Grrl Power #1099 – Honey (with assorted precious gems) trap
As I was drawing this page my white guilt gland made me wonder if making an “African themed” team of superheroines was a tiny bit racist, but even as my “Hmm” gland was chewing on it, my “Duh” gland was like, “Captain America, DUH!” My conclusion being that if America gets to have a dude who wears the flag to fight supervillains and says stuff like “Thumbs up for democracy!” (I mean, he probably says stuff like that. I can’t cite a specific example off the top of my head.) then any country can have a jingoism incarnate. Granted as someone who isn’t a member of another country, I’m not going to be an expert on what their flag wearing hero should look like, but in a similar vein to the discussion from the prior page, as long as the design isn’t trying to be intentionally hurtful, it’s probably okay.
Not that you can get a great look at the whole pride here, except for… I dunno, let’s call her Tech Lioness there in the last panel, but basically the whole team is cat themed and have African looking accoutrements on their costumes. Also, I mean, I haven’t really heard anyone complaining about Black Panther or Wakanda, so I’m not going to worry about it. I just thought it was funny to worry about something like that when a character like Captain America exists. (Not to mention Super Patriot and U.S.Agent, Regular Patriot (Eli Bradley), and probably a half-dozen others)
Aaaaanyhoo. Dabbler’s plan is to wander around the Dakar market with seven million bucks worth of emeralds around her neck in order to draw out some supervillain interest. It seems likely to me that she’ll be fending off every thief within thirty miles before long though.
Those are real emeralds, BTW. As an interplanetary adventurer, Dabbler is, by the standards of Earth as well as many other places, quite wealthy. Of course, what constitutes wealth is going to vary from one society to another, but in any pre-post-scarcity society, scarcity is obviously going to be a factor. The fact that she’s gone on her share of Lara Croft Uncharted Diablo-esque Insanely Designed Mansion with Secret Underground Labyrinths Moonbase Demon Invasion Artifact Gotta Catch ‘Em All Spelunking Adventures and has found multiple treasure vaults over the years (and unlike Lara Croft, Dabbler has access to hammerspace tech, so she can walk out of those places with 100 times her body weight in treasure, instead of accidentally flooding the place with lava or whatever usually happens), means that Dabbler can actually sleep on a ridiculous pile of treasure like a dragon if she wants to. She just usually doesn’t have all that much she wants to spend money on here on Earth, so she doesn’t flaunt it often.
The October Vote Incentive is still up!
The November one is almost done, it shouldn’t be quite the same wait for it as the Blue Babes one. The nude version’s already done, just have to do several layers of clothing. :)
So I have enough “Blue Babes” to do a theme. Eventually I’ll be able to fill in the whole rainbow of my own characters. I did a rainbow lineup previously for those who hadn’t seen it. I’d love to revisit that one of these days.
Enjoy variant 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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Considering Dabbler has fabber/replicator tech, the valuable part of all that bling she’s blinging is the gold.
How does the economy work in a society in which the respective availabilities of commodities aren’t fixed?
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking here, since our own economy doesn’t have a fixed availability of commodities. There could be another definition to those words I’m blanking on right now though.
technically the availabilities of commodities are not fixed in this planet’s economy.
The two most fundamental limits of any economy are information and energy. From what we’ve seen & heard from the spacefaring folks in the comic this appears to hold true.
Maybe like the Orville where reputation is your currency?
My theory is that what REALLY happens in star trek is that earth runs on like 500 “ration” or “prestige” currencies, all of which float against each other, and are really difficult to convert between.
replicator rations, transporter credits, holodeck timeshares, MMO doubloons, promotion points, trust tokens…. hundreds of currencies, all used for different purposes, and all with silly policies making it difficult to convert them in any logical way.
Basically what you’re looking at in Star Trek, (The later series, not the original.) is an ideologically hidebound society being kept afloat by insanely productive tech created during their more open phase, such that they can adopt all sorts of economically destructive policies and not starve. But they’re not exactly progressing, either. They’re barely holding their own against surrounding alien societies by virtue of being enormously militarized.
I mean, military ‘spending” in the sense of resources dedicated specifically to the military, appears to be most of the Federation’s economy. Those capitol ships like the Enterprise are massive investments. Whole planets are dedicated to manufacturing antimatter to power them. The day to day lives you see occasionally displayed off ship are hardly much more advanced than the 20th century.
I have to ask: Where did you get all this?
Thanks to villian-of-the-week screenwriting, that’s pretty much the only thing Starfleet will ever get to be. The higher their tech advances, they come to the attention of ever more powerful enemies: the Borg, Q, the Dominion, species 8472 … none of whom could be bargained with. The only hope of long-term survival would be to militarize at maximum speed and pray for a lucky break or two.
That sounds like pretty much the opposite of what I know about Star Trek. Keep in mind that most of the various series are focused on Starfleet vessels because those are the ones that are traipsing around the universe having adventures. Even there, we see that Starfleet has plenty of funding going to research ships. Outside of ships we see places like DS9, a hub of commerce and travel with little to no militarization. Even most iterations of the Enterprise are armed exploration vessels, not warships. How do I know? Because they bring their spouses and kids along and they have arboretums, among other things.
As to multiple planets creating antimatter…sure, that’s what you’d expect. Antimatter is the densest energy storage medium that can exist, so undoubtedly all of the Federation’s technology runs on it, not just their ships.
We don’t see a lot of technology research on the shows because they’re about exploration and meeting new cultures, not about what’s going on at home. That said, if you check the fictional history of warp drive you’ll se that plenty of research is going into that one thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_Star_Trek#Fictional_history
As to “ideologically hidebound”…what? Where are you getting that from?
Going off of this, it is only “massive spending” if it is an appreciable fraction of the human resources. Here in reality, USA’s military spending is over 10% of government spending, but the indication from star trek is that star fleet isn’t even a proper military, they are just so overpowered that the weapons and equipment they include as an afterthought are still some of the most powerful weapons in the galaxy.
amusement park rides that go warp speed and individuals being able to acquire spacecrafts to be indiana jones in space doesn’t really agree with human society outside of starfleet not benefitting from the tech.
