Grrl Power #147 – Flying not allowed in the Super High Jump
I really hope I got the particulars about Posse Comitatus correct. There’s been significant discussion about it in the comments leading up to this so I absorbed what I could. There are probably plenty of nuances I’ve missed, for instance it was suggested they should live under DoHS until wartime, when they’d be moved back under DoD… except that would probably never happen since (hopefully) war will never be declared within the borders of the US after the pending GIF/JIF civil war. Look at the Coast Guard. They used to be military but are now under DoHS. Well, we’ve been at war for the last decade at least, and they’re still under DoHS, presumably because there isn’t an enemy navy encroaching on the US Coastline.
That final panel is probably one of my favorites so far, and not just because it’s the one with all the jokes in it. We’re almost past the perfunctory stuff in the press conference, I’m aiming to make it far shorter than some of the other scenes so far because there’s lots of fun stuff after it.
It’s too far in to fix now, but I realize that as a Lt., Peggy should be wearing her dress… purples. Dress eggplants? Red gets maroon, but there isn’t a word for dark purple that just means dark purple. Well, for whatever reason Max okayed it.
Anyone spot the cameo here?
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
O_O I hurt Just looking at the position of the British runner / also didn’t know gymnasts doubled as runners.
She probable has some parts Mr Fantastic in her powerset
By the expression on his face, the Chinese runner is thinking the same thing. It appears to be rather intimidating him. Whereas Maxima is in the zone and completely oblivious to any surrounding attempts at that, including the smirking.
That or she’s checking out China’s package.
China has a package? O_o
Yes. He’s a Chinese super hero, which means that he’s hung like an American.
An American woman. That was what you were going to say, correct?
She must not have a problem with exotic sex dolls when she’s the one looking at them then. Is super-hypocrisy one of her powers?
Looks more like she and Great Britain are checking each other out (and liking what they see)
That would be fantastic, but Sydney is unlikely to fantasize that way, and this seems like another day-dream.
Anyway, Max is closer to us than both China & England, and facing away from them – unless she has some super-senses not previously mentioned, she is contemplating something else. They, on the other hand, may well be checking her out – she is pretty intimidating/awesome…
Really tho, judging by the angle her head is at and the direction her eyes are aimed, I think it’s safe to say that Max is checking out the ground. the other three ppl are behind her and shes never been stated as having a third eye in the back of her head.
That or she’s in a pose off wit Alverez!
Alvarez and the runner for Britain… give me several hours alone with these ladies. I have a different kind of marathon for us… them.. umm.. >.>;
Might be intimidation/distraction tactics, like Michelle Jenneke in this video by Second City:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BiUbwIoeYNE
Or, it could just be to limber up (the girl in lane 6 did similar bouncy moves just before they got on their marks, but she didn’t have a boy/girlfriend on the cameras that day :P)
He he. Hilarious. And, yes, exactly what I was meaning by intimidation. Which, as can be shown in that clip, does not preclude being sexy. I was just at a loss how to describe the distinction succinctly, in answer to another commentator who saw it differently to me. Which you managed perfectly.
Remember that when running there is no limitation on how big step you can take. Or there would be none for superlympics.
Plus supers tend to be mutlitalents. Sure, they can’t all beat speedsters. But common Comicbook logic states that a super is often on the level of a “Olympic Level Athlethe” at least everywhere, plus having thier powers.
Like Gambit,Nightcrawler,and Nocturne having Olympic lvl agility?
I’ve always liked the bit in later editions of OHotMU where it points out that people moving more than a certain speed will effectively be in orbit, unable to maintain contact with the ground, and thus are no longer technically “running.”
Remember that Superman could also run like the Flash? He did that as a boy before he learned how to “fly.” Also there was a charity race between him and Barry Allen.
Teleportation > super-speed. Harem wins……five times every race.
Unless there’s someone who can run faster than she can teleport… (It’s been shown to actually take time, after all.)
right up until she figures out that there’s not much difference between teleportation and time travel.
? As long as she’s not appearing at her new location in less time than it would take to get light there, I don’t see how you come to that conclusion, and I don’t recall seeing anything that would led me to believe her teleports are faster than light.
Doesn’t have to be faster than light, she’s (probably) picturing a place in her mind, then porting there. While traveling to the future might be tricky because she doesn’t know the future, she can travel to the past by paying attention to the time in the place she’s going to. Instead of going to the finish line a micron from now, she can go to the finish line a minute ago. It’s teleportation, you don’t need to think laterally to do it. And really, when you take that possibility into account her cloning makes a lot more sense. She’s not spawing a copy of herself, she’s teleporting a second into her own past. However, her previous self stays behind due to the paradox of not needing to port to a place she already is. Which in turn means that she can’t be where she is because she never ported there, but if she never ported there then she’s free to port there……paradox.
Actually, heh, guess she’s not a teleporter at all, she’s a time traveler.
Hmmm, yes a point relative to your present posittion would likely work so long as the transport is truly instantaneous, if it took time from start to finish for example you’d just spread your corpse across the cosmos. Like I said everything is moving, so the exact coordinates relative to you……imagine being in a car, you’re traveling at 30 mph south, you decide you want to teleport to a location 12 feet to your north, so you mark a position, relative to your present position, and start the teleport. If it takes a minute to complete the port, bit by bit, you’ve just spread your bits over 800 meters. Because a position relative to you =/= a position relative to the stop sign you passed a minute ago. You’d need to adjust the calculation mid-port or something…. Mind you it would work out fine if it were truly instantaneous, but instantaneous travel brings causality issue. iff you instantaneously travel to a point then you are already there and don’t need to go. so you don’t leave. causality. meh.
Ok, so you’ve read the Pern novels. What makes you think that version of teleportation is what’s in effect in this universe?
We don’t know the details of how any of the characters powers work. Creating whole new powers out of how we think they might work is… Well, stupid, in my opinion. We know Harem can create and destroy copies of herself at locations she’s aware of, and all copies are in telepathic contact with each other. Making assumptions on how that is done runs into the same problem as any other type of assumption.
I have no idea what or who pern is. It’s all very simple, when you picture a place in your mind, as would be necessary in more common forms of teleportation, you’re picturing it as it was, not as it is, or as it will be when you get there. which means you’re picturing the past. Now, if you trans-locate to that place that you’ve pictured you will have effectively traveled back in time. The other option for teleportation is more mathematical and decidedly more difficult. In this type you’re not traveling to a place, you’re traveling to a set of coordinates. The coordinates however will transport you to those exact coordinates regardless of what happens to be in in or near them at that time. Think teleporting into a brick wall, or another person. Also remember that the earth is not only rotating, but also revolving around the sun at all times.The difficulty herein comes with the fact that in order to avoid traveling into open space you must adjust the numerical values of the coordinates based upon the cooridinates of every single other point of anything in the entire universe. Which effectively requires omniscience. And the calculation capacity of a computer comprised of Star Trek’s most powerful processors slaved together into a system larger than our galaxy. Which type do you think Harem is more likely to be using? Cuz I sure don’t think Harem is omniscient.
There are of course still other forms of “teleportation” since the term isn’t very strictly defined. For instance, Nightcrawler’s teleporting, which could be more accurately termed dimensional traveling since he ports into and out of a pocket dimension while in route to another point on earth. I haven’t got the slightest frelling clue how this could be accomplished at the moment without resorting to omniscience. There’s also Star Trek’s which is actually more of a replicator that copies you to the surface and then destroys the original. This would still require a hellishly powerful system but as you’re “only” calculating the location and and type of every atom in a given body, and then recreating them in the proper order somewhere else, it’s maybe feasible. In theory. In a far more scientifically advanced society. With a bit of phlebotinum for spice. I’m sure there’s more I haven’t thought of today.
Dragonriders of Pern by McCaffery, very famous SF/ fantasy series. The dragons could teleport to anywhere their rider could picture. One of them discovered they could time jump completely by accident.
Hardly omniscience, predicting the location of objects as they move around is everyday, routine mathematics. Especially easy as you can often conduct it relative to some other object. We have a variety of terms for it, such as navigation, orienteering and astrogation. Although a teleporter would need to do the math faster, it is also simpler as she need not work out a path, but only needs the destination point. Which only requires co-ordinates. In the case of a teleporter, they are likely to do it relative to themselves. Which means they can eliminate a lot of the absolute velocity of any object they are teleporting to. The speed of the Sun, as it goes on its path around the Milky Way being far greater than any of the other, components you mentioned. Pertinent though they are too.
Knowing if objects are blocking the destination point though, you are right would require, if not omniscience then at least some sense beyond the normal. For instance if the teleportation is deemed to be psionic in nature, then good old fashioned clairvoyance, also a psionic mind power, would do the trick. But may not be needed. Different rationales for teleportation handle it differently. One example being that the matter at the destination point exchanges place with the teleporter. Filling in the gap left when they teleport out Conveniently stopping a vacuum forming there and a tell-tale implosion sound as air fills the void.
Likewise avoiding the problems that may occur if the atoms composing the air itself, at the arrival point, intersects with those of the teleporter. I have no idea what mathematics would be involved if atoms of hydrogen/oxygen/nitrogen were teleported into the carbon atoms and other bits that make up people. But I imagine the chemical reactions are not likely to be conducive to good health. And the energetic side effects might not be pleasant for anybody standing nearby, let alone the organs of the teleporter herself.
Oh, and be sure to check out the Dragon Riders of Pern. It is amongst the very best in the field of science fiction/fantasy.
You’re forgetting that everything, and I mean everything in the entire universe seems to be moving. Planets rotate, they revolve around suns, the suns are moving, really a calculation needs all the variables in order for this to work properly. do you know the exact position of whatever this galaxy is rotating around? And what that’s rotating around? And what that rotating around? I mean first we thought the universe consisted of earth, the moon, the sun, and a bunch of holes punched in the sky. Surprise, those holes are suns and they have other planets rotating around them. Really I can’t imagine a teleportation calculation in a universe in which everything is moving, and we don’t know the full extent of everything. True you could just go by the positions of the things you know, and hope you get lucky…..but that sounds a tad idiotic. Plus it pretty much requires some sort of divine intervention or a presently unknown force that we’d be using for said teleportation.
I teleported hundreds, if not thousands of times, over the past few years. Ok, only in a virtual environment. But that did have a simulated 3D environment, with reasonable enough emulation of reality that the walking, running, jumping, falling and flying all seemed realistic. And the teleporting just required a decision that you did not want to be here, but you wanted to be over there. And “poof” there you were.
Game mechanics wise it required clicking your mouse on the location you wanted to be at. Which, using the analogy to the arguments used in the previous comments, would be easy enough if your destination is in line of sight. Similarly if you did have some sort of extra sensory perception in order to be able to visualise the destination. Mentally the super just picturing wanting to go there, rather than a mouse-click being used.
You seem to have overlooked my point about teleporters being able to specify destination co-ordinates relative to themselves. It is impossible to specify an arrival point unless you have it relative to something. In your case it seems that you want to have it relative to the origin point of the Big Bang, so that you can say, “ok from there, go several hundred billion light years south by south east, at such and such an asimuth, adjust relative velocity to local star by applying the following lateral motion to the arriving atoms, then by such and such to account for planetary spin” etc.
When all you need to do is say “I want to go from here, 6 miles due east, and down 30 foot” (the latter to take into account a slight slope on the ground). The fact that “down” is relative to the planet you are standing on, would be handled in the same sort of way as “here” is recognised as being the point in the universe relative to yourself. Likewise, the point that both you and the planet are moving at a considerable speed having little bearing on the matter, as, relative to each other, they are not in motion.
As Einstein pointed out, everything is relative.
