Grrl Power #1073 – Spooky scary shapeshifters
Hopefully people get what’s happening here. I could have drawn a dotted outline of X standing opposite Chimyriad, but it turns out that not drawing people is a lot easier than drawing them.
Chimyriad is a cameo character, and technically this is their second appearance. (The prior one being the previous page) Only, they’re a shapeshifter, so who knows, maybe they’ve been in dozens of pages?
Someone suggested that I occasionally randomly add X to the Who’s Who. That struck me as really funny, but I probably won’t.
ArcLIGHT and ArcDARK usually recruit all the supers with spy powers, at least, assuming they have the temperament for it. Shapeshifting could be useful when it comes to thwarting super powered bank robbers of course, but it’s far better to not let the enemy know you even have the capability. Members of ArcLIGHT are really more analysts, whereas ArcDARK doesn’t even exist on the books, and they probably do a lot more than invisibly hang around Archon HQ.
Dumb people are a considerable drag factor in a lot of professions. My wife’s been working from home since the pandemic – it turns out a lot of jobs don’t require dedicated office space, whoda thunk? – but the number of times a day I see her throw up a hand in that “what the fuck how is anyone this dumb” way almost makes me chuckle (but also makes me grateful that my job no longer involves a lot of (or any, really) coworkers).
If you’re a con man or a legit sales person, it doesn’t matter, dumb people are probably your bread and butter. Unless you’re selling something like, I don’t know, oil derricks, or something that requires a great deal of expertise and manpower. Then you probably (hopefully) don’t deal with a lot of dumb people. But I dunno, maybe the people buying stuff like that are dummies and that’s why they have a massive team of engineers to deploy anything.
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You have to wonder if Chimyriad and Dabbler get up to… stuff.
I wonder if she and X do.
Chimyriad is Ace, but has a deep, Platonic crush on Achilles.
While she is both in awe of and deeply intimidated by Dabbler’s sheer genius, she find the succubus’ near-constant sexual flaunting off-putting.
I think Chimyriad might be my favorite new ‘cameo’ character I’ve seen in the comic. Was not a fan of Hench Wench mainly because of how long she stuck around, even though it was a cool concept that warmed the cockles of my cold dead lawyer heart, and I liked that spider-girl person but she sort of seemed out of place because of the powerset she had of having six arms (since all the other uppers seem to be ‘ideal human form’. Nothing really against her but seemed like a very temporary cameo.
Chimyriad is just awesome though and I’m really hoping to see them again in the comic. Really wondering if Sydney’s truesight can see Chim’s ‘true form.’
Does Goon Squad count as “a dumb person”, or is he “a dumb people”?
Yes.
Yes?(:
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”
– Agent K
True, dumb people can be a drag.
On the other hand, remember the intelligent guard in ‘Titan A.E.’? Saw right through the disguises of the good guys and even analyzed them Sherlock Holmes-like.
And still got bonked. ^_^’
Yes, well, intelligence doesn’t prevent Stith from kicking your ass. And she’s also well-educated.
Sorry, I gotta agree with those calling for X to be randomly added but I think you need to randomly add Glenn and Chimyriad as well. Don’t overdo it, obviously, but now1and-again around the arc building wouldn’t go awry.
But, only in cases where it is either absolutely impossible for them to be present (e.g. when Sydney was at Fracture Station), or at least impossible for them to now be present without having also been present in previous/subsequent pages.
I would propose X’s position to be completely possible and even traceable. I want a whole hidden subplot where X, on the rare occasions that we seem them, is wearing something or holding something very specific to the event or location he was added as a hidden character. That way you could spend time tracking him through months of comics to figure out why he was holding that particular mug.
I agree as well, this would be a pretty good meta joke (and Glenn absolutely be included). No idea if it would mess with new readers, but the character bio could have a brief note when they clicked it.
I don’t understand the thing about Glenn.
I mean, I can’t recall the last story arc that didn’t include him in it.
True, I mean, I’m sure someone has noticed that they never seem to have a loose thread on any of their clothing. Glenn is super quick to pick that up.
I just want him to get the credit for a job well done, ninjas don’t have the best reputation around here. He deserves more than sharing a cake party with Sydney and Max.
brichins, did you wander in from another-another alternate timeline?
Ninjas are so popular around here we regularly hire them to deliver pun-ishment to fellow forumites.
Wait, is THAT why I got jumped by ninjas the other day?
You know what you did!
Oh they’re well loved for sure, they’re just considered… how can I put this without offending them… effectiveness challenged. My understanding is that Glenn refuses to take contracts on forum members given the conflict of interest, but his dojo friends read comments too and I don’t want to make it awkward at the next BBQ.
