Grrl Power #1338 – Shadowcraft
Sciona’s managed to get herself on Maxima’s “More info needed” list. She’ll pass on her suspicions to Zephan about it he’ll assign someone to investigate further.
It’s got to be a party foul when you’re hanging out with people who can see in perfect darkness, and you light a cigar by emitting plasma from your fingertip. That’s quite a bit of contrast all at once. Of course, beings that can see in pitch black may not be doing it with some sort of visible light enhancement. They’re probably using infravision and, oh yeah, plasma is like 50,000 degrees. So, that would probably scar a Yautja’s retinas. Geeze, a lightning storm would blind whole cities on their world. (A yautja is a Predator, BTW.)
Oh, and Max didn’t exactly “shrug off” the 125mm round. Not that should couldn’t do it nowadays, but the T-72 event happened earlier in her career, and for P.R. reasons, she describes it as “shrugging off.” That scene may eventually be explained in the comic, but probably not as extensively as Peggy’s flashback.
I’m going to try something with this new vote incentive.
This month, I’m closing on a new house, selling my Mom’s house, finishing packing Mom’s house, moving city to city to the new house, forwarding mail, canceling utilities, all that. And after that’s done, I get to start the process of selling my old house, which needs a little work before it can realistically go on the market.
SO. I’m going to try and do this vote incentive in stages. Currently it’s just pencils. The TopWebcomics one will update with colors and detail until we get to the no clothes versions, then that will continue over at Patreon. Also there will be a comic or two in between each version to fill out the story.
I know it’s hard to tell from just the pencils, but this is Heatwave and Jiggawatt. The comics will explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. Although I feel like even saying that much makes it easy to guess, but hopefully the journey will still amuse.
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.
Yeah, I gotta agree that was pretty inconsiderate. A quick “I’m lighting up” only takes a second or two, Maxima.
Between that and the smell (in a place that has no wind too), it’s about as considerate as a punch to the face.
A normal punch, not a Maxima super-punch.
A super holds up a finger to their unlit cigar. If you fail to anticipate what comes next, that’s on you.
At the very least turn around a second so your body is between the assorted eyes and the sudden source of light. Especially if you can reasonably assume they are looking toward your face and you’re going to put the source of light directly in front of your face.
Well that is one way of lighting up a conversation.
Accidental rizz.
Happens to supers all the time. Comes with the job.
Geeze, come on Max, there’s a “No Smoking” sign right there, can’t you see–oh, wait.
Ironically, given that Maxima still needs to breathe and a lot of the damage from smoke comes from all the garbage that get deposited into the lungs and then stays there, smoking very well actually kill her in the same sense that filling her lungs with sand might kill her.
Her super-lungs might be immune to damage, but if the oxygen can’t actually get close enough to the breathy bits to exchange molecules with her blood she may well expire from lack of oxygen getting to her brain one day.
It’s kind of fun to imagine that smoking is so goddamn hazarduous that not even genuine physical invincibility makes you completely immune to it if you still need to use your lungs for breathing. Hell even Achilles, if he needs to breathe and doesn’t have a regeneration factor that can actually transport the stuff outside his body, might eventually start struggling to breathe as his lungs fill up over a few decades.
Wait, did I say fun? I meant horrifying.
Achilles is canonically also immune to asphyxiation. Somehow. ^_^’
His superpower is, again, canonically, “annoying invincibility.”
Maybe if her lungs are invincible to damage she could inhale acid mist that could melt the gunk down into something that can be coughed up/out or something? I ain’t a chemist.
Or he just goes into some sort of torpor
The last time I had a lung x-ray the doctor looked at me and said “You were a farm kid, weren’t you?” He then went on to point out the dust that had collected in my lungs 20 years earlier. Some things just don’t cough up.
Yeah, I got the same thing: Some kind of “fungus ball” that you only see in people who’ve inhaled manure dust.
I’m guessing that it depends on how much her internal organs have changed from the geode water. We know that her eyes, hair, lips and blood have changed though, so it’s possible that her internal organs, including her lungs, have as well. It’s also possible that they haven’t, since she’s been shown to require an oxygen mask when flying at high enough altitudes, or when scuba diving – so her lungs could very well be a vulnerability.
It wouldn’t be for Achilles though. They’ve already said, in the FAQ, that “Achilles can’t be poisoned, suffocated, starved, irradiated, crushed, cut, pierced, burned, frozen or injured by any method yet discovered.” I’m assuming that suffocated also means asphyxiated from lack of oxygen. At best, he might go into a type of torpor until there’s air again, but it’s quite possible he just won’t bother to breathe at all and still can function normally, since he’s also done ‘deep sea welding.’ And I’m betting he doesnt bother using a deep sea pressure suit.