Edit: re-adjusting my calculation, apparently i spread this comment over the wrong nest. Hmmm, yes a point relative to your present position would likely work so long as the transport is truly instantaneous, if it took time from start to finish for example you’d just spread your corpse across the cosmos. Like I said everything is moving, so the exact coordinates relative to you……imagine being in a car, you’re traveling at 30 mph south, you decide you want to teleport to a location 12 feet to your north, so you mark a position, relative to your present position, and start the teleport. If it takes a minute to complete the port, bit by bit, you’ve just spread your bits over 800 meters. Because a position relative to you =/= a position relative to the stop sign you passed a minute ago. You’d need to adjust the calculation mid-port or something…. Mind you it would work out fine if it were truly instantaneous, but instantaneous travel brings causality issue. iff you instantaneously travel to a point then you are already there and don’t need to go. so you don’t leave. causality. meh.
Do you have to do all those calculations when jumping from one building to another? Or do you simply look to make sure there is nothing in the road/place of landing?
Jumping is not teleportation, presumably when you teleport, unless it is instantaneous, which brings up causality issues as I stated, you are removing yourself from the effects of gravity and momentum and such. when you jump you actually don’t move in a straight line, you move in a curve following the earths rotation. If you remove yourself from the earths pull and just jump, or in this case port to a spot you’re likely to find that the spot you were aiming for is not where it was relative to where you were when yo ported or jumped…….and you’re going to end up “landing” a good bit above the ground. Try it at a few stories up and you’ll make a nice splat.
of course this is all assuming harem teleports according to our limited knowledge of the law of physics and not, oh say, magic or something similar. Or perhaps they have different laws of physics than us.
Ok, my 5 dollars worth. When Peggy fires at a target, she is seeing the target as it was not as it is and yet still hits it in the time it takes the round to travel down range and only seeing it as it is after the shot hits. When Harem pictures a place to go she see’s it as it was but is thinking she wants to go to there as it is. As for the whole “Everything moves” well a GPS unit tells me where I want to go without taking ALL motion into effect, only that which effects my travel. Even at LightSpeed Harem gets to anywhere on Earth or orbit in no time that we care to measure anyway. As for travel path it has not been shown to be straight, curved, or even corkscrewed. She can teleport, I can walk. Both are fantastic skill set that really do not require us to think out the whole act, if I tried I would likely trip.
My problem comes in with conservation of rotational energy. Even as far back as Traveller (Yes when they were little paper book) that was the main issue with T/P … Freeze or Boil
Actually, no anything within line of sight is within your own time frame so it doesn’t mean you’re seeing it as it was. I think the issue is probably side-stepped in other comics by claiming that the teleporter has a constant real time knowledge of every physical location……and yet they’re never used as tracking devices….odd. A gps isn’t calculating where things are because it’s programmed with data on where things are. You’ll note that it doesn’t tell you that the freeway is under construction half the time. And if the building you’re driving to burned down last week, the gps doesn’t know that either. And these things aren’t moving relative to each other to begin with. And you’re also not being transported by spatial distortion, you’re using conventional travel.
The point was: you don’t have to calculate the rotational location of Epsilon Minor when jumping from one building to another, why should you do that when ‘porting? If you can port to somewhere, then whatever you use to ‘port takes all that crap into consideration, the only thing you have to watch out for is a trashbin in the same spot (hopefully your ‘portage ability is not a hard-fast one and will know to send you to the nearest safe location to the one you were aiming for, whether that is 5 inches or 5 metres away)
Man, I’m not even certain if we’re arguing comic book teleportation or real life theory. I think i was going with real life theory, cuz in comics you can just hand wave any problems away. Not that I accept hand waves in my scifi.
Yes, ‘real life’ theory as well
The “whatever you use to ‘port takes all that crap into consideration” is a hand wave since it doesn’t describe the process or physical laws by which it operates. Essentially, it’s no different from just making shit up.
“Actually, no anything within line of sight is within your own time frame so it doesn’t mean you’re seeing it as it was.”
Not true. If I can see it I see the light given off or reflected. That light will take a finite time to reach me. On Earth this time is small but there. Go off planet and these times get longer but the objects are still in line of sight. I see the Sun where it was about 9 min. ago. If I T/P instantaneously I missed.
” A gps isn’t calculating where things are because it’s programmed with data on where things are… And these things aren’t moving relative to each other to begin with.”
The GPS does calculate my position either by NavSat shots or by Inertial data. And the whole purpose of the GPS system is to allow me to move to a target location in real time. As to the condition of the target I did’t ask it that … Only where it is.
” And you’re also not being transported by spatial distortion, you’re using conventional travel.”
True, but as said before we do not know how she does it, only that she does. There are a GREAT many things I do that I have no idea of how I do it, only that I do. I see with depth perception. I hear in stereo allowing me to locate things I can’t see, I can understand the idea of zero/null. A lot of things my senses do I can’t even begin to control. She has a connection to herself we have not even touched, so the addition of other senses to allow for the uncontrolled use of her T/P is not out to lunch. And by uncontrolled I mean she wants to T/P and it happens, without thought to as how it happens such as if I looked at two cars and said “The blue one is farther away”.
Also, not knowing everything is no reason to refrain from thinking about things. Can you imagine if Ogg had thought, “Well I don’t know where fire comes from, so I shouldn’t try to figure it out.”?
Agreed. Even if you cannot give a definitive answer, you can use logic to eliminate the impossible. Thereby narrowing the range of possible solutions to a problem. And possibly identifying a means to solve the problem completely.
eh, for reasons which are evident by my name, logic and I don’t get along all that well. I simply don’t believe in “impossible”.
So, to paraphrase “it is impossible for something to be impossible”. ;-)
Well it’s certainly possible for something to be impossible but my main issue with the concept is that using it implies a knowledge of everything that IS possible. And i firmly do not believe that anyone since the inception of the concept has ever had omni-science.
Also you might have noticed in literary examples, that when ever someone says something is impossible, they’re proven wrong by the end of the book, occasionally with a few minutes.
Actually it wasn’t that Max moves faster than Harem can teleport, it’s that WRONG Harem Teleported.
Yeah, it was Original Flavour who *zorped* leaving poor Punk to get a Maximum-Wedgie
Her pose to me is sexy, not intimidating. Flexibility helps with speed. A person whose body is stiff isn’t very fast. It doesn’t move like it should it’s just there. Meanwhile a person whose body flows like water should be very fast as the body moves almost faster than they can think. So its perfectly reasonable for her to be able to pull her leg entirely over her back.
Mr. Fantastic is extremely flexible, how come he never wins any races?
Because stretching takes longer than running (and he can’t run :P)
Has he really even tried? He’s busy being a douchebag, thinking through everything, and stretching. Though the stretching has its uses, like saving his marriage. He’s too busy to run.
Purple is already pretty dark to start with. Royal Purple is sometimes considered darker and richer than normal purple. If it’s a blue purple, you can’t go wrong with indigo.
Eggplant can mean purple-black. It is that dark.
Plum?
Yeah, I was thinking royal purple as well, but Dave said “there isn’t a word for dark purple that just means dark purple”, by which I assume he means a single word. I suppose you could use “byzantium” or “imperial”, but most people wouldn’t think of those in terms of the color word. I only just found out that they were colors myself. :-P
…And I just noticed that General Zod had already suggested byzantium below.
LOL, I meant to suggest it as a reply to Thor’s post, but I must’ve messed up somewhere and I didn’t notice it was it’s own little post. :-\
In my mind, Byzantine/ium reminds me of the Byzantine Empire, and what’s more royal than that?
Men are like windows in save-mode like that. We only know 32 colors. Salmon is a fish, not a color. Lime? Fruit, not a color.
32? really? Lets see, black, white, gray,red, blue, yellow, purple, green, orange, ummm pink? What are the other 22? Hmmm, light green, light blue, light purple, dark green, dark blue, dark gray, light gray…..Need 15 more…
Except in Bulgaria. Their word for lime is the same as the one for lemon. Until us foreigners started to complain, “No we do not want an unripe yellow lemon, we want a {lime}, it is a different fruit that we have seen you stocking, it is green. No, stop trying to give me that unripened lemon!” So they introduced a new word to distinguish them. But you still find some market stall holders who do not know it.
I like the idea of them referring to their dress uniforms as “dress byzantiums” as an in joke.
I suspect they are officially ‘dress blues’, as far as naming and regs are concerned – It saves thought and paperwork. Where the regs say you have wear dress blues, you wear their version. Where the regs say you wear dress whites, you wear whatever their version of that is. Exact color is irrelevant, except that you have to have the official uniform.
Score! I knew Byzantium was a good blend of important sounding mixed with ridiculousness.
Side note, Dave, did you see this pic before you drew the Olympic panel?
https://i.imgur.com/ITNZ61X.jpg
Now that’s just showing off!
Wow, that’s a neat party trick.
10.000 meter dash. So I asume half a second race with fotofinish?
I laughed my ass of when I read about the africans missing in a speed race :P
You will need a high-speed camera running at a few thousand frames per second to be able to catch the winner. If I recall properly, running and swimming events in the Olympics use timers accurate to the millisecond. For this group we might need to measure to the microsecond, or the whole thing will be a tie.
You all sure you are doing your maths right?
It is a 10 thousand meter dash as opposed to 100 meters for the norms.
I highly doubt any of the speeders will be breaking the sound barrier due to the collateral damage from the shock waves.
Even if they were approaching the speed of sound, that would be 340 m/s or about 30 seconds.
If they were running at bullet speeds then it would only be about 10 seconds and the shockwaves produced would be “interesting” to say the least. So faster than a speeding bullet ;)
As for the timers being used, we already have the technology today to measure much more precisely in the field. It is just a matter of cost for the equipment, transportation, setup and calibration. There is also getting everyone on the Olympic committee to agree on what to use. We know ours is run by a bunch of misogynists, knuckledraggers, beancounters, and bureaucrats that think cribbage is a sport.
Max can fly a lot faster than mach 1. I never really thought about what her running speed would be, but probably “bullet speed” at least. I don’t think a human sized object would create a massive boom unless you were right next to it. Maybe like big fireworks going off?
That would be correct. If all the runners were of similar ability, the audience would hear a staccato of loud CRACKS, similar to the sound a deer rifle would make, but probably louder.
The nitpicky details would revolve around things like whether each fist, as it is pumped back and forth, would produce its own microboom, or whether the runners would be able to gain enough traction on the ground to overcome wind resistance so they could get to that speed at all. They may be super, but the track is not.
The shockwave comes from air building up in front of the object and then “breaking” around it as the object passes ~340m/s. Obviously, in the case of a bullet, the time the air has to build up is vanishingly small. But with a runner, the air flow around each body is not going to be laminar. I’d think that would tend to prevent the buildup, and might keep a boom from happening at all. Chaos theory, anyone?
or they might synch and create the type of boom associated with say an equal amount of dynamite as the Supers’ combined weight?
Shhh, don’t ask Chaos for his theories. They seem to involve chopping people up!
I suppose Maxima could try to run so fast that the force exerted by her legs vs the force exerted by the earths flat out refusal to turn backward would cause her legs to break or possibly rip asunder.
And why must you assume I’m male?
Speech patterns and other subtle clues like how subjects are answered. It is not something that I consciously do. But if I do, and analyse why, there are usually clues that my subconsciousness can pick up on. For example, guys would be more prone, if taking a line of thinking to an ultimate conclusion, to choose a path that had a violent end.
Objectively, when I notice myself doing that with writers (those who have androgynous names or just use initials) I get curious and look up their details. I seem to have a 80% success rate. No idea if I would be any good trying to do it consciously. Probably not. I recognise that my subconscious mind is a lot smarter than my conscious one.
