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.
Was that Suzie? She’s going on The List.
Can you get put on the list twice? She might be the first to find out.
Daphne (on phone):Hey, Arianna, it’s Daphne. Look, I wanted to warn you… yeah, she’s seen it. She’s been scribbling in her List for the past half-hour. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah! That’d be smart. Lisbon? You know she can fly at sonic speeds now, right? Yeah, Cora’s still here. Hang on.
Other Daphne: Cora, you know a good planet, quiet, hospitable, Sydney doesn’t know the coordinates to?
lmfao couldn’t find an even worse photo even after going through the archives 3 times
“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.'”
Hey it’s the media! They’ll go with whatever gets the most clicks and views. It makes sense that most of the supers are all about their glamour shots and that Sydney… well, poor Sydney, she’s no Maxima, so she gets to be the comic relief super heroine.
Did a spit take there and could not stop laughing.
I got as far as “BTW” … then it dissolved into word salad and I gave up
If that’s the BTW in the new blurb, after doing the comic he realised his Gaydies joke refers to lesbians rather than being a pithy way to generically refer to gay men.
I am wheezing and I can’t stop laughing.
Come on, we know why Sidney gets the hit job.
She is a nightmare for the reporters.
Just remember the first interview after the bank robbery. You know it’s bad if the reporter begs to be cut off.
The news media IS entertainment, and always has been. It’s specialized content intended to attract the greatest amount of issue sales/clicks so as to be able to charge advertisers (which is where their real money comes from) the highest possible rates. This is why they have that “If It Bleeds, It Leads” business model: since it is impossible for them to report everything, they filter out what their target audience is less likely to be entertained by. There is no substantial difference between “60 Minutes” and “Let’s Make A Deal,” except for subject matter, and the former’s pretensions.
It is not, and never has been.
Tabloid Shit like Fox “news” is. And they in fact used that justification to get out being sued for nearly a billion dollars. And called everyone who believed them idiots while they were under oath.
USA Press began as character assassination self publishing by various leading wealth men…. Who had printing presses. There was a brief fling with supposed legitimacy (repeating nationalism narratives) after yellow dog journalism hit its lowest point. Now were back to in the yellow dog days, and in a race to see who can reach Hollow Earth first.
Is Arianna mad at Halo? *How* mad is Arianna at Halo?
Between a mad scientist and a mad PR agent, ooh, I think I’d prefer the mad scientist. The sawblades and lasers can only kill you once, right?
Depends on how good their medical tech is.
I am with Jay. Arianna may have found the key to annoying Sydney.
As many times Arianna has had to either explain away or excuse Sydney’s antics, this is clearly payback to Syd for it. Plus it is damned funny and will show the lighter side of Archon. Lets face it, supers have a tough job, and they need to blow off steam. Also pranks on Max and Hiro could be extreme, like flash-bangs rigged in a locker, or like when Max paid Dauphine back with an atomic wedgie that worked on all 5 of her. A rough job makes people into rough necks, practical jokes and pranks get just as rough.
I think I hurt myself laughing at poor Sidney. I think we all look like that mid-sneeze.
“I think we all look like that mid-sneeze.”
The hack jobs done on just about every politician that include pictures that make them look angry or sad or whatever emotion you want to stick on them to go with the narrative are possible mostly because while we talk our face goes through a series of involuntary expressions that we’re not conscious of. All you need to do is pick one.
Kind of what the media are doing to the UHC CEO assassin, to make him look deranged.
As Ennesby from Schlock Mercenary said, “They just have to capture the right millisecond. ”
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-07-15
There’s also tricks with the timing of flashes to get people to look bad
How is everyone overlooking the most likely suspect for the source of that picture?
This has Joel written all over it.
I think you may be on to something tagging it to Joel.
I personally liked when Maxima had an “inhuman” look to her back in the day. Now she just looks like a boring model: coquettishly-shy lips, mascara, wide eyes, perfect hair, etc. The only difference between her and half the team is skin color now.
I much preferred when her eyebrows were not only not perfectly cleaned, but were furrowed at all times. When her eyes and mouth SCREAMED “I AM IN CHARGE AND THIS IS ALLLLL BUSINESS.” Given her personality, it made perfect sense; if anyone tried to tell her she should clean up a bit, she’d inform them of her rank, responsibilities, and POWER LEVEL with a grinding rage in her voice. Reminds me of my mother, who is ALSO a colonel!