Perhaps her super-cough can impart so much pressure that it cleans out things that a normal cough couldn’t clean.
I WANT SPIDER-THING ATTEMPTING TO COURT MAX!
*imagines Dr. McFireman attempting to deal with this situation*
…
*completely immature giggling*
SECONDED!
“Please don’t develop a crush on her”
“Please DO!”
I, for one, think they’d make a cute couple.
You want her to cheat on Fireman Sam?
‘Cheat’? No. ‘Share’? Yes.
Maxima doesn’t exactly strike me as polyamorous. :) Even less so than Sydney who could barely handle a goblin girl hitting on Frix.
Rowan :)
Potentially the weirdest love triangle in comics between Maxima, Spider-Thing Yautja, and Rowan the Fireman/Pediatrician.
After getting used to the dark a bright light in your face would demand at least 30 minutes to get how it used to be. At least for human eyes.
I also want Spider-Thing to attempt to court Max.
As someone who’s spent a lot of time outdoors at night (camping, hunting, star gazing) and in a photography dark room (before everything went digital), I rate what Max did as well beyond a “party foul”. Drive up late to a star-party with your headlights on bright, then stepping out with a flashlight, and you’ll never be invited to another one.
It takes 20-30 minutes for human eyes to get to maximum light sensitivity. It isn’t just the pupils opening; it’s an actual chemical change in the retinas as they switch from photopic (low sensitivity, color) to scotopic (high sensitivity, little to no color) vision. You may think your eyes have fully adjusted after a few minutes, but you’re still a long way off.
Unfortunately, going the opposite way is much quicker, and low-light vision can be lost in an instant. I assume that vampires and whatever the other guy is can recover lost night vision more quickly than humans, but still.
That purple color you see with a flash of light at night? That’s literally your color vision seeing the purple photosensitive pigment your eye uses for low light level vision, *as it’s being bleached away by the excess light*.
third paragraph.. ? she ?? “Not that ‘should’ couldn’t do it.”
Can we quit with this bullshit? We know you have already decided (with flimsy proof) to out E-Sci, so, just cut the crap and do it already
Why are you even bothering having Maxi doing this ‘investigationing’, just plant the ‘evidence’ and move back to focus on Sydney picking out flavoured condoms (or some other Sydney-ism) for fifty pages
But then we wouldn’t have gotten a sentient spider-like creature gushing over getting a compliment.
Sez who? You saying Maxi would have no other reason to go down into the Deep?
Pacing. And a bit of trope aversion.
Basically, the standard way to handle the situation that Sydney discovered Sciona would be to contrive either some reason nobody believes her (which would be difficult – while she’s quirky, the team does tend to trust her judgement in these situations) or some way for her to forget (which is the route Dave took) and then go back to the status quo with minimal repercussions. The alternative would be to have Sciona revealed to the group, wrecking her plans and forcing either a confrontation or her to retreat.
Immediate revelation would wreck the pacing, but Dave seems to enjoy subverting tropes, so we have a case of memory erasure that does have notable repercussions – Max noticed the alteration (interestingly, of Kat’s memory rather than Sydney’s), and is going to start an investigation into it. This gives the author a “Reveal Sciona’s identity” card without further contrivances, while also showcasing Max’s abilities (and methodology – note she doesn’t immediate confront Sciona or Deus) and giving us some more information about Kat*. We also got a spider-dude (spider-lady? Being hornt for Max doesn’t really narrow it down) out of it, so that’s neat.
*So… a skilled (potential) female detective whose name is some variant of Catherine, is adept at kicking ass whilst unarmed, and got lycanthroped against her will/knowledge? I can’t help but be reminded of Kate McAllister, the main character of the Paradigm Shift webcomic. And while Kat might have preferred to have wound up with Kate’s (very impressive) wolfish form, she should count herself lucky she exists in a setting where lycanthropy is apparently a lot easier to control.
God bless you and best of luck with the move. Having gone through that several times while in therapy, I have some council that may help. You are going to feel stressed; this is NORMAL. Multiple therapists have confirmed for me that moving is in the top four stress events most people experience (a couple of the others being deaths in the family). I found it very relieving to not worry “why am I so stressed. Other people don’t seem to be.”. Whether they seem to be or not, they are.
Hmmm, where does Max hide that cigar? Related to the story line, I think this is just Max using the cigar as a plausible reason to pop a light and have a look around before she makes her exit. .
I’m sure the spider guy wouldn’t be the first to develop a crush on her. Frankly, I kind of wonder how many in the base secretly have one on her. Bet Dabbler has more than a few especially with the blanket ban on no sucking team mates dry.