Grrl Power #1484 – I’ve avalanched and I can’t get up
Max isn’t high-fiving herself in panel 6 there. It’s… Okay, I have this vague recollection of some martial arts movie where someone is winding up for an attack, and they slap their hands together just as they throw whatever move it is. I thought it might have been in the final fight of Drunken Master 2, but it wasn’t. It’s like the “wipe your thumb against the side of your nose” flair.
So, it’s just a bit of flair Max is doing. Yeah, fine, it’s basically a self-five.
As for Gail’s question, no, Max did not know that would work. She thought it might work, and even if it didn’t, it’d still eliminate Kaboomoid and Eat-Chicken. Once she had the glowing Eat-Chicken noodle in her hand, she was fairly certain that it’d get set off with only a minor infusion of energy. The fact that it wrecked Mt. Atrocitous’s hip perfectly is just main-character serendipity.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.
Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
spelling mistake : “would”, not “world”
lol Max playing minecraft mid combat
Fixed!
I think you’re looking for “Rockslide!”
Wouldn’t it be “mountainside” or so thing like that? “TIMBER” is for “Lookout, this piece of timber is falling, and I don’t want it to land on anybody.”
Phonetically, ‘Boulder’ would fit the cadence best.
But Timber is generally a term used for wood that is considered a raw resource. Not sure there is a good term what what resources from a mountain would be because mountains contain lots of stuff that is useful. Types of stone, metal ores, gem deposits, etc. So it would be tricky to figure out a word from that angle.
Then ‘boulder’ seems to work fine, being that that would be the ‘raw resource’ produced by knocking over part or all of a mountain. I like the things used for description before it, though I think ‘avalanche’ works as well.
or ‘AVALANCHE!!!”
Wow, but how the heck is that non lethal for eats chicken and Kaboom?
Does it need to be mon lethal?
I do think Dave has done a decent job establishing most of the entrants in this competition have either more survivability than you’d expect or are likely some kind of bio-weapon/android/golem, ect. As well as regardless of that some die anyway. I know I’m personally hoping Kaboomoid and Eat Chicken are a sentient energy being that has transcended the concept of traditional death and a bioengineered, indiscriminate killing machine with little thought or directive beyond the parameters of consuming it’s competitors respectively. That one soldier guy EC ate is definitely dead tho.
All that being said I am looking at Max ever so slightly different after this. I know she’s a soldier and has likely killed in the past, but the whole killing for fun and profit feels a little sketchy even if there’s lots of valid justification for it. Like just surviving. I would love to see some post fight introspection from her on how she felt about this competition when her life’s not potentially on the line.
I do think it’s all in good fun though. Super fights get kind of ridiculous.
Ehhh. Depends on what sort of criteria you hold Max to. She’s a very moral and ethical person, but her morals and ethics have to be viewed through the lens of who she is professionally and personally. It’s been established that Max almost never gets to show off her full power, in part because up until ARCHON went public, her existence was mostly classified, and her powerset and limits were DEFINITELY still classified, and generally the limits and mechanics still are.
Besides it’s been established that murderhoboing through the competition isn’t how it has to go; there’s that medevac party platform thing that showed up a few pages back. Combatants take the risk that if things happen fast or nasty enough, the medevac might not get there in time even if they “tag out” but there’s still the assumption it’s an option and a viable one given the tech levels.
What that means is that Max can relax how much she generally has to hold back, because everyone gave informed consent before participating, with the knowledge that generally mortality isn’t guaranteed but that if things go pear shaped they knew what they were getting into.
I 100% had already assumed she absolutely killed someone while a solider, from very early on. I’m also pretty sure we already had some pretty straightforward implication that she killed multiple supers, via a comment about the number of supers over there having gone down, because of her.
This is, very specifically, an arena where literally everyone knows the rules and risks. She’s doing the job and enjoying cutting loose. But this is very much a “everyone here has signed on” situation, which does alleviate some moral qualms, and increase the chance that many people involved have got ample safety mechanisms or are disposable creations.
Reporter: How many supers does the Middle East have?
Max: A lot less than there used to be.
You know there is a difference between a soldier killing someone during a time of active war, and that same soldier doing it while delivering your morning porno-mag, right?
It’s the first time Max get to cut loose and everyone participating it’s aware of the rules and risk.
