Grrl Power #1082 – Incoming!
You may be asking, Dave, what the hell is that accent? It’s a fair question. It started off as this guy from Robocop 2. But then my brain thought, “But what about King Willie from Predator 2?” That guy didn’t just steal the scene, he was arguably the best part of the movie. Note the lack of automatic subtitles in that clip, cause the voice to CC algorithm was too busy cracking up at Willie. “About the one that’s doing all the killing, I am.” CC Algo was like “I need whatever that dude is smoking.” Honestly, Predator 2 was a pretty solid movie. Yes, it had one or two really dumb scenes, but the movie did supply all the AvP games with 90% of the Predator’s arsenal.
Anyway, some people in the comments were under the impression that Max’s top speed was Mach 5, but I’ve no idea where that came from. Sydney’s top speed was Mach 4, until she bought her speed upgrade on the Alari homeworld. When she got back, she tried to tease Max about maybe being the fastest one of the team. To paraphrase Max’s response, “Hmm. Maybe.”
I’m not sure what her actual travel time is going to be though. She doesn’t have her Stratosphere travel kit on her. Max can actually hold her breath for a very long time – what she’s actually doing is using her power pool internally to break up the carbon dioxide and eek out some more O2 time, but it’s not efficient, and takes more and more power the longer she does it. So Max will have to watch out for commercial air traffic at times, though she knows especially around cities and costal regions she can climb a dozen kilometers for a few minutes.
The August Vote Incentive is still up!
Okay, so here’s the deal. I haven’t finished the new one, but I have a fairly good reason. My mom is having some health issues, so I’ve driven down to spend a week with my parents to help out and give my dad a bit of a break. I took all my drawing stuff with me so I can work in the meantime, but it’s a little tricky to work on certain types of art. I’m set up in the open very plan kitchen/living room so I’m close by if needed.
Everyone knows that anyone who can draw has definitely drawn naked boobs. Doesn’t matter if the artist is a tweenage girl, a gay guy… okay maybe not a 5 year old, but anyone 3 seconds after puberty has started has drawn boobs. We all understand this. However, there’s a big difference between intellectually understanding this, and me airbrushing areola detail zoomed in on my 27″ screen ten feet from my mom. So there will be a nudie vote incentive this month, but unfortunately, it will be another week. Also unfortunate that it’s not themed something serendipitous like “The Blue Ball Special.” Not sure what that incentive would look like. Cora could do the blue boob special. Maybe Sciona. Hmm, do I need more blue women in the comic? Oh! Detla! Yes…
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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Well, with Max’s super speed, even traveling at Mach 30+ she can casually dodge airliners. Her wake isn’t going to be too significant against a 747, nor is her hypersonic boom for being at 5 to 10 thousand feet (she is human sized after all)
Sky is really big, planes are comparatively very small, and Max is moving really fast, quite likely without a transponder civ airtraffic would be able to pick up. If she’s not up on her visual scanning…
https://youtu.be/iLWxy-SQ6hY?t=410
Civilian Traffic over the oceans is strictly controlled to a few tracks, like the North Atlantic Organised Track System. Lowest at 29k ft/8.8k km.
Max can just fly under them. Or given the huge hole of tracks in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, fly right through the middle.
Deus Conquered Mozambique land around the Zambezi River. So we have a rough idea of her starting point.
I am not sure where Archon HQ is, but as I read the Flight Tracker there is maybe 5 planes she might intersect with, until he she hits the US east coast. That includes all the airspace over African land, which is probably already passed.
I believe Galtyn is near the south end of Lake Malawi, and Archon HQ is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Basically, set a bearing of 290 degrees and go 9000 miles straight ahead.
Considering the team flew there in a couple of hours, and Max’s return trip is going to be in a few minutes…
It’s also possible that Max could be receiving flight information over her own radio, at least on the frequencies being used by airports in the general area. If she’s flying high enough that the only air traffic is international & inter-continental, she can easily avoid their flight paths altogether.
If she’s flying lower, then it’s harder because flights that remain more local (lower altitude) flight paths, then the airports use lots of different frequencies. To get unobstructed take-off/landing instructions, airports will instruct pilots to switch to a frequency that’s completely open; each plane gets assigned to its own individual frequency.
In essence, when Max fast-flies high she can use information from her radio but when fast-flying lower she’s really gotta watch where she’s going.
In any case, when Max is under a certain altitude threshold she’ll avoid going super-sonic unless it’s really an emergency…She can shatter windows & eardrums if she does.
When she was showing Sydney around she showed air traffic control on her wrist comp thing.
I think..
Worth noting that the faster you go over Mach 1, the narrower your shock cone, and the *quieter* the sonic boom, as well as the less destructive – unless you happen to be *in* the atmospheric wake when it collapses. So super, even hyper sonic speeds at low altitude might not be a problem, especially when it’s over the water but well under any flight corridors. She just needs to avoid hitting around mach 23 or so, which is about how fast space craft are when they undergo reentry.
Mach 30 would probably break windows several miles away. She’d also have to intentionally fly in a curve down because it’s just shy of escape velocity.
There would have to be a point of diminishing returns in-atmosphere. As she went faster and faster, more of power pool would have to be diverted to resisting heat (and eventually ionization/plasma effects). Also you’d want to bank a little extra “deflector shield” capacity in case of bird strike/bird deletion.
