Grrl Power #160 – Explodiest beam vs. the shieldiest shield
I mostly did this page to start to get a feel for doing larger action panels. These aren’t bad but they’re hardly on par with the gold standards of stuff like Onepunch Man or Black God or the Cammy manga by Masahiko Nakihara or whatever else tops everyone’s lists. Arguably like many manga, they tend to over rely on speed lines, but if I have to chose between that or the pathetic looking action of most western comics, I’ll go the speed lines route. Whatever the case I still have lots to learn and improve on.
Since there’s not too much to discuss about this page, maybe people can share some of their favorite action comics, manga or western. I’m sure there are some western ones that do acceptable action but I read so few of them these days I’m sure there’s plenty I’ve missed.
Since I know it will come up, Maxima is firing a particle beam, not a laser. :)
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So the author has confirmed that Maxima is firing a particle (ZORK) beam. I think everyone agrees it is some form of ionized plasma. We can definitely see that the light of the beam shines through, so lasers can still hurt her. Sound can also get through, so sonic weapons can also hurt her.
…. Unless / Until Sydney can “fine-tune” her Force Field to the point where it more effectively blocks specific things (such as sonics or certain light wavelengths) IF she concentrates. Of course, this assumes the FF is capable of such adjustments, but I suspect so.
Not seeing this level of control attained anytime soon but, with enough training and practice, it may be possible.
Maybe that’s why she was able to give such a thorough lawyering to the bad guy at the beginning of the comic, she knew from experience how shields work. And how it would have to be changed in order to prevent sorts of damage.
I think you’re on the right track there.
That lawyering was more showcasing how Sidney excels at browbeating/annoying a GM into submission, I think.
If he had wanted to provide a plausible explanation for the beam not working short of “Because I said so, now sit down and be quiet!”, he easily could have by saying that either the Copy Kraut’s shield blocked any potentially harmful energy above a certain intensity threshold or that it specifically blocked coherent light (lasers) but not incoherent light (ambient/sunlight).
Of course, his likely purpose to having the Kraut’s shield initially deflect Sydney’s character’s signature beam was to encourage lateral thinking instead of falling back on her standard power set. Strictly speaking, finding a loophole or gap in the rules themselves counts, which is probably why he dropped it and let her roll her attack. Semantics for the win!
Well, hyper advanced technology or magic. It can’t be ruled out that the shield isn’t actually clear, but an overlay. This could imply that while light and sound are shown inside, they are translated to more manageable levels to show that a blast did hit.
Or break the 4th wall and say it is as strong as needed to create drama in the story.
I’m wondering if the sphere isn’t able to detect that, to an extent. I mean, the spheres obviously have a lot of stuff going on in their own right, so who’s to say they can’t go, “These parameters of visible/ultraviolet radiation and/or kinetic energy would be harmful to our squishy fleshling. They shall be blocked.” I mean, if Sydney had one hundred percent complete control of her abilities, id est if she were the one producing the forcefields and energy blasts and whatnot, I’d agree that she’d likely be covering her ears in pain the first time a bat monster a la Grimm shows up. However, in my humble opinion, the spheres seem to be a wee bit too complicated to make it that simple. (Kind of makes me afraid of what their drawback is going to be…and why they were buried in the keys of all places)
Yea, they probably work like a computer, adjusting the parameters to the enviroment.
Like a smart window blocking out light if it’s to bright
I think y’all are giving Halo’s balls too much credit. As far as I can tell they do not have a mind of their own, and can’t perform any of the extensive phenomenon that is being theorized.
Why wouldn’t they?
They are either magic, or highly advanced technology, or a combination of the 2.
And both could do the things theorized, if properly programmed
We already know that Halo’s shield can auto-adjust to sound. If not then being a point blank range of a hit that literally shatered glass windows would have have some impact upon her.
The other characters were complaining about the impact sound being painful, and they were farthter away.
No mind of their own? extensive phenomenon ? We are still talking about balls that fly in formation under their own control, maintaining orbiting position while going 400 mph? Able to orbit a person controlled by a mental command given by an ADD poster child? ;)
Of course if this were a Champions game I’d be pushing for an END reserve on balls such that as a group the pool gets drained 1:1 for each point of damage blocked by the FF … Of course if the force field ball turned out to be a linked AID to the orb multipower, then the demo might get very interesting when it was Sydney’s turn to Pew Pew –as her powers were charged to the Max !
