attack.
Plus they’re not on Earth. Her “mountain shatter” punch might not even dent the thing.
Also, it could just be a clean-up crew. Now that they seem to have removed the last of Sciona’s race (Bye, Sciona. You were unmemorable.), maybe it’ll stop shooting
Dangit. Double post.
“Don’t start an interstellar war, it serves no useful purpose. When people ask you what it’s for, you’ll only make excuses. If twenty trillion folks get hurt, you’ll go to bed with no dessert. Don’t start an interstellar war…and mind your manners, as circumstances may require, and never set the cat on fire.” – From ‘Never Set the Cat on Fire, by Frank Hayes.
Attack? What attack? All it did was land
Landing on top of a civilization hard enough to destroy it is generally considered a poor diplomatic opening move.
Of course, some race have very different ideas of what lesser races should be concerned with.
We have no evidence that they were responsible, that other entity wasn’t interested in Sci (as the case would be if true), it was only interested in the strangers and Sydney’s balls
“Beam” is a good sound effect for the column of light, but maybe with an additional “pulse” for the transportee?
“Looking at this page just as I’m posting it, I’m not sure “beam” is the appropriate SFX for panel 2, since in panel 3 it looks more like they fired a mass driver at the ground. It looks like a beam, sure. Maybe it’s one of those weird mass drivers that just happens to sound like “beeeeeam” when it’s fired. But then, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a landing party”
What worries me is the idea that it IS a landing party, cause if that’s how they land their troops they must be really tough SOBs.
It’s like a cross between an Stargate ring-transporter and a Star Trek transporter pad – you know, the ones that make a sound like “bbeeeeeEEEEAAAaammmmmmm….”
What I mean is: When using a mass driver to slam your troops in to the ground is standard operational procedure for getting them into place they have to be tough because more armies would use a mass driver to kill people.
You could install some inertial dampening for the occupants – why can’t it be both? Establishing a beachhead with munitions that deploy hardened combat troops would be a pretty intimidating opening move.
No, no, nope! You are not going to tempt me to read through that archive. It is staying in my bookmarks until AFTER I have made my attempt to save the world.
*wags tail resolutely*
Good call – updated daily for the last 18 years without a miss. :) I lost a full week when I first found it, years ago. The above strip is still one of my favorite ‘oh snap’ moments anywhere. Note that the early art is terrible but improves quickly, and having the full backstory is worth it. After you catch up there, you can start on the 365 Tomorrows flash fiction archive. ;)
Make sure you have someone lined up to take over for you after you
take oversave the world, it doesn’t tend to stay saved for more than 10 minutes.Never underestimate a good megabeast first impression. Nothing says cower before us mortals of this world like a good Godzilla-Cthulhu-Dragon.
Also is what it is launching an attack? Or is that “someone/something” coming down the beam. Sure it looks like it crashed into the ground. But for near or are indestructible species that is also a good way to leave a good *I am to be feared impression*, like the pods in DBZ just smashing into the ground leaving a crater, alien walks out unphased.
The beam is obviously a laser which creates the pathway through the air for the plasma pulse to travel along.
The beam is obviously a laser which creates a pathway in the atmosphere for the following plasma pulse to travel along.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
The beam is obviously a laser which creates a pathway in the atmosphere for the following plasma pulse to travel along.
Just dawned on me…
Harem…
She’s separated from the rest of… well… herself.
Just because her superpower makes multiple of herself doesn’t mean there’s a secondary power to recombine her once she gets in range again. It’s just as possible this Harem might be like a leaf cutting from a tree and become her own Harem… which would make for some interesting social dynamics.
“You can’t boss me around, I’m not a part of you anymore!”
“Yea, but you still came from me.”
“I’m not your kid; we share memories. I’m more like budded… you’re less like my mom and my weird… bacteria…split… thingy. We’re two copies of the same being… like clone.”
“You don’t look like any part of me, I don’t think we’re clones.”
“Oh yea? Just wait till I get my second body, I’m totally going to make her look like you.”
“I’m not sure how I should feel? Imitation is the best form of flattery, but then it’s self-flattery…”
“F#%@ it then, next me will be a guy.”
“Can we even do that?”
“Dunno, never tried, but I’m going to beat you to figuring it out.”
Harem hasn’t separated. She is just experiencing weird lag in her thoughts/reflexes. I assume it would feel a lot like anesthesia.