“bird deletion”
“Albatross to the face at Mach 30” would be a very ironic way for Max to be taken off the board.
it would also be an albatrocity
Definitely a term for the worse.
all of that is asuming she has no control of the shape of the shield around her …. if she can form a limited shape in flight she can reduce her drag to about nothing and keep the incidental foul from turning into fireballs or splatterballs …….
… What shield? Maxi has never been mentioned to have a shield around her, unless you mean the one around her cells that gives her the protection from her own blasts
Its been mentioned both in comic and by DaveB that Maxima has a type of armor/shield around her tgat at least partially protects her clothes in addition to her skin. It was mentioned both during the restaurant fight and in the aftermath of the super mannekiller explosion (plus that Hiro does NOT have a shield that helps to protect his clothes as well).
Mach 30 is about the speed of the Apollo capsules returning from the Moon. Even in the near-vacuum of the upper atmosphere where Apollo aerobraked, you’d get a plasma trail hundreds of miles long. In the lower atmosphere, I wouldn’t be worried about a sonic boom breaking windows, I’d be worried about radiant heat starting fires.
There’s a reason I took to calling NASA’s Space Shuttles” as hypersonic gliders
In DC comics, when traveling at ludicrous speed for long distances, Superman actually leaves the atmosphere and then descends to his target to prevent collateral damage.
Superman handles vacuums better than Maxima though. She can’t really do that.
her cross section would be pretty small to create a major sonic boom at any speed short of turning the air to plasma though… and that technically wouldnt be a sonic boom.
When I was in Basic, I got assigned to working the pit under the WWI-era long-range rifle targets. Even the .223 (5.56 mm) bullets made sonic booms (more like sonic pops) and was also under the flight path of some 105mm artillery far enough away from the actual howitzers that the firing sounded like distant thunder, and their sonic booms were detectable as different from the discharge noise, and preceded the discharge noise by a few seconds.
Should have got Sydney to fly her back.
Why? Sydney’s top speed is still slower than Maxi’s max
Not to forget, she’s still on clean-up duty
Where are you getting that from?
There is literally nothing in the comic to say that sydney’s top speed, after coming back from alari, is slower than Maxima. And in fact there is dialog by Maxima that implies that sydneys top speed is now FASTER than Maxima.
The better reason for Sydney to stay here is 1) She’s still a relatively new recruit, even though she graduated, and 2) she’d needed here for fire suppression (assuming she told Maxima about her new power use for the atm-orb (TM) (I like the person who said Atmo-sphere, that was so much better).
Plus Anvil and Dabbler will need SOMEONE here to ferry them back to the USA after Maxima takes care of what’s happening at HQ, since she does not know whether/if the others have already handled everything or how long it’ll be until she can get back.
I’m not convinced Dabbler doesn’t have a way to get back on her own. That said, I’m not sure Anvil would want to travel via Dabbler’s path, as I suspect it wouldn’t stay within the axes Anvil’s familiar with. It possibly could visit other worlds and some of them might be notably different in one way or another that would give Anvil pause.
But Anvil definitely needs a way back and she shouldn’t be forced to rely on Deus.
Pretty sure she could hop a military transport or have Archon buy her a plane ticket.
For a military transport to come pick them up, they’d need to get permission from Deus. Unless they want to break international law or start a war (or at the very least, ruin a potential very important US trading partner if Deus was to decide to go to another nation for the same deals he’s making with the US). They already had permission for Maxima, Sydney, Anvil and Dabbler to be there as part of Deus’s formal invitation to Maxima. Not an invitation for a military transport to come in.
And while Deus would likely allow it (he wants the deal with the US as well, and has a thing for Maxima), I think Maxima prefers to minimize how much she needs to get permission from Deus.
Great points. I was thinking there must be a US base nearby, given that Deus is a military supplier who has to make deliveries – but that doesn’t mean he ever receives them, at least not in Galatyn.
If I’m not mistaken, Max’s response was ‘maybe’. In some circles, that translates to ‘actually, no, but I don’t feel like bursting your bubble right now.’ Other times, that could mean that Max’s top speed is also about mach 16, so she couldn’t really tell who was faster without actually having a race she didn’t want to bother with.
Of course, from what Dave said in the author comment, it sounds like Max’s top speed is a bit complicated owing to the fact she still has to breathe. So, it could be Max was admitting that in some circumstances, Sydney’s now faster, but in others, she’s still faster.
“If I’m not mistaken, Max’s response was ‘maybe’. ”
It reads more like ‘probably, but I don’t want to say it necessarily because I’m used to being the best at everything’ Which Sydney sort of hangs a lampshade on in the following panel.
“Other times, that could mean that Max’s top speed is also about mach 16, so she couldn’t really tell who was faster without actually having a race she didn’t want to bother with.”
Again I really don’t see where there’s anything to show that so far, but it’s definitely way above Mach 4. The fact that Maxima implied that Sydney might become faster than her seemed like foreshadowing to me. At least in regards to flight speed – Maxima likely still is faster in non-flight speed speed, as shown from what was happening with the time slowdown ray when she’s cranking up her speed to its max possible speed to the exclusion of all other powers.’ Also when Maxima disarmed the explosive in mid-shot flight during the Council attack. But it’s different than raw flight speed.
To quote Batman to Superman, when Wonder Woman said she was probably faster than him in a fight, and Superman said “Um… hello, Superspeed?”
Batman: “Who is faster, Bruce Lee or Usain Bolt?”
Speed can be used for different things. In a fist fight, Bruce Lee will hit faster than Usain Bolt. In a race, Usain Bolt would leave Bruce Lee in the dust.
