Grrl Power #1116 – Boston express
Okay, there’s a lot of confusion regarding Varia’s powers in the comments. That’s fair, they’re not so straightforward. So, when she touches someone, Varia gets a power (or a power unlocks, no one is quite sure how it works). The person she’s touching doesn’t get any powers, at least not directly. If the power Varia gets is something that would be harmful, like as we saw with Arianna (as established in the Grrl Power crossover in Wearing the Cape 6), Varia gets a fire form, and Arianna gets not-being-burned-by-Varia’s-fire. And any other source of fire, as it happens. (It’s unclear if there were a source of fire that was much hotter than the heat Varia is putting out if Arianna would still be immune to it. To be safe, the team assumes there isn’t an absolute immunity conveyed, just considerable resistance.)
So if Varia turned into Californium 238, (which has a half-life of 21.1 milliseconds), her gestalt partner wouldn’t be harmed by all the gamma radiation and whatever else Cf238 puts out, like probably heat and gossip. They’d probably both be in trouble once she let go, because everything around them would straight up be having a cherenkov rave. Fortunately this has never happened.
Obviously this guy with the Boston Eyes is breaking the rules, but as you see, V-visor there has a hypothesis. That or the guy’s powers are just triggered by stress and he has anime-protagonist-holding-a-woman’s-hand anxiety.
The December Vote Incentive is up!
Please enjoy Cora in a workout outfit. Variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon, as well as a comic to put it all in context. Spoiler, Cora’s ship is like a Roman orgy most of the time.
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Question!
If Varia gets “spontaneous mustard generation” or the like, is Varia’s contact partner immune to any harm in the line of “actually I’m allergic to mustard” or “holy cow this is spicy” or stuff? Is it based on Varia’s concept of harm, the person’s concept of harm, or some nebulous universal concept of harm?
This question is simultaneously quite reasonable and yet still hilarious.
+1 internet for this question.
Inquiring minds want to know, DaveB.
As it turns out, he just gains the ability to breath undermustard.
I’m glad to know I’m not the only one that had that thought.
I have a Gravatar now, nice.
Thumbs up emoji!
Can I be depressed that she teleports right next to THE GARDEN, and needs to wait for her phone GPS to update?
In a world of supers/aliens/supernaturals/etc, GPS is probably a bit harder to spoof what (she believes) she sees.
That’s probably true. But, the Harems are all quantum connected, and all of them should be able to sense where they all are. Distance and direction at least. The Harem that went to the Alari Homeworld didn’t fritz out because of distance, but because she was two months in the future and reacting to her other five instances.
In any case, the Harem #2 currently with Maxima and the rest of the team probably knew the instant that Harem #4 jumped halfway across the country. The dramatic 5 second (at most) pause as the phone GPS updated was likely just for confirmation.
Nothing in Harem’s power set actually says they have GPS or anything like it. For all they knew the eye beams could have been a sort of holodeck/pocket dimension generator.
I’d make the opposite conclusion: They’re quantum connected, which would mean they are connected independently of space. Note that spatial blocking like Halo’s bubble doesn’t disconnect them. So I don’t think it comes with a sense of distance and direction. Harem probably has some sort of spatial sense as a required secondary power for her teleportation, but her teleportation is equally independent of distance and bearing, so it might not give her sense of that – she probably has some sense of where she can teleport to, but not necessarily where she currently is.
Oh I just wanted to say that I really dig the mask designs and am super hype for the return of For Whom The Death Tolls. It makes so much sense that he would work for these guys. I was already loving the storyline with them but now I’m even more excited.
She knew it LOOKED like Boston before she stepped through. Her phone’s GPS told her it wasn’t an illusion or projection, or other faked version
Boston, home of the worst drivers EVER!
Clearly, you’ve never lived in LA. Or Chicago. Or Houston.
Or Maryland
Or Russia, where dash cams are universal because insurance fraud is the national sport. Or any number of third world countries, where concepts such as “lanes” and “right of way” are about as well understood as quantum physics.
General Theory of Relative Liability.
Or the Lower mainland in Canada, which is worse than all those places combined.
Except maybe Russia.
Lower mainland Canada learns from Michigan drivers.
Or Rhode Island where they PRIDE themselves on driving badly.
Or Charlotte NC where they think ‘NASCAR can do that, why can’t I????’ as they try to do a U-turn through a concrete highway barrier. (hint: Car vs barrier? Barrier wins.)
