Grrl Power #135 – An under reaction. Get it? Cause she’s short
The name “Anvil” should serve as a reminder to me not to give my characters temporary names. They tend to stick. Luckily Maxima’s original nickname, “Gold Babe” was eventually replaced. Anvil isn’t a bad name necessarily, but in the realm of superheroing, it’s hardly original. Granted, neither is Maxima, but at least that name really feels like it fits her. After spending a year or more as “Gold Babe” there was another good year where she was called Ultima. I knew then that she was going to be riding the top of my power scale, and the name Maxima went to a skinny weed of a girl who had a combination of zero range telekinesis and zero range gravity control, giving her essentially unlimited lifting strength. She could lift an aircraft carrier with one arm, the only challenge for her would be the size and inertia of the thing, its weight was irrelevant. The problem was I kept coming up with scenarios where “Ultima” was thinking “I need to max out my strength/speed/armor” (if you didn’t know, Maxima has a power pool that she can use to drastically boost her power.) Eventually I decided to swap their names, Max got the first name Maximillia and started coming together as a character a bit more, and Skinny-but-can-lift-anything-Ultima got retired into the vault with all the rest of the heroes who didn’t quite make it. Don’t worry, she’s not lonely. At its height, my own personal superteam had something like 20 members, and no one who appears in this comic was on it. I imagine some of them will show up though, in radically updated forms.
Unrelated but impressive, Fred Perry, who does the comic Gold Digger that I’ve cited several times as my favorite comic and one of the inspirations for my comic, has achieved what may be a first. He’s done 200 comics over the last 20 years. There are a few of the early color issues that he had someone else doing the coloring, but other than that, he’s written, inked, penciled and colored them all by himself. One of the things I like about Gold Digger is the consistency. Unlike mainstream comics where the creative teams swap out every dozen issues and it suddenly feels like you’re reading a different title. He’s got a special signed edition he’s putting out… obviously jumping in at issue 200 is not ideal if you’ve never read it but I’m assuming there are a few fans of the comic here that may not know about this special issue.
The way anvil stands up is the exact way all tall people stand up to impress upon you how tall they are (bend at the hips and then straighten legs first, then straighten upper body. “IT KEEPS GROWING!!!”)
Had a friend who was about 6’5″ and he explained it as that was the only way he could climb out of the average sized chair or couch that didn’t put strain on his back.
wow thats exactly the way i always get up from a couch and i never realized it, 6’3″ hilarious point tho, gona have to keep that in mind lol.
As someone who is actually a little taller then Anvil (I’m 6′ 8″ by the way) that is exactly the way to stand up out of a normal sized chair or couch.
First: I’d like to state that I’m am 5′ 11″. Second: STOP MAKING ME FEEL LIKE A DAMNED LILLIPUTIAN! You’re so tall, you’re the only person to ever take a hit from a ceiling fan to the SHIN! You’re so tall, terrorists tried to fly a plain into the side of your head! You’re so tall, you have to wear a hat with a blinking light as a warning to low flying air craft! You’re so tall, you could donate the clothes you’ve outgrown to the Statue of Liberty! You’re so tall, that in a 1 on 1 game wih Shaquel O’Neal, Shaq would hand you the ball and say “I give!” You’re so tall, Japan once considered calling you in to battle Godzilla, but decided that he deserved at least a fighting chance! You’re so tall . . . okay I’m out of crappy tall people jokes, I’ll be quiet now.
PS: That’s what happens when you grow up eating whole, live giraffes! Okay, now I’m done.
^^ That is pretty good, to be able to put them all in one place like that. I am 6’5″, and have to listen to those kinds of comments, 11th grade on. The funny thing is I have heard almost all of them, except for eating whole, live giraffes. Almost a flash back for my self. My height is one reason I HATE sports!!!
You did forget one….While you are up there, check on the status of “Space Lab One.” We need to see how they are doing.
Don’t feel too bad, at least your height means people are more afraid to pick on you… us short folks get stepped on constantly. :-P
The meanest one is when they step on your foot, but when you call them on it, they act surprised that your brain received the signal within the same hour.
well i heard this one most “while your up there check the weather”
While I’ve heard “Is it still raining down there?!”
good one i got to remember that one
We’ll try to keep in mind that Short People are just the same as you or I.
Grrrr, that should be keep in mind. Forgot the second quotation mark in the anchor tag.
Nice song ref.
Lol Randy Newman hats midgets and/or dwarves apparently. I mean short people.
hates*
Looks to me like she’s straightening all at once. Which is more or less the standard way to stand up if your legs are long compared to the height of the chair you’re in.