She has been living in the “man of steel woman of kleenex” world for years. I understand perfectly how anticipate this few minutes of combat must be for her.
There are soldiers who would be completely comfortable with the idea that death in a sporting event is ok as long as everyone consented to the risk, but there are others who absolutely would not be. Participating in the event is in some sense approving of the outcome, including the violent deaths of some competitors. The question is which way would Max go, given what we have seen of her character so far?
And Sydney is another question entirely.
Who would it ever be non-lethal? In my head, the whole point of Unlimited battle arena is a deathmatch. If someone is incapacitated or left the arena — great, they live. If someone was brave but not smart enough and got himself disintegrated by a laser beam — well, that is part of the risk. No?
Might be, might not be.
Remember, though, that Max has fought non-corporeal (well, sort of) enemies before (Darude) and probably has a good handle on how they, uh, handle.
Also, aliens. And not even ‘average citizen’ aliens, but ‘specifically created to fight in deathmatches’ aliens, that signed up for a deathmatch. The ‘don’t kill them’ instinct is NOT going to be there.
Some interesting points here.
I don’t recall there being any exposition on Maxima’s early military career, when she would have first been learning her own powers and pitting them against other supers. Seems to me that if her defences were uncertain, her attacks would have been more likely to err toward lethality. I’ll bet the Army went to considerable trouble helping her learn.
The UCBA arc reminds me of a DC cartoon movie where Superman fought Darkseid’s avatar. The villain couldn’t be hurt by destroying the avatar, so Superman had a line about how pleasant it was to not have to hold back at all. Maxima is in a similar situation now. And I think she is applying what she learned from Round One and is having a wonderful time in Round Two. The competition is believably stronger, yet she’s still kicking ass. I’m excited to see what she’ll face in the final round!
It wasn’t an avatar, it was Darkseid Himself, and it wasn’t that Darkseid couldn’t be hurt, it was that he was strong enough that Soupcan didn’t have to hold himself back anymore (pity about all the poor Dirtlings in the buildings he destroyed in the process… )
I suppose I could have misinterpretted what I saw, it may have only been a clip. Can you tell me where to look for the scene, maybe the movie title?
Darkseid does use avatars though, right? DC isn’t my source on that though. Saw it on a youtube vid about super powered match-ups across publishing boundaries. It was Darkseid vs. Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet. They said Darkseid rules another dimension like a god, but can only send avatars across dimensions. I didn’t question it because it sounded way too elaborate for a 3rd party to make up, since the youtubers claimed their character research was accurate.
Could the scene I recalled have been Superman travelling to the Darkseid dimension?
Here’s the clip, from Justice League Unlimited
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cG4BNJBXBU
“I feel like I live in a world of cardboard”
Darkseid has dimensional portals (believe they call them ‘Boom-tubes’ or something) that allow him to travel to Earth, saw it in the crappy live action movie recently
Is the unlimited class tournament always like this, or only when Maxima is in it?
I bet it’s always like this. Eat-Chicken probably would’ve wiped if she hadn’t been there, and wound up as some sort of gun-cano thing they’d have to bring in battleships to deal with.
I’m fairly certain that sometimes the battle ends in a draw because somebody thought they were smart and the result ends up annihilating the entire arena.
Alright, so far, so good!
Maxima is about to deliver a punch, if not a punch-line!
Iirc, this is the first multi-day action sequence we’ve had here without reaching a major punchline payoff. My advjce: wait for it! It should arrive some time next week, in publication time.
I do have to say, the chicken was funny the entire time.
For some reason I see no comment option on the previous comic (fallout from the hack?), so I’ll say it now.
Poor Eat-Chicken, that pitiful panicked wing flapping even after being spiral sliced (julienne cut? ribbon cut?).
>_<
Max is rocking a Captain Britain vibe in that 4th panel. The pattern from the original suits headpiece, that is.
Detcord! I called it last chapter!
I mean to be fair it was fairly obvious.
Just a demolitions issue, DETCORD shouldn’t overlap itself or it will self cut, causing it to not fully detonate. It is very specific, the same issue will happen with time fuse as well, lines need to be clear, and not cross, though they can be run next to each other…
Look at the explosion pattern, it’s sweeping from one side to the other along all cords simultaneously. Overlap isn’t going to adversely affect chain detonation because the cords can trigger each other.
