Grrl Power #1134 – Chemical victory
Knocking people out in super brawls is usually handled via concussion. Concussions are wildly overused in most media, and in almost every instance, they wildly overestimate how easily people get knocked out. Sure, sometime people in TV shows or whatever get in a car wreck (especially since some stunt guys figured out how to do the T-Bone from within the car shot) and then it cuts on impact, then fades back in, representing time lost to unconsciousness. But most of the time, a goon will take a real bantam weight ding on the jaw and drop like the housing market after decades of deregulation. That’s usually the fault of lazy writing, direction and/or stunt work. Not everyone’s going to set up a yank line on the person getting clocked to make the hit look severe enough to ring their bell. TV production schedules sometimes just don’t have the time for that kind of work when a simple stage punch is fine for 90% of the audience.
I’m sure I’m guilty of it in the comic, but at least when Jiggawatt got laid out, it was after bouncing off a cinderblock wall straight into a clothesline.
But that’s why Harem gets hypo duty. Sure, sedatives have their own risks, and might not work against Supers with dense skin or hyper metabolism or their power is that their blood is pure caffeine, but it’s probably still safer than cracking everyone on the head with a tube sock full of nickels. I think the reason other super teams don’t do it is that it makes for shorter, less dramatic fights. I don’t know that I see someone like Wonderman or Thor or Wolverine doing something like that, but I could definitely see The Beast, or… oh, man, could you imagine Iceman doing it? He’d have the hypo in his utility belt which gets encased in ice, then he pulls it out and injects someone? It’d be like getting intravenous brainfreeze.
Anyway, it’s an incredibly sensible thing to do, but it assumes you have a sedative that could knock out a 225 lb guy but won’t put the 125 lb Super powered female into cardiac arrest. Really, Harem probably has several different hypos that put out different doses, and one of her has to work at a carnival six weekends a year doing the weight guessing schtick for practice. Not that honing that skill on the average American would really be all that helpful when your real targets are muscular Supers who all have about 6% body fat. Maybe there’s a carnival near a military base and she practices on Marines or something.
The February Vote Incentive is up! Yes, I know it’s late and I still owe you guys one for March. I already have the pencils mostly done, so hopefully you guys won’t be waiting for it all month?
Kat, you remember, the newly minted were-hare? Well, someone forgot to give her a copy of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Were-Margaret.” She has questions is what I’m saying.
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Certainly, a sensible means of ending the fight. Interesting that the Lightning Guy can be depowered by a simple grounding line. Now who’s doing the telekinetics to “bell the cat”?
It may not be a “simple” grounding line. Varia could be enhancing/directing the grounding effect with whatever power(s) she is employing in the moment.
That was Varia with magnetic powers again. see last panel
Like I said, figure out your opponent’s skill-set, taking them down is SO much easier. When I was studying, a fellow student liked to flourish his kicks making them look fancy, which slowed him down, so I jumped over a low kick and landed on his ankle! “DON’T over-extend your limbs!” our sensei yelled at him heheheh…. ;) It’s simple things like that can quickly turn any fight, whether it’s a sparing match or the real thing.
“but… but I have cheaty powers!”
“so do we”
“I CALL SHENANIGANS”
“how’s it feel to be bested by a team with more women than men, with all your masculine bravado?”
“I CALL SHE-NANIGANS”
“Max, that guy makes up puns while superhero fight bantering, we can’t arrest him”
“What? Of course we can”
“No Max you don’t get it, that’s a PROTAGONIST trait”
“Oh shit”
… sorry this got away from me
Oh hells, yeah! I’m liking this twist – I mean, Harem’s already a double/triple/wtv agent, so who’s to say there aren’t more with similarly sneaky powers or ideals. For Wh… oh sod that. Deathtoll could qualify if it wasn’t for the fact he seems to be a giant sphincter…
Buttsniffer is as much a man-boy as suckhole, it only took Sydney a minute to figure buttsniffer out for the take-down. Teamwork and training is what makes a good team, not showy powers and a desire to put those who ARE good to shame. Typical villain thinking, “I’m good, I’m all you need.” rather than working together. And in the end they cry for help from the very guys that he stiffed. That’s the biggest difference between criminals and law enforcement, Criminals are always thinking me, me, oh and me, oh you’re here too?”, while a great team like ARCswat it’s all about US and the targets.
This is now canon, anyone making puns is one of the good guys. No matter what Pander says.
you mean Punder
Lies! Do not try turning people to the Dark Side with your scurilous falsehoods, you evil and nefarious miscreant!
Whoa, slow down there, Punder.
