Grrl Power #1088 – Password is “drowssap”
Back to the regular coloring for now. I’m probably going to experiment with it over the next few pages. I think the flat cell colors were nice, but would have benefitted from at least one highlights pass. I’ll find the right balance. Honestly I’d like a little more time to work on novels and other things, and I basically haven’t written anything since I released Tamer: Enhancer 2. I’ve dabbled with the opening scene for TE3 and I like how it’s started to come together, but by dabbled, I mean less than 1000 words so far.
So this was their ultimate goal. The List. As stated way early in the comic, the government doesn’t require supers to join the military or anything, but it does keep a list of them. Ostensibly, this is in case they need someone who can put out forest fires with their mind, or grant waterbreathing to everyone in a 333 yard range, or can fix all the cracks in the Hoover Dam by running his hands over them. There are probably a few people in the government who like having that list “just in case,” but this isn’t an X-Men comic. Yes, realistically there would be a lot of fear and suspicion around the existence of supers, but that’s just because people suck in general, and I’ll hint at that stuff on occasion, but the comic is mostly told from Sydney’s point of view (obviously not always, as this page demonstrates) but she’s mostly shielded from that sort of stuff due to efforts from Arianna and others. Also racism is a pretty boring reason to be a shitty person, and I like my villains to be a little bit deeper than that. I don’t feel like I can ignore it entirely as a motivation, because then it feels like I’m just denying an essential aspect of humanity? I don’t know. We’ll see.
Anyway. Yeah, so this list isn’t made public. Of course there are plenty of private citizens who have super powers who aren’t shy about letting the world know about it on social media, but there are a lot who want to keep it to themselves for various reasons. Some just want to live life as a normal person, and some realize they have some sort of power that could be exploited by bad people.
This list exists in more than just Archon HQ, but only in places like a basement somewhere in the Pentagon, Quantico, Langley, etc. But the actual FBI headquarters probably doesn’t have air vents you can drive a golf cart through, so a blitzkrieg on Archon HQ when the big guns are out was determined to have the best chance of success.
I’m not sure what ecokinesis is. Like, general environmental powers? Or maybe a superpower relating to the economy? Either way it sound OP.
Rammstein was awesome. We were in the third row, but that was off to the side, not in the “splash zone” pit right in front of the stage. I’d guess we were… 150 feet from the stage? I wore earplugs the whole time because my family has a history of hearing loss, and I want to be able to hear things when I’m 90. Honestly I forgot they were in most of the time. It was still sternum rattlingly loud. I kept thinking, “This man needs CPR, quick, get him to a Rammstein concert!” Watching people in the audience and guessing what they were on was at least as fun as the show. There was a woman in the front row who hung on to the railing and headbanged the whole time. I was like, “Hey, good for her for not getting a migraine from that.” I’m no expert on drugs, but at a minimum, I’d guess some amphetamines were involved. Four seats over was a guy with his head tilted back and his arms up in the air slowly dancing in a circle most of the concert. For him, I’d guess weed, a little ecstasy, and half a Xanax. Or, hell, I don’t know. Peyote and redbull? I am not a drug knower person.
Most everyone there was wearing black, because German Metal, but down in the stage pit, there was one woman with a very Barbie/Bimbo body – probably fake boobs, tiny waist, mid-back blonde hair, and she was wearing a latex pink mini dress and thigh high latex stiletto heels, and she spent a lot of time dancing around very sexily while her short-haired friend filmed her. I couldn’t help but think, “She definitely has an OnlyFans page, and her attractive if slightly more butch friend does all the technical stuff for her.” I pointed her out to my wife and she had the exact same thoughts, so I’m fairly confident my scenario is accurate.
The September Vote Incentive is up!
Thank you guys so much for your patience. I hope it was worth it. It took a lot of research online to find just the right references for this piece. Toil toil. :D
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Wait … is that the holy grail in the back of the safe, and they ignored it?
its probably one of the other grails….
it was Jesus’s prank dribble cup, the holey grail
that gaudy thing? Nah, that’s the chalice of incontinence, why its in the safe is because people kept swiping it as a prank pimp cup.
