Grrl Power #1055 – Lifestyles of the rich and eccentric
I’m not going to lie, this is one of my favorite pages I’ve done in a while. Even despite all the fiddly background stuff. Panel 5 cracks me up every time. Just the thought of that playing out in a TV show or something. Maxima’s eyes slowly tracking up from the trapdoor to Deus, her voice that perfect balance of exasperation and the exhaustion women experience around men doing stupid shit. “Seriously?” Ah, good times.
And I’m not taking any bets on whether he “accidentally” showed her the panels with the women in metallic paint. I mean, honestly, that could swing wildly in either direction for him.
And then there’s Deus’s pure joy at being able to finally show off some of his toys. Look, if I was a billionaire, I would 100% at the very least have a secret room behind a bookcase somewhere in my house or office. It wouldn’t even open up into a room full of weird shit, just like a little personal lounge with a mini fridge and a comfy chair for reading, with acoustically treated walls and a nice sound system. I would also probably have a room with a bunch of flip around panels, because WHY WOULDN’T I? I honestly question the sanity of anyone who has literally billions of “walking around town” dollars who doesn’t have some silly indulgent thing in their home or office. What is the point, otherwise?
Yes, Deus’s control pad is just a USB Novation Launchpad which is usually used for playing back sampled music, but I’m sure you can map those keys to anything.
Drawing this page made me think about trap doors in the floor. Like, now Deus has to walk down to the floor below him and carry those chairs back up. Yeah, he probably has some building maintenance people who can do that for him, but still, until they get around to it, he’s out of seating in his little office up there.
The June Vote Incentive is up! What’s that dripping down Sydney’s face? Uh… well, actually, clicking on the link won’t actually give it away necessarily, cause the thumbnail is from one of the, er, advanced pictures in the series, if you take my meaning. Yes, I mean there is a nude version of Sydney (and guest) over at the Patreon version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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For those wanting their own secret room…
https://murphydoor.com/
Those things are one of the very few examples where an amateur (but competent) woodworker can DIY it for significantly less that what it costs to buy.
Seriously. It’s a bookcase on a pivot. We built one for a play when I was in high school for like $50. Granted that was more-years-than-I-care-to-admit ago worth of inflation, but that’s still nowhere near the 4 digit prices they’re asking even with the current outrageous price of wood.
Something that holds up over time is a lot more involved than a play prop though. It needs to bear a fair amount of weight without sagging in the slightest over many years, both in place and while operating, and ideally would have a minimal operating profile and depth. That requires a metal frame, some specialized hardware, some engineering/fabrication skill, and all those things ups the cost considerably. …yes I’ve looked into this extensively before, shut up.
You could still build your own for less, but unless you’re doing so at scale and already have all the tools and building experience, these kits are a decent value.
8020 is your friend here.
That’s only if you’re trying to keep the weight held at the hinge. Casters to support the far end are cheap and effective.
Casters leave marks on the floors or grooves in the carpet. Nonmarking casters typically deteriorate a lot in ten to fifteen years, and that leaves the bookcase sagging slightly. It’s better to swing it all from the hinge side.
The answer there is to swing the door *into* the hidden room. Then you don’t have to care that the casters leave marks.
Or, simply replace the casters as they wear out
Or both: swing from the hinge and have casters to help bear the weight
Most hidden rooms in a house are intended to be finished spaces, possibly even a luxury area. I’ve considered (hidden) metal wheels and a concrete transition entry, but don’t like the aesthetic and expect it to be noisy – secret doors should either be silent or dramatically creaky. Also considered the classic double-sided door that pivots around a center hinge, but that takes up a ton of space.
The coolest kind of secret door might be the motorized kind that spin around both a part of the floor and the wall. You pull out a book from the shelf and go into the secret lair without moving your feet. Hard to hide the floor part though.
Nonsense, *all* my fireplaces and bookcases are centered in a perfect semi-circular floor pattern, and have candle holders on either side. Completely undetectable.
It could work with a fireplace though. They often have a part of the floor in front of it made of something less flamable like stone.