Any indication it’s a lag? I thought she described it as an echo (which would imply she’s hearing herself back instead of hearing herself talking to her other selves.)
*blinks*
I had not considered that.
Wow I really was thinking outside the box!
*pats self on head*
Note to self, stop talking to self, in public. And definitely stop that patting on own head thing. Otherwise I am going to get put in a straight jacket!
Go ahead and join us. They’re really much more comfortable then you may think. ]:)
It’s like having a nice hug, all day long!
Ooh, very good point. I had assumed it was just a lag in her connection as well. Maybe the portal duplicated everyone and she’s getting a double signal from the copy on the other side.
Team doubles would have some interesting repercussions – I’d love to see a Linear Guild style competition between the 2 copies of the team, although Harem has already sort of has the Evil Twin trope covered.
– The devastated Sciona joins Archon to fight against the original Sciona back on Earth, who is in denial about the destruction of their homeworld and is convinced the copy is either a fake or a turncoat.
– Max finally gets a sparring partner at her own weight class, but can’t stand how bossy she is. Arianna bans them from face-to-face contact anywhere outside the middle of the Sahara.
– Dabbler starts tag-teaming with her clone and ramps up the shenanigans until she is banned from the team. And most Western countries. She becomes an intergalactic talk show host and starts her own fashion line.
– Sydney has someone to argue nerd-geek-ery with for days on end, and becomes very touchy about bi-polar jokes.
– Hiro gets a new drinking buddy and starts pulling lots of stunt-double practical jokes.
You don’t know that for sure. She’s never had one of her bodies SO far separated from the others. It might be what it feels like when the body dies, especially if the quantum entanglement between her bodies has a distance limit after which it’s not effective. Even if it’s worldwide, they’re a LOT farther away from her other bodies than the other side of the world.
The whole point of quantum entanglement is that it lacks distance limit and lag. If Harem is experiencing either it means that her brains really aren’t quantum entangled.
Yup.
Or that the lag is being caused by something else. Of which there have been a bunch of different suggestions, of varying degrees of plausibility.
I was kind of thinking that maybe that rift moved them into the future. After all, Sciona was speaking with her homeworld very recently and there was no indication of this. If they did get shunted into the future, perhaps Harem is getting an echo because she’s hearing herself more than once, as it were.
Just so. That is one of the lines that has a good degree of plausibility. The rift ceremony was badly disrupted, yet appeared to function normally. Yes it did then go wibbly wobbly, but only after seeming to do its job properly. So there is a good chance that it failed to open correctly, and you have hit on one of the likely ways that a wormhole could fail (within the constraints that we know).
If wormholes go wibbly wobbly, it’s reasonable to assume they’re going timey wimey as well.
No offense, you know I love ya, but that’s all a theory. She’s never been further than the farthest you can go on Earth, which is 12,450 miles. You literally cannot test on Earth beyond that distance, and QUESS (the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale) experiment have not shown that quantum entanglement works at an unlimited distance.
The fact that Harem’s all discombobulated right now seems to be some evidence that there’s some distance limitation that’s messing her up though, although like some people have mentioned, it MIGHT be time-related if the portal sent them forward in time as WELL as through a vast interstellar distance.
The definition of quantum entanglement:
This can be maintained at ‘arbitrarily large distances’. The principle does not inherently incorporate a distance limit (which is not to say that there may not be one due to some other limitation, which we have not considered yet). However if something causes the parts to behave discretely (i.e. not as if they were a single thing) then the quantum entanglement is broken.
As such if one is suffering an echo, then they all are (for whatever that reason may be). But the speed of their communication should not be contributing to that.
Ironically the experiment you cite can suffer lag, as it uses traditional communications. The quantum entanglement testing is used other aspects, like encryption and ensuring that the transmission is error-free.
As nothing about Dabbler’s explanation, about Harem, implies that her brain is communicating by any means other than the quantum linking, that experiment would not help to inform us, on the specific issue of her echo. Although I appreciate your point that we have not experimentally proven that quantum entanglement could exist at vast distances.
dabs new ringtone is going to be cyd and harem saying “faster faster faster” excitedly.
Plot twist. they are here to workship sidney because she is the chosen one
Naturally enough.
