Grrl Power #104 – Flail-Fu Fail
So. Many. Arms. And. Stripes.
I’ve known how Sydney’s first encounter with Dabbler was going to go down for some time now, but up until quite recently, she actually succeeded in clobbering her. I try not to second guess myself but really the majority of this comic is just me transcribing my daydreams. At some point I thought I should probably try doing some actual writing, and I figured it might start getting a little predictable if Sydney comedically noggin smashes everyone she meets. Besides, she still gets one in at the end.
The original page ended with Dabbler on the floor covered in chair splinters, Arianna looks at Maxima and says “I noticed you didn’t use your super speed to prevent any of that.” Maxima replies with a satisfied grin, “I did not.”
As for the guy in the trenchcoat, we need to get through the immediate fallout of Dabbler’s reveal first. Oh, and in case you only check in on the comic on Mondays (and who can blame you) I put up a bonus tangent comic on Thursday last week.
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Well, that was a short scene. Makes me wish I had four arms.
Sydney for the win!
Dabbler for the win! That move was martial-artist-master worthy! I wish I could do that with anybody who tries to whip my with a chair :-) (Not that this happens often to me but it’s surely a move one might want to be able to do, just in case…)
Unfortunately, it only really works with the two pairs of arms. One to do the catch-and-twirl with your ‘assailant’, and one to grab the chair and position it for them to sit in. Incidentally, well done to DaveB for the choreography – so many times, artists who give their creations multiple arms then can’t think of anything significant to do with them that isn’t just replicating what two arms could do.
Don’t congratulate me quite yet. Drawing someone with 4 arms fighting or cooking or working on an engine is easy (hah), it’s when they’re standing around with nothing to do that you run out of ideas quickly.
That’s the time to start stealing poses from Spinnerette.
Hah, I’m so behind on that comic.
OMG they have a working RSS feed. Time to catch up!
Earlier today, I linked to last weeks bonus comic in their comments.
Man that’s a small font they use in the comic. I tried going one point smaller on my lettering but it was juuuust a little too small I thought.
I should really do some Dabbler/Spinnerette fanart. I actually already did fanart for the comic but it was before I had put Grrl Power online. I did the first one, of Heather and her roommate in the shower. I won’t direct link cause it’s nearly NSFW, but here’s their gallery: https://www.spinnyverse.com/gallery/guest-art/
Didn’t realize that was yours. How did they ever manage to get the scissors? ;)
So she made one of the orbs bonk Dabbler over the head.
I saw that one coming.
More to the point, Dabbler didn’t and couldn’t see it coming – she can only see the orbs when they are in her line of sight, like anyone else in the room. She cannot sense them in any other way, and even Dabbler would have problems in tracking 7 orbs as well as keeping an eye on Sydney.
That bring an interesting little thought in mind. Sydney in a real super-level fight, big muscled character grabs her by the upper arms, has enough reach to keep her from kicking too.
Villain: So whatcha gonna do now, little girl?
Syd: Run a train on your ass! (Orbs start rotating at high speed, hitting side of his face in rapid, continuous fashion.)
Low probability of doing real harm to a brick-type (I don’t see a lot of force behind the impacts) but certainly enough to make just about anyone let go and try and cover up/defect them instead.
Kinda like in The Incredibles, when Dash started punching out the mook who hurt Violet. Not a lot of pain, but enough of a distraction.
But consider – a punch that delivers no more than [0.01-Damage] can still be lethal…
…if delivered 10,000 times per second!
:P
So, how fast can Sydney accelerate those Orbs?
and the factor that many comics tend to ignore for speedsters, speed=force, the same mass moving at a higher velocity will inflict more force than the same mass moving at a lower velocity, its why straw can stab into trees and telephone polls during a tornado, and heck its the very base principle behind how a bullet works, very small mass moving at a very high speed.
True, but the BULLET, and Straw don’t feel PAIN… YOU try hitting something going that fast when you are at a stand still (just reversing the speeds: you are standing still and the object is moving at the speedsters characters speed = the energy is the same) I’ll bet you can’t take it even ONE time, let alone the 10,000 times a second like you say… that is, unless they have a minor invulnerability power that will let them hit stuff when going that fast and NOT go SPLAT!… if they have that power as well, *THEN* I’ll believe it, but if they DON’T get invulnerability and are limited by their own skin / bones weakness, then they’re are gonna get really really hurt THEMSELVES when trying to punch somebody that fast and/or that many times…
Yeah, sorry for being unclear…
…I wasn’t trying to suggest 10,000 FIST-punches from poor (mortal) Sydney,
rather 10,000 hits from Sydney’s Orbs.
speedsters by there very nature need some kind of minor invulnerability otherwise there skin would start to be rubbed raw or shredded by wind resistance going at their speed.
but that was not my first thought. I was thinking of what happens to a bug that hits a speedster going flash fast. It becomes like a bullet which without invulnerability will go through the speedster.
Don’t forget that at that speed they are generating heat from all that friction. So that their are always coming in HOT to their target. So you may want to add thermic affects to the hit damage.
to add onto the increased friction is increased weight (the very thing that haunts rocket engineers trying to make faster machines with the fuel weight ratio)
To be blunt, and gloss over the complex physics involved, the faster something goes the heavier it becomes (yes weird), so as that something increases in speed, more and more force is required to speed up even faster; hence the fuel problems with super-sonice craft and anything that needs to escape Earth’s gravity (yeah you think you could just fly up and out like the Human Torch, but even if you could fly higher and higher you’d also find yourself suddenly being held back more and more as you try to get away, which seems to contradict the small loss of weight when high above sea level *okay glossing over gravity quantum mechanics as they are something we are taught to just accept no matter how counter-intuitive they are*
*cough: feather and bowling ball fall at same rate when friction isn’t involved, even though gravity is pulling with greater force on the more massive object….really think that over and how it wouldn’t work if you were pulling two things of different weights…
anywho, back to speed, so yes, the faster you go, the heavier you become, thus needing greater strength to go even faster, so along with the greater impact you’d make requiring either momentum killers or at least a high defense aura, you also have the fact you’d need to be super-strong to reach those speeds to begin with (although some have tried to claim speedsters work through some quantum displacement of mass around them to remove friction and lessen the effects of gravity and/or time permitting them to appear to move faster relative to others while to them its more like the world slows down (a modern version to avoid all that physics issues meaning the Flash should be Hulk strong, and the Hulk able to move at super-human speeds).
