Grrl Power #1109 – Beware the handyman
This handyman is looking to get promoted to security. He practices his taser quickdraw in front of the mirror and phrases like “I.D. please.” and “Move along rebel scum.” and “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.” Although good maintenance people are worth 20 security guards. If the doors don’t lock and the cameras don’t work and the A/C keeps going out and the breakroom microwave keeps going on the fritz, then the guards aren’t patrolling a ‘facility’ so much as they are an abandoned shack.
I can imagine the pranks Jiggawatt got up to in school. “Look, this taser is broken.” (zaps self repeatedly) Friend: “Let me try!” (zaps self and collapses backward over the couch)
Actually that’s really the only prank that leaps to mind. Well, she could blow breakers and set off fire alarms easily enough, or make old CRT TVs explode by throwing a few thousand amps through them. Maybe she can electrolysis someone and make their hair fall out.
The November Vote Incentive is still up! The new one is coming along, just working on outfit variants, so it should be up either Thursday or more likely Monday (at the latest.)
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.
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Anyone else hear panel 5? I do.
What was that?
Oh, just a box.
for his sake, I hope they’re voltaged, not amped – amps kill
Voltage and amps are closely related – the amps are always equal to the voltage used divided by the resistance of the material the electricity is being sent through.
The only way to get something “voltaged, not amped” is to send the electricity through a strong insulator.
setting this link here just because it seems to apply in so many ways. Killua from Hunter X Hunter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9XApWPzsck&list=PL-s-KmJhNcKhvXsELiIgT5KqdojThiJ3T&index=23
Uh, no… You can use a transformers to jack up the volts and reduce the amps by a considerable amount.
An electrical engineer, making a digression… You can die 2 ways form electricity, heart failure and severe trauma. 30 milliamps or so directly across the heart will turn it off in many circumstances. You then die. 100 milliamps flowing through the trunk of the body will almost certainly turn off the heart and you will die. Several hundred watts running into your legs or arms will cause severe trauma, likely leading to death.
In the heart failure case, the amps kill you. In the trauma case, you are kill by power transferred in watts (you are “cooked”). In either case, voltage is what causes amps to flow into you, and voltage times amps = watts. Voltage just overcomes the resistance of whatever is in the way.
Amps, volts, whatever. If watching the Amazing Spiderman and Superman TAS has told me anything, it is that being shocked with too much electricity with give me electrical superpowers and turn my skin either translucent blue or albino white while making my hair spiky, and probsbly give me a cool new electricity based outfit.
Also with enough voltage, your skeleton will fluoresce enough to be clearly visible through your flesh, but this is almost always temporary.
Almost
When you use a transformer to “jack up the volts and reduce the amps”, the V=IR equation still applies in exactly the same way to whatever is on the other side of the transformer. In real-world power scenarios, where the power is coming from a power plant, what you’re really doing is reducing the voltage that needs to come out of the power plant to transmit the same amount of energy. Whatever you have plugged into your electrical outlet doesn’t care that there’s a transformer involved; so long as it’s getting the voltage it expects, it also knows how much amps it’s getting, based on its internal resistance.
As for the stretch of wire between two transformers, that’s experiencing that crazy high voltage you hear about? The actual transmission wires are experiencing very *low* voltages, and thus low amps. The crazy high voltage only exists within the transformers, and in the differences between the wires and other objects.
And because it knows how much amps it’s getting it also knows how much it’s not getting.
except that since volts are joules per coloumb of charge (not the same number as a mol of atoms/molecules etc but the same principle) and amps are joules per second; it’s the wattage that determines the amount of energy recieved (W=VA=J/c*c/s=J/s) which means that your electrical item does care about the ampage it’s getting…. and is why a transformer of item A will not necessarily work for item B (also, your inanimate elecctrical item doesn’t know it’s own internal resistance, nor can it calculate the current it should demand) – so YES, it very much cares that there’s a transformer involved.
It’s why cookers need 30A or 40A cable, whereas a ceiling light only needs 5A cable (UK standards here, other countries may differ). Don’t ask me though how an item is delivered the correct amount of power before the individual transformer, I can’t remember that much of my A-level physics
I bet if he threw the stun gun at her, she’d duck.