Although I enjoy speculating on the intelligent options for the orbs, the argument for non-intelligence does hold up well too. A very simple set of rules would allow them to behave in the way we have seen to date. Rules can either be set by instincts for living creatures, by means of programming or by a complex system. By which I mean some arrangement of matter and/or energy which responds to stimulus in ways that we might mistake as being signs of intelligence. As an example here is how an engineer/artist simulated life with a purely mechanical moving sculpture.
Of course if the system gets complex enough we get to the point that we may be obliged to accept it as a life-form despite not being a readily acceptable organic born critter. Likewise if the effective intelligence it can emulate gets advanced enough the question of is it a true AI or even a person comes into play.
KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid.
Put too much programmed intelligence into the orbs, and you wind up with some wierd behaviors where the programmed rules intersect. Witness some aviation based automation accidents, such as the aircraft that insisted it was too low and so refused to descend (thus missing the runway and landing in trees) or the experimental jet that was lost when one bad sensor gave it data telling it to climb (causing the computer to lock it in a verticle attitude until it ultimately crashed).
I figure the orbs are either dumb programmed objects with a finite amount of automatic behaviors (orbit, keep close, don’t zap our owner), or they are guided by an intelligence of their own, which is unable/unwilling to communicate. The latter seems unlikely, as why give out such powerful (and talking) widgets, but keep them mute?
Come to think, the question of orb smarts ties loosely to the question of their origin. Gift or lucky find. The former, one would expect to communicate at some point. The latter, one would expect no communication from.
I am thinking of threshold limiting. Any stronger/brighter/louder than a certain limit will get attenuated, while still allowing the softer sound/dimmer light to get through.
Yea, that is the way I have always imagined any advanced defence would work. Basically everything is deadly to humans, in sufficient quantity. For instance you can even die from drinking too much water in too short a space of time. That happened in the last couple of years in a radio competition. Too much of any matter and you can get squished by the pressure. Too much energy and you get fried or deformed in various interesting ways.
But, conversely, we need certain minimums to get through in order to survive. Assuming that the defensive system does not come with a self-sustaining environment, of course. And even those that do, still need to be able to observe the outside world in order to interact with it in some meaningful way. Such as allowing in enough light, sound and other informative energy and matter.
So a sophisticated system will allow in safe levels but block dangerous levels. The more advanced the better the fine-tuning.
Kinda like in Dune: their fancy armour stops pretty much any and possibly all force, physical or weapons, but a simple blade slowly pushed against the shield can get though
Also another example from the rubbish (imo) Conan The Barbarian cartoon show: Conan and some other big muscle guy climbed to the top of a mountain and had to get through a door that repelled any force used against it (the stronger/harder they pushed, the more closed the door became) in the end they simply pushed very lightly on it and it opened
Try stomping on wet sand. It becomes solid. Simply press your foot in it, you get sand in your shoe. That’s the type of defence you’re thinking of, where resistance increases in proportion to the force against it. The rest of the thread seems more to be talking about a maximum inlet. Not that it increases its defence the more powerful the attack gets, but more that it simply won’t let anything more powerful than a preset limit past the shield.
A “solid” shield that still lets oxygen diffuse in and carbon dioxide to diffuse out. This way at high altitude/high speed, she will not automatically suffocate because the air pressure is too low or the oxygen is too log.
Differentiating elements is also useful for keeping cyanide, sulphuric acid and other nasties out.
Doesn’t need to be sentience – the moment the orbs bonded to Sydney, they could analyse her biological coding, calculate the amount of damage she herself a can take, and adjusted the shield blocking accordingly.
Its also highly likely that the shield itself will block whatever would harm Sydney. It may change itself to block sound if the sound would harm her, the same with light. For example, the sound of the particle beam hitting the shield could very well be ear-shattering and only dampened by the shield. But personally i like to think that the shield gets its properties from the GURPS Force Shield spell. Which is a dome like shield that absorbs all energy. Hitting it with a large maul will not only do nothing, but since the energy is absorbed entirely the wielder would feel no recoil. The Force shield is effectively unbreakable by normal means, capable of stopping a nuclear missle that detonated on top of it, the caster may choose to allow light or sound to pass through it at will.