SISKO: (in uniform) Well, my father was a chef. He grew all his own vegetables. My brothers and I were sent out to the gardens every day.
VINOD: Most of the others, they’d only eaten replicated food before they got here. The flavour of the foods we prepare, quite a surprise to them.
SISKO: But not you?
VINOD: My mother would never let me eat replicated food.
This exchange pretty well indicates that replicator tech, for instance, is so ubiquitous that most people haven’t eaten non replicated food.
can you point to any instances of normal humans in the star trek universe being denied access to technological improvements common in starfleet?
The humans in the Ma’ki, from what I’ve seen in DS9 and TNG. :) At least prior to their being mostly wiped out by the Dominion.
Good example of humans outside of federation political control. Human independence factions who deny themselves technological improvement also exist, however I would consider both to be uncommon in the vastness of Federation Developed Territory. Transitional locations, disaster relief, denied until additional resources can be sent by incredibly fast warp ship. As well as war zones, where relief costs lives to get to.
Yeah. Plus the Federation had a ban on providing ANY technology to the Ma’ki, even for humanitarian aid. So every time I’ve ever seen the Ma’ki in the shows where they were eating food, EXCEPT for on Voyager when they were on a Federation ship as part of the crew, they tended to eat real food (usually Bajoran food, since the Bajoran provisional government did send them aid rather frequently).
I’m unable to find reference to a ban on the federation providing technology to the Maquis, and the replicator things seems to be that the cardassians were poisoning the replicators… somehow.
But yeah, probably should’ve been more specific in what I meant by humans being excluded. Could probably try to argue that I did clarify ‘normal’ humans, but continuing would be annoying. Still nothing that contradicts the point I was making of the economic system being nigh perfectly post scarcity (with exceptions for outer rim and few resources like antimatter).
I just want to say I feel like an idiot for continually spelling it Ma’ki instead of the proper spelling – Maquis. And I thank you for not pointing and laughing at me for that.
Was beginning to think the Ma’ki was some other group
Nah it was just me not forgetting how to spell their name.
Everyone uses quatloos or whuffee to keep score.
USA has been off the “value” scale since the early 70’s our currency is basically set by the stock markets around the world. And no I don’t know all the details just that Prez. Nixon took the USA off the “gold scale” back in the early 70’s as a way to fix the economy… Yeah like that worked really well…
Well, it was intended to fix the economy, but just not in the sense of “repairing”. More like fixing a race.
That is where supply and demand curves come in. As supply and demand adjust, the price changes until they balance again. When the demand for something is higher than the supply, the price rises. If this happens to many or even most products and services in an economy, then you get inflation. When the demand is lower than the supply, the price drops as competition drives down the price until demand and supply are in balance again. My earliest reference for this is Adam Smith’s On the Wealth of Nations (1774) , but it might have been defined earlier.
Nope, that’s the right reference. No one bothered to figure it out, thinking economics was a zero-sum game, before then.
The Gold standard doesn’t work because then Gold would have to be as valuable as literally EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD PUT TOGETHER. Gold is not that valuable. Gold is literally as expensive as it costs to get it out of the ground. When the world price goes higher than that cost, more gold mines start up, digging out gold which is more expensive to extract. When it falls, those mines are shut down.
Also, we got off the gold standard because other countries got off in first, and were abusing our staying on it to make millions of dollars off us for it, paying in their currency as it devalued, put getting paid in gold, which did not. Nixon had enough of it, and we went to a floating currency.
To reiterate, there isn’t enough gold in the world for people to be on a gold standard, unless you mined literally ALL the gold on the planet suddenly.
and the first time some genius developed a major productivity enhancement to the point that its used at scale, you’d have an issue because you would need even more gold or deflation which as awesome as it sounds, it makes inflation look like an old tired housecat.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-368-billions-of-bullions/
In this setting, doable.
“To reiterate, there isn’t enough gold in the world for people to be on a gold standard”
For this to be true, you would have to believe that the sales value of gold doesn’t go up as the demand goes up.
The entire reason why fictional currencies (sort of) work is because sales value and production value are not tightly linked, i.e. because the sales value can go up without the production value going up.
But if the sales value of gold goes too high, then it becomes unmanageable as a currency, because you have to break it into very tiny pieces.
And if you can break it into arbitrarily small pieces, it loses a lot of its value as a currency standard.
Pretty much all currencies are complete nonsense that only work because people agree that they do.
As soon as the value starts to escalate like that, they start mining more gold. More gold around means the price falls back down, or they start recycling more of it, because it becomes worthwhile to do so. If you’re earning $10k an ounce for gold, things like trying to sift it out of seawater start becoming viable.
The point stands that you’d need enough gold to represent the rest of the value of the world to have a true gold standard, and that isn’t going to happen. It just becomes a zero-sum currency that hampers growth and gets hoarded.
No. Red is absolutely correct. We had to get off the gold standard. There simply was not enough gold to cover the amount of currency in circulation, hence the use of fiat instead. A true gold standard is no longer a viable option with an economy as large as ours, with as much currency circulating as we have, let alone a world economy with international trade in place.
wait…. I’m seeing multiple people arguing against a gold standard, on the internet. Who suddenly has a goatee? there’s no way there is this much sense around here…or i’ve lived in Texas too long.
In Star Trek, the valuable commodities are threefold:
1. New information and highly refined skills (e.g. master chef, holosuite scenario writer, virtuoso musician, etc.) (scarce because rare and hard to acquire),
2. Non-replicator-friendly materials (dilithium crystals have a funny relationship with space, time, matter, and antimatter and cannot be replicated, latinum cannot be stably replicated (it’s pretty unstable when refined anyway, which is why it is pressed inside relatively worthless but non-oxidizing gold), Klingon gagh is best served live and thus impossible to replicate), and
3. Raw materials (valuable because they’re the source of everything that doesn’t fit into the other categories).
There’s one more :) – items that have an intrinsic numismatic value, like the baseball card that Jake wanted to get for his father, but needed MONEY to buy it, so guilted Nog into using for the auction to get the baseball card.