Just by the virtue of them being able to move at the speeds they do would by necessity mean they’re significantly tougher. If they’re going from 0 – blur in less than a second would mean they have to have incredibly dense bone, muscle, and skin tissue, along with accelerative healing abilities because of the wear and tear caused by the g-forces generated by turning, accelerating, slowing down, etc.
I had a player in a supers game who had close to the same power, except it was only one ball. She was grabbed by a large brick-type baddie with her arms pinned down and she couldn’t kick out. So she sent the orb around back and made it play( in her own words) “jail bride” with him. Also, it could expand and contract at her mental control.
::grin::
Thank you for that imagery.
I’m not sure if I want to grin or cringe at that image…especially since you’d want t clean the object later. x_X
Well, it went clean through, so she just had it spin for about three Gs and that cleaned it off.
Please enlighten me: What’s a “jail bride”? I tried google but the result don’t make sense to me.
Does “dropped the soap” make more sense to you? ;)
*thinking*… oh. Yes, it does. Now I’m with adamas on this idea.
No that is rape. A prison bride is someone outside of the prison marrying someone inside. You hear about serial killer groupies who do from time-to-time.
There is more than one version
https://www.fox.com/americandad/videos/2643118/prison-wife?sortby=date&bctag=season+8
But yeah, just rapeing someone in prison doesn’t make them your prison “wife”, that’s if you two make a commitment to just each other (which sometimes smaller guys in prison will do with some of the larger stronger guys to keep safe from the violance *including rape* from other prisoners.
So did Sydney dispel the illusion or did Dabbler drop it because it obviously isn’t working anymore?
I would guess that Dabbler dropped the illusion because Sydney had to let go of the orb to pick up the chair.
No I believe it was one of Sydney’s orbs that penetrated her illusion and also the masked intruder no one was aware of. Forget that detail? Just what the spy wanted you to do. He or she doesn’t want to leave impressions in people’s minds.
i think the orb turns illusions off
So, is Sydney’s shirt supposed to be missing the stripes along the middle when she’s being flipped? Or is that just me?
He was drawing it sort of chibli version.
My guess is he didn’t have as much time to draw this comic because he drew a thursday comic (YEAH!!), so had to ake the sceen shorter and less art intensive as he usualy dose.
Still a good story, just not as realistic as he usualy draws.
No I just forgot them. :P
I win!
If I saw Dabbler, in her real form my first thought would be alien, not demon. Well the horns would remind me of a demon, but a purple four armed woman, I’d be thinking Star Trek not demonology 101.
Well, you are both right. :)
And once again the winner is determined by a simple bonk.
Is the fang sussposed to be on the other side of the mouth?
Ah changing portrate. Is there a benchmark picture around here?
It’s an anime fang; https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CuteLittleFangs
They can be on either side, at any time.
THERE’S the ‘bonkerite’ I mentioned a few weeks ago!
Bonked her right on the head!
Is that one of the unknown orbs that pisses her off?
Nope. Flight orb
Shield orb, actually. Flight orb is darker blue.
I still maintain that “bonkercite” refers to Sydney’s constant state of being completely and utterly bonkers. Though I guess this comic does bring new evidence to your side of the argument. Then again, Sydney’s reaction with ‘Hur Hur. Lookit me, I’m gold and funny.” is more of a response to a wise-crack (such as implying that someone is completely bonkers), whereas if Maxima was merely saying that Sydney could use her orbs to bonk someone on the head Sydney’s sarcasm would be rather unwaranted.
Is Dabbler’s blue eye closed in panels 3-4, or just missing? ‘Cause it looks like it’s missing.
My guess is she has one eye closed so it wouldn’t get hit by Sydneys flailing arms.
I think it’s more a “I’m pleased with myself” with here *-Fu maneuver and execuation of said maneuver.
Succubi have a sutra?
My guess is the Kama Sutra is grade school material for them.
It’s probably as thick as the complete Encyclopedia Britannica as well.
For a succubus, the Kama Sutra is as advanced as The Cat In The Hat.
Our Kama Sutra would be, however the Succubi have their own version that comes as a 36 volume set.
And that’s not including the appendix, citations and related works. ;)
a veritable spread…
Actually they just released the 135th Edition, which includes positions suitable for use with sentient invertebrate species.
About time!
Oh, The Mental Scarring! >_<
You should check out the amorphic slime based sapient beings edition. You wont be sure if you are turned on or want to vomit.
You have that one!?
Now you’re making me jealous. My edition only covers Earth based lifeforms.
.
.
.
OTOH for this version they went all-out on the illustrations – we’re talking full color, 3D holograms!
They focus-grouped the “pheremone” edition…Turns out Amorphus protoplasmic pheromones made most humanoid species turn a most unflattering shade and caused massive projectile vomiting.
With full animation and made of fluid and stain proof materials for those into self pleasure or queasy stomachs.
We’ll Have to tell Choo Choo Bear to watch his back then. =P
Okay, this entire section right here? Funny as hell! Deepest and sincerest thanks to everyone involved for making my entire day that much better!
You’re welcome.
Glad to be of service,
just don’t be tempted to google slime people Kama Sutra anytime soon LoL.
We try to get almost as many laughs as the comic. (Can’t make it funnier, I’m not for attempting the impossible.) ;)
The comments are like the icing on a cupcake, or the salt on a pretzel.
Actually that’s a bad example, bald pretzels are awful.
How about the spicy mustard on a pretzel?
And this is one of those big soft pretzels still warm from the oven! :D
Ohhh I LOVE those with garlic and Parmesan cheese.
I blame you Comichero, for the mental scaring and nightmares I am about to have. It is all because you started this. And you DaveB. You now have to have those in Dabblers room when you show it in a few years. :)
BTW adamas, got your plushy!!!
NEEEEEWWWWWWW MAH PLUSHIE!!!! *Chases after Bismarck wielding a Sydney plushie* Gimme back mah plushie!!!