Actually, if it truly is a particle beam, then she’s firing off particles fast enough to burn the air (picture if you will a meteor zooming in through the air; it literally burns the air, but when it lands, is often cool or cold to the touch, weird but true). So what we’re seeing isn’t a laser at all, just burning air; the particles themselves may also be burning due to friction, which will limit how far the beam can shoot, but whatever does reach sydney’s forcefield, being particles and thus matter, can still be blocked.
…I do agree that she’s probably vulnerable to at least some sonic attacks, and to regular laser beams. …Maybe the 2 Mystery Orbs will help her with that?
Okay, so now I’m curious. Are you refering to Black God as in Kurokami, the manhwa by Lim Dall-Young Park Sung-Woo? The one on hiatus? Or some other title I am not aware of by the same name?
As for my favorite action series, RuroKen, Negima (surprisingly), Bleach and The Avengers (usually)
I’m not sure. I only have the first manga of it which I bought because someone said the action was well drawn in it. It’s a Korean manga about a cute little girl (of course) who bumps into an uninteresting guy (of course) eats like a shark (of course) and also happens to be some amazing street fighter (of course). Come to think of it that may not narrow it down enough.
That sounds like the right series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_God_%28manga%29
Maybe?
YUP!! and this one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-Punch_Man
and gifs 3-5 0f this one
https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2013/03/06/chapter-of-one-punch-man-manga-turned-into-incredible-animated-gif
AWESOME SAUCE THAT IT CAME OUT ON A SATURDAY!!!!!!!
Upon finding this comic yesterday, I had to stay up all night to get through the entire archive, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep without getting up to date on this amazing thing. I am looking forward to more from this, now one of my favorite webcomics I’ve the pleasure of reading.
Welcome aboard!
Thanks! I love finding a new webcomic and doing a archive dive on it. Sadly I don’t have nearly as much time to do that lately but oh well.
welcome to the fangrrl club
Welcome and bow to our gracious overlor…erm i mean gracious artist who gifts us with these comics each week
I tried to welcome you previously, but my eyes go upside down every time I look at your avatar. Fortunately Grrl Power does have Australian representatives to interact with other upside-down people.
Not just Aussies (*stomps away in a mock-huffleneck sweater*)
Oops. Apologies to the Kiwis.
I think I forget about them because I picture New Zealand as being a larger bit of the Great Barrier Reef. ;-)
You really can’t help yourself, can you?
since I found this comic 1 1/2 – 2 months ago. it had definitely become my favorite. I make sure to stop by every day to vote on TWC.
I think she will be fine, sides if that shield can handle a super’s punches then I am going to guess it can handle whatever else is thrown at it. Sides if her life is in danger maybe the power of one of the two unknown spheres will awaken and come into play. My money is that one of the other spheres can ether amplify the power of another sphere I thinks.
Obviously she’s firing a grand inquisitor.
or a bang beam ( did a double take at panel one and said VEGETA!!!)
Veggie-head? Most everyone else is getting Piccolo
I’m still of a mind that the orb’s may be somewhat sentient and are likely to respond to the need without Sydney’s direct input.Which is to say that they automatically protect the occupant from anything that may harm her. Light, heat, toxins, viruses, etc,. Heck, they may even fight back if the threat gets to the point of endangering the collective whole. Of course this is just based on my bias of believing that even the most powerful character has to have at least one person who can shut them down if needed. If Sydney’s shield turns out to be the one thing that Maxima simply cannot break though (offensive vs. defensive), then it creates a nice balance.
I’m rather of the same mind. Especially since we don’t know what two of the little things do, and, perhaps more importantly, they don’t seem to be built/conceived along the lines of “We can protect you from directed energy weapons but not a specialized flashlight with a large battery.” (And by conceived of I am referring to wherever the orbs come from in universe, not the mind of our dearly beloved author)
Are we 100% sure that the spheres even exist? Its too early to say, right? Technically per the analysis of Dabbler and Gwen, the most perceptive of the team, they appear like a whole lot of nothing. Maybe they are just manifestations of Syd’s superpowered subconscious that happened to appear when she was scuba diving and saw a treasure chest (or imagined that she did because she had the bends, or was tripping because of a jellyfish sting, etc.).