Bingo. I do this stuff for a living, and each one is different, each one has different load needs, and making sure they’re truly concealed doors takes a massive amount of planning. We don’t normally do even basic ones for less than 20k, because we often custom make the pivots around the spaces we work with.
I have literally seen this before and been thinking of using it when I one day build my secret room in my new house. :) :) :) Especially if I can do a one way mirror. :)
Make sure you have the mirror facing the correct way :P
Learnt that from Jethro (Bodine, not Gibbs)
At least there aren’t multiple sound bytes on his thunder remote so if you click it a certain way or rapidly a number of times it plays something else… right?
we will forever mourn the loss of the tech Charlie. he somehow managed to get the remote to play the complete collection of Weird Al. what combination of inputs caused it we were never told. he also somehow managed to reroute a camera feed looking at Dues as his moment was punctuated by ‘another one rides the bus’. His fate is of course unspeakable.
Hopefully Deus can find a standard gas mask or other more appropriate breathing device amongst those other “trinkets”…!?
It’s probably on the panel full of bondage equipment.
Deus is really bad at keeping secrets. Maybe Max SHOULD sleep with him; female spies over the ages have proven that men are weak that way.
you go suggest it to her. the rest of us will be FAR AWAY. we will have cameras including high speed to record your fate. Max is against ‘silk work’.
Max has already expressed her opinion on that matter.
Not on sleeping with Deus, her feelings are a bit mixed on that one. But sleeping with someone for the purposes of gaining information she’s definitely opposed to.
Back when they did i think it was the ds9 tribble episode, maybe the enterprise mirror episode, they tried printing labels on the undersides of the buttons, identifying them. Did a camera test and found that with the labels the camera could not see the text, only looking at the buttons near dead on showed the text.
Is that a corpse on panel five?
Sliding panels, they’d have to be paintings to fit. Means he’d have to have golden statues of nude women elsewhere if he wants to get handsy with his Maxima substitutes, though.
I also noticed that the paintings seem to all match Maxima’s visual aesthetic
Also, that’s Panel 6.
No, they were talking about SmugD, pre-corpsificationing :P
Bravo, every one of Deus’ facial expressions in this episode cracked me up!
Still looks like he’s about to go all Sanjiyan Unkara in panel 1, though.
If Deus was a true villain the last thing he’d want around is the “A-Team” from where I sit he’s doing good things in a grey way just this side of ok because just trying to do good things for the sake of it always winds up with someone using you and hurting you and your’s… trust me I know…
He’s like a trope savvy Doctor Doom.
His distant ancestors was named Kronk.
Not disagreeing, but where is his theme tune in that case?
I’m thinking this soundtrack, including the awkward moments when his team / gadgets upstage him.
“Wrong lever!!”
You don’t even have to be a billionaire to have a secret room behind a bookcase. I have a legit small house and my main storage closet is tucked behind a moveable bookshelf. I do wish it had an automatic mechanism, like a book you pull to release the latch and a pneumatic that’s the reverse of a door closer moves it open, but it’s still a thing.
Lex Luthor: “Oh, come ON, Deus! Here I was, actually growing intrigued with you, but then you phenomenally screw up basic intimidating button mashing!? How is it you don’t have your nefarious console buttons memorized!?”
Deus smirking: ”Or maybe I did know what buttons I pressed”
Actually this is a good point. Sacrificing the chairs first makes it a throwaway joke (wakka wakka), and gives him deniability on the other collections while still getting the chance to gauge her response to them.
The man may be a super genius, but that says absolutely nothing about his emotional maturity. :)
“If I have to play the part of the Evil Overlord to get things Done… I’m gonna Meme the hell out of the 101 rules!!”
[push Button: ThunderLightning]
I wonder if DaveB has read The Pilfered Princess. That’s the last place I’ve read about a villain who actually has a ‘thunder and lightning’ effect triggered to whenever he laughs manically.
It’s a fun little read, all y’all should check it out.
I mean…he’s not lying…who wouldn’t want a room with secret panels?
I have one in my bedroom actually. It even has weapons in it. Mind you, it has a fingerprint reader rather than a button.