Or my absolute favorite-
LEFT turns on red from multi-lane road onto multi-lane road, which I have seen more and more often because hey, why not? Rules, laws and silly things like inertia (AKA that fully loaded semi moving at 45 mph in the lane you are swanning through illegally) are for WEENIES!!!!
So USA in general.
The barrier may not “win”, but the car sure loses. I have seen a few of those barriers post-impact that were no longer able to do their job.
Yeah, barrier will get hurt but car will DIE. Semi might or might not be able to crash through depending on load and speed, but car usually goes splat.
*shrug*
Still dumb if kind of hilarious to watch.
Actual words overheard after one such-
‘Why did you DO that?’
‘I thought the barrier would get out of my way.’
*facepalm*
Mutually assured obstruction.
This kind of thing could really mess with a sat nav. The phone will be picking up satellite signals from all directions, including through the portal, and the shortened time delay from a very distant satellite signal would be enough to throw the calculations out considerably. She may not be in Boston after all.
There are no GPS signals coming from the portal because they are too deep underground to get signals in the prison.
Rut-Roh.. it’s Mr For-Whom-The-Death-Tolls!
You mean the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer?
That’s him, all right. Figures he’d hang with the guys who agree that cowls help with being intimidating. Oh, god, maybe it was his idea! Is PWBS the “Boss Cowl” in this operation?
Oh, PLEASE tell me that PWBS is instead the hired muscle, and that Arc-Swat never made his involvement with the Restaurant Brawl public.
Masks think they have a ringer…and the team just ignores him because they know he’s not a threat unless aggroed…much to the Masks’ confusion.
The restaurant brawl was televised, so no luck.
Probably worse than that would happen, while there’s no way to determine critical mass and the like for Californium it’d still be over 100 lbs of mass nearly instantly fissioning into elemental byproducts. So it’d be a nuclear-level event since ALL her atoms being californium would have fissioned in a massive energy release that likely would have destroyed everything. While I can’t really fault the writers for not knowing better it’s one of my peeves with the initiation hazing of Element Kid for the Legion of Super-heroes. One of his ‘tests’ was to stand like 3′ away from a massive stone block and turn it into U-235 and not move for 5 minutes. Except that’s both instantly fatal from the radiation release even if you don’t count that that’s vastly beyond critical mass for U-235 and would have instantly killed nearly all of them from the nuclear detonation as U-235 doesn’t require anything special to go nuclear unlike with Plutonium.
> it’d still be over 100 lbs of mass nearly instantly fissioning into elemental byproducts.
More, because Varia turns into elements based on volume, not mass. A Varia-sized block of californium would mass about a ton.
Can see the strategy now. ‘Remember everyone Ignore Mr. Googly Eyes over there. He Still hasn’t gotten them off his mask. That’s why the hood!’
Actually, I’d be interested what powers Varia gets from touching PWBS. If she doesn’t try to attack him, it should be safe?
This is a rabbit hole of reasoning I can’t afford to fall down today, but if he gets *any* power and she gets random gestalt powers, would she get *every* power? Would her power shift with his when he was attacked? This would be a highly informative line of research.
regardless he SHOULD be granted immunity from any power she generated, so, while it might be interesting to see what happened – it’s not a means of attacking or neutralizing him(?)
I also realized that technically she did get a power from him, the power to change HIS power to portal vision. That kind of power to change other people’s power is super-rare but not unheard of.
i have another idea:
she became an energy battery
the dude got experimented on, got “shoot portal from his eyes” power, but didn’t have to energy to actually power it
she touched him, and became his power source, his eyes activated
But can he open up portals to other cities?
Wait, do we even know if that’s the real Periwinkle Butt Sniffer? I feel like if you’re worried about supers and For Whom The Bell Tolls is known about, wearing that particular cowl would be a great way to stay safe.
Stay safe? Or become priority Number One! Dogpile him before he can do shit (and make it so he has to shit in a bag, like last time)
Oh my god… is that For Whom the Death Tolls?!
Who hired this man!?
The man himself, Periwinkle Butt Sniffer!
Hmm, how many new and unconnected posts can we make identifying Periperi Butt Sniffer?
Can we reach four pages of just single entry posts identifying him?
I’m guessing… about 21. I think that was my last count on people posting the same thing some other person had already posted.