“Of course, from what Dave said in the author comment, it sounds like Max’s top speed is a bit complicated owing to the fact she still has to breathe”
This is also true. Good point there. Sydney’s bubble gives a massive advantage, especially since it doesnt seem to generate any friction either, and she has no ceiling unlike Maxima.
“So, it could be Max was admitting that in some circumstances, Sydney’s now faster, but in others, she’s still faster.”
It didn’t seem to read that way to me but I can understand people who might see it that way.
Did you not read the Author’s Blurb on this very page? o_O
Still doesn’t change the fact that Sydney is on clean-up
I did read the blurb. Where does it say that Maxima’s faster than Sydney. It literally implies the opposite.
The only thing DaveB really says in the blurb is that Maxima’s top speed is significantly higher than Mach 5. Which is something I already assumed. But saying her speed is higher than Mach 5 is a LOT different than saying her speed is like… Mach 24. OR anywhere close to higher than Mach 16, in fact. If anything, it’s a tacit admission that once Sydney got her 5th pip, she WOULD be faster than Maxima.
Which means that it was likely not ridiculously higher because I could see Maxima just responding with ‘Possible, but probably not’ then reminding Sydney about how powerful she is like she said with the plasma blast during the testing of her shield. Maxima is not exactly humble when it comes to her powers. :)
And no, that’s not meaning I don’t like her. I like when superheroes have character flaws. One of Maxima’s major character flaws is that she’s a bit full of herself (usually with good reason) where her powers are concerned. It reminds me a little of M from X-Factor Investigations/Generation X/X-Men who is likewise really arrogant and full of herself about her powers and intelligence, but annoyingly for REALLY GOOD REASONS, because Monet (M) really is incredibly powerful and usually can back up her bragging and attitude. It’s one of the things I love about the rivalry between Jubilee and M. And it’s one of the things I do like about Maxima as well.
Should’ve gotten Sydney to Gate her to 100km above ARC HQ
She is leaving behind a massive low pressure wake full of ionized particles? That raises some questions on what her propulsion is. We know it lacks localized gravity, although a gravity bubble collapsing behind her might do something like this.
Ionized particles are a matter of energy transfer. At great enough speed, simple collisions with air molecules should do the trick.
No idea about her method of propulsion. Best guess? She uses whatever planet is handy (or the universe at large) as remote reaction mass via superhero magic interaction. Did I mention that I’m not good at guessing fictitious physics?
Superman-style flight implies being pulledthrough the air by your fists. This could be an Alcubierre-type warp field. It has advantages, as the forward edge of the warp bubble would deflect or destroy objects in your flight path.
Max’s main issue right now is she’s going fast enough to create a plasma shock front (re-entry speeds) so she probably can’t really see where she’s going, has no radio contact due to ionization, and as Dave mentioned, can’t really breath even though she’s not that high because the air immediately around her is several thousand degrees.
Sorry, no. Alcubierre type warp fields produce no thrust of any sort. They merely multiply acceleration. If you’re producing 0 acceleration with out the warp drive, well 0 times any number…
“a method for changing the geometry of space by creating a wave that would cause the fabric of space ahead of a spacecraft to contract and the space behind it to expand. The ship would then ride this wave inside a region of flat space, known as a warp bubble, and would not move within this bubble but instead be carried along as the region itself moves due to the actions of the drive.”
pretty sure that means that no thrust is needed for a Alcubierre drive, as what it is doing it moving the space around the craft while keeping a static centre so the craft isn’t destroyed by expanding and contracting spacetime
Superman flies through telekinesis, same as his super-strength and touchteke. He just wills himself to go that fast. Whether or not his invulnerability provides super-slickness and control of his wake is a different issue, but since he doesn’t destroy stuff around him when at superspeed, much like the flash, there’s likely an air control aspect built into it, holding the air steady as he passes through/by so as not to generate heat and shockwaves.
Superman doesnt fly by being pulled by his fist. Kryptonians fly because of the Kryptonian biomatrix, which creates a type of telekinetic bubble around each and every cell in the body, and also extends a few centimeters beyond their skin. The biomatrix also negates many forces exerted on the body if infused with enough light and radiation of a certain wavelength, which is why they are stronger under a yellow or blue or white star, weaker under an orange star, and effectively without power beyond their normal muscle power under a red star. Sone side effects if the biomatrix being full of yellow solar radiation includes heat vision (which uses the most power), freeze breath (which uses the second most power) and flight/unconsciously telekinetic resistence to gravity (third most power used). Thats why under a red sun, those are the first three powers to gi while the solar reserves in the body are used up (like when superman was caught by braniac and put in the bottle city of kandor – strength goes last, after invulnerability). It’s why, when Cadmus cloned Superman to make Kon-El, but were not able to fully duplicate the biomatrix effect without creating a Bizarro version as the genetics broke down, they used a mux of human abd kryptonian DNA and gave him tactile telekinesis instead to ‘simulate’ the biomatrix (Dr Sivana did manage to duplicate the biomatrix when he cloned Power Girl to make Divine, though). It’s also why kryptonians can hover without moving, instead of having to fly forward, like (for example) Volcana, Cannonball, or Thor.
And that is who I think that you are actually thinking of. Thor. In older comics up until the 70s, 80s, and I think 90s, thor flew by throwing his hammer and not letting go, letting mjolnir ‘pull’ him through the air. Makes no sense in physics but mjolnir (and the uru it is made of) is magic… so screw physics :).
“Superman doesnt fly by being pulled by his fist.”
