Grrl Power #1316 – Gesnewsheit
So I’ve been having trouble keeping up with the comic due to helping out my mom, and then my brain hits me with this gag, and of course, the whole thing requires a certain level of art to really land. Max, Hiro and Harem’s pictures are supposed to be nice PR shots, and maybe just a little sexy. Then cut to Sydney’s “Ren and Stimpy Close-up™” which again, required more involved art than the cell shaded stuff. So this page didn’t help me get caught up. But as a writer who is very bad at self-editing, I decided to roll with it. I hope you found it amusing. I know I did.
As for why Sydney’s getting the hit job? I don’t know. I don’t really have a reason for it, other than the rule of “it made me laugh.” I do hand wave it a bit on an upcoming page, but you’re welcome to theorize. It entertains me to think that they weren’t ready with the graphics, and that picture, titled “A_Snez_Halo.TGA” was the first one in the folder and they just went with it. Like the picture they planned on using had some prominent product in the background, and the ad guy wandered by and nixxed it because the news sold ad time to a competitor. Which as far as I’m concerned, if you do stuff like that, you’re not news, you are a unit of entertainment programming.
I kind of also wanted to do this page because I very rarely show the team doing PR stuff. Well, kind of never, except their public debut and the one time Syd, Max and Dabble went to New York and stood outside a restaurant waving and answering questions for a few minutes. (Featuring a very Frankenstein’s monster looking Maxima. Yeesh.) The team is really supposed to all be mega celebrities and doing stuff like that quite often. I don’t include it in the comic much, because drawing crowds is a pain in the butt, (Oh, look. I complained about drawing crowds on the NY page too.) and I feel like it’d make for a few perfunctory pages that do a bit of world building, but not much else. So I figure a page like this that shows them having already done it is a good compromise.
BTW, I googled “gaydies/gaydy” (after writing and drawing the whole page) and apparently it means a gay lady/lesbian. Which makes sense. But here Suzie means to refer to gay men with a word that sounds like “ladies,” i.e. someone who might enjoy seeing Hiro flexing and shirtless. So maybe Suzie is going to get some letters from L’s and G’s. Also white knighting Cis’s and performative regressives. Which is probably about average for any given unit of entertainment. Do people even bother writing letters/emails anymore to complain to broadcasters/streaming services? There’s a lot of “offensive” media out there. Or at least stuff that I academically understand why someone might be offended by it. Like Preacher with the 90-generation inbred messiah, or every other episode of IASIP/Southpark, etc. I have a feeling there’s a lot less letter writing these days and a lot more general grousing online. Obviously the online option wasn’t available 30 years ago, I just mean I think it takes less effort to be offended on your FB/Insta than it does to find the email address of someone who might actually read anything you send them at Netflix/NBC/Apple/Disney/etc.
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.
That photo is Arianna’s revenge.
This is just hammering home the point that Super Powered made – “when you get a superhero certification you REALLY need an agent.”
Can attest, IS funny dave. I laughed and giggled wo much I annoyed my sleeping wife
Please upload that picture / panel without the speech bubble.
It definitely needs to be added to the banner rotation.
later “Joel what the..”
“Surprisingly a lot of Doctors, nurses, insurers, and a few candystripers wanted that as a photo on what not to do. Apparently superheroes draw a lot of attention to healthcare.”
“…”
Help! It’s 1am and I can’t stop laughing.
No, you extra dimensional, magic weilding, pain in the but…
that pic has to be a form of revange but dam i couldnt stop laffing
this had me laughing for a good 5 minutes
“As for why Sydney’s getting the hit job?”
I choose to believe it’s karma for all the trouble she’s caused Arianna in the past.
Man this reminds me of luigi. The news tried really hard to get the worst photo of him to use in their articles, but they couldn’t get one even with a lot of effort, so they started saying that they need to stop showing pictures of him.
And they keep trying to gaslight us by saying the only reason we support him is “because he’s hot”. Nah, I’m not even into men.