I think Maxima doing the posing with the hard hat on is something Arianna arranged for PR. Maxima being all frowny faces might make good sense for a high ranking officer, but not so much a superhero. They want to capture the hearts and minds of people (especially if Arianna is going to market merchandise based on their likenesses).
Or to put it another way: Arianna told her to clean up a bit. And Maxima grumbled before they settled on what outfits and photos she would and would not do.
I agree with basically all of this. One of the contributors to this that I miss was her sharp lines from above ear to below lips (I think that’s jawline? Skull line? Cheek bones?) that made her look more angular and much more metallic, and also gave her a more unique (and yes, a little alien) look.
That was before she started banging the firefighter.
I hope my neighbors aren’t too worried about me,
I don’t usually laugh that uproariously.
I wonder if we’ll find out who the “big names in science fiction and fantasy” are.
Well, it won’t be Neil DeGrasse Tyson after the Grakz incident…
Sydney got BoJack’d.
“Sneezing under florescent lights.” I snorted my freaking coffee out my nose when I saw that picture!
Sydney, this is why you make sure the second you step out the door in the morning.
I don’t think it’s really the effort involved in writing a complaint letter – we’ve all seen some absurdly long and involved rants online – it’s the cost. Posting online costs effectively nothing. Envelopes and stamps? Those aren’t free, and most folk aren’t willing to put even a small amount of their money where their mouth is.
Panel nine is one of your best ever Dave. Well done.
Oooh, Burn After Reading. Fun film. Especially the ending – “I guess we learned not to do it again.”
And a nice timeline reminder. It’s easy to forget, even with an Obama appearance way back, the comic isn’t actually in “present day” or comic book time.
I had to look up when that movie came out, and it feels like it predates some of the other stuff in the comic. I’m thinking maybe this is just a universe where that movie came out like, a decade later than IRL?
Looks like an AI fake, LOL
Funniest strip in years. Bravo!
Guessing some of the reasons for that particular photo:
Sydney hasn’t been to many dedicated PR opportunities yet, being tied up in basic training
There may be many photos of Sydney, but I bet not all of them show all 5 orbs in frame of the camera in one shot
“All 5”? There’s 7.
okay, but who’s showing up, And how pissed is she going to be at not getting to meet some of the people going to her comic book store because she’s going to be busy with other work?
In comic time that hot new author Patrick Rothfuss could be promoting his second book!
Given the color of the commentary, this is very much a TMZ style show.
So if they can’t get Sydney looking good, then they have to get her looking bad to an equal degree as the hot photos from the others. When you’re selling the sleaze, you can’t do half measures.
I imagine the show has a tumultuous relationship with Heatwave or Jiggawatt if only because they have the highest tendency to go back and forth on glamor and disheveledness. I could absolutely see Heatwave as their sort of Britney Spears, a target that is easy to trick or outsmart and get different sorts of candids, but she’s also putting out plenty of glam stuff that also gets attention.
oh god you’re so gonna be on the list…
Well, I thought it might be going off in an odd and strange way…till the punchline.
Dave, I do understand the situation with your mom, I’m caregiver for both my wife (Endstage COPD) and my 91 y/o father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s recently, it’s a full time job.
Life is filled with bad moments when someone takes a opportunity to take an embarrassing picture of you, like I was in fireman training and was practicing with a fire hose and goofed up and got launched off the ground… took a few years to get the guys to stop bringing it up… Much less posting a copy on the bulletin board. FYI, the flight was fun, the landing however SUCKED! oow….
Clearly the weird pic of Sydney is a prank by Dabbler, who got into the PR pack files somehow and replaced the handful of actual PR shots of Sydney that were considered usable with this disaster.
Naa, this is just Arianna paying Sydney back for all her misbehaver :) Like the press conference when she was announced, or when she returned to Earth, and so on. Sydney is both the MC and the comic relief.
Where is Hiro’s torc?
“Next level” is overused, but punking your friends by using the media, that is next level by far.
That depends who you’re talking about.
This is Archon: Harem did this the very first story to Maxima(kissy marks on mr. Amorphous)
True, and though I wasn’t thinking of it when I commented, still different. She set her up Maxima directly and on the ground for the news to happen upon. Here she cajoled/bribed the news to to punk Sidney. That’s the next level for me.
While I appreciate the fact that it put you behind doing that face, it was honestly the biggest laugh I’ve gotten out of comics in a long time. So thank you very much for it. Also The List! probably the entire news agency.
