Grrl Power #1283 – Feintception
The true measure of a martial artist is how quickly you adapt to getting kicked in the face because your opponent has bendy bones.
No doubt Math has blocked hundreds of swings at his face, and is very secure in knowing the only way he’s going to get hit when he does is if someone shatters their own bones to right-angle their shin at him. That said, he has definitely sparred with everyone on the team, including Mr. Amorphous, and he did scan that tablet with a bunch of pertinent anatomy information on it about his alien opponents, so he probably knew this was a possibility. It’s still got to be at least a little surprising when it happens though.
Seriously, being able to plan ahead while getting whaled on is a skill that’s probably fairly unpleasant to train. And yes, I looked it up, it’s “whaled” not “wailed.” “Wailed” means to cry, and “wale” means to mark with welts, so “Waling” on someone would probably make sense, but apparently “whale” mean to hit repeatedly. Maybe you could say “he waled on him with a belt” and that would be grammatically correct, but I’m sure it would confuse editors and most readers wouldn’t notice or care.
The new vote incentive is up!
It’s Escorpia/Sciona, fresh off her successful… extortion campaign? I’m not sure if extortion is the right word. Addicting someone to superpowered narcotics then withholding to compel directed behavior? Kind of a ransom/extortion/generally being a butt kind of thing. There’s probably a better word for that. Anyway, check out Sciona’s business casual getup at TWC, and Patreon has a bunch of… let’s call them increasingly casual variants.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Not surprised of this outcome.
Me, either. I put 5 qatloos on Mathias’ victory… and I am raising to ten.
Math fighting for real would actually be kinda terrifying. His the fact that it takes people as powerful as Max and Dabbler to overwhelm him means he’d likely kill anyone or severely injure anyone else.
That’s mostly due to the fact that he’s very fast and clever, so Maxima’s superspeed (or Dabbler’s hax) is needed to tag him.
His offensive power is much more limited, and against the stronger supers like Hiro or Stalwart it would probably come out to a draw.
Actually, according to Max in #134, only she has beaten Math in a straight fight(Dabbler won when using magic). This means both Hiro and Stalwart most likely lost to Math.
No, it was most likely a stalemate. We have WoG further down confirming that Math doesn’t have the firepower to hurt Hiro or Stalwart.
This is something I had been arguing about with Voyager as well, although from what DaveB has said here, it seems unlikely that Math has done better than a stalemate with either Hiro or Stalwart, although DaveB did say he might be able to use the environment to his advantage to time out the fight. But that would still not be a win, just a draw.
So although I personally would have thought Math could beat Hiro and Stalwart in a fight, based on what DaveB just said, he can’t. But since Maxima told Sydney that only she and Dabbler have ever beaten him in a spar (and Dabbler had to use magic to do so – ‘sticky air’), we can conclude that, most likely, the fights between Math and Hiro and Math and Stalwart ended in a draw with neither side actually winning, unless it was a fight where powers were not being used, although I’m not sure how that would work with someone like Hiro.
Hiro would be a tough fight, but while he has a lot of strength, I don’t think he has superspeed like Maxima – and, of course, Math has that HUGE skill advantage. Overall: advantage Math.
Stalwart is an interesting case. On the face of it, how do you fistfight someone who can’t be injured or even feel pain? The answer: you don’t – you GRAPPLE instead. Tie him up in knots so tight he has a choice of tapping out or lying there unable to move until he gets bored. Advantage Math. (At least as long as Stalwart doesn’t figure out that without feeling muscle fatigue, he could, in theory, lie there putting pressure against a hold longer than Math could maintain the hold. That would be an interesting contest from a physiological standpoint, but it would be pretty darn boring to watch. X-P )
The problem isn’t Hiro’s strength, but his toughness. Sure, Math can probably dodge his attacks and hit with his own strikes – they’re just not going to do anything. They’ll just bounce off his skin.
“Stalwart is an interesting case.”
Stalwart is the guy who manipulates his own mass, the second strongest Archon member. You’re probably thinking of Achilles.
Math could still make precise nerve strikes work against someone like that, just like in this fight hitting something like the funny bone can cause some serious nerve pain which manipulating your own mass can’t do much about.
