Grrl Power #1106 – Club Sexplosion?
Detla has applied to be on the team, but hasn’t completed all the basic training and courses needed for field duty. She’s going along but will remain onboard the Osprey for security once the team disembarks, along with Peggy and her copilot. After all, they’re dealing with an opposing force of supers, so someone flying aboard the Osprey and attacking two distracted pilots isn’t out of the question.
The trope of young people being mystified by anything that existed even slightly before they were borne is funny if played right, but I think it’s a tough sell. “What’s a magazine/record/newspaper/typewriter?” Yeah, hah hah. I’ve never seen a telegraph machine in person, but I know what they are. Now, for pop-culture references, those have a shorter shelf life, to be sure. If not for the poorly received Johnny Depp Lone Ranger movie, it’s likely that anyone under the age of 16 might not actually have ever heard of the Lone Ranger. Same thing with Zorro, or The Three Musketeers (who, as an aside, were mostly known for their sword fighting skills, not their preference for muskets.) Also, massive stars from back in the day rarely have much longevity. I’d bet real money the average high-schooler today has no idea who George Burns, Don Knots, or Bob Hope are.
Still, if you had to come up with a quick example of “someone who wears a mask” on Family Feud, I think the polls would favor burglars/bank robbers, superheroes, surgeons… firefighters? I don’t know, probably Zorro or the Lone Ranger might make the list back in the Dawson days, but, eh, maybe still today with 30-40-something parents and maybe a grandparent on the team. Fencers? (The ones with the swords, not people who install fences.) Maybe Beekeepers? I dunno if that mesh hat thing is a mask technically. Still, Mr. Amorphous doesn’t cite “superheroes” because he’s standing in a sky bus full of them and no one but the non-super powered alien chick is wearing a mask.
The November Vote Incentive is up!
I went a little simpler with the art this time, which is to say I didn’t add like 9 passes of lighting and detail work. I wasn’t trying to chintz out on the time input or anything, I’d been browsing around ArtStation since I like torturing myself with all the amazing art there, and found a few people who do nice clean styles that are more Arcane (the League of Legends Netflix show) than Love, Death and Robots, and by LD&R I mean the ones that are like “Look at how realistic our skin textures are!” and not the ones that are more Pixar-y or just like 2D cell art or whatever.
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.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I know should just be happy that I get to read this awesome comic for free, and I am (following the comic and voting in TWC daily since page 50 or so), but at the same time I have a small complaint/critique about the art in this page.
If you’re going to shade, even semi-realistically, then please make sure that you add the shades your characters throw on their surroundings too. Looking at panel 1, it feels to me as if the characters are photoshopped onto the background. Granted, they probably were photoshopped in (as the usual process is to draw the background on a different layer than the characters), but it feels like bad green-screen sfx when you can see reflections on Maxima’s skin but no shadow on the ground :)
Personally I think this incomplete shading is still better than no shading. But yes, the characters casting shadows on their surroundings would be an improvement.
Casting shade on DaveB‘s lack of shadows? o_O
The lone ranger remake film with Johnny Depp wasn’t THAT long ago and yes, EVERYONE knows about the original as well. Used to be on repeats on BBC2 over here in Britain when I was a kid back in the 70s and 80s along with the black and white Flash Gordon, Harold Lloyd (hooray for Harold Lloyd! da da da da), Laurel and Hardy and many, many other classics. Flash Gordon was one of my favourites due to the cigar ships with their sparking rockets. Lone ranger was ok, but I was more into the sci fi and comedy as a kid.
Here in Southern California anyone younger than a boomer will look at me blankly when I mention Lone Ranger. And here in movieland you are only as good as your last movie, so only a few will remember the Depp one. Which film I being an old fogie had no idea about. I remember the radio show more than the black and white movies, tbh.
Middle Gen X here just shy of being 50 and I try to keep tabs on most things as time goes on. Never seen the Depp one though I only know of it as it was apparently bad but visually from what I have seen it doesn’t look too bad but that is Depp all over, he picked projects he liked and just did them regardless if they were ever going to be popular.
Growing up in the UK we had VERY limited tv compared to the US. BBC 1 & 2, and ITV for most of my young life, a big hoohah was made when independent channel 4 was released, then finally channel 5. Lots of repeats. BBC was the “main one” then repeats or lower ones came on BBC 2.
Saturday mornings from early, around 6am came the Black and white ones which I used to eat up as well, not much else to do and one TV in the house until I got a 14 inch one for my 11th Birthday in the early 80s. So being immersed in all the classic old stuff, the new stuff as it came out I’ve absorbed a fair amount of western film and tv knowledge over the years be it Abbot and Costello meet the mummy or Brendan Frasier’s 1999 The Mummy or Tom Cruise’s Mummy I have had the pleasure to experience more than most of those younger than myself and enjoy them for the fun they are.
