Grrl Power #74 – Adrenaline junkie…?
So not a whole lot happening on this page really. I just wanted to establish the new setting, at least the exterior. It’s too bad I’m miserable at architecture though. I think the basic exterior looks ok, but everything surrounding it is massively underdeveloped. That’s ok, cause I put in a shitty looking crane on the edge so you can tell it’s still under construction sort of. Hopefully they’re still working on a lot of the trim around the lower parts. Also I realized I put landing pads on the roof but there’s nowhere doors. We’ll just say there’s stairways that are flush with the roof. Only, you can see the skylight, and we know what the room underneath that looks like. Oh well. Honestly constructing this building was the first thing I’ve done in Sketchup in more than a year, I’m surprised it came out as good as it did. Don’t be too surprised if this page receives a few stealth tweaks as I build a more refined model.
The team doesn’t occupy the whole building, they have some garage and basement space, and the top few floors along with the roof, and some offices somewhere below that. At least, this is where the bulk of the intelligence gathering and the command structure is, and where the main team deploys from. Floor 1, 2 and -1 is basically a mini mall, and there is retail offices space throughout the rest of the building. The areas the team occupies is physically separated from all that though, separate elevators, garage space, entrances/exits, all that.
Why is the team in a high rise instead of some… fort? Well, they’re really small at the moment. Less than 100 people including intelligence and all the other office people, and… I don’t know, that’s just how I always imagined it. Hopefully I’ll be able to justify it at some point, cause I imagine it’ll come up in the comic.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
just need clairification is this behind the brick wall on the resturant area or a ledge we don’t see in the wide view as it has a hedge wall and the little more than human high one opposite in the later images but the wall is white while the establishing has it brown.
WHUD :-)
I’m not a super-feminist or anything, but is anyone else creeped out by the fact that all the superhero females in this comic wear collars or is it just me? Especially since it’s been said that the male superheros won’t be wearing them when they make an appearance? That really strikes me as sexist right there.
I understand this is drawn by a guy and aimed at the stereotypical comic nerd crowd (which is mostly men), but geez we’re in the year 2012 here, I don’t think we need our female protagonists forced to wear collars while the male equivalent gets an armband or a belt. (I take it back if I’m remembering this wrong, but I seem to recall a comment posted a while back from DaveB that said something to that effect.)
If you’re going to force your female leads to wear collars, guys should wear them too, in my opinion. Unless you’re trying to make some statement here…
Well, they’re not collars, they’re chokers. I think with the word collar, there’s an implication of control or ownership. A D-Ring to attach a leash or it can shock or monitor.
Maybe it’s just semantics but a choker is just decorative, it’s a tight necklace. I just think they’re sexy, I can’t really defend it other than that. There’re there for marketing purposes too. Not in the sense that I plan on selling chokers on the website or anything, I mean within the confines of the comic, Maxima shot down the team members wearing logos on their chests, so after nonstop badgering from Arianna, she conceded to the chokers.
As far as the guys not wearing chokers, I don’t think that’s sexy at all. Maybe that’s sexist, I don’t know.
Hah hah I just reread that. To clarify, Maxima did not shoot down team members who were wearing logos on their chests like they were skeet and she was an overzealous anti-aircraft battery. I mean, she fought against the idea.
actually that’d be an interesting reasoning to the argument about chokers vs. Superman/Batman style logos. “You actually WANT us to put brightly colored targets on out chests?!”
In Batman’s case, that’s where he’s put the most armor.
;) The whole matter of chokers / collars, especially as regards security, reminded me of this:
https://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-27/
why not?
okay, that was vague. Why not sell them (the ARC-SWAT Chokers, that is) yourself? A simple builder, and you could even sell customized versions.
Calling them chokers instead of collars doesn’t really quiet my internal ‘this is sexist’ alarm, but at least I understand where you’re coming from now. Thanks for the explanation. :)
I understand why the alarm is sounding, different people have different sensitivity to that sort of thing. If you’re like Maxima, anything that differentiates men and women is sexist. Makeup is sexist to her, but she also recognizes that you just can’t interface with society if your center is that far from the ‘norm’ so instead she lets it boil just under the surface. She also understands that it’s uncool of her to complain about other women wearing makeup since she is already super attractive. (Her fire engine red lips and nails aren’t makeup, that’s just how she’s colored.)
You know; practical use for the chokers could be throat mics, if Leon has access to some tech capable of making them that thin. (You’d probably need some form of nano tech just for the batteries.)
