Grrl Power #1307 – Batmax
What Maxima is implying about the split decision is that the sniper competition judges were probably a bunch of boy’s club old school military types, so naturally anything resembling a tie goes to the “can write name in snow” club.
By “in the service,” Maxima means the Air Force specifically. A branch not usually renown for their snipers. Which isn’t to say there aren’t USAF special ops sniper teams or anything, but if you had to rank the branches in terms of who’s the sniperiest, it’s probably the… Army first? Like, just by sheer volume, plus various special forces. Then it’s kind of a toss up between the Marines and the Navy, which is weird, because initially I’m like, why would the Navy even have snipers, but then I’m like, oh right, the SEALS.
My point is, the Air Force only doesn’t come in last because of the Coast Guard. I won’t say the Coast Guard definitely don’t have a special forces sniper team… but they seem the least likely of any branch. I know I could google it, but it amuses me not to.
What I do know that the Air Force has lots of special ops teams that explore alien worlds and fight the Goa’uld. I mean, if Stargate SG-1 taught me anything, it’s that a P90 can definitely dunk on a Staff Weapon. Yeah, you know what clip that is, but you’re going to click anyway cause it’s baller and it’s worth rewatching at least once a year in perpetuity.
Not sure why I dedicated 1/3 of the page to a drive by on injera. I’ve only had Ethiopian food once, and honestly, it was fine. I mean, the meat, spices, etc. But, if you don’t know what injera is – I couldn’t blame you, I had to look it up – it’s like nan/pita/tortilla, except it’s thinner, spongey and kind of… wet? At least the one I had was. Ethiopian dishes, or at least one category of them, are served on a big injera, like a scoop of 5 different things, and you rip up the injera and use it to scoop up your choice of… topping. Filling, dip, whatever.
Now, I know the burning question you have is, “Why is the American Airbase in Afghanistan serving Ethiopian food?” Simple, the hospital has an Ethiopian chef on staff. Now your next question might be, “Dave, is inflicting Ethiopian culinary sensibilities on American servicemen who are probably mostly used to MREs and relatively unadventurous chow hall cuisine, who are also in the hospital for one reason or another, possibly on drugs that make their whole GI tract a little iffy to start with, a recipe for ensuing hilarity?” Yes.
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Dammit Dave, now I have to go watch all of Stargate. AGAIN.
FOR THE 267,895TH TIME.
I hope you’re happy…. Cause I will be rewatching it.
i’ll just take this loop off….
That reminds me of the most recent “Trope Talks” episode on OSP. Red covered time loop stories and games, including that people tend to take a break for a loop or two when they are stuck long enough.
That’s how I learned to make the perfect omelette.
The trick is to whisk the eggs enough to get air bubbles into them, but not so much that you beat the air back out of them, or your omelette will be flat.
Your sacrifice is an inspiration to us all and shall not be forgotten.
“I think of them as wet crepes, Ma’am?” Huh? Poor Peggy, not knowing how crepes are served.
IME, crepes are SUPPOSED to be wet! Whether from the moisture of the filling, or the coulis underneath the crepe, or the sauce ladled over it. A crepe is NOT a hand-held food item.
I think the implication wet from being soaked in water instead of flavor.
Crepes can totally be a hand-held food item, demonstrated by takeaway/street stall crepes. Filling goes on one side and crepe is then folded into a fan or cone.
Respectfully, coming from the place crepes were (probably) invented or are at least still the staple food, you also have no idea how crepes are served.
If a crepe is spongy enough to qualify as “wet”, something went wrong with your cooking.
And the only reason the standard egg/ham/cheese galette cannot be handheld is because of the egg yolk getting runny once you pierce it.
Exact from a french who had family in concarneau Finistère ( department of France in the extreme west of Brittany)
About crepes an galettes I’m not a complete novice.
Hilariously, Coast Guard snipers regularly take high placements in sniper competitions, outshooting many USMC and Army teams. Its because they draw mainly from the HITRON squadrons – i.e. the guys who spend their days hanging out of helicopters shooting at speedboats going 60 mph+. We don’t have as deep a pool of talent to draw from, but we do have a lot more hands on practice.
Beat me to it. I came here to mention the Coasties.
Yes, this; for anyone who doesn’t already know, go ahead and do Google it. The Coast Guard punches way above its weight in snipers and sharpshooters.
(Also, there are significantly more female Coastie snipers. Not a lot, you understand, but significantly more of them than there are female alums of the Army Sniper school or Marine Scout Sniper program.)
