Grrl Power #119 – Eye of the Tiger Uppercut
I decided to skip the obvious flailing and property destruction that no doubt occurred immediately after the last page and jump back up to the base. Having an unplanned scene where Sydney lashes herself in the eye with a 3 million scoville noodle means that I get to draw her in a few upcoming key scenes with an eyepatch, but I’m sure I’ll get a few decent gags out of it.
Next weekend I’m going to the Dragon’s Lair Webcomic Rampage. I’m not exhibiting obviously as I don’t have a book to sell or anything, but I’ve been doing this webcomic thing for a little over 2 years now and I have yet to go to a proper webcomic con. I’ll have a shirt with some Grrl Power stuff printed on it if you’re there and want to say hi. Now since this is over the weekend and I do most of my drawing over the weekend, I’m not sure what will become of next Monday’s comic. I tried to work ahead this weekend and I have it about half penciled already, but I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to get it finished by next Monday. I’ll definitely post something, just don’t be surprised if it’s not colored right away.
It’s been brought to my attention that not everyone knows who Sagat is, which isn’t actually all that surprising but exposes my insular world view. He’s a major recurring antagonist from the Street Fighter series. He’s got an eyepatch and his signature move is, you guessed it, Tiger Uppercut. FADC is a Street Fighter 4 reference, it stands for Focus Attack Dash Cancel. I admit that’s all a little inside baseball – obviously pop culture references are a staple of many of the jokes here, but I’ll try and be mindful of not making somewhat obscure knowledge the focus of the primary gag on the page. Click on idle loop Sagat there if you want to see a video of various combos of his in Street Fighter 4. (NSFW due to potty-mouthed rap music.)
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It’s a taylor hammer! I know someone who sells those! (the reflex hammer with the triangular orange-red bumper in the top right frame right under the word “smack”)
By the way, it’s the reflex hammer of choice for the CHEAPSKATE doctor. There are dejerines and rabiner-babinski hammers for like 10 bucks, and queen square hammers for 10 to 20 and troemners for 30 to 50, but taylor hammers are like 2 bucks or less. So be sure to give the doctor an angry look next time he charges you 200 bucks for 5 minutes of his time after making you sit in a waiting room for an hour if he has one of those in the examination room.
that might be the stereotypical reflex hammer
At least the restaurantstaff did manage to put her in the hospital, if not in the way they thought they would. Good thing she signed that waiver of indemnification.
I’ll bet she already has a reservation for dinner there tonight.
…and A.D.D. Girl strikes again, annoying friend and foe alike.
Now now, give her proper dues. ADHD, not ADD.
Actually on page ##105 she says A.D.D.
Psychmajor here, that is ADHD if I have ever seen it. ADD is not the correct diagnosis.
As a person with this problem I can say that they are pretty much the same thing. I was never truly “hyperactive” but used to have problems keeping still. At one point a teacher tired of me kicking my shoes off and playing with them with my feet tied them around my neck. She warned me before she did it but I wasn’t even aware of doing it. I still have trouble paying attention to just 1 thing.
Clarification is needed here:
ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder, and used to be used to describe those who had attention deficit issues (difficulty focusing, easily-distracted, memory issues especially with short-term memory, etc.) without so much the “hyperactivity” part; ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and well, just what it says on the tin – all that, plus hyperactivity.
Note I say “used to be used”; ADD is no longer a distinct diagnosis from ADHD. It’s the same disorder with varying symptoms. At least as of the DSM IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision), ADHD is the diagnosis, with what used to be described as “ADD” now being described as “ADHD (predominantly inattentive)”, in contrast to just “ADHD” or “ADHD (predominantly hyperactive)”. The upcoming DSM-V may change this, but I suspect it won’t; it’s seemed pretty reasonable about the changes from what I’ve seen (putting Asperger’s under “autism spectrum disorder” for instance, since everybody pretty much knew it was a variant of high-functioning autism anyway).
If anything, going by DSM-IV-TR, she is “(predominantly hyperactive)” I would say!
Fun fact: being injury-prone is one of the red-flags noted in the DSM-IV-TR for ADHD. For exactly this kind of reason. ;) Lack of awareness of surroundings + reckless lack of care due to poor impulse control = ouch!
