Grrl Power #1076 – Obsidian crop circle
“Sydney! What did you do to the desert?!”
“As deserts are defined by the amount of rainfall they receive… technically I didn’t change anything?”
So, Sydney had a bold plan, and enacted it. There’s something to be said for decisive action, even if it’s likely that a much better plan could have been envisioned at a future date with ample time for planning.
I’m not sure if the scale quite comes across like I wanted it to. The bottom panel started off as a screenshot from Google Earth, and I think that obsidian disk is like… 10 kilometers across? I know it looks like a jagged purple mess, but I actually spent a lot of time cutting out little bits and bobs here and there for roads and patches of farmland from the original screenshot. Sydney didn’t want to actually fuck up any existing infrastructure, though she’s probably caused some headaches for future development and will have definitely will have thrown off some grazing habits.
Tourist attraction wise, I would suggest naming it “Lake Scoville,” or “The Scoville Cataclysm.”
The August Vote Incentive is up!
I’m a big fan of John Byrne’s run on “The Sensational She Hulk” and the imminent show looks very Sensational influenced. Therefore, I was inspired to draw some buff (pun intended) She Hulk, and threw in Red She Hulk for fun. Also, a wild Sydney for scale. Enjoy them posing in various outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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For a name… “Obsidianarium Scovillia” has a nice ring to it.
That makes me think of Absurdium Scovillia, but that kind of thing is actually typical.
Tourists will call it the Purple Scoville Nipple… For self-evident reasons.
Someone will try to put a giant clothes pin on it, also for obvious reasons.
On the last panle is Sydney purposefully not holding the fly orb and just falling or was it an accident?
She has featherfall, the flight orb is now passive when she used her last point.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-946-passive-enthusiast/
she can feather fall now
Well, she has feather fall….
Remember, she has featherfall now, so she can take off the fly orb in the air without doing a Wile-E-Coyote.
She doesn’t fall without the orb anymore
I mean she does have her feather fall when she lets go, so she’s not plummeting at least.
(implied) Featherfall active, maybe?
Or, just spit-balling here, having finished the glassing, she’s standing on the ground. \_(○○)_/
The fall of the feather!
People are being extremely subtle in the answer. Are they perhaps suggesting Featherfall?
:)
I just see a pile of feathers and bowling balls. I think there’s a physics law being demonstrated/violated.
Since no one has pointed it out yet, Sydney now has feather-fall.
I’mma just pile on and say ‘feather fall’. Just to see how many feathers it takes to break the metaphorical horses back.
i’m sorry, did anyone mention bird-hair tumble?
Horsefeathers.
What do the Marx, brothers have to do with it?
That, is the $64,000 Question.
(Oh, how can I not add one more?)
Feather-fall.
Modified reptile scale decent
Dino descendant descent!
another avian-based planetary retrieval system diminisher landing sedately into your cap :)
It could be the Feather-Fall power she has.
It could be feather falling perchance
Iiiii… am unsure what the long term effects of a giant piece of glass desert will do…
meh they got supers, they can clean it up.
Reflect more sunlight, thereby reducing global warming a little.
It might actually help rebalance the environment and start shifting it away from being desert. Since it is dark it would store heat in the day and radiate it at night. If you could keep enough plants alive in the desert for long enough you could reverse desertification and not just because deserts don’t have a lot of plants. I read an article a long time ago in Discover talking about how once plants start dying off in a region becoming desert it accelerates the change as more and more plants die. The temperatures become more extreme killing more plants meaning it gets worse etc.
Turns out it is a bit more complicated. They tried planting trees to slow the advance of the dessert, but the trees just sucked all the water out that was further down than most plants could reach. Dessert advanced faster.
The results of the Green Wall of Africa (I think that is what you are referring to) was mixed. It worked great is some areas, and it failed in others. So as usual in biology, it isn’t as simple as you think.
I heard about a different test. The Green Wall of China.
They learned that
1) Regional native species work the best.
2) You REALLY need bio-diversity, planting multiple types and varieties of trees and plants makes a huge difference.
3) It is an ongoing process that takes decades to work.
