Grrl Power #1304 – Triple A…ir Force
While Maxima certainly has strong feelings about things like burqas (niqabs, hijabs, etc.) she also has strong feelings about reflecting bright desert sunlight 20 miles away, and revealing the nature of her classified existence while in the field. Also, if you get a bunch of special forces guys to wear niqabs, then suddenly they’re called shemaugs, and they’re cool.
As far as I’m aware, BDU’s, or possibly ABUs, which were eventually replaced by ACUs, (which used UCP, to be replaced by OCP (Not the Robocop company)) only have the rank chevron thingy in the centerline of the torso, kind of between the man-boobs, and slightly higher on those equipped with lady boobs. It’s not on the sleeve patches, and I don’t think it’s on the back anywhere. It’d be wasted on the back, since I assume almost anyone in the field would have something slung over their back, be it a rifle or a pack of some kind, even an officer. Obviously Peggy sees that Max is a Major (at this point in time) when Max turns around and leans over her, but when Max is standing with her back to Peggy, there’s not really a way for her to know what rank Max is. I wonder if there’s ever a situation in the military where a bunch of people are meeting each other for the first time, and they have to juke around to see what each others’ ranks are so they can establish pecking order. Like if they’re all carrying gear and straps and whatever is in the way. Or do they just call out like “E1!” “E3 over here!” “E7, hah hah, suckers!” “O3 here! I win!”
Of course, I’m sure military people are well conditioned for when someone yells out “SitRep!” they just respond instead of going “Ah, ah ah! Simon didn’t say so! Papers please!” Maxima does also have a fairly commanding presence, and also just bitchslapped a technical past the 100 yard line.
BTW, the slice across Peggy’s face actually cut into her nasal passages, but I didn’t feel like writing a bunch of “I mebt to boo bat.” dialog for her, or draw panels of her sneezing blood out in a really… interesting pattern.
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sorry soldier, I’ll have to kill you to keep that secret
That’s an old finger gun sign to show that “you got it!” My father and several other’s used to do that, I haven’t see it in forever however. Just like the peace sign or the “A-ok” sign. These days it’s a gang symbol that has the same types of meaning, the whole pop-culture thing.
You don’t hang around a lot of bisexuals huh? That’s the classic bi fingerguns.
Add a pinky and suddenly it’s The Shocker.
I think that’s The Rocker. Arianna didn’t want to do The Shocker.
Typo! “I’ll dig the field kit out from wreck.”
Huh. I didn’t even notice the word “the” was missing in there until you pointed it out. The things our brains compensate for. smh
Personally I’ve never heard a medical bag or kit called a field kit. A field kit is the gear you take to the field you know what you wear your sleeping bag and the rest of your personal gear you fight with. Also most normal Med kits don’t come with the good stuff for that your need to Medics gear or the guy who is trained as the oh god we don’t have a medic person. No they don’t get to carry the good stuff actually that is only medics.
The helicopter first aid kit will have Over The Counter pain killers, maybe Tylenol 3(oxycodine). Anything taken orally will need 10-15 minutes to take effect. It will also have Wound Clot. There is plenty of stuff that Max can use to improvise the tourniquet that Peggy needs since the weight is partially holding the leg wound shut. No matter how fast Max moves, a wound hemorrhaging that much blood will kill Peggy before she gets to a field hospital. Peggy would eventually bleed out from that wound untreated, since the weight isn’t a tourniquet.
I fully expect Peggy to pass out from the pain of the Heli being removed.
I don’t know if Max’s personal field will cover Peggy being carried, so that means sub-sonic flight and/or flying backwards to block the wind.
Thanks for the explanation, I was sure that Max would need to use a tourniquet on Peggy’s leg just to keep the blood from pouring out. Glad to know that I was correct about that.