On behalf of both though, I would like to apologise if we got it wrong.
….. so you’re saying I haven’t teehee’d enuf?
Dunno, I would have to ask my subconsciousness. And talking to myself is something I avoid doing publicly. It gets folks worried. They start reaching for the straight jacket and filling syringes with sedatives.
not always. I do it all the time. but then again, people know about my six personalities.
I wonder if this race would really be first to the sound barrier. The first person’s breaking of the sound barrier would cause a lane fault in the others near by. Then the rest of the field would like a harness race crash.
If you can fly, you don’t need ground traction though.
Ofcourse this is asuming the flying is like Superman (just hovering and going really fast), and not like a bird. In Maxima’s case, it’s like Superman.
Even if she’s running, she can still make the upper part of her body move on it’s own, thus eliminating the need for ground traction to get movement
Except that it’s a footrace and not an air race, it doesn’t matter if she can fly if she’s not allowed to.
Just to add more data: When a whip cracks, the tip of the whip is exceeding the speed of sound, the cracking sound is a very small sonic boom.
Biggest issue is foot ware a speedster would run a pair of shoes into dust or at least run the soles right off of them. Next Men dealt with this by having the speedster run barefoot and building up the callouses on his feet to the point where they were like leather.
His foot would still wear out faster than a shoe. Shoes also don’t bleed and send you into screaming agony with every step.
Mmm, but do not forget that feet heal themselves. And if, like the Flash, super-speeders also have super-fast metabolisms they could heal very fast.
Like with most other things that cause calluses: you work up to it slowly/gradually
I’d be more worried that the air wouldn’t have time to move if they were going fast enough, leading to them finishing the race covered in oxygen and carbon dioxide ice. Tho then it’d be a question of where the heat went, I’d presume it went into them but then we’d have a fireball covered in ice winning the race. I suppose to find out we’d need to create a craft that moves at supersonic speeds and is shaped like a brick so it’d be more like the chest of a superbeing. Hmmm, would breasts make them more aerodynamic or less? If the breast stayed pert I’d say it should increase aerodynamics but if the being in question doesn’t have much by way of invulerability, then the breast would flatten against the chest if not whip out behind them and possibly get ripped off.
If one of them is the character from the RPG I’m running he wouldn’t creat a sonic boom. His main power is that he moves a supersonic speeds (only in a straight line) and like all speedsters he has a natural resistance to his own rapid change in momentum but he doesn’t have any resistance to the air so unaided the atmosphere would rip him apart at those speeds. His other power is that he emits a gaseous particle blade to cut through the air so that it doesn’t rip him apart, side effect he doesn’t cause sonic booms.
Concolor – I think you’re on to something… the constant movement of the arms and legs would likely slough off the compression waves to the left and right, producing a sinudal “roar,” instead of an actual “boom”
Oh … my! That is brilliant! And plausible!
Don’t you love how much thought we can give things like If the human body traveling as 750MPH cause a sonic boom?
Its why all diseases, hunger, and poverty hasn’t been wiped out. And that there’s still war in the middle east. Because no one has put the question to the people in this commentary section in an entertaining enough wording.
He he. Actually Chaos did, in another post. But I decided that my reply would take up too much room. I worked it out in detail whilst being taken on long walkies. Very long. I even decided what sources to cite. But *sigh*, hopefully one of the other readers knows how to solve it in less words than I can.
I can probably cure all of those problems with just one nuke. The chain reaction will wipe out war, famine, poverty, republicans, democrats, the RIAA, pretty much all the evils of the world.
When I pointed out the potential for damage of a shock wave, in Champions, as our speedster ran through a city downtown, or sped in a circle around someone, our gamemaster simply declared that there was either a way of running (like the flat hands thing, or psychokinetics that made the speedster super aerodynamic, unless the speedster actually bought the shockwave as a power. The speedster was set up to go multiple machs in speed.
I suppose that it might be possible that anyone capable of traveling at those speeds is vibrating enough that the air molecules don’t actually need to move around them, they just vibrate through them. I think it would still create some sort of heat effect from the vibration tho.
Last I checked we have not had war since the Second world war. Each other ‘war’ has been a police action or extended deployment. Not a ‘war’. Congress decides when to declare war and well I think they can’t decide on bathroom tissue among themselves. . . .
Actually none of the ‘conflicts’ that USA has been involved are referred to as wars since ‘The USA has never lost a war.’ Although we are technically fighting an ongoing war against drugs and now terrorism, since those are ambiguous ideals rather than a specific place are mainly mentioned to raise support for military spending.
Declared or not, there have been a few over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Wars
“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” That the United States has been shy about calling it’s wars wars when authorizing them doesn’t make them not wars.
Well yes and no, as the general reason for not having Congress declare something a war was usually political, especially during the Cold War where the general fear was that if America was OFFICIALLY in a war against a communist country, then the Soviet Union would get involved and World War 3 would begin (and likely end rather quickly with the end of humanity and quick proof if whether or not cockroaches would inherit the earth). So yes they are wars, but without some of the political implications of wars.
The US Constitution is silent on what form a declaration of has to be. It just says that only Congress has the power to declare a war. So long as the President of the US gets the approval from both houses of Congress, it’s a war.
The same applies to you and wikipedia calling our military actions wars. and really, if it doesn’t happen in ones own territory how can it be a war? the only war ever fought in or by the US was the civil war, and we won that.
Depends on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you stand, wouldn’t it? O_o
They seceded, so their loss doesn’t count as a loss for The United States of America. If they had won it would have been The Confederate States of America winning. Whole different country. Honestly when you think about it that way it wasn’t even a civil war since by their way of thinking we were two different countries at the time.
It is why the “War for Independence” should really be referred to as “The British Civil War in the Americas”. ;-)
The war of 1812, you lost that one.
Doesn’t count, we didn’t have all 50 states then.
It also wasn’t a loss since there was a peace treaty after the causes of the war were resolved and the British and burgeoning U.S. lost their reasons to fight at the time, resulting in the Treaty of Ghent.
We Canadians didn’t have 10 provinces then either; still counts. In fact, all the Canadian action happened in southern Ontario. Then the Napoleonic wars ended and the British government could send us a huge number of regular troops to help push the American forces out of Canadian territory and then we got down to Washington to make our views of their actions known.
Which, ahem, did result in the burning down of the White House and Capitol buildings, amongst others.
Uh…wut? Lots of wars occur in the territory of only one of the participants.
Can we get that british runner as a smexy pinup?
Looking at that panel closely, it seems Max is checking out the brit as well. The China runner seems to be quite distracted.
I’m curious if they sell gloves or whatever she has on her arms, cause those are pretty cool. (Yes, I noticed she’s hot and bendy, but I’m thinking of ways Dave can maybe earn money so he can do this stuff full time, we might get a 2nd strip a week out of it)
Your avatar combined with the focus on merchandise makes this comment extra humorous.
Are these the speedsters (or supers with speed-related powers) from other countries we’re going to be seeing in the future?
Normally I draw that stuff as one off gags, but you know, Senorita Alvarez is quite fetching, so you never know.
Seeing as the news title thingy says ‘2020’, it’s probably someone’s fantasy
I had figured it was maxima’s and she had just put herself in it. that would explain her thoughtful look.
There’s always the other word for eggplant that’s also used for a deep purple, “aubergine”. So few people know what one is, that you could probably get away with that one.
And those who know aubergine tend not to know eggplant.
I was going to make that comment, but you beat me to it! ;-D Aubergine is a perfectly good word for “dark purple”.
Aubergine is also the name of the PLANT everywhere except the US, Canada, and Australia.
Also, I wonder what supers African nations do have, if they don’t have speedsters.
Weather Witches.
Probably just a patchy average distribution. Patchy, because most of sub-Saharan Africa is third-world, so would have a lower proportion of supers from whatever unknown cause means that industrialised nations tend to have more.
Clever touch on that idea, by the way. If that had not been in the setting, an even distribution of super-powers would tilt the balance of world power away from the current dynamics. Whereas, this way, Dave does not need to give that any consideration to such changes, unless it suits him.
It’s amazing how every know and than we see it shining through that Dave has already thought out the entire world.
I wonder if he has the entire story for the next few years written out somewhere, just waiting to be drawn
Actually that gag was just something I came up with for the page, but why not make it cannon? I do have a fair bit of story written ahead of where we are though.
ITYM canon. The difference left as an exercise.
And, uhm. No speedsters from Africa? That’d be odd, given that there’s plenty record breaking performances coming from there. So the mechanism needs to be different.
And that is why there are no speeders in Africa – they are already fast and have no need to go uber in this department. Likewise there must not be Vodkaman from Siberia or Canadian Refrigerator – there are plenty of snow and vodka there, so there are not a single reason to compensate resource scarcity with supers.
Your assumption is predicated on whatever causing super-powers taking existing traits and making them better. Which is not necessarily how it works. And many of the classic super origins do not do that. Although, some do, granted. But if the mechanism that provides super powers does so independent of what the individuals existing traits are, then the fact that (typically one small area in one country in Africa) has humans who are fast distance runners would not affect whether the dice gave super speeding powers to random members of the rest of the African population.
And, even if you take that as being the canon part (as opposed to the industrial vs non-industrial aspect), there is no reason why there can’t be super speeders from Africa in the setting. Just that none are competing in the 2020 Olympics, as imagined. Some might have had no interest in sport, others might have chosen to use their power for commercial gain (and thereby be integrable to enter the Olympics as an amateur) and others might be using their powers for different purposes. Heroic or villainous as may be.
The Olympics stopped being for amateurs only a very long time ago
I had a feeling that it had. Trouble is I stopped watching it a very long time ago. ;-)
Getting a bunch of NBA players in the Olympics was the big nail in that particular coffin.
Olympics was ever for amaturs?
Damn how long ago was that?
A long time ago, on a continent far, far away…
Canon. Actually one suggestion that has been made in RPG circles is that, when populating a whole world, with the paranormally endowed, gross GNP is the way to go, since nations with a large GNP tend to be populous, do more cutting edge experimentation and tech development, and spend more time going around and digging up ancient artifacts. And if you don’t actually want to totally overset the political balance of the world it avoids giving third world nations and China the bulk of the world’s supers the way an even population distribution would. Every nation would have at least some supers, but the United States isn’t swept away.
That would be asuming that artifects play a big role in devloping super powers. Other than Sydney, we haven’t seen anything that would indicate towards that.
Though purely statistical with our current sample ofcourse, we’d have a 1/8 chance for alien orbs to give superpowers, but you get my point
I remember a joke told at the last World Track and Field Championships: Our Jamaican sprinter is faster than your Jamaican sprinter. Oh yeah, well our Kenyan marathoner is faster than yours.
Depending on just where in africa, I’d imagine there’d be very few supers at all due to them being branded demons or some such and killed. I’m sure there’ll be a few in less superstitious territories but I think its safe to say that the ones that survive the superstitious folks will be flat out terrifying. The superstition angle might go a ways to explain why they weren’t more common in the early days. Or at least much much more secretive.
Possibly. Although we do not see current parallels which would lead to that conclusion. However what we do see, mostly in Africa, but also in India and elsewhere (including in the UK, albeit with immigrants from Africa) is worse.
Do not click to reveal unless you are comfortable with grim subjects.
In Africa human sacrifice to drain ‘magical powers’ still happens all too frequently. Usually intended to bring luck or prosperity to the individuals taking part. Albino children being at especial risk. Likewise I recall examples such as an Indian mystic who had a foot that was reputed to have healing properties, having his leg hacked off by individuals hoping to profit from using it. Given those are things going on at this time, it is easy to see that if there were super-powers they would be at risk from such practices. But hopefully not in this comic. Far too grim.