I’m given to understand it’s Our Fault for failing to be sufficiently clear in the contract terms.
X shkuld be added to Sydneys recruitment interview
X was there…He was assigned to follow Dabbler around (at least at that time) but Dabbler noticed something weird where he was standing & called him out on it. X’s cloaking technology is impressive but Dabbler more noticed that she couldn’t detect anything at all in the space he occupied & that made her sufficiently suspicious.
Plus, no cloaking technology can mask The Horny, not from a succubus at least :P
Pretty sure this is appearance is to remind us that X exists. Who’s the transparent person though?
X is the unseen character. Chimyriad is the one that actually looks like X when he’s uncloaked…
And sound like X for one sentence.
X is the transparent person. Chimyriad has just changed to look how X looks like when not cloacked.
The transparent person is X. The person you can see is, apparently, a shapeshifter called “Chimyriad” who has shapeshifted to look like X.
Many people say that X’s motivations and true loyalty are a matter of debate. As for myself, I can see right through him.
So, is that the tentacle monster that stuck around after a bit of Shape Shifting training?
No, Trent is someone else.
Trent is a nice guy.
Little bit of a slacker, I think, but down to clown and I really hope we get to see him again in the future.
I bet he’s a rockin’ MC, and you know that being a Writhing Mass of Tentacles means he can spin, like, a bajillion turntables at once. ^_^
Maybe trent got hired by Cora for the tentacle closet
Arc Dark intercepting the job done. And yeah the whole superpowers that don’t work as well for super hero work, but can be useful elsewhere provided additionally the person has the temperament for it is an interesting thought experiment to play with. And how frustrating it would be for a super team scout/recruiter to find that perfect power but the person has no interest or fortitude for the job.
That’s been done, iirc was a manga. Total slacker, aliens boost strength, intelligence etc. Utterly uninterested and questioned the validity of superheros in general.
Superheroes have been around for nearly a century, no doubt everything’s been done.
it is still fun to think of characters with powers, but either the power isn’t that good for being a superhero (too subtle, too lethal, too specific and weird) or else the person just doesn’t have the mental state to want to be a superhero or a spy no matter how perfect their power would be for it.
heck I have a guy in my reject pile whose power is Mind Altering Pheromones, he emits them automatically in his body odor, limited exposure acts as a truth telling gas of sort, however prolonged exposure caused people to get horny…then rapey…and then self destructive mindless sex impulse to the point a guy overly exposed to it broke his junk, and fractured his hip and leg trying to hump the corner of a brick wall because the squiggles in the brick looked like a woman to his pheromone addled mind.
He was approached by the CIA and M-Group (my old RP CIA style super team), but ended up an off site employee paid to collect his sweat and deliver it. Also paid to avoid the public as his power was a danger to the general population, especially in in-closed spaces.
PS238 has the Rainmaker program for kids with extraordinary abilities, but that would not lend themselves to superhero/police activities, such as the kid who makes food out of inedible things, like rocks, or the kid who can put somebody to sleep, if they are within about 2m if him. For reference: The Fandom write-up.
hehe!
Murphy is great.
I am really gonna be surprised if WB/DC/Vertigo never fled a C&D order on that.
Pleased, but also deeply surprised…
Looking at last page, guess I should have said my money was on X and a previously unseen member of Arc Dark .
Nonsense! You’ve seen a kajillion times, and just didnt know!
(not rilly i know but i like to pretend ^_^’ )
To the randomly appearance of X in the Who Is Who? sidebar. Wasn’t there some sort of guideline that only people with speech get a mention?
And X is speaking. He is just invisible. The “That’s really creepy” is X. The first one that is, before he gets mocked.
Hans was referring to the suggestion some people have made that, every once in a while, DaveB should put X in the Who’s Who sidebar for pages he isn’t actually in, just as a prank.
Well how do you know he isn’t there and just not speaking?
Dave, dear. Who do you think gets to sign the contract buying the really complicated expert-use-only machines?
Hint: It’s not the people who’re expected to use them.
Can confirm, some of the largest projects I’ve ever been involved with (>$1B) were authorized and operated by morons who only knew enough to listen to the right underlings. I’ve also seen (and heard) plenty of instances of people who made enormous mistakes (expensive and potentially lethal) getting promoted out of the action rather than fired.
One of my friends does tech support at a university, and it’s surprising how dense actual college professors can be outside their area of expertise. Sometimes “dumb” just means “out of your element” (and possibly “overconfident because of how talented you are *in* your element”).