I suppose it’s not reasonable to expect everyone to have read all the other comments before posting their own… but a quick ctrl+f and searching for the main terms of the intended post might help cultivate actual discussion between people, rather than just a bunch of needlessly repetitive comments that make it even more unreasonable to expect everyone to have read.
The issue is the unresponsiveness of the comment system – when everyone posts their first thoughts right after the comic goes up, the system hangs and the other comments aren’t loaded in yet, so you can’t see other people already wrote the same.
No, no it’s not
This ‘issue’ was happening even before the current ‘time-delay’ nonsense, back when you had to scroll past other comments before you reached the Comment Box
Even when you ended up on the 2nd or third page, you could still see that you weren’t on the first page of comments
That explains some of it, but certainly not all of it. People post things days after the comic goes up that say the same thing as posts on the first page of comments.
One of the reasons for that is that comments defaults to the last day of comments, a partial page, rather than the first. So people scroll down, don’t see their comment, and put one in, not realizing there’s a whole other page of comments ahead of them.
Oh, and sometimes they just post without reading, too.
Yeah – but did you notice? that looks a LOT like For Whom The Death Tolls!!
Nice, Polerbear. :)
Carefull Harem you can get softban in pokemon go with that teleport
She probably already has been banned –repeatedly. She teleports all over the place with multiple phones coming into and out of existence. But I bet she has a slick “family plan” cellular account.
eyyy its skull face again … no need to use powers on him since everyone knows his powers, just shoot him (in the kneecap or just mag dump) and tranq him if he does not die. that would probably learn him a lesson (since getting his a$$ beat didn’t take)
His power is defensive against anything thrown at him, a mag dump would just make him really durable for 15 seconds.
What you need is a mag dump, a lightning bolt, a kick to the face, energy beams to the legs, Dabblers sleep spell, and a psychic trying to give him a mental weggie all at once to overwhelm his ability.
His power is defensive against POWERS.
That’s it.
You could still blow his kneecaps out with a gun.
That’s not true. Sydney’s description is “allows him to counter anything thrown at him”, and we’ve seen that he got a fire aura against Dabbler’s ice shard attack, and was unfazed by Harem’s flashbangs.
And Sydney is Ultimate Knowledge on every power
Are… people getting Peri mixed up with Kev? How the fuck can you counter a high-velocity impact via a small amount of metal?
Dabbles’ ice shard attack was still a power, unless you are claiming he could gain that fire aura if he stepped out in a blizzard
> And Sydney is Ultimate Knowledge on every power
No, she isn’t (although she’s certainly supposed to be very genre-savvy and good at analysis, and she figured out his power quite well otherwise, so it’s still evidence, and makes it the most likely assumption absent counterevidence), which is why I backed up her statement with factual evidence – namely that his power can protect him against flashbangs, which are entirely mundane.
> Are… people getting Peri mixed up with Kev? How the fuck can you counter a high-velocity impact via a small amount of metal?
Multiple kinds of durability, force field, telekinesis … there are many ways to become immune to bullets with superpowers.
> Dabbles’ ice shard attack was still a power
No, it wasn’t, it was magic.
> he could gain that fire aura if he stepped out in a blizzard
No, he couldn’t, because his power is defense against attacks, and a blizzard is just a natural phenomenon. If someone threw an ice shard at him, however …
That… was a sarchasm
There are those who don’t have powers (of any kind) that aren’t affected by flashbangs (usually while high on drugs, and not just adrenaline)
How many people in this story have been shown to have multiple powers? Maxi doesn’t count, largely because no one is completely sure about her
For Peri to gain those defences against being shot, he needs to counter someone first, and hope that becoming bullet-resistant is what he gains
Magic is a power, albeit one that is usually learnt or at least trainable
Sydney herself surmised that his protection against Dabbles’ attack came from Heatwave. Are you now doubting her word at the same time as praising her knowledge on this stuff?
> There are those who don’t have powers (of any kind) that aren’t affected by flashbangs (usually while high on drugs, and not just adrenaline)
I don’t believe that. Overloading the visual receptors and disturbing the inner ear fluids is physics. The only way someone might appear unaffected is being so high they can’t walk straight anyway.
Do you think Phrasic Dumbphace was drugged out of his mind there?
> How many people in this story have been shown to have multiple powers?