That’s been a joke in the comics community for, oh… well, several decades, at this point. Why does Superman fly with his fists out like that? Because his fists are what pull him along, of course!
It’s laughing at the style they use to draw him. Please don’t take stuff like that seriously.
Supe’s swimmer pose actually does make sense though (in atmosphere at least). The outstretched fist(s) acts as an aerospike, which reduces overall drag and causes the primary shockwave to form just in front of his fist, instead of directly on his face. So more efficient and more comfortable.
That aerospike response actually does make a lot of sense, especially if Superman doesnt want bugs of whatever hitting into his face as he flies (I’m assuming he isnt actually uncomfortable with the primary shockwave or drag on his face, since he and Supergirl have taken nuclear explosions to the face without flinching. Or to a lesser degree, taken a bullet hitting his eye and flattening without a problem :)
Only for someone as tough as Superman or otherwise very durable.
Saw an engineering thing once regarding jet packs and flight, for a human that pose puts too much pressure on the vertebrae at high speeds and can cause permanent damage over time. Its actually better to fly at a slight lean forward in an almost upright standing pose, the human body doesn’t have much a cross section to begin with for wind resistance. So yeah Magneto and Dr Doom have better flight posture for non-invincible character than Iron-man…then again Iron-man’s suit uses palm and foot sole thrusters so unless he’s got handwavy magical science in real life he would be all sorts of screwing up his palms, feet, wrists, ankles, shoulders, hip joints, you want your flight to lift you up from center mass. although easing forward in leaning flight can be done with both upper back and back of the heels *glider board*, just not the straight up centered right inside the palms and arches of the feet.
Oh okay. My bad. I thought you were serious, because that IS how Thor legitimately has flown for most of his comic lifetime :)
You cereally believe Thor just throws his toy out of the pram but keeps hold of it and lets it pull him along?
It is the canon reason, specifically stated in the comics and by Stan Lee himself for Thor’s ability to fly for at least 30+ years … so yes.
Pander is right. Thor couldn’t fly originally, this is where that twirl he gives his hammer before he takes off came from. He spun his hammer and then threw it while holding onto and was dragged through the air.
Later on to hover in one place he would spin his hammer above him and make a cyclone/helicopter effect.
after that they decided *screw it* and let him fly normal. But the spin thing was such a trademark of this version of Thor that they kept it.
And we never disclose the real depth a submarine can dive to.
In Predator 2, Calvin Lockhart was doing his bad, exaggerated version of his native Bahamian accent. Even people from the Caribbean laugh at Bahamians’ accents. I waa offended untilI realized Lockhart was born there.
Why ? if something exists then it can be portrayed.
This “I’m offended” schtick has gone too far
Nobody is apparently allowed to say anything, even if it concerns themselves, without someone saying they’re ‘offended’ by it.
Well I’m offended by that !
In the words of Stephen Fry…
“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”
the exaggeration of a culture in a potentially negative light is the possible offence there
like saying the Americans are just all uneducated gun toting hicks, or the French having no backbone, or the Chinese all being like there government
offence on a personal level is just complaint, offence on a cultural level is wanting the history books to be right(modern media is a form of history)
I decided a long time ago, the best response is always…
“I find your politically correct affectations offensive. Please cease and desist in that behaviour.”
Turn it back on them, or just ignore them. :P
When most of the people I grew up with who share my skin tone say they’re offended about what the history books are saying, they mean they want the history books to contain the same lies they’re fed by their pastors.
Not everyone wants the truth. Not everyone can handle the truth. But I feel like it should be up for each of us to determine if we can handle the truth, rather than have someone else make that decision for us.
Meanwhile, everything they’ve been told about the Irish is absolutely true.
We all fink like drish and drop at the fight of a hat. *grin*
And yet people whine about dark skinned elves
Better question-
Is there ANYTHING people do not whine about?
I think they likely are complaining more because it goes against canon, not because of racism. They’d also complain if the hobbits were tall and they complain that female dwarves dont have beards, because Tolkien described all elves as being fair skinned, and all dwarves, including female dwarves, as having beards (that was also mentioned in the movie by Gimli). I think they even complained that some of the dwarves in the Hobbit movie did not have beards. Tolkien was apparently VERY specific about his descriptions and even wrote the Simillarion (Sp?) because of how overly specific he wanted to be about the worldbuilding).
Ps – Im not a lord of the rings fangirl, I just am familiar with the critiques of the netflix tv show.
I know nothing about the show or the controversy around it except that it exists… but here’s what I’m imagining.
Thank you so much for showing me that video. It was hilarious.
Also from what I’ve been hearing about the tv show, the writers for it know about as much about Tolkien’s LotR world as Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller’s characters in that skit :) Although I think it’s also largely because they were not able to get the legal rights to the Simillarion (sp?) which is sort of necessary for the time period in which they were setting the show. Pretty sure they never read it either from all the complaints I’ve heard.
I tried to watch an episode myself but it was really boring to me and I didnt get through one episode. But I’m not a LotR fan (unlike Maxima) so probably not the target audience.
Spoken like someone who has not been a constant target of prejudice in their daily life.
Or subject to systemic bias in society.
But I suppose that isn’t surprising. Those who feel inconvenienced by requests for better behavior, greater conscientiousness, or simple justice frequently fall back on punching down, telling everyone else to accommodate their bigotry, or calling them hypersensitive wimps.
Poor guys. Nobody understands how hard they have it, huh?
‘And lo, I saw a odd cloud in the sky that heralded the coming of PAIN!!!!!’
-Maxima 35 verse 6.