PREACH
…some of the dumbest people I ever met in the Navy were college educated Officer – and I’m talking multiple degrees, even post-Docs – but once the subject was literally anything outside their field…
True story, I knew a PhD that managed to burn water.
He was a brilliant surgeon, who one day asked me to teach him how to cook.
NOTE: this was back in the late nineties, long before YouTube.
He put the pan on, and then forgot about it; the water all evaporated out and the pan scorched. -_-‘
After that I made sure to be watching him the whole time. He did eventually learn what he wanted from me, and later told me that he wanted to learn my cooking to impress this woman from a different department. He’d got it from the Filipino Mafia (there’s some inside baseball) that she really loved my Bao and Siu Mai, when we did Mandatory Fun for the command.
Which is how he managed to burn water. Somehow, this very intelligent computer science guy didn’t think ahead to, “the steamer can run out of water.”
That all said, mind you, he was a great guy, and good officer, and someone I really admired at the time. I dunno if his courtship ever paid off, but that over 20 years ago now, so he’d be in his 60’s by now.
I hope it did. ^_^
This is much more a lack of experience than a lack of intelligence, of smarts, or of (book)knowledge.
It’s also why you need instructors around, to keep things from going off the rails too badly.
Not always: eldest sister continues to let pots boil dry, even after repeatedly being told not (one time, she let a pot almost boil dry before being told to keep an eye on it, and ten minutes later… boiled dry and caused the element to melt a hole in the pot!)
Some people should simply not be allowed anywhere near a stove or anything similar
Back in college I was taking an organic chemistry course with lab work. One lab was for a distillation of individual chemicals out of a solution. It was getting near the end of the 2 hour lab and the person on the next bench was not nearly done. A flicker caught my eye and I looked over to see he had really cranked up the flame under the glass beaker to try to get it to run faster. I thought “that does not look safe” which was shortly followed by a loud CRACK! and the sight of about a liter of boiling alcohol being dumped onto a flame. The sight of a lab bench erupting into a pool of flames is one of the more vivid memories I carry with me from my school days.
A lab monitor did shortly arrive to extinguish both the flames and his grade for that lesson.
Reminds me of the time the Chemistry professor wanted to impress upon his students the hazards of chemistry when improperly used, and whipped up a bit of Thermite to melt through a block of steel to prove a point. Unfortunately, he got his proportions slightly wrong. It went through the block of steel… and the desk… and the floor… and the desk on the ground floor… and that floor… and made a crater in the basement where it finally petered out.
It certainly proved the point, at least.
There’s a book “The Design of Everyday Things” written by a Cal Tech engineer. He discovered that the top of the line photo copy machines were nearly all bought by $1K+/hr law offices. It turns out they bought it to impress clients and the secretaries knew <10% of the functions. :D
So, if ArcLIGHT has ArcDARK, does Archon have Archoff?
Teehee!
*quietly sends dispatch or for Iga’s Discount Ninja service*
“It’s the new and improved Archoff! Guaranteed to repel all those nasty and pesky bad guy in one simple application.”
* Disclaimer: intended only for minor ArchEnemies, effectiveness not guaranteed on archenemies.
“ArchOff! Apply Directly to an Arch!”
What if X used this face:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Can%27t_We_Be_Friends%3F#/media/File:War-WhyCan'tWeBeFriends.jpg
Or Sydney for that matter..?!?
X is not the shape-shifter. That is Chimyriad. X is just really good at camouflage, probably by actually being invisible; she is still working on not blocking sounds and not getting horny while on duty.
Admittedly, sound transparency _is_ a bitch. Unless is power includes personal molecular sovereignty, I don’t know how he can allow vibrations to pass through him.
I think his only hope for emotional manipulation is probably going to be a Charm/Gadget of some sort that prevents psychic emanations.
ACTUAL invisibility is just as much of a bitch. At least according to my physicist uncle, anyway. He was a radar guy for DARPA back before he retired and worked on stealth systems, so he knew a bit about other types of stealth, including what was known about optical camouflage.
Interesting fact from that conversation- A primitive form of optical camouflage was used during WWII by antisubmarine aircraft. Basically, a bunch of lights were rigged to the wings to break up the silhouette and it worked. At least, U-Boats all got radar… And it was a bit on the fragile side. Lightbulbs and all.
Personal invisibility has been done so many ways in fiction it just isn’t funny, but it always has its downsides.
It would be funny if X’s given name was Yehudi.
… That’s not X
We’ve seen that little blue ‘drop’ before….
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1063-ole-ole-ole-ole/
Does that mean Ari is really X? Or maybe, X is Ari?
No, it means that the Sweatdrop(c) is a long standing and well established trope of graphic storytelling at this point.