They started in the 1970s and are still working on pushing back the Ghobi Desert today.
Those sounds like some good lessons.
I especially value lession two. You would hope that would be obvious, but the economic thinking that runs our current societies doesn’t respect redundancy.
I am just happy that they learned and shared the results.
They are making some good progress today, and it is making a good impact on slowing global climate change. (Now if China would cut down on industrial pollution, they might become leaders in saving the planet. But that is less likely.)
Big question time! Does modified sand count as sand? I’m guessing yes
lol that’s what i was thinking. can the villain control the sand in glass form? if no, this is a brilliant plan! if yes, this was a horribly horrible plan…
The crystalline properties of volcanic glass, which is what Sydney created, makes it an entirely different material to sand. A material known as Obsidian. Even if he ground that up, it wouldn’t be sand again due to the difference melting it like that did.
The term is apparently vitrified glass instead. Volcanic glass comes from cooling magma.
I’m told that grinding up old glass and using that as an ingredient to make new glass lowers energy costs with some 40%, so maybe it’d be worth it to Deus to bulldoze and grind up the sheet, and feed it to his glass-making factory. Which I presume he has, since it’d be fairly silly to spin up an advanced economy in a desert and not include a glass factory.
Or use it as the source material for his matter sequencers
Vitrification still occurs in lava to turn it into obsidian. Vitrification is the process of glass creation in any way shape or form. And the reason I’m saying that’s obsidian is the coloration. That purple coloration is pretty distinct to volcanic glass due to impurities in the lava it was prior to cooling down.
And that’s the actual sticking point, impurities. The only things that differentiate volcanic glass (obsidian) and normal glass is temperature at creation and impurities, with the prior being used to remove the latter where normal glass is concerned. Without a way to remove those impurities, even at a higher temperature, you would still be left with volcanic glass.
I think it was established with the flash back to their last night that Durade is a sandkinetic specifically and not a silicakinetic, so can’t also control glass.
Yeah, you would need a villain like Colonel Glass from Spinnerette to make this tourist attraction into a weapon.
He, was turned to ash.
Actually, If you could use pure sand, melted into razor sharp shards, I can’t imagine a war trained (possibly terrorist) super who wouldn’t use it as a weapon already, instead of the sand. There is also the phrase Max said of “beating him down & needing to resupply” that makes it sound like he has some kind of limit on ow much he can use at once
Trinitite.
The glass under the first atom bomb test.
At least Sydney’s glass isn’t radioactive.
CORRECTION:-
‘At least Sydney’s glass isn’t radioactive……Yet’
Seeing how its Sydney, it’s probably not her worst idea.
No, this is far from worst idea she could have. This is “something drastic” and also “WTF” levels of thinking. The updraft from all that superheated glass will also negatively affect Mr Sandypants.
The updraft from that much molten glass would case a wind that would easily pull in enough sand to supercharge Mr. Sandypants. Heck, even a hot asphalt parking lot can cause dust devils, we’re talking dust Lord of Nightmares here.
That’s what I was wondering about. Surely there was sand outside that circle? A desert with a radius of only 10 km seems kinda small.
NyanHalo!
Sydney just joyfully glassing nearly 100k of dessert in 5 minutes.
dessert is often displayed under glass at patisseries
On the plus side, she’s made harvesting the silicon for microchips easier and burned away a lot of impurities…I think?
A moment of silence for the spiders, scorpions and snakes she wiped out.
Deus could also start an entirely new art trade in obsidian statues (and I wonder if all those 911 detectors pick up obsidian knives?)
Sydney also may just have become the greatest natural disaster since the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs :)
Depending on just how much desert she turned into the aftermath of an asteroid impact
High density refractory minerals do, in fact, show up on X-rays.
Maybe call it “Halo’s Ring?”
Was thinking “Scoville’s Hole”
The Sc-Hole-Ville.
Now, now… I think Dave almost had it right. Almost.
It should be named, “The FIRST Scoville Cataclysm (That we know of.)”
well.. that would explain the “Richat Structure”…
My mind went straight there too, The Eye of Africa.