I think I know how they are going to track the baddies.
Remember how someone got their fingertip cut off?
Remember how there are multiple magic users in the group?
Who’s “goose” again? I’ve forgotten that name.
Guy who looks like Duke Nukem
Duke Nukem guy.
What if they try to get Halo’s list? Deciphering that would be amusing.
I misread that as echokinesis, the power to reflect back sound, possibly used also to reflect back energy. Seen it also used for general sound manipulating too.
But Ecokinesis, as in to all powers over the environment? Well seen that as Omnielemental or Omnielekinesis , so long as it’s not as far as particlekinesis, quantumkinesis, or reality manipulation. Kind of sounds like a category for elemental and other environment types like florakinetic and such as well.
Wasn’t that what Hiro used against that screechy bitch who blow out Jiggs’ ears? The echokinesis thing
I don’t remember, I don’t think that’s in his power set, he seems to be standard enhancements plus flight and durability all around the C or B class range. I’d have to look back at that page of the fight to see what he did.
I’m not sure if it was explained in full what kind of ability it was, but aside the more well known flying brick / superman lithe powerset it was shown he was able to absorb and send back the sonic waves shot at him by Breakpoint.
It’s even mentioned in the blurb below the page this is a separate ability.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-231-communicant/
okay, yeah that could be standard energy absorption and redirection like what Bishop and Sebastian Shaw from Marvel have. If we see him do this with other forms of energy that is. If it only applies to sound, although Echokinesis tends to also include things like absorbing specific words and projecting them back or from distant points. Or just used to describe reflecting anything *with or without absorbing it*
of course there is also Dazzler, whose power is sonic-photonic conversion, she absorbs sound but then converts it as projectiles into bursts of light and plasma.
Ecokinesis is basically Storm.
Storm is Atmokinesis, she controls the weather, the implication here is Ecokinesis/Envirokinesis controls ALL natural phenomena, the weather, earthquakes, fire, water, possibly also the local flora and fauna…which really seems you can take this term as either a category in which environmental powers are classified or by its self as the omni grab bag of all of them.
honestly I am seeing it more leaning towards a category like shapeshifting is a broad category of many different specific powers or energy manipulation, physiology enhanced, flight, -porters, etc…
So Storm.
Eco/Enviro- Kinesis, sub-category Atmokinesis
When I looked up ecokinosis it just said controllng the climate. Not controlling all natural phenomena…. which would basically control everything. Sounds overbroad to me.
Clinate alone is basically Storm. She has also controlled water though. Earthquakes are not the climate, nor is fire, nor are fauna and flora (or it would also mean controlling humans).
Although what you are describing is Captain Planet. :)
Then it needs a different name as eco is short for ecosystem, the ecology, not just the weather. That said no one source can be taken as definitive honestly, after all Marvel, DC, Top Cow, Dungeons and Dragons, etc…anyone with a skills, magic, set, can use terms with a basic comprehension and create their own guidelines for it….just so long as someone doesn’t go silly and claim Pyromancers control water *ignoring the etymology of the term entirely*.
But if that’s the concern then okay, Envirokinesis it is then for someone manipulating everything in nature, who isn’t just a full blown god.
I’m just telling you what I get when I google ‘ecokinesis.’
that’s okay, I argue with those people to. Especially the ones that will insist all fiction follows the same rules as one form of fiction (examples being people insisting mythical morphology obey D&D rules or elemental powers obey Avatar the Last Air Bender rules…to name two groups with a bad habit of imposing their rules on unrelated media), so long it is internally consistent and makes sense within the setting its not a problem.
But a lot of people like to use the same name for something in different ways in different series but may not notice what the etymology implies, which can be a knee jerk. Its like someone insisting Cryokinesis covers ALL stone if its cold because ice is technically a rock…ignoring the specific. or that related debate if Cryokinesis is a sub-set of Hydrokinesis, and if so then Magmakinesis should be a subset of Geokinesis/Petrakinesis (I actually had two people arguing this as there was also the Pyrokinesis argument mixed in that then assumed if we went that route that Hydrokinesis should be a hybrid of pyro and cryo…and getting upset because Magmakinesis was being stated to not be a hybrid of pyro and geo but only a subset of geo as fire *being a specific gas may be caused by magma/lava, but is not a component of it.
etc…
but that’s what happens when etymology, physics, and such get mixed into your metaphysical supers and magic setting and arguing that the symbolism crafted by gods doesn’t have to follow those rules but how they bound them….or not.
