Grrl Power #136 – List near miss
The List started out as a throwaway joke, but the more times it comes out, the more I think about what’s in it and what it takes to actually get in it. (Besides anything that falls under the rule of funny really.)
Of course, understanding “3 moves ahead” and employing it in a fight are two entirely different things. Just cause Sydney’s now familiar with the idea doesn’t actually make her some sort of indomitable fighter, though it probably doesn’t make her any less dangerous either. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s something you hear a lot in relation to anything that involves strategy. Chess, boardgames, RTSs. Basically it just means thinking ahead of your opponent’s reactions to your actions and always working to outmaneuver them. Deploying it in a fast moving fight is yet another skillset entirely, and it’s a fair bet that Math is thinking quite a bit further ahead than just 3 moves. In fact as soon as someone takes a swing at him he probably knows how he’s getting home after the fight and what he’s having for dinner.
I didn’t get a chance to do a new vote incentive this weekend, but I found an old picture of Max that I hadn’t posted to the DA page, so I figure I’d throw it up for now. It’s not bad, and you get to see a little of the evolution of her outfit in it.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
A more in depth idea. He knows how many moves she could think ahead if she pushed herself, so he tells her that many.
Sydney’s eventually gonna lose the eye-patch eventually, right?
The doctor said it can come off in a couple of hours.
So she will probably take it off in a couple of days. Accounting for the pirate factor.
Yeah it will come of quite soon actually, in comic time I mean. Probably another month for us. :P
The one thing I don’t get is why no one has thought to use the injury to test the mystery balls for healing factor…
Sydney’s indicated in previous strips that she has tested that…
considering the doctor had healing powers, willing to bet her eye is already better and she’s just keeping the patch on for fun, or doesn’t realize her eye is all fixed up.
It hasn’t even been a day after she got slapped in the eye by spicey. Give her a few
‘Day’? Try ‘not even a couple hours’
I totally want to hear about superpower side-effects at some point. Is Anvil dreamless? Is Morpheus allergic to salt? Is Max in need of eating ants to keep her alive? Is Harem teleporting in her sleep? Is heatwave… oh, right. Is the good doctor unable to make a phonecall in a phone booth because of giggling??
I want to know. (-;
Limitations or side effects on powers are an interesting thing, but not ALWAYS needed. If done right, they make the character more interesting and realistic, if done poorly, well, we end up with cardboard cutouts.
Limitations/side effects can be part of the power itself(Sydney’s limits already stated), hard to conceal(Maxima is gold all the time), self imposed(can’t think of any in universe examples so I’ll use SpiderMan), or a logical extrapolation on the power itself(think of the hours Math has to practice to keep in shape).
One of the classic self-imposed limits is “code against killing”. Heroes like Batman have a rule that they never kill.
There was a crazy comic called The Badger. The Badger was a martial arts master, who dressed up in a superhero costume and fought bad guys. The only thing was, in the world of The Badger, dressing up in a superhero costume was not normal or expected. The Badger was viewed as kind of crazy. (Which was fair, because he really was pretty crazy.) Anyway, The Badger had a slogan. Talking about himself in the third person, he would announce: “The Badger maims, but he doesn’t kill!” And yes, he really did maim the bad guys he fought.
There was a great take on this in Frank Miller’s famous The Dark Knight Returns. A police officer feels Batman has used excessive force and complains: “You just maimed that kid!” Batman’s reply: “He’s young. He’ll probably walk again.” Or another scene, where the Batmobile fires machine guns into a crowd of teenage punks, Batman’s voiceover narration says: “Rubber bullets, honest.”
I am actually against special weaknesses on human supers. Its more a darkstalkers/demons/monsters kind of thing, or alien lifeforms (an alien planet would have plenty of things that would likely be harmful to a none native species). *I have aliens species who have guarantened the Earth from contact because of the abundance of milk which is highly toxic to most alien life forms*
But human characters, its better to have psychological or just normal limited power range than any special weakness or side effect. the special weaknesses make them out to be like monsters (I have fire power, but pure salt burns my skin), and degenerative side effects make superpowers feel more like a disease than a blessing of power.
I can fly and shoot beams from my eyes, but it gives me terrible vision up close and irritable bowl syndrome.
weaknesses can be a nice plot device…but I fear that more often than not its are a cover for a lack of creativity on the part of the writer…present company excluded of course…it’s like bad guys before the first Die hard movie…simplistic…stupid…really easy for the hero to kill… If you’ve got a powerful superhero…it takes a lot of creativity to write a challenging villain. IF the hero is a no-kill hero, well then it’s easy to recycle your bad guys whenever you need them instead of thinking up new ones all the time. IF the hero’s bane is cottage cheese…then every frickin’ bad guy is going to have vinegar and cream…yawn..
So, are you gonna start selling “The List” little blue books? I’d imagine those selling like hotcakes!
I really probably should, but I don’t really know where to get them made.
Blank notebooks and lab books, including custom covers. They’re a call-for-quote place; there’s no simple online formula to sort out prices.
There are probably other, similar companies.
I will order 2 when you do it. One for me, and one for myself, and maybe a third for I.
All kidding aside, I would order 2.
Hmm, I’ll have to look into that, thanks.
I would buy the Orbs if you sold them. |D Course I could probably make them with a crystal growing kit….
