Grrl Power #148 – Just say it. It’s about presence
Ok Suzie, don’t gloat.
I don’t know if it’s really even all that important that the team is under the DoD as opposed to the DoHS. I just don’t think any non-DoD department should really have the sort of firepower that Archon does. The INS doesn’t have access to Ospreys and artillery as far as I know. Besides the reason that Arianna gives, the “keeping it all in the family” reason, which I think is a decent one (at least I hope) it really does come down to presence. Soldiers are scarier than cops, and Maxima wanted to be able to take that to the field. And obviously preserve her rank and that of the other Archon members coming from other branches.
Maxima may not have meant any disrespect, but it’s hard to believe she won a lot of friends with that jab. It was a jab after all. Not at honest, hardworking police. She respects them, but she’s used to working alongside jets and tanks, and tends to qualify most police issue equipment as “cute.” Still there may be some eating of the crow ahead for her. Possibly several police charity events.
Ok, enough questions about what branch the team is under. A lot of that debate will continue mostly outside of the comic. I just need to remember to stick the occasional webpage/TV Screen/Newspaper in the background showing that sort of stuff is going on.
We’re almost past all this procedural stuff in the press conference, then it’s on to some quick introductions which should be a little more amusing and then a live fire demonstration which will test my ability to draw explosions and an unfortunate decommissioned tank. Which reminds me, I need to practice drawing tanks.
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I done a podcast! Some other webcomicers have started doing one cataloging their experiences as new… well, webcomicers, and one of the hosts is the writer/colorist of Juniper which I’ve linked before and I know via Twitter, so asked if they were interested in talking shop for a bit. If you are so inclined, check it out.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I feel like this press conference is kind of stretching on too long. Show don’t tell. Enough with the flavor text B.A. Lets get down to the E.Ps.
Yeah, the question is, how much of this information is integral to the plot, and how much of it is just Fun To Know. :P
To be fair, how much of anything that’s happened in this comic is integral to the plot. :)
There is a plot? O_o
plot
noun, verb, plot·ted, plot·ting.
noun
1.
a secret plan or scheme to accomplish some purpose, especially a hostile, unlawful, or evil purpose ;)
That was sarchasm, and you fell right in it
The proof is right there. Dave is planning something hostile, unlawful, or evil. Probably to the Show Don’t Tell impatient crowd. Dave you magnificent bastard. :D
Hope you are not lumping me in with that lot, so far, don’t believe have ever been disapointed with anything about this comic (some of the readers on the other hand… :P)
Nah, I was just taking what you said and making a really cheesy joke about the people that post just to complain about how long this is taking. Probably involving a wedge of cheese, some chipmunks, a shrine to Nurgle, and Lawrence Welk music
was it a plot hole?
I disagree the pacing is fine. This is a scene and will make more sense when read as a book. Dave is kind enough to share his work for free. Stop whining.
Keep up the good work Dave, ignore the detractors.
Let Dave tell his story his way, please.
Criticism is an important part of any creative work, if we don’t offer it, improvement can’t me made.
To me, “Criticism” is merely nay-saying, without any constructive aspect. When I want to be helpful, I try to “Critique”. If something doesn’t “work” for me, I need to explain WHY NOT, & (if possible) offer a different way to get the same result. The Artist can then judge for (him/her)-self whether this is something they can either agree upon or ignore.
I can definitely see the point of this segment being long. But frankly, I’m enjoying the hell out of it! I love the interplay. I love the filling in of the history of ARCHON. But then, I like to read books … books which don’t have pictures. Though, I do like comics too. I think the pace is moving along fine for me. But, that’s just the opinion of one old man.
Likewise. This is a world that is our own in most ways – and, in a few extremely specific ways, totally different. An occasional infodump for the reader’s benefit is fine by me, and much more preferable over random fighting and destruction (but, with Sydney now on the team, I do expect to see a fair bit of that last in the future ;) ).
I don’t think the Coast Guard has anything heavier than .50 MGs. A quick search doesn’t reveal what aircraft the DEA has, much less how they are armed.
Coast Guard has armed warships with 5 inch cannons and missiles.
thats 5 inch in diameter and not length correct? Cuz otherwise I’ll just have to laugh at them if i ever see them.
Yes it’s a 5 inch diameter projectile. Turret mounted and capable of firing 60 rounds per min.
Compare that with the USS Missouri: Triple-mounted SIXTEEN inch cannons capable of accurately firing over the horizon…But also consider that the Coast Guard isn’t supposed to be equipped for the equivalent of front-line naval battles.
ah yes – the point-and-laugh technique – bane of lust-struck males around the world…
A 5-inch long gun is called a pistol which is pretty useless unless you are only a few feet away.
50 meter = few feet? first I heard of that math.
compared to the I think 300 meters of a M-16A2?
I’ll take the 600 meters of my Enfield No 4 Mk 2.
and I’ll take bushmaster 25mm over 3000 meters for the block tribeck.
As opposed to a 5-inch diameter gun mounted on a World War 2 U.S. destroyer. Range: not quite the horizon (16 km).
Now you’re getting into some juicy information. I really get into the logistical side of running an organization like Archon. Manpower, support, R.R.S.Ts, and whatnot.
Of course all my friends are bored to tears by stuff like that. They’d rather get into the fight right off the bat, than deal with the mundane stuff going on around HQ. I swear they’re a bunch of munchkins.
I’m really enjoying the press conference.
same here im learning stuff (its not happening that often with me)
do you notice how Max is glancing off to her right (towards Arianna) when she’s saying that there’s no disrespect going on for the cops… hmm… kinda almost like she realized that she overstepped the line of OK vs Insult in the previous panel, and is trying to get back on A’s good side by adding in points about the budget, and that the cops aren’t equipped like us AND SHOULDN’T BE…
and YES, that is SOOOO, a Charlie Brown “whaaa, waaa, whaaa” guy talking back on the Mayor’s phone…
Gah… her LEFT… OUR Right…
Arianna was probably thumbing her dog training clicker while Max was talking. “No no no… bad Colonel!”