Err, I hope you spot that spoiler error and fix it Dave. Sorry. :(
What was so bad about that? Are we operating under the assumption that this comic is being read primarily by 3 year olds? I really don’t get peoples values sometimes…..we’re on the internet, you get hard core porn pop ups googling frelling Sesame Street. And that’s if yer lucky enuf not to hit CP instead.
*shrugs* It is not from a sensibility point of view. Just that the site is for a comedy web-comic. Too much grim reality can be a downer. If folks are not in the mood for it, I would rather not foist it on them.
There are always people that like to complain about the obvious, nomather how hard we laugh at them. Might aswel silence a few early
The difference being that in our world, people who are purported to have magical powers of course don’t have any, where in this world, there’s a chance they actually do have powers. Now, while being able to relieve a fever by laying your hands on someone does not give you any defense against psychotics with a machete, being able to dig a well for a village because you can shift the earth might make it a lot harder for someone to make off with your foot.
Prove they don’t have any.
Can’t prove that they don’t have the ‘cure a fever’ part, but you can be pritty sure that if someone could control the earth you’d know about it.
Ofcourse you’d also hear about the fever thing, but that’s more in the superstitious department and most people not believing it
People are cure of illnesses all that time. Who’s to say that they’re not all cured by “that one guy in africa”? The only waty to prove that that one guy is not healing all the people on the planet is to kill him. And that kinda defeats this convo.
Edit buttons are nice…..hint hint….
Well you could probably set up a controled experiment and stuf. But that’d be kinda unethical
Depending on the circumstances. For example, there was a perfectly ethical experiment which was carried out to determine if human brain activity continued after decapitation.
At the time of the French revolution, a couple of scholars saw a way of making the most of mis-fortune, should either of them be condemned to death, and made a pact. If that happened, their fellow would ignore the possible consequences of bringing attention to themselves, and conduct a scientific experiment. It had been observed at the frequent executions, by guillotine, that a certain proportion of the severed heads continued to show activity, such as silent screams, blinking or other facial expressions. Sometimes continuing for a few minutes after decapitation.
Scientific opinion being divided. Some contesting that these were no more than reflexive twitches of muscles, with no active brain control required. Strengthened by the (unscientific) argument that the soul would have departed so there would be no conscious control. The pair were of the opposite camp, thinking that some individuals may be surviving the shock of the blow and continuing to try and speak or scream or otherwise communicate, despite no longer having the lungs to do so.
So they worked out a pattern of distinctive eye blinks that they could use to prove that the activity was consciously controlled. As it happened, one of them did get picked for execution. His friend remained true to his word, and stayed with him to witness his end. And was able to observe the exact pattern of pre-arranged blinks from his friends head, in the basket. Thus conducting an experiment which, under any other circumstances would be unethical. But which means we now know that consciousness is not dependent upon your head being attached to your shoulders.
Warning: Rant below. :-P
Well, yes, you can’t prove a negative (unless you can disprove it by definition or by a complete examination of the search space). However, we can say “people who are purported to have magical powers of course don’t have any” to a reasonable degree of certainty due to the decades of concerted effort to demonstrate such powers and the complete absence of good objective evidence for any such powers. Anecdotes aren’t objective evidence.
There are several prizes around the world available from various skeptical societies if anyone can objectively demonstrate such powers, including the $1 million JREF prize, but so far not one person has managed to pass even a preliminary challenge that they designed for themselves (possibly with controls added to prevent cheating) and agreed beforehand was fair. If you really could play a piano, and there was a $1 million prize for anyone who could play an instrument, wouldn’t you try to be the first in line for that prize? Yet many self-proclaimed psychics, healers, and the like refuse to be tested. Odd, eh? ;-)
If you require absolute certainty before anyone makes a claim, then you’re requiring people constantly sprinkle their language with “probably”, “likely”, “almost certainly”, and the like, since outside of things like mathematics, where the terms are defined a priori, you don’t find much absolute certainty. Even “the sun will rise tomorrow” can’t be said without absolute certainty. So this is why it is acceptable to make statements which are reasonably certain, even if they aren’t 100% certain.
In any case, since nobody can prove a negative, asking Dave to prove a negative is silly. If anyone wants to prove Dave wrong, all they have to do is show one person with testable powers, who is willing to be tested by a scientific+skeptical group, and show them passing that test in at least two trials with statistically significant results. That’s never happened so far. The burden of proof lies upon those making the positive claim, so the people claiming that they have powers have to prove it. We don’t have to accept their claim blindly until it is disproved, as that would be a reversal of the burden of proof.
Apologies for going on so long, but the idea that someone can’t reasonably reject things like this is one of my pet peeves.
and yet there have been demonstrated and recorded events that rely on beyond human tech/art to occur for multiple governments, I walk the street daily and fly where people can see me regularly yet no one is willing to say “magic” exists. they see a normal person walking or a plane flying. most tests are actually designed to be proven a trick or an illusion or when all else fails pure chance to be repeated till it fails once. sorry sore spot on the testing bit.
This reply is to both Shenron and Chaos:
No, sorry, it doesn’t and can’t work like that. If your power is to regrow amputees’ lost limbs, then there is no way that people can fail to notice ex-amputees with regrown limbs after the test. If your power is to fly, then all you have to do is fly up 50 feet, around that barrier that prevents you from throwing something up there, and press the button on the ceiling. If your power is to read minds, then doing statistically significantly better than chance on a Zener card test under controlled conditions cannot be missed. It’s nonsense to claim that people won’t or can’t notice phenomena like this.
Seriously, think about it. If what you say were true, then that would affect new mechanical devices as well. People wouldn’t have been able to see the first airplanes when they thought that heavier than air flight was impossible, yet they clearly had no trouble seeing it. (And please don’t feed me the lie from that stupid “What the (Bleep) Do We Know?” movie where it spouted nonsense about the American Indians being unable to see sailing ships. That’s not only BS not backed up by any reliable source, but it’s BS that’s completely insulting to American Indians as well.)
The tests are not “designed to be proven a trick or an illusion”, as you claimed, they’re designed to rule out tricks and illusions. And as I pointed out above, the person claiming to have powers gets to design the test themselves. The test will only be modified if necessary to prevent possible cheating, and it will only be modified in ways that the claimant agrees are acceptable. If the person claims that they can dowse for water correctly 80% of the time or better in a test where 10% would be the expected rate at random chance, then failing up to 4 times out of 20 tries is perfectly acceptable. Seriously, look up some of the JREF tests and see for yourself.
Simply put, if your “magic” has any appreciable effect on the world, then it can be measured. And if it can be measured, then it can be tested. However, if it doesn’t have any appreciable effect on the world, then it really isn’t doing anything, is it? (Unless you’re arguing that your magic retroactively changes reality to be consistent with a world with no magic, in which case, welcome to unprovable nonsense town. Population: Crazies. ;-) )
Also, there are no “demonstrated and recorded events that rely on beyond human tech/art to occur for multiple governments” that I’m aware of which have been proven to be true. Most don’t go beyond completely worthless anecdotes. And I’m pretty well read in these subjects, so don’t bother with things like the Stargate Project, because they were so “good” that they were all scrapped for not producing useful results. So, exactly where is this record you speak of? And does it include objective evidence and testable claims? Or just more completely worthless anecdotes? Please let me know.
So, I’m open to the evidence. Heck, there’s over $1 million in prizes available if you can prove any of it, as I pointed out earlier, so I’d love for it to be true. However, being open minded shouldn’t be the same thing as being gullible, thus I prefer my beliefs to only include things with sufficient evidence supporting them. Where is your strong, objective, scientific evidence for these rather extraordinary claims?
Yes but unless you believe in said powers your mind will “sunnydale” them away. So it’s pretty hard to prove magick to someone who doesn’t believe in it.
That is the strongest line of argument when dealing with any issue which lie beyond the boundaries of ‘easily provable by science’. It is well known, when judging the credibility and objectivity of an experiment to bare in mind any conflicts of interest of the researchers. Why? Because it has been known and is provable that results can and do get biassed if they exist.
This need not be due to conscious corruption on behalf of the scientists involved. It can be fairly subtle, like shading key judgement calls in protocols or interpretations. But, whatever the reason, like the placebo effect (one of those things that exists but which science has a hard time of explaining how it works) it exerts influence over every scientific experiment.
How much more influential can that particular effect be, when dealing with an effect or subject that is widely held in scorn or contempt by the scientific community, like magic? Even fields which attract a few researchers have to constantly battle the prejudices of the majority of their peers, such as parapsychology and cryptozoology. Specialising in such fields can be the touch of death to a scientist’s career.
Loosing credibility, the chance of funding and the likelihood of any meaningful advance being dismissed by the sceptical. I deliberately chose not to say “out of hand” although the term would slide in easily there. Being scientific, debunkers will examine something and then dismiss it for plausible reasons. But, if there is reason to be sceptical, their threshold will be vastly different to evidence provided for a credible project.
Let me give just one example, so that you can see what I mean. A scientist came up with a hypothesis that the Sphinx was weathered by rainwater rather than wind, due to his interpretation of various pieces of evidence. Several of which, to my mind were plausible (albeit that it was being presented to me via a TV program, which one must always be highly sceptical of, as you are unlikely to get a balanced presentation of the evidence).
The trouble being that the last period in which Egypt would have had the amount of rainfall required to produce such weathering would have been earlier than the currently estimated start of civilisation. No civilisation, no monument building. Archaeology, as a field is always revising the earliest dates of various estimates. But when dealing with the rise of civilisation, I note that science seems to be extremely inflexible. Which I always find puzzling. We know that humans have been at about our level of intelligence for hundreds of thousands of years, and yet any suggestion that there might have been early civilisations gets stomped on hard.
In this case, the guy anticipated such, so made sure that when he sought opinion about the nature of the weathering, using photographic evidence, he cropped the Sphinx’s distinctive features, such as the head. Which the appropriate expert(s) then verified to show distinctive signs of water weathering. Immediately on being shown an unmodified version of the photo though, they started to back-track. Why? Not wishing to be drawn into the dubious field of scientific doubt.
The point that researchers make their name by overturning established thinking is well made. But that kudos goes to the person making, proving and fighting against scientific prejudice for decades to get the necessary consensus. Something that can be hard even in legitimate fields of science. However little, if any, kudos goes to the peer reviewers. All they get is the risk of a stain on their careers which can damn them for life. Why risk ending up in a soup-kitchen, in order to support some crank’s pet theory, when it is easier to find a plausible debunking excuse for a piece of evidence?
Not that I am saying that any of these fields are necessarily meaningful. Just that it is science which has the problem in dealing with them, which proponents of scientific thinking seem unwilling to deal with. The assumption being, as eloquently argued above, that “if it is not {easily} provable then we are better assuming that it does not exist”. Exactly the same sort of thing that happens in the science vs religion arguments.
Just how much more compelling will my points be, if you consider that some things may be influenced by the state of mind of the observer? Many aspects of magic, psionics, mysticism, religion and the like are clearly bogus and easily disprovable. But, hidden amongst the dross there may be things which have a real and, possibly, measurable effect on the world. If, however, they are being researched by the sceptical, their very cynicism can be tainting every, well meaning, experiment they conduct. Thus it is hardly unsurprising, if that is the case, that evidence is not forthcoming.
I made this very argument to one person I met. Throwing in an off-hand “you might be one of those guys who does yoga and who can levitate up into the air, yet if I find that hard to believe, and you are aware of that, then you might not be able to find the inner balance needed to demonstrate it to me.” To which he replied “actually, yes, I can”. Which surprised me, “oh, could you show it to me?” “No, I have tried to do so for others in the past and have failed”.