Such naked hostility. Have you become a Pander Bare?
Have to agree with the Punderer: puns don’t make you a good guy, just good guys get a lenient sentence
Was actually expecting him to be calling for a big (as in bigger than Kev after he embiggened himself) female super with the name of She-Nanigan (who may or may not have a bigger brother called He-Nanigan… )
Perhaps a twin sister named She-Nan-Again.
Pretty sure that name would be reserved for an octogenarian grandmother super coming out of retirement.
*shakes fist angrily* THAT DOESNT EVEN MAKE SENSE AS A PUN BASED ON THE THREAD !!!!!
*incoherent angry rambling sounds*
It doesn’t have to make rhetorical sense! Puns are a law unto themselves no matter what Cornell Law Review says about humor.
Also I think we broke Pander. Shhh, deep breath and come lie down in this secure, wordplay-proof timeout room for people with joke-related stress. What? Why, yes, it is called a pun-in-tension-ary, how did you kn- {gak!}
if those wont work im sure Jesse Faden can find some chambers suitable for Pander’s recovery/ reprograming. wait did I say that out loud?
*looks at cornel link*
scrolls through table of contents. almost 100 pages of text!!!!
*sees page 1 and 2.* (actual number is much higher)
that looks like some of the study bible pages… 1-2 paragraphs of text and 2/3 of a page of footnotes…
*closes link*
mental note… no. not again.
*pokes Pander with a stick as she lays on the floor twitching and foaming at the mouth*
“Hello, Poison Control? Yes my emergency is fish related! I believe my friend here has carped too much for one diem. Ah, I tried cod liver oil. That was no good? Ok, I will try the castor bean oil next.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-183-confirm-skill-upgrade-yn/
(panel 4. Sydney – that’s me right now. Graara! Raggle! RABBLE GRABBLE!!!!!)
Stop grabbing the rabble! You don’t know where they have been, or rolling in!!
Ist pünderbar.
‘But most of the time, a goon will take a real bantam weight ding on the jaw and drop like the housing market after decades of deregulation.’
hmmmmmmmmm…..
I suspect rather than weight guessing at a carnival that there is a more organized way to do it. also, there are doctors on staff, there are 5 harems, maybe she just has the doc give her some guesses.
I do not know for sure but it seems that it would not be difficult to make the injector ‘dial-a-dose’. yeah its expensive.
just add the cost of a new one to the super’s fines in court. given that a town can mistakenly destroy a house with a swat team and feel that it is not there proble to fix it even if the owner is not a fault. I see charging the super some absurd amount for a ‘one use dial a dose fight suppressor’ pretty easy.
Just one ridiculously expensive injector, made by dabbler with hardware to scan the recipient in real time and adjust the dose accordingly.
Or made by Gadget. It doesn’t actually use sedatives. It runs a microscopic chain through the subject’s arteries and chokes them out from the inside.
The first few, dozen, were instantly lethal, but fortunately they used animal testing. The local meat packer did have to occasionally pry a tiny chain link out of a meat saw, however.
That’s how I’d handwave it if I were the author — with Dabbler’s advanced tech, she could surely create an injectable that used nanobots or whatever to monitor the recipient’s vital signs in realtime and continuously adjust itself so as to keep the victim right over the edge of unconsciousness but not so deep as to suppress breathing etc. Basically an internal anesthesiologist monitoring the patient.
I imagined that the sleepy-time cocktail was designed, or enhanced by their resident super-powered medic. Maybe a super powerful sedative with little side-effects and, almost, no chance of overdose.
> …a town can mistakenly destroy a house with a SWAT team…
The case I know of was absolutely not a ‘mistake’. A shoplifting suspect added Breaking and Entering to his rap sheet, and the police response was “We broke some windows trying to smoke bomb him out and he’s still in there? Let’s tear the house down around him to flush him out!”… and then the owners weren’t allowed to retrieve anything from the home because the bits that weren’t rubble were structurally unsound, and the city refused to pay to have the home repaired or rebuilt for reasons I can’t remember off the top of my head. (Civil forfeiture, because the house was aiding the shoplifter? Eminent Domain?)
probably some form of immunity. I think I say a leto video headline saying a court ruled in the homeowners favor.
IIRC, they claimed that since they were exercising policing power, it didn’t count as a taking that required compensation. That was a pretty outrageous story, but only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to government stealing or destroying people’s property.
Depressants knock you out, too much and you die. There are drugs which just make you go to sleep, there is no “too much” because you’ll just sleep longer.
If you inject a sedative, you can easy select a amount that would be effective for small female and a heavy male. however there always is a danger.