Or it’s just a matter of Math figuring out the patterns of when Hiro’s mass makes him untouchable and forcing a situation where he has to reduce it to a level where he could be hurt, like it must be kind of tricky to move as easily if you have the mass of 13 elephants so it’s probably best to lower it to a reasonable level if you want to keep up with Math.
And of course even if that won’t work you can always poke him in the eye, Hiro’s powers can’t do much to make that not suck for him, and the nerves around the eye are capable to creating the kind of pain that will put just about anybody on the ground.
Forget what I said, word of god appearing lower in this comment section states that not even eye gouging is effective against Hiro’s ability.
No, he can’t. Because Hiro’s nerve points and eyes are still too tough. His toughness also affects skin and nerves and eyes. Remember how Vehemence tanked a .50 BMG to the eye without injury?
WoG from downpage: “They’re just too tough for him to even land effective nerve strikes/eye gouges/choke holds.”
Stalwart has the super strength to easily move while heavy, so it would be difficult to force him to reduce is mass. Also you’re assuming that reducing his mass also reduces his toughness, but the fight against Supermassive, where he confidently melee’d a guy capable of going toe-to-toe with Maxima, while reducing his mass to defend against his gravity powers, suggests differently.
Nah. I was arguing this earlier until DaveB said that it was impossible. Word of God trumps all unless it violates its own internal canon.
That’s the problem with Halo demanding HE stop sandbagging; It’s a friendly match, not a fight to the death. Sandbagging is built in, if you didn’t start out holding back, and you’d over-estimated your opponent, somebody might be dead before you knew better.
“I thought you were stronger!”
I loved this but is Sidney floating around?
If you look close she’s holding the flyball
She grabbed the flight orb to get over there quickly, without having to run (which she hates doing).
I wonder whether Sylv’s culture has a martial art based on their ability to bend their bones. Getting in joint locks might be near impossible for them…
Joint locks are perhaps very difficult, but what about making an arm/leg knot?
Guys like Stalwart or Hiro might make it work. Stalwart however might go for decorative braiding.
He may have bendy bones, but he still has joints, and joints can still be locked (or have fingers jammed into them)
Math can’t beat Maxima right? As well as I can remember there’s only two on the team that had a chance of beating Max in a straight fight and is was Anvil and Dabbler. (I could be wrong.) I only ask because Math seems pretty undefeatable in a martial fight. If he has powers I wonder if it precognition or like a spider-sense. But I imagine that the right powers would just be too big a hurdle. Super speed, invincibility, intangibility, just flying him up in the air then dropping him. How have spars with Max and Math went? I imagine she’d hold herself back, but is he a better fighter?
Not to mention the ability to shoot beams (which are a lot less dodgeable in reality than in movies) or Sydney’s ability to change the atmosphere.
If you check the character sheets, Max, Halo and Math can all do projectile energy attacks.
Not Math. Look at the cast page
Yeah, it’s never been stated outright that Math has any kind of ranged ability or energy AOE or “Iron Fist chi style boost” attack. But it is implied by his little character card picture, there’s a symbol that looks like it could be some kind of energy attack. Again though, those have never been explained that I can recall so some people are definitely misinterpreting it.
That’s fairly certain to be a ranged attack. Maxima has it, and flight, toughness, strength and speed would be the others. Heatwave has it as well.
It probably means that he can throw stuff with unerring accuracy. During the first fight in the restaurant, way back when, he kicked a falling knife and impaled the eye-beamer in his mouth. That definitely qualifies as potential ranged attacks.
No, marksmanship is its own category on there, with a crosshair.
Heatwave has it, but jiggawatt doesn’t. Heatwave also has a reversed symbol for it, so I’d assume it’s something along the lines of energy/heat production. Which leads back to the original two options of either he can do hadoukens, or he has some sort of ki thing going on. Though him doing a supersaiyan aura could fit the bill as well.
“Heatwave also has a reversed symbol for it, so I’d assume it’s something along the lines of energy/heat production.”
I think that’s her defensive/area of effect heat aura.
The crosshairs being for marksmanship is probably right on the money.
During introductions it’s said that Math has no superpowers just raw skill, but his skill level is so high it may as well be a power.