Sure, he could have used a replicator to make a copy of the baseball card, but it would not be the REAL baseball card with its own intrinsic history and numismatic value. It would not be worth what the real deal is worth. And that would require gold pressed latinum.
I really loved Quark and Nog and how they kept showing Starfleet the problem with not having currency based economics on a space station which was involved in many other alien races.
If not for currency-based economics, they would not have found out about the Dominion until it was way too late, and would have had no ‘in’ to getting any intelligence via the Ferengi’s dealings with the Karemma and the Dosi.
Jake had to resort to guilt-based extortion to get money (not very high-minded Starfleet philosophy there) in order to get Nog to go along with the auction idea.
Nog showed Chief O’Brien how bartering could do a LOT to get what you need, if you know how to sail wisely upon the Great Material Continuum. Although I feel this was basically a rehash of a MASH episode where Radar does something VERY similar. :)
Riker had to resort to trading his ‘Quark credits’ for information in one episode. One wonders what the heck Riker had been using to WIN at Dabo so often to get the credits, if humans are not currency-users. In a casino.
Quark has to explain to a vulcan (who I believe was in the Maquis) how economics can be used to promote peace, in a very logical way.
As cartoonishly stupid as the Ferengi could be, Quark and Nog’s characters did a lot to make them less utterly foolish and less of a joke species.
In most advanced alien civilizations, synthesizing gemstones is probably a trivial manufacturing challenge. Also, there are probably dimensions where demon rulers live in palaces carved from a single diamond or whatever.
We can already synthesize quite many gemstones on the cheap: diamonds, opals, rubies, emeralds (supposedly a bit more tricky but still perfectly doable) to name a few.
They are simply in the context of jewelry arbitrarily considered inferior to the point of being treated as fakes in order to jack up the prices artificially. In case of diamonds it is even crazier as the natural ones are common enough and mined in large enough quantities that the only reason for their high price is that De Beers buys them out and keeps locked away in order to maintain scarcity on the market.
Diamonds and such aren’t rare in the first place. Their high ‘value’ comes only because the cartels that run the diamond/gem industry restrict supply to artificially inflate the price of glorified glass. Only thing that’s really rare are the coloured gems. Diamonds are all over the fucking place. De Berr’s diamond cartel is one of the ones that have convinced morons that diamonds are expensive and that engagement rings should cost 3 months pay.
So that actually stopped being true a few decades ago. There really is a genuine shortage of diamonds these days, and we’re running out of likely places to look for new ones.
Yeah, nah, you can make diamonds in a lab
“Their high ‘value’ comes only because (snip) restrict supply”
Demand has something to do with it too, if there were no common cultural patterns that require a diamond, then their value, while still inflated by restricted supply, would be lower.
And that common cultural patterns requiring diamonds? A very aggressive and widespread marketing campaign by De Beers made that. Once it took roots in the US, it spread all over the world.
And supply will not be a problem for a very long time as most of the diamonds mined since 1940’s were stored away. That, and synthetic diamonds are cheap – just arbitrarily not used in jewelry.
I was about to say, synthesizing gemstones is ALREADY pretty trivial. You can buy 20 carats of perfect emerald (flawless, perfect uniform color, etc.) for under $1000 US if you’re willing to go with lab-grown.
Not when advanced mass-fab machines can kick out various gems like manure from a cow’s… hind end. I used to make “gems” out of a carbon arc torch with sand and baking soda. Looked really nice even though it was basically flawed glass. Fairly brittle too, worse than unleaded crystal. I was 12 y/o and selling trinkets and bait and tackle to tourists, was making a fair amount doing that until the marina closed.
Those advanced fab machines take a huge amount of energy. And produce things at an efficiency loss. That is acceptable in certain circumstances. (It’s kinda why they actually BUILDS their ships rather then giant replicators to piss them out) It also requires stock-matter to be fed into it to be modified into whatever the desired output is. A replicator doesn’t pull things out of the ether. There’s more, but I don’t have any of my technical manuals and compendiums at hand, they’re in storage.
Oh sure, like diamonds are just carbon, and amber is tree sap. All matter can be broken down into base elements, the trick is figuring out what they are.
And like my 3D printer, feed in the basic material(s) and you can make parts that once assembled, can make some pretty complicated items.
I’m working on a clock (for fun) that other than the screws, is entirely plastic. I just make different parts with a different plastic filament for the needed properties, the spring is a flexible plastic while the case is a hard, ridged type. Oh yeah the pendulum is metal (a 1 1/2 in. flat washer polished) as well plastic is too light. It’ll be a curo piece is all, won’t keep time very well.
Energy demands are not that much of an issue, the tech is advanced enough to off-set it. An example is the first combustion engines were thick, heavy and needed to be oiled and maintained constantly, few would spin up faster than 350 – 600 RPM on a good day, plus they wasted half the fuel out the stack or in blow-by the piston. Starting and stopping these engines was a task in itself! Today we can jump in our car and drive 300+ miles without doing anything other than stopping to refuel.
In Star Trek, the replicators, convert energy into matter.
Problem with that interpretation of the lore is that it would make any form of energy generation other than replicators obsolete.
Why would you need to generate anti-matter, when all you need to do to power your starship literally forever is to keep a cargo bay full of dirt, a shovel and a replicator?
The assumption that replicators either can’t or have trouble with synthesizing and/or transmuting elements is way, waaaaaay less lore breaking.
I’m writing a story set in a universe that has diamonds that are a worthless byproduct of semiconductor manufacturing. My MC in this universe “acquired” a planetary shuttle in exchange for a particular beer the aliens (human but raised off Earth as slaves until a few thousand years ago) couldn’t get quite right in their breweries. In exchange for continued deliveries he’s paid in diamond “dust” scraped off the inner surfaces of the reactors used for something during manufacturing, the most recent trip the diamonds were about a half carat each and he has tonlots of them that used to be usable abrasives in the 10-50 micron range, but something went wrong and instead of dust he’s got jewelry-quality diamonds but in very small sizes. This causes the MC some difficulty in explaining why he has such large amounts of diamonds of such high quality.
Dabbles also has the equivalent of replicators, so I would assume that simple blobs of crystal in rough shape instead of super refined geometry like computer parts.
