Grrl Power #121 – The Talk. Well, a talk.
Sydney’s obviously a little hyped up with her recent conquest. She’s got the sass.
The little mini comics at the bottom aren’t necessarily canon but in this case they’re basically what happened between panels 8 and 9, because I’m unable to edit myself and want to do a single page with 17 panels on it. :/
Next week I’m not planning on having a regular comic, as most people will be on break and not up to their usual routines. Personally I’m looking for even more things to entertain me online over the Xmas holiday but there it is. I will have a guest piece up so be sure to check in at least once, and I will be hauling my gear home to my parents and drawing – I really need to build at least a one comic buffer so I don’t have to put up a comic in pieces like with #120 if ever a con rolls through town or heck, if I lose power over the weekend or something.
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.
Oh yes, Maxima… once a nerd, always a nerd… you have hidden reserves of wisdom to draw upon! :D
Love it.
Finally, something penetrates the aura of hyperactivity!
Someone should write up rules for a D&D Aura of Hyperactivity :P
Kender are racially hyperactive and have a massive Initiative bonus, along with downgraded spot and listen checks. So. it’s already there.
Wait, does that mean Sydney is a Kender? o_O
If she is, perhaps she has a miniature giant space hamster?
I have a list of feats for ASd in dnd. Now i need to make an aura… THanks for the idea. Presige class: Frenzied nerd, class abilities inspire hyperactivity. Just think of the cahous.
SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read through to the current page in the comic, just bookmark this and come back later.
Beware, if the aura is upgraded beyond the basic level there may be side effects!
Sidney in panel 8 looks freaking scary. The toothy grin and with the patch making it look like she only got black pits instead of eyes reminds me of how the devil himself appeard in another webcomic.
which one?
I was thinking about the Gaming Guardians comic, but taking a trip down memory lane it turns out i was mis-remembering. The devil actualy wore picnk sunglasses and was disguised as a hippie. I think it was that i always had this feeling that there was black pits behind those shades.
For the particular strip… https://gamingguardians.com/2005/03/03/03032005/
Realy recommend it in general. It´s a good comic. Unfortunate it has died of. :(
Oh, be warned though, looking at the strips around that particular one will give spoilers for what is an essential plot point earlier in the comic, so i suggest against it.
And now I have this scene in my head –
Math to Sydney: Ok, I’ll admit you caught me off guard. But you can do that again.
[Sydney grins, grabs the telepresence and tentacle orbs, Sydney 2 appears behind Math]
Sydney 1 & 2: You think I can’t?
Math [looking around to find the source of the second voice]: What the…?
Math [on the floor, wrapped neck-to-toe in tenacle]: Best three out of five?
Comedy gold!
Also, quit possible.
quite
Hmm…while I would love to see that, I think that Math, if anybody, has seen enough hentai to know better than to take that fight…especially with Sydney.
Actually, that was the SECOND scene I had in mind.
Math [on the floor, wrapped neck-to-toe in tenacle]: Best three out of five?
Sydney: Are you surrrrrrre you want that? [end of tenacle grows longer and wiggles in front of Math’s face]
Depending on how much control she has over it the shield orb could bubble him for a “Math under Glass” effect. Ever throw a superball in a small hallway?
I thought of that, but Dave has indicated that Syd can only bubble herself. :(
She could bubble while he’s in a corner.
if she could control the size of the bubble and speed at which it expands, it could come in handy if she’s surrounded by a group in melee range, or to block a door/corridor.
does any know how much damage you take for getting hit by a rapidly expanding force bubble?
same as a rapidly moving car or train due to same momentum shifts.
she could use the bubble as a weapon to destroy tanks, etc.
1) Give Max baseball bat
2) Hold the Blue orb in one hand and the Purple orb in the other
3) Activate both flight and bubble
4) Remove/disable any inertia limiters on both orbs
5) Get Max to hit bubble
6) Aim for tank
1)Activate Shield and Tentacle
2)Have Anvil grab Tentacle
3)Anvil swings tethered/shielded Sydney
4)Chaos!
Or there’s always the kinetic energy weapon method. Sydney bubbles and uses flight orb to align gravity to a point behind enemy. And “Bowling Down Bad-guys” becomes a new trend.
sidney then says sure and says hidden jutsu thousand years of pain and math screams i give up i give up as a tenticle goes where none ever should
Going by their respective power levels, a prepared Math should narrowly defeat Sydney. Unless Sydney benefits from the Home Title Effect, of course. (Superheroes tend to win in their own titles).
Bubble and tentacle means Math would lose. He would not be able to touch her and she would be able to try and touch him. She only loses if she drops the shield.