Except the RTichat Structure is made of sedimentary rock with some igneous in the center. No metamorphics, so no post-deposit melting. But if it did, I’d buy this scenario as an explaination.
Ok, who else read the first couple panels in Neil Degrasse Tyson’s voice?
well now i am! haha!
Nope, he and Sydney aren’t on speaking terms right now.
You probably shouldn’t green light Sydney’s plans without reviewing them, especially when Sydney say she thinks it is probably a bad idea.
In panel 3, Sydney has a Power Pack contrail.
Actually panels 1 and 4; 1 was off screen when I wrote this.
I haven’t laughed at an alt text so hard in years.
Is this an effective strategy? It depends on if Darude can only lift a limited amount of sand per square meter, and also how fast he can move and what kind of reach he has.
At worst, he just needs to stop fighting every few minutes and go on a ten-second supply run to a part of the desert that Sydney hasn’t covered.
Still, whether success or fail, the team will now learn the answer to these questions, informing their strategy for next time. Good job, Scoville!
The Sahara Glass Eye…
the site for the “Scoville Quarry” premiere building material. Spin the site as a way to reduce global warming by reflecting sunlight.
Wait, I thought one of the key points of this fight was that it WASN’T in the desert, and thus the only sand he had was what he could carry with him.
Maxima Leander needed to get the fight away from buildings that happened to house alien-tech with power sources that could blow a hole in the continent if disrupted. Even within a few yards of all the asphalt, it’s nothing but desert for hundreds, if not thousands of miles. The factory strip is built in the desert of Galytn (Galtyn? I forget). Even if the factory is personelled mostly by military, there are also innocent civvies that work there, as Deus has offered jobs to basically the entire nation.
So, for supers who are capable of doing so, the SOP is probably to move the fight away from such structures.
I just checked the last page to feature Halo and Maxima, where we see a flashback to Maxima’s previous battle with this guy.
…A massive disk of obsidian is actually far LESS damage to the environment than what Maxima did. Especially since the obsidian can later be smashed into pieces (or harvested as a resource).
Yep, I figured if Sydney didn’t “make a wish” she’d glass the sand. Max isn’t sure if it’s a bad thing or good, yet! And now for the panic by Max over whether or not it’s going to cause a international incident.
Getting “A Sydney Special”, even if you’re used to them, is ALWAYS disorienting.
Partially because of the “come at it sideways” thinking that takes some getting accustomed to after you get hit in the head with it. And mostly from the sheer crazy.
oh i’m just hysteric trying to picture max’s face when looking down on sydney’s work.
the slumped shoulders really tell : “what have i unleashed on this world…”
bwahahahahahahaha!!!
Well the PewPew orb is a tiny fraction of a percent not a perfect transmitter of energy, since it transmitted several petajoules of heat and only got too hot to handle without gloves.
Just because deserts are dry, doesebnt mean they’re devoid of life.
Heck, the deserts I have access to are packed with it – even the sand dunes.
If she glassed a large enough area, count on some upset enviromentalists
Yep, that’s mass genocide, that is. I think most people agree that genocide is bad.
They are many species; for Genocide, they must be one single species. Edited, noun
noun: genocide; plural noun: genocides
the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group
“a campaign of genocide”
Hmmm… maybe this would be called ‘ecocide’?
I think the environmentalists can deal with it, considering the collateral damage from previous superhero fights probably released incredible amounts of carcinogenic or outright toxic chemicals and/or compounds into the environment.
Technically, a desert is any region that is devoid of biodiversity, not necessarily devoid of life.
There are many places that are not dry, but are considered deserts. Not the least of which being those found across many ocean floors.
Other deserts may be host to a single carpet species that stymyies the natural ingress of other species that might otherwise have thrived there. Examples of these can be found throughout the world.
I have never heard that definition, and I just googled it and only some of the secondary definitions somewhat come close. Ecologically speaking, a desert is defined by rainfall and not by biodiversity.
Hang on, I have the perfect dictionary for this: Henderson’s dictionary of Biology.
“desert n.