So he’s absolute peak human, trained at something he had a disposition to be good at anyway.
That’s long since exposed as not true. His strength and speed are clearly superhuman, so there’s no reason to assume there’s nothing else to his magical martial arts fuckery.
You should think of him as having supernatural martial arts.
His speed and strength are clearly superhuman *by real world standards*. They’re perfectly in line with high end human martial artist *comic book standards.*
Everybody in the comics is tougher than is realistic, except when the plot demands that they not be. (Gwen Stacy’s neck snapping, for instance.) Martial artists especially so.
There are “martial artists” who claim to be able to perform “chi projection” in real life. This is not so far out from common conceptions of martial arts that I can’t see it in a comic.
You: Technically what was said about Math was that trying to determine whether his martial arts was skill or superpowers was an exercise in futility (to paraphrase) rather than saying definitively that Mathias was a normal human with amazing skill or a super with superpowered martial arts.
Unless “item-based” ranged attacks is what the crosshair icon (Peggy, Dabbler) is for.
Anvil can deal with Max’s strength but not her speed or flight. Max could bury her or pull her into orbit. In a rules-based spar she’d be pretty good though.
Who’s the second one then? Maybe I misremembered but I thought Max said there were two teammates that even stood a chance against her. I can’t think of anyone else really.
I believe it was at the press conference where she said there were only two supers who had ever been able to stand up to her attacks – one was on the team (meaning Sydney, thanks to her shield), the other was dead. She had an aside that indicated she wasn’t 100% confident that foe was actually dead, which makes me think she was talking about Darud, the sand guy (who turned out to indeed be alive, but is currently in Deus’ custody following Sydney turning much of the desert into obsidian to stop him).
The other one was Dabbler, who used magic: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-134-sobriquet-quest/
However, I also expect that Ren, who has super speed, should be able to beat him as well. At the time of Maxima’s statement, he was a new recruit who might not have open sparred yet, and also his power has grown in the mean time.
There’s also Jabberwokky, a later addition to the team, who is a confirmed peer to Math.
I misread your comment, please ignore.
Actually, I was thinking about how a fight with Math and Ren might go, and there IS a way for Math to beat Ren decisively in a fight.
A couple of ways actually, depending on how the whole nerve strikes thing goes.
1) Hit a nerve cluster which can halt adrenaline. I have no idea how that would work, but Math does things which no normal martial artist should be able to do anyway. So… super martial arts technique?
2) Render Ren unconscious BEFORE his adrenaline can spike to the point of him not being able to be beaten. Sort of like how Superman would likely beat the Hulk by knocking him unconscious before the whole ‘angrier i get the stronger I get’ thing actually takes effect to make Hulk stronger than Superman. Because you can’t really get angry or have your adrenaline spiking while you’re unconscious.
1. Even granting that as a possibility (but it feels too much like the martial arts version of “pulling new powers out of your ass”), that only works if Ren isn’t fast enough to defend. Or tough enough to resist such a nerve strike.
2. Yes, but that only means Math can beat Ren in certain circumstances, but if Ren starts off with enough adrenaline (say by jumping off a cliff before the fight, like against Vehemence) this doesn’t work and Ren wins. And Ren’s super speed is already notable at baseline, and I think the prospect of fighting the super martial artist with a reputation of invincibility would get the adrenaline to spike already.
“fighting the super martial artist with a reputation of invincibility would get the adrenaline to spike already.”
I think it would take more than that. The prospect of fighting someone who would have been able to kill Maxima (Vehemence) was not enough to get his adrenaline going so Maxima had to kick him off a cliff.
There are levels to it. He didn’t have enough to take on Vehemence, but not necessarily take on Math. He was redoecorating the landscape with Vehemence after all. Psyching himself up before the fight would have taken some time, but if they agree to a sparring, he does have time, and he said he only needed a few moments. Math’s initial attack would also lead to an adrenaline spike.
His adrenaline also increases his healing factor and should help him to stay aware, so there’s some protection against a knockout too.
People are misremembering. There are only two people who had ever fought Maxima to a standstill at the beginning of the series; Dabbler and Darude (the sandstorm guy). There were NOT two teammates who could stand up to Max. Sydney was not one of the ones who had fought Max to a standstill.