What is with the shiny sparkly thing on the merchants face?
Is that reflection from the glass ornaments? or part of some spell effect?
Looks like the reflection of all of that blingbling
Oddly, since Dave B says that they are real, that’s the reflection of emeralds and gold, and there’s more of this reflection on the merchant’s décolletage. Since everything else about Dabbler that we can see there is an illusion, the neckace has no reason to be real instead of an illusion, and the ‘sparkly stuff on the merchant’ could also easily be an illusion.
Don’t forget Captain Britain and Captain Kangaroo
As you said, every nation would have at least one patriotic Super (hero or villain) if not an entire thematic group
I’m pretty sure Captain Kangaroo wasn’t supposed to be a super hero, nor a super villain, but rather a retired boat captain of some sort. The Kangaroo part referred to the giant pockets in his overcoat. Not that I’m old enough to remember the show, because I’m not. My parents just wouldn’t shut up about it.
I am old enough I watched it every Saturday, it’s how I found out about Rocky and Bullwinkle and so on. A bit like “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” on with cartoons rather than puppets, he did have a few of those and fewer “lessons” than MRN, mostly as fun for kids.
Mr Rogers did NOT adequately prepare me for the people in my neighborhood.
if he had, you would be very depressed. because, he would have taught you to be very cynical before you were 12. this would have made your teen years and your twenties awful.
I’m old enough to have watched the premier on a weekday morning. Yes I’m old get off my lawn kinda old.
For those of us who watched as a child Captain Kangaroo was a superhero, just not the caped kind.
Oh I agree, Dudly Doright, (mind rambling in the dusty halls of my mind), oh I can’t remember some of the early Hanna-Barbaria toons were on there plus the skits they did between toons. I loved it!
Was joke about the Kangaroo :P
Can’t wait for “Kapitän Deutschland”
No, seriously – some nations wouldn’t.
You might enjoy Ramstein’s videoclip Deutschland.
A better question would be to ask “Would this country *not* have a nationally themed superhero team” and then extrapolate from that why they would not. If there is no proper answer, then go for it. You are not Real World, you are Real-Adjacent, so no need to stick totally to modern political shite.
The Silver Age introduced a bevy of “Captain National”-themed Batman copies inspired by the original and later brought back by Grant Morrison during his Batman run.
They’re called the “Batmen of All Nations” and they included the following:
* Knight & Squire from England
* Man-of-Bats & Little Raven from the Sioux
* El Gaucho from Argentina
* The Ranger & Scout from Australia
* The Musketeer from France
* The Legionary from Italy
* Wingman from Sweden
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batmen_of_All_Nations?oldformat=true
Lab-grown emeralds are real emeralds, and you can get that many for less than two thousand dollars. You can get that many lab-grown sapphires for less than a thousand. Just in case you ever want to put together your own “rich dummy” outfit.
But the star sapphires take a week to properly crystallize, I’m told. So they probably go for a relative premium.
Seriously, synthesizing rubies and sapphires, (Same mineral, different impurities.) is science faire level technology these days.
19th century watches used synthetic rubies as friction-reducing bearings. High end watches also used diamonds as bearings.
Synthetic ones in the 1800s sounded early, but sure enough rubies were being synthesized as early as 1837.
Make sure your corundum has no minerals in it and you get transparent aluminum, aka star-ship windows in Star Trek. If there are mineral contaminants, then it is called ruby, if chromium is in the mix, or sapphire, when other minerals are in there.
I understand your concerns about the lioness team, because you as the artist are the one who has to deal with the consequences of your decisions, but I seriously hope that we all will soon get past this phase where we have to worry about being accused of racism whenever we depict any culture that’s different from ours in a stereotypical way. I am firmly with Avenue Q’s “Everyone’s a little bit racist” song on this one.
I agree, racism has become like child abuse, pedophiles, and Amber alerts, everyone wants to be a hero and on the prowl for offenders. The very first Amber alert was false just because a woman saw a child in the back of a suv/minivan at a store and called it in.
Maybe we shouldn’t lean on stereotypes so much, rather than hoping society will become more comfortable with lazy writing.
First? First!
I think that there are far too many supers in Senegal, based on statistics laid out early in the comic. Either that, or there’s distortion of reality because of the presence of the American-based supers.
It’s the Lionesses and the garçons d’or and who knows who else. Senegal has like 17 million people. I think the number of supers to be consistent with statistics laid out would be about 10-ish? And the Lionesses alone are already 5.
No, the early comic statistics were blown apart during the Restaurant Rumble
The statistics based on combat rated supers powered individuals? There may be single ability individuals who may have very little super fight capabilities.
More interesting if the Lionesses have more than just a feline theme, but somehow actually empowered by a feline form of magic. Supers classification does seem to be given in the under comic writer’s commentary. Archon includes some mystic, supers, aliens, advanced tech, incredibly skilled, why should we expect here to be different aside from the budget?
I think it’s already been established that their original estimate of the frequency of superpowers was a bit low. Apparently a lot of supers were in hiding until after that press conference.
Also remember Deus’s projection that within ten generation, half of earth will be supers.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1049-proposing-better-worlds/
There’s also the high probability that supers all over a country’s geography would tend to migrate to the larger population centers anyway; Bigger & better opportunities are available that way.
For example, in the Marvel universe, heroes may be found just about anywhere in the USA but in New York City you can barely turn a street corner without bumping into one…Proverbially speaking. In a nutshell, supers tend to do what most people would…If you have an exceptional talent or skill, you would tend to go where the best opportunities are available & that usually means large cities.
Unless someone has a “Better first in a village than second in Rome” way of thinking.
Or so many supers go to the big cities that all available positions are filled while they are highly sought after in smaller towns.
Still it does mean, most Marvel supers are in NY.
Supply and demand, a small town just doesn’t have that much use for a super or resources to spend on one. Anyone with powers would do more good for their hometown by moving to Metropolis for work for a few years and spending some of their ridiculous salary on community improvement and infrastructure.
You are forgetting something important: small town pride
Sure, most of them would leave to the nearest Big City, but a lot would return after they find there is just no place for them in the Big City, or with the Big City way of life
They may not all even be ‘Supers’ but trained operators using tech supplied but a Tech type super.