Biome where the average amount of precipitation is erratic and less than 25 cm per annum, and evaporation exceeds precipitation. Such areas have sparse, highly adapted, vegetation, e.g. cacti, scculents, and spiny shrubs. Hot deserts such as the Sahara have very high daytime temperatures. Cold deserts such as the Gobi and the northern Californian desert have very low winter temperatures.”
How many, besides me, understood that?
I wouldn’t expect the definition of a true desert (hot cold, arid or semiarid) to have included properties that some other types of desert would have.
And quite possibly Sydney’s call sign needs to be upgraded from Halo to The Calamity
(with a the before it because she is singularly calamitious if she has a good idea ™)
The Calamitous Halo
Calamity Pain-in-the-Neck
i think Halo is still perfectly fine, if we reference a certain video game series made by Bungie and originally marketed for the Xbox; considering what Halos in that universe are designed to do…
I guess that works, since “The Stampede” is already taken.
Maxi has medusa-hair :)
Still seems to be plenty of sand around for the guy to use, but maybe it’s a scale issue.
The bloggy part says that it is 10 km across, so depending on his movement speed getting more sand could take hours.
For those who are American and therefore eschew the metric system for unfathomable reasons (myself included), 10 km is about 6 1/4 miles. So the obsidian disc has a diameter of 6 1/4 miles. Since theyre near the center, sand is 3.625 miles away (5km). Might take him 3-4 min if he can move as fast as a car on the highway at normal speeds (60 mph).
Against Someone as fast and powerful as Maxima, 3-4 minutes is a lifetime.
Belly button, not a nipple…
well its defiantly an ouchie.
Hi boss,
Not sure whether you’ll be worried about this or not, but anyways.
Using Firefox to access the site, I get a half-assed ‘Protecting your privacy – [don’t agree] [agree]
at the bottom of the screen, with no clickl buttons. So I cant flip pages or anything.
Using Edge, no popup, the site works fine.
My workaround is to simply copy the URL back into FF, which takes seconds,
but I’m one of those picky shits, you know?
It could be my rig’s screwed, sure thing. But it’s the only site I have a prob with.
Regards,
Eli…
Sounds like ad malware or maybe a FF plugin? Nothing like that in the page source, and never seen it on Chrome.
Using FireFox as well, and I’m not seeing what you describe. One thing to maybe check is if your scaling (aka zoom) is at 100%? Some pages go a bit wonky when it’s set higher.
GO GO PEW PEW ORB!
Just put a small, perfectly black, rectangular item at the bottom of it, with
a perfect ratio to 9 9’s of 3 to 2 to 1, and then make no press releases of any kind.
It’ll drive the conspiracist theory web-sites crazy.
Eli…
Or a metallic triangular prism.
The Scoville Anomaly?
Although I will admit that The Scoville Thermal Power Plant proposed elsewhere does have a nice ring to it.
Did…… did Sydney just GLASS A FORIGN NATION WITH WHOM AMERICA HAS A “complicated” RELATIONSHIP WITH?!?!?!
I mean, Dues will probably smooth things over quite a bit (just to improve his personal relationship with ARC and the US government.) But this might be considered a “Crime Against Humanity” depending on how much this affect the climate and Global Climate Change…………. Is the glass going to retain heat or reflect it? Either might be bad on this large of scale.
humanity costantly do worst and no one have be put oin a trial for crime against humanity.
if that splat of glass reflect heat may be good againt the global temperature rise, if not also pretty easy to dismantle and reuse.
Going with a 5km radius if Sydney melted the sand 5cms deep she unleashed the heat energy of 13 Hiroshima bombs. It wasn’t instantaneous so probably not a big pressure wave like a real nuke but any roads or patches of farmland in that circle are toast.
Probably only needs to fuse the top few milimetres, what am I saying, sand grains, to stop the sand being available for long enough to get one over on mr. Sandstorm here. Occasional deeper “roots” to anchor maybe.
Doesn’t look like there was much farmland. Mostly sand (but oddly not dune-ish) and some greenish haze that may or may not be grass. So, pasture? The grass’ll be toast, of course. Can’t have been fully covering because then there’d be no loose sand to use and fuse to block use. But then we’re back at the question of whither the dunes.