We never got what you call cable or satellite until the 90s by then BSB (British Satellite Broadcasting) which was then brought out by scumbag Murdock with Sky to form BSkyB, later to be just called Sky where it finally expanded.
So even when someone says about something coming out in say the 80s and going whoa never heard of that you must be old! I think it wasnt that long ago, but then realise, yeah its coming up to nearly half a century but from a memory point of view because I had seen it so many times on TV or at the cinema when it came out I have happy memories of it.
It just makes me both laugh and feel sad that yeah I know DaveB was making jokes about how old are you to make jokes about the Lone Ranger, these are things are part of our history, which really hasn’t been that long, people are still alive who remember clearly yet the speed we are progressing even in my lifetime is staggering.
I have gone from Having a Mercury Commander MKIII (a pong console prior to the Atari 2600) playing on the huge box of a small screen living room TV and 3 television channels to a high end spec gaming machine running on my 4K OLED 55 inch screen in under 40 years with internet access to watch live tv or anything worldwide with thousands of possibilities. Sorry, waffling.
Have had a similar experience as you, just from the opposite end of the planet :)
I’m younger than that, and I remember a Lone Ranger animated show from my childhood.
I didn’t know there was one, and checking online there were two Lone Ranger cartoons, both fairly short but stayed in circulation for a few years. 1966 and the second in 1980
I remember the Lone Ranger cartoon from the 60’s. It was probably well into repeats by that point. I was usually up early enough to catch the test pattern before the start of the broadcast day. The Lone Ranger was one of the last cartoons of the morning and was usually followed by my older brother coming in to watch American Bandstand.
It IS EASILY possible to elude marketing if you don’t have a TV and don’t be an English native.
I do know the Lonesome Cowboy cartoons (i.e. Lucky Luke) but the Lone Ranger could be any other Western as well. Since he apparently wears a mask, I’m guessing a Zorro lookalike?
No, I won’t contaminate my innocence by qwanting on the internet.
Had read the Lucky Luke books in high school
Ranger was only a Zorro lookalike in the fact they both wore a burglar’s mask (Ranger dressed like a Texas Ranger, because that’s what he was)
Zorro was Spanish (like ‘from Spain’ Spanish, not Mexican, although he lived in territory claimed by Mexico), and when he went out as Zorro, he wore a completely black outfit. Kinda looked like what most people think of when you say a ‘ninja outfit’. Tight-fitting, of course, because he was a fencer.
The Lone Ranger, on the other hand, was basically a cowboy with a domino mask. Complete with the Colt Walker Dragoon as his pistol of choice.
So they looked very little like each other.
I was going back through a few past episodes and came across this one. So I had to look up the episodes. The following was some information that I found.
Lone Ranger 1966
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060002/?ref_=tt_mv_close
https://comicsradio.blogspot.com/2020/12/steampunk-lone-ranger.html Terror in Toyland with Terrible Tiny Tom
Episode Guide – The web site has problems in that the cgi filter doesn’t seem to be running. (cgi is sort of like php but older.) If you want to see episodes, go to Youtube and search for titles of the episodes.
https://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/Other_Studios/F/Format_Films/The_Lone_Ranger/index.html
https://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/Other_Studios/F/Format_Films/The_Lone_Ranger/more2.html
https://www.bcdb.com/cartoons/Other_Studios/F/Format_Films/The_Lone_Ranger/more3.html
Did anyone else notice the blue “shoot me here” markings on the chests of their armor? I know they are supposed to be a quasi law enforcement branch, but marking the target area is just asking for trouble.
Police and Army armor vests have (Police) or (Army) in big letters in the same spot.
Gary Larson agrees with you.
Well, in Dark Knight Returns, Batman explained that he wore a target on his chest because he couldn’t armor his head. If you’re going to get shot, taking the hit where you’re best protected strikes me as a good idea.
Yeah, just because video game bosses have targets on their weak points doesn’t mean you couldn’t instead choose to put targets on your strongest points, and try to distract from the weak ones.
Since that’s an area where mobility isn’t required, that’s where you put the thickest plate.
pop culture can be a weird thing, some things are universal, but then are things that used to be universal and certain generations get it but some younger ones or age gaps won’t get it or didn’t get into so might just know the name existed (this category is where Garfield the Cat tends to call into these days).
Keeping things constant or reviving via memes, re-runs, new adaptations, is required to keep the younger audiences. There are kids that don’t really know what GI Joe is and are confused by the toys on the shelves *some I’ve overheard thinking its some game they don’t know…doesn’t help that half the toys in the action figure aisles come from video games these days.
