Grrl Power #161 – Cooldown
I penciled this page and then thought I should check the lift capacity of Ospreys. Tour busses have quite a range of weights depending on the model and options. Even if ARCHON rented a bus based on weight and… you know, whether or not it would disintegrate while being airlifted… it’s probably a stretch to think the Osprey could carry one. That’s why Dabbler is hanging off the top of the one there. She’s maintaining a few Tenser’s Floating Disks equivalents under the wheels there to help out.
That artillery range has a huge parking lot. Must be one of those touristy artillery ranges.
Vote incentive is updated with the inks. It’s partially colored but the flats are pretty boring. I’ll try to have it done by next week.
Oh and I almost forgot, but if things go as planned, I’ll be a guest on a college radio show this Saturday called Otaku Attack which you can listen to off of this page. Note the 9pm – 11pm time listed there are for West Coast time… well, technically Mountain Time but AZ is weird about daylight savings. I’m in central and their show started at 11pm for me. It’s not a podcast so there won’t be a recording of it, but on the plus side you could call in to the show and as questions… unless I’m tying up the line and they only have one. I’ll update here and on twitter as I learn details.
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So any idea what the purple spikes are?
could be residue, who knows exactly what maxima was firing at her, although superheated sand = glass although to get purple requires some odd admixture in the sand.
Yea, the flat circle is clearly sand melted into glass. As the spikes are in concentric rings, radiating out from the impact point, I presume it is an effect similar to the ripples of a stone thrown into a pond. Except when looking at it closely when you see that it has formed crystals on the wave crests. So perhaps the carbon in the air and ground was being mixed with molten sand.
They better not let the press get their hands on any. If they are even part composed of diamond, then the world diamond markets could collapse overnight. Either way the purple colour is likely just down to trace minerals in the area. It is exactly how coloured glass is formed and likewise why there are diamonds in a whole range of colours.
I guess it is probably some other crystalline mineral that has been formed though. Something part carbon part glass. Over to the geologist readers on what that might give them.
Diamons? Really now. I thought every geek everywhere knows, thanks to the old superman comics, that you need high heat and very high pressure and a complete lack of oxygen to form diamond, else you just get good ole Carbon Dioxide.
As for the purple colour, I take it as artistic license and the play of light as the volcanic glass cools.
Obsidian. Carbon is only clear when crystallized under extreme pressure.
Guessing what we see there is something like obsidian (volcanic glass), mostly silicon (from the ground) and maybe some carbon. Exceptionally sharp material (used in specialized tools for super-delicate eye surgery), but not what anyone would call valuable.
Making anything like diamonds requires a massive amount of pressure. There was a ‘Mythbusters’ episode where they visited a university that actually creates diamonds via explosives. But it requires a c##pload of boom to create just a few grams. To create more diamond all in one go would probably require energy release comparable to a nuclear blast. Given the limited extent of the destruction we see here, and that the range’s blockhouse is still intact, guessing they didn’t ramp things up quite that much. This time.
Not to rain on you thermonuclear parade but a few places I do work for make diamond materials every day but on very small scales, without huge pressure. One of them does the so-called diamond coatings for safety glasses and such, even though the process just rips everything but the carbon from the polymers surface through a process involving lasers and specific gas mixes. The other place builds them almost one atom at a time as part of research on optical computing circuitry – this time it is under a vacuum so pressure is zero and temperature is hard to determine. =/
As I said, this is to produce the stuff quickly in “large” quantities, as in a big BADA-BOOM on a firing range. Not in a lab.
I agree that the suggestions of obsidian, amethyst or other crystals/minerals are far more likely than diamond. One aspect worth considering though, is that there is pressure involved. That particle beam was tearing the ground apart as it passed, without even touching it! The force the air was being pushed aside with (assuming that is the mechanics involved) must have been phenomenal. Let alone the pressure at the point of impact.
Ok, as it radiates out, the pressure drops the further it gets from the impact point. But that would explain why there are a couple of close rings and only the one further out. Being the points where interference patterns (or whatever the appropriate terms are in these circumstances) caused either the matter or the energy to clump or peak.
Not that I think it is likely, but in the event that even tiny amounts of diamond were formed at the points of greatest pressure (and where there was no oxygen present, as another commentator mentioned), spectrographic analysis of samples would show that it is present. If the headlines that followed were “Superhero can make diamonds with golden beam”, that alone might cause the price of diamonds to plummet worldwide. Despite, on closer investigation, only being true on a microscopic scale.