Was joke :(
We’ve seen it on X, too.
Well back in ‘the good old days’ Betty went Harpy because of Modok wanting to use her against Hulk, when they went with the god-awful Red Hulk and Red She-Hulk stuff decades later some people complained she should have become a harpy again since that was clearly her alter-ego so I guess eventually they shrugged and went with Red Harpy route in response to the complaints.
I could have sworn the red she hulk was a result of an secret futurist organization that made betty into red she hulk in an attempt to successfully assassinate bruce banner. This resulted in bruce getting shot in the head and ending up in a secret shield hospital town filled with those holographic training robots pretending to be people cause he had severe brain damage, and any hulking out could make it irreversibly worse.
then later when betty wanted to make bruce jealous red she hulk fucked the hulk after hulk and bruce became completely different personality alters.
Was gonna ask if we had met Chimy before, but guess not (last page notwithstanding)
Okay, that explains why Ted thought Chimy was Ted
Is Chimyriad not in the whose who on the right alongside X because we haven’t seen what Chimyriad actually looks like yet?
Patience. ^_^
I’m sure you’ll get to see what she looks like…at any number of moments. ^_^
Okay, was thinking of a different sort of ‘bong’ than whatever Doctor Bong was
You mean, like, aside from Howard the Duck’s greatest nemesis?
(Fire up the Wayback, Sherman!)
No, meant drug-related
I agree the Cast page needs work. It’s really outdated and lacking alot of characters.
Oh no… resident Morph character. Well… at least they’re not going out to do battle?
*grins in Cheshire*
Ok what is it with shapeshifters usually turning out to be jokesters, is it a requirement?
It’s probably just another form of the comic writing trope where Wolverine gets seriously injured about as often as Cyclops uses his eyebeams (See Page 126
if you don’t recall the reference.)
Yerp.
Besides, if you had shapeshifting abilities, can you honestly say you wouldn’t ride that trope straight to Clown Town?
I would. ^_^
Besides…there’s also the _other_ side of shapeshiting powers. The Tzimice-meets-Symbiote-meets-H.R.Geiger-meets-The Absorbing Man side, where even David Cronenberg fears to tread. When you think of it that way, doesn’t the Class Clown Shapeshifter seem so much nicer and preferable?
*asymmetrical off-timed blink*
I have seen a bunch of terms for the more disturbing shapeshifters, Necro-morphic, Bio-Necro-morphic, Eldritch morph, Cronenbergian morph, Geiger morph, Zombie morph, Horror Morph, Body Horror-morph…and even Gore-morph
I based a character (Lash Fang) on this, a shapeshifter with twisted eldritch horror body puddy shifting…and then extended this to an entire species of shapeshifting Mimics.
Probably due to an imprinted trope due to how many shapeshifters were trickster characters in folklore and fairytales. So people keep it going.
For anyone wanting a cool Superhero Law fanfic, Pound the table is written by a real lawyer, defending from Magneto to Hank McCoy to other characters
https://archiveofourown.org/works/32633056
DaveB, big mistake putting X in The Who’s Who. If I were experimenting with ways to make myself undetectable, and I lived in a webcomic, first thing I’d figure out is how to hide myself from The Who’s Who. Major giveaway there.
Also! Invisible sweat drops. Another major giveaway.
The human body is a noisy thing, just eat 3 Taco Bell burritos and try not to make noise! And I don’t just mean gas, it tend to make the tummy rumbly on it’s way down LOL. Breathing, blinking, heart beat, and so on anyone with good hearing or a parabolic microphone can pick you up.
I think it would be funny if Sydney befriended, or dated Chimryiad. Think of the Hijinks that would ensue if she had a shapeshifter at her beck and call.
Daphne will find her Prank Queen status under serious threat in whatever variant universe that definitely happens in.
I wonder if Sydney puts another upgrade in the comm/teleport orb, will she be able to bring someone with her? Oh the mind boggles with the pranks she and Chimyriad could pull off… Or Dabs for that matter!
Actually just being able to include a second person in the telepresence would be enough for them to open the door to SO MANY pranks…
DaveB, can confirm that even in trades that require years of expertise you still have to deal with dumb people. I sell construction materials, specifically luxury doors and windows, and I have to deal with contractors that can barely do math and don’t understand the basics of their own trade on a regular basis. It takes all kinds, ya know.
I mean you *could* add X to the Who’s Who, but basically just say “Classified” instead of a bio
You forgot something tremendously gargantuan, Dave. The people the “oil derricks” are being sold to, are only “bean counters”. They have no expertise in anything. The people who do, do the work. These people don’t even know who the “wheelers and dealers” even are.