Would Max even notice it? Really, the training collar needs to be on Sydney.
I don’t think Max would care to much on which one of Arianna’s sides she is.
The Metropolis P.D. Special Crimes Unit never seemed to have much of a budget problem despite packing enough firepower to take on invasions from Apokolips, but then that iteration of the DCU has had publically operating supers since the 1930s.
I believe they are being funded by Lexcorp, partially as a PR move, partially as a way to test weapons in a public-friendly fashion.
Maxima invokes a .38 Special revolver? Really? The last time those were commonplace among the police was the 1980’s, and even as far back as the sixties many departments were starting to upgrade to larger calibers or semi-automatics. Today the most common police weapon is a .40 S&W caliber Glock semi-automatic pistol.
And yes I am a gun nut.
That’s good to know, but if you say “.38 Special” I think most people think “cop” (At least people over the age of 30?) but if you drop “.40 S&W caliber Glock semi-auto” on them, they’re going to think “commando” or something.
When was the last time the cops used a 0.38 revolver? Glocks now. Unless they carry hand cannons like a 0.44 magnum or 0.454 Casuall on them.
Rail Guns are still secret so why would they mention them unless it is now standard for the military. Talk about fire power!
You’re assuming that in a world with supers, including super geniuses like Dabbler, superior power systems, such as room-temperature superconducting supercapacitors and “pocket”, (merely room sized) fusion reactors (that WORK!) aren’t available to a limited market.
Rail guns aren’t secret, if they were secret we wouldn’t know about them.
Functioning rail-guns in our arsenal would be secret. That is the difference. Familiarity with the concept is not proof of existence in an arsenal. There is still speculation about several military craft like the SR-91 are not shown to exist yet even if they do in secret.
scientists have published building a rail gun system but it was so large it would be the only weapon on a full sized U.S. battleship and impossible to change elevation relative to the hull the energy would be too high for reasonably repeated fire add the shifting of waves and targeting is worthless. the round was smaller than a standard 9mm fired into concrete wall in front of rock in a subterranean facility for “research into space launches” report was over a year ago.
rail guns aren’t common tech in our or GP world, and I believe few militaries in GP (let alone our own) have a reliable supply of them as the image is in either max’s or halo’s head.
Like DaveB said: mention a .38 Special and most will picture a cop (even if he is dressed from the ’30’s), mention a Glock and most (those who even know what it is) will be picturing a soldier
Actually, I picture a gangbanger.
That word, it may not conjure the same image in some peoples’ minds as you intended (just saying, there be sexual deviants out there, and some of them are truly Out There!)
Agreed, as regards the general US watching public, who the conference is addressing. Maxima probably does not care that the ‘gun nuts’ of the world will get all twitchy about the subtleties, as it provides a diversion for them to discuss an unimportant detail. Whereas most of the rest of the world, who are also a target of the press conference, will neither know nor be concerned what calibre guns the US cops carry. Aside from international criminals and terrorists, and her message to them is that they will have bigger issues to deal with if they mess with the US now.
I think it is an age thing, and cutoff may be closer to 40 than 30. Once upon a time saying a “.38” was the synonym for a handgun, today it is a “Glock”. (Funny thing, even though the FBI switched over to Glocks as standard issue back in the 1990’s, the U.S. military still issues the M-9 pistol which is made by Beretta)
So you have a weapon that is not any more usefull against a rampaging 10 meter robot, but at the same time is harder mentally link to “Default Police Weapon” and “definitely useless against 10 meter robots” for average persons (who are not gun nuts).
The whole point is to demonstrate that police are not armed with weapons which are suitable to taking down giant robots. Which it does just fine.
What is the evidence that Glock is harder to associate with a standard police weapon than .38 Special? That might be the case for someone older than 35, but I think not in general.
I was just struck by the oddity of Maxima making such an antiquated comment. Maybe she is actually much older than she seems.
I am not even thirty, but I can make the jump:
.38 special -> 6 shoot revolver -> classical police weapon for beatcops and detectives in the movies. Without knowing what “.38 special” even means (propably something about calliber).
Hear in Qld. we issue 9mm Glocks, there are still a few .38’s around (mostly in storage) because their isn’t enough in the budget to re-qualify all Members (our cops are “Members of the Police Service” not part of the Police Force, but the current State Government, Police Union and Senior Members of the Service are pushing to change the name back to a Police Force) every year let alone retire weapons that still work. heck some Police stations are being bulldozed then the land sold and the staff relocated to district Watch & Courthouses just so we can afford to keep Members wages inline with the cost of living increase. five years on from the commitment to have all police certified on Pepper Spray within 12 months not all previously serving officers have completed the training and not all those since recruited and those trained have bean re-certified, as for universal Taser training well it’s three years on from the minsters announcement and it looks to be going in the same direction as pepper spray.
Heck their are D’s with 20+ years on the job who only draw their weapons to log them in to the Gun Safe at the end of shift.
those are the ones that you should be thankful for. having to draw or use a weapon is not a admirable thing in police action, peaceful resolution of even military conflicts is considered the greatest victory a soldier can see. there is a saying the best soldier is the one tilling the farm.
I carry a .38 snubby as my self defense gun. Of course sometimes I carry a .455 instead. (.455 Webley Mk VI that is)
Boy am I glad that I live in a country where it is not considered necessary to carry a ‘self-defence’ gun. Living without fear really does improve the quality of life.
