Grrl Power #1138 – Sure-re-re-re-render
Goon Squad literally has no skin in this game. Well… he’s flesh and blood until the dupe dies, then it turns into weird chalky stuff that eventually disintegrates into powder. And even though his dupes loses IQ points for every few copies he makes, he’s still smart enough to recognize that everyone who signs paychecks is already in custody. That puts him ahead of most thugs, honestly.
It’s got to be annoying, because like a teleporter, he’s kind of impossible to arrest without taking some kind of extreme measures. At best, you could knock his dupes out and keep them in a coma, since he can de-duplicate at will. Really, all you’d be doing at that point is making sure that any other dupes he makes start off a few IQ points down. It’s not nothing, but keeping people in medically induced comas isn’t exactly cheap.
Weirdly, he could take Harem on five separate dates at the same time. She only has one mind, so hopefully he’d take her on five different dates. Like if he took her to 5 different restaurants, it’s possible she’d get confused which one of her had already ordered when they waiter came by. Plus she’d have to deal with tasting lobster with one mouth and pizza with another and Korean BBQ with another and so on. Best for one of her to go to a restaurant, one to go to something like a Dave and Busters, one go to a fair, etc. We don’t know how Goon Squad’s mind works exactly, but we can guess that he doesn’t doesn’t have the same distributed consciousness like Harem. He seems to know when his dupes get taken out, but as to whether or not he absorbs their experience is up in the air.
The February Vote Incentive is up! The March one is mostly finished. Just need to do the clothed version and finishing the bonus comic page. Monday for sure.
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.
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.
“No excessive bedroom roughness though. We fall to pieces like a leper orgy.”
Check, please!
*offers wafer thin mint*
My brain hurts from even trying to visualize this.
Brings new meaning to ‘getting a doggybag for your date’ doesn’t it?
I think he’d just leave a mint on her pillow.
Sounds like an underachiever euphemism version of giving her a pearl necklace.
Also? Isn’t he like?? Made of candy.
She want candy. Dundadunadadundundun. She want candy.
The guy has some serious moxie hitting on Harem while being held for criminal debriefing. Pun intended.
think its more with how spread out his brain is running all the dupes his rational thinking isn’t exactly there
On a reread…his duplication and brain doesn’t quite seem to work like Harems? Unsure. Either way, I’d argue that his present bodies all being entirely expendable probably helps him with confidence. There’s not really much of a worst case scenario to fear.
A lot of funhouse-mirror experiences for Arc-SWAT this storyline. Varia sees herself in Perry the Death Troll. Harem sees herself in Ted the Goon Squad. Even X gets reflected in Chymeriad. Anyone spot any other telling reflections?
Are you saying that The Ascenders are the Linear Guild? :)
Yet another crossover I’d love to see. In either direction, actually.
Ooooh, you “nale”d it!
Honestly The Mighty Halo would make a good Vaarsuvius, too.
You implying Chimy is a criminal? o_O
Stalwart and Sado-Masochist of course.
One of her clones has a thing with Deus, but sure, *now* she’s concerned about age gaps and questionable morals. Sure, Harem.
She covered that with “He’s so rich that even the people who don’t approve still get it”. But she’s presumably not really concerned about the age gap itself, so much as what kind of person he is.
He’s in the “He’s so rich that even the people who don’t approve still get it” group. Dude literally owns a country.
In addition to that, we have seen that Deus earns his reputation as a sex god, with Daphne herself as well as Sciona.
In one of the earlier scenes where Harem is hanging out with Deus, she is wearing a shirt that says “You had me at terminally ill Billionaire”
ArcLight and ArcDark would kill for even a age bracket to start their work from.
In case of ArcDark, the killing could be literally.
I think she is playing the age gap card as a good reason for a hard pass. From the other side, Goon squad didn’t know precisely that she was 19 but close enough. If you knew that your current body would soon dissolve into a pile of chalky candy like bits you would flirt too.
Well, in theory the villain could be 12 years old so it isn’t unreasonable for her to wonder if there’s an age gap….
Actually I’ve wondered if panel 4 could be read to imply Harem is older than him, but he’d have to have a really mature frame for a kid, say 15 or below.
Judging by the reduced intelligence the leader commented on during the assault on archon I suspect goon squad doesn’t send a very clear picture “home”.
> It’s not nothing, but keeping people in medically induced comas isn’t exactly cheap.
That depends how important it is to be able to wake them back up again :)
We usually want our Artificial Coma reversible. In this case? Not so much!
i wonder what would happen the original if they chemically lobotomize the goon duplicates
The extra hilarity for me is that even with his IQ dumbed down she’s falling for it.
IQ and hormones are often at odds with one another.
Ehh k ignoring possible age gap, Harem could basically be in for the dumbest orgy of her life if she wanted. Goon squad has no limit to his numbers, and brainpower isn’t not needed for certain activities.