Though, now that I think about it Harem is possibly the best secure communications system on Earth; Just put one Harem on each side of the conversation, completely impossible to trace.
The’ve got some realy small and somewhat flexable batteries out there. I’ve heard about them coming out with plastic batteries about six years ago. So batteries in the chokers as a locater/ communications equiptment is not out of the relm of reality. But I think they are probably just for location purposes. They have the fancy phones, and there are already some very nice milatary grade throat mikes out there just for the requisitioning.
slappin a I already covered this earlier label on here
I agree… that collars / chokers / scarves are sexy.
HOWEVER… I prefer collars to chokers. At least collars don’t imply trying to strangle someone or otherwise cut off their oxygen supply.
Plus as far as dudes wearing chokers goes… it is kinda uncomfortable to have something pressing on the larynx like that. Bloody adam’s apple. ¬_¬ … Cool, but uncomfortable.
Actually… to clarify… LACK of a collar / choker / neck-covering of some sort registers in my mind as distinctly un-sexy… mostly because it makes ’em seem “feral” to my subconscious… which sorta translates to “homeless”.
I was kinda raised by cats. My mother hates when I tell people that, but I spent more time with the many cats than I did with her when I was a kid… so… whatever.
Dave – first off, props on yet another great comic, particularly considering the compressed schedule you’re working on, with your home-improvement efforts.
second, question: what do we know of Max’s heritage? I wonder what kind of parenting she received, and every now and again (particularly with straight-on shots) you can see a hint of Japanese in her features. I suspect her backstory would be particularly interesting
She’s white, I think Germanic probably but I should probably look up the name Leander, I just saw it and thought it fit. Like most people she’s probably not purebred but for all intents, Caucasian. If she looks Asian at all, it’s just how I draw her eyes when she’s scowley, which is a lot of the time. I try and be a little consistent with eye shape, but I’m no portrait artist, so ethnicity may drift a little from time to time. :P
She look’s eastern european to me, like Russia or Lithoania. Some very beautiful women that have the same bone structure come from that area.
Yes, the eyes do sometimes convey that, but also the facial form–the “heart-shaped face,” combined with her depressed nasal ridge and minimized brow overhang all come together to give just enough hint of northern Pacific Rim to be noticeable, even if not specifically identifiable
The most common ‘source’ for Leander that I could see was an ancient Greek/Byzantine myth. Of course, there’s nothing to say the name hasn’t migrated anywhere you care to name in the 3000-odd years since.
You do realize that Max didn’t land on the top roof, but the next roof level down; the one with the tables and the hedge row bordering the edge. If the Osprey is landing on the nearest roof pad that will give our two “bad guys” the chance to get into the base and out of their covers and back to normal before Sydney can run across them (although they may cringe when she passes them for the first time in the base, much to Sydney’s confusion [“Why are those two guy looking at me with such worried faces?”]).
They’re actually on the ground floor. Max is going to check Sydney in though the security station, get her a visitor’s badge and all that. I obviously need work with establishing locations.
Church Lady voice “Oh, nevermind…”
thanks for explaining if not to the outright ask of the question I posted earlyer
The text at the bottom of the page made me chuckle.
1st – I’m wondering if Maxima has trained herself against reflexive motions like catching Sydney. If she’s as strong as you imply she is, it’d probably only take a couple accidentally smashed people to give her a serious phobia against moving without forethought. Remember how she didn’t get out of the way of the biohazard-puke?
2nd – Arianna probably loves this base. Nice, high-profile, scenic, and lets people come close (But not to close) to the heroes. Odds are she’s the one who arranged it.
3rd – This might not be their permanent base. The local army base was full, none of the normal chains of command wanted these oddballs associated with them, and this building was a convenient place to stash the team. Of course, it probably cost a mint to set them up in it, but all things are relative.
4th – hopefully this building is structurally reinforced and that the glass is hardened. I worked on one job where they installed special RPG-resistant glass. It terrified my boss – if we screwed up one piece, it’d cost 20 odd grand to replace.
Dude, I would not want to be on that outdoor Cafe when they land that Osprey on the roof; your lunch would get blown to the land of OZ. The Rotor wash from a regular chopper is bad enough, Ospreys are epic from the footage dust storms I’ve seen them generate landing in Iraq.
Depends on which direction they come in from.
Not really as most of the force would be directed DOWN. Which is why I laugh at every movie scene with a chopper going under a bridge or in a tunnel, the down-thrust would suck them into the overhead without some extreme forces acting against it.