OR G3TS D1STR4CT3D. >:]
I see in the furture a spare match math does not know who but think its one of the normal supers his used to. TO his horror its sid the queen of choas after seeing that math follows up with the typical NOOOOOOOOO hahahahha let the pain begin hahahhahahahah.
Yes, Maxima, you dealt with Sydney’s geekery like a boss. Congratulations.
‘Spider-Man’ is hyphenated, btw.
only as a means to make it easier to read.
Believe it or not, all those -man superheroes can also be spelled without the Hyphen. In fact I have had people try to correct me the otherway around that you are correcting *removing the hyphen*.
Nope. Batman isn’t hyphenated. Neither is Superman. Spider-Man is.
that is a company decision, not an everyday person who doesn’t care about that decision.
DC / Marvel
However, hyphens in spoken language don’t exist except to show how fast or slow, or to emphasise if a person is putting an intentional break when they speak.
For instance Spiderman, said as one word in one breath.
Spider-man, a brief pause between spider and man to emphasise both words.
the hyphen is somewhere in speed between the one word and just putting a space between them, or that both words are being emphasised apart from the rest of the sentence.
I think Sydney should keep the eyepatch as part of her uniform. I will be sad when it goes away.
As will I.
I would agree if, and only if, they can make it functional for enhanced vision; ie the patch really hides a suite of sensors for infrared, night-vision, zoom lens, HUD, etc.
How can you tell if someone is anal-retentive? Ask them, “Is the word anal-retentive hyphenated?” If they answer, “Of course it is! Everybody knows that!”, then you have your answer. As you may have noticed, I have hyphenated it.
anal-retentive
anal–retentive
I was going to try to out-retentive you by pointing out that that you actually used an en-dash instead of a hyphen, but looking over the thread, I suspect it’s actually just poor typesetting in whatever font the page uses. I’m making this post to find out if that’s true.
Okay, I was expecting the hyphen to come out too long, but I was definitely not expecting the en-dash to come out shorter. Interesting screw-up in the typesetting of the font.
As it was explained to me a long, long time ago, back when the D&D manual was literally a folded sheet style booklet (which I do happen to have! *geek cred*)…this is the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom.
Intelligence: Observing things, awareness, identification. “Oh, it’s raining outside!”
Wisdom: Common sense, deciding what to do about things, making good choices. “I’d better put on a coat/hat/grab an umbrella so I stay dry.”
…Dexterity/Initiative: *dodges raindrops while dashing for the mailbox in shirtsleeves–probably medium int, low wis*
Max is amazingly patient with Sydney’s little quirks. I’m surprised and impressed that Max was able to bump Sydney out of her impending daydreams of destruction with a bit of Spider-man lore. Excellent story development. Meanwhile, Math seems to be enjoying the sympathy of at least some of Syd’s victims, the lucky skuz. (How long before they gang up on Sydney and talk the General into putting her on some sort of probation/restriction?) The mini comic is perfect. The whole thing is perfect. Thanks for sharing, Mr. B! :)
Thanks, and thanks, and you’re welcome!
I can see Maxima starting to read comics more & more to be able to connect with Sydney better.
What surprises me is that Maxima actually knows anything at all about comics for making that Spider-Man/Gwen Stacey connection in the first place…That IS a very old story (even though the event itself has been referred to fairly often down through the years) & Maxima doesn’t seem to be the type of person to be spending much time on comics anyway.
Maxima confessed earlier that she “used to be a bit of a geek” during the panel interview just after the reveal of the orbs. Max was the only one to say “Ioun Stones”. She was likely a DnD geek too! Yes, regardless of what the ‘DnD’ song says and the jokes, DnDers can be sexy and get some quite often :3
Also: Wa-chow! That sound effect was one of the only reasons I used super strength in City of Heroes. R.I.P.
She has learned Geek Talk!
Because she is a Geek (she just hides it very well)
Speaking the right language is a major key to communication.
Maxima has learned Geek Talk! But already knows 4 skills, which one would you like to delete?
Miffed Anger
Rage Fucking Run!
bah, need an edit button, I’d like to change “Fucking run!” To “Destroy Mosque”.
Side note – the colors in Sydney’s hair, from the glow of the orbs.
Nice touch!
I was just admiring panel 8, and trying to figure out the difference between Max in this one, versus the one I was unsure about last week. This one feels much more realistic to me. Purple hair, pointed ears and golden skin notwithstanding. Cute though they are. There is nice depth of expression in the look.
Just found this comic, it rocks! Now (purely for my personal benefit) step up the pace of your updates so that I am in no way bored, inconvenienced, or otherwise forced to wait for entertainment. Well?!