Actually… that reminds me of that old black and white Superman serial where the bad guys would shoot bullets at Superman, and he’d stop and do an akimbo pose while they did it just to show off… And then when they ran out of bullets they’d throw the gun at him and he’d duck… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGf1r8-Snss
That’s due to the fact that while the bullets are fake the gun was made out of metal and would hurt the actor it was a blub in an old Superman trivia book. The better example would be Downpour vs Aquaman
Why is beside the point. The point is it happened and it’s hilarious.
She’d duck because being essentially immune to electrical damage doesn’t protect her from kinetic projectiles.
…which is why the Superman TV gag was funny.
There is a good in-world excuse for it. Henchmen might be superpowered and while the bullets might not hurt… who knows if the henchman has super strength, the ability to charge the item full of explosive energy, or some other ability that might actually make it dangerous and is just trying to lull him into a sense of false security.
Hey, just because you are invulnerable, doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt
Side note: George Reeves (1950’s Superman) had a kid point an actual gun at him. George had to convince the kid that the bullets would bounce off but would hit and hurt someone else. Kids would often try to test his invulnerability at public appearances.
That repairman is going to get a quick lesson on the different levels of voltage, amperage, and current.
One wonders, why would a maintenance guy be carrying a tazer? What does he perceive to be a threat? His job ought to be pretty quiet down in the bowels of the facility. Maybe it is for those little blobby things with all the eyes and mouths that infest the power conduits.
he’s not maintenance, he’s just…The Electrician
Heroic work there, Plunger Man! https://youtu.be/OW5jaBq6KWg?t=82
In questions that can be answered..
You carry the taser (hammer, serious wrench, small axe,…) because of the firm belief of any true Technician in Animism, specifically the malevolent type sulky equipment posesses.
Stuff becomes amazingly well-behaved when you deploy cruel and unusual percussive maintenance on kit that simply doesn’t want to listen in front of the rest of the lot.
Given that they’re in an area with lots of electricity/electronics, the taser is not for use against humans. He carries it ( after proper public demonstration of the effects on sulky circuit boards ) to remind the bastards down there who’s actually Boss.
As a utility worker, I carry an hatchet because it is seriously THE most useful tool man ever invented. Machetes come a close second but oddly enough, can scare people even in a sheathe and are really hard to hammer with. (Hatchet with hammer head on the back ROCKS!)
Taser? I don’t need no stinkin’ taser.
As a biker, I carry a crowbar in my saddlebags. You’d be surprised how many uses the thing has.
This is a supervillain lair which is a place where you need to be prepared for unforeseen dangers like rampaging killer robots, dangerous experiments escaping and of course the inevitable superhero attacks.
Rats? Snakes?
Maintenance people run into a lot of vermin that take up residence in those places.
a taser would probably make short work of a rat.
But that smell would linger, I’d way rather set out traps than work in a tight space filled with ozoned rat fur.
only if your stationed in that location. not onsite where there’s no pest control, traps take time you may not have to get the work done.
he may not be wearing the stripes, but I totally recognize this guy as Bert from Sesame Street
That is not Bert… That is Beaker. He even has the correct head shape and mouth shape. Meet meet Meep meep.
Nah, it’s Leon’s evil brother
You and Guesticules are totally right, it’s leon’s evil brother, Beaker!
Maybe this guy is the guy from Aperture Science (the 1050s version) who did all the Boxes and such.
Growing up in a rural area, we used to do the, “The electric fence is broken again!” prank. It hurt a little, but it was worth it if you caught someone.
Does this guy have any eyelids at all?
‘Cos if he gets rendered unconscious but she doesn’t realize it because his eyes don’t close, is Jiggs going to keep zapping him?
Sounds like he’s the local Barney Fyfe. Was probably not issued the taser, just bought it himself in hope.
I don’t know how effective those little hand held tazers are for self defense but they make great ignitors for potato cannons.
The vast majority of them absolutely suck because all they do is send current from one electrode to the other. They hurt like hell but don’t actually do much more than piss the other person off. In order to have a real effect, they need to pulse with a specific wave form that disrupts the neuromuscular system.