I read that as “work ship” and now believe that Sydney’s use of the orbs binds her to a period of indentured servitude while she i s trained as an apprentice. Should’ve read the EULA, Sydney.
Yaaaaaaa I’m with Dabbler and Sidney here RUN! Slam the wormhole shut and hope they are on the other side of the Milkyway and have no idea about Earth or they are from Earth.
And cross their fingers that nobody on this side of the wormhole has a grudge against them, which might inspire her to blab all that to them.
*crosses claws*
Ugh Ugh Ugh. Maxima, pick up Halo. Halo, bubble e’ryone. Maxima, take off at ass-warp-5.
Not a bad plan.
It does have one high risk factor, namely that the big thing chasing them seems to be very specifically after Halo. So dropping her shield, even for a moment, could be very dangerous.
But in dire circumstances sometimes chances have to be taken.
If doing that it would be best for Maxima to interpose herself between the pursuers and Sydney, before the bubble is lowered.
With all this frantic running away, I’m anticipating trouble to pop up in the form of Sidney leveling up and having to stop and choose her next Power-up.
I’m pretty sure the orbs won’t allow that while she is using any of them, so Sydney would have to let go of both the shield and flight orbs for the level up to kick in. Sydney is WAY too terrified to even consider stopping right now, so the flight orb is remaining firmly in her hand until they’re back on Earth.
Must go faster! Gogogogogogo…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jdNTyA7QRM
All I can see, in Syd’s face in that last panel, is the villain Mok, from 1983’s “Rock & Rule”.
This reminds me of Jurassic Park and Jeff Goldblum.
“Must go faster! Must go faster! MUST GO FASTER!”
*sound of T-Rex chasing*
Great minds think alike, I guess.
Would this make them go-go girls? (Aside from Hiro, that is.)
No, it makes them
GO! GOGOGOGOGO!
girls.
Clever girl….
But just don’t go teaching them how to unlock doors, or pilot aircraft!
They are aircraft.
Seems to me the priorities of the situation are:
1) Survive long enough to get to the portal
2) Exit home via portal
3) CLOSE IT CLOSE IT closetheportalareadyeveryoneitsgettingthroughohmyg….
4) If successful and closed before anything gets through: Debrief and then pizza, lots of pizza. Then consider what to do if it can get to Earth via other methods.Or if it recreates said portal.
4b) If it gets through, see if it likes pizza. And maybe just wants to chat. After all, it wiped out a common enemy, there MIGHT be a chance it could be friendly or at least not interested in a lesser power. If it doesn’t like pizza, then Epic Battle Sequence.
5) Why not consider just staying and talking to it right now? Have you looked around? It just swatted a massively powerful civilization like it was a fly. Personally I will go with the ancient warriors philosophy of war in that the best defense is “Be Not There”.
Funnily enough, I just put a pizza into the oven a minute before reading this comment.
Kinda looks like it may have been a particle cannon of some sort, in a magnetic containment BEAM? Think of the cannon from ID4. >.>!
Check the background of the last panel, and the artist’s notes. That wasn’t a particle cannon. It was one of the ship’s crew members coming down to the surface.
Wait, where are they going? Hadn’t they been standing right next to the portal all along?
Read back a couple. It has been moving due to instability.
Portal ran away, exit stage itwentthataway
Two things.
I like the way Halo and Harem are both going ‘faster, faster, faster!!!!!’ almost like a prayer or chant.
And I’d love to see Harems face right about now. Considering she can see what the beam did.
Oh one more thing. It could be going FREEM!! instead of BEAM!
I can’t figure out why they’re in a hurry.
Sydney can extend her force field around all of them and fly at supersonic speeds.
Maxima is super fast all on her own, she just needs to adjust for her passenger.
Why is Achilles carrying Harem? She can teleport.
Not Achilles; he never came through the portal. (Super) Hiro.
Don’t forget that the thing that summoned the ship was VERY interested in Sydney. But not Dabbler. It scanned her and then ignored her. And not anybody else, because as soon as it scanned Halo, it summoned the mother ship.
So whatever that is it is specifically after Halo. Hence why she is keeping her shield up. If she lowers it she might get beamed up or vaporised. Or, given what we know about alien past-times, and her current orientation, Sydney might suffer an anal probe!