Hehe.. nice plug-in there Dave. Thanks for your Anti-SOPA support.
Feel like I gotta contribute somehow. In a sane world I’d guess this would have no chance of passing, but when was the last time you heard about anything that Congress/The Senate did and though “Yeah, that’s super reasonable”
According to “The Young Turks” it’s all just a way for congress to force internet companies to pony up “donations”.
BLAAAAAAAAAAAARCHON.
(what I thought when seeing panel 2 after reading the next comic)
Don’t know if someone said this, but an open area around the building is important for defense. Take a look at the big trees they cut down that used to be on the perimiter of Fort Knox — it’s just out in the open now, nothing else around for quite a ways.
When all you had to worry about were calvary charges and relatively short range weapons it makes sense, but in the days of rockets, artillery, and sniper weapons effective out over 1000 meters, does having much of a clearing really matter?
Plus, the windows are reflective, armor plate glass, so you don’t realy have to worry about that sort of thing. And how Leon is such a teck head he’s probably set it uo so you can’t hear anything using a laser.
Yes. Truck bombs; 1993 World Trade Center and Oklahoma City. Large amounts of foliage etc allow people to approach unobserved and provide hiding places; you want to spot trouble coming from as far away as possible so that you can intercept it before it gets somewhere sensitive.The set up the Archon building itself is actually not bad; doesn’t look like there’s much that could hinder a full CCTV observation of the area; it actually looks like it’s be a pain in the ass to approach without being observed which is fine. The “outdoor areas” will get tormented with rotor wash; but architects are often completely stupid and rarely if ever consider security unless they work in the industry or have their plans reviewed by someone who does. I worked at a hospital with a helipad on the SIDE of the building which made for very tricky medivac landings depending on how the wind was going. I can imagine a lot of tension between Arianna and Maxima and whoever else is running Security over the arraignments. Arianna will likely be pushing for more ‘openness’ and publicity. Maxima will want to button the place up. The bane of every security detail is the public relations people who just want convenience and flat our resent security procedures; which leads to them hopelessly watching an accident waiting to happen and then getting in deep when it does. Then they scream at you for not being able to deal with a problem they created. :D
yeah, but that’s why you get WRITTEN orders for when things like that overrule you. When the fecal matter impacts upon the rotary impeller, you can point to the paper and say “It wasn’t ME… See!”
Even so as the Nuremberg trials pointed out that orders don’t mean you are absolved for doing something that is a war crime. You have the right to refuse to carry out such orders.
for war crimes, sure no arguments there at all… but for somebody telling you how to layout the interior space of a building, nope that’s stupid. you have blue prints to back you up, a building being built is no simple slap-dash thing, there are bazillions of checks and balances, lots of design meetings tours of other similar type buildings, etc etc… there is no way the dimbulb can be THAT clueless about how his building will function afterwards… and when he does scream at you, there ain’t squat he can do, providing you actually built it to those prints… THAT is what i was talking about, nothing to do with war crimes…
Sorry I misunderstood you.
For some reason Sydney’s face in panel 1 reminds me of pocket god
that is sooo me! XD
TUUUUUUUBE
Okay. Serously. Awesome page and all, really awesome, but the text at the bottom made me giggle for an inordinate amount of time.
Thanks. Sometimes coming up with that or the title of the comic is the hardest part of the page.
I don’t know if this has been commented on but I just noticed the crane in panel 2 is all wrong. Cranes like that are not “stand alone” and need outside bracing, typically from the building being worked on. In new construction the building is built up around the crane and the hole left behind when it’s finished and removed becomes an elevator shaft. In renovations/repairs of an old building such a crane would be affixed to its side.
I will keep that in mind for next time.
You know, it occurs to me that the skylight-in-a-top-secret-facility issue from a few pages back (since I’m sure it’s secrecy-related, since most of the things they’d be worried about getting through that skylight from a defensive standpoint would go through the roof just as well) would mostly be covered by it being mirrored and multi-paned so you couldn’t see through it in bright daylight, with a layer of that fancy glass that goes black when you run a current through it to black it out for when that won’t work…
…or, as I just realized, they could just use magic. Because that’s a thing.
Ye-gads! The lols! So many lols!!!
In reference to the alt text: she certainly flapped her arms hard enough to be flying.
I just read the tagline under the comic, then looked back to panel 1… xD Oh my god I can’t un-see it now! xD
“I think I landed on a rock”
Why is that line so damn funny to me?