I speak from experience here. Like literally – at current I have a bruise under my left big toe nail because I kicked the stairs while trying to go up them (then managed to trip UPwards, like, at least twice more. No, I’m not quite sure how). Frankly, I’m lucky I didn’t break something in the process. :P
Page 79 has her medical records indicating an Adderall prescription for ADHD.
I know someone who just broke her fingers… :P
Great. We have someone with a temper and a tendency to flail around wildly. And now she has no depth perception. If she’s not careful, she just might run into something. (like a ceiling).
Or maybe an Anvil. ;)
Well it could always be worse, she could’ve chosen to mimic Tiger Cannon instead!
Everyone say it with Max: “NO PPO INSIDE ARCHON!!!”
bup bup bup, only if you’re hip.
And Max certainly is, so the comment stands :D
This should be a t-shirt – Cafepress, or something. SagatSydney! with the tiger uppercut larger and to the side…seriously.
Now would be a good time to test if there is a healing ball.
Merchandising/promotional idea: ARC passes. Front side in typical identity card format, with photo, name, ARC logo and so on. The reverse can list hero details, similar to the profile page. And not the webpage, of course. You can do a separate one for each hero you want to promote.
A bit more expensive than doing single sided promotional material, granted. And trickier, getting the front and back to match up well enough to trim down to card size. To give a realistic look, they would need laminating (but this is not ruinously expensive). It both improves the shelf life, and the likelyhood that individuals will keep it in pocket, at conventions or the like, for gag potential, or just to show friends.
If you want to maximise the latter option, but at greater cost, you could even consider clip on transparent plastic identity card holders. That way, you will get a few extroverted individuals who will clip them on at a comic convention and act as walking adverts.
Correction: “not forgetting the webpage”
(On the subject of corrections, if there isn’t a convenient widget for self-editing posts, perhaps there is a simple one to preview? Similar to how it appears when awaiting moderation. But with buttons to confirm or cancel.)
I’d buy one. :o
One? Don’t you realise you have to COLLECT. THEM. ALL.?
you could have it like the current military ID Cards (except no internal chip) with the bar-code on the back. i know there are free apps for the ipod/ipad that will let you make your own QR Codes, with whatever data you want encoded, but i don’t know if they’ll do the straight bar-codes like they use on the back of Mil ID’s… YMMV i guess. you could go with a link that leads here to the website, or better yet, have it lead to the profile page for the person on the front side of the card, and if you offer a “visitor” badge, that’ll be the one to the main page.
as for the tricky liningthings up… thats what print preview is for, you get them lined up just right then print one sheet on a double-sided printer and see if you need to tweak anything, lather, rinse, andrepeat. that way you don’t waste too much paper… or, bring it to
Kinko’sOOP’s it’s Fedex now…You’re going to have to start putting callouts on these things for those of us who don’t speak Sydnese. I haven’t the slightest clue what she’s talking about in this one.
Google’s your friend, dont be afraid to use it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagat_(Street_Fighter)
Note the eyepatch.
https://www.actionfigureinsider.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2008_3/SOTA_sagat4.jpg
ROFL funny how mental images can be totally wrong. With Sydney’s fang in that panel, I was picturing a gap toothed oriental old man!
Man, I wish I could break this addiction. I think I caught ADHD off Sydney, and it all ended up focussed here! But quarktime makes a good point, that I think is worth picking up on.
If you contrast this week’s page with last week there is a difference. Despite last week having more in-jokes, they were completely unobtrusive. You can read the whole incident and be completely unaware that there are any at all. The central story was completely unreliant on insider knowledge.
Which is ideal. Those people who get the in-jokes have an extra laugh, whereas those who don’t are unaware that they missed it. Apart from us comment addicts. And we enjoy being brought up to speed on the hidden details!
Whereas this week, the whole scene pivots on Sydney’s geeky past-times. Which is wholly in-character and to be expected, so no problem with that. Likewise, the action speaks for itself and we can all laugh at it. Plus, I was able to follow the gist of it, from her actions.