Dabbler clearly had a spell active when she was being scanned; presumably some type of ward to counter the scan. Sydney didn’t react quickly enough to completely avoid being scanned. The scan stopped on Sydney, so it never even got around to looking at Maxima. I’m pretty sure that, whatever their plans are, these new arrivals are quite unprepared for the situation they are now facing.
Welp, I started an archive dive, ’cause, why not…and you know what I found?
THIS:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/428
Gwen (goth mage gal) found *nothing* in the tube. She does admit it was a cursory look, and that later on with deeper scans, she still cannot tell anything about the orbs…but that scanner-tentacle-dude from a couple pages ago? He had MAD information on TWO of the orbs…and zero info on the rest. Literally black hole orbs of zero information, at most rimmed in dark red (which is what the event horizon should look like, because it’s mad-stretching visible light, lengthening the wave and thus deepening it toward long slow red tones).
But the tentacle scanner dude DID find SOMETHING about the orbs in its scan, unlike team Arc Magi (Gwen, Zephan, Dabbler, etc). Now, it would make sense if it’s the one Sydney is holding and activating…but which one is the one that has the language scribbed across it that is *floating* untouched?
If we go by the rate of rotation, and the fact that the last color image has the shield orb not yet to her hand, green (airbubble) foremost, the previous image yellow (truesight) was foremost and green coming up…then when the orb finally does get to her hand, it should be the beige Unknown orb that is causing the creature to write all over it.
Which is hella weird. That’s the orb Sydney doesn’t know what it does. So…is it constantly active and when she tries to use it, nothing happens because nothing gets turned on in that moment (it’s floating along serenely, already active)? Or is it something that is vulnerable to being scanned? Or…?
Personally I am going with the easiest explanation is the most likely. The tentacle scanner saw the two active orbs, in this case the shield orb, and sense she is on an alien planet and in a shield bubble, the O2 orb. If the scan was happening at the same time as the previous panel, there would have been no rotation, so the air orb was the one in the place being scanned.
Oooops….hit enter too early. I know she has to hold the orbs to activate them, but they are linked to Syd, so I would assume they prime based on needs and activate on touch.
Gwen is only a self-taught apprentice, so it is likely that the orbs scanning countermeasures were simply too powerful for her.
These we know exist (or something messing with perception anyhow) because Dabbler could not even see the skill tree with her cybernetic eye (likewise the TV cameras failed to register it either). Plus, with the gamut of spells and technical capabilities Dabbler has she could not see any sigils, glyphs or the like on the orbs.
Yet we can see them, as can Halo. And Halo pokes them to do things like embiggen the Shield.
But, again, Dabbler is a generalist, rather than a specialist. Which makes her able to to a little bit of a lot of things. However she does not excel at any of them. For example she is a pretty good swordswoman. Yet Heavenly Sword was better.
So it is not surprising that the critter could do something Dabbler cannot, if that was its specialist thing (and, of course, that it was very powerful at that, just as Heavenly Sword is a super powered swordswoman).
Agreed. Albeit that there is a divide in the community, with some of us saying that, and others, such as
StoneWall242 championing it being the green orb, aka the air orb. However throughout the comic the orbs rotate between panels. Hence why I remain firmly in the Brown Mystery Orb camp myself.
Plus, if you look at the final panel, after the scan, you can see that the orbs have moved on two steps rather than one. Which is consistent with the scanning panel having moved on one, rather than remained stationary. Pretty much making it conclusive, in my opinion.
Ahh, it took a more observant reader than me, but note that the mystery orb’s text (be it the brown or the green) is all written in red. Whereas the one in Halo’s hand has some red but one line of green text. We know that this is the shield orb and that the shield was active.
Hence we can deduce that the green line is an active power. Whilst everything in red is not active.
Meaning that the brown mystery orb (going by our take) does not have any passive power (or at least not one that was working at that moment).
Why only those two could be scanned but not the others? Mmm dunno. But clearly it was not able to penetrate all of the scanning resistance, for some reason. Otherwise they would all have red text.
I think only two orbs were scanned because Sydney was in the process of activating the shield as the scan took place, so the shield blocked the scanners before the other orbs could be properly analyzed. This may also be part of the reason it reacted in such a way.
A further thought. If the brown orb is the ‘anti-scanning orb’, that could explain things.
First off we know that active things are easier to detect than passive (or inactive) things. Take present day electronic countermeasures. You can actively jam sensors, but then someone knows you are doing that. Alternatively you can use passive ones, that are hard to detect. However they are also less useful.