Is there confirmation of this somewhere? I always interpreted Dabbler nudging Sydney when Max says “… and the other one is on this team” as being “She’s talking about you” rather than “She’s talking about me” (“you” being Sydney, “me” being Dabbler, for clarity). It’s also possible Max’s “fight me to a standstill” is something of an inside joke, referring to the fact she was brought to a literal standstill when she tried to use Sydney’s orbs to move her around and couldn’t.
Granted, if Dabbler is able to fight Max on that level, that goes a long way toward explaining why Max is wiling to put up with her shenanigans.
Given the context in which it was said, there is ZERO chance that Sydney would qualify. There had been no testing of Syndey’s powers beyond a few punches landed on her shield, which wouldn’t even remotely count as fighting her to a standstill. Max was talking to press, and was conveying cold hard facts to them in an attempt to intimidate anyone watching into not messing with her. It would not be a place for inside jokes, and Sydney hadn’t been part of the team long enough to qualify for inside jokes anyway.
WoG from page 273 confirms it:
“Dabbler did figure it out on her own which is how she was able to fight Max to a standstill. Dabbler forced Max into an armor dump and left neither one of them capable of hurting the other.”
Ah, this is what I needed to see, thank you. I guess I misinterpreted that page all this time.
I find this sufficiently hilarious that I consider it cannon now that Max lost to Halo before Halo was Halo. Literally could not move the orbs. That total *dafunk is this* moment. This also means Hiro can not which is equally hilarious.
“How have spars with Max and Math went? I imagine she’d hold herself back, but is he a better fighter?”
Math is probably technically more skilled, although Max has martial arts skills of her own.
Since she has a dial for her powers, she probably just turns them down to a level where Math is competitive.
If powers are involved, Math has no chance against Maxima, or Hiro, Stalwart. They’re just too tough for him to even land effective nerve strikes/eye gouges/choke holds. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t delay someone like Stalwart if he fought them in a construction site or somewhere he could use the environment against them. Sort of a Spider-Man vs. Titania fight, if anyone remembers the original Secret Wars comics.
So when Maxima said no one except her could beat Math, “https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-134-sobriquet-quest/” was that “sparring without powers”/”Math wins by points because he scored more hits, even though none of them did any damage” or “stalemate as Stalwart/Hiro can’t hit Math and Math can’t hurt them”?
I’m gonna go with Stalwart can’t win because he can’t hit and Hiro can’t hit because he can’t hold back. In addition there are methods of non-pain that can incapacitate your opponent. This is why absolutely nobody can beat Math except Maxima as she can technically become too fast to hit and too strong to endure against at whim. Plus she’s probably not ticklish. Gold skin probably has no feeling of any attacks.
Plus Maxima is fast enough that even when Math is moving his fastest, he might as well be standing still so far as she’s concerned if she hasn’t deliberately dumped points out of speed.
Speedsters always get bad writing when they’re up against somebody who doesn’t have super-speed. I think the best written fight of that sort I’ve seen was a fight between Piedro and Spiderman, where Spidey could see Quicksilver moving, but just couldn’t move himself fast enough to accomplish anything against him, until he finally managed to get an arm up in time to clothline him.
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-fbff4688f7ef73f714f40213b7f250fe-pjlq
But that was only possible for him because Spidey himself has low level super speed, so it wasn’t full on speedster vs normal.
an even better example is him fighting Speed Demon. He’s punching at the guy, who is simply moving his head out of the way, and he taunts Spidey by letting him know how fun it would be to see him shadow-box himself into exhaustion before running away. SPidey could see him move, but not lay a glove on him.
Note that Spidey’s true speed has varied widely over the years. he’s supposed to be able to run at 200 mph with those big bounding leaps of his, but eh.
His reflexes are 10-15x faster than human, so he can definitely see speedsters move, but we don’t know how fast he can move his limbs in return. 10x speed means punching at 400 mph, and would likely kill a speedster if he landed it.
—-
Dabbler was the other one who tied Maxima, using her force fields to tank all the hits.
Max can’t block someone with superstrength, and actually should be getting pushed around by these big guys here, if they have any. A block would just knock him right over, even if he kept his arm rigid.