But, at the same time, the name checks and dialogue leaves anyone not knowing the references aware that they are missing stuff. Which may somewhat alienate those readers left out of the joke.
You mean those, like me, who have NO idea what a “Sagat” is, nor F.A.D.C.? Any clarification what those mean or where they come from, since I am tired of having to Google the punchlines from some comics that are extensively tied to knowledge of video games. Which I never play.
Sagat is a character from the video game franchise “Street Fighter”, and in the lastest of the series, there is a technique called Focus Attack Dash Cancel or F.A.D.C.
Can I point out that the author was kind enough to put an explaination and links in his post under the comic?
I must be missing something, then, because I don’t see the link. Sorry. Besides, it is me not bothering with video games that makes me not understand it, not his lack of clarity in writing. I am just getting frustrated that so many online comics now seem to be aimed at people who do follow a rather broad spectrum of video games, and if you don’t, then clarity goes downhill rapidly. I had to stop reading one comic because EVERY line in it was based on video games. I’d started reading it before that had become the norm, and totally lost interest when it became the rule.
The link is the animated picture DaveB added in his comments under the comic. Click on the fighter, to use it.
It is great how Dave listens to any quibbles and responds so well. Makes for a good environment.
Thanks for the pointer. Educational if nothing else. Still does not attract me to video games, but y’all enjoy them for me, OK?
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I love this comic, but I really felt lost on this one.
Yeah, I was clueless as well. Just rolled with it – still funny, and it isn’t like this happens too often.
Geekculture is a vast and much-vraied thing, and not even the most uber of us will necessarily understand or even have heard of EVERY Geek-y reference to ever come up.
It’s fun to have obscure refernces in stuff just because it somehow becomes funnier to the person who gets it. It’s definitely ideal not to have in jokes that are pivotal to what’s going on in the comic, which is what I did here. That was my bad, but to me a Sagat reference isn’t an in joke. Even people who don’t play a lot of fighting games presumably know the primary cast of Street fighter: Ryu, Chun-Li, Blanka, Guile. I didn’t think it was too much of a stretch to assume they’d know M. Bison, Sagat and Vega but evidently that’s not the case. I’ll have to keep that in mind going forward the next time I have some pivotal joke about The Cancer Man from the X-Files or Omnicron or something.
I knew who he was, I just didn’t get the FADC bit. Never used. Didn’t know it existed.
You are right about the obscure references giving folks who get it a buzz. Personally I love the game played in the acting community, where they try to slip Princess Bride dialogue into their conversations, interviews and ad-libs.
I am not your typical target audience, so this does not matter in the least, but, to give you an idea about the breadth of my ignorance, I missed every reference above. Kevorkian (I am not an American), all the Street Fighter stuff (including the ones that ‘everyone’ would know) and the little green man.
Plus I guarantee that I will miss every upcoming contemporary paper comic reference (I stopped reading those a long time ago). However I will get many movie references. That is one of my things. Whereas other folks will not. We are all into different stuff.
Basically any overt reference will confuse someone. Which, given the strength of your visual humour, you can avoid easily by keeping the dialogue generic. For instance, panel 8 above, combined with Sydney’s actions in the whole sequence, allowed me to follow what was happening. Despite my inner voice having to say “ok this is some kind of arcade game reference”.
The secret is disguising your in jokes, much like the actors do if they want to slip a reference past their director in an ad-lib. Last week’s comic being a superb example. If a scene can be understood without knowing any of the references, then you know you are on the right track. Perfection being reached when reader’s who are unaware of a reference do not even suspect that one has been made.
Which is a lot harder than it sounds. I challenge readers out there to come up with alternate dialogue to the above which 1) sounds natural and in-character 2) supports the visuals and helps carry the main gag, but without any reference to a specific game 3) is actually funny in and of its own right 4) but slipping in at least one in-joke that will pass un-noticed to those who don’t know it, whilst being picked up by those in the know.
Not implying that I wish to change the above, it is canon and Dave was channeling Sydney. Now that we are all in on the references, we can appreciate it fully on any re-read. But just as a way of getting folks to realise just how clever DaveB is every week!