Considering you can literally see the curve of the horizon on that last panel, I think the scale comes across just fine
I like how Sydney’s handiwork has smoke rising from it for pretty much the entire surface area. Heat advisory for the surroundings is most definitely more than an advisory.
Max: Sydney! Did you just glass half a continent!?
Sydney: oooh, nice Halo 3 ref Max! think the Covenant would be jealous?
Max: …
Ohhhhhh, that’s. That is. Oh boy.
I wonder what that will do to the local temperature range.
Dave….
Random question, but have you been faffing about with your site lately? The top bar thingy is missing, there’s several ‘dead’ images in the side and footer bars, and random elements on display in the Cast page where I’m fairly sure there were none before. And yes, this is without any ad or tracker blockers.
On Firefox 98 atm, perhaps in version 103 is different?
The website’s still functional, but aesthetic issues like this might point to bigger ones.
I have been bad about it. I think fixing the header will either take 15 minutes or 6 hours, so I haven’t put the time in yet. The cast page needs to be redone entirely. Some wordpress update broke both but the cast page hasn’t gotten updated since the site went up. Whenever I think about working on it after I’ve finished the comic work for the week, I wind up working on the vote incentive instead, because I have a commitment there, and also I get to draw boobs. But I do need to fix the header and clean up the missing images at least. :/
“there is a shortage of perfect breasts in this world, it would be a shame to ruin yours” – when drawing boobs is job one
You could start with the small stuff. At least one image looks like a http/https issue. Another looks like a missing www.
The cast page shows closing div tags with a parameter (closing tags don’t take parameters) enclosed in a pair of p-for-paragraph opening-and-closing tags (closing tags need to be at the same nesting level as their matched opening tags). Fixing that even if you plan to replace the cast page entirely might help prevent the same mistake later on.
maxima, i know you a shocked, BUT WHY DID YOU REMOVE YOUR MASK? you are asking for “habooob man” to pull a “Taylor Hebert” with sand instead of bugs.
Now I’m just imagining Taylor “Empress Of Escalation” Hebert with Sydney’s orbs. Depending on how that would go, the glassing shown here may well be small potatoes in comparison to the smoldering remains of New England.
Question. Not a criticism, just a question.
Why is the glass purple when both sydney and maxima have superheated it in two completely different regions? I am assuming because there are either manganese or amethyst particulates in the sand but it’s weird that it has happened two separate times in two separate places when exposed to extreme heat when it’s not typical of most sand. Or am I wrong or missing something, or is it not actually purple and only is colored that way for artistic license reasons?
it does feed the idea both the symbiote and the orbs are Nth tech relics, so may have some quintessence field or symmetron field or whatever super quantum field radiation signature that gives a specific discoloration.
I’m not sure that you’re responding to what I asked.
That the sand glassing purple from both Maxima and Halo regardless of mineral composition could be due to an element within the beams themselves. Meaning Halo and Maxima could be using a related extra dimensional energy source and therefore their power sources Maxima’s geode symbiote and Halo’s orbs may have the same source manufacturer.
I know those are words you’re writing but I’m not familiar with the combination thereof.
Just kidding. But I have no idea why you’re using words like ‘symbiote.’ It was totally throwing me off.
So your theory is both Maxima’s plasma beams and Sydney’s PPO blast derive their energy from the same source. Okay… plausible idea.
Although I do now realize it’s purple obsidian, not purple glass. Still confused though, but it does look cool and your theory could fit as an answer.
the geode goop that got onto and into Maxima is being hypothesized to be a living organism that bonded with Maxima to grant her superpowers (Venom, Guyver, Witchblade, etc…) concept. As well as the theory both it and the orbs might have been left behind by the same or related sources.
so yes, if Maxima’s beams by default turn material into a purple crystal when melted and resolidifies (see the training course before the tank demonstration of Maxima doing this to a block Sidney was behind).
and Sidney’s heat blast beam does the same thing,
there may be a component to their beams doing this and therefor may be related in what sort of extra dimensional source they are drawing energy from.
“the geode goop that got onto and into Maxima is being hypothesized to be a living organism that bonded with Maxima to grant her superpowers”
No – what you’re referring to is that Deus said there were some microbes on the geode which were possibly not of terrestrial origin. There was nothing said that the ‘geode water’ itself was a symbiote, or a parasite, or alive at all.