Of course there some one might have thought were true universals…and I suspect some claiming they have never even heard of them either have to be hermits *which some advanced age people can be, cutting themselves off from all media*, or are just playing dumb because they think its beneath them or embarrassing or its “kids stuff” to even know the name of things like Transformers, Ninja Turtles, Pokemon, My Little Pony, Super Mario Bros, etc…that have kept a very constant presence since their inceptions.
-I had one guy try to claim he didn’t know what Superman was and my look of “are you fricken stupid?” made him realize he brushed off knowledge of something that predated him by half a century or more and has been in the public mind ever since.
“…I’m Authorizing weapons free, full force contact…” OpFor supers, Amoral millionares and politicians wearing the same anonymous targets on their faces? Suddenly, Goose knew there was a good reason to have gotten out of bed that day… ;3
Snerk!
use of excessive force has been approved.
“Anything worth killing is worth overkilling.”
– I don’t remember
“Who doesn’t know who the Lone Ranger is?” Canonically, pretty much everyone in the Old West: “Who was that masked man?” In fact, I don’t think he ever calls himself “The Lone Ranger.” and Tonto just calls him “Kemosabe”.
But, yeah, The Lone Ranger is pretty perennial. The movie with Johnny Depp in it wasn’t that many years ago, and he does make occasional comic book appearances, either directly or by legally-distinct reference.
The Lone Ranger, The Spirit, The Phantom, and The Shadow walk into a bar, and they meet a man with an impossibly long scarf sitting there, nursing a beer, but nobody seems to know who he is.
Technically, I think nobody remembers who the Shadow is. Mind control powers, remember?
yes, but nobody knows Who the guy at the bar is
Should I have said fez instead of long scarf?
No, no you should not
You forgot to mention the Man With the Scarf offered everyone a jelly baby :)
lol, yes, I completely did! Thank you! (eats my jelly baby)
Oops! That was from a bag of sour lollies
On his radio show, the Shadow was often invisible.
Which was a cost-effective special effect for a radio show….
I mean, on radio shows, special effects is basically audio processing and sound effects… invisibility on its own doesn’t really have either of those things unless you want it to, so yeah, very cost effective.
For those who don’t know who The Shadow is… the was a movie in the 90s that tried to revive public consciousness of the character, but… like it’s been said, he’s kinda forgettable… Also he’s the inspiration for The Silver Shroud in the Fallout games.
è Tom Baker
Sexplosions lead to sticky situations.
or polymorph with the right partner.
Wait, Detla’s a recruit, now? And she’s not being allowed to fight?? No fair!! Sydney got to be in a super-battle on HER first night!! No better training than experience, amirite? Let Detla fight!!
Detla is technically an alien mercenary who was apparently lied to be her last employer on why they were going to Earth; so she is essentially in the same category as Dabbler here.
But what she doesn’t have experience with is the sort of rules that are considered “common sense” or “common knowledge” on Earth. The human members of the team have been steeped in the culture for long enough to have an intuitive idea of what is or is not appropriate behavior in many circumstances, even for super-powered cops. It’s not her combat ability that they’re concerned about.
Sydney didn’t exactly have a choice: they were attacked during a meal, and she was hit before she had a chance to bubble up
Also, Max wearing a bullet-proof vest? She’s just doing it to set an example for the recruits, isn’t she?
Pretty much. That, and uniforms are supposed to be, well, uniform.
Following regulations? I had a super-soldier RPG character, who was required to wear full combat gear on the battlefield like everyone else, despite being immune to pretty much anything short of a nuke. She’d sometimes take her helmet off to draw the attention of any hostile snipers…
Uniform and perhaps misdirection: wearing protection from something you’re immune to could draw fire away from vulnerable targets if you exposer yourself because you’ve misled the enemy into thinking you need the protection in the first place.
For the Three Musketeers , they are from a 178 years old novel (published in 1844 translated in english in 1845) “Les trois mousquetaires” followed by “Vingt ans après” then “Le vicomte de Bragelonne”.
Alexandre Dumas is a well know author in France and he had the honor to be buried in French pantheon and he is one of the most translated authors.
In France he was an institution , and french like swashbuckling – called de cape et d’épée in France -.
For a French it’s more a well know general Knowledge for “Les trois mousquetaires” and in lesser extend “Zorro”.
The enemy base is in a swinger club, isn’t it.
Club Convulsion, the most pulse pounding venue around.
Muffles the sound of torturing captives, and moving hostages can be covered up with ballgags and bondage gear.
No, I’m not a villain.