Max better put the T somewhere to notify the medicals that there is a tourniquet on the leg, every grunt gets that drilled into them. I know they have basic pain killers, but this requires a little more than Tylenol 2 or 3, or Motrin gods I hate that stuff useless and barely touched my headaches back in the day. The T is normally on the forehead made with a pen or mud or well blood. What ever you have on hand at the time. Yes she may pass out you would be amazed at how some folks deal with pain.
Max is looking a bit creepy in that fourth panel. Like a shiny variant elf on a shelf.
I had the same thought. I settled on it being an expression somewhere between surprise and “I’m really impressed”.
She looks like a tall alien looking down on you with a little bit of curiosity intermingle with amusement.
It’s the Shaq on Hot Ones expression. https://img3.hulu.com/user/v3/artwork/6d2e8547-992c-41ad-9075-8974a9794fba?base_image_bucket_name=image_manager&base_image=fcf97ac7-5f4d-4aef-8824-71c7726962fa&size=600×338&format=webp
ooh! ooh! make Maxima variant Elves on Shelves! pleeeeeeeese?
Have the fellow who made the Maxima variant My Little Pony do it. Maybe Sydney can buy one next time she goes to a comics convention, since Astra is not around to mistakenly take it.
Probably already on order/inventory in Mighty Halo Comic Emporium.
Max on the Stacks – a US military tradition
Her face looks weird in that panel, but also in the last panel. Something about her cheek angle there is just… too pointy? I dunno, it’s weird
Her cheeks are meant to be pointy, they just got softened recently with the art
The sun in the desert casts all kinds of glare from the sand, wich has a lot of silicates in it.
Also, I think is a look of total suprise that Peggy actualy ment for that shot happen.
I figure that was intentional. That alien look really sells Peggy’s reaction of “Uh, wtf are you?”.
Yes, I can confirm when a group meets for the first time there’s a lot of “what’s the rank?” look about. I can also confirm if someone you don’t know commands sitrep, specifically if they know your rank, you respond on instinct.
Yeah, sounds like the easiest way it’s to wait till someone pulls rank if nobody does you’re it.
Yeah, was about to make a comment similar about even a corporal can ask for a sitrep from a general… as long as they are respectful in the requesting and they are the one doing the rescuing (and if the general isn’t an arsehole)
I took me a hot second to recognize the enlisted ranks in the USAF and I never had a pressing need to learn any other branch’s insignias, but you develop the ability to recognize rank at 50 paces when you’re a CGO. Also, there is SO much trouble you get into pretending to be any rank you are not. If someone as yet unidentified calls you by rank and ask you a question, you answer first question later.
Finnish Defence Forces use standardized enlisted rank insignia (also ranks E-2 to E-6 and E-9 are standardized, Navy E-1, E-7 and E-8 being different from the other branches because reasons), officer rank insignia is partially standardized in that some Army and Air Force uniform items with epaulettes use “yacht club bar code”, otherwise Army and Air Force use the same officer insignia & Navy it’s own bar code (which isn’t even fully compatible with US/UK “bar code” & derivatives), it still catches me off-guard whenever I see a Navy officer in cammies with that/those thick as f**k horizontal gold (black if subdued-) bar(s) in the middle of the guy’s chest where I am expecting (a) heraldic rose(s) or (a) heraldic lion(s), my standard (joking-) response is “herrings belong in the sea, not on land” (for any confused Americans, replace “herring” with “squid”)
(I am reserve E-something & only say that to other reservists.)
*also ranks E-4 to E-6 and E-9 are standardized, Navy E-2, E-3, E-7 and E-8 being different
The trick is to look for the star. If it’s underlined they’re a sergeant. Otherwise they’re an airman.
The faces seem a bit off in this one. Or is it just me?
We’re still viewing Peggy’s memories of this and how _she_ remembers Maxima looking.
and as stated, she’s also got a concussion
Also also this is several years ago and i have a feeling Maxima was pretty young when she went into the military
No, that’s just the art
Back in the day, before everyone and his sister were wearing camo, joint functions were always an adventure. For the NCO paygrades in the Navy, we all wore rank chevrons with a number of stripes signifying the paygrade. Those chevrons were topped with an Eagle that looked just enough like the O-6 (Col. for the Corps, Army, and Air Force, and Real-Captain for the USN). Depending on the uniform you were wearing, it would be on your hat as well.