In this case I am proposing that the beastie was a specialist scanning device/critter, and up close. So any active powers would stand out, even with strong countermeasures. But, if the brown orb’s active power was specifically an anti-scanning power, then that ability (and perhaps the code associated with it) may well have been able to block being detected.
However the fact that the orb was actively doing something did mean that the scan picked up the other stuff. It was too close to miss that something was up with that orb. But it just could not penetrate that specific power.
And, of course, if none of the other orbs were doing anything at all, then the anti-scanning power could continue to cover that up nice and easily.
Theory on the brown orb: Cloaking and stealth measures.
Somehow I think tgat if Sydney has/gets stealth/cloaking capabilities, it would be some byproduct of the shield instead. Like chameleon opaque mode or light bending mode. I dont think the brown orb does something that obvious or sydney probably would have discovered it already. Its probably something that would only be noticable in certain situations, like the life support orb.
Maybe, if it is in close proximity to supers with variable powers, it will grant Halo the ability to control them?
Some sort of mental control/telepathy power would be cool, but I’m thinking that she’d have found out by now if that was what the unknown orb did.
Although MAYBE the last orb is like a universal translator. And she hasnt found out yet because everyone she knows while she’s tested it speaks English anyway.
Let me try and explain my thinking on this. Applying game/comic logic to the situation like Sydney would be doing.
The brown orb has a passive ability that affects the ability to scan the orbs, you don’t see the passive working except via its effects on the others so no green ability lighting up in it when it was scanned like the active power of the Shield orb. The brown orb shows it has abilities locked away but Sydney hasn’t put any points into it yet so the only thing working is the passive non-detection.
The scanner probe beastie managed to penetrate the non-detection barely, allowing it to see the active shield power and the brown orb doing something passively but not the other orbs.
Whatever it did scan was enough for it to call in the heavy support in the form of the tentacle ship of freeminess.
Hope that made sense.
I think that it’s just an artistic limitation. Artist did not have time to fill out all the little bubbles and just did enough work to show us what’s going on.
Naa, Dave put a lot of work into making the panel look exactly that way. Heck even I could copy and paste the lines of red/green text into the blank boxes, with no effort! If the artist wanted those filled in they would be.
When Dave wants to do an artistic shorthand he makes it very clear, like having a crowd of grey silhouettes. Not only that he would mention it in his blog.
Although in this instance it would be faster to just copy the other orbs over, than to type an explanation!
I have a feeling that they will get back through the gate(or rift or whatever it is) and shut it. Right before they shut it, Sciona will pop through it and say, “You guys were gonna leave me behind?!”.
RAOOOOOO ?
Run Maxima, you are being persued by an owlbear !
I am imagining RAOOOOO could be to these aliens more or less what ULLA was to the Martians in “War of the Worlds”.
A thought just occurred to me.
Between gawking at the local wreckage, the portal dropping bits of Earth between ArcSWAT and itself, Sciona having a mental break, a grue emerging to eat the party, recognizing Sydney’s orbs, and going apeshit, a double-large skyscraper-sized spaceship(?) hyperspeding(?) in, orbital and/or aerial bombardment, and running/flying away at speeds measured in triple-digits of kph…
…. does ArcSWAT still know where the portal IS?
…..
Also, that thing recognizes the orbs. So maybe the 7th orb will do something. (BTW, I’m calling “universal translator”.)
If they could not see it they would not be flying so determinedly in a specific direction. Rather they would be looking around for it, or conducting a search for it, or gaining altitude to get an unobstructed view. Therefore we can take it that the team can see the portal, but that it is, as the dialogue indicates, much further away than it was previously.
Universal translator is a very good suggestion, and entirely plausible. Doubly so if it is of the sort that scans people’s brains to translate, rather than just working off sounds made. Given that many species might not communicate that way.
If that is the case then it explains why Sydney was totally unable to get it to work, even with being able to experiment with the orbs for months, before joining Archon. She had no foreign person to speak to, therefore could not use the power. And even if she knew someone personally, who spoke Spanish, for example, she was too afraid of exposing the orbs to risk using them even with friends and family.
Now if it was a different sort of translator, which could also interpret written things, or otherwise did not require a brain (or mind) to scan, then she could have understood any foreign language films or TV shows that she may have stumbled across, whilst trying to figure out what the mystery orbs do.