Dosing gas or a bag of nickels to get the same effect is much much more difficult.
However knocking someone out, be it with gas, bag of nickels, injection or a taser is always unethical.
lets pass this question to the ethical committee and let them figure it out.
Rendering someone unconscious is far made ethical than killing them.
There are no non-leathal weapons, only less-leathal weapons.
Here in Bahstahn, the riot cops used to have this airgun that shot you with a heavy rubber ball, which then shot pepper-spray in every direction like half a second after impact. The idea seemed to be in ideal circumstances the ball hits you in your chest and either you look down or fall on your butt, just in time to get a face full of burning irritants. They stopped using it about fifteen years back after somebody died – not for any of the reasons you’re thinking, goodness no. Some genius shot one at a dude in a sports riot who had drunkenly climbed a statue and was dangling thirty feet off the ground. There’s exactly nothing that’s nonlethal when used on somebody whose arm is the only thing stopping them from falling to their death/serious injury.
The objective of the two sides is different. The Arc-SWAT objective is to arrest the people who attacked and damaged a military base, injured some law-enforcement and support personnel, stole physical property from the base and abducted a federal law-enforcement official (just not the one they thought they got). The team is here during the investigation of an active crime, due to that, there is no need for warrants.
The people at the secret evil lair (not to be confused with a secret evil layer, where Sydney sneaks her favourite hot sauce into the strawberry jam being put between vertically stacked parts of a cake, without telling anyone) are being seen to actively resist arrest and assault federal law enforcement officials, sometimes directly targeting certain known individuals. This is the short-sighted elitist point of view that “I can get away with anything, if I pay enough for it, so leave me alone” but attacking police just invites more police to the party, so achieving just the opposite of “Leave me alone.”
Ascension member: They entered the premises without obtaining a warrant.
Arianna: We were investigating an on-going crime at that site. A warrant was not needed.
Ascension member: They did not come in the front door.
Arianna: The so-called front door was hidden inside the lower level of a parking garage, with several potentially lethal security measures in place. Therefore, we entered in a way to avoid those security measures.
Ascension member: We had the right to defend ourselves and our property.
Arianna: You do not have the right to physically engage identified police officers who enter your property for the purpose of retrieving stolen property and personnel. Almost all of our members were wearing uniforms that clearly identified them as police officers. Several of your members verbally called out the names of some of the Arc-SWAT members present. A few (of the less wise) even thought that engaging with certain members of Arc-SWAT was a suitable challenge. In reality, all it did was slow down the inevitable and add a few years to what will be their already lengthy incarceration.
It is a fight. Forcing submission through violence. That is what a fight is. In a pure sense, all violence is unethical. In messy reality, all civilization is underpinned by the regulated application of violence. ArcSwat is essentially a group of thugs that beats people up and then kidnaps them. The key factor is that ArcSwat uses violence to the benefit of the majority of society. Whereas the criminals they beat up use violence to the benefit of themselves (a small subset of society). This is the reality of all laws and law enforcement everywhere ever.
“Society is – in part – underpinned by the regulation and restriction of violence in a way that convinces the majority that they are largely safe from the predations and depredation of themselves by other parties, irrespective of the object reality, which may – and historically does – consist of a minority party of society holding exclusive or near-exclusive control of the socially acceptable ‘legitimate’ use of violence, which is used to enforce the norms that are favored by and materially benefit that minority group, to the explicit, demonstrable, and independently verifiable detriment of the rest of society.”
There, I fixed it for you.
“which is used to enforce the norms that are favored by and materially benefit that minority group, to the explicit, demonstrable, and independently verifiable detriment of the rest of society.”
The norms are always of more benefit to those in power, but not of more detriment to the rest of society than having no enforced norms at all. It’s never as good as those in power get, but the “detriment” is only perceived as such relative to what those in power have, not relative to what would be if those norms were just not enforced.
The working poor in a first world country today have a longer healthier life expectancy and more access to education, culture, and healthcare than George Washington did, who died in 1799 at age 67. The progress that happened in the last 220 years was made possible by the enforced norms that you claim are to the “detriment of the rest of society.”
Should the law always seek to be fair and equitable? Yes. Will that ever actually be achieved? Unlikely, it will just become inequitable in different ways as different groups gain and lose power. But rest assured that in the end it will always be enforced by the application of violence that will almost always be worse than Harem’s tranquilizer gun.
Is-Ought fallacy.