It’s not necessary to carry. I do so because I refuse to be a victim. Even where you live the police cannot respond in the few seconds it would take for a thug to beat you senseless.
Personally, I prefer the risk of getting beaten up to that of being shot. The former has a far greater chance of me surviving than the latter.
But, I was only practising my bad habit of teasing Americans, I know y’all can get tetchy about that constitutional right. Quirky though it may be, given that the most likely person to get killed or wounded by it is yourself or one of your loved ones. However, as you are a Grrl Power reader, doubtless you are savvy enough to minimise that risk appropriately, so I am not having a personal dig at you.
I just find it really sad that my American friends, and the media celebrities I love, suffer an extra risk in the same order of magnitude as being killed in traffic or by heart attack. And I do not say it lightly, as a very close friend of mine lost a member of her family, to his own gun, earlier this year. Which hit her hard. But, other than that, it is none of my business. Y’all are only shooting Americans, and, bitterly grim reality though it is, the planet is overpopulated. So that is doing the world a favour, in an extremely dark way.
Every nation and cultural group has at least one special quirk that outsiders consider to be totally beyond the realm of logic.
is that a dig at collecting princesses?
Nope.
Yeah. Cause having a gun automatically means you are going to get shot. As opposed to having it stops someone from attacking you and not having to either shoot them or get beaten up. As if fists aren’t fatal, or a curb stomp. I know of a few places I could hit you, once, that will kill you. Easier then trying to place a bullet in the right spot to do the same. Course, I could also stab you with any knife in my kitchen, a pointy stick, or bludgeon you with a rock.
Funny thing is. The jurisdictions that have the strictest gun control, have the highest crime rates since the criminals, who are all still armed, know no one is able to defend themselves from them. Lotta other countries that don’t allow their citizens to be armed, spend their time killing them themselves. Having a gun doesn’t mean you have to use it. Any more then putting on a seatbelt means you are going to roll your car.
The right to bear arms is an important part of the national sense of identity of Americans, and you get very emotive over the issue as it is such a contentious point. So I will just make the one post and then steer clear of commenting any more on the controversial political issue. After all, how you choose to live, or not, is up to you. But if you want to make an informed decision about such matters it is best to separate the emotive side from the facts.
For instance the crux of your argument is “I want to carry a gun because it makes me feel safer”. Which is purely an emotive argument. The supporting facts you provide are the smoke and mirror misdirections which have been given to you as propaganda. I have seen a few of the comparisons of international crime rates which have been touted as corroborating that stance. And, when you examine them and look up the sources that the figures came from you find that they are incompatible.
As each country has vastly different criteria for what constitutes a “crime.” International comparisons of crime rates are therefore not like-for-like and as such are unreliable if attempting to make comparisons directly. Where one country might only include serious crimes in their figures, another might include trivial ones, which may not even be considered a crime in other countries. Plus some countries encourage the reporting of crimes. For instance the UK makes efforts to ensure that every domestic incident (eg verbal abuse or threats) is recorded as a crime. Massively inflating their figures compared to others, whereas some nations either do not even track such incidents or have very poor methods in doing so.
Therefore the safer statistic to look at is the number of deaths due to guns. That is much less subjective and gives a fairly clear cut comparison. If you sort that list by the annual number of deaths, you find that the US is 11th in the world with 10.3 per 100,000 population.
Whereas the U.K. is something like 57th on the list, with 0.25. Clearly showing that although criminals are capable of obtaining guns in the UK, in general, they do not have the need to do so. As British citizens and beat police to not carry guns, there is no need for the criminals to also carry guns in an ever-escalating arms war. If you are going to get the same amount of money from robbing a till by threatening with a bat or knife, why risk the much longer jail sentence for doing the same with a gun? Either way, the guy behind the till is just going to give you the money rather than risk a beating or getting shot.
Underneath that table is a link to the number of homicides per country. If, as you contend, the criminals are simply using martial arts, street-fighting techniques and pointy sticks to kill people instead of guns, then the rates should be comparable. Whereas it shows that the US has 4.8 homicides per 100,000 compared to 1.2 for the United Kingdom.
Britain’s rate is hardly something to be proud of, but it does show that, by comparison, the right for citizens to carry guns does not reduce the chance of them being murdered. In fact, if you use these figures in isolation it would imply the reverse. Although a highly-trained soldier will have no problem killing bare-handed, it is a lot easier for an average person to kill with a gun than otherwise.
And that is only dealing with purposeful killings. When was the last time you heard of somebody accidentally killing themselves with a punch? But accidental gun deaths are an every-day occurrence. In countries where guns are commonly available, anyhow. Likewise, attempted suicides have a lower success rate in countries where people need to improvise, rather than using their purpose-built killing device. If somebody finds you with a slit wrist, there may be a chance to save you. Which they can’t do if they have to scrape your brains off the ceiling.
World-wide, people have a one-in-three chance of suffering mental illness during their life. If you remove late-life dementia from the figures you find the biggest remaining category is depression. Which, fortunately, tends to be both temporary and treatable. If the person does not kill themselves. That is one of the reasons why every gun owner is at risk from their own weapon. You do not know if you will be one of the unlucky folks who suffers from chronic depression, at some point in your life. It only takes a moment to make the decision to kill yourself, and if you have a gun you can do so without hesitation. Whereas having to go buy sleeping pills, or make your way to a bridge to jump off, it gives you a while to reflect and hopefully change your mind.
As regards your opening comment, of course owning a gun does not automatically mean you will get shot by it. However compare the chances. Mine is 0%, do you know what yours is?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not having a go at your constitutional rights. Nor am I trying a “my country is better than yours”, as I know that Britain has just as many flaws in it’s criminal justice system as the US. Just in different ways. All I would hope, almost certainly in vain, is that you re-consider whether that constitutional right is worth the huge numbers of Americans dying for it every year? But if you think it is, then fine, that is your call to make, not mine.