That is what happens with amethyst. It is quartz contaminated with iron, which turns it purple. In fact, those spike could be amethyst. Silicate sand, melted and refrozen in a crystalline form, with iron impurities giving it purple colour, perhaps even starting with iron silicate sand. Iron and silicates are two of the most common materials in the Earth’s crust, so yeah, I call amethyst not purple diamond. Even still, we are talking HOT here. Not surface of the sun hot, but not far from it (only about a quarter that hot).
If the cooling iron-impregnated silicon dioxide forms crystals, you get amethyst. If it forms a non-crystalline amorphous structure, then you have purple glass, in the style of volcanic glass. Either way, it is a pretty and marketable, but not particularly rare, material. Unless it is valuable for being tied to some of the specifics of its creation.
Sydney: [ At a pawn shop ] Yeah, this amethyst was formed when Maxima, you know, from ArcSwat, blasted my force field during training. So what do you think it is worth now?
Rick: I don’t know much about this, so at face value I can give you… $25 bucks at most. But to be sure, I got a buddy of mine that specializes in superpower-created artifacts, lemme give them a call to come check it out.
Not the pawn shop I was thinking of, but … yeah, that’ll work. LOL! :D
Unless you can establish historical providence, it’s just another mineral. Archaeologists complain all the time about valuable artifacts being made worthless because they are stolen, and therefore no longer have the paperwork that says they are the genuine article.
the archaeologists aren’t complaining about loss of financial value, its the cultural insight that comes with knowing the exact circumstances in which an artifact was found. Every single thing found at a site from jewelry to plant residue on a potsherd helps to tell the story of what went on there. If even one thing is left out it can distort everything else.
Where would they get the iron… Great Googalymoogaly! Just how many Giant Steel Blocks have they gone through testing Maxima alone!?!?
Iron is one of the most abundant metals in the Earth’s crust. Iron laden rocks are all around us; most of them are just not in economically exploitable distributions. Also, an artillery range is likely to have all sorts of steel shell fragments laying around. Look for the rust flakes!
I think Ugwump was primarily implying that super-hero testing alone might have seeded a lot of iron at that particular range, by being blasted off or otherwise vaporised in earlier events.
…. Girders, engine blocks, cars, tanks, locomotives.
All very plausible things to be found on a test range for supers.
the joke here is diamonds aren’t rare and the only reason the market is so high is because they’re artificially inflated by the monopoly on world wide diamonds trade. there are literally 100’s if not 1000’s of football field size warehouses world wide filled to the top with Diamonds that never see the light of day. all to make sure we pay more for those little blobs of carbon.
Sometime this year, I think, astronomers identified the remnant of a star. After it had gone boom or otherwise shed its usual fiery parts. And the remains are pure diamond. So that means that there are diamonds ‘out there’ bigger than planets!
However until we can figure a way to get it here, that pesky high demand, low supply formula ensures that diamonds continue to be valued. Unless Maxima causes a run on the markets. And such things do happen.
Yeah– and since the De Beers are based outside the US they are beyond legal reach to break up there Monopoly. However — thanks to advances in man-made diamond technology they are running scared now :)
There ‘forever mark’ is a trade mark to try and distinguish man-made from mined diamonds since they know man-made diamonds will eventually crush their monopoly (since they are identical in every other way).
I for one will always buy a man-made diamond if I can just to speed their little evil empires demise!
Yep, IIRC a Ruby is actually about 100 times RARER than a Diamond
though manmade rubys exist and are cheap to make.
True, and Ruby and Sapphire are the same element with different Impurities
Same compound: Aluminum oxide. Chromium contaminants would make it a ruby. Anything else gives you sapphire. If you have no contaminants, that is pure aluminum oxide, you get transparent aluminum, like the windows on the star-ship Enterprise.
close enough, we’re not gemologists here! ;)
We can see Sydney’s shield starting to crack under Max’s firepower. That might have created some area for the sand to kick up and get put under pressure from both the shield and the blast.
Other readers last week suggested that the patterns were simply the effects it displays when operating. And I would tend to agree as they linked to the earlier testing in the ballroom and the same pattern was there even when Maxima was giving it her gentle taps*. Just much smaller and fainter.
But, yours is not an unreasonable take on the issue. Except that stress fractures, once they get going that far, usually propagate rapidly to a catastrophic conclusion. Yet the testing proceeded to quite a staggering level with the shield continuing to hold out. Rather, if your line of reasoning holds true, I suspect it may be an indicator of it approaching it’s capacity (perhaps intentionally as a warning to the user, or as a side effect of the technomagic it uses to form the force field).