I don’t see why this is relevant, but Varia obviously, Hiro(Strength, Flight, Sonic Absorption), Harem(Teleportation, Strength), Anvil (Kinetic Absorption, Strength) immediately come to mind and I’m counting conservatively here (we could consider Stalwart’s strength, durability, density manipulation separate powers).
> For Peri to gain those defences against being shot, he needs to counter someone first
He counters the bullet attack – naturally giving him bullet defence.
> Sydney herself surmised that his protection against Dabbles’ attack came from Heatwave
She considered it for a moment, then rejected the hypothesis.
Her final result, however, is bolstered by having successfully been applied to counter him – and by facts, of course
Umm, no, Vahriah only has one powah: the ability to gain a powah from anyone, but so far, it has been shown to be only one at a time
Actually, no where was it shown that Sydney dismissed her surmising that Heatwave gave Peri the heat-shield
Again, the fact they managed to defeat by hitting him with more things than he could counter (namely, by doing it all at once) doesn’t mean he gained the heatshield as a counter to magic ice
Please, show me where it was stated that that is what happened, or it’s Vahriah and Sydney’s balls all over again
> Actually, no where was it shown that Sydney dismissed her surmising that Heatwave gave Peri the heat-shield
In #246, when she says: “He only has one power. Nemesis.”
> Again, the fact they managed to defeat by hitting him with more things than he could counter (namely, by doing it all at once) doesn’t mean he gained the heatshield as a counter to magic ice
No, the facts that he has a power that manifests powers for defense against attacks and gains the heatshield just when the ice attack comes mean that, you’re building straw men again.
And don’t think I didn’t notice your attempt to let the actually more relevant flashbang datapoint fall under the table once you had no counter.
Today has been terrible. I ruptured the distal bicep tendon on my dominant arm. The weepy goths in highschool were right, life is pain. The drugs might help to provide some terrible poetry to go with it.
We demand horrible poetry. Feel better.
red hood’s mask doesn’t work. it just looks like he has hillbilly teeth
… He’s not wearing a mask, just a hood (and he has more, straighter, teeth than ten hillbilly’s)
Now I wonder what would happen if the two gestalt supers touch…
I hate it when villains some how always show up after the heroes sneak in their secret base or something. Like what was the point of all that work the heroes did when the villains just know that they are there? And why would the main villains show up and not just send some of their guards to capture the heroes? There is a difference between being a competent villain and somehow knowing everything.
Sending guards to capture the heroes is extremely dubious for superheroes
The point is that the heroes are inside the base and near their goal as opposed to being outside the base and having to fight their way through to their goal
Jiggawatt killed the guards, who are all duplicates of a single super – who knows when his duplicates are killed.
So naturally, he would alert his organization, which then dispatches someone to intercept the intruders. And they’re sending supers because they’re dealing with supers. All of this is entirely natural.
The only reason it looks like the villains are on top of things is that the Corporate AdVisor just couldn’t resist the temptation to announce himself with villainous gloating. But if he knew everything, he’d know that Maxima is outside preparing to attack, which makes it a bad time for confident gloating.
I wonder if they’ve tinkered with Death Tolls and his powerset has changed a bit.
Power mods would certainly be a strong motive for experimenting on people. You would need a pretty secure facility incase you accidentally created another Maxima. Hence, I suppose, the death traps in the cells.
Oh shit, isn’t that For Whom The Death Tolls?
Hey, its Four Whoosh da Dealer Tells.
How quickly can Maxi get to Boston?
Probably faster than Visor can change his underpanties :P
I was thinking about Harem’s powers and I think she should be able to essentially fly. She can teleport anywhere that she can see and she can change her velocity vector (although not magnitude) when she teleports. She could teleport into the air, then teleport sideways again and again. When she starts to fall she changes her velocity vector to point sideways. When she wants to slow down she points it upwards and lets gravity decelerate her (she’s been shown to do this onscreen), then teleports to the ground. When moving at high speed in the air she would need goggles or other eye protection and to keep her speed down to something that doesn’t injure her through air friction, but it still seems doable. Is there any reason it’s not?
She can’t change her velocity vector. She can change her orientation, and her velocity vector is preserved, relative to her orientation. So while she could presumably do it, it would be pretty disorienting, because she’d need to frequently flip herself around. But why fly when you can just teleport?
Because flying, beyond getting from A to B, is awesome!