I’d read that bible. Or bibble.
In truth, you were reading it just before you decided to look at the comments…
Only because time is an illusion.
As are pants.
Addressing the tough issues.
This is probably the only time we will see Papa, but I love him already and want to see more of him even if it’s only in bit parts like this.
You did it again, Dave. ;p
Still wish we could get cameo scenes of side characters and scenes like this as the vote incentives or even a SFW Patreon tier, rather than Yet Another Pinup of Max.
The problem with that is it means a significant portion of the audience wouldn’t be able to discuss the comic on the same footing, because they would not have access to the same information. It doesn’t matter if they don’t see some pinup that doesn’t contribute to the story.
On the other hand, many people don’t really seem to pay attention to the details anyway, and ask questions about things that have already been addressed, sometimes repeatedly, in the comic. But I’d hate for the quality of discussion to suffer any more by information being locked behind a paywall.
Agreed. I was thinking more throwaway jokes or behind-the-scenes stuff that doesn’t really have any bearing on the main story. Not characters we’ll ever see or interact with again, but a quick slice-of-life about how Archon’s mere existence is rippling through people’s lives.
Like maybe a check-in on the conspiracy couple from the Times Square battle, where they are about to (or just have) confessed their true nature. Or conservative parents trying to manage a teenager who recently gained teleportation powers and has chosen Harem as a role model.
So say we all.
Papa is the french for daddy , so it’s more a descriptive than an name.
And yes in Senegal french is the official langage..
We already know he’s seen this before… Execute flashback sequence.
We know he fishes between two key locations. He might comment on various air travel situations.
MAKE WAY FOR THE PAIN TRAIN!!!!
Choo choo
That guy really does know his clouds, doesn’t he?
Fishermen and Farmers. They’ve got the weather eye.
And bikers.
Pretty sure the villains are going to find out how POed Max is going to be.
That punchline made me snort. Good thing I wasn’t drinking
This comic makes me think about what must be happening in DC all the times when Superman or someone else needs to go high speed from one location to another.
That raises the question, can Maxima affect the weather in a meaningful way on purpose?
Or make the world spin the otherway to turn back time…
Superman travelled backwards in time, so as the camera was staying contemporaneous with him — new use for the word ‘contemporaneous’ — it showed the point of view at earlier and earlier moments, meaning the earth appeared to be rotating backwards. It wasn’t. You were just watching time run backwards, like playing a cassette tape in reverse. Yes, that means the producers of the film got something subtle — right.
Actually making the world turn the other way would kill everyone on it if you did it as fast as that scene depicted. But, as George Phillies replied, something else was going on there.
Just saying, so you know. You probably don’t feel like you’re moving about a thousand miles an hour, but depending on your latitude, you might be. I mean, if you only pay attention to our rotational speed. If you pay attention to our orbital speed, you’re moving 67,000 mph (107000 km/h). Looking at still other frames of reference, we could probably find one where you’re moving near the speed of light. (Of course, that’s not a frame of reference we could *get* to, for obvious reasons. But there’s a near infinite number of them like that.)
“moving 67,000 mph (107000 km/h)”
I forget what th speed of LIGHT is, what portion of said speed is that❓
Only 0.01% of c. Safe rule of thumb that anything still being measured “per hour” without scientific notation isn’t anywhere close.
I think the speed of light determines which frames of reference are possible, so we should be surrounded by a bubble of speed of light frames of reference, exactly up to and including the speed of light times some amount of time but not one iota beyond that.
Though in this case we would have to define a frame of reference as a potential interaction, which means other factors will reduce the maximum distance. Maybe the mass of the interacting objects, the medium in between, and the energy they have? Though really any human definition of interaction here is actually multiple interaction steps, and the distance gets reduced during each step by response delays.
From Wikipedia:
The speed of light c is exactly equal to 299,792,458 metres per second (approximately 300,000 kilometres per second; 186,000 miles per second; 671 million miles per hour)
So 67 000 mph is a bit more than one third.
You’ve gotten a bit confused there, perhaps understandably, because you’ve compared 67,000 miles per hour with the miles per *second* value.
67,000 mph is approximately 0.01% (1/10,000) the speed of light.
Best answer to give for fictional fliers is that they travel at the speed of plot.
Basically, if they need to get there on time, they either will or they won’t, depending on which makes for a better story.
Or, as someone else noted, since they only do so for emergencies, they are flying at the speed of plight.
So say we all.
The interesting question would be how much time has passed since Maxima taking off and this scene. It does not seem much, but there is not real indication (there only is a two hour delay between Dakar and Maputo, so the ambient lighting gives little hint) and we are talking a distance of 7000 km ~ 4350 miles air-line distance. If the time passed actually is what it appears to be, we probably are better off calcutating Maximas top flight speed in fractions of C rather than Mach.
AND calculating in the collateral damage from the shockwaves of approaching the speed of light in an atmosphere as dense as Earth’s low enough for a human form to be visible at all.
Is she flying low enough to be visible? Or are they only able to see the wake she’s leaving behind? Assuming she’s flying at a dozen kilometers like Dave said, she wouldn’t be visible. But if she’s flying fast enough to be useful in Archon’s incident, her wake certainly would be.
Well, they can see what is causing the light trail. They probably cannot make out Max herself, but they can see the energy that is surrounding her.
I don’t know specifics for how far away damage will occur, but I DO know I want to be NOWHERE close to something moving that fast. In atmosphere anyway. In space, it is another story entirely because there is very little to be moved, blasted or burnt by a fast moving object’s passage. It can and does happen, but very rarely since space is so big.