The wave shape happens to be the same wave shape sent by the brain down to the muscles. It causes all of the affected muscles to suddenly contract. This in turn causes the connected joints to go absolutely stiff, which is why when you see police taser someone, they kinda just plank and fall down as if they were a statue. The stiffening is caused by the contraction of opposing muscles. The effect is known as “tensegrity” which is a portmanteau of tension and integrity.
The effect can even last for a little while after the electrical pulse stop, if they induce a charley horse effect.
Needless to say the stun guns that work exploit major bugs in the nervous system in a way that if reality were a video game people would get banned for exploiting bugs that give them an unfair advantage.
See, that’s what Axon claims, but that’s largely marketing. The difference in effectiveness vs a stun gun largely comes down to electrode spread. Since the electricity travels through a much greater amount of tissue, there’s a lot more muscular involvement, which is also why the “drive stun” on a Taser is no more effective than any other stun gun.
Also, they hurt like a mofo, but it’s entirely possible to fight through it. Assuming you didn’t get tasered while at a full run and just smashed your grape into the pavement.
Can you show me one with a sine wave shaped pulse making someone go down like a tipped mannequin?
I unwraveled a cartridge from my taser from back when I was working as a security guard and hooked it up to my oscilloscope a long time ago. The actual wave form was a bit different than the one the brainuses but the overall shape was about the same. The brain uses triangular shaped wave that spikes high on positive, goes down about a quarter as far into the negative and then levels off back to 0. The “t-wave” looks like that but bouncier. It’s hard to describe. It’s like it vibrated up and down a bit when it reaches each pos8tion before moving on to the next position. But over all it’s about the same.
It makes sense to me that such a shape would be adept at disrupting the nervous system because it’d result in the muscle would be receiving the signal to…
CONRACT, relax, I SAID CONTRACT, ok rela- CONTRACT!
I did not have an off.brand one to test. Also given how old the patent is, I’d be surprised if it isn’t expired now.
But if the wave is important, I’d imagine that saw tooth and triangular waves would be more effective than a sine wave. Also square waves maybe being the least effective at locking up the musculoskeletal system, but more painful. But that’s just a hypothesis.
The shape of the pulse matters less than the amplitude. You’re essentially shouting louder than the nervous system with the taser. But the only reason it works as effectively as it does is because of the electrode spread and the greater involvement of muscle tissue. Which is also why some of the more recent models have focused on improving the early spread of the darts so they work better at closer range. You want the best possible effect? Stick a dart in someone’s foot, and the other in their shoulder. As I mentioned, that’s also why the drive stun on the Tasers don’t have the same effect as the darts, and why people you hit with the drive stun don’t lock up their entire body.
This brings to mind a psychiatrist that I worked with. He was very into Electro Cranial Stimulation. It used electrodes that clipped to the earlobes. There was a transistor radio sized box that produced an alternating current whose wave form was supposed to mimic Delta brain waves associated with deep sleep and relaxation. The box had an intensity knob and you could crank up the current to the point where it was mildly uncomfortable. He was using it on chronically mentally ill patients in a psychiatric hospital. While it was FDA approved and there was some research support in actual practice it was pretty much a failure. Our patient population was not one known for frustration tolerance and average time between sending the units in for repairs was pretty low.
Like trying to beat Aquaman with a bucket of water.
Rule one low-tier jobs: put in just do not stand out, not too little, not too much.
Defending the evil lair from invading forces is NOT your responsibility.
Hair that falls out like that never regrows cause if it fell out that means the roots are fucked and the cells that make hair are fucked. Please tell me she didn’t make someone bald for life as a prank…
The funny thing is that he tried to shock her through her vest, which I would not expect to be very conductive (though Jiggawatt’s might be special). Still, fast reaction on his part.