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-355-aerial-areal-detour/
Those people in the last panel actually look kinda cool. Too bad that won’t last long after our heroes pound them into the ground.
I disagree. he doesnt break the rules. its simple. he gave Varia the power, to give someone a power. or something like that. the power he gave her allows her to do something to someone else, is my point.
Wild theory. Eye portal guy has a power. His power is to copy the powers of whoever he touches. So when he touched Varia, he gained Varia’s gestalt. Then because he was touching someone (Varia) this triggered the gestalt and gave him magic “go back to where you came from” eye portals that send people to their hometown, possibly triggered by touching them which is why it just happened. Varia gained no power because either he was a blank like Sydney, or she didn’t have time to figure out what she was getting because he found out his powers first.
It’s a simple (hah) explanation for why he had gotten a power by touching. Either that or he has some freaky power that under the right conditions sends people “home”, to their hometown, to their place of birth, whatever.
Sydney’s not a ‘blank’, we just don’t know what happened, no matter how much certain people want to believe that Vahriah gained the ability to handle Sydney’s balls
I know it’s not his style but those masks would work wonderfully to hide Deus’ scar… actually I wouldn’t be surprised if he suggested the idea to them so he could sneak around their bases.
Why would he need to sneak around his own base? They work for him!
Uhh… What? I don’t remember there being any indication that the Ascenders work for Deus, and their methods are very much against his style.
So, it was just a co-inky-stink that they launched an attack while Maxi was out of the country?
Kev’s attack was part of his plan, or did you forget his reaction?
Why is it that some people are allowed Wild-ass Speculums, and others take them serious, but not me?
Is it because they paint the SmugD in a golden light as opposed to shining a spotlight on his shit?
I was going to ask the same question. You criticize other people for speculating, and then think you can make baseless conjecture.
To answer your question: People don’t take you seriously because you’re not serious. You’re crude, you have peculiar writing patterns that do not make you seem intelligent, and you’re obviously biased about the characters, rather than operating on facts.
Have never criticized anyone for speculating, may have targeted what they speculated, but not the speculating itself
> So, it was just a co-inky-stink that they launched an attack while Maxi was out of the country?
Likely not, but that just means the Ascenders had good intel.
> Kev’s attack was part of his plan, or did you forget his reaction?
I certainly don’t remember anything like that. Mind jogging my memory?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-292-crime-may-not-pay-but-villainy-is-evidently-humorous/
While it might not have been his plan, he still knew about it
The fight was broadcast on live TV – loads of people knew about it.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-288-hearts-and-mind-fingers/
Final panel of that page confirms that the broadcast was live.
Did… you not read what he said?
“Unbelievable, even better than I’d hoped.”
So because the outcome of the fight was advantageous to Deus, he *had* to have planned it?
It was on TV, so of course he would know about it.
There are good chances he knew beforehand, because he both has connections to the instigators (who don’t seem to be the Ascenders) and a habit of knowing things, but that doesn’t mean he planned it. Also he simply could habe predicted something like it would happen in response to Maxima’s challenge, without specific knowledge.
And even if he was behind the Restaurant Brawl, that doesn’t mean he’s behind the Ascenders – the only connection is Death Toll, but he was apparently just some guy who showed up to the Brawl.
I think because he’s rich and wears a suit and they’re rich and wear suits that some assume they’re working together. I seriously doubt he would have people this incompetent working for him, but I almost guarantee he either suggested they do this so he could benefit from their work, or he’s manipulating them somehow.
Well, Deus is manipulating EVERYONE, so it is a fair bet he is manipulating these ‘Ascenders’ for his own gain. Either giving them intel or simple ‘suggestions’.
Now as to why? I have no idea but I know better than to take what the man says at face value.
I know people would do anything to see the Sox but this is ridiculous.
The villains have some real class. Definitely to a clear theme yet surprisingly original with plenty of room for personal flair.
I agree that giving someone the power to send you to Celtics games and pick you up there from anywhere IS pretty kewl if you’re an evil mastermind who loves powerful, irrelevant, yet cool things. Isn’t pointless extravagance part of the trope?
First!
*snrk* I see what you did there.
Now to see just how strategic ARC is as an Org. Do they have an OPS plan for every known villain? especially those they have encountered?
Maybe Jigawatt needs to start practicing with 100 yen coins or just take a course on plasma physics.