And apologies for posting on a political issue. It just stirred a cord in me.
I’m still laughing about “I dare you….to club this seal.”
Hmmm, funny picture for Dave to sketch…. A scene of future britain……where everyone is running around talking all “innit innit innit?” “innit innit!” like frelling pokemon. It’s really just the logical conclusion.
Future not required. That is common enough today, depending on where you go. Not everywhere, mind. Of course, it used to be said that no Englishman could open his mouth without offending some other Englishman. Simply because of the wide variety of accents. And the fact that there is likely to be at least one other faction of society which does not like the one you use.
Less of an issue nowadays though. The more that people get exposed to what used to be “strange” sounding accents, through TV and radio, the less alienated they feel by them when heard in person. Likewise with the transatlantic gap. Mind you, with the frequency that things jump the gap, in both directions, perhaps it might be worth Dave experimenting with “innit” catching on in the US. ;-)
As long as it sticks to meaning “isn’t it” as opposed to every single other frelling contraction in existence…… Is it considered polite to reply to folks who use it like that with a steel toe to the head? It should be.
In those circles I believe it is considered appropriate etiquette.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovi7uQbtKas
Although it is sensible to disable comments on that video, as much of YouTube’s comments descend into a hateful slanging match, it is a shame that the ratings were also disabled. Given that I think that the video would end up with a massive ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down. I certainly tried to show my approval, as I wholeheartedly approved of Stephen Fry’s sentiments there.
Although, I do not think he would endorse somebody’s use of language when it was degraded to constant use of “innit”, rather than something interesting or innovative. Or even just varied. Continuously re-suing a single word* in every other sentence being a linguistic trait which can cause irritation in any listener who becomes aware of it. If they, like Stephen, care about language at all.
* Excepting the common words that need to appear often in constructing any basic sentence, of course.
I’m not sure how any of my videos get set to anything, actually. I’ve never done anything other than default really
whoops, misread that as a different link…sorry
I’m never quite sure how seriously to take it when people put for the “language evolves” argument. A very close friend who laughs off her daughter’s deliberate use of “funner” (saying “communication occurred – I understood what she was trying to convey”) will go into paroxysms of anger if when I counter with “well I guess I’m just more sensitive about it than you’re”
Some countries have tried to control language to keep them frozen in time. For instance South Africa with Africans and France with French. And they fail laughably. Our societies are in a constant state of flux and innovation. Every profession, hobby, section of society and specialists of all sorts require “buzz” words to make their communication more effective.
Without which you may need a sentence or two, instead of the one word. The sheer volume of such terms rapidly overwhelm the petty committees charged with keeping the language ‘pure’. And they end up with a backlog of years, even just trying to deal with new and changing mainstream words. Let alone the fact that citizenry ignore public bodies who have the audacity to tell them what words they may and may not use!
Yup just look at how the brits have warped the american language.
:-D
I think your friend’s daughter has the funnest way of talking by the way. ;-)
Ugh – wrap it in Burberry pattern and call it Chav-o-palooza…
NJPD? What city/town is NJ? The New Jersey State Police is abbreviated NJSP. While they do have a tactical unit available, even that would be overwhelmed by a giant metal monster shooting force beams. Maybe they can do crowd control?
NJPD badge
Apply to join at New Jersey Police Department (NJPD) recruitment.
Hate to say it, but neither of those links represent an actual New Jersey Police Department. The former is a picture of a sticker/icon saying that the owner of a member of the Honor Legion of Police Departments for the State of New Jersey. The latter is from a police exam prep course company and not from any New Jersey Police organization.
Rats. Was trying to save Dave from feeling the need to correct stuff.
Oh man I’m an idiot. It was originally going to be NYPD, but then I decided to make the store the Quick Stop, so I changed it to NJPD, forgetting that New York is a city as well as a state.
Leonardo, the town that shop is actually in, doesn’t even have a police department, so it would need to either be state police or from other towns nearby. The store has been shut down in this world mind. Not that it matters, given a fictional setting and world, albeit drawn from ours. One funny thing about the town is that half the list of famous inhabitants are fictitious individuals.
White!
Knuckled!
Exposition!
XXXCITEMENT!!!
Okay, as a non-US person it took me far too long to realise that DoHS was not the Department of Health and Safety. I was all like, “Of course they’d be with the DoD! Why the hell would anyone be under the department of health and safety?!”
And then I came back a day later and was smacked around the face with the soggy salmon of my own stupidity.
Yup, they definitely belong with the Department of Human Services. Social workers need bigger guns.
welcome to G.A.P. where you will, no not get cool clothes for back to school……. learn how to spot and translate or S.A.T. an abbreviated government reference like H.o.C. or S.P.C. no not the military rank standard pay chart. I can’t work with these L.D.F.s*
* (language deficient fools)
An employment councillor told me of a time she worked with a bunch of people who were being laid off from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, a part of the federal government. Most of the people that she was working with (about 50 or so) had been doing R&D. The employment councillor asked them what kind of research and development they could be doing in the immigration department, only to be told that for them R&D meant Recoveries and Deportations; these are the people that make sure you leave the country after the court says you are no longer allowed to be here.
NO!!! Social Workers are given far too many rights as is. They can come into your home without a warrant as denying them entry is grounds for taking your children. They can twist your arm into providing special care that only exists in the minds of the school system. They should all wear brown shirts and armbands to get the outside to match the inner core. Whew…
An Yorp thought Americans were touchy on gun control. Social Worker control rates way higher.