Math and Dabbler can both tell you they are solid.
Yes one of them was used to bonk one of them on the forehead. What do you think Sydney is grabbing? I still say they are super technology of an alien or ancient civilization sort. They make an effective grab bag of protection and they only work for you. I can see them packed for each member of a crew or passenger.
Dabbles got bonked on the head (and bit her forked tongue), Math got clocked in the cheek/mouth
Interesting thought. They definitely “exist” in as much as most physical objects exist. They are solid objects, visible to the naked eye, and can produce a variety of useful effects, so they’re probably more real than e.g. carbon monoxide, which is none of those things.
But they could be projections from somewhere else. We know they involve technology capable of generating solid force fields, visual illusions, and detecting their environment. So there could be a very long-range projector somewhere that’s creating seven spherical force fields and projecting the illusion of different coloured balls over them. (Or just making the force fields different colours, that’s probably possible).
This would explain why Dabbler can’t scan them: because they don’t actually exist. Of course this (a) presupposes tech or superpowers WAY ahead of anything we’ve seen in the setting, and (b) makes their distance limit from Sydney highly illogical. Unless the projector is actually inside Sydney, as you were suggesting, or near her (such as in the spheres).
Maybe only one of the spheres is real, and it’s generating the other six as a User Interface for Sydney to choose the effect she wants. Or maybe two of them are real, which is why they can only produce two effects at once. And we do have two spheres that are different from the others…
Variant explanation: Psionic amoeba. Need I say more eh?
Oh, I do? Ok. Sydney is swimming off the Florida Keys, and bumps into a psionic amoeba. It scans her, finds her and her other multi-cellular associates to be amusing and decides to play with them for a while. It is telepathically suggesting to her and everyone she interacts with that there are seven spheres of various colours orbiting her. Likewise with all the other effects.
Meanwhile it is sitting on her eyebrow giggling* at the ensuing antics.
* In the usual amoeba way, a kind of rippling wobble.
Totally got a Vostok (from Magellan) vibe from that, so much so had to go back and catch up again :D
Maybe they’re like the Guyver bio-booster armor? Their primary components exist in a near range extra dimensional pocket that the energy ‘extends’ from. Kinda like, I believe, string theory where several dimentions coil up into a plank length space…
Oh, now I get why Maxima is having her hide behind de steel block. She knows her shot won’t penetrate that, so even if Sydney’s shield breaks, the block will still absorb the direct blast. (The secondary effects are probably covered by the blast suit.)
Yups
Okay, I just got it. Just now. Yes I’m an idiot, and thank you.
She’s blasted steel like this before, so she knows how much it takes to melt/vaporize it and won’t go beyond that. So, that means we know (will know, I presume) Syd’s shield is at least as good as around a meter of solid steel (which is thicker than any battleship armor ever made). Upper limit still unknown.
Yeah… I don’t think that would work right, I mean that blast could conceivably move the block and them Slam! Squish! aaahhahahaa… dead. unless the blast suited is rigid in which case she could possibly survive until maxima removes it.
Oh, man. I love the energy line pattern on that forcefield. Makes me more inclined to believe the halospheres are super-science instead of magic.
Why not both? XD
“Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!!” — Agatha Heterodyne
All this comic needs now is Agatha popping up with her Reindeer and Sleigh. I’m sure the Wave Motion Gun on the Sleigh would be a good test for Sydney’s shield. Plus, I’m sure Agatha could figure out where Max gets her powers from XD
But what would the orbs think of Agatha? Would she fall back into old habits and get all “I am your mistress and you must obey me”, only to find that they are very loyal to Sydney?
And just what effect would so many heroes in close proximity have to a Spark? Heroes are obviously immune to the minion effect. Or at the least radiate their own charismatic version of that. But would their presence negate spark powers in some way? And even if that did not happen, Agatha might instinctively get ticked off because she was not attracting minions thanks to the competition. She has not shown any fondness of heroes to date, which can support those lines of thought.