* Relative to this terrain-altering blast, anyhow.
When Max Hit Dabbler’s shield it also seemed to form a Fracture pattern. Dave said that the main reason Dabbler’s Shield is 3 stars is it’s relatively small size (About 2 feet across, the size of a Targe-type shield).
If you look closely, you’ll see the same pattern here in the first panel. It seems to be an effect of getting hit.
And her shield has the same power rating as any of Maxima’s abilities (according to the cast page).
The question there is ofcourse, would a 5star shield beat a 5star beam, or other way around?
If both go out full power, would the shield hold?
would the surrounding area hold? they haven’t tested the PPO yet.
nah, I call a newly created crystalline structure that may have military applications to replace industrial diamonds.
Looking back at the last page, the shield was only just slightly larger than Sydney and the block combined. It looks to me like there were at least 3 tests, each with making the shield cover a larger area as evidenced by the 3 rings of crystal.
Trinitite. The glass is primarily composed of arkosic sand composed of quartz grains and feldspar (both microcline and smaller amount of plagioclase with small amount of calcite, hornblende and augite in a matrix of sandy clay) that was melted by the atomic blast. It is usually a light green, although color can vary. It is mildly radioactive, but is safe to handle
Once, Twice, Three times a lady….
fired her finger beams at Sydney, who’s shield measure grew three times that day.
It is an airbus :3
I love the crystals in panel 1 and 2.
That’s some impressive damage to the ground, I really like the effect.
B.t.w. aren’t the lenses missing from Max’s sunglasses in panel 4?
Yea, it looks like she has Sydney’s glasses on like this
She does wear glasses sometimes. It is just that she is a lot tougher than her glasses so she does not wear them when doing many activities.
She was wearing them when she started shooting though
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1039
And she still looks like the frame of the glasses is there, just not the glas
Max’s glasses are not too car off from the color of her skin. Sometimes they just aren’t darkened enough to stand out from her skin tone, and since they’re not really in front of her eyes you don’t get that visual clue.
Is that a butterfly in panel 1?
Yup. Possibly a disguised mechanical bug. Maybe a shapechanged super spy. Probably just a butterfly.
Maybe it’s a magic illusion just like Sydney’s telepresence
Prototype of Machina Industries new Mark One Surveillance Drone.
Or Leon. He’s got the chops for making his own spy gadgets, doesn’t he?
A possibility. He’s probably got several ways of “normally” monitoring that location anyhow, but a little extra can’t hurt.
That is a common cabbage moth. The are shown in various manga and specific forms of anime. Unfortunately I have no clear recollection on the symbolism when they are used.
In NA it is the clothing moth that is used to show being destitute.
In this case, I think it’s representing the extreme residual heat from the surface, since it seems to be sizzling in the updraft.
I know you’re being silly, but I’d say it’s there to emphasize that while the outside of the shield was subjected to enough temperature that the ground literally melted, the inside was cool enough that a butterfly – symbol of fragility – is still merrily flitting around.
I think somebody with more poetic skill than me should pen an Haiku for this.
butterfly dances
above scorched glass of desert
inviting questions
I would have gone with “desert of glass” but not bad.
. . . that WAS actually supposed to be “desert of glass”. Cats decided to stage their own MMA tournament on the couch for fun just as I was preparing to post, and the correction totally slipped my mind. I yelled “STOP THAT”, clicked “submit” without thinking, then bolted out of my chair to rescue the ten-pound cat from the twenty-two pound cat before it started snowing fur. (The smaller one starts the roughhousing all the time. He thinks he’s bigger than the purebred Maine Coon no matter how often he is proven completely wrong.)
Nice result. Poetry, music and art are all sorely lacking in my repertoire. Creatively speaking, that is. My lack saddens me, but makes me appreciate the skill, all the more, when I see it in others.
Excellent page once again! And userfriendly even for iPhone :)
sand in the dirt glasses under high temps. sorta of the “green glass sea” after early nuclear weapons tests. i don’t remember all the details.. but there you go.
For certain values of the word bus, Sydney. =P
As for the range’s parking lot it stands to reason it’s going to fairly expansive. Have to park the Deuce-and-a-halfs, busses, or what ever else they use to get the troops out there. As well as a staging area for the equipment use to mule the pieces out to the range that aren’t self-propelled. Not to mention the General’s HMMWV. =P
Yep. Back in the 80s when I was in the army my job was to chauffeur visiting dignitaries around Ft. Sill OK, the home of the field artillery. I often had to drive them to demonstration shoots, and some of the places not only had big parking areas but bleachers for crowds. I always loved seeing the MLRS night launches, even if those assignments interfered with my drinking time. :-)
WOW!!… i “JUST” got done watching “Future Weapons” and that is one of the places/systems they talked about, what a co-inky-dink!!