I have to disagree. There are distinctly different types of force. Aggression involves the initiation of force against others who are not harming or imminently threatening, and is indeed unethical. Defense involves the use of force to resist aggression, and is ethically justifiable. Finally, there’s retribution, the use of force to punish aggressors after the fact. In civilized societies, retribution is usually delegated exclusively to the state. This is fully ethical in principle, whatever its shortcomings in practice.
Good to see Varia took her hand out of Jiggawatt’s trousers BEFORE she came round..
These are women who shower together. It’s not like she was cupping a full butt cheek.
I’ve gone to the gym with coworkers and showered at the same time, no big deal. I would feel very different about them pulling aside my shirt and sliding their hand under my belt, even if they weren’t making full contact.
There are clearly mitigating circumstances here, but no reason for the contact to be maintained longer than needed.
Now off to jail with those billionaires, who’ve donated tons (or tonnes) of money to politicians. Bail by 3.
Don’t injected cedatives also take quite some time to become effective, especially if you don’t have the opportunity to directly inject into a vein, as opposed to *tsjik* out in 3 seconds as portrayed in most media?
I know my injected migraine medicine takes ~5 mins before it is effective.
It’s Sparkly Magic TinkerTech Bullshit Sleepytime Cocktail, which means it’s super effective on just about everyone while NOT being accidentally fatal to almost anyone.
There’s a reason anesthesiologists are a medical specialty.
I take insulin daily and the number one rule is if the needle going in stings more than normal, pull it out and pick a different spot because it’s in a vein, if you ignore it, it can cause a sudden rapid sugar drop which results in you passing out and go into a diabetic coma. Not good.
It depends on the amount and type of medication it is, and where the shot is put. If your in the OR and they tell you “Ok, now count down to ten” and you only make it to five… That’s an IV injection, acts very fast and if you didn’t notice she puts each shot directly into the jugular vein, so yeah a ten count at best. She was trained to do that, clearly.
“If your in the OR and they tell you “Ok, now count down to ten” and you only make it to five… That’s an IV injection”
IIRC, it doesn’t actually knock you out by 5, but in addition to knocking you out, it interferes with long term memory formation, so that you can’t REMEMBER having counted past 5, even though you probably got to 7 or 8.
During my last colonoscopy:
Me: “Before we get started, I have a question.”
Nurse: “We’re already finished.”
Me: “Nevermind.”
My point was that in under ten seconds, ANY drug injected into your circulatory system will only take that long to reach your brain. And organs.
So, watching the progression of the last few pages, some new questions/observations have come to mind regarding Varia. If she is in contact with more than one person at a time, does she get the gestalt powers she would normally have while in contact with each of them individually? Or, does she get a new gestalt for that particular combination of people she’s in contact with?
Because, if she’s getting vorp’d in and still in contact with Harem at the same time she touches someone else, she could potentially have ger gestalt with Harem, her gestalt with whoever else she contacts, and/or maybe an entirely new power based upon the combination of all of them being in contact simultaneously.
Second observation: She might get a different gestalt with each Harem? On first blush, you’d think she might get just one gestalt power for touching Daphne, no matter which iteration. But it would be a fascinating breadcrumb into Harem’s nature if there were at least slight differences between each one. Over time they might even drift further and further apart.
Loop back to the beginning of this post, and she might get a very different gestalt by being in contact with all five Harem’s simultaneously than what she gets when in contact with any single one. A few years back in the comments there was some discussion about Harem eventually getting a sixth (and eventually more) versions of herself as she ages and gains power … which somehow seems relevant. There’s always been a bit of a question of just how unique (or not) each image of Daphne is, as manifested in corporeal form. Experimenting with Varia and different combinations of contact would provide a very useful data set to gain important insight into Harem’s nature. At the same time, it might also provide more insight into Varia’s nature.
If memory serves then when Varia is touching multiple people she simply gets to pick one of said people to use her power with.
Casual contact is what activates her power(s), like at the night club dancing, she just brushed someone and BOOM she’s a fire golem. Then when they realized who she was everyone wanted to take a turn to see what happened. Later while taking a break she bumped hands with that vampire Crimson, she turned into that bad horror movie vamp and scared Harem sober lol.
I think she’d gain more power by touching all harems but I think it’s the same thing with any of them. They only look different because of the confusion it would cause everyone. If you could make 4 copies of yourself you wouldn’t want to wear numbered shirts all the time. Plus she seems to be able to maintain the look she’s chosen for each one even if she “deletes” one.
That’s because the other Daphnes aren’t just a copy, she can’t ‘delete’ them, she just puts them into ‘storage’
She knows who each one is (because they are all her), she did the looks for others to tell them apart and not get freaked out or confused
And as always, victory was brought by the power of friendship, aka the power of “teamwork”, “number superiority” and “ganging up on people fighting alone”.