Other than Aggie herself, wasn’t aware of there being any (other) Heroes in Girl Genius
How can you forget Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer? :-O
He is literally described as being a hero at some point. In a context that implied, to me anyhow, that there were others like him. I seem to recall that although he (and presumably they) lacked the creative side of the Spark but clearly do have the Sparks’ power to captivate minions.
Thought he was just a protaganistic pain-in-the-rear-hindquarters do-goodering arch-nemesis to Wulfenbach
“Hero”.
….. At least in his own mind. Least as THAT might be.
Nah. Othar, in his own demented way, is a hero. He just isn’t the hero of Agatha’s story… because Agatha, of course.
However, note that Agatha is too schmott for that. As recently demonstrated:
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20130710
and then the alternate approach and its pitfalls:
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20130805
Does her shield work like the ones from the Lensman series? They start relatively clear and the more damage they take the higher up in the color spectrum they go until they go past ultra-violet and into “black” where they stop working. If so can she feel the amount of stress the shield is under. I know she said she could not feel the difference in Maxima’s punches but maybe there just was not enough of a deviation in strength to be noticeable.
she couldn’t feel any difference between Max’s first and Last punch, just that she was hitting it, and that could’ve been because she was seeing it
Heh, forgot that Maxi has a sidearm under her arm (even with that tasty image of her attempting to re-holster it past her bewbs /drool), but, is it facing the wrong way? As in, the grip should be facing her front not her back? And, if she can “ZORK” from her fingers, what does she need a firearm for?
A lesser form of lethal weapon in case she needs to have something left over afterwards?
Also a foe might not realise taking that weapon away might not be in their best interests….
With her super speed and forefinger, she can just poke holes in skulls faster and more accurately than a gun could shoot. But anyone who doesn’t know that is going to think twice at the sight of her big ass pistol pointing in his or her direction.
maybe for when she needs to shoot something but has had to max invulnerability also as said lower a weapon pointed at you is more of a psychological mind f*** than some one looking /pointing at you. next a pistol can have different effect ammo (example XXX movie) loaded that a PBF (particle beam finger) can’t.
I’m sorry, but how does a porn movie relate to differing ammo loads? Generally porn is not allowed to include violence to get past regulators.
‘XXX’ or ‘Triple X’ was the name of an R-rated movie a few years ago, staring Vin Diesel as an anti-hero style James Bond.
Except ‘XXX’ wasn’t porn. At least as regards sex and nudity, both of which were almost nonexistent there. Just loads of violence. action and harsh language.
My take on the holstered gun is that Maxima had a bad experience in her formative years. Say attempting to stop a hostile situation by pointing at the aggressor and threatening to blast him. To which everyone in earshot just burst out laughing and started playing cops and robbers ‘shooting’ at one another with their fingers and saying “bang bang”.
Very good point.
Definitely put in mind of ‘Snow Crash’ (book by Neal Stephenson, highly recommended BTW). In it, one character is issued a gun as part of his job. It works fine but, to look at, is this teeny-weeny thing that looks more like an expensive toy. The only way to get people to take this weapon seriously is to actually use it, which tends to be counter-productive. So the character usually just leaves that fancy gun in the glove compartment and carries his katana instead.
As is said in the book, “Swords need no explanation.“. Pretty much the same can be said of Max’s gun in this case.
Two words: “Noisy Cricket”
well even superman can drain all of his energy, so I am guessing Max can as well and maybe she has done so before, could be embarrassing to do so, maybe that is why the gun.
Mostly intimidation. People are more afraid of a gun than someone pointing at them.
Because pointing a finger at someone isn’t quite as intimidating as a big honkin’ gun. Besides which, if she’s channelling her energy into her other abilities like strength/armor, her finger might not be as powerful as the aforementioned big honkin’ gun…
Plus marks for the latter point. Something I had not considered. I wonder if she wears body armour, for the same reason?
That’s not a big gun….
Here, take this BFG.
Going with what others have said: the speed lines in the first panel should be centered on the tip of the ZORK-ray, not Sydney’s Bubble o’Protection
She should have shouted “Dodonpa!” Come on, Maxima, give in to the nerd side!