Sandy is missing from the Who’s Who.
IIRC the Black haired guy is Hiro, but I can’t make out who the other person flying in is.
looks like HeatWave is flying and Dabbler riding on top of the other bus
Weird, wordpress truncated the S off of sandy’s tag, so it was looking for the “andy02” badge. It does that with Syndey too sometimes. Must have something against S’s.
becaue it i a very dangerou letter to deal with. jut ak any englih teacher and they’ll urely ay that it i…
Got about halfway through your post before i realized, no S’s.
question is that maxima next to the bus? if so…. huh?
Maxima could carry both busses at the same time.
It’s probably Heatwave. She can fly, but not very extencively. It looks like she’s signaling to Hiro to help him land
What? Did someone say, “impotent rage”?
Impotent Rage: the liberal superhero!
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/09/20/impotent-rage-the-liberal-superhero/
This comic reminded me of what has to be one of the most useless superheros ever conceived: Schadenfreude Man
Sydney totally knows the best day to day use of gravity controlled flight. To improvise a couch whenever you need to chill out.
I’d say this is the best evidence you could possible get for how her florb works. She’s clearly having some force pressing against her entire body, or floating like that would be dificult
What if I tell you…. that she just doesn’t have a force pushing her down? (also called ‘anti-gravity’)
It is more than just negating the existing gravity. Remember how she rotated around her own axis, when first revealing the powers of her orbs? She can control the direction that gravity operates on her. Note that her hair, in the link, acts like a plumb line clearly proving the point.
Combined with the fact that she can fly, fast, by doing so, means that she has powerful and variable control over gravity. Depending on the upper scope, and whether she can affect other people/objects with it, means you could start thinking of her as being the Magneto of gravity.
Not quite. THIS is the Magneto of Gravity.
https://marvel.wikia.com/Franklin_Hall_%28Earth-616%29
Well she can do the same thing on personall level. I guess
Air planking.
Sydney’s force field overloaded?
It looks like it changed diameter during the test and allowed
some damage to the steel block.
Remember the block has been used before for weapons tests. So the damage it has was probably already there
From the dialogue, no. What we can conclude though is that the force field does not absorb the incoming energy (or at least not all of it), but makes it radiate outwards. Useful in some circumstances, problematic in others.
I think those are just the holes that were already there myself. Do not be too fussed about the exact positioning, as they appear to be drawn rather than created with a texture. But there was a big hole with another line of bullet holes and those are still visible. The smaller nicks and so on would not stand out from the more distant viewpoint.
Yes, all of the damage to the block was preexisting and the radius of the shield orb, if you look at the last panel in the previous strip, was barely surrounding the block + Sydney, so the inner radius of crystals indicates the shield boundary. Further, from the view in the first panel of this comic, Sydney was on the far side of the block from the beam’s impact, which explains the reduced damage shown by the partial ellipses of shards.
I was wondering why Dave didn’t give us a treat and actually Max’s power blast. However, this conversation makes me realize he’s best off saving it for later when real action and danger become present.
I am doing a bit of detective work*, but I think I can give you the real treat you asked for. Hit the “previous” button above and you will see Maxima’s blast attack!
* My line of reasoning being that I assume you missed DaveB‘s comment last Monday that he would be giving us a bonus Thursday comic. As such, I guess you logged on to today’s comic without realising there was a scene preceding it you have missed.
Oh, thank you! :-D I did miss it. I usually only come here on Monday.
I am assuming the hole in panel 1 (through which at first glance it seemed Sydney was speaking) was there before the test (that face of the block not having been previously shown in close up).
What is particularly interesting is the blast pattern in panel 2.
Was all that from the single depicted shot?
Is its complexity merely artistic or should its multiple ellipses be indicative of the nature and durability of Sydney’s Shield?
The double layer of glassed earth suggests a multi-layered shield with the shot penetrating (but not destroying) the outer layer only to be stopped by the inner layer.
Is this a reasonable interpretation?
another interpratation is that the shield is creating a second smaller blastwave
I don’t think they shot just once.