(And even Americans aren’t allowed to shoot ’em)
One other minor point is that in Florida at least with the 10,20,life law in effect, shooting a criminal breaking into your home invokes a 10 yr min, hitting him is 20 and killing him is life –now consider: By using the gun, you become an accessory of the crime itself because you caused the gun to fire while a crime was committed. Weee. Dumocracy at its best. Why not just hand out confiscated pot (punish the growers not the smokers) and cut out the middleman?
Bonus points for the Quick Stop in panel 4!
We all know ay & Silent Bob will survive the mech assault and end up with ladies on a deserted island… and maybe a monkey.
Kevin Smith is cool enough that he is probably already a Grrl Power reader. One of the few directors savvy enough to potentially be able to do a Grrl Power movie. At least his writing for Jay shows that he would not have an issue with creative language.
With Sydney’s creative use of language?
Heh, I suspect that you have not seen Jay and Silent Bob in action? Jay has quite… colourful dialogue. I can recommend the film Dogma. With cautions about strong language (stronger but not as imaginative as Sydney’s) and anyone sensitive about religion (it plays with contradictions in it, but does not attack it).
In addition to being a director and actor (he plays Silent Bob), Kevin Smith is a writer. Being responsible for Jay’s dialogue. In particular he is skilled at adapting his writing to best suit the resources available. For instance, tailoring the script to best take advantage of the actor’s capabilities.
Adapting a story from one medium to another always requires re-writing for it to suit the new medium. Personally, I think he would do justice to the adaptation, as he would not shy away from portraying Sydney ‘as is’ rather than sanitising her for Hollywood sensibility.
Oh, one other reason he would have insight is that he is a comic store owner
himself.
Would totally love to see Sydney and Jay meet up, preferably on a ‘News’ item, just to see the poor censor person have a nervous breakdown >:b
“The words, so so many bad words! The doctors, they say I will never be able to use a keyboard again! And the words! They never stop!!! I still hear them! They. Never. STOP!!”
Can we get panel 3’s shirt in mass production to send to People Eating Tasty Animals?
Why? Main reason any seals are clubbed is most certainly NOT for eating… :-P
Main reason seals get clubbed is Europeans. They want the furs. Bout the only people that buy them. Sure some people eat the meat. But that gotta be a limited market too. I find it hilariously hypocritical of the to piously condemn the seal hunt when they are the almost exclusive destination market for it.
Boston was very accomading to their area being “locked down” under martial law for hours on end. Only when it was lifted were the culprits found. And they tried to kill one but failed.
Accommodating is the word.
Yup. A successful exercise in getting people to accept the violation of their rights and to acclimate them to how they will be treated under a police state once all the baby steps are taken.
I love how the mayor is Big Mike, the store manager from “Chuck”.
Yeah, first thought here as well, but it’s not Big Mike, it’s Cuba Gooding Jnr. as seen in “Jerry Maguire“
Either way, DOD or DOHS or any other alphabet soup agency, it’s all smoke-blowing. No matter where you put them it boils down to the government making its own little army of conscripted, if not to say DRAFTED, super humans.
And the little crack about the NSA is not comforting, considering the unconstitutional shenanigans they’ve been up to of late.
I think you need to check your definition of both those terms. Given that no one has been forced to join Arc or even coerced into doing so. The only restriction is that private citizens cannot go around taking the law into their own hands. Which has nothing to do with either conscription or the draft.
RH … you need to relax. Dave may be using Real Life groups and agencies, but how they’ll do things will be how he perceives then fitting into the world. I personally like the fact he’s using them, as it makes the world more believable.
Dude, you really need to have a cookie, or do some re-reading, because that is NOT what is going on.
How on earth do you conscript someone like Maxima, Anvil, or even Halo? You can’t rely on the current cast of Archon, none of them have the personality to force someone to join them. So what you’re limited to is pretty pretty pleases to get what you want. You can’t force someone with super powers to do what you wish.
Economics will always beat an ultimatum to bring people on board.
I’m still going with what our intrepid public relations lawyer has said: you can do whatever you want, but if you want to bust crime with your powers, you have to join Archon.
Harem could probably convince the average guy, and Dabbler could empty your standard college campus of male (okay and some female) military building material with a few shakes and a smile –let alone the Porn Aura…
I think he was talking about the “transfer” from the military effect that anyone who volunteered for military service and suddenly find themselves in ARC once identified as having “powers”. Be a real shame to be a trained seal and find you have aquatic powers –and then get transferred to a land bound service…
Yea one day you are a highly trained seal, the next you find yourself in the circus balancing a ball on your nose.
They aren’t being drafted.
Course, when you do have a drafted army, you have the hoi poloi having their own kids sent to war too. Not just those who volunteer, for their various reasons. Said hoi poloi might think harder about sending their own into the meat grinders. Sure don’t see any evidence they do now. What with all the mulling going on about throwing more into the grinder in Syria. To which I say, Fuck That.
There not Drafted they can choose not to enlist and live out relatively normal lives or seek commercial options for the use of there powers. if they want a life of public service using there powers but don’t want to become Para-Military Police there is the Fire Department, Ambulance or Rescue Services to choose from, they will still be advancing the public good (for a crappy wage) just not fighting crime.
But something tells me many federal agencies (especially those with parts in or totally in the Covert Community) won’t give up there supers already in service (at least not all of them), and what about Supers in State & Local Law Enforcement that don’t want to go Archon? (you ain’t a Vigilante if you are a sworn officer) I expect Staties and LEO’s to be offered an opportunity to have there Supers given “Liaison & Joint Operations” Training at Archons expense just so Archon can pouch them when they show up for training, failing that when they go home they have a compatible skill set should they ever have to work with Archon
This has been discussed slightly. The best way to keep your supers on board is economics. Now of course a PD can’t afford the same salaries that the feds can offer. That’s when you use incentives. Many people don’t want to just leave their home area to go somewhere they don’t really know. So you offer them good pay and throw something in like a house. Maybe even make a day in their name.