The reason why they’re reluctant to re-date the dawn of civilization should be obvious. Religion, not specifically it’s existence but the fear that comes with telling hundreds of thousands of people that their core beliefs are flat out wrong. To be honest, I’m terrified of religious people. I’d rather be a black man at a KKK rally then me, in the vatican.
Mmm, I think it is just mental inertia. There is not a huge amount of religious influence in mainstream science. Obviously there are a lot of scientists who have religion, and it may affect their thinking, so your statement is fair, from that point of view. But as they couch their arguments in scientific terms, it does not extend to affecting others too much. So science, as a whole will not be steered by religious dogma.
I see similar reluctance to accept new ideas, even with a great deal of supporting evidence, in many other areas in science. Take for example the debate over the date that humans first came to America. Although it is a healthy scientific argument, the old guard seems to be very reluctant to accept any of the numerous contradictions to the late date that they cling to
Once a concept has entrenched itself by being stated as fact in text books, they are very reluctant to send them back to the publishers for correction.
I wasn’t thinking religious dogma so much as the fear of being violently murdered. Ya know, the fear of actual, REAL things, not the fear of invisible, non-corporeal fairy princesses.
You’re getting science incredibly backwards. “Magic” (and I’m using this as shorthand for your “any issue which lies beyond the boundaries of ‘easily provable by science'”) isn’t missed because people are cynical of it, and thus people are failing to look for it and/or find it. What’s actually happening is that people have tried to look for “magic” repeatedly, and have repeatedly failed to find it, thus they became more cynical of it. Remember, people used to believe in magic, witches, demons, etc. as a matter of course. It was all assumed to be true Heck, it used to be blasphemy to not believe in them. No, people only became cynical in these things as the light of reason has been shone upon the claims and consistently found them to be completely vacuous.
Besides that, you’re forgetting the far more surprising discoveries which are being made because of science. How many totally unexpected and counterintuitive surprises have we encountered in quantum theory alone? And yet they were proven by science.
As for conflicts of interest biasing the researchers, do you think that there isn’t one researcher investigating “magic” that believes it to be true? Just take a look at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (PEAR) if you need an example of one group of believers who did the research. (Though their research was apparently biased in the direction of proving an effect when no effect much larger than barely being significant could be found, and that effect could not be replicated.) However, there have been open minded researchers like Susan Blackmore, who started out as believers, but became skeptics as the tests kept demonstrating effects no greater than chance over, and over, and over.
As for science being inflexible about changing the date of the rise of civilization, do you have any idea how many times it has changed in the past? Quite a few. Heck, the term hasn’t even been nailed down particularly clearly, so there are multiple dates still. Do you count it from the first sedentary culture in 12,000 BCE? Or the first agricultural society around 10,000 BCE? Or from the first writing around 3,300 BCE? Or the first cities from around 3,100 BCE? Rather than science being stuck on one date, we actually have a surfeit of many dates.
You ask why an expert would “back-track” after being shown the context of a photo he had examined and given his opinion on earlier. Well, the thing is, context is really important. If I play a sound of galloping hoofbeats from a large animal that sounds like a horse, what animal would you guess it is? Now if I tell you the context that it was recorded in the African veld, wouldn’t you change your answer from a horse to a zebra? Based on context, interpretations of evidence can switch from plausible to implausible, or vice versa. Asking an expert to make a judgment on an incomplete picture gets you less accurate results. As you give them more information, their answer may change. This should not be surprising.
Also, you said, “if it is not {easily} provable then we are better assuming that it does not exist”. No, that’s close, but inaccurate. If a claim is unproven to any reasonable degree then you should not accept it as true. This is the basic gullibility filter we should all have that prevents us from believing unproven nonsense. However, that does not mean that we should “assume [the object of the claim] does not exist”. There is a big difference between not accepting a claim and accepting the negation of that claim. If the claim is “fire breathing dragons exist”, I should not accept that claim until there is sufficient evidence, but that does not mean I should accept the claim that “no fire breathing dragons exist” instead. Also, just because a claim is hard to prove, doesn’t mean you should just forget about it. That’s just lazy. Real scientists work on proving the hard claims all the time.
Finally, regarding the “yogic flyers” of transcendental meditation, I’ve seen them do what they claim is flying, and they’re basically just flapping their legs while in the lotus position to hop off the ground for a moment, and sometimes they’re confusing a brief moment of free fall for flight. Seriously, check out the YouTube videos on this one. They’re pretty silly looking.
It would only take one person ever to prove that this was possible. Yet not a damn one can do it. So what is more likely? A few people have a power to do something people have wanted to do for at least as long as recorded history but violates know physics, or a few people are delusional, hallucinating, or simply mistaken about what they are doing of have done? Occam’s razor says the latter is the more reasonable option with the evidence we have today.
Your reply has a lot of issues in it, each of which deserve a decent response. But I realised that it would take a lot of space to give it justice. So I figured that I would leave it until this was no longer the current issue, and then wait for it to get old enough that my posts would not clutter up other people adding late comments. Which also gave me spare moments throughout the week, when I was not thinking of more pressing matters, to polish my arguments.
However, I think I did too good a job. Although the thought process that lead to this conclusion, and the moral decision which followed that realisation, has some fascinating aspects, it would be quite a rambling tale. Which would just end with “so I have decided not to detail the proof”. I am guessing that most folks would just ignore several back-to-back long posts, so will save my time and leave it at that.
I realise it sounds like a cop-out, which kinda galls me. And would be willing to explain the reason for doing so, if not detailing the proof itself. But I think walls of text would alienate most folks, even if one or two found interest in it. So will spare the majority.
Yup. And thanks for the tag fix Dave.
Also Dave is the artist, and therefore godlike so proving a negative should be child’s play for him.
Glad you resisted the urge to draw detailed characters for everyone in final panel (other than the ones in the foreground of course). Superb result on the way you did the crowd and the overall picture it contributed to. I bet the Super Olympics would get more viewers than the regular ones combined!
The irony of no african nations in this race this the funiest thing ever
There are a LOT of people from Nigeria living in England.
Maybe the super speedsters from Africa all ran to a country where the biggest problem facing the populace was too much food.
Would make it easier to eat the 5000 callories an olympic athlete needs (or whatever the number is)
Don’t you just love the sponsors… =)
I may have made that a little too subtle. They were just an afterthough while I was coloring anyway. :)
Heh… The “Veridian Dynamics” one is my favorite.
I also see “Stark Industries” and the Umbrella Corp. logo. I’ve seen the “MM” logo before, but I can’t remember where. (Tell me! It’s driving me crazy!) The other two I can’t see enough of to recognize.
Closest I’ve come to an answer on that is Massive Dynamics, which appears to be a corporation in Fringe.
Here’s a pic : https://fringepedia.net/wiki/File:MassiveDynamicCrane.jpg Apparently there’s a website too : https://www.massivedynamic.com/
Is the moderation bit part of the text or what? If not where did it come from? I R cornfuzzled.
It is an automatic anti-spam feature, built into the program. If you put in more than one link in a single post it gets passed to DaveB for moderation.
Ah, thanks, I’d just assumed I was annoying him. I do that sometimes.
Yeah, that’s it.
Thanks. :-)
testy……lessee testy…
Ah, so the moderation IS just for me. I feel so special…… also…..is “STFU Chaos!” too hard to type?
He he, paranoia not required. It happens to everyone. Well, not to folks who do not link. Which is why your test got through without being moderated.
Eh, at the risk of sounding like I’m trying to hide my stupidity……can we delete this bit?
It certainly would not bother me if DaveB were to delete this thread.
So…What’s the cameo?
Also, pun most certainly not intended, but chili is the french name of chile, the south america country.
Judging by the caption “Dave – owner”, I suspect that DaveB is in the cameo himself. Apparently flogging a shield with interesting properties.
It’s Dave! That’s exactly the way he looks IRL. XD
I was half-expecting a humanoid giraffe-unicorn.
Your avatar’s eyes said as much.
He’s that pale in real life? Damn.
I’m thinking that with Sydney at the front, this will be like the George W. Bush “Yawning boy” video.
I don’t find it all that surprising that Africa has no “Speedsters”, personally. They seem to be more distance / endurance focused. While I’m sure they have their sprinters, all nations do, they are just far more famous as long distance runners.
I’m not sure Mr. Caption Typer at NBC would ‘enter’ that, but everyone would be thinking it.
I challenge the commenters to puncture other ethnic/racial stereotypes.
(Like maybe an Amish Super Technician.)
Well the caption typist probably got his/her start with things like “I feel like I’m playing Diablo with the censor button.”
Yes, in my world, the ticker typers are all a bit more glib.
Maybe that’s his/ her super power. Being able to keep up with Sydney’s profanity has got to indicate borderline superhuman talent.
It’s probably the same guy that captationed Sydneys interview
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/388
I point out that, in fact, the Coast Guard (except in wartime) has never been under the War Department/Department of Defense.
It is a police force with a paramilitary organisation; in peacetime it was under the Department of the Treasury and later the Department of Transportation.
Thus posse comitatus does not appl;y to the CG.
I love your avatar totally to pieces.
Likewise. And you remind me I must try and get Gunnerkrigg Court onto whichever new RSS reader I change to, from Google Reader. If it supports that.
while you all get to chuckle about africa’s lack of speedsters, i’m laughing over the joke below that, since i happen to have a collection of daikaiju-morph (specifically, Godzilla film based, with a scattering of Mazinger based robots) characters.
if such are ever needed for cameo or “visiting nations” purposes, i’d be happy to loan you a few Dave
the one where they’re all japanese high school students right?
does this means that japan in this universe actually has “monster of the week” and Mecha? oh and to the Britain Olympic athlete….DAMN!!! 0_o
I thought they were talking about the earthquake, tsunami, and reactor breakdown that occurred in Japan not too long ago.
Still do.
You are right. But
+ superhero setting = Godzillla.
For the purposes of the one-liner gag, anyhow.
I KNEW IT!!!!!!!! GODZILLA!!!!!!
Ah but there’s been no mention of super-animals yet. For all we know superness requires human genes here.
The same reason you never see zombie animals?
Nah, that’s cuz zombies are humanitarians, no matter how hungry they get they’d never bite a cow.
Actually it’s the brains. The taste of sentient brains is the only thing that drives them. Mmmm… brains.
You never watched the first season of The Walking Dead then: Sherrif Rick rode into town on a horse, he traded it in for a tank when the zombies ate it out from under him
did the horse turn zombie? Could you still ride a zombified horse? It’s an herbivore, so it might not figure out that it’s craving flesh and not grass.
They ate the whole thing, which makes far more sense than a HUGE zombie horde taking 2 bites out of a guy and than leaving him to turn into a zombie.
Cause let’s face it, those thousands of zombies only have a few injuries, while they should be ripped apart if attacked by more than a few zombies (kinda like the girl with the bike, but even worse)
If they eat the whole thing then there’s no reason for there to be more than a few hundred zombies unless for some odd reason they avoided each other to hunt prey seperately.
Not sure if everyone has seen The Walking Dead so:
It was determined that you didn’t even have to be bit to turn, you just had to die, some sort of plague/virus,
Oops, the 2nd paragraph was supposed to be spoiler-covered (ooo, supposed to have been [] not >)
Well,if I ever find myself there I’ll make sure to pick up wood chipper somewhere.