There probably was quite a range of tests between this and the previous page, but that’s all just the same and thus not relevant to put into the commic
From the dialogue, I would say that the shield held up throughout. I think the patterns and effects are down to Maxima’s particle energy being reflected off the shield and interacting with the ground and air. Melting it and inducing other chemical changes. The radiated energy having behaved like a wave and the patterns you see left behind are the result of that. Possibly as a single prolonged attack by the golden beam. Although no reason why it might not have been done in a series of strikes.
Triple layer of glassed earth. Look at the corners of the picture.
I’d say the inner layer is from the first attack(s) where Sydney was hiding behind the block. The second layer I would say is where she stepped out from behind the block to change it up a little bit I’d bet.
Coulda got a Chinook to carry the buses in. 28,000 lbs cargo capacity (compared to 15,000 lbs external of the Osprey).
Or better yet a CH-53E Super Stallion with an external load-out of 36,000 lbs. I’m sure the Marines would be happy to loan Archon one or two. =P
Super SEA Stallion. Good ol’ triple S. Ahh, the memories. Good times.
True, but: The Osprey is a better general-purpose vehicle, and the entirety of ARC can ride in one, so there’s no need for ARC to have multiple air-transports. (Also: they don’t normally need to transport hardware, just their own personnel.)
Basically, this is what they have on-hand. They could probably get a loaner if they needed it, but this is impressive enough. ;)
No, the point wasn’t just to fly the reporters in, it was to compare and contrast Hiro’s lifting strength.
I wonder, if press can be counted as non-human intelligence, and if so, do that particular Osprey has a handy drone nearby?..
… and Dazzler here, yes, of course. That makes that particular intersection more plausibe, if only in “one can dream” world…
Doubtful. The press conference would be boring, as virtually none of the press would notice anything really newsworthy, and probably unnecessary, as most likely no one would have noticed superpowers being used to foil the “bank robbery”. Going public with weird stuff like superpowers in the Narboniverse would be hard.
Please note that there is a third ring of shards in panel two. A really large ring. Holy crap!
Yeah, and that wasn’t at 100% power.
I wonder if Maxima has any weaknesses, Kryptonite?
From the Bio description, it wouldn’t exactly be a kryptonite, but she would be relatively vulnerable to sneak attacks while specced for something other than armor, or possibly quick counterattacks depending on how fast she can re-spec.
Even if she dumps stats in 1 atribute, the other ones are still pritty damn strong without the aditionall buff
I have theroized that maxima, while quite powerful would be vulnerable to a series of Blitz attacks using multiple attack forms and points of attack, forcing her to constantly shift attributes and eventually either shifting to the wrong one at the wrong time or striking with Surprise so she has most of her Attributes “Dumped” and therefore Vulnerable.
The way I understand it, she is 5star in everything (thus a power level of 9), and can dump the rest of her energy into any of the stats, pulling it up to 6 (or 5,5).
Now whether or not this pulls the rest down to 4 (or something like that) or not, remains to be seen.
So while confusing her focus could work, it would still need to be very strong attacks to begin with
I think Dave said 5 is her ‘Baseline’ (How she usually keeps her stats with most of her energy in the “Pool”) the stars for her powers are when she’s “maxed” that ability out.
The limited nature of those icons isn’t helped by the complications of Max’s power pool. These numbers aren’t absolute, a 5 point scale is a limited way to notate some of this stuff, but in general terms, Max is at a 3 all the time, she can take two abilities to a 4 with the power pool or concentrate on one and take it to a 5. She can also draw against her other abilities to push herself further but it’d never quite be a 6. The 6th pip I added on Achilles’s picture was kind of joke really.
I was thinking the stars at the bottom of the pic when I said 5 (Anvil’s overall rating) to give him a point of comparison.
That makes it awhole lot clearer. Thanks for the explanation
Actually, no, in that context, Achilles having six stars would make sense, because he is just as completely invulnerable as Max, except that he’s invulnerable all the time, whereas if you were to hit Max hard enough while she wasn’t watching for it, you’d probably at least injure her.
Basically, I guess, it comes down to this: if Max knows she’s about to step on a nuclear land-mine (or whatever it takes to crack her armor when she’s not actively buffing it), or even that she could step on one, she could buff to the point where it wouldn’t hurt her, and then taunt the bad guys. Achilles, on the other hand, doesn’t have to know he’s about to get hit–he’s good regardless of whether or not he buffs.
So if his passive invulnerability is on the same scale as Max when she concentrates to get a five-star rating, then…yeah, it’s worth six stars. He’s still pretty limited in terms of usefulness, but that’s okay, because he’s always there to pick up any pieces that need to be picked up.