They weren’t fighting alone, however. They were fighting individually.
i like the cut of your jib.
Teamwork is dreamwork!
*recalls every ‘group project,’ ever*
…
*1000 yard stare*
is in a ‘group project’ at work
*crying in corner*
*offers a pumpkin pie flavored kit kat*
*offers a kit-kat flavoured pumpkin*
*accepts both, debates which of my worthless coworkers to smash the pumpkin over while eating the kitkat*
That might be a tough decision, in the meantime you should play the same Smashing Pumpkins song on repeat for a while and maybe the answer will arrive on its own.
No, it’s just I bought a BUNCH of these last month when I saw them at a Dollar Tree and I’ve been eating them quite happily. Instant cheer up to anything. :)
https://www.bestproducts.com/lifestyle/a33266102/hersheys-halloween-kit-kat-pumpkin-pie/
*is now happily laughing in a corner*
sadly I’m now entry level diabetic so yes brichins can eat the kit kats.
but if you come near my sugar free reseses I can’t answer for the consequences.
(leaves out the Russel stovers as bait)
Maybe it is just me, but Russel Stovers candy seems to be just brown wax. No flavor that I can tell.
That’s what happens when you take out the sugar
My issue with sugar free russel stovers is the induced flow afterwards.
Guesticules, they should still taste like they have cocoa in them.To me they do not.
Yeah, that’s group work, not team work, huge difference (but you knew that)
> Fucking teamwork
Dabbler ears tingling.
Too bad she is stuck in Africa for now.
I’m sure she’ll be showed the footage when she gets back, Max loves to torture her like that ;) “Watch, this is when Varia turned her fridged!” Heh…
You mean frigid? Fridged is… something else entirely, and usually not healthy for the one getting fridged
It’s a play on words, frigid means just that but Varia used ice so it was meant to mean both lol.
It’s just, normally, when someone gets fridged, they tend to end up in a fridge in pieces (usually just the head piece)
It’s always bugged me as an adult seeing how easy it is to knock out/kill people in fiction. Spend some time in a hospital emergency room, as an emt/paramedic or a combat medic and it becomes apparent that humans aren’t as squishy as shows/movies/books make them out to be. To the point where a friend and I coined the phrase ‘death by shoulder wound’ for all the dudes in movies who die from non-life threatening injuries. Nice to see an author come up with a different idea than ‘beat them to unconsciousness/death’.
Humans are actually incredibly easy to kill, they are just absurdly hard to disable without killing
Knocking out, pain compliance, choking? It all takes way more precision and is way more dependent on the individual, than most any media depicts
We are both easy to kill, and harder to kill. After all, people have survived stuff which you would think should kill us easy. And then as pointed out, in TV people go down a lot easier than it is in reality. Inconvenient shoulder wound kills a bad guy thug, but the protag gets to shrug off same said wound and keep fighting with a “mild” handycap.
Sure that shoulder wound is not a “kill shot” , but the resulting blood clot that forms and lodges in their brain that night is still lethal.
Another example – arterial wound on an appendage, shooter victim goes into shock after total surprise of being shot out of nowhere. Victim falls unconscious and bleeds out….slowly till death through the night. [this is 3rd hand from Vietnam Special forces Medic 18D)
There is HUGE difference between what can person survive when alone and when actively cared for by team of doctors in hospital emergency room, yeah …
Another issue is individual variation in the sensitivity to whatever is being used to knock out a person. I’ve personally been acquainted with a 130 pound individual who would keep on fighting even after being given enough sedatives to keep a person twice his size asleep for 24 hours. Conversely, I worked with another, often violent, individual with who we had to be very careful with all of his medications because it took very little to through his blood sugar out of whack. The point is that while supers may be robust, experience shows that subduing without injuring iin real life is quite difficult.
Usually in the movies its the underlings or “random guy on sentry duty” who is put out with one punch.
cant have every fight the hero’s are in last 5 minutes.
*DragonballZ clears throat* Hold my beer.
but first we need 10 minutes of glaring and constipation.
Just one punch,
But
Over 9000 SCREAMS!
its already over 9000!!!!!!
open the pod bay door Hal
I can’t do that dave. because I’m only 9000.
Sounds more like Goku lol.
Although suckhole wouldn’t effect him much either….
a three whole seasons of posing then one punch is thrown
What’s the thing that looks like a giant gray doughnut in panel two, engulfing the one guy?
That’s the ground, it was whipped up at the end of the last comic.