A decent mold and some acrylic would work and you could put dyes and holograms/objects in them.
totally would buy some too ^_^
I think this is my favourite vote incentive so far. Sexy, yet strong. Me likey.
I have got to ask: Is your name a reference to The Lost Room?
Wrabbit season :)
Man, that has made me hungry! You just can’t buy good meat pies here. And I cannot afford the price of imported ones. So I only get to have pies as a treat on my once-yearly trips to England.
I guess I could make my own, but the only meat nearby would be mouse or stork. Neither of which really appeals. I suppose I could look around for something else conveniently pie-sized. Even if it is cute. With either a fluffy or feathered tail.
There is a place in NY that does meat pies in the same building as David Letterman’s show, he had them deliver some pies after they opened.
I hear mice taste good with Teriyaki. Of course i hate teriyaki, and if I can avoid it I prefer larger prey.
“Remo Williams” is one of my ‘Guilty Pleasures’! Right up there with ‘The Phantom Of The Paradise’ and Gerry Anderson’s ‘U.F.O.’ I kept waiting for them to give him a cameo appearance on ‘ST: Voyager’ but no such luck.
Did I see something I wasn’t supposed to? Who is the world is jigga watt?!
Just another member of ARC, she has been seen a few times (first time may have been when Sydney was being escorted to lunch by Peggy and did a survailance sweep in the hall)
Is Math’s character design based on Kanji from Persona 4?
It’s based on Joukyuu, from the manga AIKI.
We’re a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your web site offered us with helpful info to paintings on. You’ve done a formidable process and our whole community will be grateful to you.
So, never fear that the “three moves ahead” will make Sydney into some kind of super-super. After all, Math said that mastering that would only be the beginning of her learning.
Do you know how painful it is to even think one move ahead? In chess you have to factor the range of every possible move of the opponent and then assign a probability of it in accordance to their visualization of your next move. To do that, you have to understand how your opponent thinks. Do they try to end the game as fast as possible risking pawns and other pieces in the process, do they play defensive, with no openings, are they an opportunist taking valuable pieces as they come, do they try and whittle down your army one pawn at a time, etc and onward. Because of this I play in a panic due to time constraints and win purely by luck.
She makes the most villanous superhero ever in that last panel…
Math and Halo as OTP.
Now, if I had her powers, I’d use the comm orb to trick Math into thinking I’m somewhere where I’m not, then sweep his legs and bind him with the tentacle orb.
Mmm. We know she was physically* in the room, in sight of Math, at the time she decided to give the challenge. Such use of the comm orb would be rendered impractical, as he would still be able to see where her real body was.
For example, the simple ruse of moving the inner orb behind him and saying “BADGERS” would hardly make an experienced fighter forget that he could still see her in front of him. It might divert his attention somewhat, but a cinematic-style martial artist has no problem fighting multiple opponents. Especially inexperienced ones, such as Sydney.
Likewise the vast inferiority of her experience compared to his, would make attempting such a basic martial arts move against him incredibly easy to counter. Of course, if your martial arts skills are comparable to one of the best on Earth, then that might make a difference. Assuming you can anticipate every counter-move he would make, and know an effective retaliation to each. Which may not be easy if he has secret styles, as is very likely.
Binding with the tentacle orb, though, may well be one of the best options. Due to Math not having seen it in action. And he may find it difficult to adapt his training (given that most of his experience is likely to come from fighting humans, or near-humans such as Dabbler) meaning that wiggly tentacles would be an unexpectedly tough proposition.
* Because she hugged him.
He just said that to sound cool.
Seeing Math always weirds me out because he bears and uncanny resemblance to Kanji from Persona 4.
How is this comic so dang good? I’ve read this part like 3 times now and still just about every strip makes me laugh.
An expertly applied melange of skill, luck and happy accident?
And it’s still on the “bad webcomics wiki” *rolls eyes* stupid people can always find something to kvetch about
I once started to debunk the article in question. But there were so many weird takes in it, that I started to wonder if it was a parody website, rather than a serious review site!
Looking around at a few other articles, associated with it, and I saw that they were equally poorly thought through. Realising that the reviewer, in question, clearly was not up to scratch. So doubted that his opinion would be well regarded, and abandoned the reply.
Since then I have never heard it cited, one way, or another, on any comic, up until you mentioned it today! Lending credibility that it was not influential in the field.
Contrast that to the Top Web Comics, which crops up on many webcomic blogs. Even (although not review related) XKCD appears frequently in news articles and other mainstream (non-comic) websites.
Funnily, just yesterday I spotted an Order of the Stick quote, in the D&D wiki. So its reputation has expanded into the roleplaying community. For instance I recall it being mentioned by D&DO players.
Likewise we get many influential people cropping up as members of our community. Numerous authors and artists, of course. As well as too many diverse fields to even list. But, super-hero wise we had one of the leading people from City of Titans chatting here, as one prominent example. Not to mention the crossover with Wearing the Cape.
And, finally, given that the bad review heavily featured the misconception that this comic was sexist (in a gratuitous exploitation manner), it is actually well regarded in feminist circles. Such as Dave doing a series of guest strips on Gyno Star. Which is about as pro-feminist a comic as you can get!
I miss The List
I am trying to get on it. Upside down, at the back, of course.