Actually, the Coast Guard has never been part of the Department of Defense. The Coast Guard was originally created as part of the Treasury Department, as the United States Revenue Cutter Service. They were originally created to enforce law and order on the seas near the American coasts. Simply put, the Coast Guard is basically the ocean-going equivalent of the police, and it is the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the country (although it is not formally recognized as such). Because its charter requires the use of lots and lots of what are essentially very small warships, it is formally transferred to the DoD during war-time, and is thus recognized as being a branch of the American military.
The bit about the law enforcement agency is why the Coast Guard got moved to the DoHS. The DoHS was originally created as an attempt to put federal law enforcement/disaster prevention all under one roof, hopefully in order to cut down on the inter-bureau power struggles and turf wars that were causing so many problems. For this reason, it included the FBI, Office for Domestic Preparedness, DESTS, all from the Justice Department; the Customs Service, Secret Service, and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center all came over from the Treasury, and TSA and the Coast Guard came from the Transportation Department. Ironically, of all of these, only the Coast Guard, Secret Service, and the Customs Service actually come with the power to make arrests and so forth.
During this same reshuffling, the ATF got moved from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department. And yes. It should worry you that the Treasury Department has, for many, many years, had more authority to arrest people than the Department of Justice.
Interesting, Arianna is touting Peggy as a Super. I had to check her rank to see if it was Peggy that Arianna was talking about. I thought they would differentiate between the empowered and the insanely gifted, like the Math the Letch and Peggy the Sniper.
I think Anvil is the Major.
Anvil’s listed as a 1st Lieutenant. So’s Peggy, actually, so my initial statement is wrong. Who’s the Major? One of the as of yet not introduced supers?
Hiro’s a Major. And now, thinking about it, I don’t think it makes sense that Anvil’s a 1st Lt. She wasn’t in the military before Archon. Really she should be a Corporal at most. :/ Bah!
Maybe after joining Anvil went to officer’s school? West Pointe or whatever it is for her branch of the military.
Actually 2nd lt would be appropriate there is a distinction between officers(lieutenant captain major and such) and enlisted(privates sergents airmen so on) and it’s hard to make the jump. Or another thought(since this is a separate branch from the air force where most of the military supers started) would be to make her a warrant officer. Warrants aren’t used in the air force but all other branches do. They are highly specialized technicians with authority somewhere in between non-commissioned officers(sergents and petty officers) and commissioned officers.
Is Warrant Officer a discreet rank or are they some flavor of Sergeant?
IIRC Warrant Officer is somewhat outside the normal E/O system.
The Warrant system is discreet, and usually filled by former enlisted personnel. The idea was some career fields needed people that would be around for a long time, doing their specialized job, and accruing experience, without having to worry about an up-or-out promotion system. So Warrants are paid somewhere between Enlisted and Officers, and will not be “promoted” into management or leadership positions, instead continuing to operate as technicians for their entire careers.
Ripley, in Alien, was a Warrant Officer on the Wayland-Yutani refining ship “Nostromo.
Warrant officer is a strange rank and can have very different responsibilities. One who has retired to my village had over 100 men under his command for a long tour of duty. And, at another point in his career, was deployed in a critical enough role that he had direct access to 10 Downing Street in the event that nuclear weaponry needed deploying. Along with appropriate security clearance (the highest level in the Army).
Which, thinking on that now, is quite amusing. Given that he certainly had higher clearance than many more senior officers (in less critical positions). It could have led to a few comical situations.
If you understand the history of the rank it’s much less confusing, though of course the military are veritable masters of doing their thing following their own twisted internal reasons… if not always logical ones.
Warrant officers used to be the (commoner) people that knew how to command and run a ship, as opposed to the noblemen with the commission, often enough paying for the privilege. See the wikipedia article. These days warrant officers usually embody the technical track as opposed to the leadership track. If that technical track ends up including command over 100 people or direct access to number 10, well. That’s the military for you.
On that note, the US has warrant officers as a separate classification, which appears unique in modern usage, and with five ranks has the most. In, say, the UK they appear to be simply top-ranked NCOs.
For another way, look at what the Germans do. There’s a bit of interesting history as well as a far more integrated approach. But then, they redid the whole ranks thing from the ground up, back when.
You sure Warrant Officers aren’t used in the Air Force? Pretty sure when was at Air Training Corps we had at least one Warrant Officer floating around (or maybe, WO’s are just not used in the US Air Force)
Maybe a U.S. army helicopter pilot? Who can hold that rank.
When I was a helicopter mechanic for the army, the pilots were either officers or warrent officers. Warrents are treated the same as an officer, but aren’t in command of the unit. Officers are unit commanders. At least that’s how the ranking system seemed worked to me.
during WWII, the Army Air Corps used both Officers and Warrants as pilots. Later (1947), when the AF broke off as an independent service, they continued carrying the Warrants for awhile, but really didn’t know what to do with them. The rank was phased out over time, basically supplanted with the then new E-8s & E-9s (in 1958). The rank looked a bit odd (often jokingly referred to as a “blue pickle,” further setting it apart from the other services, which looked much like black or red Lieutenant bars), and by the ’70s, most airmen didn’t even recognize it, and didn’t know how to respond even if they did (salute? sir/ma’am?). The last AF Warrant retired in 1980, so it’s not surprising that many modern day servicemen (and even a lot of veterans) have never heard of them.
Yeah I meant the US Air Force. Not sure how many other militaries even use warrants at all.
From memory, US, UK, Australia and Canada.
NZ :P
Yes, my posts referred to US militaries. Sometimes I forget Dave’s readership truly is international. My apologies.
No apologies necessary! The comic is set in the US, so that is actually the most pertinent side to discuss. I was just passing on some trivia which might have a peripheral bearing on the subject. When I say such things, it is usually out of a real interest in the cultural differences. Mentioning things like that will often encourage others to give points of view from different national perspectives. US, or otherwise, as the case may be. In this case, in particular, I find military traditions and the variation, from one country to another, to be fascinating.
Um, about that, no. Peggy’s not a major. A’s talking about one of the guys (check back a few, where the view shows the whole group), he’s sitting next to Max, wearing a similar uniform.
Page 143 has a good view of the seated personnel. He’s not in the Cast List yet (be patient, Dave’s super power is “funny” not “cyber-linkage”), but he was sort of introduced earlier (to Sydney).
D’oh. I didn’t figure anyone not in the front line would be… eh, my mistake.
Well, the Air Force was not specifically mentioned in the original Posse Comitatus Act, (for the very good reason that the Act was passed in 1878 and the Air Force was created in 1956,) but the Act was later modified.
Where Archon would probably find it’s legal justification is in this clause:
“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both”.
In 2006, the Insurrection Act of 1807 was modified to say the following:
“The President may employ the armed forces… to… restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition… the President determines that… domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order”
While the RL motivation for this is surely the war on terror, it would be tailor-made for Archon. Actions taken under the Insurrection Act, an act of Congress, are exempt from Posse Comitatus.
“Its”, not “it is” there. If I read your excerpts right that means first some regular LE (well, at least the state ones, maybe all local+state ones combined) must at least look at the situation and say “we can’t do this”, possibly even try first. That might be cumbersome and that last bit may not always be desirable.
Not that this sort of thing means much in practice any longer. All that’s needed these days is enough plausibility to handwave the issue in theoretical debate, sometimes not even that, then go on as you please. The terrists did that much for government.
Yeah, supervillain attacks are definitely classified as terrorist attacks. Imagine if someone blew up a truck on the Golden Gate bridge and only managed to blow a hole in one of the lanes. Now think about X-men 3 (which actually wasn’t all that bad if you ignore the Phoenix stuff and rubber Juggernaut) and Magneto ripping the thing out of the ground and carrying it to Alcatraz. That would be a Double Dog Extra Black level terrorist attack.
Magneto is also significantly more powerful than anyone yet shown in the comic – depending on who is writing his script.
Meh. His helmet may protect him from telepathy, but not versus tongue-fu!
And he has nothing protecting his body. He could be taken down a small piece of non-metallic debris. Hell a good pitcher could take him out. Why no one ever did always annoyed me about him.
Au Contraire. I saw at least one write up from years back claiming that Magneto’s outfit was a variation on chainmail. Which made sense in an odd sort of way because then he could strengthen it with his magnetism.
He was defeated in X-3 with glass syringe’s filled with anti-mutagen
While I’m not really a big Xman fan…
His face isn’t covered is it? Can’t be that hard to take him out through his face
How? His control of Magnetism is to the point he can effect any metallic compound so bullets and darts are out. And his shield has been shown to block non-metallic objects and energy attacks. I think the only energy I’ve ever heard of passing his shield was electricity but by the time it got through the shield the shield absorbed enough that the effect was like “ow…that stung”
Like I sad, I don’t know that much of Xman.
What about rubber bullets? They’re less-than-leathal, which basicly means that if you get one in your eye, you still got a pritty big problem.
Even if you don’t hit something vital, they hurt like hell
Although I teased his about his power, it is very strong. If you tried to shoot him with a regular gun capable of firing baton rounds, he could just disassemble the gun (it being made of metal). Or, given his villainous streak, more likely turn it around and shoot you!
So the way that they got around it in the movie, as Guesticus said above, was using non-metallic syringe darts, carrying the medical payload, but fired from custom-made guns which were likewise made of plastic. And the troops had to either get rid of or replace every metallic object with plastic versions. Another trick that Magneto likes to pull is to make all the pins on hand grenades slide out. With nasty results for all soldiers who have any about their person.
But, even if none of his enemies are carrying metal, he can still improvise with any metal in the area. Cars, man-hole covers, telephone poles, electric cabling and even ore in the ground, if he has to. And his capacity is vast. In the movie, he picks up the entire Golden-Gate bridge to fly his army across to Alcatraz island. Complete with all the cars and other traffic that was on it when he lifted it, without effort. So, yes, very powerful.
But, even though my comment was a tongue-in-cheek way of saying it, he is still vulnerable. Use a non-metallic attack of any sort and he has no more defence than any other man in the street (the alluded-to chainmail armour, if canon, is hardly cutting edge invincible armour). And, although the helmet is fairly protecting, like many super-armours, it does leave exposed areas, that someone like Bullseye or Math could easily bypass.
If they can avoid the metallic projectiles he will be throwing their way. And he is capable of blocking attacks with any metallic object, if he senses it coming. But, unless it has a metallic component to it, or some kind of magnetic field (either of which he can sense), he is just as likely to be surprised as anyone else.
Idk, given the existence of adamantium and mags ability to essentially liquefy it magnetically, I’d bit the chainmail is made from it. Still, unless he’s produced adamantium mail so thin it can’t be seen…..a shot to the face will end him.
or, ya know, he could have laced his own bones with adamantium too. From what i’ve read on Wolvie, the adamantium poisoning isn’t a side effect of adamantium in the body but rather of the bonding process being done wrong. Which should be obvious, since is adamantium is said to be indestructible, and metal poisoning comes from the metal breaking down in the body. Another reason to hate the weapn x docs being that they infused his entire skeleton at once, which damn near killed him. If they’d just done one bone at a time, and done it properly, everyone on the team could have an adamantium laced skeleton.
The problem with ignoring the phoenix stuff is that that was like /three-fourths of the bloody movie/.
I can’t wait to see them write their way around that in the days of future past XD
in the comics, it turned out that the evil jean grey was all a mental projection and that the entire time Jean was sitting at the bottom of the water in a psychic bubble
It was pretty ham-handed writing. Alienating a lot of fans unnecessarily. Ok, the climactic scene with her and Wolverine was powerful stuff. But to kill off three major cast-members (especially changing the script to do so because one of them was unavailable for a longer role), really was sloppy. It just was not necessary AND failed to take full advantage of each.