“That was my bad, but to me a Sagat reference isn’t an in joke. Even people who don’t play a lot of fighting games presumably know the primary cast of Street fighter: Ryu, Chun-Li, Blanka, Guile. I didn’t think it was too much of a stretch to assume they’d know M. Bison, Sagat and Vega”
Just to let you know how much, to me anyway, it is an in-joke, this entire quoted sentance makes no sense to me, except that I have HEARD of Street Fighter (but exactly ZERO of the characters). I don’t play ANY video games. Not just fighting, ANY. So my “geek level” is a bit skewed compared to base-line. I am a misfit among misfits. I don’t do sports, I am not a gear head, (car/motorcycle type) not a coder or a gamer or a skater. 90% of pop culture references have passed me by for decades.
One of those “it’s not you, it’s me” sort of situations. For the vast majority of your readers, you are probably quite correct in your assumption, but for us statistical outliers, we get used to not getting the reference. I still find the comic, even this one, beyond hilarious. You write quite well, and it is very entertaining. Thank you, for your skill, and don’t worry if some of us don’t get it. Some of us (like me) never will.
Hey, at least I can relate to Sydney on the spice level dining! And I could be even more obscure than the gaming references talking about vintage aviation or cooking, my twin but mismatched passions. heheh
Don’t sweat it, let the jokes flow as they come to you, I didn’t know who sagat was, but, I sort of got it.
Anyway, I only had to endure seconds (less than 30) of uncertainty until the internet cleared it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagat_%28Street_Fighter%29
I figured out what was going on, sort of. I’m not completely helpless, I did Google “Sagat” and found out all the pertinent information, but at the time it just left me head-scratching a little. It’s why I don’t read some of the otaku comics, because they assume you know absolutely *everything* about manga and anime, and will instantly get every reference — if you don’t know every obscure character in all of Japanese comic history, you’ll never get any joke, ever.
But that’s the Nth degree of this effect, and I doubt it’ll happen here. So far, I’m loving it…just this one page left me going “huh?” a little. In-jokes are fine, you just need to let people in.
Man this one had me laughing for reasons that are classified. LoL
i like the kiff head in the maximas groans that put the level of “oh god why did you inflict her on me” to the appropriate level
This is….shocking… I tried to find a decent youtube video of Kif Kroker groaning for those who haven’t seen him or the show….and there’s like…Nothing….Someone call Guinness! There’s been a meme that’s been overlooked!
Bah, not Guinness, that’s what I’m drinking, lol. I meant KnowYourMeme.
Max’s opening conversation with Peggy got me to thinking.
As regards Sydney, there have undoubtedly been a LOT of conversations over the years between various people that have run along the lines of ‘Question: Where’s Sydney?’ and ‘Answer: There was an incident’.
<kif> needs to be added to HTML!
Somewhere, in the depths of the archives, DaveB made a comment about a test that can be applied to see if women are being portrayed in a balanced way in movies or the like.
A friend just linked an article, which had me laughing out loud, looking through the various pictures. All the while, thinking of Dave’s comments on that.
The Hawkeye Initiative is amusing, but it’s a bit of a broad brush. I make sure to have character appropriate body language. Sydney has decent posture but is occasionally a little hunched. Max doesn’t thrust out her assets at all, but Dabbler or Harem absolutely could act all minxy in a fight.
A lot of the Hawkeye pictures are silly just because it’s a picture of Hawkeye wearing women’s clothing. The point of it is obviously to point our how impractical superheroine’s outfits are, but it looks especially silly to show a guy in what is essentially lingerie. Lingerie doesn’t exist for men because our society doesn’t value males sexuality. If they did the equivalent and drew Hawkeye in jeans and no shirt, or tight boxer briefs or whatever the “guy in a sexy guy outfit” then the images wouldn’t be that ridiculous. Some heroes already wear that sort of stuff into combat like Colossus. Short shorts and knee high boots with fancy suspenders.
I have a question. Sydney could, theoretically, learn to juggle. It would give her an excuse for the orbs, and it would keep her hands occupied. I know she’s a stumblebum, but she seems to have a pretty good dexterity score. I fear mayhem, but I’m not sure. Bad idea?