That’s the ground and it’s green not gray, they made it bendy a couple pages back.
Check the last two panels of the previous comic. When Varia touches Mr. Amorphos, she apparently gains the power to manipulate earth. She uses it to bring up chunks of sod to hold the enemy forces.
In the last strip, we learned that Varia’s gestalt power with Mr. Amorphous is to be able to apply a variant of Mr. Amorphous’s shapeshifting power to the terrain.
I just want to be sure about this. The ascenders, Supermassive included, all want to capture and experiment on supers in order to give people, in this case, high paying clients, powers, right?
Supermassive has two options, he can use his powers on a grander level to escape, or he can surrender (though if it’s the latter, worst case scenario, he’s just an elite mook who doesn’t know anything about the ascenders’ plans and he was just a distraction for the real masterminds to escape.)
I don’t know how often people say it, but it needs to be said: in addition to your wonderful comic, your commentary visuals are SPOT ON :)
If there were a hundred Harems,they would perform the dance of a hundred Smurfs…!
Might be a simpler method than that. We’ve got a super-healer with a medical degree, all she has to do, is have one of her relaying information to said healer, who structures the doses, then passes them to the versions delivering the goodies.
Thus, Harem can have roughly to well tailored doses for every target of sedation quickly and efficiently.
It’d be interesting if during a fight. Someone in ArcDark was watching battles and their super power was the ability to know the effect and exact dosage of chemicals in a body, and their job was to tell Harem which dosage tranq to use on a person.
Don’t know if it helps build your idea, but my late father was a Marine and one of his superpowers was knowing your weight. He could walk into a room, look at you and call out your weight to the pound. He used to box, too, so it was probably something he found useful.
Don’t forget that if you are hitting someone hard enough to knock them out, you are causing brain damage. At best a concussion, or you could cause a TBI or hypoxic-ischemic brain injury. At worse you can cause massive bleeding and straight up kill them.
BTW, anyone noticed how Jiggawat has a VERY high injury rate when she is involved in combat?
“How Not to Get Hurt When Working Around Tanks” will probably become a part of ARCSWAT’s core training curriculum. We have also seen Heatwave take a fairly serious injury in the first melee. Jiggawatt may be less experienced/more injury prone than some but several of ARCSWAT team are not particularly injury resistant
It’s like being invulnerable in a pitched fight is an asset or something, rather than having showy energy projection powers that Look So Cool. Who knew?
Hey, the last time she got hurt, she was in a group of pure non-super durable supers.
Still you make a good point.
Jiggawatt carries standard military equipment to protect herself against super powers, although it is pretty effective it has some big blind spots.
First her equipment is mostly designed to protect against piercing, while supers tend to focus on blunt force and/or specialized attacks, because most tools don’t survive them.
Second her equipment doesn’t incorporate her powers in the limitations it works with.
My porposal:
The combination of the camera manipulation comment(she has enough fine control to stop the film) and her thinking while trapped in Hwwtdt implies she could with enough effort learn to pilot and power a purpose designed exosuit by telebolting and piloting the suit by directly inputting the ports and exit inside the suit if she needs to do something which requires more fine mortor control or can for a different reason not be done inside the suit. She could become basically the terminator, with energy protection powers.
The advantage of this would be that keeping a bunch of high energy electrons from being hurt and scrambled is much easier than .minimizing blunt force trauma in a human.
Harem would probably best defended by using her multi body ability to “replace” damaged Harems.
Varia would be harder to defend, because in her default state she has no special powers to be exploited.
For Varia I propose, basically a very sturdy pressurized tire with safety valves, so that if she is hit the force is spread over time.
Heatwave could be given the same tire, but the option to repressrize it when it’s deflated by a punch.
Teamwork makes the dream work. And other vaguely inspirational platitudes.
There is a reason you “collar them”, Dabbler’s autodoc collar would knock you out & administer a heal potion all while putting a spinal block at your neck to stop movement.
Since this universe has mostly bi-pedal humanoids, the NECK is the junction where you can get the fastest results.
At the restaurant battle, Harem administered the initial dose but then slapped on bracelets that included heart rate monitoring (and other things) and could administer additional doses. Spinal block sounds far too dangerous, especially during a fight when even someone unconscious might get knocked around.
And THAT children, is why my SGT used to say TEAM is an acronym for
Together
Everyone
Achieves
More
Goddamn right he was.
we need more GOOD stargate.
*indeed*
They were right to cancel Universe.
Knowingly going against a military unit and complaining about teamwork is rich.
Knowingly going against a military unit (DoD, remember) and then complainig about being sedated rather than being killed would be even richer.
