Grrl Power #1314 – Replantigrade
I think I’ve said this before, but in my original envisioning of this story, I’d never intended Peggy to get her leg back. But having introduced Cora and her crew and their Space Meditech, it just doesn’t make sense that she wouldn’t. Only Peggy refusing it or Cora and Co. denying her for some reason that… I maybe could have come up with if I’d really wanted to. I vaguely remember some story I read when I was in middle school (?) about some guy who traveled back in time to bring a cure-all to the past, but in the end it turned out to basically just be a vitamin shot. It worked in his time because childhood vaccinations and advanced nutrition and environmental conditions of his time got people 90% of the way there, and the shot was just the icing on the cake. Man, I haven’t thought about that in yonks. Weirdly, I can’t remember if it was a short story I read, a comic book, like a “Strange Tales” kind of thing, or an episode of the Twilight Zone or one of the many TZ wannabes.
(Only slightly related, but after watching an anime, I often can’t remember if it was dubbed or subtitled, unless there was something about either version that stood out, like terrible voice acting or hard-coded cultural footnotes on the subs. Not immediately after! I know you were wondering that. Like, six months later. Language is weird, and so are brains.)
Anyway, the point of the vitamin shot story was that I guess I could have come up with some BS reason Cora wouldn’t want to give Peggy a new foot, like Space Anti-Rejection Drugs™ and if she ever missed a dose her leg would shrivel up and look like a stubbed out cigarette. But I really don’t want to be constrained to write a story about things that never change because… Actually I don’t know why Marvel and DC comics never change. I guess so someone can read a Superman comic in the 70’s, then pick up another Superman title in the 90’s and again in the 10’s and Clark still hasn’t married Lois and the reader will be like “Guess I’m picking up right where I left off!” Actually I think Clark has revealed to Lois and/or Lois has figured out his identity about 35 times across various iterations of the comic/animated series/movies/TV shows, so honestly, I don’t even know what you’d see if you cracked open any given Superman title these days. But that muddies my point about not wanting to write about static characters, so, er, ignore me?
I’ve had to scale back the coloring just a bit because as it turns out, a mother who wanders in every 20 minutes to tell me about the great emergency of needing to find the christmas wreath with the big red bow on it or how we need to get ready for her doctor’s appointment that I’ve explained to her 11 times isn’t for three more weeks, combined with my own ADHD is not a great formula for productivity. Hopefully after christmas there will be significant movement toward a better living situation for my mom. Well, I say better. None of the options are awesome, and nearly all involve moving at least one household worth of stuff, so… maybe there will be some Stick Figure Grrl Power pages in the medium-near future? :P
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.
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MOAR MARGIN CHIBIS
For decades, Barbara Gordon refused to take advantage of the super-science of several of her allies to fix her spinal damage, explaining it wasn’t fair that such miracle tech wasn’t available to the world. So she vowed not to take advantage unless it was available to everyone. And no one minded because she was far more awesome as Oracle than she was as Batgirl.
And then Flashpoint came along, and not only was she out of her wheelchair (with no explanation), she was Batgirl again. They probably explained her change of mind eventually, but I didn’t bother finding out.
I recall reading a really old comic back in the day. If my memory is correct about this, in the 70s, the pages were yellowed with age. I don’t remember who the superheroes were, but they did let the heroes advance the world. It didn’t take very many issues for them to progress the world’s tech to such a degree that they had Jetson’s level tech. I don’t think it continued much beyond that.
Superheros can solve any problem within the span of one comic. If you let them solve the problems of the world, they rapidly run out of problems of the world that it’s politically acceptable for them to fix.
One of the best jokes I recall about the constant return to status quo in Marvel was when Scott Summers was getting razzed by a SHIELD agent about getting together with Emma Frost like he was being unfaithful.
He replied, “My wife DIED, you insensitive-”
To which the agent sarcastically rebutted, “Yeah, THAT’ll last.”
Which…I mean, Jean Grey’s literally connected to a power called “The Phoenix Force.” Agent had a point.
my view on it, she should not be guilty of taking advantage of the benefits of her position, she is part of a super powered government team that regularly fights super beings, sure most people don’t have access to this tech but most people are not expected to fly a attack helicopter into battle against alien gods either. think of it as a peice of equipment for your job.
I think the vitamin shot story is from Squadron Supreme — Marvel;s miniseries about their ersatz Justice League parody. It was their scientist, Tom Thumb, who made this discovery — he had cancer himself and was devastated to find out that the future cureall was worthless for him.
Re: the colouring, I’ll say this every time you say it’s not up to your usual standard, this level looks great. If you’re feeling pushed for time or want to build a backlog, make this level your default and save the ‘higher standard’ that you want to do for the pages where you really want to make an impact – big fight splash panels etc.
I wonder what the VA is gonna say.
Also, I’m in the piece of the pie graph who don’t say “a lego”. ‘A lego piece’, ‘a lego kit’, ‘a lego model’, ‘a lego convention’? All of these and more are fine.
Also also, please don’t pluralise lego. It’s like sheep.