And yes, I recall the obsidian forming around the block as well now that you’ve reminded me. Apparently it might be standard for Maxima’s beams and Sydney’s beams as you have surmised. Either that, or DaveB might assume all sand, when superheated to the extent that Maxima and Sydney can do, become purple obsidian? I dunno, but your theory makes some more sense.
Good post :)
you got the reasoning behind the energy correct.
however you misunderstand the reasoning for calling the geode water a symbiote. It isn’t actually based on anything stated, implied, or established within this comic its self. Just something the people here in the comments have called it, due to the trope.
99% of the time in comics, anime, manga, animated series, whatever. When a person gets their powers by bonding to something, that spreads and infiltrates their body (rather than being called upon as an external object, so not Super Sentai or Magical girls), like the examples I gave with Venom, Witchblade, and Guyver being the best known possibly; it tends to be a living thing, even if artificially altered or created. Heck even Earth Final Conflict had these bio-guns connected to the user’s arm that were revealed to be an alien race that these other aliens had enslaved and altered for their use.
in other words its just a common trope, that if you seen some weird alien goop or liquid splash on someone, and it spreads over them and grants them superpowers it is usually a fair bet the stuff was alive in some way.
“however you misunderstand the reasoning for calling the geode water a symbiote. It isn’t actually based on anything stated, implied, or established within this comic its self. Just something the people here in the comments have called it, due to the trope”
So basically you’re saying you made up the reasoning? That sounds more like fanfic than anything else. I’m trying to figure stuff that could be discerned from what we’ve actually seen in the comic.
Also I don’t think it’s 99% of the time. :)
The cosmic rays that bombarded the Fantastic Four was not a ‘symbiote.’
Neither is gamma radiation that created the hulk.
The spider that bit Peter Parker did not start working in concert with Peter Parker when he became spider-man. In some instances, the spider is stepped on almost immediately afterwards, in fact.
The yellow sun of Earth that gives superman his powers is not a symbiote either, even though the yellow solar radiation infiltrates every cell of a Kryptonian’s body via the kryptonian biomatrix.
All we know from the webcomic is Maxima got doused with some geode water from a space meteorite, and it either reacted with human DNA to give her powers, or Maxima already had the potential to be a super and that geode water changed how she is a super and mega-augmented it. I’m guessing the former, because of how Maxima described her body before the geode as ‘more like a beanpole’ – but the latter is possible because Deus alluded that there was someting particular about Maxima that reacted with the geode water, and he tends to know things he shouldn’t know.
All I do know is what is in the webcomic – and it doesnt say that the geode water was ‘alive.’ Although it’s POSSIBLE since Deus did detect some microbes of non-terrestrial origin in the geode. So maybe you’re right. But it would need to incorporate those microbes if we have a theory based on more than fan fiction speculation. The microbes are something at least stated in the comic itself.
However…. I think if the microbes gave powers, and there were microbes on the geode for Deus to detect in the first place, he would possibly be able to recreate Maxima’s powers in others, or in himself, unless there was something particular about Maxima in the first place where those microbes (or geode water) would not have done the same thing to anyone else.
Furthermore wether the substance in the geode is alive like Venom or not is irrelevant to the point here that whatever the substance is that gives the impression it bonded to spread through her altering her biology is, might have a synthetic origin given how it was found and might have chosen it’s wielder (possible not confirmed) could hypothetically given the power level and things like the odd specific crystalization mean the concept that has floated in the comments that it also may be Nth tech may hold some validity.
Wait… why is Sydney saying “ooh! hot! hot!” in the last panel? I don’t think the PPO(.) actually generates or absorbs heat when it’s used… considering that the beam starts outside of her shield radius? Far more likely she’s pantomiming being burnt by the orb, performing for the (nonexistent) crowd.
And before anyone objects, the period is a microdot containing my credentials.
she is being silly
She is pretending it’s hot because she is Sydney :)
the HR learning about that later: “Yeah, Sydney did something Sydney again…”