True, an airstrike is not subtle.
But it can be effective.
Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Once you start seeing “racism” you will see it in everything. It’s how it works. Same for “white guilt”.
I think it’s more that as a problem is successfully squashed on a larger scale, it’s easier to see it where it wasn’t seen before. Like in America, the biggest problems of racism have been pretty much solved, but there exists a lot of what were previously smaller problems but are now look much larger thanks to no longer being dwarfed by the kaiju like visage of Jim Crow. Not to say that those smaller problems like real estate red lining, racial profiling by police, juries needing lower standards of evidence than for whites, etc are problems that don’t need solving, because they do need solving.
Well, also when people are PAID to notice something, or to pretend to notice it, it will persist.
No one is harder to convince of a fact as someone whose paycheck depends on not understanding that fact.
… No dude. I don’t know a single company that would keep the person who looks for problems on board when they keep presenting false problems to waste resources on fixing. Problem finders keep their employment because they either a) find problems, or b) certify that there are no problems. A company being able to say that they did their due diligence looking for any potential problems is a huge thing. It’s why auditors exist, among other professions.
“No one is harder to convince of a fact as someone whose paycheck depends on not understanding that fact.”
That’s simply not true. Zealots are usually religious and/or ideological. They don’t care about money. There is only one subtype of zealot that would actually stick to their point longer for mere money and that is the capitalist zealot.
You know the type, the one who can see the free market ruin something they love permanently and still think that less restrictions on companies would make the problem go away and their loved thing magically re-appear.
The type that says they are all about competition, but doesn’t think there is anything wrong with a monopoly.
The type that on the one says that economies of scale are why countries with a free market are so rich, but they don’t seem to understand that economies of scale are why there is no competition. (You can’t win with a one-man company at the disadvantaged end of the economy of scale curve.)
He’s not a true capitalist or free market person if he endorses monopoly. Capitalism and free markets require competition to endure, and both are opposed to monopolies.
Now, an industrialist or businessman is all about monopolies, as they just want to make money. Monopolies were de riguer for nobles and merchant lords for a great deal of history, not to mention governments. No competition and charge what you like is very similar to taxes, and a lot harder to evade without smuggling and thus law-breaking.
He didn’t say endorsing monopoly, bu rather not seeing anything wrong with it. I know the type he’s talking about. They think that monopolies are only a problem if they’re created via government interference (and they identify being exposed to even the slightest regulation as qualifying government interference). They acknowledge that natural monopolies occur, but don’t view them as a problem because “they eventually break apart” which while generally true can take an indeterminate length of time to break apart, meanwhile said natural monopoly is still a massive problem to society and to the stated goal of capitalism being competition.
Thing is, the end goal of unfettered, unregulated capitalism is not competition. It’s the concentration of wealth and resources in the hands of as few people as possible. They claim that capitalism is the most efficient means of wealth distribution, but that isn’t efficient at all.
no, that’s not the end goal of capitalism. Capitalism is about the most efficient transfer of good and services to where they are needed, money becoming a part of the process.
Unfortunately, capitalism runs into human greed, and gets thrown off the tracks. Quite a few capitalists are all about accumulating the money for me, me, me. BUt that’s no more capitalism than China is Communism.
==RED
The profit motive is a part of the common definition to capitalism. Even a more technical economic definition still includes profit motive. You seem to be confusing capitalism, a specific economic and political system, with the general field of economics. Yeah, literally, you transplanted the definition of economics for capitalism, more specifically the definition of pareto efficiency.
For reference, modern day capitalism is *mostly* industrial capitalism, meaning private owners of the factories and such. To emphasize, previous system would be individual craftsmen who own their own forge or loom or whatnot, but modern day is select owners own the factory where the laborers then work. The owners derive profit from owning the capital, the laborers derive profit from working. But then because that dynamic is hugely skewed in favor of the capital owner, the capitalist (being able to decide who works how long and usually for what wage), is where you get the “boss makes a dollar, I make a dime”. Capitalism, because it is a system about owning capital.
I say mostly because it is constantly branching into derivative versions. Venture capitalism, system about starting and owning new ventures, deriving profit from spinning them up and selling them (e.g. how the creators of paypal made bank), is one you may have heard of. Most predominant of the current derivatives is shareholder capitalism, where the name of the game is owning shares.
The “intended goals” of capitalism, as claimed by its advocates, have little to do with the inevitable consequences of the systems they propose.
Well, they technically have everything to do with it, but, yeah. All philosophies are perfect on paper: communism, socialism, representative democracies, benevolent tyrannies, they can ALL look nice. Then they hit the real world and go all to shit.
Ehhhhh, free market doesn’t mean the competition is fair, just unrestricted. So even if the only contender is a 50 trillion dollar conglomerate, with resources to instantly squash competition, and the barriers to entry is acquiring a multimillion dollar factory, anyone can still potentially enter the market and compete. The competition is hugely unfair, but still unrestricted.
Is this what we call “being possessed by an idea”?
I am oddly amused by the fact that the lioness on the far right appears to share Sydney’s attitude *and* her build.
i mean as a tech/item based heroes neither actually gets the amazonian physique without putting in actual training, unlike those whos powers are inherent/permanent,
tho it could also be a side effect of being a less physically aligned hero given that krona is also within that category
Krona isn’t a super either.
Which means that Dave REALLY needs to arrange for a ten foot tall gadgeteer sometime soon.
a ten foot tall bimbo gadgeteer, where nothing they make works by science, just by them thinking it ‘ll work, ’cause they made it. ‘Electric hand-held fan? sure, here, hold this battery and this cardboard propellor (propellor spins) there you go!’
That’s how the mad scientists, “Verns” in the Capes universe work: They can build “super-science” gadgets that will work for other people, but anybody else building them exactly the same gets non-functional junk.
Done in the Wild Cards, books in the early 80’s.
Does said tall gadgeteer whose gadgets only work because they believe it works also have green skin, tusks, and scream things like “WAAAAAAGHHHHH!!!”?