Although the fact that she could have tried that is no guarantee that she would have thought to do so.
So, either way, you get a big check in the ‘plausible’ box.
“If they could not see it they would not be flying so determinedly in a specific direction.”
True…. unless the specific direction they are flying so determinedly in is “away”.
Touché.
Although the dialogue, on the previous two pages, does support the portal as being where they are going.
e.g. Max’s “Everybody back through the portal”.
Likewise Hiro’s “How did we get so far from the portal” (with the strong implication that he can see it, and it is further away than he expected) .
Right, right. I’m just playing with the idea that they think they know where the portal is, but they got turned around or passed it somewhere along the way.
Fair play. And plausible when the world is unstable.
You know what would be really hilarious? If the red text on the orbs was actually just error messages as various aspects of the drone’s scan failed to detect anything where there clearly should be something.
Everybody reading the comic is freaking out over the aliens knowing about the orbs, and it turns out that they know even less than Archon does.
Love it.
Alien: “Captain? One of the drones is signaling us.”
Captain: “What did it find?”
Alien: “…nothing, sir.”
Captain: “So the drone just gave a false signal?”
Alien: “No, sir. I meant LITERALLY nothing. Empty space. No air, no light, no ambient radiation. It’s like there are seven small holes in the universe.”
Captain: “What the…!? Okay, that’s DEFINITELY something we need to look into.”
Alien: “The anomalies are moving. They appear to be orbiting… There’s something ALIVE down there!?”
Captain: “Get this ship moving! We need to find out what’s going on down there RIGHT NOW!!”
Great theory, and even plausible. And I love the proposed dialogue :)
Captain: Employ advanced scientific exploratory technique!
Alien: Poking it with a stick, aye!
Leave it to Dabbler to find the silver lining LOL!
The perspective of the last few pages has really lost me. It doesn’t seem like it will matter, but it’s a thing. Been staring at some of the panels trying to figure out what exactly I’m meant to be getting from it.
I believe it is intentional that the alien aspects are hard to make out. I am not even committing to whether the thing that scanned them was a machine, a creature or something else. Likewise the scale of the ship could be anything from tennis court sized to larger than Mount Everest.
It is all alien and we lack things in our experience to contextualise alien stuff.
Which can make it harder to relate even to the other non-alien things going on.
But then throw in the fact that they are on an alien planet, which also has weird things (like sigils on the floor) and that there is an out of control wormhole teleporting chunks of the Earth to their location, and it is getting even more confusing!
Plus the heroes are seeing some things (like where the portal is) which we are not, because the alien ship, and the thing looming up out of the dust, behind them, is the more dramatic thing to see, right at this moment.
So, do not worry, you are not alone.
That ‘BEAM’ looks like more of a ‘BLAM’ (A booming slam from a sudden short duration concussion pulse)
I’m kinda curious why Taxi Halo isn’t taxiing the load right now—not only would it make the slower members much faster, but it would also make the less than invulnerable members a bit safer. Since the fact that if the enemy combatants have enough firepower it could be possible to overpower Maxima’s defenses if she isn’t in defense mode (which, in a running position she should be looking at max speed with a possible pinch of strength to make carrying Dabbler easier, if her base strength isn’t enough) It is likely a safer conclusion to add everyone to the majorly insane safety bubble of move fast.
That is unless the device that targeted Halo for her balls was what called the ship down in the first place, at which point we may be looking at an alien abduction about to happen with a fancy ball tractor beam which in turn accidentally yanks the attached at the hip Halo….in that case, it is highly dangerous to be within the shielding, as you would be coming with her, and you will be walking with a limp the next day due to probing.
So this is just my OCD talking, but is there a reason why page 2889 was skipped? The comic just goes from page 2888 straight to 2890?
The page numbers include comment pages, afaik.
So this is just my OCD talking, but is there a reason page 2889 was skipped? It just goes from 2888 to 2890?
Nevermind, apparently there’s been random skips in numbering before this I just never noticed it and assumed it progressed linearly…
I don’t think even Dave knows why it does that. I recall him once expressing frustration that the first page of the comic was not page 1.
Sometimes the gap seems to have some correlation to the number of comment pages. Which I wondered if it may be just the number of those before the next comic comes out (bearing in mind that new comment pages can and have been added to some comics even years later).