Anyway, once you have one, you don’t think about it anymore unless you need it. Last time mine got opened it was because I needed to chase a crack head out of my house at 2am.
Well, aren’t you a badass.
Fun fact: Fingerprint readers, especially cheap ones, can be fooled.
Thats why you wipe after, like when going poo.
Badass? No. Far from it. A badass wouldn’t need a gun that risks missing and shooting through the wall and into the neighbor’s house by accident. I do. I’m just a guy who lives in a bad neighborhood is all.
Seriously, when I first moved into my current house a friend who used to live in the same neighborhood more or less forced me to hold onto his shotgun until I got my own. I quit arguing with him about it after a couple weeks living there.
And yeah, the fingerprint reader can be fooled. Which is why the safe is concealed. You can’t try to fool it if you don’t know it’s there.
There are rounds that are specifically designed to not risk your neighbors/friends/family due to excessive penetration characteristics. If you need to shoot through even drywall to ‘kill baddies’ you’re doing it wrong. If you can afford a secret safe with a fingerprint reader and your firearms, you can afford those shells.
So, if you lose power you also lose access to your secret compartment and your weapons?
Good to know!
If I ever build a house, the entrance to my man cave will be Batman esque.
Also, the monthly art might entice me to get on patreon.
Too bad there’s no licking involved
I like the idea of the flip-up head of Shakespeare with the big red button, but ADA regulations now require secondary access in addition to the poles to make it more accessible.
that’s why the grandfather clock is always wrong.
Honestly I feel Deus wouldn’t be into all that BDSM, but I do feel he’d totally be into owning and showing off the gear.
But if he has a girl in there waiting I could totally be wrong :p
Deus prides himself on being an *exceptionally* good lover (along with everything else he sets his mind to). Even if if BDSM isn’t something that he’s personally into, he’d definitely keep his options open. If it’s something she’s into, his ego will not allow him to leave a girl unsatisfied.
Yeah if I ever get my own standalone dwelling, there will probably be a (most likely cost-effective) set of hidden doors or sliding panels. I’m with Deus on this one.
Honestly I love this! I remember as a kid drawing up house plans and always including secret passages and rooms because totally who wouldn’t want to build a perfect house like that? If I had the money I’d totally do that and Deus has obviously always loved the dramatic and the genre of super-spies and the like. Of course he’d have at least one place built like a stereotypical super-villain’s lair and include rotating wall panels revealing all sorts of things in hiding. Just like Vehemence was amusing himself playing the role of a super-villain saying stock super-villain phrases before adding ‘just kidding, just saying what’s expected from a super-villain not serious about it.’
The more I see of him lately, the more Deus is growing on me. I mean, why would you put yourself in the crosshairs like he has without at least enjoying the absurdity?
Growing on you, like a fungus?
Aside from perhaps Sydney, he seems to be the only one who actually embraces the madness. He is also a master level troll who is actually occasionally funny – I am not at all convinced that he pushed all those wrong buttons by accident, though that could just be projection.
I fully believe Deus’ goals are the betterment of all mankind, just wjth himself at a very high position of power. After all, if he became an actual evil overlord, Archon would be able to take him down, even with Vale in the way. And Deus is all about his own position in the end.
I admit. I want a room with secret panels
There’s always an issue with secret doors though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ktmN0wvHQs
There’s another problem with secret doors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WytgfPwQQ8
Thought you would have gone with Get Smart
My Billion dollar plan is this:
1) Get a nice below-ground wine cellar for house.
2) Put two of those 6 foot round Barrel Kegs on one side.
3) Put a fake Barrel Keg in the center of them, with tubing so that Spiggot actually works.
4) Put staircase to sub-basement inside middle ‘fake’ barrel.
5) Outfit sub-basement as ultimate RPG room, with flagstone walls and floor, and lots of tapestries.
6) Place hidden elevator behind a tapestry, so I don’t need to go down three flights of stairs and through a wine keg every time I want to play D&D.
Do not tell players about elevator.
I bet it would take less than ten minutes for a player to stumble across the elevator.
You need to install a concealed pit trap with spikes in front of it, at the very least.