That way they have some major incentives to stay home. Good pay, secure housing, and stroking the ego get surprisingly good results. They say money is the root of all evil, but mercenary desires really aren’t all that evil.
Doubtless you are right about the covert side (If they have any, remember that super heroes are very rare in this setting, so not all will). It does depend on how many of those were officially pulled over, quietly, and behind the scenes, into Arc Dark. The same arguments for concentrating your extraordinary assets into a pool where they can multiply their effectiveness by co-operation applies to security services as it does to policing/the military. With the single exception of compartmentalisation increasing the secrecy of agencies.
But inter-agency rivalry may interfere with that, true enough. For the public agencies though, if they do not comply with the act, then they will be facing legal action. Unless they successfully argue for an exemption due to extraordinary circumstances.
Heck I can see some Leftie or Counter-Federalist Conservative Jurno asking “What if someone doesn’t want to get Drafted in to your Little Super Army?” Arianna can say “just go join the Fire or Rescue Services if your civicily minded and don’t want to join Archon, it’s a free country and it’s your choice”
an other reporter can ask “What if your already a Cop and find out you have Powers but don’t want to join Archon?”
i think you guys are taking this a bit too far… if you are ALREADY a COP… then your aren’t a VIGILANTE (yes, I’m ignoring the fact that you can be a cop during the day and a vigilante at night, but that is a totally different topic, i think you get my point)… and THAT WAS the point of Arianna saying what she did. before this, if you wanted to fight crime the “right” way you would already have joined some kind of law enforcement agency, you may have needed/wanted to hide the existence of your powers, but you would have been OK… anything else, by definition, would have been as a vigilante, which is already illegal… now that the Gov is acknowledging the existence of Supers, they are, yes, i’ll admit it, trying to get the upper hand with respect to other countries and their Supers by getting them under one roof, so to speak, but that isn’t FORCING them to join Archon, all that is saying is that the Gov recognizes that there is a stereotypical mindset that the public has when it comes to super-powers… either you are a good guy, or a super villain… and they want to keep the newly discovered supers, or those people that are somewhat neutral, away from that middle ground of vigilantism… so they make it just as illegal as for a non-super. and if you think about it, when was the last time you heard about a “REAL” vigilante in the news? you hear about mass-murderers, or serial killers and cops that take them down, etc… but I’ve never heard of anything about an actual real-life vigilante… I’m not saying they don’t exist, just that i haven’t heard of any… SO… as it goes for this comic, yeah, i don’t think that there will be many problems with supers that are already in LEA’s. i think that what will happen is something like Drop Bear said… that they can stay where they’re at job-wise, and get training via Archon for the slight inconvenience of being “on-call” if their specific talents are needed elsewhere…
Look up Phoenix Jones. They call him a Real Life Superhero, but often the word vigilante gets thrown about. Dude runs around hitting people in the face and spraying them with pepper spray because they might be breaking the law. He’s the kind of person that Archon is set up to put down.
If he hasn’t been deputised by any form of LEA, then who is he to decide if someone is breaking the law or not, let alone dealing out punishment?
If he is pepper-spraying complete strangers because they might be breaking a law, he is nothing more than a vigilante and should be arrested and jailed for assault with a deadly weapon (what is going to happen when he sprays someone with an alergy to whatever is in the spray?)
The whole Real Life Super Heroes movement is a crap shoot. Some are doing it to be masked vigilantes. They read too many comics or something. Some just go to schools and talk about gun violence, gangs, drugs, and try to convince kids that this is all bad stuff, despite some of the costumes looking like they were designed by someone on drugs. Some of them record violent crime and give the evidence to the cops for later use. Remember, that whole warrant thing only counts for people that have been deputized and are officially working for the police. Private citizens do not need them.
Frankly it’s bozos like Phoenix Jones that concern me. They’re going to kill someone one day, or get themselves or someone inspired by them killed. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want some kid in hockey pads killed because he wanted to follow in my footsteps and got nailed.
If you’re already a cop and have powers, they’d probably want to review your situation on a case by case basis. Being a bulletproof cop is fine. Being one that can arc lightning through stone may require at least the pretense of oversight, but you’re right, they’re trying to prevent a proliferation of costumed vigilantes.
The odds of there being a person with undiscovered super powers in one particular profession are fairly low. But for the odd individual who did find themselves in those circumstances, then they clearly are not breaking the law, being unaware of their potential until the powers manifest. Once they do then would they choose to remain a small timer on regular cop pay and perks or be promoted to the big league with better salary, perks etc?
Personal circumstances might well end up with them wanting to stay in their familiar environment, though, so they can ask to be exempted. Which as DaveB has said is likely to happen for someone who is just, for example, bullet-proof. Or if their powers had no bearing on their job in the police force.
But, consider the massive harm to the legal justice system if a cop with subtle powers chose to ignore the act and continue operating in the police. Should he get found out later, to be a telepath, for example, just how many civil rights would he have been violating in the meanwhile? Every conviction in any case that he was involved in, even in the slightest capacity, would be subject to being overturned. And the harm to the credibility of the force would be massive. With privacy campaigns screaming about police invasion of people’s minds. Which would be the ultimate manifestation of a police state and Big Brother society.
Need to consider the likelihood of one’s newly-acquired superpowers actually being compatible with personality, lifestyle and/or chosen career path. If there is a significant degree of psychological basis (or bias) for power types, then this may be less of a problem. If power acquisition is more variable than that (which seems likely), then things COULD get weird(er).