Now, now you have me wanting a big batch of Gored Gored. Now that is SPICY and oh so good. The injera at the place I used to frequent was not wet as such, the perfect balance of moisture. But, I suspect whom ever was doing the injera was an Auntie or an Uncle. They always do those better than the kids.
I can not wait for the ensuing hilarity.
Ok the clip is indeed badass, but I cringe every time he starts his “this is a weapon of intimidation, this is a weapon of war” spiel BY FLAGGING Carter! Dang Colonel, weapons discipline! She even eyeballs the weapon, and flinches. At least his trigger discipline seems ok.
Dave, since you mentioned Max flew her to Camp Bastion it would actually be a British hospital, so their food is a bit more varied, considering the whole empire thing. And the Coast Guard/Puddle Pirates don’t have the best overall snipers, but they do have some of the better snipers used to shooting from moving helicopters at moving targets. The engines on smuggler go fast boats aren’t the largest targets and the people on them aren’t particularly motivated to slow down or hold a nice straight course.
>Best sniper
Was Shawn in at that time?
>By “in the service,” Maxima means the Air Force specifically.
Oh.
Obviously Max means what you want her to mean, but I don’t think “in the service” is usually used to refer to a specific branch of the service. And if Peg essentially tied for first in an international competition, it seems likely that she is, in fact, the best in the service – not just the best in the force.
Yeah, “in the service” is usually meant to mean out of the entire nation’s armed services. “In the force” would usually mean in the specific branch.
I’ve seen emergency services open a locked double hung window very easily, after an elderly neighbor’s alert thingie went off.
I’ve opened a sliding window from the outside using my fingertips (think Spider-Man) [it was our place, and somehow or other keys had been locked inside]
I’ve had surgery. I’ve been on one of those drugs. “Iffy” is not the word I would use to describe what they do to ones bowel control. Thinking about all of the people I’ve heard try to describe what it’s like, I think John Oliver did it best. I am not certain he was talking about this sort of drug at the time. I’m not remembering the context, but I’m certain he’s gone on one of his simile searches that at last sounded applicable.
Certain pain killers and muscle relaxers will paralyze or at least slow down the muscles of your digestive tract making it difficult to get ‘consistent results’ from the process.
Opiates don’t “paralyze” your intestinal tract; they do cause the intestinal tract to suck up water, giving you dry, hard stools (which is why scripts for them usually come with a script for a stool softener).
Immodium AD is an opiate molecule that’ll trigger opiate receptors in your intestinal tract (and just generally dry things up), but is (usually) too large to get absorbed into your blood stream.
Yes, there are ways to get around the “usually”, but they’re generally only of interest to people in “faith-based” (ie “we will let you stay in acute withdrawal until you pray for death”) treatment programs.
Truth. I had morphine after back surgery. Nothing would stay down. Nothing would come out. Green jello isn’t pretty going either direction.
In case anyone didn’t mention it, Max is currently a MAJOR in this scene…
So she’s a major asset to the military?
I’ve never been in any military this lifetime. But I distinctly remember several of my relatives who have been in the US Army asserting that it wasn’t true that the army had a policy against ever employing any good cooks. It’s just that if they did employ a good cook, they apparently had a policy of deploying that cook somewhere their skills would not be appreciated, and frequently somewhere that they’d have a horrible time getting all of the ingredients they needed to cook their preferred cuisine.
Disclaimer; I’m reporting hearsay. I do not know how accurate it is, nor how generally applicable across the various armed forces. That said, it feels applicable to this situation to me.
I’d suspect that the best cooks are posted to one of two possible deployments: the closest assignment to a high-ranked (&/or influential) officer; or the worst hellhole currently occupied by U.S. military personnel (because they pissed off said officer by declining).
But I’m no expert.
For some reason I just thought Peggy had naturally occurring pink hair, the brown hair is really throwing me off, it took me several extra seconds trying to figure out who the brown haired character is before it clicked.
The Coast Guard consistently makes a good show in sniper competitions.
I spent a few years training come of those guys, they’re definitely better than most people would expect. It isn’t an easy job to fire accurately from a moving helicopter at a target moving on the ocean. It requires not only accuracy, but good timing.
I half expected the link to be something else entirely just because of the followup sentence.
Dang it, now you have me craving injera and shiro.
I went to a place that had the entire table covered with a purplish injera, like a table cloth. They just dumped food on it. Was wild.