Not to mention being damaging to the long-term franchise. Pointless killing her off in the movie prior (which did nothing useful at all). Cheapening death by bringing her back and weakening the fear of death for future writers, in that “oh it doesn’t matter if {insert name} dies off, they can always bring him/her back.”
Something that comics companies in general do, but which Marvel is especially notorious for – Jean Grey, Bucky Barnes, Captain Marvel, Colossus, etcetera.
They keep denying it’ll ever happen (yeah right, like Jean and Bucky), but I have absolutely no doubt that Spiderman’s Uncle Ben will make a sudden shock return any time now.
Eh, that’s one of the things that annoys me in all works, the urge to kill off characters, or end the show, if the original actor isn’t available…….they really should have just recast Buffy.
Here I speak as a dedicated Buffy fan and say that every show has its natural limit. Yes, I would love to have seen more Buffy. But I would have hated to have had the concept ruined by trying to extend it beyond it’s natural life span. The cast were so close-nit and the chemistry so good between them all that it would have been a disaster to re-cast someone else in the lead role. Just like Highlander was tarnished by the film that claimed to be a sequel, some things should not be tampered with.
Seven seasons is a good run. I still keep my fingers crossed, after all these years, that they might do a movie or two. But, unlike other top-quality shows, I think the call was fair. Unlike, say, Firefly or Space Above and Beyond. Which were excellent sci-fi series that really should have gone on a lot longer.
Indigo is probably the purple equivalent to maroon
Indigo is dark blue though.
Correct. It’s like Navy Blue, only much more saturated. The two colors are kind of polar opposites when it comes to saturation levels, actually.
Indigo is the opposite (blue) side of purple from maroon
The stretching prior to the race would definitely make the high lights reel of every Olympic report. LOL
Looks like Ireland’s fielding Straight Cougar (from s-CRY-ed). Radical Good Speed FTW!
That’s why he looked familiar to me. I loved that show.
Holy crap that is a total coincidence. The power set and the look and everything. I wish I could take credit for that. That’s crazy. I think I had Adon from Street Fighter in my mind when I was penciling him.
Ah yes, on to the next problem: A treaty forbidding supers on the battlefield? Wut?
Compared to, oh, having normals fight battles by satellite, by using drones? For now it’s aircraft, but what if it’s fully automated artillery? Or main battle tanks? In fact, long range missiles already go there. Why are those not a problem, and a few supers (that’re still somewhat human and presumably all can be killed) get a treaty letting them out of military service?
That really makes not nearly as much sense as it might have on first sight.
They have to try now that supers are out in the open. I seriously doubt they will succeed, witness the trouble with the treaty against land mines and the rules against using chemical weapons.
In short, there will be a lot of noise about the matter but not much will get done. What does get done will often be ignored.
What is guaranteed to happen is that special ops planners all over the world will be scrambling to beg/ borrow/ steal supers into their ranks. Kidnapping is certainly an option.
Kiddnapping a superhero of militarily significant power is an exercise in applied stupidity. The only “safe” control would some sort of hostage, and god help you when that leash slips as it inevitably will.
You will work faithfully in the service of the Regime or we will detonate the explosive collars we just placed on your entire family.
There are ways to force a super to serve you if you are willing to be a complete bastard. Even without resorting to mind control and telepathy.
Political asylum for supers suddenly becomes very, very nasty…
I trust that my family would rather die than have me be forced to commit atrocities.
It won’t always work, but there are other tricks. Think about how many books and movies have some shadowy organization trying to coerce an individual to work for them. Now add supers on both sides.
Your family must really love you
No reason not to.
Think of the christian martyrs. They would rather die than renounce their religion.
If his/her family is of similar mindset, like the Amish (for instance), then resigning oneself to death to avoid having your mere existence used as justification for to commit murder is conceivable.
Look at it like this – you are an invulnerable super. Only super ability is not being able to be hurt. Powers that be (say the Taliban) strap vests full of dynamite on you and your family. As long as you go where they say and do what they want, the vests on your family don’t explode. Your vest keeps being replaced, since they explode it whenever you get near a target (remember, you must go where they say to keep your family alive). Basically, you have become a suicide bomber. Over, and over…
How many innocents will die?
Which ones?
I think my family, also, would prefer to die. Invulnerable me would then show the Taliban the flaw in their plan.
But many governments would use similar tactics, if less overt…
so I should listen to you or you shoot my sister huh? you do realize the only thing keeping me from peeling open your ribs is she is physically in the way and alive, you shoot her what leverage do you hold to keep me from you? you are my hostage against harm coming to her fool!
that scenario something along the lines of what you are suggesting?
Yes, that is the major flaw in the hostage coercion plan, especially using single hostages.
Take someones family, though, and you have a few spares to help convince your target.
Some people have a family first mentality that could be exploited by such methods, for a while.
However, there are limits to effectiveness, and the downside can be pretty severe.
Probably won’t keep attempts from happening. That’s the whole secret identity rationale…
There’s also the “I do what you say or you’ll kill my sister? Do it, I hate that bloody bitch!”
I wonder…..just how do they intend to deal with us barely restrained sociopaths? If it were me, I’d just kill me as quickly as possible instead of finding out what happens when I just stop giving a shit.
And the idea that it’s because not all nation have access to the same power set. We’re going to get a treaty that makes it a war crime to engage an enemy without an equal military capability when?
It could also be that if you don’t sign or abide by the treaty it’ll mean that everyone else who has is free to use their supers against you. While that wouldn’t really work in the landmine treaty, what could be done for that one is to make it understood that anyone who doesn’t abide by it can be freely conquered by whoever they use them against with no repercussions from any other country. Unless they too want to surrender to that enemy. We could threaten to nuke them but everyone knows it’s an empty threat because even without MAD the results of using a nuke are devastating to everyone, not just the target. It basically becomes a situation where we or our allies are not teated as badly by the press in a conqueror role because ‘they’ were the ones that refused to play nice.
I imagine there are “Black-Op” supers working for “No Such Dept.” in any large nation along with researchers with knowledge of every supers’ achilles heel.
Like Arianna said, the particulars are still very much in debate, primarily what I was thinking of, and therefore many of the nations involved, is excluding supers at Max’s level at least. She’s this world’s Superman, so imagine a militarized version of him vs any army in the world. Unless they had kryptonite payloads, Supes could take out the entirety of any standing military force on his own, unless maybe a battleship scored a lucky hit with an 18″ gun. The only way to combat that would be to field other supers of his level, creating a category of engagement that exists only to nullify each other. That’s what they’re trying to avoid, though I’m sure there are voices calling to allow lower level supers to serve, maybe in non-combat roles, like a super speedster messenger or ammo humper, but not someone would could cut an aircraft carrier in half.
Basically they’re trying to avoid the “Nuclear Deterrent” trap we grew up with. “They have A Super! WE NEED TWO, MORE POWERFUL SUPERS!!” Etc etc.
Plus unlike inanimate nukes, supers are very much self-aware; capable of questioning orders, harboring ambitions of their own, and other x-factor actions. Creating GELF supers in an ill-fated attempt to remedy this would likely follow, and end little differently than the zillions of sci-fi plots just like it, so that’s another case for moving to suppress super-militarization before it becomes a practice.
Actually, supes could take down any military not armed with kryptonite payloads. No human/traditional weapon can actually affect him when he isn’t holding back. However, the only being that supes goes all out against is Darkseid, a god.
I remember that fight. I think it was in the first Justice League animated. Superman literally fought his way through everything that rather horrible planet could throw at him and then he and Darkseid leveled half the palace fighting mano a mano. Worth looking up if you can find it.
I don’t wanna say Netflix, But…Netflix.
Wasn’t that the one with Supergirl? Pretty sure have that one on DVD (not sure it was a Justice League though, believe it was called “Apokalypse” or something like that)
He means This.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwU0QkcrNVQ
That’s such a good scene. Still, it could have been a lot better. That ripple shockwave when he punches him was weaksauce. I would have had every window on the block shatter. It also doesn’t help the scene that Darksied gets up a second later and isn’t missing a tooth or anything.
Actually I meant the one that ended with this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVzGyqSbGew
Unfortunately this clip ends just a little too soon, Superman expects the natives to rebel, but instead they pick Darkseid up and start to carry him off to get his wounds treated. Darkseid raises a hand and they stop – and then he delivers the most wonderful line about how Superman will always lose because he does not understand what it is to be a god.
Previous to that clip were a sky full of Para-Demons going down in a single flash of heat vision and a wonderful little sequence where that squad of Apokolypse warrior women attack Superman. It took them a couple minutes to actually get him to pay attention and then about thirty seconds for the fight to finish. The instant of horror on the whip wielder’s face when she realized Superman was about to crack *her* into orbit still makes me chuckle.
Was thinking more along the lines of this one
There’s a flipside: With supers appearance being a function of the population, and the actual powerset being random, larger countries are more likely to have militarily useful supers, but they aren’t guaranteed. So a small country would want this treaty because there’s no way for them to create supers on demand, and allowing them into the battlefield would put them at a decisive disadvantage. Large countries would also want this treaty, because the random nature of supers means they might otherwise end up facing a country with a population of a few thousand who’s entire military force is made up of Superman – they’d rather focus on what they can control.
If you could make supers on demand (even with difficulty), sure I can see wanting to keep them in the military. (And I expect treaty violations regularly by countries who think they can get away with it – see the ‘small country with Superman’ scenario above.) But with the random-but-biased super distribution, it’s not really in anyone’s best interest, overall. It’s best to just deploy conventional forces, and focus on what you can control/plan for.
As for the Super-lympics, I think the most cost effective way to rack up the medals is to skip looking for the best athletes and just put someone with mind-control powers on your countries coaching staff. Then after the race he could have a little ‘chat’ with the officials.
‘Too bad, your athlete came in last again.”
(Coach’s eyes glow for a second) “Are you sure about that?”
“Oh, Sorry. I meant your athlete came in first again. Here’s your medal.”
For those of you who bring up the little matter of several thousand spectators and video recordings, just have the mentalist be the runner. At the start of the race he could have the other runners head off in the opposite direction. Then he could just leisurely stroll to the finish line.
There could be a few problems in calculating some scores. How do you measure the distance of a shot-put throw when it goes into orbit?
Also, imagine Gambit doing an energized javelin throw or Thor in the hammer toss. “What? This is mine own hammer, Mjölnir. I will throw it if I choose.”
Announcer: Next up for the shot put, from the United States of America, Lorna Dane.
Judge: 16, 17, 18, 18.6 kilometres.
Surprised you used Polaris and not Magneto for that. Or is Mag’s facing Captain America in the Discus Throw?
We need to start putting together the roster for the Winter games.
Iceman Bobby Drake, Mr Freeze, Captain Cold, Ice, Sub-Zero, Killer Frost, (surprisingly Emma Frost is NOT on the list). And if you are letting Thor compete, then we also have to let in the Frost Giants.
Storm could compete in both summer and winter games along with Weather Wizard.
hell, with storm there they could hold both summer and winter Olympics events on the same day.
And in the same venue! You don’t have to have the summer games in Paris and the winter games in Chile the next week.
Like Maxima would ever where an outfit like that…
Why not?
Well, you probably could, but I was thinking about the whole feminist-thingy she’s got. About how she doesn’t like being viewed as an “exotic sex doll”. Wearing a top like that doesn’t really help with that.
That’s a sports uniform, not something you would wear outside of a sporting event
Your logic would mean she would never go swimming or go SCUBA diving with Sydney
You might have noticed that her regular uniform, https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/wp-content/themes/comicpress/images/page_gfx/cast_page/bio_max.jpg, is still pretty sexy. Do you expect her to wear a burqa? and not complain about how sexist a burqa is?