Ha! Awesome, just what I would’ve expected from Sydney. And loved the surprise “bonk” at the end. XD
ALSO! Notice that Syd’s bangs *ARE* affected by gravity here, as opposed to comics #87 and #88, in which they are not. Thus proving conclusively that the “anti-gravity bangs” are the result of the flight orb, and not some freaky property inherent in Sydney’s hair.
Also note how many studs Dabbler has in her tongue, that girl must love to give head. [natch]
It makes her tongue look like a sea-slug, which makes me question if they are studs or part of her tongue or both in some freaky cyber prehensile tongue that can be used for sex and to hack computers with.
Natural french ticklers…[Spock] Fascinating[/Spock]
My first thought was that I know of a couple of diseases which cause lesions like these. At least one is sexually transmitted. Being STD-positive would definitely be a bad idea for a succubus. Then I started thinking of tongue studs, but how do you get to the ones in the back? Or are those just little saliva balls? I guess we will find out soon. In the meantime, Sydney, do not let Dabbler kiss you.
We had evidence of that when her stomach was growling in the waiting room.
Ah – that may explain something – I was wondering why Sydney was so easily disoriented by just turning her around while she did nearly exactly the same movement on her own behalf.
Aww. Dabbler was super cute in this one although, boy, those are a lot of tounge stubs in panel 9. She’d better hope they never fight Magneto.
Also was that Martial Arts reflexes, or super speed? The multiple panels gives the impression of Maxima/Flash type super speed, but maybe not.
Also panel 9 raises the question of how much force those orbs can impact with when she directs them. If it’s enough she hardly needs another power. :)
Well she has a long tongue. :) Dabber doesn’t have super speed, though she probably has a haste spell somewhere in her arsenal. She is a competent martial artist… actually she’s a really good martial artist, but she’s not the best or even second best on the team.
Obviously Math is the top martial artist, but even he would have to admit that having four arms does present quite an advantage!
Since we’re hard-wired to fight something with a similar configuration., yeah is her tail could be used that’d be an advantage, much less an extra pair of attacking limbs.
Although, having more appendages means that there’s that much more that an attaker (or from an evolutionary stand point, a pedator) can grab you by.
I’m reminded of the Honor Harrington series. How most of the native wildlife on Sphinx that’s mentioned has 6 limbs (Treecats,Hexapuma, and Sphixian Chipmunks all have 6 legs)
Wait, how exactly did Sydney get the chair? Based on how she is positioned, and the lines showing the movement of the chair itself, it looks as if the chair was magically/telekinetically pulled to Sydney behind her, so that Sydney can than pick up the chair and swing it at Dabbler from right to left. (That is from Sydney’s right to left.) If the first panel is supposed to show Sydney after she had already swung the chair at Dabbler (from left to right,) then lines showing the chairs motion should be in front of Sydney and her hair should be moving in a different direction. At least, that’s what I think the first panel is showing.
I’m also assuming the cloaked guy is someone that is supposed to be there, considering Dabbler isn’t going INTRUDER ALERT at the moment.
It was the chair she was sitting on during the “interrogation”. With her ADHD reflexes she just picked it up mighty fast.
i think the general consensus is that he’s still invisible to everyone, including Dabbler, therefore, why would she be yelling intruder? even Dave says “As for the guy in the trenchcoat, we need to get through the immediate fallout of Dabbler’s reveal first.”
Four arms, bat ears, horns, fangs, AND a forked tongue? Dabler has it all! (as far as looking like a demon goes, at least…)
Tight butt, shapely bust, trim legs, perfect skin. Dabbler has everything she needs to be a model! ;)
Quick Demonology 101 lesson…
Daemon (Demon) crossbreeds (with humans/humanoid species) generally maintain the primary appearance of the secondary species. Few Daemonic attributes cross over, the most common of which is a tail, and possibly horns. There are, however, noticeable differences in the new halfbreed’s appearance. In Human/Daemon crossbreeds (known as Nephilim) the appearance or loss of a digit on each hand/foot is commonplace, as is being approximately 1 foot taller than average, and having a second row of teeth (like a shark).
As Dabbler actually has NO human in her genetic makeup the extra set of arms (rare in Daemons, especially for succubi/incubi) is likely a feature from her 1/6 unknown heritage, as well as her cloved (hooved) feet (which are only found on a small handful of Daemons like the Baphomet). The coloring/fur/and “bat-tennae” could also be from the 1/6 unknown, but also fit in-line with many forms of doppelgangers. As her primary heritage is Doppelganger, the loss of digits and height would likely be the signs of her Daemonic heritage (as well as her proclivitous actions).
Though I really must wonder just which type of Doppelganger Dave is basing that side of Dabbler off of, obviously a hereditary (a species in which there is a birth from a parent rather than a focusing of energies) form with illusion capabilities… but it would be interesting to see which of the doppelganger myths/legends is the one chosen to explain the existence and source of that species’ powers…
The doppleganger she’s based off of is from my own not-quite-D&D-but-yeah-basically-D&D realm… and a single doodle I did once. She’ll get into her heritage in some detail eventually I’m sure.
What?
Is this from D&D or something because its not mythology or folklore, where demonic trait are always dominant, and in many cases to the point that the human acts more like a host organism than a proper parent. In fact many demons intentionally reproduce with humans as they can’t bare their own offspring, in which case the child may start out human like but matures to have the special powers and often apperance of the parent.
this is how many Sorcerers, villains, heroes, and witches come to be in many of the world’s folklores. Some even have a special name for the human like offspring such as Mara before they mature and fully take on the demon parent’s form and powers *fully becoming a demon*.
I think you are confusing mythology with legends… legends tend to be more fantastic and thus have the more dramatic flair, whereas mythology is based more realistically. Take the Roman/Greek mythos for example… all the half-mortal children of the gods fully appeared human except for whatever powers they had, even the children of Hades. The ‘monsters’ created by these gods generally weren’t their children, or were of non-human heritage (this also follows true for Norse Mythology). Legends however are different, i.e. the legend of Grendel, while it fits within a mythos, has the key components of a fantastic, dramatic aire to the story.