For example, ‘Bulletproof’ would be dang useful to a combat soldier, less so to someone who avoids all conflict as much as possible. ‘Flight’ is a rather awesome power but, for someone mortally afraid of heights, would get strange (and kind of sad – visions of a dude who WON’T travel more than two or three feet above the ground at any time). IF, of course, this assumes such people even discover that they have these powers.
Dave, https://www.3mm-crisisstrike.com/ has a bunch of explosions you can use in stock for free! Check it out ;-).
I just told my bro about the Seal shirt and he started laughing and agreed it would be something a RL Navy SEAL might wear off duty.
Have a happy 4th Dave.
I’ll have to do a larger version.
As in a real t-shirt design?
Quite a few places can screenprint an image onto a shirt if you bring them a reference pic.
Yeah I need to start getting into the merch side of stuff. I’ll see if I can dual purpose it as a vote incentive too. :)
You might want to look at putting them on Amazon, rather than just this website, as you reach the mainstream buying public that way. Your existing “always expect ninjas” t-shirt is good, but I personally think the silhouette version looses some of the comic impact of your original art. Contextually people do not need to recognise her as a specific character in order for it to appeal, as the art does that on it’s own. What they will see is a girl with attitude. Which appeals to folks. Combined with the comic pose, and caption and you have a winner.
Just make sure that whoever you go through to produce the products can handle the capacity if it takes off and demand is more than you expect. I think that your merchandising would succeed far better than print-on-demand can keep up with economically. Don’t forget to put the website address on the label, or somewhere discrete, to potentially get them as readers too. Plus consider other products as well, such as mugs.
I’m loving all this political talk. Although I can’t wait for the live fire demonstration! We’ll finally get to see what the Pew Pew Orb’s beam looks like.
Is seal guy the same guy from #933?
I am guessing you have a typo there, as we are only up to #148, on this comic. Clearly it isn’t #93. Do you mean the sailor in #33? If so, he does not look similar to me, other than hair colour.
Ahh, though it took me ages to get there, figured out that you meant the guy in panel 6 here. For info the # numbers in the archives do not match the URL suffix, hence my confusion.
To answer your question though:
Dunno. Well spotted, it looks possible.
Yup.
They are not the same guy? Maybe he was staked out at the bank to make sure things went the way they should (but no one anticipated Sydney, or the mouth attached to her :P)
2 days later, and I realize that I could have made a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff reference about that last panel.
The official T.L.A. for the Department of Homeland Security is DHS, not DoHS. It’s DOD, not DoD. Also, the Coast Guard has 76 mm Oto-Melara cannon mounted on the 378′ & 270′ cutters. The new National Security Cutters have 57 mm cannon as their main armament, and many cutters, as well as the 110′ patrol boats, mount 25 mm chain guns. Hell, the even fired a Harpoon missile from a 378 once. HQ decided we couldn’t afford to repaint half the cutter after every time they fire one off.
You’re correct about DHS being the correct acronym for Homeland Security. For Defense, both DOD and DoD are considered correct.
The problem is that DHS also means department of human services…..and it was around first.
Actually, that is “Health and Human Services” – HHS
https://www.hhs.gov/
I greatly enjoy this storyline, because so far it has covered things the way I feel a government should address superheroes. The vigilante thing has always bothered, but I guess it must grow out of the silly “authority=bad” thing most of us Americans seem to suffer under.
I went another way for my Bystander and Divine Blood settings.
In Bystander, while “peaks” are public, they’re not really seen as that much more powerful. There might be several thousand in Bystander-US, but its still a drop in the bucket. The most powerful 30%-40% are actually kept more or less hidden from the public eye. Publicly, the idea of superheroes is laughable and most “peaks” have rather mundane jobs. The main character is a librarian for example, as a publicly known ex-con.
In Divine Blood, psychics are known to most governments, non-humans known to a handful of governments and Gods and Demons known to a handful of families. Despite this, the population of psychics and non-humans is humongous.
https://fav.me/d61spkp
As said in the description on that DA link. Divine Blood supers go unnoticed to the public for the fact that the vast majority of them living boring lives and are about as much use in a fight as Sue up there is. Using the rating system from the Grrl Power cast list above, most living sentients would rank as a threat of 1 or 2 regardless of what their potential power is. This includes the Gods and Demons, most of whom are civies, with soldiers becoming less common all the time as they retire to other pursuits. That said, there are also people in DB that go past what I perceive Maxima to be at so far…though that is a limited perception.
I was thinking today…
Just when exactly is Joel going to find out about all this? Is going to be watching this on TV and be like “Oh THAT’S why Sydney hasn’t come back from the bank in the last four hours!”
(Did we see anything with him earlier and I just forgot about it?)
I can fairly imagine that he doesn’t get any info that soon.
Then Sydney comes back into the store and he doesn’t believe her story.
So, she wordlessly turns on the next TV, where the whole interview is being repeated on loop endlessly.
My own guess is that there would be people who, upon recognizing Sydney on TV (and YouTube), would contact Joel or go to the store to find out what is going on. Of course, poor Joel doesn’t have an answer.
Does he ever with regards to Sydney?
Probably not.
He is totally unphased by Sydney’s quirkiness, and that mobile phone conversation shows him as being fairly unsurprised by any strangeness that may result in her vicinity. So far, anyhow – the current sequence of events is probably going to set new standards for him.
Yeah, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see if she shows up in the press conference. Arianna would probably flip if Sydney got anywhere near a camera during all of this.
News cameras wander, especially if all they have to record otherwise is someone making a speech. So I am dang sure that there would be footage of the assorted weirdoes (including Sydney) arranged near Mac and Arianna.
It’s only a matter of time before Sydney, Harem and/or Dabbler cause more court martials than Tailhook, isn’t it.