Ryzyl has been suspiciously absent this engagement (and when Max returned, the minimal had his location marked with a question mark). As the assassin type explicitly mentioned to wait until the other combatants wear themselves out before taking out the remaining victor, I am curious how he tries to take out Maxima, and just how much of a threat he ends up being.
Will.it be like the fairies from the last round where it almost gets her, or will it be a “she-bang” moment where he lands the hit, it doesn’t absolutely nothing, and he gawks in disbelief for a moment before getting absolutelt wasted.
*minimap
You know, I’d initially thought that it’d be an anticlimax, with Ryzyl simply surrendering to her once she wipes the rest of the field, but I think you’ve got a point. His whole thing has been “hiding until everyone else is down, then ambushing the last remaining contestant.”
So I figure while Max is taking out everyone else, we get a segment with the announcers discussing how Ryzyl is hiding in a cave somewhere and taking out some legendary weapons of his own. He draws the famed dagger of disruption to break her defenses, and the legendary murderite blade of murder, and then coats them in murderall poison. Sneaks up on Max, gets her with both blades.
Her disguise gets disrupted, so people can tell she’s wearing a hardlight disguise (even though they still can’t see her face through the mask), and maybe the other dagger gets through her outer field, cuts the clothing, and leaves a bit of golden skin visible (for speculation reasons). Everyone’s in shock that she’s unhurt, but also, with the disguise and active camo options down, she can’t get away from the cameras/interviewers and can’t retreat to Cora’s ship without being noticed. And then, well, DRAMA ENSUES.
“So, what is our top super getting up to?”
“Well, she forcibly fed one contestant to another, then sliced them up so she could wrap their entrails around a third person and blow it up.”
“… What the f-“
Those two that fused are probably dead, huh?
Brutal, but probably not plot relevant.
Well, it IS Unlimited Battle Arena. They likely signed waivers knowing the risk of death. They just wanted to prove they were the biggest badasses in the Galaxy and get whatever the end prize is. Mean, it’s worth noting the giant robot and the Kaiju guy were previous winners of the whole thing. And it’s pretty likely both had a pretty sizeable amount of kills. It’s just part of the risk of a competition like this. That said, they do notably have a system for folks who tap out, like Grey Anatomy, so it’s not like they leave people to die if they’re seriously injured and can’t fight. It’s just some death stuff is, well, instant.
They haven’t been beamed up yer, so either medvac believes they can’t repair a ribboned eat chicken or eat chicken is still in the race.
Or eat chicken is (most likely IMHO) remotely piloted. Remember they have mind upload/remote body pilot ability in some of the galactic cultures. It would just be a weird body to remotely pilot, but for some species probably not a lot weirder than being in opposite gender aliens body. Probably true for the living explosion too.
My theory is that Eat Chicken is a fully autonomous bio-engineered weapon with a hidden override. No brains other than whatever is needed to control muscles and perform one function: find and eat anything that moves. No pain receptors, no sense of self or self-preservation, no “soul”. So not sentient and definitely not sapient.
Then when the match is over its creators can send a hidden signal, or maybe it’s on a timer, or something, to knock it unconscious or put it in a trance for transport.
I endorse your theory, because the story is funnier that way!
As far as recoverability, the living explosion might be able to re-coalesce, but not soon enough to matter. There might be small parts left over from E.C., but they’ll have to build a new one for the next UCBA tourney.
I cant access page 1086 and a few others around there. is anyone else having this glitch?
It may be a lingering problem from the site getting hacked.
I’m not seeing that problem.
What’s the spread for the first competitor to drop out of her next round before it begins? What’s the spread for all competitors in that round to drop out? ;3
The next round is the final round with compeditors who have survived 2 rounds.
Wasn’t the clap before the punch the kid who punched the “I support ICE” kid? Either that or he watched the same thing you did
Yeah, that’s what I remember it from.
Avalanch?
Methinks Ixah’s glowing right hand in that last panel indicates that clap was more than a self-five.
I think clapping forcefully can help hype your body up if you’re in a relaxed state and need to get into an energized and focused one before a fight starts. But after you’ve been in one for as long as she has (minutes? tens of minutes? over an hour?) clapping would do nothing.
I really dislike those ‘knee down’ superhero landings. Not practical, try doing that jumping off a three foot height like the bed of a pickup truck and see how well it works. It’s something only ‘supe could do without hurting themselves, so I guess it’s kind of show off thing. “Hurr hurr, not only can I fly and punch out Godzilla, I can do a cool looking knee down landing.” Okay, I guess Max is playing to the crowd.