Also, remember that folklore was originally passed orally (by word of mouth) when the term ‘demon’ could easily be interchanged with ‘alien’, ‘fairy’ or ‘monster’, and often became blown way out of proportion after multiple tellings and interpretations. In the rare cases a crossbreed child does have (even later in life) dominant Daemonic traits, you will often find that the parent Daemon dies off shortly after the child’s birth and the full ‘essence’ of the parent Daemon is transferred to said child.
But as to where this information comes from is actual books on Daemonology written by the Catholic church (mostly on how to properly identify and exorcise such entities), from various holy books, including both the Bible and the Qu’ran, and other reputable sources I used in research for my own writings. I could give more specific references… but this isn’t the place for that. Most people immediately jump to the more fantastic aspect of Demons, and expect that fantastic traits carry on, thus we have our modern movie versions, but this isn’t the case, as can be demonstrated by any couple where both parents are picturesque health and beauty, yet their children are anything but. I commend Dave on recognizing this (even if it was on a subconscious level) for his ‘real world superheroes’ side of the comic.
and now i feel like I’m doing a bit of rambling and lawyering (great… I’m Omnigal from the first few pages…) so I’ll leave it here =^.^=
Not forgetting hopefully that books of demonology written by the church are “reputable’ only in the sense that a collection of myths were committed to paper, they are still dealing with an entirely fictional subject. By that measure, the Monster Manual is every bit as reputable a source.
Heh, I need to make sure my own skepticism doesn’t get in the way of creating an interesting fiction. It will be at least hopefully internally consistent.
I am in the camp that does not consider the church written demonology texts reputtable sources, but rather works of fiction dreamed up by friars, monks, and priests, based on dreams during a time period in which fiction was looked down upon as was creative thought so had to be passed off as real so they could write it
In fact this is why so many old tales it is hard to find an author as it was popular to claim a story was told to you by a traveler, or passed down, or was a vision *not a good idea to claim this last one unless a member of the church*.
In fact so many of these bestiaries and grimoires came into existence over time that by the Victorian era it was popular for none church members to create their own fake grimoires; which themselves could become popular and the peasent folk forget which was “legit” and which a work of fancy.
As few if none if the demonology texts were based on actual biblical teachings, and many of which were simply bastardizations of European folklore and mythology (more than a few so called demons were in fact pagan gods, often fertility dieites which the church looked down the most upon).
However I do agree that the term demon, faerie, diety, spirit, and so forth are often interchangible depending on the culture (hell at one point the church tried to claim the Greek gods were just different faces of the devil).
I should also mention that bringing up that the children of Greek gods looked human isn’t a major point seeing as the Greek gods also looked human, the major difference being internal with their “maleable forms” and blood that was poison to humans *rarely brought up aspect but mentioned by Homer*. Although him as a source faces the same charges as the church’s demonology books as potentially altered from a source to fit his own imagination and storytelling.
-heck all mythology is altered from its source, check out pre-hellinistic Greece, and pre-dynastic Egypt, we see clear signs that the growing religion adopting aspects and characters from older tribal faiths and blending them together to create a solid narrative and bring the communities together under the guise of “this is the true tale”. Look into it, and you find that Posieden pre-dates Zeus as a majore diety, Zeus supposedly introduced from a northern or eastern tribe along with Demeter and Hestia. The main pantheon in fact could be described as the joining of regions with the Zeus/sky worship based group being dominant.
Actually I am using ‘reputable’ here as the source is known for honesty, goodwill and that of any recognized group they are deemed highly likely to have correct knowledge on the subject… NOT that the material is purely factual. Unlike other sources which have made other claims with the intent to make a profit or largely deceive/instill fear in people as a whole. (which granted, in some cases, any holy body can be deemed responsible of the latter).
Hehe, and don’t forget your own skepticism Dave! It is a great tool in any form of writing to help keep things controlled. After all people would’ve been skeptical about the comic’s fairness to ‘supers’ if everyone Sydney met kept getting smacked around by her ‘flail-fu’ with her not using her powers.
Just remember, in some versions, Merlin was the child of an Incubus and a human.
i like the thwarted fury event here.and how Syd launches her sneak attack betweeen panels 5 and 6 (7 orbs in 5 vs 6 in 6) once she realizes the demon hasn’t lost yet. since i’m bad at colors was that one of the unknown orbs that bonked Dabbler? unless it fell from the ceiling to get some decent speed going to hurt her like that, maybe it has some kind of demon harming power to be able to affect Dabbler that much?
The last orb is just off-panel in panel 6. If you look carefully, there is a small bit of it on the right margin. Plus, her shield orb is visible in panel 6.
I’d say with Sydney’s level of control, she can smack the orbs down really hard as well. Imagine her having to expand the shop rooms, she wouldn’t need a demolisher. Just write something on the wall that surpasses “list” status and she’ll send all the orbs at it to demolish it.
If someone drops a stone from 1cm above your head, it still hurts like hell.
I’m asuming the orbs are roughly like big glass marbles, so you wouldn’t need alot of force to hurt with it (specially if it’s unexpected)
Remember how Syd yanked the poster tube out of Max’s hands so fast she didn’t have time to react?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/373
I’m guessing Syd can get the orbs up to whatever is needed in speed in a very short distance.
It took me a few reads to get the sequence of events after Sydney attacked Dabbler, and then again to get the right speed in my mind. Makes it all the funnier to me when I can see it going in “real-time” in my mind though.
And the last panel made me laugh really hard! Poor Dabbler, Sydney is a like rogue who hates her sneak attacks failing, so she does another one and hits square on.
It looked like it took maby a second and a half for her to do that move. Dabbler is very strong and has some teriffic hand eye cordination.
Don’t you mean “Hand,hand,hand,hand-eye”
Face-palm, Face-palm, Face-palm, “Higgs Slap!”
Who the Tartarus is Higgs?
And where the heck is his Boson?
Did you mean Gibbs from NCIS?
And now it is my turn to use DaveB favorite saying.
SON OF A ……
Yes i do. It is Gibbs I speak of.
Give me a little slack, I work a 13 hour shift every night (without overtime pay) so I am a little off.
Hmm I always pictured myself as Ducky instead of DiNozzo .
I’b be an annoying mix of Abby and Tim.