T. SHIRT.
So I guess one of the mystery orbs doesn’t heal, assuming Sydney would have tried that.
Love how insane she is poor doctor
She is injuring herself with her shenanigans awful quick… how did she survive to adulthood?
24-HOUR PLOT 4RMOR WOULD DO TH3 TR1CK. SH3’D N33D 1T, G1V3N TH3 STUNTS SH3 PULLS.
I recently found your comic here. Instant fan, Grrl Power has a whole lot of potential and the characters you have so far are fantastic. I’m a bit of a writer myself, but I’m not much of an artist. I mean I draw a little but nowhere near your level. Anyway, I’m definitely going to be reading this truly awesome comic every chance I get.
Thanks!
Squirrel!
Falling in votes! Get Cracking Chicago zombie style. There’s bacon in it for you somewhere, somewhen from someone (else)! Why take the risk of not having more bacon in your future? Vote!
Dave
Any idea of when throughout the weekend you plan on being at the Lair?
I am flying back from Orange County tonight and gave a heads up to another fan who wanted to drive up and meet you. So was just trying to get a time window since it’s not like you have a panel list and I can’t just ask Guest Relations where you are ;)
Vulture – Akon
Enjoy your time at the Dragon’s Lair. And, do not worry if you only have a rough pencilled comic for Monday. We appreciate how little time there is to spare when you have a day job all week. Plus it would be fascinating seeing a snapshot of work in progress. Girl Genius does that once in a while, and it makes for an interesting change.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict that the glyphs on the blue orb are important and not just decoration…
Oh damn, I shall try to swing by Dragon’s Lair before I hit work today.
I’d love to see Max try and put this little mini-sagat through some basic training in hopes of focusing her hyperactivity….if Max know anyone that Sydney would both fear and respect long enough. https://home.comcast.net/~abunny2000/pics/rlm.jpg Still if that same person train the rest of the teams…I bet they have already dealt with a truck load of Super powered whackyness https://lboe.com/images/Ordnance/2006/OnMailCall.jpg but seeing how the active members of Arcon behave…I don’t know how much thing would improve….*shrugs* but I still think it would be funny for sydney to find out that arcon’s trainer can take what she can verbaly dish out and send it right back at her.
What’s F.A.D.C?
Discussed several times on page 1: In Street Fighter 4, it is a set of moves that can attempt to cancel a previous move.
Blackwolfe showed me this site and i LOVE the web comic, the art, and the story. if i had one complaint is there’s not more of it. ^.^
T……………SHIRT!!!
I was not familiar with the F.A.D.C. reference, so I looked it up. It’s always nice to add to one’s repository of information, so please feel free to make your in-jokes as obscure as you like. I’ll always get it next time!
test
Love the street fighter refernce.
Y’know, I realized its probably a good thing Sydney missed Maxima – the ceiling is probably softer then Maxima’s chin, and Sydney would have broken her fingers if she had connected
Poor little corner text, you can’t Super -> FADC, super costs the whole bar and FADC costs another half. I think? Been a while.
I meant super as in a super move like a Shoryuken, not an… actual super. Not sure what to call the “regular” super moves.
I have no idea why I didn’t catch this comment first time around, years ago.
In general, fighting games have three tiers of attacks, though half-tiers and higher tiers, as well as multiple categories in a single tier, are not unheard of
The general tiers: Normal + Unique, Special, Super.
SF2 through SSF2: Normal + Unique (1), Special (2).
SSF2T: Normal + Unique (1), Special (2), Super (3).
SF4 through USF4 (which didn’t yet exist when this page was made): Normal + Unique (1), Special (2), EX (2.5), Super (3), Ultra (3.25 – 4 depending on how full the Ultra Meter is).
While I’m utterly familiar with Sagat (and reference Tiger Uppercut more often than Shouryuken)… that FADC thing was beyond me, even after explanation.
Guess I’m too old-skool for recent stuff to make much sense to me. Haven’t really played the Street Fighter games since the Alpha series… =/
A literal Noodle Incident!
oh man, that’s pretty good
Could the flight orb be used by Sydney in a sort of martial art or am I giving too much of a stretch?
FADC makes me think of FADEC.