It might actually be faster for her to go up to where there is little atmosphere and go back down, depending on how wind resistance slows her down.
Besides which, how fast can she get there? Even at Mach 10, it’s going to take her (estimate) half an hour to get where she’s going. The event may well be over then.
“Even at Mach 10, it’s going to take her (estimate) half an hour to get where she’s going.”
Yeah, I was coming to point out the same kind of thing.
Mach 10 is very roughly 7,000 miles and hour. She’s 5-ish thousand miles away (since the place is fictional, it’s hard to know exactly).
To get there in under 10 minutes would require very roughly Mach 40.
Or, you know, asking Sydney to open a portal… that would take less than minute. Even if they had to exit the atmosphere first (which that silly scene with Neil Degrasse Tyson implied was not required) and then come back down from orbit afterwards, that’s still MUCH faster.
Eek: an exclamation, usually of surprise
Eke: (verb) manage to support oneself or make a living with difficulty.
The base meaning of “eke” is “and”, or “additionally.” So “eke out” means “add a little bit to”, i.e. stretch out or make to go further.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnCTOiw66aw
Nothing like some good toe-tappin’ accordion music for fishing..
Eyyyyyy!
Senegal, where 18% of my ancestors come from!
I second Papa needing to pop up here and there, offering the wisdom only a Papa knows.
Maybe he’s has some sort of clairvoyance!
Max is doing at least Mach 24 given the bubble of hyperheated gas and particles around her being similar to that of space shuttles when they reenter from outer space. It begs the question then what shielding tech might she have to protect her clothing from conflagrating from atmospheric friction or is she moving so fast that she has an accumulated bubble that inadvertantly prevents that from happening.
No tech – whatever superpower protects her against outside harm also gives some level of protection field close to her skin. It was explained at some point.
No. 24 is slower than she’s decided to go. I am very sure she decided to crank maximum flight speed. We’re looking at 78 easily. Possibly even breaking into the hundred.
I cant figure out where you are getting mach 24 from.
It’s not based on anything from what I am seeing.
What is more likely is that her top speed is close-ish to, but very likely not greater than, mach 16. Otherwise she wouldnt agree with Sydney that she might now be the fastest flier. Her ego would not want her to just say yes, sydney is now faster, but she is honest enough to allude to that she is no longer the fastest flier. My educated guess is Maxina’s top speed, based on that logic actually shown in the comic, is between mach 10 and mach 15.5, depending on how much her ego is willing to stretch the word ‘perhaps’ :)
First of all, I said at least Mach 24 meaning that it is possibly the slowest speed she is going on the page. So she could and more than likely is going faster than Mach 24.
The way I figured out Mach 24 is the flaming ‘bubble’ around her being similar to that of a space shuttle during reentry. They come in at around 17,500 mph or around Mach 24.
Just in advance Iam not trying to be rude. Excuse my adversarial tone please…
Where are you getting Mach 24 from though? I dont see any basis for that guess at all.
Also the shuttle during reentry is going from a vacuum to a heavy atmosphere over a very short window of time, which causes alot more heat than just flying fast through the lower atmosphere generates. To recap, maxima is not in reentry. Shes in the lower atmosphere the entire time. So I am not sure why you are comparing her speed to that of a shuttle reentering the earth’s atmosphere. While sheis definitely going faster than mach 4, theres no reason to think she is approaching or exceeding sydney’s mach 16, which let her go halfway around a planet in 2 panels. Including having to evade multiple beyond-nuclear level explosions aimed at her.
well he is right.
I can’t help but wonder if this is exactly what whoever set up the attack on the base was hoping for. Unless they’re dumb enough to think that going after Archon on their home turf is a good idea, they may be trying to see just how quickly Maxima can really travel to prepare for her response time for a later operation.
Also I love that people in some parts of the world already recognize signs of Maxima’s presence and know what’s going down, she’s clearly built up a hell of a reputation in parts of the world even before Archon’s reveal to the public.
Sydney’s probably only faster with the Aetherium Causways. cuz teleporting beats even appreciable fractions of C
Indeed, provided that Sindey managed to figure out the controls properly yet.
If she’s going Mach 5+ Maxima would need to have some of her power set for her shields, especially if she’s flying in the denser lower atmosphere. Otherwise she’s be heating up like a meteor. The SR-71 Blackbird wasn’t quite that fast and flew in the much thinner upper atmosphere and it still heated up enough in flight that the aircraft expanded in size dramatically and needed special Mylar computer tapes and specially made fuel that wouldn’t spontaneously combust.
That level may be her default shielding effect that encompasses her clothing.
2 hours flight time for Mach 10.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/point_to_point.pdf
Since Max has no fuel consumption issues and no heating issues, she would just fly sub-orbital as DARPA planned for.
I always liked the first line of Colm Meany in “The Englishman that went up a Hill but came down a Mountain”…
In Predator 2, Calvin Lockhart was doing his bad, exaggerated version of his native Bahamian accent. Even people from the Caribbean laugh at Bahamians’ accents. I waa offended untilI realized Lockhart was born there.
Those swirls happen around airplanes because of their wings. In a nutshell – the wing pushes air down, but because it has a finite length, the wing tip causes vortexes (vortices?). Since max lifts herself, she shouldn’t leave those.
Also, people asking about air-traffic: commercial airplanes travel above the weather. At around 25,000 feet there is an “inversion”, and for… reasons, the weather cannot travel above that. Since Max is punching holes in clouds, she’s obviously lower than that. As such, no air traffic enroute should be in danger. She is potentially endangering take offs/landings, and non-commercial flights, but those are _much_ easier to avoid.