(For those only finding a roller coaster on google searches):
https://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Dodon_Ray#Character_meaning
heh you heard dodonpa, i heard Special Beam Cannon
OK you know what? Now I have an image in my mind of Syd & Max playing a REALLY hardcore game of Laser-Tag.
ouch! Sydney’s FF and PPO vs Max’s Particle beam and Armor, that’s not laser tag that’s WMD tag.
yes – a little stronger than anything my company hands to kids :)
I was wondering what Maxima would do if that energy beam she fired bounced off Halo’s force field straight back at her?
Well since she has moved her stats from defense to offense, she could wind up standing there in just her super-skivvies. (hint, hint). At which point the press bus rolls up and Adrianna growls ‘Just what have you two been up to?!’
Um… did anyone else notice that Syd isn’t holding the force field sphere? She’s still holding the flight sphere from the last page, but her other hand is empty.
Flight is blue, not purple. You can clearly see it above her head. The glow in her hand is purple.
Hm, okay. Looks purple in the panel on the previous page, but that might also be from colors of the suit tinting it differently to my eye.
I forgot to say thanks for the extra page. I’m sorry, I was just so excited. Thanks, DaveB!
I’ve never seen force lines, but the first panel looks wrong somehow, like they should be radiating from somewhere beyond her left shoulder in a line with her shot instead of from the target. That makes me think she opened her eyes real wide or some super thing. I don’t know. I know the art always gets better, and this is a damn fine start. Thanks again, DaveB. :)
+1
the shield is amping up due to the threat. so yes – huge force emited from the force field.
can it be used as an area effect pulse weapon ?
Coulda sword posted something similar (about how the speed-lines should be moved to center on the tip of the bolt), but computer was playing up so maybe it just didn’t get sent ;(
I saw some comments, maybe including yours, but I wanted to give Dave my virginal ignorant feedback. At fist, I thought it was a telescopic vision thing. “Objects may be further than they appear”.
Good for artists to get similar feedback from more than one source
Impressive!!
I am a fan of one called Errant Story. The action is pretty awesome!
Heh
She’s able to fire off the skin flakes on her fingers. Wait until Sidney finds out what they are. . . heh heh.
I wonder what sound the middle finger makes.
I’m reluctant to imagine what would happen/sound like if you pulled Max’s finger…
You’d get a ZORK that you could never recover from.
I know you have this already planned out, but I look forward to seeing more Peggy. She’s by far my favorite character so far.
Same here
…. i saw the first panel and i got a flash back to my childhood watching toonami on cartoon network and hearing piccolo shout “Special Beam Cannon” … ill be surprised if there is no one who understands what i am talking about
It may just be me, but I’d kinda like to see the first panel from the other side…
I can somehow imagine a really evil grin on Maximas face as she finally gets a real chance to batter that annoying force field properly.
Also, I suspect the sunglasses would make that a really killer profile pic for her ArcSwat bio (courtesy of Arianna).
Is it just me… or does that last panel remind anyone else of Samas Aran?
Metroid Power Suit
*sniff sniff* Woof!
Next Panel: Sydney “Hey one of the unknown balls is blinking. I wonder” –grabs it in off hand and force field suddenly releases the same weapon Max fired back at her…. missing only because Sydney turned slightly. Birth of “Mirror” ball. Not exactly the easiest power to figure out when not surrounded by powered individuals.
I can see how that could get very nasty, very quickly.
Hey, if they are willing to dish it out, they should be prepared to wear it when the diner throws it back at them
Perspective and settings are tricky. There’s probably a reason so many manga panels consist of speed lines and gradients / textures rather than actual backgrounds.
Finally getting to see some of what gives Maxima her name. Real power from that energy bolt.
Yay! We get our first Gold Beam!
Here is an article article involving gold and beams. Interestingly enough it mentions that Gold 197 is a non-radioactive stable element. But that if exposed to radiation it can turn into Gold 198, which is radioactive. We know from Maxima’s statement earlier in the comic that her skin composition is not gold, but is classified. From which we can take it that it is neither the stable version nor one of the thirty six radioactive radioisotopes. But, perhaps, it is made up of a new version of gold?
Given that gold could be used in the creation of salted nuclear weapons, it might provide a link to explaining how she can fire a particle beam out of her finger.
She said it’s classified and muttered “that and we don’t know”. If she WAS a form of gold I think they’d recognize it.