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. I know. ;)
DaveB: “But I really don’t want to be constrained to write a story about things that never change because… ”
If the writers are intelligent about it, it usually makes sense to NOT keep everything static and unchanging and everying going back to the status quo unless you hang a lampshade on it to be funny (ie, Futurama did an episode about that).
But one of my favorite sci fi TV shows, Stargate SG-1, did it VERY well. The humans (Tau’ri) started out at a current level of technology, but they didnt stay there because it would make NO sense for them to stay static throughout the entire series, given the new tech that they learn about, new allies they gain, and the entire mandate of the Stargate Project. Within a few years, they had learned how to build a naquada generator by backward engineering a naquada generator from another human species on another planet, then a short time after that, they had a few stolen Goa’uld ships (a death glider, an al-kesh, and VERY briefly a Ha’tak mothership, which was promptly used to blow up a sun I believe, although the al-kesh was also destroyed as well). Then they had basically modified the death glider, the X-301 (which was a huge fail because of security protocols in the glider), then they made a complete-from-scratch Earth-based glider using a naquada generator and earth-produced materials, which was the first actual Earth ship – the X-302 hyperspace fighter, which was then mass produced as the F-302 fighter-interceptor.
By the middle of the series, they had a few earth-built ships to form an actual ‘fleet’ (the BC-303 – Prometheus – the first Earth interstellar battlecruiser, followed by the BC-304s Daedalus-class battlecruisers – the Daedalus, the Odyssey, the Korolev (run by the russians as payment for giving Stargate Command the stargate dialing device, desatroyed fighting the Ori pretty bravely at the second Supergate space battle), the Apollo, the Sun Tzu (crewed by the Chinese, though it was destroyed by a super-hive Wraith ship in Stargate Atlantis).
Then the Asgard helped humans upgrade the Daedelus-class BC-304 battlecruisers to be a lot more advanced, where some of the above ships were upgraded with Asgard beam weapons and shields and MUCH faster hyperspace travel and transport technology.
Then game the George Hammond, which was the first Deep Space Carrier Battlecruiser and basically the culmination of all Asgard technology merged with the human-built ship, along with a database of the sum total of all asgard knowledge in it (when the Asgard decided to self-suicide their entire race because the cloning degradation was deemed completely irreversible and fatal). Basically humans became the new most powerful technological race because of this, since the Asgard were previously the technologically powerful race (other than the Ancients/Alterans, who mostly had gone to a higher plane of existence when they ascended and left their tech behind, like the stargate, atlantis, the alteran warships, the drones, etc). The Hammond was capable of destroying multiple Ori ships with the beam weapon.
Then in Atlantis, they not only had that ship, but they also had an Alteran warship (I think it was called the Aurora), dozens of puddlejumper stargate-capable scout ships, and of course the Atlantis city-ship.
And the best thing about the show was all the technological jumps made perfect sense given the backstories and canon of the shows. And the show managed to go for 10 years. And two made-for-TV movies. And probably would have gone even longer if not for legal problems with the attempted creation of a Stargate 2 movie, which never came to pass.
There was, unfortunately, no other Stargate TV shows other than Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, the first movie, and the two made-for-TV movies – the Ark of Truth and Continuum. There definitely was not a rumored show called Stargate Universe, and such ludicrous lies are only spouted by clinically insane delusional people. Do not believe them even if they show obviously faked video of it. Definitely never happened. Nope. NEVER.
Was Atlantis the space-travelling series? The one with Aqua-man in it? Or was that the one based in the Antarctic?
Minor peeve: working back from the finished product to figure out how to build something is “reverse engineering”; “backward engineering” is how hillbillies “invent” hot tubs heated by open fires.
Sydney really needs a shot of “shut the hael up”
It’s fine for her to get all flirty-sexy with her boyfriend in public, but no one else can go off for a private time?
Well she doesn’t need to go to the support group anymore, considering she will have her leg back, and the experience will be like a nightmare dream, also it would be a really bad idea to go back.
Just re-reading the sidebar describing Sydney and her orbs, and just realized… it seems like it’s been quite a while since there’s been any update regarding them. (I swear, if I don’t find out what that last orb does by 2027, I’ll be miffed!)
Yea in any super hero universe where super genius is one of the abilities it’s easy for the tech curve to get out of control as the good guy tech heads and the evil genius get into an arms race. The way Wearing the cape handled it was one of the more creative solutions I have seen with Vern’s being a power class and the tech was actually a manifestation of their super power and not real science.
Tech adoption also takes time and early adoption is expensive so it makes sense that super tech is pretty rare while non super geniuses wrap their heads around the concept of new fundamental forces or that an entire branch of physics is wrong. First places you would see super tech creeping in would probably be the same places that can afford to hire supers (military, resource extraction operations ect.) Most of the early stuff would be super mundane, batteries that last days, mostly indestructible phones ect. Then slowly in medicine first for the super rich and special forces military folks then trickle down to the normies.
Ad. Anime watching
I find that often I cannot recall what language version of movies I have been watching. Was it english? Was it my native language (not english)?
Either I have very bad memory, don’t listen to the dialogues at all, or my english as second language comprehension is so good I don’t even notice. I hopefully believe its the last one, but could be either of first two. Or something fourth.
Yep, brains are weird.