By the way, my vote for the two mystery orbs: healing and languages. That is, one allows Sydney to heal herself or others, and the other lets her understand any language. Both of these abilities seem to be pretty seriously lacking in ARC at the moment, although having several members of the ARC team speak multiple languages is a nice touch. Perhaps more importantly, however, both of those abilities could only be apparent in certain special circumstances, so Sydney would have no way to know what those two orbs did until those circumstances arose.
I’m pritty sure DaveB already has plans for the unkown orbs :P
Actually, ranges having large parking lots isn’t that unlikely, especially if it’s Archon’s own range and they had a need to demonstrate to large numbers of people, and/or there were more individual ranges nearby. What’s actually the unrealistic part is that it’s paved. I’ve never seen a range road or parking lot that wasn’t just a dirt track, as military vehicles are rugged enough that it doesn’t matter, and since military weapons can’t be carried in privately owned vehicles (those that fit, anyway), it’s rare to see a POV at a range at all.
Of course, this can all be handwaved away by saying “It’s Archon, and they had bunches of politicians and generals and so on coming down to see the team in action and they decided to pave the parking lot because why not.”
Just noticed that Hiro now has a neck thingy. Very nice design, nice workaround to the big muscle necks
Well spotted. A modern riff on a torc. Agreed, hats off to DaveB for finding a good solution.
Looks like it says SH on it. SuperHiro? ;)
Noticed the neck thingy too. Math’s was all the way around. Is the interrupted band only for hiro, only for those big enough to need it, or will all guys have it?
Torcs for the guys with thick necks, chokers for everyone else. Except the guys call them “Tactical Throat Mics” and not chokers. They also call their dolls “Action Figures”
If I remember correctly, didn’t seal team 6 have chokers for their throat mics? Same thing for the bomb/eod team in “SPEED”
“Where we are going, we don’t NEED roads…”.
That line immediately came to mind with the last couple of panels. Thinking they would ship in the press by Osprey, but I obviously was only half right. Makes sense, showcase ARC’s more obvious / photogenic capabilities as much as possible.
Otherwise, very cool. I definitely like the talk between Sydney and Max – the developing friendship between the seasoned warrior and the ‘new kid’, sort of thing. Yeah, Max is (or will be) her Commanding Officer and has to maintain a certain stance in public, but these quiet moments where both can pretty much be themselves are important.
Putting Arianna up in this week’s ‘Who’s Who’ seemed odd to me, given that all we actually see of her is her left arm and part of her back (presumig that’s her, anyway). No biggie, mind you.
I wonder if there is ANY reason whats-o-ever to not just fly them in an actual heli, other than showing of the flying people on the team.
Maybe it’s so the press can be driven back home after the whole event is over
Love the informal things to. Ofcourse we have already noticed that the entire Arc team is highly informal, so it’s less special, but still
I think it may be our PR person at work here.
Helicopters are notorious for having not so comfortable seating, minimalist sanitary facilities, never have formal bars. If you want AC, just open a door. And it is just nigh impossible to wear a Prada suit and give a formal presentation while maintaining any form of dignity or coherence..
Helicopters, and that Osprey in hover mode, are also very noisy. Briefing the press during flight would be very difficult.
well, at least Arianna has some dialogue in this page which is more than Hiro has and yet he’s in “who’s who”.
He’s showing off his powers though. That’s worth a mention
Arianna is shown doing her duty as the PR manager, that’s also worth a mention ^_^
I wonder how stable the ride is dangling beneath an Osprey or a Super. Air turbulence might make things interesting. :)
Also, I think this is the first time Sydney and Maxima have talked to each other calmly and sanely.
There are probably supers flying around the busses to stabelize them
Or they spent that little bit extra for the Pictorvision built stabilization system.
Actually, Mythbusters showed clearly that the air pressire from a helicopter or similar is rather negligible. Even a person can climb up from the skates of a flying helicopter.
It’s not the pressure from the helicopter I was worrying about, it’s the fact they busses are dangling from a single point, allowing them to rock or rotate as air passes them due to the forward movement of the vehicle through the air.
“Barfbags! Where are the barfbags?“
Meh, just open a window
Openable windows are not necessarily available here. The coaches in the last panel look like the ‘completely-sealed-cuz-it’s-air-conditioned’ type.
Also, these days, many buses / coaches that DO have openable windows tend to site said windows in awkward-to-reach spots and make them only openable a teeny bit.
Also also, when in a vehicle moving at a reasonably high speed, opening a window to puke outside has the potential for Bad Things To happen. In a word, “blowback”.
Hence the need for barfbags.