He is probably the only one who can deal with all 5 of her at the same time for an amount of stimulance that could charge up Dabbler big time
Goon Squad really should sign a contract with ARC-SWAT to get out of criminal charges. He brings a lot to the table, both in terms of simply being a convenient source of warm bodies for low-level work and in terms of what he can do to help Dabbler recharge.
So, if Dabbler drained one of his dup bodies entirely (until he dissolved into candy), would she get the same charge as if she did so to a normal person? If so, then he COULD IN FACT BE a neigh infinite battery for her…
She says that supers are full of tasty energy, but do Goon Squad’s dupes count as supers? I think it’s strongly implied that only the original can create more duplicates. I’m guessing, since they seem so fragile, that they have less energy than a regular person does.
I would think that if all the Harems count as supers, all the Goon Squads count at supers as well. They’re definitely not normal humans. Normal humans do not turn into butter mints upon death, nor can they self-disintegrate or form more of themselves. :)
Harem’s bodies are all equal, as far as we know. There’s nothing special about the original. Goon Squad’s original and dupes are presumably very different from each other, with only the original being able to produce more copies, and only the copies being able to self-disintegrate and turning into butter mints on death. So I would classify Goon Squad’s dupes as a product of his power, rather than supers themselves.
“Harem’s bodies are all equal, as far as we know.”
Harem’s MIND is equally distributed between her bodies. She actively does differentiate her bodies though.
That’s the main difference betwen Harem and Ted. Ted’s mind is different in each body. They are effectively distinct individuals that happen to have completely identical BODIES.
“There’s nothing special about the original.”
Except it’s been around the longest. Same with Ted’s original body. Although there is ONE difference between Ted’s original and Harem’s original. Ted’s origiinal … probably doesnt spontaneously disintegrate upon death. Or maybe it does. Who knows. But we know whether it does or not just as much as we know if Harem’s original body has anything distinct about it.
“Goon Squad’s original and dupes are presumably very different from each other,”
The only difference I could possibly see is that Ted Prime doesnt self-disintegrate.
“with only the original being able to produce more copies”
Why do you think this? Has there been anything in the comic to assume that?
” and only the copies being able to self-disintegrate and turning into butter mints on death.”
Like I said, this seems to be the only real difference. For all we know, Ted Prime has been on his beach house for years and each of his dupes have the ability to duplicate, like Billy Numerous from Teen Titans (The Hive) or DupliKate from Invincible.
“So I would classify Goon Squad’s dupes as a product of his power, rather than supers themselves.”
I’m not sure that being able to make a copy of yourself where the copy has his or her own independent thoughts makes the dupe just a product of the power instead of an individual. Take Star Wars for example, with the clones. The clones are all duplicates of the original – Jango Fett. But they each have their own thoughts and the older they get, the more independent-minded they can be, despite their training, willingness to die to protect the cause, and the organic chip in their heads. They are a product of cloning, but they’re also people, even though they were unfairly considered more expendable by most of the Jedi, the Republic, and the Empire afterwards. And despite being clones, they are different from Jango in that they were artificially aged up faster (except for Boba and Omega).
Actually do we even know whether the dupes can spawn as well, or is it only the original? Don’t recall seeing anything indicating the dupes multiply, which would have a huge impact on their value and the logistics of hiring/deploying them. Both for employers and Ted Prime.
“Don’t recall seeing anything indicating the dupes multiply,”
1) You havent seen more about the dupes multiplying than the original only multiplying, so not sure why there would be an assumption that it’s only Ted Prime.
2) If Ted Prime has been far away from here this entire time, and Goon Squad has needed to duplicate himself up to the point where thinking gets really fuzzy (as stated by the two Goons who had been guarding Chimy), that does seem to indicate that maybe the dupes DO duplicate as well, sort of like DupliKate from Invincible.
You know? Now I want to see those two date. I think it’d be neat. And there’s just enough chemistry to be interesting.
I’m noticing an awful lot of people are realizing what this guy could do for Dabbler. Pretty hefty topic of conversation.
A lot of people assuming Goon Squad, especially spread out is a competent lover. What if they are premature rope pushers?
If there are enough of them it could be fine, he’d just have to coordinate
Six inches or twenty feet, soggy rope is still soggy rope.
On the absorbs their experiences. You did imply during the raid on Archon that be did as when they were destroyed the one outside the base was commenting on how they were destroyed.
I can’t help but find Harem really cute in this page, the whole casual back and forth, the going on her tiptoes to check if Maxima is looking before fishing for more info, and her immedieately shouting out like a kid caught while thinking about doing some mischief by their mom, its all super cute.
Well, he’s rich enough to own a beach house, which raises the question: How many paychecks is Goon Squad drawing at once, anyway? He might be making serious money for sitting at home out of danger.
Depends on where the beach is
She says that supers are full of tasty energy, but do Goon Squad’s dupes count as supers? I think it’s strongly implied that only the original can create more duplicates. I’m guessing, since they seem so fragile, that they have less energy than a regular person does.
Her hair is so unique