Did you ever watch or read The Pirates of Darkwater?
They call them “ecomancers.”
I have heard of that cartoon but never saw it :)
oh you should definitely hunt it down if you can and watch.
You’ll love the way it ends.
I’ll make sure to put it on my list! :)
fair warning I was being cheeky.
it is a good show, my first child hood crush (that wasn’t an anthropomorphic animal) fantasy adventures, the high seas…
but it is a show that just…stops. I hope someone makes a movie to finish it like they did 13 Ghost of Scooby Doo; but it is on the list of series that need a closure.
I have been to exactly one concert in my life, which was Halestorm, and everyone there was wearing black, with the exception of me, who was wearing a pink My Little Pony T-Shirt and red leather pants.
I was also very much in the minority, by being one of the few male presenting people there.
The warm-up band was a British punk band, whose name I sadly do not remember, but at the end of their set, the lead singer looked down at me (I was in the front row) and said: “The rest of you might be dressed as punks, but he is the only one here in the punk spirit.”
That was a pretty cool experience, but sadly I am not good with crowds, so I have yet to go to another concert.
Damn it is a small world, i just got back from a Halestorm concert today! I can 100 percent vouch for the fact that everyone was in black, including me. Though i still felt out of place because everyone else was wearing band shirts and i was…. very much not
I want to see more Goose in this comic! He’s really turning out to be something interesting. :)
I would like to see a Goose Arc.
Maybe him & Sydles stranded someplace where the orbs don’t have full utility, for whatever reason.
Him, Sydney, and Pixel, actually. I think that would be hilarious.
They would be stranded without food for 10 days, trying to survive. Clinging to life with sheer will. On the 10th day, they get rescued, barely alive.
On the flight back. Goose eats Sydney. Because he wanted to.
This is why letting the government make lists of people with X characteristic is a bad idea.
Making the list isn’t a bad idea, keeping it in a location that can be attacked and accessed is. It wouldn’t take a great brain to check at Archon first, it would of been better to have a fake one, maybe that way if used would help them to track the guys that stole it. Keeping a list of all known supers in that obvious of a location was just bad planning. They should of known something like this was up since they tried to grab Sydney and had Concretia’s body captive to force her to do their bidding. There was a pattern there I can’t believe they ignored it. Or did they? hmmmm…….
hmm, maybe they leaked the intel to the captives from the swam boat, leaked when the base would be down An A, and S and potential future Omega class (not that, that should be told to anyone) supers, and set it up so this fake list with a tracker inside could be stolen.
-that said their collars should have trackers in them now with an alert if damaged…as they didn’t apparently when Sidney was grabbed and that should have been raised as a potential solution to the situation.
the fact they even tried to grab some of the Archon supers is a major red flag as well as either they are overly confident in their sales pitch or have some means to control people *like a Purple Man scenario*
I think you are forgetting what Archon is dude. Like “Oh hon hon hon, you made the foolish mistake of storing the gold in fort knox, one of the most heavily guarded locations on the planet, so I knew where to look”.
Pretty much everyone at Archon is just a Super, but a high tier super with very good combat powers. It’s like storing a receipt surrounded by living super tanks.
Secondly “keeping it in a location that can be attacked”… so any location that exists? What qualifies as a location that can’t be attacked?
a location that can’t be attacked…The core of the Sun? (minor construction and maintenance issues here).
It is important to remember, that this list was made for some purpose, which means it needs to be accessible by authorized personel. So it cannot simply be hidden in some secret and remote location.
Someone’s going to make a list. What’s the best response, when preventing people from making a list in the first place isn’t an option? A friendly entity with a list might be helpful when faced with an enemy with a list.
Almost every social media app in existence is based around sorting people by characteristics. Then selling customized lists or access by characteristic. Facebook has roughly 2 billion daily users, that’s 6 times the population of the US. Governments making lists might have been a threat in the 1960s, but now it would just be redundant.