I see multiple lift cables and anchor points under the Osprey. Even Hiro’s rig has multiple attachment points. Otherwise, yeah, those buses would be spinning like a hanged man.
The things that gets me about Hiro’s rig is that the cables appear to be attached to the roof. Bus roofs are not that strong; they are not intended to hold up the weight of the bus on a regular basis. The cables should be anchored to the wheels or frame of the bus, which is on the bottom.
Dabbler: (speaking telepathically) “See, I told you the structural integrity enhancers would stop your cable rigging from tearing the roof off. Do not worry, as soon as we land we can turn them off and the sonic dampening side-effect will stop affecting us.”
The cables attach to straps that go under the bus, see? Dabby’s straps?
You say “straps”, Dabbler says “structural integrity enhancers” ;-)
he says straps, you say “structural integrity enhancers”, xurial says “my sleepwear and play toys”.
Dabby knows her stuff. I should never argue with a schmott succubus like her. ;)
The butterfly is a nice effect, & appropriate: the hissing, cracking terrain mere inches away from a perfectly safe butterfly (they really are rather fragile creatures) shows the sharp distinction between the raging destruction of Max’s bolt & the safety within Sidney’s shield. Also means Max won’t irradiate the neighborhood with that blast.
comments about pre-existing gouges not withstanding.. the fact that sydney’s voice is pictured as coming THROUGH the hole, gives the impression that maxima did, in fact, penetrate the shield.
Which is odd when sydney’s comments imply the opposite.
Given the destructive force of Maxima’s opening shot, I doubt she’d leave something the size of a bullethole though
That didn’t occur to me while I was lettering. I’ll have to make that clearer when I go in and put Maxima’s lenses back in.
I thought it was a humorous way of messing with the readership. The first panel makes you think the shot went into the steel block and maybe even singed Sydney. The second is the artist going ‘Psych!’.
Just for some information, a Chinook helicopter could definitely lift those buses. It would probably still fly around 70 miles/hour too.
They are very common in any military (ground force) operation where large amounts of troops or equipment need to be moved into areas where fixed wing aircraft can’t gain access.
Actually, bomb ranges would have parking lots for when EOD goes through and does cleanup (sets off more explosives to destroy any unexploded ordinance (UXOs))
I wouldn’t have thought carrying press buses around would be part of the job description. Little demeaning for a superhero to tote a yoke just to save PR time.
Always read the job description through fully.
There is always a last or second to last line in there somewhere stating something similar too – and other duties as assigned.
Could be a line in contract involving the occasional odd job
It’s all part of the demonstration. From Hiro’s point of view, he’s basically going “Hey lookit how much I can benchpress!”
It’s certainly a step or three up from Bank Robbery, which is what a couple of ARC supers were doing earlier on in the name of publicity.
Hm. Sydney’s choker in the last panel. Isn’t the stylized “H” supposed to be yellow?
Normally, yes. In this circumstance though, if the text part of the collar is reflective (like a yellow high-visibility jacket), it may be reflecting the blue radiated by the very close fly-ball.
I’ll have to check to see if that’s actually light from the orb of if I left her choker selected after I went to go color something blue. :)
its the same blue as Hiro’s new Choker so I’m guessing the later of the two
In the last panel we have no fewer than 4 individuals flagrantly breaking Newton’s laws of motion. What kind of example does this send to the children of our country when members of our armed forces take such a flippant attitude to our legal system?
And remember kids: Gravity. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.
So somebody please tell me the answer. If Sydney’s talking to Max, then why is there a golden flying amazon in the background of the last panel?
Maxima’s really fast. She flew over to wave to the rubes between “Bussed in” and “Seems like”
Word on the street is that one is Dabbler and the other Heatwave. Count the limbs to figure which is which. And (one quick check of the cast list later) Heatwave can fly, just about.
Dabbler would be in her illusion, so only 2 arms.
But judging on the hair and clothes, the left one (under the heli) is Dabbler
Looks more like Daphne than Brook, but how is she flying? Can she vorp herself up in the air, and then vorp again before she falls too far? If so, he could sort of hop around in the air like a dust mote. No?
Most theories about teleportation I know, is that when teleporting you keep your momentum.
So if she’d keep falling and teleporting up, she’d quickly be falling at terminal velocity. Now she’s pritty though, but you can’t just land when you have the momentum of a body going at terminal velocity
Are you saying she can’t come out of a vorp going up instead of down?
Turn 180 degrees mid vorp?
That might work
I’m no expert, but I saw a movie called Jumper, I think. Lots of cool vorping tricks.
