Grrl Power #1305 – Save 50% on roller skates
Is there anything a bossomy hug can’t fix? Well, yes, but that’s no excuse not to keep trying.
I struggled with the layout of this page because I really wanted to include the above group hug panel on it, but I just couldn’t figure out how to fit it all without shrinking other panels to unacceptable levels. So it’s a bonus panel. Still totally canon though.
I don’t know how it works when you have a catastrophic accident and you require surgery and all that. Sure, in civilian life, the hospital would contact family members and presumably you’d probably have someone waiting there for you to wake up, assuming you weren’t in a coma. But in the military, I don’t know if they would assign someone to sit there so you get a SitRep the moment you wake up or not. If it’s a busy day and there’s people rushing around because there was an ambush or something unexpected exploded, they might not have the staff to have someone sitting at your bedside – and I don’t even know how critical it is to do that, but I’d think that if someone is going to wake up missing a limb, finding a way to ease them into that new reality would be preferable.
Realistically, I assume in a military setting, you’d probably have a row of cots where a few people can keep an eye on multiple patients, but Maxima pulled some rank as the commander of a dark and mysterious special ops unit, and got Peggy a private room. She obviously didn’t drop her off at a field hospital. Max flew Peggy back to Camp Bastion, and not some Combat Surgical Hospital, which is a big half-pipe tent. The modern version of a MASH unit.
I would also fully believe that the military would allow Peggy to wake up by herself, and the only explanation for her situation would be a clipboard with Form MF-40156-b, requisition to replace missing boot.
Of course you really only save 50% on footwear if you know someone missing the other leg. And they have the same taste in footwear. And the same size foot. Not for socks, but it wouldn’t help Peggy if she knew a 6′ 3″ dude missing his left foot. Presumably he’d wear something within ±1 of a U.S. 12, and at 5′ 4″, Peggy’s probably rocking a 6 – 8? Plus women have about a million times the shoe options that men do. Most of which are more painful than most men’s shoe options, but still.
I suspect if I was a woman I would have a decent size collection of cool boots. Every time I google women’s boots for Maxima reference, there are a ton of cool and/or sexy results. 90% of which Maxima would never wear, but they make me regret not being a transvestite.
Okay, not really. Is it weird that I think about my “if I was a girl” wardrobe? It just occurred to me one day how different most of my life would be if that 50/50 coin flip that determines our sex came up the other way. Not the broad strokes, of course. Me being a boy or girl wouldn’t affect where my dad moved our family due to his job, or what schools I went to – at least not through high school. But would I have been into sci-fi and fantasy movies, video games and comic books and D&D if I’d been a girl? It’s not impossible, certainly, and I might have appreciated the physique of my He-Man action figure in a different way, but it’s probably a lot less likely. All of my drawing came from wanting to draw my own superheroes and Vallejo/Frazetta/Elmore/Parkinson/Caldwell style pictures. Would this comic exist? I think there’s like a 10% chance. Of maybe it would be called Man Power, and it would feature a bunch of muscular, shirtless dudes with effeminate faces and dazzling cum-gutters. Sydney would still be named Sydney, but he’d be built like an 11 year old boy… Okay, Sydney wouldn’t change much I guess.
The new vote incentive is up!
Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Your alt universe comic would be pretty close to: thepunchlineismachismo.com
I can’t believe it’s been 6 years since they stopped uploading
I figured that the author simply felt that the comic had run its course. It started with kratos single trying to deal with the world in general. And ended with kratos teaching his son how to deal with the world in general..
I didn’t see a circle. I didn’t think I could interact with it.
Those circles were everywhere. Including but not limited to showing the HDMI port on the flat screen TV
Thank you for reminding me about this comic
The saving 50% on the cost of shoes thing only really kicks in if you’re planning on spending all your time on crutches, it’s really a hangover from before ready availability of decent prosthetics.
Speaking from experience, a hard collar like Peggy’s wearing would make it really difficult to look at her missing foot until she’s pretty much sitting up. A collar like she should be probably be wearing with a traumatic neck injury – cupping the chin, projecting down towards the sternum to limit front-back movement, would make it really, really difficult.
Please color that extra panel as this/next months vote incentive!
I don’t think anyone would even care that there isn’t a NSFW version of it.
This!