I like Abby <3. Tim is in someways her Straight man, and in some ways a 63'd Abby.
The only thing that would even slightly annoy me about Abby is she’s a Vegetarian. Otherwise I adore her and can sympathize with her caffeine addiction.
Vegetarians I can deal with, as long as they aren’t the “Preachy” type. You want to eat a certain way, more power to ya, just don’t start in on how I eat.
Yes I agree wholeheartedly but Abby might get preachy. Still might a fun debate. Like why it would be OK to rip the limbs off one living thing but not another. How it’s been proved plants communicate with each other etc etc, etc.
Joining the chorus of nitpickers… Dabbler’s forehead tattoo/stripe is missing on panel 2
ha ha I bet you regret your super detailed character design now…
But hey cool comic you’ve got here. :)
D’oh! Yeah with the exception of the previous pages she’s appeared on, I’ve only really only drawn Dabbler in pinups. This was the first page that had her in almost every panel and it took a lot longer to draw that I thought it would. Dabbler’s not one to traipse around in a long sleeve shirt or anything but yikes. I understand why Fred Perry puts Cheetah (who, even if you haven’t read Gold Digger, I’m sure you can imagine is covered in spots) in long sleeves and pants on occasion.
Yeah I have to wonder if that’s part of the reason Zebra girl has been a human for the last couple of years too… :)
I’d put money on it.
I keep forgetting about that comic. I get 50 pages through the archive then leave off somewhere. I need to figure out where I left off and get back to it.
The chapter dropdown works well… reading the whole archives from the start isn’t that big of a chore though, comics that update once a week don’t move that fast *cough* ;)
Sounds like your hitting that same problem as Amber over at DMFA. She has characters with spots and zebra stripes who also have wings.
Yeah, I have seen a few pinup images online of some pretty cool looking characters, but if you think, now if they wanted to do a comic and had to shrink down for panels, draw in motion, draw in constant repetition this character could they do it?
That was one of the most epic combat moves I’ve ever seen! xD
another one is the move jayne cobb does in the serenity movie,,,
I don’t think that “i’ll be in my bunk” counts as a “combat” move…
Rofl
HAHA that is so sid yeah we all thougth of cool thing she could do but nope good old sid just goes for the chair thogth in true sid facsion she gets the last one in to hehehe sorry dabbler . One more thing i so like real dabbler then the blondle so boring you seen one blond with big bobbs you/ve seen them all good wok yet again dave.
O one more thing dave if you have problems with dabblers strip easy way to fix GIVE HER MORE CLOTHES EHHEHE
Personally I prefer less clothes :D and being a succubus (partly) she probably does too. What she is wearing is a compromise between what she like to wear and what they want her to wear.
haha true
you have to take style into account to, not just how little clothes there are. Its a marketing thing that video game developers and comic book character designers are big on and have gotten pretty good at, if you can recognize a character by their clothes alone, even if those clothes are barely count as skimpy straps and look like body paint.
This factor also plays into actual clothes designers (who are more limited by reality than games and comics which get to ignore the fact that the clothes need to come on and off and move/breathe), leaving something to the imagination with that little flare can make someone more tantilizing and memorable than if they just walked around naked.
If Harem has two of her hold the clothes, can she teleport into really tight jeans/clothing?
:)
Hah! Teleportation, the fastest method of undressing known to man!
I don’t know how true it is or not, but i heard a while ago, that most of the really outlandish outfits seen at fashion shows, with outfits that fit the description of what you’re talking about here, are actually SEWN ON and CAN’T be taken off or even put on normally, they have to cut them off of the model at the end of her run on the catwalk. so they can get away with SOME things, but not all of them that a comic gets away with in costuming, for sure.
I understand that there was this same problem with costumes in the 1st season of the 1st series of Star Trek – if an actor had to answer the “Call of Nature”, he had to get a costumer to get him out of his StarFleet uniform, because they lacked zippers! One of the actors’ non-negotiable conditions of renewal was that they insisted on proper zippers in their costumes.
They had Velcro back then and it looks better than zippers so why not use them? Why not today?
They were stealing salt and pepper shakers from the lunch room to use as tricorder sensors IIRC. They had a budget that made shoestrings like like Bill Gates.
Also while Velcro was available it was not widely used as manufacturers didn’t see it as practical. The basic reason our technology often advances a lot slower than it could.
Dabbler is winking lolcat cute when NOT using her powers! A pity the kitty has pierced her tongue a little much…
I can has Dabbler? :)
Obviously Sydney has that type of personality that everyone likes. Well, mostly everyone. But then, most of the characters we’ve met so far seem to have a very dysfunctional relationship, so she should fit right in. Reminds me of where I work. Everyone has known everyone for a very long time (except me, I was just recently hired), and it’s very similar to the relationships between the characters in Grrl Power, or so it seems. I love working for them.
That move is like poesy! :D
She hasn’t had the Orbs long enough to use them instinctively yet. Once she starts using them more and incorporates them into her defense/attack array Dabbler wont get off so easy. Consider how fast the chair (which probably weighs 1/4 of her body mass) became a blunt instrument moving at high speed toward the perceived threat. Sydney is gonna KICK ASS!
At some point I thought I should probably try doing some actual writing,
Normally people start with a script or a storyboard …
Doing it as you go along is good enough for the funnies section in newspapers.
If you want to succeed Garfield then go right ahead.
Wow. That’s got to be the most hostile thing I’ve ever seen posted on this board. Sure you’re comfortable up there on the high horse?
And please don’t try and pretend there is one correct way to write.
There is one correct way to write.
With WORDS!
Ahh but what do you make words with? LETTERS!!
Unless you use pictograms or characters for words. Which a large part of the world does.
Was going by English/most modern European languages.
I wasn’t hostile at all.
Critique is actually beneficial to every Artist.
I think also that you’ve taken the quote out of context. These are transcriptions of daydreams, which implies an extensive degree of oral and/or mental composition rather than simply making it up as he goes along.
If you want to argue that all composition must be textual, then I’d say take a look at the vast body of literature for which the reduction to writing represents the last point of an extended period of narrative, literary genesis, rather than the early production of something with an authorial and definitive status, (see for example the vast majority of the Icelandic Sagas, perhaps Beowulf, some of the poetry by Coleridge or any of countless other examples).