For a huge subsection of the Paygrades, seeing a Spread Eagle screamed “O-6.” Consequently, we were saluted a lot by people not familiar with Navy insignia. Depending on the sense of humor of the sailor there were a whole lot of ways of responding to this. My favorite was to suggest that ‘father’s day’ might be a confusing holiday for the Officer paygrades because they’re all bastards. “No need to salute me, LT. My parents were married.”
Some laughed. Some got pissed off. A whole lot needed the joke explained.
This came up in a comment long ago, but you are (still) misusing “chevron.” A chevron is a V shape, used in noncommissioned officers’ insignia. Commissioned officers’ insignia don’t have chevrons, they have straight bars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_(insignia)
Thank you.
I mean it. I love that little bits of relative info gets passed on to make a bit more realistic and if you are not improving your knowlage base a little bit every day you are not improving as a person.
In the ancient past when I was in, USN Enlisted E-6 and below on shore patrol would obscure our rank by wearing the SP armband on the left arm to prevent those of higher rank from trying to use it to get out of trouble. This was not proper but was common. US Navy enlisted E-6 and below back then only wore rank on their left arm. E-7 to E-9 and officers wore collar insignia
during desert storm, a few of us had the rank on the back of the cap / helmet while in the field.
and some put rank on the flack jacket closure tab..
Ayup and at least until when I got out in the early to mid 00’s we were still wearing a subdued rank insignia tab on the back on the “cat’s eyes” elastic helmet band.
For field uniforms subdued ranks are worn rather than the bright, shiny dress uniform ranks. Gold turns to an odd brownish-yellow while silver turns to black. Using Army-side names, 2LT and Major are gold while all the others are silver. Max has a black oak leaf which translates to Lieutenant Colonel.
I was in the Army, and we did have our rank sewn onto the front center of our cap and the cover of our helmet (BDU/DCU). When I was in Iraq, we still did have sewn rank on our collars, and the winter jackets had it on the top center chest.
In a situation like that, I would not generally have mattered if Max was a Private or an Officer (to my knowledge) asking for the Sitrep. She is clearly part of the rescue “team” and is currently in control of the situation, so she needs to know the situation quickly. IE, if part of a team and her own commanding officer showed up and asked a minute later, she could then relay the information she was given along with her own evaluation.
Generally at least in the Army, you can get away with a generic “sir” when talking to officers. And if you said that to an NCO, the common response is typically a lighthearted; Do not call me sir, I work for a living.
Always felt, when an NCO said something like that, it made them look like a prick
That’s the joke.
also in O.D.S. we were ‘recovery’,. rescue were the guys on the ground, to pull em out of the hot spot. IE: we would drop em off, and they would cover us while we got the crew, gear, and other (classified…)
but, while we were doing that, ‘everybody’ was Sir. private to general… yes there was ONE in charge, but rank didn’t matter till job was done.!
Why wouldn’t Maxima be using camouflage face paint, or at least some sort of matt coating on her face? While I am sure she is not worried about a headshot, she doesn’t want to draw attention to her AO.
It was earlier revealed that typical grease paint camo slides off her skin quickly. I imagine that flying close to Mach 1 will make it move off even faster.
I assume her “zero-range telekinesis” works on the shemaug/hat/goggles combination. Otherwise Mach 1 (not even her top speed) would likely rip them off.
I’ve driven a motorcycle at 120mph, which is much, much slower than that. Anything that isn’t tight to the body and heavy (leather/plastic/etc.) is going to flap madly enough to give you bruises.
The grease paint slides off because her skin doesn’t like it I guess. Her velocity likely won’t make it slide off faster.