If all they have is ‘big guy’ strength, that’s a little different, but, yeah, a punch from Hiro is going to go right through Math’s block without stopping.
“Max can’t block someone with superstrength”
It’s worth noting that Math basically has low level superstrength himself. He punches significantly harder than a human could, so he probably also blocks harder. But yeah, against Hiro that isn’t going to help, he’d have to dodge.
“If all they have is ‘big guy’ strength”
I think, except for Altus (whose attack Math dodged), whose species is apparently known for their brute force qualities, they’re somewhere between “fit big guy” and “large animal”(say, a gorilla) strength, after all they’re supposed to be biological.
“10x speed means punching at 400 mph, and would likely kill a speedster if he landed it.”
Yes, it’s already established that Spidey has trained himself to pull his punches, to the point where he has trouble fighting in his own weight class, because of the risk of accidentally one-shotting the sort of low level villains he normally fights. Like Doc Ock, who has those superpowered arms, but could still have his head torn right off by a full power Spiderman punch if the arms failed to block it.
A lot of speedsters seem to have a reduced inertia thing going on, where their punches are moving at bullet speeds, but don’t actually hit any harder than a regular punch. Spiderman’s speed is a product of fast reflexes and super strength accelerating a light weight body to very high speeds, there’s no inertia reduction involved. So the impact when he hits can be superhuman.
Not to mention things like saving falling people.
Yes, there was Gwen Stacy, but what about someone grabbing a falling person’s arm and stopping their fall?
If you’re not tied off, chances are the grabber will just go over the edge as well.
“10x speed means punching at 400 mph, and would likely kill a speedster if he landed it.”
Hm. What happens if a speedster trips? I guess he might have time and the slowed perception to catch himself, so he’s unlikely to land on his head. But if he’s heading for a wall, it may be a crash landing anyway.
Yeah, 10x velocity is 100x force involved. I doubt Spiderman can actually punch that fast; it means needing more body mass so he doesn’t punch himself off his feet from the recoil. He doesn’t weigh significantly more than he did before he got his powers. He’s not leaving really deep footprints in the sides of buildings, or he’d be more unpopular than he is.
I think the writers just ignore that little bit, but it may also be an alternative explanation to why he didn’t kill (normal) bank robbers by accident when he was just learning.
Many speedsters are protected from the side effects of their own powers when moving at speed. Wind resistance, for instance, would flay them alive otherwise. Its presumed they get enough impact resistance to effectively be no more than running into a wall if they take a tumble, which does help them with taking a fist to the chops as long as their powers are active. Quicksilver would pull away from the blow, the Flash would use his Aura to take control of the inertia.
However, if they get clotheslined with a thin wire, they can still get chopped.
An alternative fight would be Quicksilver vs Mister X. Mister X has low level telepathy and uses that to know what his opponents are doing and then doge. He tried that with Quicksilver and knew exactly where he aimed but was to slow to do anything about it.
That would be a Jackie Chan level ‘environmental hazard’ combat scene that I would want front-row seating for… assuming said front row seats had some pretty substantial transparent walls. Maybe Sydney could sell seating inside her forcefield?
I guess that this confirms (via Word of God) that Math has NOT beaten Hiro or Stalwart. Combine that with Maxima saying no one has ever beaten Math except her and Dabbler with DaveB saying that Math has sparred against everyone and his only including, from the team, Stalwart and Hiro as the people who Math has stalemated with, on the team does now confirm that Math has only stalemated with Hiro and Stalwart, only been beaten by Maxima and Dabbler (Dabbler only by using magic), and has beaten everyone else.
“DaveB saying that Math has sparred against everyone”
Where is that from?
From this page:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-134-sobriquet-quest/
(panel 2)
“For what it’s worth, I’m the only one who’s beaten Math in a straight fight. Not even Dabbler’s done it without using magic.”
Also DaveB just said on THIS page, in the second paragraph: ” That said, he has definitely sparred with everyone on the team, including Mr. Amorphous,”
“Also DaveB just said on THIS page, in the second paragraph: ” That said, he has definitely sparred with everyone on the team, including Mr. Amorphous,””
Thanks, I missed that.