Maybe it is Gold 69, and that’s why she doesn’t want to talk about it
Gold has 79 protons. To get an atomic mass of 69 would require -10 neutrons. I see some logistic problems with this arrangement. Mind you, it might explain the anti-gravity flight Max can seem to do.
Perhaps they can’t successfully get a sample for analysis, thus things like atomic weights go unmeasured. Oh, you could spectroscopially analyze the surface, but if you can’t get a sample and all you see is gold atoms….there’s something going on you arn’t seeing. -> don’t know.
We get to see our first Gold Beam in action rather than just the after effects/damage
i love the extra page this week, total surprise, but a fantastic one! I wonder how it would look with the speed lines coming from maxima’s shot in panel one and angled to show its speed towards sydny’s shield. just something to toy with and see if you like. Keep up the awesome art!
Just noticed soemthing about the Zork-ray in the second panel: the fact the over-laying surface is being disturbed the further along it goes implies (to me at least) that Maxi was aiming low rather than high and the Zork-ray is gaining strength rather than remaining a constant after it was fired
Possibly, although I think it is more likely to be just the perspective involved.
Examining that panel though I picked up that the beam does appear to drop off in height. More than likely just an artistic effect, as straight lines are not as aesthetically pleasing in certain situations. But it may be showing that the beam is subject to a ballistic trajectory. Which makes sense, being of particles, and therefore subject to gravity.
Implications, if it is ballistic, being that aiming gets trickier the further away the target is, possibly making extremely distant targets impractical for Maxima to hit. Even more so for fast moving and/or smaller targets. Her cast details make no mention of having exceptional mental capability*, so she would be restricted to dead-reckoning.
But there is a plus side to ballistic attacks. You can use indirect fire. So if an enemy is hidden behind a hill or a wall, you can arc the shot over the obstacle. But that is not as easy as it sounds unless you have both a forward observer and either time for ranging shots or a means of calculating the trajectory accurately. Unless there are no innocent bystanders or other important collateral in the area, and she can just make the crater as big as she wants.
* It does mention about her being able to
“So if an enemy is hidden behind a hill or a wall, you can arc the shot over the obstacle. But that is not as easy as it sounds” (still not sure how to do quotes properly, and at least this way don’t have to worry about it messing up)
That reminds me of those old-school games where you had to try and hit your opponent by using trajectory, but that was kind of cheating as you could see where they were (being a side-on view) and after playing enough times you could go back and one-shot them because through trial-and-lots-of-error you knew what the correct power/angle is (which reminds me of one of the games on the old SuperDudes site: you had to jump from platform to platform, eventually had played one level enough times knew the right angle for every jump at 100% power to get the daily maximum points {after getting the maximum there was little point on continuing, specially if you had managed to complete the whole thing} but there was still a lot of dieing involved before working out the correct angles)
Heh, I do manage to mess up the blockquotes more often than not myself. Although it follows the normal format of the commands but just using “blockquote” instead. I have not managed to get my weird Bulgarian keyboard’s special characters mapped to the right keys, and my laptop using another set again. So I find it easier to just copy the commands below, rather than try to figure out where the special brackets are. But the blockquote tag needs a bit of editing, and I sometimes forget to add the closing “/”.
As regards ballistic trajectory games, if you have never tried it, find a copy of Worms, any of it’s sequels , or one of the many clones. I am sure you would love it.
Wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be [blockquote cite=”quote goes here”][/blockquote] or just [blockquote]quotegoeshere[/blockquote] (with the greaterthan/lessthan signs instead of [])
Have heard good things of Worms, but thought it was a regular combat game, with worms instead of humans
For our purposes it is the latter. The former does not format the text at all when displaying it in comments. Silly though it is for such obviously related commands not to behave in similar ways in the user interface.
Assuming that is intentional, I speculate that the former is a way of flagging to the internet something that can be picked up when searching for a particular quote or phrase. But that is pure guesswork, as I have no knowledge of the hypertext language other than the bits and pieces I have picked up here.
PS. I got curious enough to look it up, and confirmed that the guessing was spot on: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_blockquote_cite.asp
So that version is not of much use to us for general comments. But perhaps if we want to make sure that key phrases we are quoting from within the comic pop up when Googled? So the next time someone searches for “Zorp” or “Golden Beam”, the Grrl Power comments feature in the results list.