Rather than an unplanned story, what Dave seems to have is multiple tellings, each vying to become the version that gets given a concrete form. It doesn’t devalue the other versions in any way, however, regardless of how transient each might be. I would imagine that Dave’s friends and familly have been treated to many alternate versions, and their memories form an additional and personal repository that stand as evidence for the extensive process of composition that underlies these marvellous tales.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter being declaimed from my own high horse.
What DaveB said he did is what many writers do,
He said he had another idea in mind but changed it last minute for what he felt was a better outcome.
I can say personally I write outlines and then write down rough events way in advance, however while writing new ideas come to mind, a sentence changes, a conversation shifts, new ideas are born, events play out while writing differently than originally planned if only because the story writes its self that way spurt of the moment (among other various reasons to make changes such as new ideas and further planning requiring changes for continuity and shifting how you want a character to be seen by the audience)
Sometimes, you write the story, sometimes the story drags you along and all you can do is play the archivist. Just like sometimes a character will do what you want, and sometimes they grab ya goolies, give them a twist and go a completely different direction.
and we must never forget when to reign them in,
I was doing a fanfic where Rhulan meets the Justice League, it was supposed to be the typical bit when “heroes” and other supers first meet, fight and then realize it was all a misunderstanding; it was going that way. At the end she left to return at a later date…which had her fight Young Justice, and then she took the reigns and somehow it all went south; there was another story after “DC Cataclysm” brewing; but as I was planning it I stopped and thought, “hold on, for one adding in the Dimension Police would make the story too close to canon * a big no no for fanfiction, especially as I plan to use Rhulan in my canon novels and aspects of the fanfiction are based on her history* and I had it written down that Spectre was going to summon alternate universe Super-mans who had no qualms about killing to face Rhulan (Spectre went more nuts than Super-man about her as she exists from a multi-verse outside his knowledge and this contradiction of his universal view drove him insane) and Rhulan would stop playing nice and fight with intent to kill single handedly killing several of these Super-mans…
for one this makes her look too villain like, and second I realized…didn’t I intend for this to be friendly eventually with Rhulan flirting/sexing up Wonder-woman and Super-girl? What the hell happened? Apparently I have a subconcious hatred for Super-man LoL.
(to be fair he is like the ultimate Mary Sue character…no matter how many times anyone tries to change his character or do one of those people turn on super-man plots, it will always come back to the status quo of everyone loves super-man, sometimes impossibly quick like at the end of “Super-man Doomsday”. Smallville was actually making him like a real character but the last season threw away all that plot development to adhere to the original premise that he becomes the super-man of the comics).
anywho, yeah,
between planned out and the story takeing its own reigns, a fine balance must be maintained.
I have experienced this many times when writing. I mostly write freely with a mental plan on how it should go but as I write it changes (sometimes dramatically) almost as if the story was just using me to write itself.
i’m not saying that I don’t like his work. If I didn’t I wouldn’t bother criticizing him.
But if he keeps going like this then his story will never get anywhere and he’ll have wasted all his fun ideas in the introduction.
He’s been on it for two years and a 100 pages and he’s still stuck at introducing the main character, funny as that may be. If I were to write a synopsis of Grrl Power then it would be something like:
“In a world similiar to ours but where meta-humans start emerging into public awareness, a young, nerdy, scatterbrained girl stumbles upon a mysterious artifact granting her super powers. During a publicity stunt for a meta-human military division she gets recruited by an all-girl super team.”
There, two sentences, everything said, nothing left out. Summarizing Garfield this way isn’t much shorter.
given how much character development you left out of that description, I could summarize the history of the X-men in not much longer, with most of the big points being from just this last decade, thanks to most of the X-men’s history being a retelling of “Magneto bad…Magneto good, repeat”, “Sentinels, time travel”, and “The Phoenix is back”. Throw in some Shi’ar alien stuff every so often and your good to go with the most hypocrital concept in Marvel history (the X-men often feel like they don’t belong in the same universe as the other heroes given the base premise of discrimination and mutant registration and all that, given other supers rarely if ever got the same treatment). But I digress.
Spider-man would be even shorter, throw in the major plot points (Gwen Stacy, Symbiotes, Mary Jane, Mephisto erasing their marriage) on top of the whole bitten by a radioactive spider and you have his life history in as much as what matters in the long run. (okay yeah, joined the FF and Avengers…why?)
But given those both have decades behind them, how short their summaries can be is kind of sad. Looking at page numbers DaveB isn’t going much slower than a once every two month 20 page comic.
I think this introduction is fine the way it is; although I will make one critique,
Be careful Dave of falling into the too much detail, every moment written out/drawn, trap. I have had chapters or paragraphs I went back and deleted much of because I realized I was detailing every last second of a converstation and actions that should be between scenes (sometimes good to do that, sometimes a very bad idea, it leaves the audience interpriting what happened between moments or not caring depending on how you do it; like some movies and shows do if they kept following every second of the day then the scenes we do see in the half hour expanded out like that might at time feel off.
Imagine if say for instance, American Dad (20 minute run time, show often covers a whole day if not more of time) decided to do a real time special series of episodes covering a full 24 hours; given what we do see on the show what would it feel like, how awkward would it be to try to imagine how their conversations and actions continue between the scenes we do see.
Lord of the Rings: BRB, walking in to Mordor LULZ.
Aroddo does have a point, the ‘story’ is teetering along at a snail’s pace. If this was a comic book in 24 page chunks, I would have done a terrible job selling people with the overall story, or dropping in that hook that foreshadows a bad guy or anything like that by the end of the first issue. That being said, it was never my intent to tell a tightly wound story of intrigue and betrayal, etc. The comic is day in the life stuff with emphasis on the characters and humor. Not to say that there won’t be action and other stuff, but instead of setting up the hooks in the first 24 pages, I’m giving myself a bit longer, as the first book will likely be “Empowered” sized.
that’s your hook, a slice of life super-hero tale that starts at the beginning of her career.