But I distinctly remember pointing out to you just a few pages ago that the other quote doesn’t prove he fought everyone.
“Math has only stalemated with Hiro and Stalwart, only been beaten by Maxima and Dabbler (Dabbler only by using magic), and has beaten everyone else.”
This doesn’t follow. When DaveB said Math has no chance against Hiro or Stalwart, that doesn’t mean that is a complete list. Especially Mr. Amorphous seems like he would be difficult to damage for Math.
There’s also the possibility that he got beaten by someone else after #134. Ren (who has superspeed that got stronger over time) and Jabberwokky (who is established as being his peer, and has beaten him for real before joining the team) come to mind.
Actually I think that Spider-Man -HAS- beaten (not just stalemated) Titania. To the point where Titania had a fear of fighting Spider-Man ever again. As in, he absolutely wrecked her. (Web of Spiderman issue 65, FIrst Secret Wars event)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Spiderman/comments/9cq6bu/spiderman_beating_up_titania_web_of_spiderman_65/
I won’t include where he beat her while wearing the black suit because he has even punched Hulk into orbit when he was in the black suit.
I’m also not including the MCU versions where Spider-Man is a LOT stronger than Titania based on both strength feats, since the She-Hulk TV show was just awful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Spiderman/comments/z9zriw/titania_lost_in_a_fight_to_spiderman/#lightbox
He’s also beaten her in every other fight they’ve had EXCEPT when she had the Infinity Stone of Power.
When she had the infinity stone of power she almost killed him but also almost killed everyone else including most of the Avengers and Fantastic Four, but Jennifer Walters had some sort of spell on her cast by Scarlet Witch which made her undetectable as Jennifer Walters to her enemies (which included Titania) so when Titania thought she had killed She-Hulk she had actually turned back into Jennifer, and pretty much just plucked the power stone off of Titania’s forehead, then punched her (AS JENNIFER) into orbit. :) It was in one of the Sensational She-Hulk comics. I think v1, issue 14. But I might be wrong because she was in several issues, but only one with the power stone.
“I won’t include where he beat her while wearing the black suit because he has even punched Hulk into orbit when he was in the black suit.”
That was the plot arc where he’d gotten, without knowing it, Enigma Force powers. It wasn’t just the black suit.
True, true.
That is correct. In Secret Wars, the heroes invaded the villains lair, and Titania had just been created by Dr. Doom as a new villain. She’s going to drop a big I-beam on them, Spider-man comes up to stop her, and they have a little tussle where he just avoids everything she throws at him, pummeled her non-stop without throwing back, and then literally threw her like a baseball through the wall into a thousand foot fall onto her head, basically knocking her out of the fight entirely.
She had a real phobia about it afterwards for a long time.
Note: Original Titania clocked in at 85 tons of Strength, and She-Hulk at the time was 70 tons, so when she was new, she was the strongest female character in Marveldom. She just didn’t have the same level of durability as the Hulks do.
Math looks SO happy today, ‘boinging’ there. I love it when you have had him sparring with the others. Math may be my favorite of the guys and it’s 100% his attitude.
I think some of the other guys are more to my liking for eye candy, but Math is just so enthusiastic about being challenged. It’s so dang refreshing.
Honestly Halo is acting like a child again.
She should really learn to stf up sometimes, when its not about her, but 5 guys having a bit of fun.
Well she should also learn some dojo etiquette, and stay the &%¤# out of the ring while a fight is going on.
Agreed
Truth. But I suspect that this is a means of moving the story along a little more quickly.
She’s the one person who is breaking the 4th wall to want the comic to progress to something else I guess :)
Not that I’m not enjoying this already.
*shrug* It’s what happens when your CO plays favorites and you know that you’re one of them.
So cute how Frix was able to partially stop based on the T-pose Chomp to the arm. Still could not stop completely and made his teammate pay with a set of tooth marks.
Better than getting gored by accident at least.
And with that, the fight goes on another 4 pages, or “we get bored” and transition out in the next.
Impressive how Math didn’t get knocked out there. That kick by a very large, muscular and fast opponent, hitting him by surprise, should have flattened a normal human, even an elite martial artist.