I’ve flown through/around storms enroute to Brazil and back in the 70s that went well above the natural inversion layer. The thunderheads went up near 44k and all traffic that could avoided them. Their cloud to cloud light shoes were amazing to a 7 yr old. Everyone else seemed bent on prayer for some reason.
Chapter 1082, verse 8!
When Maxima clicks “ground stop” on her phone they have 5 minutes before she’s taking the right of way in the air. Clearly she broke Mach 78. Only question is by how much?
Max may not be using aerodynamics to give her lift, but that doesn’t mean she passes through the air without having any effect on it. The only things I’ve seen in our atmosphere that moved as fast as Max is right now are a meteor and the space shuttle, and I don’t know exactly how fast relative to those Max is moving. The fact that she’s tiny in comparison and not shedding mass makes those experiences a bit less relevant than they’d otherwise be, but I’d still expect some kind of visible air disturbance.
I’ve been on a commercial flight cruising at 25,000 feet and saw cumulonimbus clouds that started way below where our plane was and extended way above where our plane was. Wikipedia says they can go all the way up to 52,000 feet (16,000 m). Those look like cumulonimbus clouds, so it’s reasonable for them to go up pretty high. Dave said she’s flying around 12,000 m up, so not above *all* clouds, just most of them.
Why do I hear Mark Henry’s theme?
Now THAT’S…..Comedy! Too Funny.
Last panel: Let’s face it, he’s not wrong.
Yeah. This isn’t getting it for me.
Mach 20, the speed that destroyed Space Shuttle Columbia, needs more prep and tools.
Breathing, shielding and navigation are issues that aren’t being addressed.
Maybe she’s flying *and* super-speeding so that subjectively she’s taking her time.
So, shielding has been covered, repeatedly. Max has a force field as part of her powers that extends to her clothing. Breathing, covered in the author’s notes for this very page. Navigation… slightly less clear. Max explained Sydney’s navigational gear as if it were something she herself had a version of, but I don’t believe she’s ever been depicted using such a thing.
Far be it from me to further expand Max’s power set, but I’m not sure that it makes much sense that her 02 reclamation from C02 takes progressively more power as she does it.
As stated, she’s using her energy to “somehow” breakup CO2 to O2. Presumably this takes x amount of energy. Metabolic processes happen, and then she’d need x amount of energy again to break up the same amount of CO2?
It might be that she’d be getting a build up of carbon and other metabolic waste products wherever she’s running this process internally? Given that she apparently has molecule level internal control, that seems solvable? It also raises the question as to what other internal chemical reactions she can pull off.
“Build up of carbon and other metabolic waste” seems basically right. Her body needs the oxygen to do lots of other chemical things, so even with perfect CO2 -> C + O2 conversion she’s going to have carbon buildup. But she’d also be diverting O2 out of the cycle, so the gases in her lungs/bloodstream will become exponentially less oxygen dense as she continues to push herself. It’s going to take increasingly more energy to extract the O2, and eventually she’d run out completely.
But once we assume internal molecular control she could do other things with the buildup and waste products to “get them out of the way”. She might, for instance, turn them back into carbohydrates. Given that her energy output likely vastly exceeds her energy consumption, even assuming some sort of frictional loss, it seems like Max could survive nearly indefinitely just by manipulating her own blood chemistry.
Final Cloud looks like Reuben Wu’s paitings, very nice
I was going to say Thanos right before the Snap, myself.
Regarding Max’s top flight speed, while I don’t have the leisure to read back through the comic to try and find references supporting Max’s top flight speed, there is an obvious previous practical example of her speed being lower than Dave is suggesting here – the Sciona chase and subsequent destruction of the bridge. In that scenario, Max was tailing Sciona as she flew, but then sent an energy blast at her when she happened to approach a bridge. The blast was deflected and lead to the destruction of the bridge.
But if Max had been much faster than Sciona, she could simply have closed the distance and ended the chase in effectively no time (Sciona was in clear visual range and even the addition of a single extra multiple of the speed of sound would have closed such a gap with distressing alacrity). Sciona was mentioned as being super-sonic, but did not appear to be going anywhere near as fast as Max is here. So either Max was sandbagging previously, or Sciona was moving with a great deal more pep than had been displayed.
Max was originally just tailing her from a radar contact report, intending to track her back to her base. She only engaged after Sciona spotted the tail and veered towards a bridge (and therefore civilians). After a quick detour to monkey-patch the bridge, she caught up in moments without warning.
But that’s the point. Max could, apparently, have engaged instantly without what would turn out to be significant danger to civilians.
Sciona was already within close range of the bridge when Max realized she was about to target it. At that point a flight plan like the one we see here would’ve trashed the bridge (and nearby civilians) as thoroughly as whatever Sciona had planned.
Whatever speed Sciona was traveling at was demonstrably not enough to cause damage to the surrounding area just by dint of her travel, since, you know… she didn’t cause the damage.
Max only had to travel relatively faster than that to actually stop Sciona, which she could (from this comic) apparently do without any real effort on her part. There would have been no need to go “all out” as she seems to be doing here, and yet she did not.
Point taken, but the relative distances (Max much farther back) with Sciona only 2-3 seconds from the bridge would mean Max had to travel say 10x faster (or more) to intervene with a safe margin of error. If Sciona was going ‘only’ Mach 0.25 (190 mph), that puts Max at Mach 2.5, right past the bridge deck. Which is far slower than what we see on this page but still enough to blow in the glass on all the cars on the bridge at close range.