I know I get down into the weeds a lot with dialog exchanges, but I do edit myself from time to time. I’ve actually cut out a ton of dialog from the next few pages cause I realized if I didn’t it would be like 3 or 4 pages before we got back to Mr. Trenchcoat, which is ridiculous. As it is I’m having trouble cramming him/her on to the next page. :P Honestly I may have to cut the next two pages into 3 pages, cause I’m trying not to go back to 12+ panel pages. I think I have the next page laid out but honestly I’m not happy with it.
I have to admit, waiting for Monday is tough, but it is worth it every time because I get such a laugh out of it. And I think this is the comic of which I re-read the archives more than any other webcomic.
My take on it is this: Dave draws a load of detail in every page, comes up with a fun story on every page, and also has a life beside the webcomic. Plus, he is not the only one who updates once a week and still draws loyal readers (and a lot of votes, too).
One successful SiFi author would submit an outline, get the contract then write what he wanted. That was Keith Laumer.
I read of another who found the best means to minimize waste if time for proposed novels is to submit an outline and the first two chapters. That was Piers Anthony.
I think it’s safe to say DaveB was just making a joke at his own expense, while in actuality he probably puts more thought into this than he lets on. Though to be honest, I hope he hasn’t been, because if this is what he can do when he’s just going off of what’s in his head, I can’t wait to see how awesome this gets when he starts planning this out. What’s happened so far sure as hell shouldn’t be compared to Garfield.
6 tongue piercings oO
I like how, after Sydney’s been flipped and seated, her ID lanyard has spun around so it looks like she’s got a choker of her own. Assuming she’ll be joining the team, it’s a nice bit of foreshadowing.
as we saw oh so long ago, she’s part of the team, They just haven’t gotten to that point yet.
I barely comment here, but: Dabbler is my new favorite.
Flat-chested or not, I am highly surprised that Dabbler did not take this opportunity to get in an introductory grope.
With her being called in to scan unknown objects (Which managed to thwart her to the point of her using a toothpick to penetrate a tank) Perhaps she decided to see how Syd reacted first. The grope will be at lunch.
Sydney +1
Why do I see Sydney and Dabbler as best friends in the future?
Sydney needs to learn to keep her eyes open when she charges an opponent! :)
Yeah, that’ll be her first combat lesson. :)
If she had her eyes open when she swung the chair, Dabbler’s illusion would have been restored — which might have made Sydney abort her attack to say “What the…”
Keeping her eyes closed might have seemed logical to her – she saw through Dabbler’s illusion and then probably realized her attraction was based on a spell. By closing her eyes, she may have been hoping to avoid the spell since she let go of her Clarisense orb to grab the chair. Of course, this doesn’t explain why she still see’s Dabbler as a succubus now that she’s let go of the orb.
Maybe it doesn’t just let her see through illusions when she’s holding it. Maybe she’s rendered “immune” to any illusion she’s already seen through. A new casting may work on her.
Of course, it’s also possible that Dabbler dropped the illusion while concentrating on the Sydney twirl. Given that Max isn’t dressing her down for being visible in a low-security area I doubt it, but it’s a thought.
Closing your eyes in a combat situation is a common instinct for untrained fighters. This helps protect your eyes from a counter attack that you would have no effective way to counter.
Unfortunately there wasn’t room for anyone to lay in to Dabbler on this page, it will get brought up shortly though.
Oh – are we gonna get super-speed Maxima closing all the curtains? I’m trying to figure out how Sydney will point out fedora-guy. I see it as being casual. Maybe she’ll saunter over to him while Dabbler is getting dressed down, then as an aside go “Your first time seeing her too, huh?” which leads to Sydney Shennanigans.
The orbs are of a hard enough substance to hurt even a partially extradimensional being. Or maybe I’m thinking Dabbler is tougher than a human being.
Hm. No reaction yet to the masked unknown guy the room. Maybe he’s not a threat or part of Archon in some capacity.
DaveB, looking up Dabbler, I noticed that she has 2 pairs of breasts in her profile art, but has only 1 pair in the comic. Change of character design?
Yeah I made an update to her appearance just before she appeared in this comic. I may call that out in a flashback or something.
*crosses fingers*
Inflatable venom sacks, or two small extra lungs to adapt alien atmospheres for breathing (just to explain Wereworld…that other guy from Earth is a cyborg with major organs altered for alien world combat)
It looks like dabbler has 6 tongue rings in that last panel?
Tongue studs, yeah. She has a long tongue.
Message to Dave:
Always.
Worth.
The.
Wait.
+1
+1 again!
With a 10% crit buff.
and a x20 awsomness multiplier
+20% cooler
(someone was going to make this joke in this line of comments, so I did it first)
*insert maniacle laughter*
You were just giving 110%! XD
Ya know….At first glance i automatically thought of Goro from the Mortal Kombat series after seeing Dabblers 4 arms initially. There was a female like Goro as well i believe her name was Shiva? Either way…two more 4 armed beings…
The Nali species from the Unreal game series (not the tournament ones) also have 4 arms.
I still play that online. I love the original. there are still servers out there.
Her look when she is flipping sydney feels like this:
Panel 2: Lets see if I can get this.
Panel 3: Alley-oop
Panel 4: Set Everything up and…
Panel 5: Stick the landing. Now I can show Math I got that Throw down.
I had forgotten that Sydney could move her orbs independently. Unless Dabbler gets out of range she’s gonna get clonked repeatedly by Sydney isn’t she?
Forgot something. Dave did you notice that the Archive page number for this comic is Stitch’s Experiment number in the HTML name? Its archives/626
Well, this comic’s left me in Stitches enough times. =)
And Sydney does seem like the type to steal everyone’s left shoe.
… And Sydney, having JUST realized her potential for cheating at skee-ball, begins her practice on targets of opportunity.
DaveB, thank you for making my Mondays entertaining. Your comic is one of the few things I look forward to with going to work on bright and early in the morning.
Thanks! Glad I can entertain.
Here here, one of the few things that can actually make a person WANT to get up on a Monday morning.
I agree with the rewrite to make Dabbler beat Sydney, instead of the other way around. It was quickly building that chaos-fu was Sydney’s biggest superpower, and this nicely negates it: Sure she’s confusing and unpredictable, but that doesn’t always mean she’s effective. If people learn to expect the unexpected from her (so they don’t get surprised), they can counter.