On why someone in pr might be pressed to discredit The Mighty Halo.
Sydney is from Ariana’s perspective on payroll for her disarming personality and from the generals’ perspective a wandering confidentiality risk.
Also tactically she is often a behund the scenes player.
We want bad guys targeting shiny indestructable Maxima, not glass canon Halo.
Discrediting her helps with all of this.
The Glass-Cannon ratio of each character is an interesting thought experiment. Maxima is very durable, however she got her nose broken by a fairly mundane punch from Vehemence. Sydney’s shield took a shot from a hundred-kiloton range explosion and flashed a warning shot. From that comparison, it would seem that Sydney’s shield is far more durable than Maxima’s defenses. Max appears to have FAR greater firepower than Sydney – “hundred’s of petajoules in a few seconds” output vs. Sydney’s obsidian disk feat are vastly different in magnitude.
On a ratio of offense to defense, I think I could argue that Max is more of a glass cannon than Syd. Sydney’s damage output is relatively matched to her defensive capability, whereas Max can dish out a tremendous amount more than Syd while absorbing far less.
Part of this is that Max can reshuffle her “stats” – when she destroyed the Fel Carrier, she likely dropped everything else down as low as she could, making her much less durable than normal (but still more durable than a normal human). Meanwhile, when she opted to tank Vehemence’s punch, she focused (but not to the same extent – the above was probably a Power Stunt that dropped everything else below her proper baseline, while this probably left everything else at the baseline) on both Flight (to avoid knockback – note this meant she essentially leaned into the punch, making it that much more powerful) and Defense. And noses are pretty fragile; that same hit to her chest may not have even left a significant bruise (particularly considering her healing factor). Oh, and I wouldn’t call Vehemence’s punch mundane. He had previously uppercut a space-shuttle-weight (somewhere between 165,000 and 4.4 million lbs – 82.5 to 2,200 tons – depending on if his weight estimate was for it empty or fully-loaded) Stalwart hard enough to lift him off his feet, and I’d imagine he used at least that much power for the punch against Max. Which she took while moving no more than taking a small step back (normally a decent amount of the force of a punch is essentially “wasted” pushing the target back).
That said, I agree that Sydney’s shield almost certainly outclasses Maxima’s maximum Defense, while Maxima’s energy blasts almost certainly outclass the PPO, at least in its current state (just as Sydney may be able to get a higher real-space flight speed than Maxima with enough invested points, she may similarly be able to upgrade the PPO to exceed Maxima’s output). But what arguably makes Sydney a glass cannon is that her shield is an active use of her power, and when it isn’t turned on (or if someone manages to slip in before she activates it, like with the first villain KO), she’s every bit as vulnerable as a normal human.
All good points. My use of the word Mundane in regards to Vehemence’s punch was relative to the crater left in the aftermath of the Alari-Kaiju explosion that made Sydney’s shield beep red. Heck of a punch, but several orders of magnitude weaker than that blast.
The Mighty Halo has good active, but bad passive defense, which matters most at the start of the fight and thus the part that will go most likely go to the plan of the one who takes the initiative(most often the villains, because they need to have a plan already to qualify as villains.)
If you don’t cringe when looking at your earlier works, you’re doing it wrong.
If you don’t cringe when looking at your earlier works, you’re not improving.
Both of these are true. As an artist, I’ve laid some real stonkers on the past. And I am reminded of them by friends. Which inspires me to improve.
On news vs entertainment programming.
This is actually a legally relevant question top gear got away with flat out lying about Tesla Ranges, because they’re not a news or education organization and in many jurisdictions news and educational programs legible for all kind pf privileges(prime time slots, government funding, etc.)
That was effin’ brilliant.
This page me laugh quite a bit, too. And since I’ve been dealing with a nasty Malware infection on my computer for the last hour, it was really what I needed.
Thank you, and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Dave, we need a supersize Sydney sneezing pic for the vote incentive please.
I would assume that “delightful” photo of Sydney is Arriana’s revenge for all the trouble Sydney’s caused her.
Like a “why yes I do have a few photos of the team that you can print in your newspapre let me just open my SPECIAL folder and send them right over to you.
What is the hard hat for?
Osha
To distract you from the fact she is also wearing a high viz vest. That’s like attaching warning lights to a star.
Man, my sides still hurt after laughing at Sydney’s picture, you really nailed it!
Wow, did they do a girl DIRTY.