Didn’t he already do that with the gidget/fixit character (Sorry, can’t remember her name)? The one with the grapple guns and the drywall repair bot.
Well, raven-haired was mentioned as something they needed to complete the set. We still need green, orange, and purple though.
Dabbler is acting very subtly, if you spell subtly like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlrUKF4095Q
Hmmph, airstrikes can so be subtle. I prefer “As subtle as a pumped fusion planet cracker” to get attention when needed.
Why does the tiny one have the cutest gloves that are also the most impractical for handling tech?
… She’s not wearing gloves (joke… maybe)
She does look like she’s wearing a Neko-suit lol. Not into anime myself but my son is (sigh…)
Will we learn the names of the other Lionesses?!?
Disguised as a local. Acting like an American.
Ms. Shopkeeper should immediately offer to be her shopping assistant.
Also….
Rightmost lioness is the only one with a tail?
Is that the source of her powers?
Yes….she and Sydney should be pals.
Dabbler apparently leans far more on her succubus heritage than her doppelganger heritage.
But I’m not sure what the point of the local disguise was if she’s going to act like that.
But I’m not sure what the point of the local disguise was if she’s going to act like that.
No one sees her as being out of the ordinary until she’s right next to them?
Captain Britten is a thing. As is Captain Canada and Captain France. So yah probably a Captain Where ever they are.
Heck theres even a superhero literally named Uncle Sam.
Early superhero comics.
It’s not that ‘early.’ He’s still been in comics as recently as Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and in Justice League Unlimited in the last few years. He was also in the New 52 universe, which is pretty recent, and had a two part mini series in 1998, and Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters has been ongoing as recently as 2008.
isn’t he the grandson of magician Murphy? or is Murphy his grandson?
No. Uncle Sam is DC Comics, and I think has also been in Vertigo Comics.
Murphy is from Xanth. A completely different company by a different series of books of which I’ve never read, and the only reason I even know who Magician Murphy is is people on this forum mentioned Piers Anthony’s Xanth series like a year ago.
So another person with Sydney’s body type, after Pixel and Krona. Since this comic has the “Most Common Superpower” trope at its heart, that means the Pride’s “Sydney” is NOT a super or has innate superpowers. I wonder if she’s technology-based?
fetish based. NO NOT THAT ONE, the other one. get your mind out of the Adam and Eve store.
you’d think I was trying for a pun or something.
well, that is soooooo subtle… she could not be screaming bait as much as she is now.
ps: those mittens are so cute.
Well she’s going to the irresistible bait instead of the believable one.
Sounds about right considering it’s dabbler.
Going by the theme, I’m assuming the guy is a lazy glory hog that acts as mission control, a la Charlie and his Angels?
Whoa there. Making a lot of assumptions and i would assume projections as well bud.
I’m going to rebuke that based on the fact that it doesn’t fit Dave MO.
For better or for worse, all the characters in his comic are upstanding and unbelievably candid.
If he did introduce that kind of character now, it would effectively change the whole world setting opening it to a whole new layer of darkness.
I was wondering if there was a lion in this pride. It would fit, as well as making him the off screen supporting character.
I never thought of Charlie as lazy, as much as letting the Angels do what they do best, and setting up the jobs for them
with all the high society contacts. And though pay never came up, I’m assuming that the Angels didn’t lose money
doing those jobs.
It would fit if they had a “Charlie” and if he was a Leo :)
Charley was the Equivalent of Mr. Johnson.
Who says it’s a guy? Could be another brick house like Anvil.
So the alternative is to leave out a very large portion of humankind because someone might pretend to be ‘offended’ no matter what you do in order to gain personal prestige/power/policial pull from clueless people ?
No matter what is said or done someone is going to say they’re ‘offended’ by it so why bother worrying about which one it is ?
If Dabbler was disguised as a middle class Irish woman someone would get ‘offended’ because she was in Senegal. If she were disguised as a japanese tourist someone would get ‘offended’.
It doesn’t matter, everything you do is wrong to someone.
As the song says…”You can’t please everyone so you got to please yourself”
“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.”
From: I saw hate in a graveyard — Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005
Regardless of the prevalence of false positives, it is still important to minimize the number of actual positives.
If everyone started claiming to have cancer, that doesn’t mean you stop doing your due diligence in treating and preventing cancer.
That is an excellent example!
Except that is also exactly what a certain segment of society would do.
Defining doctors who will imminently lose or have lost their medical licenses as a segment of humanity is certainly generous of you.
No, certain religious groups
And yes, that includes some doctors (unless you don’t count doctors as being part of humanity)
I am confused by your response, but I suspect either I missed some specific real-world reference, or that you misunderstood which segment of society I was referring to.
Counter with the “well I’m offended that you’re offended” card.
Or my favorite insult, which is almost impossible to reply to: “I find you argumentative and easily offended.”
No, I’m just naturally contrarian lol!
The second one from the left must be some kind of stretchy one, or part grasshopper. Her butt is in front of her calves when she’s facing forward.
Dabbler skipped the “Subtle Seduction” classes at Succubus High, clearly.
that was the subtle seduction…
So Tech Lioness is a black version Krona look-a-like? And reality goggles replaced with other tech?
I don’t think Krona’s googles have anything to do with her powers.
I remember that Star Trek episode, where Kirk basically laughed at an attempted bribe of a pile of Gemstones, basically saying they could make tons of them on his ship (Presumably with early model replicators)
Emeralds are just Berryl with Chromium in it, so whatever fabbing equipment Dabbler has in her lab can probably 3D Print huge emeralds all day long.
Google says emeralds have a mixture of chromium, vanadium, and iron in varying ratios with the darkest emeralds having the highest ratio of chromium and vanadium. Just chromium gives you a ruby.
Come on, folks, we all know that we would sleep on a big pile of treasure like a dragon if given the opportunity.
Not really, a dragon has dense scales like armor so it wouldn’t matter to them while humans have soft skin, anyone that’s gone camping knows that a rocky spot under the sleeping bad is hell by morning. Gold coins, gems, and bars of precious metals would be as bad if not worse!
I would sleep next to said pile, or perhaps on a luxury mattress placed atop it. I’ve done too much camping to imagine a pile of wrought metal and rocks being a good sleeping experience no matter how shiny they are.