I find planning out a story beforehand (outlines, storyboards, etc.) works well for plot-driven stories. Stream-of-conciousness writing appears to work better for interpersonal relationship based stories. (If you can do it, which you are doing fairly well.) So there are strengths both ways. Though I do find as a story gets longer having some formal structure makes the whole thing easier.
Plus I felt I needed to start establishing the credentials of some of the other members of the team, and Dabbler is definitely one of the more capable team members.
I kid about not really doing any writing, but I have stuff planned out in my head so far in advance, given the pace that I’m able to draw these, that I know what happens after the ballroom here, after the press conference, after the bit after that, and at least one more chapter past that and into the start of another storyline. Of course, a lot of it is a string of scenes that need bridging, but so far I seem to manage pretty well with that workflow.
Given that I have writing & background for a hoped-for webcomic (I have advertised for artists, as I can’t draw…) that date back over 6 years, I can relate on having stuff planned ahead… ;)
If you’ve been waiting 6 years then maybe it’s time to teach yourself to draw. :) Seriously give yourself a year to learn while drawing the first chapter of your comic, then before you publish it, start over with everything you’ve learned over the last year of learning (including, hopefully, the discipline to draw a strip on a regular basis, build up a month’s worth of a buffer, then unleash it on the world. Even if you’re not so good after a year of learning, remember there are a lot of comics out there that start off with… really rough art. But you stick to it and you improve as you go.
Unfortunately the first chapter includes one of the most complex (drawing-wise) scenes I’ve gotten written, and by ‘can’t draw’ I mean ‘Have clinically-proven-bad hand-eye coordination, and can’t make recognizable stick figures’.
I’m slowly buying figures and props for Daz 3D; maybe I’ll be able to work something out that way eventually. (But that will take a while to afford.)
In the meantime, I’m starting to put more directly prose works on Smashwords – stuff that’s not related to the webcomic idea.
Well you don’t have to start with the most complex scene ever, or even tell the story you’re thinking of. Start off telling the back story of the main character in a 3-5 panel strip format or something similarly simple. Just a thought.
That scene is the backstory. ;)
I have other stories I’m working on, and I’m not really caught up in having a webcomic – I think it’d be fun, and I’d be willing to work at it, but I’m not going to worry too much about it. I have other outlets for my writing. Not quite as glamorous, but present. ;) As I said, I do have a fallback plan, and I have other things I’m working on. (That’s not even my oldest story – I have stuff at least a decade older that still gets attention from time to time.)
Start with a day-in-the-life type scenario where something odd or unusual happens and use it as a hook.
Get a secure DONATION BUTTON.
,.,,,..,.,,,.
Sorry was that a yell.
…,,,… …,,,…
Then you could afford a colorist. Just a thought.
The problem is, that DaveB’s colors are wonderful, and getting a colorist on the same level of skill would be spendy. And a full-time job for the colorist.
Given the intricacies of the shading, I’m surprised that he manages to crank out four of these a month.
I like your first idea but I see no need for a colorist. DaveB is doing a fine job. And this is a solo project at this time anyway. I don’t see this as pressing or even something he needs to think about.
Doesn’t Dave’s wife handle the coloring? Or did that change?
She helps with the inks when I have finished pencils that I don’t need to immediately start inking myself. I’m usually not far enough ahead for her to lend a hand but she did some inking on the Dabbler reveal page (#103)
Heh, if every unique visitor that hit the page in a month put $1 in the hat, I could quit and live on that for a year while I do the comic, which would at least double my output. If every returning unique did it, I could do that but I’d be barely squeaking by. The problem is that realistically, 1% of even returning readers will ever hit the donate button, and while some of them might drop $10 in or even more, I’d probably need 10x the traffic before I’d have a shot at making a living off the comic – at least from donations. Obviously that much more traffic would boost ad money I make, which right now just covers my own advertising on other sites.
But for now a donate button wouldn’t hurt anything. I’ll need to find the time to add it, so it’ll probably be a few weeks at least, maybe over the holidays.
I hear ya, the link in my name I have zero faith in, (mostly due to SBPRA over charging for the genre and I’m a new author), but my editor is taking awhile so there is that, when that’s all ready I’ll likely put the first four books of my series *to get over 600 pages to match the expectations of sci-fi fantasy readers* together at LuLu.com.
I know for a fact (thanks to view counts) that I get over a hundred people a day on an invite only forum looking at my free stuff that I post daily, which usually amounts to once a day sharing a spell, place, person, or random critter that roams Aesperia or Hell usually, been on a kick sharing layers of Hell of late. But still, if each view was just one dollar I’d make over 700 bucks a week. and I’d love to donate to help other writers and artists out there, but I myself am a starving artist (in that I write, if I could draw then I’d turn my stuff into a webcomic, damn I wish I could draw people).
You may want to try what Penny Arcade did – a kickstarter to run the site ad-free. They got $528k. It might be a way to get the revenue you need to concentrate on this.
You could include stuff such as cameos in the comic, Moxana points, recognition in the comic bumper, etc. Maybe even sketches and artwork.
Just a thought, and I’m content to keep reading at the pace you set. A good comic is like a good RPG – there’s a lot that goes on between the fighting, and it’s usually the funnest bit.
Also, where is this donate button you speak of? My brain may be failing me this late, but I’m not seeing it. I’d be happy to toss some cash your way when I have some to spare.
There isn’t one yet but I’ll probably put one up in the next few weeks when I find time.
Penny Arcade also has ~30 Million weekly readers. If all the readers on my comic donated an equivalent amount I’d make $1,000. Not quite enough to live on.
They didn’t start with 30 million weekly readers, Dave. They built up to a loyal core following, just as you’re doing. I guarantee that you get a few more dedicated fans every week, thanks to your excellent art and engaging storytelling. The fact that you interact with your fans makes you and your work more interesting. Eventually, you’ll hit the tipping point and start doubling your readership. I look forward to the day that you start gaining the wider audience you deserve.
Just don’t forget your loyal fanatics, er…what I meant was, Fans. All of us will be here for the “long haul”. Or the world will end in 12/20/2012, and we all just will reincarnate in YOUR world. ;)