Unlike most of this webcomic’s demographic, I’m not much of a comic nerd, so I gotta wonder if Lex Luthor ever had some propaganda spin about people only liking Superman because he’s attractive.
Our Belovèd Ruling Class is terrified of him and the sudden remembrance of solidarity that was very common in my parent’s and my generations
Not wishing to criticise but someone is missing from the who’s who
Suzie News Villain Arc!
Whether it was Arianna or someone else, what Sydney needs to do is freeze Suzie out. That’ll teach Suzie as well as Arianna/PR staff a lesson. Just refuse to ever answer another question from Suzie OR her network! They both need a lesson anyway.
Oh hey! We finally have a last name for Hiro! Not we need ones for Stewart, Harold, Math, Ren, and at least a first name for Mr. Amorphous. :D
I have to wonder if Suzie is going to call out the folks who gave her that photo–“Really, guys? That was the best you could do? Making me look bad, here!”
Suzie Wen has just made the List.
I wouldn’t put it past Arianna to deliberately do this to make Sydney the most “Human” of the heroes and therefore the one people more easily identify with.
Hiro, given his height of around 6’3″ and that build, would be a bit over 500 pounds assuming his super body is the same mass density as a mortal body. Since most of it is muscle mass, he’d be eating something over ten thousand kilocalories per day if it requires the same kind of food to support as mortal muscle mass. Obviously he’s using more energy shifting around multi-ton objects than 10x that diet could possibly provide, so…. who knows how much he needs to eat? And his muscles, if they generate heat at the same ratio as mortal muscles when converting to mechanical energy, would more than account for a few of those scorched shirts.
Just a random observation. More random than most. And I know, comic-book hero physiques don’t partake of objective reality much more than any other superpower. Still, I can’t help but wonder how all that would work.
at 6’3??? He might, MIGHT be hitting 300 lbs if he’s as bulky as a devoted bodybuilder, and I’d say more likely is around 275 in real life. Marvel Captain America is 6’2 and 240 lbs, and is built much the same as Hiro is, for comparison. I don’t think Hiro is THAT much bigger than a supersoldier.
Just look at the weights of football players. You have sizes all across the spectrum. A 300 lb lineman is a BIG boy, and Hiro doesn’t have bone structure quite that heavy.
I’d personally put him about the 275 mark top end.
I just don’t see this happening. This aspect of the story tends to get taken seriously and it got a bit yikes out of me. A hit piece like that is a clearly losing legal battle with a government run superhero organization. I hope it’s just a pre-recorded video they put on the screen just to mess with her that didn’t actually get aired live *to the entire world and the internet where she would be tormented by it forever*.
I just don’t see this happening. This aspect of the story tends to get taken seriously and it got a big yikes out of me. A hit piece like that is a clearly losing legal battle with a government run superhero organization. I hope it’s just a pre-recorded video they put on the screen just to mess with her that didn’t actually get aired live *to the entire world and the internet where she would be tormented by it forever*.
Y’know, I clearly wasn’t the only person who thought that Sydney’s pic was revenge from Ariana, but after rereading this comic several times I think it’s actually the opposite.
Many of the members of the team either are fine with male-attention (Harem), openly invite it (Dabbler), or at least are intimidating enough to protect themselves (Maxima). But Sydney is both less experienced than all of them, and also a bit less of the physical super-heroione ideal, so I think Ariana is actually trying to stop creepers from creeping on the most publicly well-known member of the “A-team” by making her appear as unnatractive as possible.
Lapha is tagged but not in the list of characters, FYI.
Syndey basically spent an entire afternoon trolling reports at her comic shop and making them buy things. I bet one of them got offended enough to set that picture up.
Well…
Sydney did threaten some reporters with going to “Sydney jail”
ohhh my god, that Sidney`s sneeze panel made my bring tears to my eyes!! hahhahahahahahah
Oh, this page is awesome. I burst out laughing immediately, then I did it again when I read it a second time. I love the peanut gallery laughing in the last panel.