So I did some random trolling on MythBusters, and apparently they have shot an RPG with a gun in season 4. The thing Peggy did was impossible. No it’s not impossible to shoot the RPG, the results that Peggy got are impossible.
If you shoot the RPG before it is armed which happens about 60 feet after you fire it, there won’t be an explosion. RPG may become damaged from the slug impact, but there’s a whole problem of the mass of the round versus the mass of the RPGven for a 50 cal sniper rifle they are just not in the same category. So you may disable the resulting object but there won’t be a boom.
If you shoot the RPG after it is armed, which happens after the RPG enters its boost phase, the RPG will detonate, but then the molten copper slug which also weighs a lot more than that 50 caliber round is still going to keep coming towards you. The RPG is the delivery method for the copper slug and that is what pierces the armor plate. The explosion itrself is outward, not front or back so neither person would be harmed even at 20 feet, though it probably raises the air temperature
You’re assuming a HEAT round. The RPG-7, which is what is pictured, can take a wide variety of rounds, including thermobaric, fragmentation, and HE. One of the commnon HE doesn’t have a boost phase, so it must arm some other way. I haven’t been able to find detailed information on that, but there is likely at least some round out there that would not respond well to a .50 on its fuze, even in the launch tube.
Worst case, say she got lucky, and drove the piezo trigger directly back into the explosive, bypassing whatever the arming/safety mechanism is.
According to the wiki, the way Dave drew it, Is one of the 2 HEAT variants according to this source website. That is equivalent to Belarusian manufacturers websites I found and an online search. The fragmentation model looks different and apparently it does have some sort of range extender but apparently can be fired without it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170116163518/http://modernfirearms.net/grenade/rus/rpg-7-e.html
Oh and the description in the link above indicates that the arming system and detonation charge are in the base of the load, not the tip which is just the impact sensor active after it is armed whivh happens after 10m/34 ft.
Might be more logical if you flipped the set and had the window on her left instead of right since it would be on her blind side.
Kudos. The story of losing body parts is never an easy one to deal with and respect the service in the same time as trying to provide both story and humor. I super appreciate your skill in doing so and managing to hit both points. As I have read this comic you have dealt with several serious subjects and done it with skill, not acknowledged by most professionals in the biz. Fantastic comic, definitely a fan. Keep up the great work, don’t mind the trolls. <3
I hate to be that guy… but as a writer I have to.
It’s: too braggy*
This has been stuck in my head so I will just leave it here.
Higglety pigglety pop,
The crackhead dropped his rock.
The cops came ’round,
took him downtown.
Higglety pigglety pop.
Max has super speed. She could enter the room via the front entrance, unlock the window, speed back around, and quietly open and enter through the unlocked window. Why would she do all that? Because Shut Up, that’s why. ;)
I think Max was totally trying to batman Peggy, and by the sound of the heart monitor it was a resounding success. :D
It sounds like Max truly nailed his attempt to “Batman” Peggy, and the heart monitor’s reaction seals the deal with perfect comedic timing. This clever and amusing description adds a layer of drama and flair to the moment, making it as thrilling and impactful as a key survival move in a suspenseful game!
As a former Army puke, “best” at the top end really is splitting hairs. Talking “taking out the dial caliper and measuring tenths of a thousandth of an inch”.
Late to this, but best shot in the service? Not anymore. Losing an eye makes one of the most important skills of a sniper irrelevant, Depth Perception. It can be compensated for with range finders but at that level of ability it is very noticeable.
You can see in other pages with Peggy that her eye is not lost. A scar goes right above it, but whatever caused it luckily missed the eye itself.
She didn’t lose her eye. She just got a scar. And lost her leg.
About that window …
How none of you, even our beloved author, thought about that is eluding me : this is A HOSPITAL.
Every opening in an hospital, by design, following rulings from the United Nations, Geneva Convention, NATO and a whole bunch of other authoritiess, MUST be able to open from both sides, with easy-to-unlock doors, windows, elevators and everything.
They are not a secure facility, they are a SAFE facility, meant to be as easily accessible AND evacuable as possible.
The first time this was put in place was shortly after WW ONE, with several addendums during the years.
NOBODY ever locks down an hospital, despite moves, series and books telling otherwise, there are smaller dedicated areas for quarantine and containment in every hospital since 1930, but even those can be evacuated quickly and safely if there is a need to.
Most nations agree to leave hospitals alone, but there’s no accounting for stray shots, individuals, terrorists, “rogues”, nations that don’t agree, so hospitals are SAFE more than SECURE, and designed with rapid entry and exit in mind.