Why do you ask?
the real question is. which lone ranger. the white guy with a native american sidekick. or our real world’s first black deputy U.S. Marshall who was known for not only never giving up. but also always getting who he was after. partly because the criminals started giving up when they heard he was on their tail. Bass Reeves
given the context provided by “people might be wearing masks” comment referring to the ‘insider’ definitely the old radio shows, and not the far more interesting RL Lone Ranger.
Wait, so Goose is wearing the body armor but not the tactical shirt? I know we’ve seen him in kit coming off the Osprey after the bank false-flag. I also get that Amorphous is probably better off without stretch-resistant armor, but shouldn’t he also be wearing the uniform at least?
Well, I mean….
Telekinetic control over seltzer could be devastating with some prep work. And what defines seltzer? How loose is that restriction? Could you open a CO2 tank in the ocean and become a terrifying hyrokinetic that wipes out cities? Can you FORCE non-seltzers to absorb gas, and thus become seltzer?
If they had a base, it would be in a soda factory.
the problem with telekinetic control over seltzer is.. the power looses its fizz after a while.
the real problem with telekinetic control over selter is really just….the fizz-icks
well that stuff always comes down to range, finesse, and quantity control as well. Most kinetics are limited by these in some way, that way you don’t have every Geo/Petrakinetic just making mountain golems to march over entire armies.
and weirdly I think I have seen a villain with power over soda pop before, it was some Z-list villain in a cartoon I think (as in either was taken out at the start of the episode as a joke or never showed up again after being defeated).
I just saw Sydney in a film!
But, before the details, sorry that I have not been able to comment for ages. Life is pretty much work, recover from work & repeat. That said I am in the process of changing things so I have enough free time to be more flexible.
Now back to the main feature!
Troll (2012), just released on Netflix (in the UK anyhow). Which I can recommend as a good movie in its own right. But watch it and part way through you will get to see Sydney!
Looks (glasses, features etc) CHECK
Geek behaviour CHECK
Military uniform CHECK
Working in the team responsible for saving the nation from supernatural (etc) threats CHECK
Super hacking skills … what, no, that is more like Leon or Krona … oh well close enough CHECK
Activates “I want to marry this girl tingles” CHECK
Check out Troll!
We missed you so much!
*petspetspets*
Who’s a Good Boy? Who’s a good Yorpie?”
YORPIE!!! We has missed you!!!!
Good to see you’re back!
*offers treat*
we have missed you.
I think the one on Netflix is the 2022 remake, the original Troll (that I know of) had Harry Potter in it
It plays into Maxima’s geek cred if she’s referencing the original radio shows. And that logic would follow either Mr. Amorphous was listening to a lot of midnight Canadian (good ol’ CBC) radio in the 90’s/early 2000’s, or in the States locally Mid 40’s to 50’s and probably 60’s?…
https://archive.org/details/OTRR_LoneRanger_Singles
For geeks who must immerse themselves in the original.
Covid-19.
If you don’t wear a mask, you’re a monster, and a vast majority of every human in every civilization across the entire planet agrees. Where have you been, Dave?
Obama was shown to be president in the comic, so it’s presumably set between 2009 and 2017, so Covid-19 hasn’t happened yet. And I’m guessing probably won’t happen within the comic, for a variety of reasons.
Not the least of which being that Dave has no desire to needlessly relitigate the whole eye-bleedingly stupid culture war nonsense.
Could have been more Obscure and Referenced Zorro ;)
Zorro had a couple remake movies (with a Welsh tart) about 20 years ago (maybe 30?)
The Lone Ranger a movie more recently than that. It’s just that nobody saw it.
I’m offended no one is mentioning The Man in Black / Dread Pirate Roberts / Wesley amongst the masked
That’s only because the Dread Pirate Roberts never takes prisoners, and people who wear masks are not to be trusted as you wish.
Massive stars from back in the day? Oh like Erol Flynn?
What? Don’t look at me like that, he was long dead before I was born, both him and his grody dick.
WHAT?! Geeze, look, I’m a huge fan of obscure media that greatly influenced hollywood and peoples perceptions of characters, the man’s a legend in Hollywood for two things.
1: He’s the guy that’s responsible for the most common depictions of Robin Hood looking the way they do, hence why I know about him.
2: Also for having had every STD in the book at the same time. Dude got around!
What about Douglas Fairbanks Jr.?
Flynn is also famous for being the most (only?) famous Tasmanian :P
btw, Dave? Should Stygan be Stygian?
Have to remember, Lone Ranger was the American Hero, before they got the Greatest American Hero in the 80’s :P
Addressing the point made by Dave in his commentary, I met a couple of college girls who didn’t know Arnold Shwartzenagger was. Man, that actually made me fell old.
could’ve gone for zorro instead? XD