However that did not hold up under examination (the big gap before the start of the comic being a prime example that broke the idea).
it’s obviously assigned by the software in charge of wrangling any new pages, and assigned in the order in which it get’s uploaded, and if multiple pages get uploaded in one day,.. um, er… i WAS going to say that if three other comics upload strips for any given day then they’d get numbered in the order which the software received them, and that’s why the gap in numbers… but then i realized that Grrl Power is the ONLY comic on the Grrl Power website, so that thought fell thru because if it IS the only strip, then it SHOULD be labeled directly numerically, and it’s not… so i guess it’s kinda like the question of: How many licks DOES it take to get to the middle of a Tootsie-Pop? …
The World May Never Know!…
Was archive diving, & was on the half-evil page, (#333), and saw the comment about wanting to mix up the panel layouts from page to page.
I like the way you do that, Dave. I love the splash pages, I love the too many panel pages, and I love the ones that are neither too little nor too much. Big vertical panels like the three up on this page, followed by the horizontal one work, and work very well, for what you’re conveying here. And it’s all lovable, all of it, because you DO mix things up.
I really enjoyed Love & Capes (the full archive is online if anyone wants to google it, a mostly comedic superhero romance story, it’s something everyone could enjoy reading), but he had the same format, 4 panels, or 2 and one conjoined panel, rarely one full panel… It was a great story, and the layout worked for that story (or was made to work)…but the layout was predictable in far too many ways. It might’ve been a little better if it was more dynamic, like yours…and I don’t think yours would be so enjoyable if it was a more static layout.
Mind you, going wild tends to backfire…but you don’t do that. So you have my thanks for that, too. Good job!
any one want to be this is just like a drone (and i don’t mean something like a scout drone war drone but still a drone)
Oof, so odds are Sciona is toast by now…
Possibly. But Sciona had gone wandering off. Plus the incoming ship and landing party are after Halo. So Sciona is unlikely to have been in the impact area, so is only at risk from the flaming fireballs.
We have already seen that Sciona can easily fend off things like that, with her wings, from when Maxima shot at her. In this case a lot more of the landscape is not being hit than has fireballs falling towards it. So parrying may not even be necessary.
For some reason I’m picturing the Id-monster from “Forbidden Planet.” :)
The friendly ship is just trying to help them better fit the cool image they have
After all cool ladies don’t look at explosion. Maybe the captain of the ship put to much in their pyrotechnic budget I don’t know but they only use chappy sleep time tools not weapons that kill.
I kind of have a different feel. The giant screw-ship, called down by tentacle-robot is hunting Halo because of the orbs, sure. But the beam in this comic could be…backup. Maybe screw-ship-tentacle race is hunting down the orb-bearers to try and wipe them out, but this new beam-splosion is the orb-bearers sending backup to help one of their own. The blue beam doesn’t seem to be emanating from the ship, and is BLUE, where the signal beam was clearly RED. What crazy aliens would use different colored beams? No, two different alien species are now landing on this planet.
The beam is probably white, but just red-shifted when going away from the observer, but blue when coming towards it. Bearing in mind that it is not a laser beam but something different. The ship likely travelled faster than light (or through a wormhole/teleported), given its apparently instantaneous appearance. And the red beam appeared to be the beacon or tether that it came in on.
Likewise the landing party travelled down the blue beam, so a similar (albeit maybe not identical) effect seems to be at play.
When the team member looking back starts screaming “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” then I’d say it’s REALLY time to go faster.
Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket or Lovecraft’s cry of the Shoggoth?
The perspective in the first couple frame is.. odd. not really comprehensible. I had no idea what was going on :(
IMO, a view from further back, at least initially with maybe followup zoom, would help a lot.
Useful feedback. And not the first to voice that, although your specific advice is both new and good.
My personal take is that Dave is purposefully not trying to make everything easy to follow, because that is simulating bringing us closer to the experience that our protagonist(s) are having. Sydney, for example, is only glimpsing the events over her shoulder and is spending most of her time fixated on the route ahead.
Weird s**t is happening behind them, which they are pretty much having to guess what is going on. So Dave is ensuring that our trepidation and confusion is on a par with the teams. And is doing a cracking good job of both!
It’s not so terrifying if you think of all its billions of parts as all one. Then it’s just one enemy. What’s the problem?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jdNTyA7QRM