Question about Chimriad’s shapeshifting type. As it is hard to tell in still panels, the way they are folding up between forms are they…
A: Melter/Wax Morph *becomes a thick melting look mold that restiffens into a new shape* (think classic Clay Face),
B: Globular morph *a thick goo that bubbles and blurps into the new form* *think later versions of Clay Face*,
C: Liquid/Slime Morph *a smooth liquid shapeshifting (very hard to depict in still images),
Wow, that really would be a truly disturbing face to see on an opponent
“ThAt’s ReLlY CrEePy” and he took that Personally lol
I am actually surprised X wasnt in Galytn shadowing Dabbler still. :)
I think now that the team has had a half dozen actions where Dabbler performed reliably, they’re probably starting to give her some trust and autonomy. Plus, it would be pretty hard to send a handful of members halfway around the world and not have them notice an invisible tagalong. Especially given that they left on very short notice flying Halo Airlines.
And looking at the link I realize this attack was FORESHADOWED!
Interesting times indeed
Same
Specially considering she was in another country, but guessing it’s difficult to ‘tag along’ unseen inside Sydney’s Bubble
I would think if found an invisible guy tagging along there would be something of a diplomacy issue.
I was also under the assumption he only shadowed her on base just in case she tried to wammy any of the top brass or get into anywhere she is not authorized to enter, and not following her off base like to the club, or out of country *where she would be someone else’s problem anyway*.
The repercussions of “someone else’s problem” almost always create headaches for the home office.
Look kks like ARChitect is gonna be busy redesigning the building security and systems.
;-p
Introducing a character we’ve never seen before to set up a bit of a gag just feels confusing and plot convenient. It really should have been Mr Amorphous. I do appreciate seeing the background characters pop in like X and some of the others, like the tailor with the textilekenesis.
It does bother me that Dave jumped from the middle of one unresolved battle to jump into this extended battle sequence. Im also not feeling the stakes of this fight. ARC seems to be handling things quite easily. You’d think that if you were gonna take them on you’d over prepare.
Sorry Dave but lately you are just all over the place, even this segment is bouncing around without resolving some scenes. It all feels a bit muddled and unplanned from a writing perspective.
In six months you’ll blow through the entire thing in five minutes and it will seem fine. It just seems odd because it’s four days between pages. If you think back to the big fight scene with Vehemence, I believe that took like six months or something to work through, but now it just flows right along.
So, easy-peasy, just enjoy the pages and stories as they come, and don’t make the assumption that there’s not an ulterior reason for doing so. After all, it’s probable that the reason there IS an attack is because they are all in Galtyn, so the two events are not unrelated. Who knows? Maybe sand-guy is even being paid to cause a distraction and keep the three most powerful members of the team there fighting, right?
Pacing of web comics always feels odd when read one page per week. Every comic online has people complaining about the pacing in their forums.
While Dave is not the best at writing tightly paced stories, this also is not that kind of story. He says in his explanation about the comic that he is inspired by the scenes about funny character interactions (and super heroines). This is not going to be a tightly plotted and paced, fully focus tested, story. Ever.
Regarding the ‘winning easily’, so far they have only been up against disposable clones of one invader (that even the villains did not expect to be much in the way of a speed bump). Hiro is tied up with the villain front line fighter. and Varia and Chrona are keeping mr Firehead pinned down. The team has yet to go up against the leader of the invasion who at least can cut security cameras to small pieces without touching them.
My personal guess is that this battle is meant to show that the rest of Archon is not exactly helpless either and do not need Maxima and Sydney to come ride to the rescue every time the get into action. (which has been a bit of a legitimate complaint and a danger of writing stories which a huge cast of mostly hero adjacent characters).
Agreed, we’re getting caught up on the home team so that we don’t have to do a flashback when their experience intersects with the away team again.
Also, it looks like this fight is just a diversion / cover-up for a break-in, you don’t blow your A-team’s cover for a distraction.
Interesting thoughts.
Hey, show us how you do it in your comic.
*mic drop*
The whole point of this webic is the gags in-between the action, and the action is designed to set up further gags and ‘humourous’ interactions between the cast
“Hopefully people get what’s happening here” Nope.
I rarely do, no offense, but you your comic tends to not make it easy to understand what is going on.
Reading this chapter is so funny LOL like trap the cat trap the cat
I like the interesting and trap chapters like in the trap the cat, it’s a great read.
Chúng tôi thiết kế và sản xuất đồ nội thất hoàn toàn cho khách sạn, nhà nghỉ, biệt thự nghỉ dưỡng, căn hộ dịch vụ, du thuyền sang trọng.
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