If I was trying to fight a para-military unit and all they did was force to take a nap, I’d be happy! Or at least until I woke up to my rights being read to me through a set of bars… He’s just whining because he lost to an “unfair” fight with real cops there to arrest him. Like I said, a man-baby wanting to “play”. Nothing more.
I’m assuming that Harem’s hypo has a dosage knob that can adjust how much sleepytime cocktail to inject, and she’s pretty good at quickly estimating body mass, setting the dosage and hitting the button on the fly.
At least it’s not like the magic hypos McCoy had in TOS Star Trek, which had an “Ingredients” cartridge and could mix up anything he needed by “Setting” it for the drug he needed (Like in “The City at the Edge of Forever” where he falls on the thing when it’s “Set” for psycho Juice, and makes himself go berserk.)
Undifferentiated Matter – the stuff the ST replicators use is the magic ingredient supposedly from Aristotle originally.
Shame on you Dave, you really missed a chance for a callback in the comment section! You should have used ‘bra full of billiard balls’ instead of ‘sock full of nickles’.
Woah! Couple of things. There is no “safe” injectable knock out drug. You go in for any kind of medical procedure requiring you to be unconscious, there is an anesthesiaologist on the team with his/her own Doctorate. Of note, one of the more common drugs used in anesthesia is Fentanyl. Yeah, that’s right, the drug that illegally is brought in country and kills over 100,000 Americans a year. That’s why you need a professional with a Ph.D. to administer it.
Second. TEAMWORK fukin Ay. There’s a real world example of that playing out in Ukraine right now. Ukraine began training in Combined Armed tactics and strategy about ten years ago with the help of NATO nations and developed a strong NCO corp as its military backbone. Russia is still using ancient WWI tactics of just sending massive amounts of troops and equipment with little coordination and teamwork. Also they have no effective NCOs, middle managers, between their officers and grunts on the ground. This, along with corruption, is why Putin, with what was once thought of as the second most powerful military in the world, is losing his war against a country that wasn’t even considered in the top ten. No teamwork.
In Russia, anyone with above-average intelligence is suspected to be counterrevolutionary and generally politically unreliable, and clever people keep emigrating to west for century. Who would say it will have negative effect on military ability … I mean, besides “everyone”? :-)
Read an interesting article the other day about how the Russians are losing ridiculous numbers of tanks, due at least in part to their utter failure to coordinate with other forces. Instead of waiting for infantry to clear minefields, they just roll right in until things start blowing up, just as one example. Plus, poor coordination and logistics leave them intact but useless due to lack of spare parts or even fuel.
Another problem is that most of their enlisted and even many NCOs are short-service conscripts. They’re poorly trained because if you took the time to train them right, their terms would be up by the time that training finished. As a result, they’re not good for much beyond the most basic gruntwork. Lots of jobs that would be performed by enlisted and non-coms in western forces have to be done by officers instead. Throw in a general lack of motivation, and it’s no surprise they’re vastly underperforming.
Yup, you nailed it. I find myself caught in a dichotomy. On one hand I fully support Ukraine and their dominance against their Russian adversaries. On the other hand I feel for the Russian conscripts, Mobiks, that get sent to the front with little or no training, badly equipped and often with no real direction or orders, just “attack thataway”.
You can probably work out that much of their idiocy is ‘deliberate’. “Oh, I hit a mine. Guess I won’t have to drive this tank over into RPG range of those Ukrainians, darn.” “Whoops, firing pin on my rifle broke, and we’re out of spares. Guess I’ll have to retreat.”
That is totally what is going on with some of the conscripts.
Well good news for Supermassive, his power suite will probably let him railgun himself into the stratosphere before anyone can react and try again with some other org.
A railgun uses electromagnetic force, not gravity, as the means of propelling an object.
I think you’re meaning a zero point energy field manipulator (ie, the gravity gun), like in Half Life.
You are forgetting: Maxi can move at rilly rilly fast speeds
Eh, they took a shot, and stumbled at the end.
Why are they all in front of him and gathered up? I know it makes a good image but he has gravity powers and the three in the back doesn’t really have good defense? Right? Even if he can’t afford to be distracted considering what the front-line is that just seems like a bad decision.
He tries anything, Wart is gonna knock his helmet off (with or without his head still inside… )
Does the ability to create, train, inspire, coordinate, and lead a team count as one of Max’s powers? Because if so I think she DID beat Suckhole with her powers.
that is a skill. she had to learn that. probably through painful means.