I’m guessing the bone-bending took a lot of the speed/force out of the blow. It seems like the bend was a result of inertia (especially with the boing spring sound), not a deliberate bend so much of the force was required to bend his arm. Sort of like being hit with a pool noodle.
Physics says no. Whipping around a block like that is how flails on a chain work. If anything the attack from an unexpected angle is MORE dangerous, not less.
Of course flails were not used a whole lot in real fights.
Hard to learn, hard to use successfully, hard not to damage yourself instead of your opponent, slow to recover for a second hit, hard to block with, easy to damage.
Also hard to use in practice fights, so you don’t get good with them anyway.
Popular in fantasy films, mostly because the villain looks intimidating when whirling one around his head.
I’m not sure the bendy bones thing really works anyway. Any blow that isn’t trying to get around a block strikes with much less force because the rigid structures the muscles are working against to produce force use up a lot of that force in bending instead of moving the rigid structures faster.
If he had some sort of pneumatic structure in the bones to be able to make them rigid or bendy that might work. Of course that makes them a lot more complicated, and therefore fragile. How would you set a broken one?
yeah, they are basically a specialist weapon for getting around shields. Actually more common among cavalry than on foot, since a ride-by attack with a spinning ball of metal makes up for having a smaller flail, and they can really slam into people with them.
His absolute glee is so genuine. XD
I understand the 4 of them sandbagging because it’s 4 on 1, and Sydney should’ve realized that Math was sandbagging as well back when he was taking time to talk to red guy or didn’t follow up on any of his attacks with more punches like what green guy is doing on this page. But I guess she got distracted by Dabbler’s boobs.
I’m betting on a 5-0 victory for Dabbler’s boobs here, myself. (It would have been 4-1 but Sydney yelling at Frix to not get distracted was also a sufficient distraction.)
how much of the male audience gets distracted by dabblers Boobs?
boooooooobs…
well that’s 1.
“Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the face.”
Math: “Your plan didn’t involve getting punched in the face?”
I’m surprised Sydney didn’t make some ‘another 20 episodes’ DBZ reference.
actually, I’m waiting for math to go.’kah..me…ha…me’ at some point.
and then it ends with insane Joker-style laughter
this had better be your final form! I got stuff to do later!
I can see how Altus and Frix are posed (poised?) / positioned to launch when they attack, but Galen? How go from curled up flat on his side to leading with his fist?
He’s just that good at fighting Drunken Master style. You have to be able to strike from any stance, including on the ground.
We used “whale” all the time in middle snd high school, and to be honest, I never felt comfortable with ANY spelling. It’s a word that sounds great, but looks awkward at best in print.
Maybe a compromise will help, spell it “whail’d”.
I am annoyed a LOT by chibi Frix in a non-chibi panel, for some reason. WAY more than I think I should care about ANY comic.
I don’t get why, but it rubs me the wrong way where I don’t want to be rubbed.
P.S.: and Math is avoiding looking in Dabbler’s direction. Because of her weapons of mass distraction! I bet he’s going to watch that stream after the match…
Having trained in a style that teaches you how to take hits while still being tactical and thinking ahead in a fight (I trained in Systema for a few years and getting punched in the face bare handed was expected, not an accident. One of the other styles that does this is Kyokushin), the trick is to start with light hits to the face, then work up to harder strikes.
After a bit, you start to get used to rolling with the punches and not being stunned into not being able to react after getting hit.
I don’t understand Math’s eyes glowing in panel 5, since he has no superpowers at all. Was it just artistic license to show he was excited that the fight was leveling up?
yes. that’s a standard anime trope.
yes. that’s a standard anime trope for strong emotions.
I’d assume so, yes.
They aren’t glowing, they’re “gleaming.” It’s an artistic thing, that can be used for multiple purposes, but in this context it represents him revealing that he has lured them into his trap. If this were a written story, that moment might go something like “As the group dove towards Math Slyv saw the human’s eyes gleam, and realized they’d fallen for his trick. “Shit! Abor-” he tried to call out, but it was too late.”
Goku vs…… um…. well…. pretty much anyone, I guess?
Poor Gellen has been getting absolutely wrecked this entire fight.
Somehow, he became the Gohan of the group.