First thing I thought when I saw the last panel: Successima
Enjoy your holidays, DaveB! And while I do not speak from experience, I have seen that a buffer comes in HUGE use! “Looking For Group” and “Leasticoulddo” do something like weeks in advance (not saying you should go that far) and they’ve never missed a day… except that one time thier web host’s own servers died completely and forced them to post to twitter or something similar…
All a matter of resources. There is a huge difference there in webcomics that have a whole team/studio working at it (like lfg/licd) and the one-man-show that is grrl-power.
Frankly, I’m impressed Dave manages to put out a fully colored page every week on his own. As far as I’m aware, most of the one-man/woman comics that update more often, are 4-panel comics with copy-paste backgrounds at best. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that. I also enjoy such comics, but imho they will never be as good as full page comics in terms of story-quality.
Kudos Dave and happy holidays!
Art wise I think Grrl Power is comparable to Girl Genius. I don’t mean in a 1:1 quality comparison, their backgrounds blow me away for example, but just in the sense that they do a full sized full color comic page. They post 3x a week but 1) Phil’s been a professional comic artist for a bit longer than me – he apparently won a Hugo when I was 5 for instance, 2) he has a writer, 3) he’s also got a colorist.
Questionable Content is the bizarre exception to a one man operation, he does a full color page 5x a week. It’s crazy. I’ve watched him stream drawing his page from start to finish, he knocks them out in about 4 hours, it’s almost beyond belief.
only one thing to say on that last one
daaaaaammnnn
To be fair, Questionable Content doesn’t have nearly as much coloring detail as your stuff, Dave. Still as an artist myself, it is fairly impressive that he’s able to knock out those pages as fast as he does.
honestly, while comparable to Girl Genius like you said, I like that yours has a more comic book feel to it than other series I’ve read. It brings out a certain quality that makes your work shine. Keep up the great work.
Jeph Jaques is a very positive exception indeed. He also has 9 years of experience creating QC and I remember his artwork on the earlier comics. He has come a long way and I enjoyed seeing the progress.
Girl Genius is top notch as far as webcomics go. Great story, great art and 3 updates per week. I know it’s not as simple as 3 x the people = 3 x the updates, but still…
The punchline is machismo also started out with several updates per week, but as it turned out, that just wasn’t compatible with…having a life I guess. It is now a weekly comic as well.
You’re doing one hell of a job, no matter how you look at it!
There is one other thing that complicates the math. I get the impression that Girl Genius is worked on full time (albeit that they all work on other projects too, such as illustrating for third parties and writing novels). Whereas DaveB holds down a regular job. Further complicated by his wife helping too.
Keep recommending Grrl Power to all billionairs you meet. We need to get them sponsorship, so they can give up the day jobs. We don’t want them burning out due to pushing themselves too hard!
Sidny looks adorable with that eye patch lol
Max’s meme face is strangely terrifying.
I have a feeling Syndey is trolling the HELL out of Maxima right now in regards to the different powers and how dangerous they are. She is pretty intelligent if extremely hyperactive so its not that much of a stretch that you can claim Syndey is practicing the ancient art of faking stupidity.
Seriously doubt Syd has faked anything in her life
I do not think that Sydney is “faking stupidity”. Both individuals have had the opportunity to size each other up, and clearly consider themselves intellectually on a par. If Sydney had been dealing with a dull-minded bureaucrat she might have had to spell out “don’t worry, I am smart, I know that I have to be careful, but I think I have been reasonable so far”.
As it is, her unconcern at Maxima’s initial statements was a shorthand that neither had any problem following. Max’s solution, in panel 10, responded in kind.
The unimaginative, or anyone who doubted Sydney’s intelligence, may have said “Bear in mind that even very smart people can be overconfident and make a life-threatening mistake”. But Maxima found a way that would say the same thing to a geek, but also carry with it the emotional connection to slam the message through the ADHD barrier!
Regarding the ‘non-chibi’ chibi’s at the bottom: what is up with Maxi’s face in the last frame? Did Syd aim a little lower?
No, that’s just her snapping before shouting at Sydney.
Chud!!!
Ah yes – “CHUD”!
“Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers”
…& another acronym that I won’t share, because it’s a spoiler for that same film.
Started reading your comic earlier today, and a wail (yes, an actual wail) escaped my lips once I caught up. Thanks for the ride! I enjoyed it and I will continue tuning in and telling all my family members/friends/people in Barnes and Noble to read too!
Thanks I’m glad you like it. I feel your pain too, I wish I could put these out faster. Every time I sit down to jot down some jokes or plot I wind up with 5 whole pages of material. :P
Actually I like the mini comics, they give me a good laugh, and they just seem proper for some reason…
Enjoy the holidays with your parents Dave. I shall be doing the same. Although I will try to get access to a PC so that I can send the odd TWC vote for Grrl Power. Perhaps we might be able to push it up a rank or two, before the year end.
Sooooo, powers of miss-reading, invoke!
“Sydney’s obviously a little hyped up with her recent conquest. She’s got the sass.”