Just a minor question. In the last panel, Varia is holding Jiggawatt’s GLOVED hand, yet she still seem to have magneto-type powers (they’re standing on a floating bent metal girder).
So was this an art error, or does it mean that she doesn’t NEED to touch people’s skin directly? Because I remember DaveB mentioning that she didnt NEED to actually touch Arianna’s bare leg through the run in her stocking.
And if the latter is the case, why did he need to pull down Jiggawatt’s pants a bit earlier to give her spankies? Also why did she say the reason that she couldnt get powers from Maxima was ‘she has screwy skin’?
Hence why I’m leaning towards an art error. Anyone else have opinionson this?
It just occurred to me that Jiggawatt is wearing fingerless gloves. So although it looks like she’s just holding hands, maybe Jiggawatt’s fingers are touching Varia’s hand.
Awwwww… poor suckhole, he just wanted to show off and now he gets arrested… Whelp buddy, here your sign!
And don’t forget your T-shirt!
You all remember Kelvin’s shirt in jail that read “I fought ACRswat and all I got was this stupid T-shirt”? Pure gold there!
Wasn’t it an objective to keep the pressure on him so he wouldn’t be able to crush the squishies?
It seems rational that there could be some kind of super chemist somewhere in Archon who, between developing a paint that passively amplifies wifi and a spray foam to seal spacecraft hull breaches, knocked out a super sedative.
It was probably their college thesis.
Kinda feels like this is going to be Super Masshole’s formative moment as a villain.
Not, “the traumatic triggering event that spurred him to a life of villainy-that-is-really-a-totally-understandable-thing-that-he-reacted-to-poorly-and-which-doesn’t-gel-with-established-neoliberal-hierarchies,” but rather, the experience that is going to shape _how_ he goes about being a villain.
Specifically, I feel like he’s going to be That Guy who is going to spend all his effort proving that He Doesn’t Need Anybody, and Your Reliance On Others Makes You Weak.
…only I’m pretty sure a basically a shitheel techbro type, and will go about it in the most douchebag way possible, because he’s kinda forced to acknowledge that the organized numerical superiority of a force whose membership trust and genuinely support each other does in fact have a material advantage over his Lone Badass factor.
I’m certain he’ll be back for the big Villain Teamup Crisis that will irrevocably alter the dynamic of the entire series, at some point.
For he record, I would have a hard time, as a super working with Archon in this scenario.
These guys are, at the end of the day, slavers.
I have only one response to that, and it involves ends with putting the bodies on display as a warning.
I read a comic called “The gentle wolf” that had the perfect way to deal with slavers and rapists, they strung them up on a frame and set a trap, anyone got close to the guys it tripped buckets of kerosene to dump on them and lit it on their bodies! A fitting end and with witnesses! Message received.
perhaps we can imagine a cost savings program for such criminals. hold them in Texas state prison. where there is no air conditioning, and just a bit of overcrowding for that ripe human smell.
I’m assuming you’re talking about the Ascenders?
Can never be too sure with Bharda…
It could be read as Archon or the Ascenders. But in context I am also assuming she means Ascenders. Since the Ascenders literally have enslaved people who were JUST saved… while archon pays their people (although jabberwokky is instead a work release program thing and so is Detla sorta).
For such things I like the response they used in Beetleburg in the first chapter of Girl Genius. Miscreants are place in a glass tube in the town square. The tube is ventilated but that is all you get. When the next bad guy comes along he gets dropped on top of the remains of the first. Much more hygienic than gibbeting.
That does not sound hygienic at all, depending on how that tube is ventilated. That sounds exceedingly gross, and I would not like to live in such a place.
It’s not meant to be hygienic, and it’s used as a warning for wannabe miscreants (kinda like those cage-things used on criminals in the Real World, just more reusable)
I mean for the townspeople. If air can get in the tube, it can also presumably get out, and probably stinks. That just sounds like a breeding ground for horrible diseases, placing the townspeople at risk. Which I guess I would think they deserve, if they think such a horrific punishment is appropriate.
The Jars, yes.
I’m down for it.
Really? Because the kind of people who would utilize such a punishment are also likely to be the kind of people who would think that people like you would deserve to suffer it.
A key point here is that, any time you hit somebody hard enough to knock them out, you’re hitting them hard enough to potentially cause brain damage.
Whereas Harem probably has a second hypo with an antagonist, in case she accidently over-sedates somebody, you can’t unpunch somebody by 20% after you tore something inside their brain.
So, yeah, all things considered, they’re better off getting hit with the hypo, even if it does carry risks.
I wonder how much brain damage you’d cause with a marshmallow, I mean, a fresh, squishy one