So much This
This pile on!
A also vote for this!
I would like this also.
I mean…. There might be. You don’t know.
“Sydney would still be named Sydney, but he’d be built like an 11 year old boy… Okay, Sydney wouldn’t change much I guess.”
Sydney adds Dave Barrack to “the list”.
I seem to recall he has been added a couple of times in the comic under the comic.
And experimented on by Dabbler.
My mother’s second husband had a leg amputation and he said that they have a system. People with leg amputations look online or in other places for an amputation buddy. Somebody with the opposite amputation to them, and the same size, and just mail each other the part of the pair that they’re not using.
I think he was pulling your leg…
I know the 127 Hours guy had contacts like that for gloves.
Or maybe he was pulling his amputation buddy’s leg, eyyy
Okay, I think we know what one of the orbs does. It’s a passive ability to relive other people’s memories.
the communication orb at work.
Sydney never realized and just thought she had an amazing imagination
I think you are on to something here. Head canon established
Went in the Operation Room for a quadra heart bypass. Woke up after, lifted head and said “I survived!!” There was nurse and she laughed.
So, regarding the differences between the story and the way a patient would really be treated/accommodated in this situation:
1: As others noted, this takes place pre-ARCHON, and thus, Max’s very existence is a state secret (especially including her presence in a war zone). It’s quite possible there’s simply no overlap between “time for this” and “cleared for this”.
2: I’ve got my own headcanon to account for Peggy waking up in a situation where she is able to sit up, not be a mass of wires, etc. Follow me, here:
While this is pre-ARCHON, it’s highly likely we’re in the run-up period when Max would be fully aware of the decision to go with a super-powered agency. This would likely give her knowledge of other supers and exceptional individuals like Peggy herself, whom she’d already identified as being candidates for the forming agency.
And one of those individuals would have very likely been… The Doc. (I don’t know her name, and my first attempt to learn it, she wasn’t even listed as part of the cast for that page, so, yeah, “Doc” it is.) Because the Doc herself would’ve been a high-level state secret, it’s likely that she was not used to treat rank-and-file troops.
However, while Peggy was out, Max could easily (well, could, at least) have arranged for the Doctor to be brought out to the hospital, as she knew she would be recruiting Peggy for the team ASAP. So Flashback Peggy doesn’t know it, but she’s essentially been sped through the initial healing period; bones knit, tendons restored, etc. She’ll probably be able to go straight into rehab at that point, which likely would’ve further cemented her loyalty to Max.
Hm… That said, writing all the above makes me a little annoyed While obviously, the team needs a medic, they don’t generally suffer injuries worse than any other combat ops, or, for that matter, plain civilians in high-crime areas. (I’m assuming her primary ability is removing injuries, rather than curing diseases or other medical disorders. If not, this actually makes my gripe much, much worse.)
Sure, ARCHON should be able to call the Doc in if she is needed, but that woman really should be working on a hospital ship near the two theaters of war that were going on at the time the comic was set. It’s not like she’s still a state secret. The start of the comic is the point where that wouldn’t be a thing anymore.
I would have to disagree about the need for Doc to be part of ARCHON. Sure, comparatively speaking, Archon might, on average, get the same percentage of wounded during missions, but the thing to keep in mind is, while a med ship could definitely benefit from her abilities, the people in Archon can deal with threats regulars can’t.
If it was a choice of healing someone like Peggy, who is obviously top-tier material for a human, vs someone like Max, who’s worth the equivalent of, at minimum, a battalion of regular troops, and literally the only person who can go up against the likes of Darude and similar level threats, it only makes sense to have someone who can heal supes fast in order to get them back in action as fast as possible.
Nearly every supe would be considered a force multiplier. Sydney by herself would probably qualify as a carrier strike group that can transport that level of firepower to any land/sea location needed and even off planet for short duration. Healing her up would vastly increase the readiness of any unit compared to having Doc heal up several squad of regular infantry.
I still say she shouldn’t be at ARCHON’s base, for two reasons:
1: Opportunity Cost. The team is not on active duty 24/7. Sure, when they’re going on a mission, having the Doc (or someone with similar abilities) available on standby makes sense. But during their seemingly copious downtime? Calculate out the number of lives she could save on an hourly basis, and the math gets pretty brutal.