I, um, read that as ‘ass.'”
And invoking Gwen Stacy’s death at the hands of bad science… Well, a fan geek such as Syndney should know how to mock these failed attempts at mixing story telling with bad science. She should be laughing at Maxima rather than falling for her comic book reference story.
What bad science? The physics of the whip lash are known and the reason why Stacy died. Look at the “Physics of Super Heroes” illustrates it very well. You can see it in the comic illustration. Correct real physics did her in, and Peter Parker forgetting his physics too.
I admire Col. Maxima a great deal. No matter how frustrating Sydney gets, Max holds her temper and tries a new angle.
Although an alternate take where Max turns Sydney over her knee has some interesting possibilities also…
You should get someone or the community to do a little test run animating this comic, it would be amazing :D.
Well it’s 12-21-12 and the world is still turning. No apocalypse today. Yes I know it’s off topic but I get so annoyed at all the idiots that buy into that crap.
Of Course Not!… Didn’t you KNOW that The Doctor saved us ALL!!!
Doctor Who? lol Just had to do it! :)
“Oh actually if you don’t mind, it’s just The Doctor. Doesn’t even really matter who.”
I wonder if Horton heard of him?
Yay dr who!!!!!!
“Connection Made!”
Meme’d it! o.0
My god, that last panel! Seriously, Maxima’s expression right there must be my favorite panel art piece of all you strips so far. Can you make a larger, printable poster version of that? Best “success” image on the Internet. I think what I REALLY like about it is it’s appearance on Maxima’s face- caught me a bit off guard. But really, make that poster!
I agree. Panel 11 could be used for a meme easily. either: “Hell, Yeah” or “Challenge conquered”
As requested. https://davebarrack.deviantart.com/art/Success-Max-345064311
Wow max! Never noticed that eye twitch!
Didn’t they retcon that to say Gwen Stacy (a healthy 20-ish female) had a heart attack so that they didn’t want to admit that catching someone falling can snap their neck?
Who can say? At this stage, seems like the entire Marvel Universe has been retconned several times over.
I had to scroll allllll the way down to comment, so someone may have already posted this. Aww well. Second panel of Sydney, I adore with her lil sharp tooth, and the last panel of Maxima? A win. Seriously… such a huge win I would save that look just to stare at and giggle at. XD
I’m slowly reaching the point where I’m coming to hate comics, and by association, comic geeks…
There are various reasons for this, but largely it comes down to me being an everything-but-comics geek.
I quote films, play games, quote games, know SCIENCE, have dabbled in written fiction (most of what I read as a kid were biology textbooks though), have lived on the Internet since 1995 and know its ways, I’ve done various pen & paper roleplaying, I’ve LARPed, watch anime, have watched various sci-fi series on the television (and little else)… and know more about Star Trek than any non-trekkie has a right to.
But comics? As in printed comics.
Nothing.
Well, unless you count manga. I have a limited knowledge of manga. But western superhero stuff…. nothing. Ok. Almost nothing. I just remembered that I had a few Spawn books… but I’m not sure how much Spawn counts or not.
References to Spiderman, the X-Men, Superman, Batman, any of the other countless men (or for that matter women) go completely over my head. I’ve done a bit of internet research, but that doesn’t exactly give me an exhaustive knowledge to call upon.
What I’m getting at is that when it is implied that a detailed knowledge of comic books is in any way a necessary part of being a geek… it bothers me. It irritates me. I take a certain measure of pride in my geekiness, and have no great desire to fill that particular hole in it. So I will say it right now:
I’m a geek who dislikes printed comics.
Webcomics are different. I’ve read almost all the long-running webcomics on the Internet.
I always thought that Norman Osborn killed Gwen, and then threw her off the bridge.
I was under the impression that it was the jolt from his catching her with his webbing, but as one site explains it:
With no preview and no edit buttons, I just hope I got my a href tag right.
Just remembered they’re called anchor tags.
Ooh thanks, a new mode for me to play with! My turn to cross my fingers.
Success baby? Hahaha! Nice one! :D
Yes! Finally, she’s getting through to her.
It’s basically like in Akira, when Kei is trying to explain how dangerous Tetsuo has become. Like an amoeba getting the powers of a man, Tetsuo is a human that gets the power of a god. And amoebas only ever devour whatever is around them.
The last panel with Maxima… creeps me out a bit. She looks like Sydney.
May be deliberate. but really.. can you imagine Sydney, with Maxima’s body?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa………
(runandhiderunandhiderunandhide)
Guess I kinda flipped out the last time I came through this page.
Thankfully, nobody seemed to notice.
Anyhow… the take-home point is that there is not all geeks are comic-geeks.
We see everything. But not all comments need a reply. Take home point noted and agreed.