I did wonder why she isn’t just using one of those helicopter pilots’ helmets. Though I guess her current wear is easier to remove/adjust.
And is likely closer to regulation uniform. She’s likely in and out of rear areas more often than the typical troop, so she’d have less chance to fix things. Though she’s likely to interact with relatively few other soldiers, since her existence is classified and anyone who even gets a close look now has classified information.
Max has no pores, no creases of any kind on her skin, she’ll still be smooth-faced way into her 90s. Any kind of cameo face paint is no different than trying to use a marker on foil, it just puddles up and wipes off, even after it’s dried. She wears a face mask, you can see it in P1, and see it around her neck in P4 after she pulled it down to talk to peggy.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-334-make-down/
All about her makeup issues. She’s wearing a balaclava here.
This is why she should have been wearing a burka!
What Max is doing has a high probability of killing Peggy. When a limb is crushed, there’s a lot of cell damage, and a lot of toxins are released as the cells die. If you lift the object off the limb, all those toxins flood into your system at once, which is Not Good. Also, lifting the helicopter before applying a tourniquet seems like a recipe for rapid blood loss as well.
It’s been a long time since I took first aid, but I thought that was only when the limb was trapped for a long time. I think it’s probably only been like 10-20 minutes since the bird went down.
Step 1: find two tourniquets, or one tourniquet & repurpose a webbed belt for a second one
Step 2: apply the things from step 1 to as high up on the injured leg as possible & as close to where the leg is crushed as possible, tighten both, the one closer to the injury as tight as possible (the leg below that point is almost certainly a total loss at that point, so go nuts)
Step 3: flip the chopper.
Max DID say she’d find the field kit first.
“As tight as possible” for Maxima would probably result in the tourniquet either breaking or slicing through even the bone, depending on how resilient it is. Which, on the bright side, would mean Maxima wouldn’t need to bother with flipping the chopper, as Peggy would immediately be freed.
Limb Crush Syndrome is a thing and the recommendation is that if people have been trapped under pressure for 15 minutes or longer non-professional first aiders don’t free them.
The rules are probably somewhat different when you’ve got Max’s ability to transport people rapidly and I think she’d gone through training to respond to emergencies and natural disasters so she’s aware of what she should do.
She can probably get people to hospital for treatment before a team on the ground could do anything
Max is fast enough to catch bullets. Pretty sure she’d be able to apply a tourniquet after lifting the helicopter, but before any significant amount of blood in Peggy’s leg had a chance to resume flowing.
Having Maxima wear desert combat fatigues makes a whole lot more sense than having her fly around in a T-shirt, and not just for the reflection issue. It gives her a place to put her rank insignia, for example. Hmm, where is her rank insignia? I see her unit badge and the country flag, but shouldn’t there be a major’s or Lt. Col’s rank insignia as well?
Dave stated that Peggy could see Max is a Major at this point; according to comments, it should be on her chest, but that insignia is partially obscured in the shots shown.
Yeah, I posted that before reading that other Dave’s blurb. There it is, kind of tucked under her scarf.
Prior to the OCP switch USAF officers wore rank on the collars, enlisted on the sleeves. This switch now results in the occasional squint to see if someone is a Major or Lieutenant Colonel since the light may make the spice brown rank insignia look darker than it is.
Alright… what is “kich”
never heard that sound coming of someones mouth, ever…
Dave’s trying to make an onomatopoeia for the “click” sound people make at the side of their mouth when they imitate a gun cocking mechanism (combine it with Max’ pointing a finger gun and she’s basically conveying “you got it”).
Why is Max wearing goggles?
to protect the air from her eyes.
More likely to keep the sun out if her eyes. Goggles are harder to lose than sunglasses. And the polarized lenses will increase her vision clarity.
Or do they just call out like “E1!” “E3 over here!” “E7, hah hah, suckers!” “O3 here! I win!”
The correct response in that situation would be “O3 here! Bingo!”
@Dave shouldn’t that be 6 passengers, including Peggy? In comic #1297, she said there were five other passengers and two pilots.