Scrooge McDuck could swim in his, but that was due mostly to the fact it was all liquid assets, and nobody got the pun
I’m sure Pander did, and sued him for it.
It’s easier to be his lawyer and defend him from the IRS, then get paid well for that. I’m not a pushover like Fenton Quackshell is.
I also sent a ninja hit squad after the writers.
Two days later, Duck Tales ended.
Sorry… but that pun required some sort of comeuppance.
And that’s why you can only afford incompetent ninja hit squads now?
It might be karmic.
If we find out you did Firefly in as well, I’ll never be able to forgive you.
I would never have done anything to Firefly, except send ninja hit squads after the network execs who killed it and presented the episodes out of order, then take their places and give it the 10 seasons it should have gotten.
That’s… a bit of a tough call: if we continued to have “Firefly”, we wouldn’t have had shows like “Castle”, or “The Rookie” or “Resident Alien” or that show set in the DC Universe with Bruce Wayne’s cousin
I would gladly have given up Castle (which aired from 2009 to 2016), The Rookie, and Resident Alien to have 10 seasons of Firefly.
Castle was great, and so were Stana Katic and Molly Quinn (both of who did great voice acting in one of the better DC Animated movies, Superman: Unbound – Lois Lane and Supergirl respectively) but Firefly was one-of-a-kind awesome.
Also Resident Alien and The Rookie would have still been able to exist, since they just came out in 2021 and 2018 respectively, while 10 years of Firefly would have meant 2002 to 2012. Then multiple movies like Serenity, which are what happens in my head canon. :)
Agreed. Castle is fine, but procedurals are a dime a dozen (and I prefer Psych anyways). Never found anything else quite like Firefly.
I liked Psych too, but that was basically a ripoff of Monk. :)
HOW DARE actually no that’s fair. I couldn’t get into Monk at the time, once I catch up on my current backlog I should give it another try though.
There’s a USA promo for Psych where they literally lampshade the fact that Psych is essentially a ripoff of Monk. :) It’s very self-aware where Monk realizes in two seconds Shawn’s whole scam, and Shawn gets Monk to stop by saying he can ‘prove’ his psychic abilities by offering to hold Monk’s hands to read his palm. But Shawn’s hands are all messy and Monk refuses to let him touch his hand and just gets out of there. :)
I seen an episode of Family Guy where Peter decided he was going to “Scrooge McDuck” it in his pile of gold and they did the reality of it, he broke both legs, an arm, and his back. I had to laugh!
>Scrooge McDuck could swim in his, but that was due mostly to the fact it was all liquid assets, and nobody got the pun
I LOVE it. Best subtle pun ever!
I hate how well-made that pun is. I want to send more ninja hit squads but intelligent wordplay is rare when people make puns.
And I’d just like to say our girls are totally NOT in Wakanda!
Remember The Woman King was written by a rich white woman :p There is absolutely nothing wrong with anyone making characters they have no relation to, or else, what good would movies and books be?
Can’t make it have Russians, you’re not Russian. Etc etc
Bram Stoker wasn’t Transylvanian or (We hope) A vampire, after all…
I have never heard anyone utter the words “Sweet baby Mohammed” before. :)
Since when does Lara not have hammerspace tech?
I admit there’s no reason given for *why* she has it, but anyone who has completed any of the games with a full arsenal should realize that she clearly has it.
She has a rotary inventory. Not the same thing, right? even if she has twenty healing kits in it.
I remember this Web comic Dabbler is a guest star. Protagonist is a human with metal prosthetic arm. He’s on the run from a galactic empire or the like, and with terminal illness he lands on a fantasy world to find a magical cure (or so I remember it). He meets a traveling warrior princess of some lycanthrope race and they team up. Along their adventures, human starts to play a lute or the like and rock the world with a vampire girl. Last things I remember reading of it, man meets Dabbler who at the time is the slave of the galactic empire. They have a fight, and slave spell or whatev gets undone during it. Dabbler heals the man, prepares to leave, and wants to take one of man’s companions (a dragon with huge breasts) with her. I want to check on it again. What’s the name of it and where to find it?
Wereworld
Let’s see…
“WEREWORLD follows the story of fifteen-year-old Drew, a shepherd’s son”
…
Are you sure about this?
Okay, found it now.
http://wereworld.comicgenesis.com/
No new pages since last I checked… YEARS ago?
It’s called Wereworld, and you can Google it (Wereworld webcomic). I will warn you that it popped up on malware alert when I tried to do so, so I didn’t go through with it.
Just check it, no warnings at all, may have been a false positive?
Nope, Malwarebytes Browser Guard goes off on it.
Didn’t have any troubles
Did you follow the link Matti posted?
Yep, and google, and the link Dave B had way back in the second year of the comic where he mentioned Dabbler was in it. They all trigger Malwarebytes.
Like said, maybe the problem is with Malwarebytes giving false positives
I wasn’t sure if I should comment on her dreadlocks looking like a preditors on the previous page, and now This!. when is someone going to give sydny a flintlock pistol.
now is the time.
https://www.fluideglacial.com//customers/medias/www.fluideglacial.com/albums/9782858158423/9782858158423_facebook.jpg
https://www.bedetheque.com/media/Couvertures/Couv_390481.jpg
What’s the “salt and pepper” thing a reference to?
(I mean, presumably a foursome. But what’s she quoting?)
Salt and pepper is an English term for non-colored beards of middle-aged men, I think. “Grey and dark hair in a mix”.
The mayor seems middle-aged, but has no salt in his beard, only dark “pepper”.
Might also be a reference to African cuisine, but I’m not so sure if Senegal’s cuisine is very peppery. (looked it up, pepper is used less, but there is a lot of chili, salt and peanuts in the dishes. Still not sure on the hotness, I guess it depends.)
Note that the Lioness is white-haired, so salt and pepper, and the captain was not, so pepper and pepper.
The Captain America thing and this team are a related concept but not exactly the same, and both can be tricky. The Flag Hero and the Culture Hero.