By leaning forward, she is moving her centre of mass from over the chair to over her feet. Then she can stand up, straightening all the parts that were folded when she was sitting on the chair. This is how us short 6-foot tall guys stand up, it is just not as dramatic.
Arrgh! I did it again. I slipped into science teacher mode again!
I am still convinced that Michio Kaku some times comments here. The theoretical physics has gotten deep at times. So dong the teacher thing is fine.
Now I know who to avoid whenever I want to get back at Adamas. ***Evil Grin Here*** So I don’t get sent to the office.
*Appears on Bismarck’s shoulders*
Now why would such a big strapping lad such as yeself want to be getting back at little ol’ me? *disappears*
Heh just noticed that but yeah.. i’m 6’7 since i was 12, and yeah same way outta a couch . even when i’m laying down on it i’ll swing around and get up like that. hmm anywho i’d want to climb that mountain too XD
Least you wouldn’t have to climb to kiss her! =P
I’m 6’4″ and once (briefly, for a few weeks) drove a car (I forget the model) roughly the same size as a Geo Metro. I’d climb into and out of that clown car in an exaggerated version of that motion. It hand a manual transmission, and shifting involved something akin to high speed yoga due to the thoroughly inadequate leg room; a passenger once asked if I was having a seizure when I was accelerating up a short ramp onto the interstate.
I would have liked “Nucleus” or go all L.O.S.H. style and call her Sphere Lass or Saturn Girl (cause Saturn has so many moons).
Saturn would have been a good name, Or Solar. Or Orbs or orbits. Nope, Saturn I think is the best of them. Halo makes my thing something angelic.
Syd is NOT angelic.
Of course she is! Fallen angels are still technically “angelic”.
Yup, that’s how Avengelyne got an angel-hunter off of her back: by introducing them to a demon hotdog-seller :P
If you actually read the bible’s real descriptions of angels, instead of just looking at the pictures on greeting cards, angels were supposed to be freaky weird and scary monster things. Balls of eyeballs with wings sticking out all over the place, wheels spinning inside other wheels, all kinds of weird stuff.
If anything, Sydney’s not quite weird enough to qualify as an angel.
The bible gives varying descriptions of angels. I have yet to find a specific reason for why that is, but two possible (and non-contradictory, thus they could both be true) reasons is that there are different types of angels and/or they can change their appearance.
Ack… just noticed that should be “reasons are” rather than “reasons is…”. Unfortunately, I’m catching these errors one second after I hit the “Submit Comment” button.
Well, the reason is that the bible is full of inconsistencies due to poor editing.
The rings of eyes and wings thing is probably our 3D conditioned brain trying to comprehend a being occupying more than three spacial dimensions.
Moments after Maxima says she’s paying in protest, Sydney takes away her right to. In the same panel, no less.
i have a question
what Sydney mean when she says “because it’s there”?
and for those laughing at me, i’m french, give me a break i can’t understand everything
When the first guy to be officially listed as climbing Mt Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary I think, was asked why he did it he is supposed to have answered “because it is there”. Basically Sydney is calling Anvil a mountain. I don’t know about anyone else but I think that warrants an avalanche, or at least a landslide.
Actually, as pointed out on the first page of these comments, it was the guy who failed who said that (Sir Ed’s quote was closer to “we knocked the bastard off”)
Oh, and believe she might be more referring to the twin peaks of Mount Kenya :D
Is “Halo” expressing a desire to climb, then?
I do believe that Math expressed a similar interest earliar in the comic.In fact, I remember he even got a picture of himself with them in the background to commemorate his great achievement.
At the very least, it’s a jab (although a friendly one) at Kenya’s (the erstwhile Anvil) height.
Captain Kirk also said he was climbing a mountain “because its there” in Star Trek 5. Specifically El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
And he promptly fell off if I remember right.
Thank Spock for that, and ‘grav’ boots.
I’m English and I didn’t get it either. I put it down to her general weirdness.
I’m English, amongst other things. But I got it. My brain is tuned to the same weirdness wavelength.
It’s a reference to why some people will climb mount Everest. Because it’s there
I used to collect Gold Digger Religiously. Then my father, Comic Journalism Pioneer “Zeus”, died. We’d collected comicbooks together since I was 11. Every week we’d log them in. As his health failed I’d pick up the comics for him, once a week, like clockwork. When he died, I found I couldn’t read comics any more. They had been “our” thing. I’ve sold or given away almost all of the 70,000+ comics we once owned. But not Gold Digger. Somehow, I hope to be able to one day pick them up again. I don’t know how many of them I still have, I think I have the first 150 or so. I stopped buying them when I ran out of money and might have lost some in the move. I have the first Four Gold Bricks and the DVDs though. Still, I miss those days… for oh so many reasons. Sorry to be a downer.