Since super speed is part of her powerset, everything would basically seem to freeze in place when it kicks in, removing a lot from the equation for targeting.
Maybe what she’s firing isn’t so much a particle ray but some type of gravity wave that pulls in material as it travels and gets superheated by the ‘wave’ effect, kinda like how microwaves heat stuff.
I had not considered that, but yes, perfectly true.
Still, such calculations are not easy. Even the pro’s usually use artificial aids to help with them. And she will not have sighting aids or other assistance of that kind. So there still may be an upper limit to how far she can accurately shoot. Plus it is still an extra power that would need boosting if she is attempting a long range shot. Presumably the longer the range the more she will have to devote to speed to give the extra calculation time. Likewise for any other complicating factors such as movement.
Another interpretation, given the relative height to Sydney: Maxima is aiming down. If she aimed straight, she’d probably just brush the top of the block, if she hit it at all, and it’s much safer to aim at the middle of the block, which is considerably below her shoulder-height.
So it is getting closer to the ground because it was aimed that way.
ZORK
Heyas Mon Signor, are you a new visitor or regular?
At least it wasn’t a “Dork-ray”, but, would a Dork-ray have any effect on Sydney though? o_O
Thanks for the bonus strip. I thought I’d have to wait for Monday for this.
I don’t know if there’s a word for it, but in the last panel
I’m guessing the geometric shaps in the force field are supposed to represent
“Force Field Arcing” as seen in the motion picture ‘Independance Day’ and
‘Forbidden Planet’.
They are normally in a ‘hex’-pattern, but that doesn’t mean they have to be, nor that they can’t be any other pattern, like in the last panel
I wonder how many people had those as their last words?
…Is Max’s gun holstered the right way? Because if that’s the grip we’re seeing, then it’s in the holster backwards, making for an unnecessarily awkward draw. The grip usually points toward the front.
DaveB confirmed earlier in the comments that he drew it the wrong way round.
Here’s a piece of advice for you. I realize that you wanted to point out what you’re doing, but as an avid fan and reader, speed lines are meant to convey motion, not draw the eye. By drawing attention to them (namely talk about them) you have me with two impressions on this page. The first was awesome. Action packed, epic, and real movement seemingly conveyed. The second is ‘holy crap those are a lot of lines’.
Importantly though, DaveB was after feedback and got a lot of constructive replies. Which showed, on the speed lines front, a general consensus. So the process worked very well.
The author’s comments do draw attention, as you say, but only for those of us who eagerly await each week’s episode. Long term, if new readers are doing an archive trawl, they will hopefully be caught up in the flow of the comic and not even notice the weekly comments.
The exception being if there is something about an episode that they do not understand. Or that they think they have spotted one of the hidden Easter Eggs but wonder if they are reading in things which were not intended. At which point, it is very helpful for them to see DaveB‘s comments first, so that they can get it direct from the author. Using this page as an example, that he is experimenting with a technique he has not used extensively before.
And I am caught up again! loving this man. i’m still a huge fan of the writing and art on this it’s just so top notch!
I’m rather enjoying the tessellations on Sydney’s shield. A pleasant variation from the triangles or hexagons I’ve seen on other shields.
That took a while to design… mostly cause I suck with Illustrator, but also coming up with a pattern I hadn’t seen before was a challenge. That said I’m sure I could walk into a hotel one day and see that pattern in the carpet.
I think it might read better if Sydney’s line in the last panel was more like “WAAAAAaaaactually this is pretty cool.”
Are those cracks I see?
Just pretty patterns that show the shield is under attack.
Why does she bother to carry a gun?
Maxima : (pointing finger at bank robber) “Police! Put down your weapon and assume the position, or I will fire.”
Gunman : (ignores the crazy gold-painted delusional woman and carries on committing crime).
Some time later…
General Faulk : “Maxima, please explain to me why we are having to investigate you for failing to declare that you were an armed police officer? You have blatantly failed to carry out correct police procedure. The gunman’s dependants are suing for a seven-figure sum. Not to mention the suits from the hostages for the trauma of having bits of gunman splattered all over them!”