Given only a second or two to react, and not anticipating the sudden redirection (a la fear vomit) or being in super-speed mode already, she decided to take a shot rather than engage hand-to-hand. Obviously didn’t turn out well but typically better to engage an enemy at range if you have the capability, so probably still the right call.
I’d challenge that assumption about relative distances. Look at the image again. Sciona is actually fairly large in the panel. I’m not an expert on the matter by any means, but by taking a look at pictures taken from various landmarks(whose heights are known) I’d guess that she’s probably not more than 1000 feet away from Max (possibly less). If Max increased her relative speed to Sciona by 200 mph, she’d cross the distance in 3 seconds. Given that she can accelerate seemingly instantly and apparently go much faster than that, and also apparently always has a passive amount of super speed (even when she’s not actively juicing it with her pool), the second or two to react limitation doesn’t seem like a concern.
Consider also that while the shockwave of her passage might have been an issue (even though again, Sciona was demonstrably not traveling fast enough for that to be the case), the risks involved in using one of her blasts are potentially much more concerning (just hitting the water might have caused tremendous damage to the bridge because of the conversion of water to steam).
Sciona veered to the bridge when she spotted Max coming up fast to distract her. Actually it was Max’s deflected blast, not Sciona, that damaged the bridge. She was just as shocked as Max was when it happened. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-614-stratotail/ and 615
Sciona was already far away, moving at super-sonic speeds. Max caught up to her. Then, after she pauses to patch up the bridge, she very violently catches up to her again. So it’s been established that Max can very much exceed Sciona’s flight speed.
Right, but Max’s tactics in that engagement don’t make a lot of sense if she’s that much faster than Sciona. There was no need to, for example, use an energy blast when she could have (if you’ll excuse an attempt at humor) DBZ-battle style teleported behind her and punched her.
Why would Max ever use energy blasts if she can super-speed into melee? Presumably because she expects the damage type to be more effective than physical impact. Ranged attacks are generally safer for the attacker, as well as faster, but those are not generally concerns for Max. And there is a much higher chance of missing and hitting something else.
Max made a choice. In retrospect, it was a mistake. But if characters always make the right choices, even when they don’t have the requisite knowledge of the outcomes, that would make for a less interesting story.
You ask a perfectly valid question, and not one I think we’ve ever been given an answer to.
Consider the consequences if she’d just straight up missed and her projectile hit the water below. Given what we’ve seen her projectiles do, and what that projectile in fact did do to the bridge, the resulting spontaneous conversion of water to steam might have destroyed the bridge entirely. There are a lot of unknowns there, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the use of one her blasts is the responsible option if civilians are anywhere nearby.
Unfortunately, the answer is most likely that it’s just how the author wanted the story to play out. It shows off some of Max’s flaws, it allows for the other characters to contribute and interact with each other in amusing ways that develop their relationships. But ideally, a story makes sense front to back, as a logical progression of events, instead of characters taking the path necessary to reach a predetermined destination.
But along those same lines, I feel that’s what people are asking the characters to do when they complain about them making poor decisions based on the outcome, which they could not have known about prior to making the decision.
Seeing as I know you have MEGS (DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes RPG) stats for the characters, and I know Max has Power Reserve that can feed into multiple stats and powers including Flight, I’m sure she’s stupid fast when she dumps the reserve into it. We just don’t know what Max’s base Flight or Power Reserve APs are.
Not for nothing – but Sydney ‘Gating’ her to the Crossroads and back to Archon would have taken <10 seconds…
as was pointed out numerous times last chapter, Sydney goes to and from the same point on Earth, there’s been no proof that she can return to an earlier jump point. Every time she’s used it, she’s come back to the same point she left from.
So she can’t bring Max back to the HQ, she’d just return to Africa where she left from.
Maybe an upgrade would allow her to return to older jump points she sets herself.
The comic is silent on the point.
So she may or may not be able to.
wait… nope. iirc, the system automatically tracks the points that she booms from. So she very likely can return to various spots on earth that she has used.
It’s not been shown that HER jump points are locked in. Thus my caveat ‘points she sets herself.’
There’s no indication she’s able to set a point as yet, she’s always returned to the point of departure the two times she’s used it from Earth.
And as a caveat, if she could do so, she’s not dumb; she games and would know the value of the ability to teleport and get around travel times. Unless Dave wants to spring that on us as a surprise, there’s no reason to think she can set recall points like a video game as yet, because you just know she’d celebrate if she could.
My theory is that the bookmarks are per-planet, since she is still a very basic user, and they auto-update to the last point on that planet. Once she gets a couple more points on the flyball she might have more fine-grained control – after all there are 4 more nodes on that line of the skill tree, plus another that looks like the start of a new branch. What kind of upgrade is past aetherium causeway?! O_o
Maybe future updates will allow her to make portals within the same planet. Sort of like Illyana from X-Men. Or Opal from… well… Grrlpower.
Divination from clouds, reminds me of a certain the last airbender episode.
Clearly, Maxima’s flight field pulls most of the air out of the way, puts most of it back correctly, and collects air whose atoms are given room temperature speed and 1 atmosphere pressure, so there is a light trail, the flight field twists local clouds into knots, but the sonic boom is prevented.
boom was previous page.
‘weird dopplery thunder’ is the rolling sonic boom of Mach+ speeds. She’s just outrunning the sound and its layered instead of a single boom.