It’s good that you and your dad shared a hobby like that, no matter how close two people are it never hurts to have more common ground. For what little it’s worth (especially over the internet) I’m sorry for your loss, that of both your father as well as the hobby you shared. I can understand how having things like comics around would just remind you that he’s gone, but I hope you’ll eventually be able to read them and having it bring up good memories instead.
Likewise. Your situation is very poignant.
i also am sorry for your loss
Eh, so I was close. I should have known the public relations lady would come up with the name, I just didn’t think she was in the room. *explodes*
Ari probably came in after the non-battle (or was at least waiting around the corner
for ‘plausible denilability’so she could deny knowing about it/condoning a little bit of peg-knocking-down {not that Peggy was involved, unless as part of the peanut gallery :P})No, no, she was there she made a bet with max before it started remember
Technically, anything in the mini-comics is not canon. So may have happened, or may not. AllowingDaveB to put any stuff in that makes him laugh, but which could be too silly to have actually happened in the canonical story.
Although, like you, I too tend to think of most of them as additional information that did not fit into the flow of the main story.
Nice job on the lower angle, Dave. I’m learning to draw right now and I bet perspectives like that are going to give me quite a bit of trouble.
So, I recall on the comments of the page where Sydney busted her self in the shin with Math’s help that you said you managed to work one of the suggestions into the “page after next” which would be this one. I was hoping it was my idea :P. Since I didn’t see my idea, and I enjoy it when I do see Dave using user comments on his pages, I went back and reread the comments to try and discern what was the idea that got a guest appearance. So far I can’t figure it out.
Yeah learning to draw people from odd perspectives is tough, and gets tougher the more detailed your art is. Actually the idea was on the previous page, where Max chastised Sydney for challenging someone to a fight right after proclaiming invincibility.
MUST HAVE SNU-SNU!
you shall be snu-snued by the most beautiful women,
then the large women,
then the petite women,
then the large women again.
If they all looked like Kenya there…..I’d gladly suffer the crushed pelvis.
With your Av it went into a whole new world of wierdness.
I know, I keep forgetting I used that as my gravatar, but I could not resist, that face is friggen hilarious.
Reading your comment about Gold Digger I thought i would mention another comic that i’ve been reading for the last couple of years Schlock Mercenary. If you haven’t checked out this web comic “https://www.schlockmercenary.com/” you should do your self a favour. He has been running this commic since June 12, 2000 posting a episode every day come rain or shine so there is a couple of pages to catch up on :)
Hmm I am guessing this isn’t how they become friends though.
Maybe, maybe no, but it’s certainly the start of a beautiful thing :D
If I was Anvil and Sydney suddenly decided she wanted to climb up me like a mountain I’d be okay with it. Maybe have Sydney on my shoulder like a crazy attack monkey.
I had an entire adventure in a D&D campaign where one of the other characters rode on my shoulder for the entire thing, even during one combat… I had four arms so it was okay, he shot the people who I missed
35,696th!
My way of saying “Congratulations on provoking 35,695 comments to the comic”. I like to be untraditional at celebrating milestones.
If you want proof, check out the previous comment (chronologically speaking that is) and note the number:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/852/comment-page-1#comment-35695
The back end is telling me we’re just now passing 30K comments, I guess the number on the permalink includes spam messages that didn’t make it past the filter. Still, nothing to sneeze at.
Ah-ah-ah-achoo!
Is it okay if I sneezed at it anyway?
ARGH! Palantir would’ve been so much better than Halo!
For her superhero name, I’m kind of surprised they didn’t suggest ‘Nitrogen’ or something based on Nitrogen – Seventh element on the periodic table.
Sydney considered that. Perhaps if somebody had suggested “Liquid Nitrogen” she may have thought that was cool enough?
Oh that was HILARIOUS
Sydney: “Must commence fangirl fondle…”
MCPO John-117: “That’s the new Halo? Forget this, I’m retiring. Hope they got a place for me at the local VFW…”
I Reigned over the Fraggles once…… Then I got older, and now have one as a pet.
juggler wasn’t bad, balla was ok,
Fraggles??? Great Scott you were an 80’s kid weren’t you.
Personally, I think “Anvil” really fits, considering her most interesting power.
No Death by Snusnu jokes?