I think D&D crowd is exactly the wrong audience for keeping a hidden door a secret. Especially in an actual dungeon-esque room like a wine cellar.
that’s why there’s a dungeon of a different sort behind the other secret door…
I bet Deus has such panels in home office in America where Sydney made a visit before going to cause havoc in the lab. Now in retrospect Deus there should have been ½ page long skit where Deus says after “Replicas?” something like: “Right, replicas. But I assure you, this stuff…” *BEEP* *VRRT* “are the real deal!” And Sydney goes apeshit.
How many ball gags, collars and sets of restraints does one need? Answer: Yes. :D
It’s so he can entertain all the Harems at once.
rumor has it that some subs prefer unused ball gags. something about sharing spit and who cleans them.
I’ve already worked out where to put the secret panels & rooms in my house. All I need is the budget and a disposable workforce!
Knowing Deus it’s possibe he has three or four sets of chairs, when one set gets dropped the next set gets pulled out. The dropped set gets looked over and repaired. They’re quality material, but can’t just drop a set of chairs to the floor below and not expect a little damage.
Floor? It could be a pool with sharks, or piranhas, or shark/piranha hybrids.
(Sorry, no head lasers. They didn’t hold up well in the salt water.)
I am surprised that Deus went with a trap door. They are getting less effective now that the world contains increasing numbers of people who can fly.
I had really considered drawing a pool with sharks with lasers on their heads below the trap door, but Deus wouldn’t want to risk braining a shark with a chair leg. He’s not a jerk. At least not to sharks.
sharks are worthy of respect.
he has access to both magic and alien technology’
so portal inside the trap door to any number of predator filled hell holes,
you can also use bio-filter forcefields so only living tissue (like humans) and things immediately attached to humans like clothes *otherwise things get…weird and/or messy*; so only the people fall through but not chairs.
Anyone who’s watched Shark Week would not be a jerk to sharks. :)
“Whoops, my graphic smut mags fell out of my desk while getting your files…what a total accident” That’s this guy. I’d say he’s an HR nightmare waiting to happen, but he runs his own business. He’s like a little kid, vaulting between pulling Max’s hair and telling her he has the biggest, shiniest toys. It’s why he wants her so bad, she’s the biggest toy there is and he doesn’t have her.
You’re not wrong. Though I will defend Deus by saying he’s more of a “whoops, tasteful nudes” than a “whoops, I accidentally tugged one out into a potted plant while making eye contact. Hi, I’m Harvey Weinstein.” kind of guy.
So he’s not the prince of romance, but he’s far from the worst, I think.
Love the little details like the Daddy’s Little Brat paddle.
Never mind secret panels. I’ve always wanted a house with secret rooms and hidden passages behind the walls. And a secret tunnel in the swimming pool that takes you to a secret room and escape route.
I may have been seriously influenced by a book called Friday, by Robert Heinlein. In no small part because parts of it, the house specifically, is set in a small town about half an hour from me. Not many books get set with significant parts taking place in Canada, much less in and around Winnipeg. I always mix up the name of the town tho. Stonewall/Stoney Mountain. Both are close to each other and I always mix up which is which. My. Entire. Life.
Super genius and doesn’t remember which button does what?
All of that definitely happened intentionally with a pay-off for next year.
This is the first time Deus has made me laugh. To be blunt I never liked sequences with him in them because they seemed to drag the comic down to a level of seriusness that never seemed to fit.
This? This fits.
Ah, good. I was getting pretty tired of Deus being a preachy self-righteous jackass (who’s totalitarian dreams are going to plunge the world into darkness).
I much prefer Deus the goofy dork.
his pose in the last panel makes me think of banner shouting ‘time travel!’
Fifty Shades of Gold?
I have secret doors in my house, and they make no sense, they are only big enough for a cat to fit through and connect to tunnels above the cabinets and up through tunnels that lead into the attic and one closet. Used flash lights to figure out where they lead to. Shining the light through them and then walking to where they could lead to see if I saw the light.
Kinda sounds like a dumbwaiter. There’s no pulleys or other mechanisms at the top, are there?