(Really wish we could edit our comments, instead of making a new one, but oh well; I shall reply to myself. :) )
It occurs to me that Maxima climbing the ranks quickly would have been necessary, simply to keep her existence classified. I don’t think someone higher up the chain would take “classified” as an answer to Peggy’s question (for example, if Max was a Corporal and she was helping a Sargent or above), and Max would be obliged to tell them if they demanded the information, right? It would also explain why some of her commanders had no idea what to do with her. “So, she’s a corporal, but her existence is classified? What am I supposed to do with a classified corporal? Have them peel potatoes, alone in a field kitchen?”
Nah, if they demanded answers Maxima wouldn’t be obligated to tell them anything other than, ‘you haven’t been cleared to know’. Maxima might be detained temporarily if the questioner was of sufficiently high rank and stupid enough, but most people know to request to be read in through the proper channels, which they wouldn’t need to do because they’ll be getting a debrief detailing what they’re allowed to say in the official reports. There’s also a good chance that she has a point of contact that has greater authority than whoever is asking, which she can give out.
Rank doesn’t equate to “you must tell this person all classified information”
There’s “need to know” as a common modifier for a start
Yup. One can have the rank and clearance, but if one does not have the “need to know” and of course proper identification, a fresh recruit Private can tell a Colonel to figuratively get bent when it comes to demands for disclosing classified information.
One example of a low-ranking soldier having secrets would be the code clerk. I’m not sure if this was an American position, but it is one in some other militaries.
The point of a code clerk was to encode and decode stuff to be transmitted, transmit them and receive them.
To do this you needed to know the codes.
No one who wasn’t a code clerk (or actually involved in creating the codes) needed to know them. So they didn’t.
It meant that the encoding and decoding was done right.
It did require those people to be very trustworthy, and placed restrictions on their movements so e.g. they couldn’t be kidnapped (or defect).
You get to be a high ranking soldier because you need to be, in order to command other soldiers, and because you are entrusted to command competently by the chief executive. Access to secrets, other than to do that job, isn’t part of it.
I don’t know about a position that old, but I do remember when I was in the coast guard, only a handful of people had direct access to the crypto keys.
Once a month a pair of them would go to all the radios and load the new key. They were always enlisted and usually both E5 or below.
The not yet used keys were in a very secure safe at the bottom center of the ship.
No one who was not one of the handful of people authorized could get access to that safe, officer or no.
Classification status outranks everyone.
Even if you have the clearance level, if you haven’t been officially read in you don’t get access to anything.
Emergency situations have a tiny bit of ‘best judgment’ here, but afterward, you can expect your decisions to be examined under a microscope.
She’s going to wake up in the hospital thinking this encounter was just a dream (lucky shot included), until Max stops by to check on her.
So, it’s probably a bad idea to just lift the helicopter without seeing how it has injured her leg. Removing it could pull out some metal that would kill her if removed or it’s preventing her from bleeding to death.
Major could be odd for some foreigners like me Maxima is
Commandant (/ˌkɒmənˈdɑːnt/, /ˌkɒmənˈdænt/, /ˈkʌmədənt/; French: [kɔmɑ̃dɑ̃]) a military rank used in many – typically Francophone or Hispanophone – countries, where it is usually equivalent to the rank of major.
NATO rank code OF-3 an O-4 in US army.
Apparently “major” is a shortening of “sergeant major general”. Where the “major” part means “greater” and so does the “general” part.
So it could also be rendered as “sergeant++”.
Except of course that’s also confusing because “sergeant” is used pretty much exclusively these days for non-commissioned ranks.
Military ranks are a hodgepodge of words from all over, so it’s not surprising they’re confusing and don’t make a lot of sense.
Why does a “lieutenant general” outrank a “major general” but a “major” outranks a “lieutenant”? For that matter why does a “general” (which is short for “captain general”) outrank both the other generals, while a “captain” is between “lieutenant” and “major” (except in the navy, which is different)?