I mean…we already know that the tech firms happily turn customer data over to the Alphabet Agencies…
Good on you for the earplugs at the concert. I wear them at every loud concert, and anywhere else it’s noisy enough I’d have to yell to have a conversation with someone right next to me (like some bars).
For anyone who’d like to do the same, seek out earplugs labeled “musician’s plugs” or the like. They’re designed to drop the volume substantially but not significantly alter the balance over the various frequency bands. So the music sounds the same, just less loud. They cost a bit more than low-end earplugs, but not a lot more if you shop around (mine were $18), and they’re well worth it for the better sound quality.
Back in ’78 I did setup and ran the sound board for a fledgling band that didn’t last (of course) and we did several concerts (mostly block parties, restaurants, that sort of thing) and at 62 I have hearing loss mostly in my left ear which was next to the lead’s speaker. That and working for 15 yrs in a factory that was tested at 90 to 120 dbs. So yes ear plugs are a must! It’s a pity I love music but now it sounds tincan-ish like the very old transistor radios from the late ’60s, early ’70s.
I love the implication here that Goose was just roaming the halls with that bayonet minigun to hunt down the dupes because he doesn’t get enough time to use it normally. Just imagining him being so happy while also so horrendously destructive. Like a kid on Christmas.
“He’ll shoot your eye out!”
(apologies to Ralphie Parker)
It’s slightly odd that you’re calling it cel coloration. That’s animation terminology referring to traditional animation cels, there’s really nothing to connect it comic illustration. It’s not like animation invented outlines.
The last page looked like an old cartoon, from the pre-00’s
The power plug and what looks to be an ethernet port in the center of the floor — floor is raised so there can be a gap underneath for easy wire draw — is a truly fine bit of architectural thoughtful design.
And so we finally get to hear the name of the minimum with the bayonets on it, is called “The Auger”
Rather foreboding.
It is called “The Augur”, not “The Auger”.
Both make sense, though. An Auger is a kind of drill and the minigun drilled the Goon Squad copy quite well. An Augur was a kind of seer or scryer, who used animal entrails to foretell the future. Too bad, that the Goon Squad clones didn’t leave any…
Hey, anyone else notice that Sciona who was a main big bad is now inhabiting the dead body of the girl whose design was used as one of the speculative Olympic Speedster back in the Conference about ArcSwat and Supers?
It’s kind of freaky, cause if I recall the one girl called her El Scorpion or something?
……………………………………………………………….
But man does Hiro look like he got some minor injuries, while Zhang somehow got a Black Eye… Did the Telekinesis guy punch him while he was down?
You do not want to get an email from info@archon.mil in a few days:
Dear [First Name] [Surname],
Recently, Archon suffered a breach, during which personal or confidential information about you was potentially illegally accessed. As required by federal law, we are providing notice to you and other potentially affected individuals about the incident, and about tools you can use to protect yourself against possible identity theft or fraud. Although we are unaware of any actual misuse of your information at this time, it is important that you remain vigilant and report any misuse of your personal or confidential information as you become aware of them.
-If you see any person, person, or vehicles appearing with regularity and/or lingering in your vicinity that you wouldn’t normally see in your day to day business, please stay in a public space and contact Archon’s offices.
They will never guess that the password is CorrectHorseBatteryStaple
This. Is. Epicness!
Something that should be considered, these “Ascenders” could have in their employ a technpath/Tech Diver, or a Cypher-Psychic *AKA the cheating powers in Cyberpunk games* allowing them to access and override the safety measures of the device and possibly speed up the decryption process through electron path memory to undo the encryption. *yes that sound silly but if Hydropathy lets you see “the memory of water” and everything that has touched or be reflected in a pool or body of water then this isn’t any less screw physics and how stuff works*
all they need is one Doug Ramsey (Cypher) and his useless power to learn languages, and that code is toast inside an hour.
Wait, Archon doesn’t have backup of The List?
So they can’t do an anal-list to determine the most likely to get nabbed by Hooded Mask and keep an eye on them?