I’m glad that Grrl Power has broken into and kept the number 2 spot on the Top Web Comics list. Let us hope that we can keep it in that position, as time progresses to favour the multiple-days-per-week updating comics.
Since there was a discussion about Thorium reactors a few pages back, I though I’d link this:
https://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/07/02/thorium-power/
Skeptoid, BTW, is a great resource for debunking nonsense. I’ve listened to the podcast from the beginning.
Thanks for the post. I had not heard about that reactor being constructed. I’m glad that they are expanding the use of thorium reactors and that they have found a way to use up waste plutonium. The fact that they can use it in conventional reactors is good on one hand but bad on another. The good being that it allows immediate conversion. The bad being that it only peripherally brings us closer to the use of safer and more effective liquid thorium.
I watched a fairly good* made for TV movie, just the other day, which showed the all-too realistic scenario of loosing power to a nuclear reactor, which thereby threatens imminent nuclear meltdown. There are so many ways that power to a reactor can be lost that the actual means really does not matter. The only important fact being that conventional reactors require power and the continual pumping of water for coolant or there will be a meltdown.
The plutonium/thorium reactor they are building, being a solid fuel conventional variety, will still suffer from this inherent risk. Whereas liquid fuel thorium reactors only require electric power to continue reaction, as soon as it is lost, the reactor stops working and returns to a non-volatile state. Good for humanity, but bad for disaster movie makers.
“Oh no, we have lost control of the nuclear plant!”
“Oh, so the lights will go out until we can get around to repairing it.”
*Tumbleweed rolls by for one hour twenty minutes…*
Long term, if the tree-huggers of the world win and we abandon conventional reactors and cease to produce materials useful for nuclear weapons (ok totally unrealistic fantasy) we would not even need to have plutonium to run thorium reactors of any sort. As the waste they produce themselves can be used to used to initiate nuclear reaction in new thorium reactors (in addition to sustaining it in the producing reactor).
* Despite the title of Atomic Twister.
I’m just gonna sit here and ponder how norway has a company called THOR ENERGY. Gonna be some weird weather cropping up round there in the near future.
On Cops & Hardware, back in the 80’s the Qld Police spent so much money sending almost the entire Drug Squads from all our Major Cities up to cape york or the gulf country to evidence and destroy individual Pot Crops, due to the terrain it would take between six weeks and three months to access some sights. the Premier of the day had a study before him showing it was cheaper to buy a couple of F-4’s and just Naparm the Crops (along with the surrounding rainforest) after sending in half a dozen Cops to collect evidence and mark the sight. one Crown Inquest in to Police & Political Corruption and a change of government later the police Air Wing was scraped, it took a quarter century to get back a single Police Helicopter, paid for by a city (and not the capital) chamber of commerce and private backers (that’s right Qld Pol-Air 1 has Add Space from it’s backers and for rent), the current government is searching it’s empty coffers to find money for more after it proved successful.
Municipalities and States after paying for Hospitals, Schools, Roads, Fire & Rescue, Public Spaces, subsidizing Utilities, Community support to the Disadvantaged & Special Need, Garbage Collection, Public Health, Food Safety, Environmental Protection and any one of thousands of other things they do out of their finite budgets don’t need to add “Super Villain Control” to their To Do List.
Hey Dave! I am extremely glad that Grrl Power is so seeing so much incredible success! I have a very simple gauge of just how successful it is! When I started reading Grrl Power (back around page 5 or so, I think), I was able to make comments! Now I can’t get a word in edge-wise!
You’re coming up on page #150 and you’re getting hundreds of comments within hours of your posting of a page. I’m having a beer to toast your success! Awesome comic! WTG DAVE!!!!
Thanks a lot, I appreciate it! I’m enjoying doing it.
Source of the energy beam from the giant robot…
Where is exactly is the starting point?
Intuitivley it would be the center of the head/eye area, but that doesn’t match the beam path, unless the light/dark dots above that area is some ARC member which just punched in the head, thereby moving it (right after the shot, or interrupting it).
Right now I would expect the beam to hit that nondecript grey building in the front.
There was a commercial for a sci fi show called Eureka that was making fun of public service announcements with a quote “When you build a robot, make sure you follow all the instructions. Because todays mistake can be tomorrows deadly killing machine”. Can’t find the video
‘Eureka’ was a GREAT series.
Seconded. I very much enjoyed what I saw of it and would have liked to see more.
MUHAHAHAHAHA “I’ve got them ALL on DVD…” though… due to life interfering, I’m only up the the point where the Founders Day fiasco happens and they come back to be in different jobs um, season 3.5 /4 i think?
Maxima gets a lot of mileage from glaring out from under the brim of her dress cap, doesn’t she?
If you’ve got it ……
Solid Snake is a hero of hers.
Sometimes, it’s just very useful having a really large hammer. ;-)
I was thinking of a little mini comic of a group of people unhappy with a page a week showing up at a party DaveB says will cheer everyone up. “Here’s a blindfold for a door prize, now go stand over there for a group photo in front of that pock marked wall. Don’t put your blindfold on til the photographist tells you. Cigarette? Anyone?” But that’s not very helpful.
I’ve seen “Donate” buttons on other sites. Would that be helpful, or a headache? I’d buy DaveB a beer or two every week, if there was an easy way to do it. Maybe that’s all it would be worth for a while, but if enough others in the audience pitch in, he might be able to hire some help, someday. After at least a little research into the lifestyles of rockstars, pornstars, and high rollers, of course.
DaveB? Donate button?
I NEED THAT GUYS SHIRT. I REQUIRE IT DEARLY. I LOVE SEALS.
You know the guy who played the former cop on The Human Target would make a fine police chief if you wanted to turn this into a live action tv series!