Flag Heroes traditionally wear the flag or colors of their country and tend to either represent the government of that country *in which case their origins likely lead back to patriotic propaganda during wartime* or are meant to represent the ideals a country claims. Many of the former eventually became the later.
Culture heroes however tend to be soaked in themes like religions, heritage, customs, traditional outfits and folklore.
-and this one can be extremely difficult to pull off as an outsider writing or making a character meant to portray this, after all “culture shock” is a thing; and what feels like a minor difference can make huge differences. Just see dubs or attempts to localize another country’s pop culture characters; trying to make it more appealing to the local audience with some slight changes can be off putting to the original. While not a superhero a prime example of this was what Disney did early on with Winnie the Pooh when trying to appeal to American children when taking it from the U.K.
Funny enough Flag Heroes outside of the US aren’t that common anymore. It is always important to look at what media is making either of these. People can point out a ton of Captain this or that or a Sub Saharan African themed hero or Central American hero; but are pointing at a US publisher, not a local creation. Which goes back to the debates on who is writing the story, how well it was researched and so on.
An outside of America example would be from Japan with their old Super Sentai team, Battle Fever J, which was supposed to be an international team of Super Sentai flag heroes which can be a tad “collar tugging” today to look at.
But one can also argue its no worse than how the majority of the time from 1960-2000s, if some made a Japan themed superhero in America they had a habit of being a ninja or a samurai; when these are as far as common hero themes go, pretty bottom of the list in Japan. In fact the most common heroes are the ones people think are cliches…well
SuperSentai/Kamen Rider: this type of hero is so common you actually see mascot Super Sentai heroes for specific prefectures and even some cities.
Magical Girl,
Giant Hero,
Monster Themed Hero,
Robot Hero,
Mech-Pilot,
then come the culture heroes of,
Wandering Martial Artist
Wandering Monk/Exorcist
*and these two in modern media are often subverted.
But from an outside perspective there can be a hard time seeing that line between, cultural stereotype and embracing the culture. In other words there is a significant difference between Super Friend’s El Dorado, and Mexico’s own El Santo.
Final thought on the flag hero vs culture hero, there is a significant difference in concept between “I am wrapped in my nation’s flag” and “I embrace the culture and traditions of my land”.
Side Note: Wrapped in the flag is usually a servant of the government or member of the military.
Iconic/Cultural Hero often is not, since representing the heart of the country’s culture often places them at odds with the government AND the military.
Also, Red Guardian for Russia is definitely a flag hero in Marveldom, a direct answer to Captain America.
In very early comics, there was a hero, called The Flag. https://www.google.com/search?q=the+flag+superhero&client=firefox-b-1-d&sxsrf=ALiCzsYAcm_6SNyIrgUwodraYbstizU__w%3A1667933134006&ei=zaNqY-b5PLetptQP3o25oAY&oq=The+Flag+sup&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQARgAMgYIABAWEB4yBggAEBYQHjIGCAAQFhAeMggIABAWEB4QDzIGCAAQFhAeMgYIABAWEB4yBggAEBYQHjIGCAAQFhAeMgYIABAWEB4yBggAEBYQHjoECAAQRzoECAAQQzoHCC4Q1AIQQzoLCC4QgAQQxwEQrwE6BQgAEIAEOgUILhCABDoKCAAQgAQQhwIQFEoECE0YAUoECEEYAEoECEYYAFCXBliuUWDAiAFoAHACeACAAfABiAGVBZIBBTAuMy4xmAEAoAEByAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Interesting. That one on the end is a magic user, not a super.
It was mentioned once in the story that one of the side effects of having superpowers is that you, well, look like a comic book super. Tall, stacked, well muscled. That all supers are built like sex symbols is one of the big reasons people assumed that it’s some kind of artificial effect.
She might not be a magic user. She might be a tech/artifact user, like Zephon, or just incredibly skilled, like Peggy, Sean, Goose, or (maybe) Math. Deus has people on his team who are also just incredibly skilled without being Supers. :)
Or… like you said, she might be a magic user (like Gwen or Zephon).
Or she could possibly by a lycanthrope, like Pixel, who for some reason has a tail even in human form.
ART ERROR ALERT: While speaking with Dabbler, Lioness has for some reason removed her tight Senegal-flag badge that was on her left bizeps when she was introduced.
Wouldn’t have noticed, but Dave mentioned flag-themed heroes and nobody has a flag theme… anymore.
Well it’s gone or it’s under her hand she’s got her arms crossed in that shot so the bicep is turned inwards slightly, plus her hand there would make it way harder for Dave to draw it.
Her skin has gotten darker as well
I’m not sure but I think Dabbler twicked her look to make herself seem thinner than normal, which makes sense she’d look weaker and an easy target.
The generally accepted “not an asshole” protocol for scenes set in real places that you don’t know well is to run them by someone who lives there IRL. Best practices is to pay sid person for their time.
I mean one saving grace for Captain America is that they’ve been pretty consistently saying he’s not loyal to the country or American government per sé but the Dream and American ideals. He loves his country but he’s not afraid to criticise it, even abandoning the mantle sometimes when he loses faith in the government. Plus they have a character (John Walker, a.k.a. Super Patriot a.k.a. U.S. Agent) who exists to be the jingoistic Fox News version of Captain America just to show how much that would SUCK.
Superman was that way too, more than once he went against the US government because they were going against the ideas he held dear.
Yeah, Soupcan was never an agent of the US Government, his big catchphrase was “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”, pretty much all three have nothing to do with the US Government
I’m old enough to remember the Nomad arc of the late-60s very early 70s.
Too bad most of the people who claim to be American patriots don’t understand the distinction.
So true, ask not want your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!” JFK
can do for your country?
Image result for So true, ask not want your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!” JFK
Kennedy spoke on January 20, 1961 resonate across the decades? On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address. The conclusion of that speech inspired a generation — and profoundly shaped the launch of the Peace Corps in 1961.Jan 29, 2021
Yeah, the Peace Corps aren’t as peaceful as they claim
Okay I’ll bite. :) Mainly out of sheer curiosity since I know nothing about the history of the Peace Corps and this seems like it’ll be a good story.
How were the Peace Corps not peaceful?