You can do a landing like that…twice.
I saw that. I’m not judging, she deserves a pat on the back for that one. Though this is displaying an astronomical amount of Battle I.Q.
Once upon a time, we got the bright idea of using detcord to clear a bunch of small trees on the EOD range.
Our excuse was that we were testing to see if it could be used to clear an emergency landing spot for a helicopter.
It worked, mostly, but it took a lot longer to string it than using power tools would have and made a bigger mess to sort out after.
Power tools don’t make a satisfying boom though :) at least not if you use them properly.
A couple of reels of detcord weigh less too, especially when you factor in gas cans.
If we had the nice floppy US issue stuff instead of our stiff bright yellow plastic coated clothesline cord, it would have been easier.
My father was at Ft Lewis, Washington, waiting to ship out to the Pacific theater when the war ended. While they were waiting around, they ended up helping fight forest fires. He described seeing engineers using detcord to knock down trees for a fire break. I wonder if there wasn’t a case of “We have all this detcord. It would be a shame not to use it.”
I should think that for a firebreak what you want is big, wet mess that the fire won’t burn easily, so the detcord is optimal. If you want open ground use the power tools.
I like to think that Mt. Atrocious, when noticing its leg stopped supporting it, immediately went for an elbow drop on whatever might have damaged its leg.
If it weren’t explained in the text of the update, I would have assumed the clap was just Maxima putting the sword away.
That’s what I assumed, since the storage tattoo thingy was on the inside of her wrist right?
I think Avalanche could work in place of Timber… does that have to only be snow and ice?
..I post after reading the stingline but not having read the page title.
The thing max is doing is like when a pro wrestler slaps the underside of their elbow before elbow dropping onto a prone opponent.
Doing flairs like that could be a “tell” indicating her Earth origins.
Yes, she did what I was thinking. Blew off his leg using the hyper-charged wrap. I’d say that man-mountain is about to become her next kill in this fight, is it 3 or 4 now?
Medical team is going to be working overtime on this one.
“Okay, I have this vague recollection of some martial arts movie where someone is winding up for an attack, and they slap their hands together just as they throw whatever move it is.”
In Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, everyone that saw thruht uses Alchemy by clapping hands. But most needed to touch the ground or a wall to have rock to transmute.
Only Mustang could make flames without further movement.
In Dragonball Z, the Android Saga, Picollos vs Cell (2nd round) “Light Grenade” started with his hands forming a cage.
Those are the ones that sprang to my mind.
Now for something completely unrelated-
I can never see my own comments on the webpage version of this strip, only on Patreon. Am I the only one, or is it everyone’s experience? (On Firefox, if that makes a difference.)
Interesting. I only use the webpage, with Firefox, and have always experienced lag before I could see my comments. But just a while ago my previous comment showed up immediately. Surprised the hell out of me! Maybe to do with recovering from the hack, or just a matter of how busy the server is?
(And I love my coffee too.)
We would call it a Bergsturz, but for some reason the bogus german designation Sturzstrom is used as a foreign word in english. That’s a valid compound, but not the correct term.
I think I remember something similar to the clap in panel 6 figuring into the tai chi routine I was learning about 10-ish years ago. It was either at the start of the routine or towards the middle called “grasp bird’s/sparrow’s tail” I think? Or somewhere near it in the form?
Either way, I wouldn’t be surprised if some other martial arts with similar jumping-off points in their family trees have a more aggressive movement incorporated, even if it isn’t strictly “functional” in re: doing direct damage.
In American Kenpo, we did a lot of slaps, but it was more a bouncing your hand off your own body thing before landing another hit.
The fragments of leg in panel 4 are altogether too large for that amount of detcord. Of course it isn’t real detcord, so maybe not.
Kaboomoid basically stated they’re a living NUCLEAR explosion, so it was likely something akin to NUCLEAR Detcord. Not to mention Max also set it off with a plasma reaction via her powers.
Stuff is likely WAY stronger than normal detcord.
We knew Max could fell a mountain. But doing it this way hides more of her powers. But the bigger moment here is.
We finally get Maxima in something “Skintight” and her own powers seem to stop giggle physics. A true loss to the watching audience (ಥ﹏ಥ)
Jiggle*