From what I’ve been seeing, he’s been the Yamcha of the group actually. :)
Nah, he’s actually fighting the target rather than getting murked by a random minion, plus he survived the opening hit. So he’s already ahead of Yamcha by a good margin.
I don’t know enough about Dragonball Z outside of Team Four Star’s Dragonball Z Abridged (which I know is not official but imho is better than the actual Dragonball Z) to argue with you about this, since all I basically know about Yamcha is he’s considered a joke from memes I’ve seen.
So I will just accept what you said, although I thought Gohan was supposed to be VERY powerful.
Again, I’ve only really watched Abridged.
Very powerful but often kidnapped or slapped around so that others can look strong.
I guess Abridged went a completely different direction than the actual anime. :)
IIRC, Toriyama was originally going to have Gohan replace Goku, with the “passing of the torch” being the fight against Cell. But he quickly realized he’d need to completely change Gohan’s personality, so he sidelined him and kept Goku as the main character. I actually never watched much of DBZ outside of Frieza Saga and Abridged, but in the manga Gohan really wasn’t a Worf character. He started out surprisingly-powerful but too untrained to make proper use of it, grew into a competent fighter but was still outclassed for much of the Frieza Saga, came into his own in the Cell Saga, and then largely stopped improving as he didn’t have much reason to. He was still ridiculously powerful – in the Buu Saga, the villains were terrified at how much he filled their power-draining device (I think he pretty much filled it completely, allowing them to put things into play far earlier than they expected – they thought they’d have to drain the entire stadium of the tournament, competitors and spectators alike), but I don’t recall him accomplishing much there (in part thanks to the power-drain).
Honestly, I felt TeamFourStar actually did a pretty good job of sticking with the way the plot went, but appropriately abridged it (and added in a lot of jokes, naturally).
I wonder if he has some specific advantage up his sleeves like his crewmates and just has gotten to show it yet. Altus has strength and toughness, Sylv has speed and flexibility, Frix has natural weapons. What does Gellen have?
I have always just figured from his position on Cora’s crew that he is the brains of the team. If they were Star Wars Bad Batch, he would be Tech.
(While Altus would be Wrecker – tough/strong/demolitions, Frix would be Echo – engineer/medic, and Sylv would be Hunter – agility/speed)
Which wouldnt really help Gellen in an MMA fight
Unless it’s a chessmaster brain, which he could use to counter Math’s “three steps ahead” tactics advantage. Especially as he isn’t fighting alone, but has three powerful allies he could direct.
Whaled means you threw a whale at them.
I thought it meant you had been stabbed with harpoons…
It could also mean what happened to the Essex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship)#Whale_attack
I’m assuming because you have to hit a whale with a dozen harpoons to kill it, “whaling” on somebody could be easily defined as hitting dozens of times.
Huh, never really considered the etymology of the term, but that tracks. IIRC, in many cases whaling was done by just getting a few harpoons into the whale (to anchor your boat to it so you’d be dragged along when it tried to swim away) and getting it to tire itself out trying to get away, then once it was exhausted you hopped on its back and stab-stab-stab’d it until it expired. Which is a pretty rough way to go, but that’s how it is when you become prey for persistence hunters.
Math: Bold of you to assume ‘being here all day’ isn’t what I want. I haven’t had this much fun since last night when I had sex, or last night fifteen minutes earlier when I had sex.
Sydney is going to have so Much cred when she lets (at least) Frix know she was actually able to land a hit on him. Probably a vested interest in hurrying the match up come to think of it…
She didn’t land a hit, her balls (or at least one of them) did
Would that mean that technically, Sydney t-bagged Math since she hit him with her balls…? :)
She only landed one on him because he was angling for a sympathy kiss, remember?
Do we have confirmation of that? My reading was that he only played up his injury to get the sympathy kiss, and his claim later was just wounded pride.
Letting yourself get hit by a superpowered artifact of unknown strength (it has been seen overpowering Maxima at one point) sounds way too risky to deliberately let happen.
Unless his combat perception is supernatural and gives him information he shouldn’t be able to derive, but even then, the orbs resist various types of observation.
“You would prefer I switch the sand for the tea, Sydney? Would you like me to teabag your boyfriend? Or can we continue ‘sandbagging’ all day?”