Its not that they dont have a copy of the list. Its that someone else now has a copy of the list as well.
That… wasn’t what was getting at
Obviously they still have to retrieve The List as quickly as possible, but it’s not like the people they were secretly monitoring can’t be protected
I am still convinced it’s a Rock Ridge play.
Does Goose have any superpowers or is he just memetically badass?
So far as we’ve been shown, he’s just a normal badass highly trained soldier.
How easily he was hauling around a large mini gun, I’d guess he is an enhanced physiology type, strength, durability, agility, speed, stamina, etc… Maybe as low as D class, which is original Captain America levels (training makes the difference but this class is in the lifting a few hundred pounds range and running for miles with little strain)
Like Jesse the Body in “Predator”
It is the unofficial action movie superpower (low enough to not have no call it super powers but clearly above what humans should be able to do and survive and such, like leaping twenty feet from a helicopter onto concrete or walking off and fighting despite taking three knives to the chest, surviving a shockwave from an explosion that should liquify your organs and other stuff Myth busters would talk about.
Why is Hiro apologizing to Anvil?
Three heavy hitters on the team were missing. Four went. He’s referring to Maxima, Halo, and Dabbler as the heavy hitters, apologizing to Anvil.
Wonder how many on The List don’t know they have powers…
And how many got added after touching skin with Vahriah?
Varia gets powers regardless of if the person she touches has powers or not, and the way it seems to work in this series it’s not clear if people can have such low class powers they could have them and not know it, seems Z and Nil power class is not present in Grrl Power. That said the parking lot fight had supers the government didn’t know about and implied there were likely more out there than they thought. So most of that list is likely private contractors, recruits, vigilantes, and criminals, and military combatants from other countries.
How long was it before Ren realized he had a power?
Or what about someone who is rilly rilly good at maths?
Or someone who can drink (and only drink) anything and survive? Or a similar power that only prevents them from dying (or maybe only under certain conditions)
Or the one whose power is that of a small (or not so small) explosion (can only be used once, naturally)?
Not every power is going to be ‘flashy’ or easily identifiable
That is my point, read the Z class and Nil class type powers, and that so far in THIS series those types of powers don’t seem to exist. Also remember Grrl Power supers get the also physical fitness and no body hair addition.
Varia’s power works on people with nil powers. It works on humans, non-humans, and supers. Most non humans have nil (ie, no) powers. Ariana has no powers and Varia’s power worked on her.
I know I was telling Gauticules that, just because she touches someone that doesn’t reveal if that person even has powers; so why would they be written down as a super.
On that note when I say Nil-powers in the context of having a power it means something like a trade off power, like they can breathe underwater *something a regular human can’t do* but they end up not able to breathe air. So Nil-power as they just traded one normal skill for something else. Although some could argue some Z class powers also qualify as these are powers you can have your whole life and never realize it, like being immune to all viruses, or immune to radiation (unless you are in a situation where it comes up you’d never know).
But Girrl Power provides hints at being a super, and everything we’ve seen so far has been pretty clear, the most subtle so far has been Ren, who with some training jumped his class up.
Actually on what I posted, I might be mixing up Nil with Null, although Null powers I usually see as those powers that hurt the user, but could also be trade off skills, so that may more sense than saying Nil for something like losing air breathing for water breathing.
Hooded Dick does know about hair dyes, right? Or that they come in colours other than douche-brown?
I knew sooner or later the geokinetic dude with a huge vault of gold was coming back. WRT to encryption, as they said the existence of highly advanced alien technology is a huge X-factor which may or may not speed things considerably. Even a detailed scan or clone of the drive that doesn’t trigger the self-destruct would be an incalculable boon.
If the drive has a functioning self destruct security against opening the case, that would also include hacking security.
Needing a long code on the shown keypad would make the power of available computers irrelevant.
Three strikes and you are out. Unless you have a way of duplicating the drive, localy reverting time or looking into the future.
But this would also make computing power irrelevant.
Hand the drive to Goon Squad and have them “dup” because since their gear disappeared WITH them, I wouldn’t be surprised if the drive doubles as well.
More copies of the drive mean more attacks are possible.