2: Of course, not all injuries occur when expected. Sometimes they happen when the team is just relaxing. In which circumstance, the LAST thing you want is the Doc in the field of fire. Keeping her moving around through different urban ERs would actually make her safer than being in a building that’s definitely a target for super-terrorists. The medic is for aftermath, not during combat, D&D be damned. (“Forgive me Father Gygax, for I have sinned….”)
Given the existence of Harem, it’s trivial to get patients either to or from the Doc as needed. Meanwhile, ARCHON can be building goodwill and popular support, not only among the US citizenry, but even boosting our image abroad (“What’s that? 300 people injured in an earthquake on your west coast? We’ll have Doc Chevy right over. Don’t mind all the American Flags she’ll have around her.”) Unlike most of ARCHON, the Doc isn’t going to be perceived as a threat just for being in their national borders.
And how, exactly, is Harem supposed to aid in the transportation of patients or doctor? She has a fairly restrictive weight limit, and she can’t teleport other people. Varia is the exception, but that’s due to her power, not Harem’s.
According to the TV Tropes characters page for Grrl Power, the Doc’s name is Dr. Chevapravatdumrong, AKA Dr. Chevy.
I love this bit. The emotion on Peggie’s face and the long set up really made it land. Great framing too with the close shots and then the pull away.
Most military hospitals I’ve been in were just hospitals that had a lot of military guys inside. I wasn’t over in the sandbox so I can’t speak to how it worked there, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we’d worked with whatever local hospitals were available. Or hell, maybe Max just flew her to Germany/Japan/Korea/any of the many other places we’ve got a permanent presence. Or even stateside.
From Afghanistan to Germany in four minutes. That would be quite a feat, even for Maxima.
Yes thats incredibly fast. Afganistan is 3008 miles from germany. So 4 minutes means 752 miles/minute. Or 45120 mph. Which is almost mach 59. Someone please check if I got that right. Mach 58.6 and change.
Unless the initial hospital was not in germany that Max took Peggy to and was instead somewhere closer.
Dave wrote that it was Camp Bastion. That was inside Afghanistan. So a lot closer.
On a side note, the real camp was gigantic, but the buildings were still mostly containers and tents.
Only some special buildings were individual builds, like an operation theater, but still a lot of prefab, visible trusses and powerlines.
Maybe Peggy was directly flown out to germany after her surgery.
Otherwise the room looks still to “permanent” for the camp.
OK add me to the list that says that that extra panel HAS to be colorized. It would be a crime against humanity to not to do so. Oh just so you know I sat down and read the whole comic in one sitting and you are directly responsible for an extreme case of insomnia that night.
Peegy came out from under anesthesia pretty quickly, when I had surgery on my arm to fix a shattered humerus, i was groggy for a while and immediately puked
It is likely that she received a different aesthetic.
Reactions to anesthetics are very individual (and interestingly redheads tend to have significantly different reactions to other people)
I’ve been under twice, the first time for back surgery which had the potential risk of paralysis, the complication sheet stated it as “there is a small chance of permanent paralysis, the odds are extremely low but if it does occur this will significantly affect your life”, I woke up in a recovery room and thought, “I wonder if I can move my feet” I tried and saw something moving at the other end of the bed and my next thought was “somethings moving down there, I think they’re feet, I wonder if they’re mine?”
I don’t recall seeing anybody in the recovery room but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
then I was out again and woke up in a standard hospital room with parents waiting for me.
The second time a camera was getting a tour of my rear to investigate some bleeding and I woke up sitting in a chair in the waiting room and was fine as soon as I woke up
I’ve been under 3 times now, first time I didn’t “fall asleep” or anything, the nurses were talking to me pre op then next minute I was post op. I freaked out. my two more recent ops I suspect was different anaesthetic (over a decade and lots of updated medical knowledge later) used because it felt a whole lot more like sleeping and waking up.
Personally I think you should just give yourself a break and make that image a full page, and let it be the update for Thursday. I know some people want it to be a vote incentive, but I want that image to be canon in the comic proper. And don’t worry about it slowing down the pace, I’m sure everybody here would enjoy seeing that, especially considering…recent events.
I will second this. Pile on the support votes!