Because the ranks were created at different times and with different rationales.
“Commandant” seems to be mostly from French areas, or those areas at some point French-dominated. Not too surprising that English and English-dominated areas wouldn’t adopt it.
Slightly surprising that the US went with English usage instead of French considering their alliances in the Revolution. Maybe they were already used to it.
Generally if you’re in a group of soldiers and you all have to figure out who’s in charge, then it’s all been fucked sideways and you just listen to whoever sounds like they know what they’re talking about until the sideways is at least partially de-fucked.
A sergeant in motion outranks a lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-05-04 but in the case where two people both seem to know what they’re talking about, yet disagree with each other, checking relative rank among just those two might at least be faster and fairer than talking through all the relevant facts https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-02-04 or trying to settle it with rock-paper-scissors or whatever.
Really hope Max applies a tourniquet before she lifts the helicopter… Even ignoring blood loss, the possibility of toxic shock for crushed limbs…
Yeah that’s a huge risk, when I shattered a bone in my foot, they used a “pressure splint” on my leg for the same reason. Felt like a vise… I was lucky though, the nerve damaged saved me from much of the pain until later when the swelling went down in my spine and the feeling started to return. Peggy could watch as her leg swelled up like a balloon, then the skin would burst open. NOT pretty. It’s clear why she lost the leg, even if there was any intact bone, the soft tissue damage would be serious enough to merit the amputation. Not to mention that the lower leg was starved for blood this entire time.
Note, that O3 versus E7 might not be a clear win… To quote Maxim 2 from another comic “A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on” I have witnessed an LT (Navy O3) get dressed down by an CPO (Navy E7) on a couple of occasions as they don’t always have all of the rough spots polished off before making it to the fleet and end up trying to give some…. Ill advised … orders (“No, you do not shut the discharge valves on pumps moving 6000gpm of DFM” or “No you do not tell the senior Petty Officers in the pit that they cant walk around waving a broom ahead of them due to it not being professional” (Anyone who has worked in a 1200psi steam plant adopts that as a survival strategy… better to have the broom cut by live steam than your leg…)).
To metric aligned folks 1 200 psi is near 83 bar or 83 000 hectopascals….
6 000 gpm is about 22 712.5 liters ( or litres) per minute.
Hell, even just a normal ship’s diesel engine can be bad. If you have even the faintest hint of something that might possibly indicate a pinhole leak, you test your path. No one wants a needle of hydraulic oil injected into them at some hundreds of miles per hour.
Not only do they compare ranks, but lieutenants with the *same* rank will start comparing promotion dates to establish seniority, very quickly, if they are going to be together for any amount of time at all.
Keeping the politics Out of it, I find the one in this webcomic versus current the Global situation in reality hilarious.
not only have there been times in my military life where a bunch of troops had to all quickly figure out who ranked what, but it is a lot of fun when its a bunch of high ranking people from different types of military. So the Army Captain and the Navy Captain are two VERY different ranks. It is even more fun when you are the E-4 (low ass rank) giving the intel brief so officially before the briefing you are the lowest ranking troop in the room, but during the brief military tradition says the person giving the briefing outranks anyone getting the briefing. Multiple times in my time in service I had a 1 star general send his Air Force Captain to get my Senior Airman butt a coffee because the briefing was going to go over and I was going to need something to drink before the questions were done.
Is Maxima wearing a plate vest? Seems like a waste of effort on her part…
Anything the plate stops is something she doesn’t have to.
Also, this is a younger Max here. She may not be as adjusted/experienced in her powers as current Max is. So she may not yet be as capable of the rapid shuffling we see in current Max. So the plate would help since she’s not yet as used to getting defense up to bullet-resistence levels as she’s used to.
Okay, no one is going to buy into this, but a helicopter is not all that heavy given it’s volume.
This is true, but it’s still more than you’d expect to lift off of someone with no equipment and less than a dozen buff airmen.