Grrl Power #1340 – The Zambia Reversal
Hah! Deus has a history with air quotes. I forgot about that but someone linked that page in the comments for the previous comic.
Deus has been working for at least a decade in preparation for his takeover bid. He’s been quietly improving the GDP and quality of life in Galytn proper for a decade, but he knew his push through Mozambique would tumble their military and allow him to step in. The fact is that a lot of the nations in Africa just don’t have the resources to handle a determined and funded enemy. Their best defense, it’s sad to say, is that no one really wants what they have, at least not when they can strike wildly lopsided resource rights business deals. When I wrote the pages where Deus pushed into Mozambique, I looked up what their military was like, and their air force did only consist of roughly 15 aircraft, including a training helicopter and several jets which were thought to be out of commission due to maintenance issues. But the fact is that if your neighbor only has 5 soldiers, you can probably defend yourself with 4. There’s always a chance they’ll roll really good, (It’s been about 25 years since I played a game of RISK, so I don’t remember how it works, but you get my point.) but it’s probably not worth the risk to them when their neighbor has 6 troops.
Taking Mozambique, Zambia and the DRC just barely cuts Africa in two, though these days, so much trade is handled by sea it probably won’t put him in a decisive strategic position, but if I was Angola, Namibia and Botswana, I’d be getting nervous. South Africa is probably safe for a little while longer, as their GDP puts them in the top 50, and is the biggest in Africa. That surprised me. I would have guessed Egypt, but they are the second largest in Africa. Well, I would have guessed either Egypt or some country that you’ve definitely heard of before but couldn’t point to on a map, like Sierra Leone, because it turns out they’re the world supplier of some niche product like Nilla Wafers or something. Anyway, it seems like a big part of Deus’s strategy is absorbing poor and corrupt nations that wealthy countries just don’t care about. So South Africa is probably okay for now.
Unfortunately for Deus, we all know his plans are doomed to failure, because he didn’t start his conquest with Madagascar. You guys remember that game?
Whenever I use google maps and zoom way out to go on a tour of, well, usually Africa as I plan Deus’s strategy, I get distracted by little speck islands out in the middle of nowhere. And then I get frustrated because more often than not, there’s no street view. I want to look around a place that has 20 houses and 4 boat docks and a strip of land that’s technically an airfield and that’s it. The fact that street view isn’t available for massive swathes of Africa, the middle-east, and Russia doesn’t bother me nearly as much for some reason.
BTW: Sciona should still be standing there just to Maxima’s right, but I’m remembering this as I’m writing the post and I had insomnia last night and got 2 hours of sleep, so… I guess in that second to last panel where she should be seen standing there, I guess she’s, uh, tying her shoe? Or re-strapping her strappy heels? Whatever. I’m very tired.
So the move back to Dallas takes place this Friday, and I’m very stressed and ready for this all to be over. Of course, once I get up to Dallas, I have to unload all this crap and find a place for it. Honestly a lot of my parent’s stuff will probably remain in boxes for a while. You know how it is when you move. I’ve been packing their house on and off for two months, and I feel like I’m so close to being done. I went out and got ten more boxes the other day, not banker’s boxes, but the Wal-mart “medium” sized box which is like 40% bigger, thinking that 10 boxes was overkill, and went to work on the master closet. Hah hah I’m stupid. Filled them all up and haven’t even touched the hanging clothes. Hats, purses, king-sized sheets, towels, folded sweaters on shelves. This is after we donated all of my dad’s clothes too. God, he had so many blazers. BTW, “blazer” is way too cool of a word (in an 80’s kind of way) for a suit jacket.
All of this is to say that if the comic two pages from now is stick figures, this is why. The comic won’t immediately jump back to the fully shaded version I prefer to do right after that. I might try for a bit more of a cell-shaded look, but eventually I won’t be able to stop myself from adding in a soft edge here and there, then some bounce lighting, and then we’re back to full renders, but this weekend is the turning point.
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.
Long term storage boxes – get em’ from U-Haul. Seriously.
Yes, they’re cardboard, but they’re the good cardboard. And if you get all the same size, they’ll stack up very nicely in the storage unit you’re swearing you won’t be renting. Yeah. BTDT, didn’t get a t-shirt because I didn’t want it.
Reasons why Eqypt is the *2nd* biggest economy in Africa:
Their primary industry is the canal. Literally. They have nothing else worth anything on a major geopolitical scale besudes maybe their tourism industry and their government isn’t interested in improving that.
2nd the government is wildly corrupt. Like legitimately it is widely considered the *most* corrupt in the world even if other nations like China or the USA might be *actually* more so. How corrupt is the government? The only reason the nation isn’t an outright dictatorship is because the people shut down the government about a decade ago by flooding the streets of the captial and not letting government workers do their job for a whole month and replaced the guy trying to do that with a new guy. In response the new gjy has begun building a literally golden city out in the desert to move government functions out of Cairo so the same thing that got him in power doesn’t happen to him. Also yes the city is literally being built with gold *everywhere* and is costing the country its entire GDP and *more* to build. This whole thing is insane. It’s like this guy wants to be Ozymandias.
They live in a desert. 96% of the country is desert. This makes the 4% of the country that’s not desert wildly overpopulated. This is why Cairo was able to be flooded with just… bodies and it was enough to shut down the city. It being wildly congested to the point of near nonfunctionalality is *normal*.
The Canal is, as mentioned their primary industry, unfortunately that still pales in comparison to South Africa’s ports because the canal only really gets used to bring stuff from Asia to Europe while South Africa is part of the routes that cater to the US and eastern Europe. The Seuz is important but it isn’t *all* of international trade… just a good chunk of it and the other chunk goes past South Africa which has a *much* stronger and more diverse economy. (Gemstone mines, not living in a desert, a functional and “not corrupt” government benefiting from heavy development investment from the colonialism era all are major factors)
Finally there’s the fact that a good chunk of the Egyptian economy is just.. humanitarian aid from western countries looking to keep the region stable so they can make use of the Seuz…
Egypt also possesses natural resources such as petroleum, natural gas, and phosphates, which contribute to its economy.
“Nonfunctionalality” should be a word.
I found this: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1D6AyLTXHP/
What strip showed Max’s backstory at the Museum?
Page 414.
Could you maybe show a map of Deus conquests?
I admit I am not as versed in African nation names to place any of those places on a map. Without asking Wikipedia.
Most likely Galytn is located in the following region if it was originally part of Zaire, but also borders on Mozambique.
https://tinypic.host/image/nBG9NOtTEBj.3heR82
I’m going to assume that was Vale calling Deus. Mostly because the crescendo of Mars was the ringtone, and Deus is 100% enough of a massive Dork to have custom ringtones for his underlings. Mars suits Vale, being as insanely powerful as she most likely is. A battle song for a being of battle.
Speaking of Junta, when it came to the board game of the same name, my friends and I always played that the country was so small that tokens each represented *one* of whatever military forces were involved. Thus the entire army for the country was like, eight guys.
At least they’re holding hands now.
Your main villain sounds too much like a glorified Elon Musk to be as interesting.
What is he, Elon’s Nazi technocrat grandfather?
Don’t compare him to that Lex Luthor cosplayer Elon. He isn’t anywhere close to this level of competency.