You know, until now the strip is in a form that just COULD be orchid, but a webcomic really is way more flexible than that. You can include centerfolds, moving animations, cluckable javascript, or surprise bonus days. Just as your art style variee, the form is flexible
Fun fact: There is a Polish expression to humorously describe Sidney’s “medical treatment” applied fo Peggy: “okład z ciepłej piersi” which roughly tranlates into “compress (made) of warm breast/boob” :) it is used when some dude gets hurt somewhere between non-life threatening and “boo-boo” and someone makes the suggestion “just apply a compress of warm breast and it will go away” :)
…oh GODS i just realised Peg leg ♂️please tell me you didn’t name her Peggy for the pun?
This set of panels, especially the ones where it’s just her getting more red eyed as she realizes what’s happening literally made me tear up. I haven’t ever posted before, but I’ve been following this comic and been a patreon for years. This was just a really exceptionally well done emotional moment that was done with such well done understatement and intense emotionality. Just…. good job.
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If it’s a hospital, they are monitoring your how are your body responds on the treatment – mostly, because it can turn to be worse, but when your body become more active, the machine can mistake it as a beginning of a seizure. It depends on how suddenly you move, when you wake up.
In Peggy’s case, as it was a smooth awakening, it could had taken a couple of minutes, until one of the nurses noticed.
As someone who is transgender that last section in the notes was how I used to feel before I realized/accepted I was trans. I used to think about what I would wear if I was a girl, how I would act, what I would do, etc if I didn’t “lose” that coin flip. I used to think about that A LOT. Like so much that I basically lived in the fantasy land in my head where I was a girl and everything was better and I was happy with my body for years.
I can’t say if this has any deeper meaning for you or not but what you said about seeing those cool/sexy boots and how “they make me regret not being a transvestite” is almost exactly how I used to feel just with a different term. I used to feel like trans people were lucky because they got to be trans and change who they are and wear all of that cool stuff/outfits while I was stuck as a cis dude. I was so sad that I couldn’t do that (Spoiler alert but I totally could and would start doing that just a few years later). It took so long to realize I didn’t need permission to be transgender, I could just be me.
I just wanted to put that out there because it hits close to home for me. If you have any questions about this kind of stuff I’d be happy to try and answer them. Sorry if this is an overstep but I wanted to put my similar experiences out here.
Love your comic btw, I just haven’t commented recently and wanted to say again how much I enjoy it.
Thanks for your comment, but I’m not remotely up in the air about my gender identity. I think my mind wanders to these topics because of, well, ADHD, but also because I’m a writer and I like to think deeply down a path to understand motivations. I don’t want to be a guy who writes women who are “dudes with boobs” or sexualized male ideals… which yes, I understand that I DO write characters like that, but it’s because I have a wide cast. Hopefully I also have a slightly deeper cast, meaning that while Dabbler and Harem and Cora and the like are obvious dude fantasies, hopefully some of the other cast members feel more complex.
And sure, I admit sometimes I see some baby-doll t-shirt that’s about 85% lace and think 1) That’d be sexy on the right woman, and 2) I wish guys had more options for shirts than t-shirts and polo shirts and button down shirts. But I also think 3) I couldn’t fit into that if it was twice as big, 4) all my chest hair would poke out the lacy bits, 5) I’m not remotely fit enough to try pulling that off anyway, 6) I’m not the slightest bit gay*, and while you wouldn’t have to actually be gay for a guy to wear a lacy shirt, it sure would help, and it would definitely send out a certain type of signal, and 7) That shirt looks really uncomfortable and itchy.
(And not that being a cross-dresser or whatever it’s called these days necessarily means someone is gay, that’s just my particular train of thought.)
* Okay, I might be like… 01.75% gay in that I can look at a really fit, groomed, manscaped to an inch of his life guy and think “Sure, I get why a heterosexual woman would be into that.” Do I want to look like that? Sure, that’d be great, thanks. Do I want it pressed up against me? Abso-fucking-lutely not. And for any guy that isn’t a 9.8 or higher, (including myself) I look at them and think, “I feel really sorry for heterosexual women, cause… yuck!” Which is admittedly a total failure of imagination on my part, but I guess that just how hormones and gender identity works I suppose.
So, yeah, I appreciate the check in, but I’m good. Hopefully you’re in a good place too and keeping safe in our fucked up political environment.