Sounds like a laundry chute to me, or an (abandoned?) central air return.
the best I can think to describe after looking at them again is.
think of those kitchens that have the smaller cabinets for extra storage above the cabinets (never understood the point of this instead of just extending the cabinets already there), but whomever was trying to make them made them HALF the size of one of those, made it one long continuous shelf (except for a window but continuing above the cabinets on the other side) wrapping the kitchen with multiple sliding panels *without knobs or anything, just had to realize they weren’t solid one day and overlap a little*, making a tiny space too small to really store anything, but a small cat could crawl through it.
and periodically there is a shaft going up. these go either up through the walls up thee upstairs and into the attic, or into the closet floor of the upstairs (its like a pseudo attic with wood plants on the floor and these shafts come up to a space between the wood plank and the brick wall.
My best guess is they didn’t measure right when adding onto the old house so had like this extra foot here and there.
Yeah a mismatched addition would make sense… how old is the house? Could also be deliberate for ventilation – open in summer to release hot air, close in winter to keep it in. Or maybe you have house elves / brownies and that’s how they get around.
I have actually joked about them being a Borrowers’ space, and thought about putting little fairy houses in there like a hidden art piece in the house.
They don’t bottom out or have anything functional in them. If anything they feel like , extra space, like they didn’t measure properly when building the house so had these left over spaces. They are behind sliding panels that just look like wall above the cabinets in the kitchen, thought they were forgotten parts of the cabinets but are too high up, line the kitchen and there are parts inside that are holes going up, these lead into the attic and the corner of one upstairs closet. And I do mean only big enough for a cat to fit through, no way I could store any large cooking utensils behind the sliding panels.
Any chance at getting a close up look at the Krillin t-shirt (and an explanation for what it means)?
it means that Sydney liked some aspects of the Dragonball franchise (she has taste after all). she is a certified nerd who runs a comic store. Were this a bigger budget comic there would be a game with how obscure and hard to find some of her fandoms are.
I have deja vu with that silvergold lady sculpture.
I feel some 90 /early 2000 3d modeling vibe from it, or just it is another artistic naked lady, or picture in furniture store but I saw it somwhere else
I get the bondage equiomentt, but look at how many different full sets there are!
And I’m going to call that Deus is the bottom.
Is the middle golden statue holding a giant pineapple? o_O
me thinks he is
… Any one else now interested in seeing the full image?
Eesh, your low-key “men suck” schtick gets exhausting.
Humanity is genuinely terrible, men and women both. Your complaint, however, reads as if it refers to something specific, but unspecified. I do wonder what attracts you to the work if you don’t like the tone the author sets.
What? Men suck because… Deus is cheerfully eccentric?
You’re angry at feminists and kinksters at once? What are you, Christian?
I hate Deus so much. Not in a love to hate way. In the way where I will be genuinely upset if lives through the story arch. In a world of super powers where people are aware of the tropes before they show up they should at the least know that they classic “If we end him we’ll be as bad as him” line is just something writers have characters to say to keep the story going. End him. Whatever use he has is less than the damage he does by being a smart person who only values human life as Victory Points.
Or don’t. I’m not your boss.
Edit: when i say in universe. I mean it would have to have a story that makes sense leading up to it. I’ve seen stories before where *cliffhanger* then *epilogue- oh hey exposition plus ooh he died. sorry I couldn’t be bothered to write the two chapters showing it*
Sure. Everyone has their hates and no hates. It would have to make sense in the universe though. So far everything he’s been done has been annoyingly legal. the u.s. supers are still u.s. supers. and there’s a whole u.n. thing to go through. And I doubt he’ll leave just cause lying around for the u.n. to give them the go ahead to shut him down
Completely agree
Oh, and the ones most likely to say that classic line, are the ones most likely to need to be ended (or their brain-dead sycophants)
This guy is a by-definition super-intelligence and he can’t remember which button does which?
He is also a super-troll, who is trying to charm his way into Maxi
*shrug* i could see him scrolling over and over through all the toys for her to see while *claiming* he can’t remember which button. mind way early some of his display items caught Sydneys eye. Sting from LOTR I believe. something about her loving the replica. and he responded “Replica?”