The problem is that most female atheltic gear is form fitted shorts and a sports bra. Male gear is usually shorts and a shirt (both form fitted) or a leotard. So while she could take some offense, there really isn’t much to say about it.
With Sydney acting the undisciplined new recruit that she is (even if in Peggyy’s spare uniform) and with the very same reporter who covered the bank heist she was in not just among the crowd but asking questions, I can’t help but think that including her in the press con was a bad idea.
First, it’s an unflattering sight for a military unit- not something Arianna wants for their image. I’m sure she and the other higher ups want to project professionalism and trustworthiness as part of their public introduction.
My second point is something I’ve talked about before: Susie and other reporters noticing that she was the same person at the bank that was robbed and saved by Max. She thus becomes suspected as being a plant at what was a staged robbery.
My third point is something I realized just now: so Archon explains that they found Sydney at the bank and recruited her that same day, which is indeed the truth. But that may also get people to suspect that Archon is just a facade for some sort of conspiracy to find American supers and put them under government control. Okay, “conspiracy theory” is the operative word here, but this is something Archon and Arianna do not want for their PR. Sure, there’s no avoiding nutcases like that, but it would have been better to at least raising the possibility for as long as possible rather than getting off the ground right at the start with Syd’s case.
I know the story is mainly Sydney’s, but maybe Archon could have kept her in the background until she’d gotten at least some training and discipline. Even being who she is, if she can become a certified diver, then it’s safe to say they can smooth out some of her edges. But back to the main point, they probably should have excused her from appearing since she’s their newest member.
Actually, no, “unflattering for a military unit” is exactly what she wants. She wants the public to see thee people as people and not military kill drones. She wants to avoid panic not incite it. If you were watching a press conference in which everyone stood around looking like the damn clone army from star wars, wouldn’t you be just a tad suspicious of their motives?
Well argued. Plus it will undermine the credibility any conspiracy theories about her being in the military prior to the bank robbery, before they even get started. It looks unprofessional, which is bad, but it has useful side-effects.
Are the Superlympics mixed? That would be a first one !
And as for the press conference… I sure hope there is a demonstration of some powers at the end (I know, confidentiality and all that stuff but, you know, in the USA, isn’t there some obligation to show off ? ;) )
With supers, limits are more likely determined by the actual powers than the body housing them.
It would open a whole new level of competition ! Like race to the Moon and back (teleporters not allowed), Boat-lifting (would telekinesis be allowed?), grip pressure measurement, rope/cable pulling (against how many “normal” athletes/trucks can one super compete?)… Man, that would be so cool :)
That would make a big ethical dilemma, for anyone having to decide which Olympics they should appear in, if you had a super who was also disabled. It is unlikely that any would be born disabled, given that they all get the perfect physique package as a birthright. But any who do not have some kind of invulnerability would run the same risk of becoming disabled through accident or other (possibly villainous) means.
Given the very small number of supers to start with, the odds of two becoming disabled in the same way to be direct contenders is vanishingly small (unless they had suffered from a common fate). Obviously if their power had no competitive advantage then their being super would not even be an issue.
Which means that a very careful assessment of the individuals disability versus their power(s) would need to be made to see if they, perhaps, cancel one another out. Thereby allowing the prospect of them appearing in the regular Olympics, as a compromise.
Drawing an interesting parallel with the real-life Olympic ruling that had to be made on the runner with prosthetics that were alleged to give him a competitive advantage over able-bodied athletes.
I disagree on the non-existence of an issue if the super’s power doesn’t relate to the event. Simply being born a super gives people a near-perfect physique without any work, if not a superhuman one. So natural-born supers would need comparatively little training to match or even overcome normals that need to work their whole lives to get into the Olympics. Letting supes into the normal Olympics just wouldn’t be fair and would likely create a lot of negative feelings towards supers as a whole.
A reasonable point, and a fair conclusion. One possibility does strike me though, and that is they might not have as much improvement capability as you assume. If the ‘super package’ simply enhances the individual to the maximum of their capability (physique wise), then they would not be able to further improve. In which case, it is possible that although the super does not require effort to be very good, it may turn out that the normal process that selects Olympic quality athletes, combined with the hard training required, will result in a better competitor.
To give an example, would even the weakest super be able to beat the (normal) Olympic gold medal holder in every event? Or is it logical that, although some supers might be very good contenders in some events, and all will be better than an average professional athlete, that they too might have to put in that extra effort to become the very best?
Although, that is just arguing the one counter-point that your argument raised. I think your position is actually sound, despite that.
you are referring to the fact the athlete has honed his technique to perform the contest event to the best effect and efficiency while a super has all the strength without training and thus performs the task sloppily wasting energy on brute force execution and thus getting inferior results. think a child with a Frisbee that plays with friends versus one whos been doing exercises with there parents – the one whos used the Frisbee a lot will be able to get it further more accurately than the one who has built twice the muscle with their parents.
Trouble is that what consititutes a super is extremely hard to nail down.
Someone who can levitate unassisted and/or shoot laser beams is obvious. What about the less obvious – eg. someone like Math? No super abilities as such, but extraordinarily skilled in his field. Should one go on the basis that anyone exhibiting skills and abilities outside “the norm” is considered super? Does that mean Stephen Hawking could be a super? Or Michael Jordan? No easy answers, IMO.
Yea, especially as they do not know even the approximate cause of powers. So there is unlikely to be something like a DNA test that can show a specific marker.
Easy solution. Just ban any really pretty people who have superb physiques without training required. ;-) Worst case scenario it means couch potatoes like myself would get a shot at contending.
… Or opens up the possibility of alleged supertypes trying to pose as normals by “uglying up” via plastic surgery.
I ceased to be surprised, long ago, by the lengths some people will got to in order to secure personal advantage (or just make a buck).
Anotherr thing to consider is the use of superpowers from outside the actual competition.
For example, someone in the audience subtly using telekinesis or gravity / air / temperature manipulation or mind control could really mess up a “normal” athletic competition.
That is why you can’t see Halo, Dabbler or that girl with the mystic mojo who scanned the orbs. They will be up in the blimp watching the crowd for just such cheating. Super hero versions of the randomised drug tests that are applied to current day doping cheats. You are right enough that there are always going to be folks who are not content with playing fair. Let us just hope that those who police the events are better at detecting the frauds than the perpetrators are at committing them!
Any chance we will get to see Team Kaiju?
Hmm, About the Cameo. Running for Great Brittain: Kalvin from Misfits?
wouldn’t Kaijin be a better name for a japanese team of supers since that means Strange person as opposed to Kaiju which means strange Beast
I think DaveB was referring to Gojira and Rodan and the like – truly ‘strange beasts’.
Suuure… So, team Kaiju members are called Kaijin. Everything worked out!
From the phrasing of that comment, I was assuming that they’re the team that *fights* kaiju.
Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.
Dunno why, but Max’s character is more appealing when you’ve got her hair pulled back.
I find that is true with some women. The actress who played Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 was very much like that.
Ultramarine is supposed to be a dark blue-purple. There’s also Cobalt, but that one has more blue in the red-to-blue ratio. Midnight blue is a blue-purple, along with a bit of grey I think.
My understanding is that Ultramarine and Indigo are basically the same thing, though if I had to chose, I’d say indigo might have slightly more red to it. To me, Cobalt is a dark blue but not as dark as ultramarine, and probably implies less saturation.
Whenever I have conversations about colors like this, I imagine the world has human animal hybrids in it, and when the fox people read stuff like this, they just shake their head and think, “Sure, they can tell ultramarine from indigo, but they can’t smell the difference between carayine and olebast.”
Ultramarine – Dark Blue with faintest hint of Green
Cobalt – High Saturation Blue – less Purple than Royal, less Green than Pthalo
Midnight – slightly less saturation, and much darker than Royal
(tetrachromatism: proof that not all superpowers are useful)
Apparently people have that, mostly females. Can’t recall where I read it but there’s a suggestion that’d actually help identify sickness, and so would be useful to healers. Since that’s not how medical science works at all, well, we haven’t really put any effort in checking it out, have we?
Then there’s the insects and such that see ultraviolet; it appears to work well enough for them, if not so much for us. Though I read somewhere a few oldsters with aphakia were used for WWII landings.
I have to confess that tetrachromatism is totally new to me. I was just saying to my brother, this evening, what an interesting bunch y’all are. And there you go proving the point straight away. :)
If you want to go farther than that, the mantis shrimp has six different color receptors including both UV and infrared, as well as detectors for two types of polarized light.
https://deepseanews.com/2013/03/supermantis/
Some researchers say they have over a dozen different color receptors.
science.tumblr.com/post/48036499588
Most paint color names are unique and undefined so that they can be trademarked.
you can look here for W3 standardized names: https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css_colornames.asp
BlueViolet, Purple, DarkOrchid, DarViolet and Indigo all look like good choices.
For general amusement – On the subject of just how bad a military action super slug-fest can get, I present the following link (some Man of Steel spoilers):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/21/supermans-battle-with-zod-cost-2-trillion-killed-129000-people/
Thankfully nobody yet shown in the comic is quite that powerful. It is interesting to read though.
Maxima is damn close, at the very least. I’m sure we haven’t seen anything close to her top end strength – and from the bio, I’m not sure she has.
you should check out “purple.com”
How about Byzantium/Byzantine?
Puts a new spin on the ‘Special Olympics’, no?
Umm, no
I’ll say it again… Sydney’s being remarkably blase about some of her wildest dreams coming true and her life changing in extraordinary and frightening ways.
Well, all of this has apparently taken place over a very short span of time, so maybe all the excitement all at once has worn her out?
Or she’s come to the saturation point of excitement. This can happen to anyone.
It’s all moving quickly and it hasn’t hit her yet. Plus the military aspect is throwing a wrench in her perception of it. Wait until some fan photoshops her in a Robin-esque costume with a mask.
Oooo, someone needs to do a fan-art of that :D
And it has to include a follow up where she finds the artist, and uses the Hent-orb on them (hopefully it’s a male artist :P someone other than DaveB ;))
I don’t know, I kinda like the idea of an in-universe DaveB drawing
naughtyfanart of Sydney…Man, i forgot about Zebra Girl, last time i read it, it was on keenspot or w/e that abomination was called. Thanks for popping in to remind me Joe.
I’m afraid I am going to have to call out the author on a certain issue.
This week # 970: eye shadow
Previous week #962: no eye shadow
Previous week # 955: eye shadow
Previous week # 953: no eye shadow.
At this point you’re basically just messing with us, aren’t you? It is all a plot to see if you can get OCD readers to break under the pressure. To that, all I have to say is STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! AAHHHHHH!
And another thing. The archive page count numbers don’t match the archive URL numbers. Very un-tidy.
Yeah I’m not quite sure why wordpress numbers posts like that. I think I could fix it in the back end, the problem is now the comic has been around long enough that there are permalinks coming in to the site from reviews and tvtropes etc. Changing them would also break comic-rocket and inkoutbreak so unfortunately it’s probably stuck like that.
As far as the eyeshadow goes, yeah, that’s on me. I’ll try and fix that soon.
I know you don’t have any control over what outside web companies do with naming decisions. We appreciate that the pages are there for us to enjoy. A URL by any other name would link as sweetly.
As for Arianna’s intermittent chromatic aberrations, just update her bio to say that as a teenager she was bitten by a radioactive chameleon.
It might be that it’s counting every post separately. You might test by counting up every edit, news piece, and discussion reply you’ve made between this comic post and your next comic post to see if they, plus the number from this comic post,add up to the next comic post’s number.
OCD: still not an adjective, no matter what the Twitter generation would have you believe.
OCD: a real problem, no matter what some think
Pizza: a food group, despite what nutritionists might say