When I was is college, back in the early ’80s, I had a roommate in our dorm who repaired TVs on the side. He had a gizmo he called “The Intimidator”, a pistol-grip soldering gun whose tip had busted off. He modified the broken end so that there were a couple wicked-looking wires sticking out of the business end, maybe a quarter inch apart. It was capable of delivering an electric shock when he pulled the trigger. Not a terrible powerful one, and the two prongs on the tip had to be touching the subject’s skin for it to work, but, as I said, it was wicked-looking and the discharge stung enough to make a bellicose football player step back and decide to reconsider diplomacy.
I think my other roommate was the one who used to incinerate flies using a can of Lysol and a cigarette lighter as an impromptu flame thrower. That was an interesting year in college.
I had a buddy who made a squirtgun into a flamerthrower during my last year of high school. He didn’t do anything with it at the school, he just wanted to see if it would work at a park nearby. It DID throw flame. Only problem? Squirtgun was made of plastic and plastic melts. The fire department and cops who were called to the puddle of fire that resulted from his ‘science lab experiment’ were less than happy.
He DID avoid jail time, but just barely and when he started talking about making a lightning gun, everyone ran.
Employee of the month, everybody. Let’s give him a hand. Jiggawatt, you go first.
Posthumous Employee of the Year!
the face on this guy is perfect
For juuust a moment as I scrolled down, I thought “Oh Snap! He’s got a radio/alarm remote!’ Then a moment later. “A taser? Really? Evil.org arms even their lowest peon? How do you berate an underling within an inch of his life when he can taze your balls figuring he’s fecked anyway?”
It’s also doubtful that a taser will work through her plate-stiffened tactical vest, anyway. Even a layer of carbon fiber will stop a taser pulse, and I’m assuming all ARCSWAT armor would be made resistant.
Quick draw, but inadequate. Lol
he’s either a really well paid to also act as a security man or they’re really cheap when they ask staff to double up on their duties
Or he thinks he’s slick doing doing a tacticool taser trick.
She could have done electrolysis in the chemical sense and pulled off burning water to confuse people.
Static electricity can be deadly.
Electricty + Water = separation of Hydrogen and Oxygen. Both pf which can go boom. Or be used in other ways and schools have lots of water.
EMP?
Back to static, she could charge kids then stick them to walls.
Burns… so, in my early childhood I was playing with a battery, bare wire ends, and different things like motors, fans, lights, etc. I made the mistake of holding the bare wire to the battery with a finger (something I’d done before with no problem) and the electricty created enought heat in the wire that it cut my finger open and cauterized it simultaneously. It was a very uncomfortable healing process.
Batteries in the pocket can also lead to burns. I dropped a 9 volt battery in my pocket and it shorted out on a coin. I noticed something was wrong when it burned my leg.
We used to use 0000 steel wool and a 9volt as a fire starter for campfires when I was a kid. I learned really quickly (yes the hard way) not to put them both in the same pocket….
Look, the coffee machine is broken and starts only when you jolt it with a Tazer. That is why he is carrying it.
Further point and while I don’t know the proper use of a Taser- Would that thing even have worked through several Layers of body armour? I know, Electicity n’ all but that feels… kind of like an ineffective path for travel. Ignoring the whole Lady Zaps a Lot thingie.
I hope ARC recruits this guy. He has gumption.
He’s got 1.21 regrets. Great Scott!
I was questioning how someone in school would get their hands on a taser, but then I remembered my brother made one out of a disposable camera in middle school, so maybe not all that unlikely.
Y’know, I think this is the first comic I’ve seen where putting body armor on makes you look real skinny instead of bigger.
You really can’t think of another prank? Really?
Joybuzzer. The sheer number of pranks she can pull with a simple battery powered motor designed to lightly vibrate against someone’s palm actually tasing someone is only the start.
I know he’s part of the bad guys but this is kind of mean. For one who makes conductive body armor. Second who
I realize I’m a week late on this epiphany-
But hadn’t jiggawat dyed her hair sapphire blue? Why’s it back to gold?
When was it sapphire blue?
I have to wonder how long was he standing there in shock before she turned to him and he tried it
Wrong move, bucko.
Misaka version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8qcwtHzIA
Yeah he practices drawing the taser in the mirror. But he doesn’t read anything about how you actually use one.
Sticking it in her (presumably) armor vest? Why don’t you cover it with a sheet of rubber first?