If it is Heatwave mind, she would have had to get changed. Last time we saw her she was wearing her sanitation engineer’s outfit.
Hey, that’s right! So, how can Harem fly, then? If she’s vorping, wouldn’t it be kinda jerky?
Purely for information, City of Heroes’ teleporters had a weak levitation ability built in. It took a couple of seconds, after teleporting, for gravity to notice that the hero was there. Basically just to allow ‘porters to jump from one visible aerial point to another without continually loosing height. Even with that the teleport power was not easy to control. And continually teleporting to the same spot to ‘hover’ would be very hard. But there is no suggestion that Daphne has a similar capability, so I mention it solely as a point of interest.
Here’s a question I don’t think anyone’s really thought of. What the Press’s reaction being to seeing the rings of glass.
One of them will have the urge to sing. Most of the rest of them will likely be thinking “thank God they are on our side!” Suzie’s thoughts are “Oh my God, is that Sydney in the middle of that crater?” Oddly, another will be musing “It is usually about this time that I have to go off and rescue Lois”.
And start looking for a phone booth
He can use the washroom on the bus.
One might go home to wake up Emily and tell her about havingthe strangest dream.
I am surprised at you people! All that speculation up there and nobody as yet has said anything about the shards of glass being the same color (more or less) as Sydney’s Forcefield Orb.
The fact that the ‘overload pattern’ in her shield looks like a recycling symbol might be an artistic visual hint btw…
Purple. The new invincible.
Those aren’t cracks. They’re fractal/tesselated patterns showing the shield absorbing the energy- This could be an example of the shield reaching its stress point, but is more likely the same effect as you get with Beehive shields in anime- when the shield is under no strain, it’s blank, but when it gets hit with something it’ll channel the energy and/or flex along the pattern of its ‘energy weave’ or construction, so patterns and geometric shapes will show up on its surface.
From the way it appears, it seems that the Shorb creates its dome from interwoven strips of energy as opposed to a single contiguous surface. Assuming the different energy bands share the same space, that would give it both the structural integrity inherent in egg/ovoid/spheroid shapes, as well as good energy diffusal properties.
Secondary thread – Is Dabbler is silencing the rotor noise from the Osprey? Otherwise there would certainly be sound effects at this point.
It would also show to the people paying attention that ARC can move several dozen people and lots of heavy gear a substantial distance in absolute silence. Without even trying hard.
Where IS Dabbler anyway?
Above and to the left of the left-hand bus in the picture, the one under the Osprey.
Dabbler’s next to the bus being carried by the Osprey.
I can imagine Dabbler pranking Sydney with muting their arrival.
I’d think the muting would be to allow everyone in that bus to hear one another.
One can also reference Sydney’s first statement, in regards to the Osprey and why she’s not hearing it or at least its muffled somewhat.
“Well, that was educational, and cool, and loud.”
Her hearing may still be a bit wonky and a lot of things are a bit muffled. I’ve had that problem after being around loud noises for awhile(concerts, firing ranges, etc, etc). Your ears just haven’t finished stabilizing back to ‘normal’ yet so they might have problems with certain tones or volumes.
Or the fact that its a testing field might also imply a military base nearby so she’s already ‘tuned out’ the sounds of planes or helicopters flying “relatively” close by. What’s another chopper when you’ve heard five go by in the past ten minutes? You get used to such things after awhile. I live near a hospital so I don’t even notice the sound of ambulances(when I’m inside) coming in or the lights shining through my window as they go by. I still hear and see them, I just automatically tune them out.
A final thought is that the shield orb has a mild sound dampening effect, which combined with the aftereffects of the shockwaves has left her localized hearing fine but stuff from a distance, not so fine.
It could be the distance is a bit skewed and the parking lot is quite a bit father away than it looks. Hard to be sure. It looks real close, but depth can sometimes be tricky to judge (and draw).
Or simply dramatic license.
Just various thoughts on the matter on why. I’m inclined toward the idea her hearing is wonky (she did make the loud comment after all).
+1
https://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov/Research/Programs/tramprogram.html
I wanna see Sydney test her PPO!
I don’t think anyone has noted yet the still-green blades of grass inside the smallest circle of volcanic glass.
Yes, it’s a very subtle touch showing just how effective the shield is.
Not even a little bit of heat from the blast gets through
Sydney prebavly doesn’t hear the Osprey because she’s too engrossed in her conversation with Maxima on top of absorbing the experience of the blast.
Or she’s partially deafened by the noise from the blast. Either way, it’s pretty cool to see the after-effects of Maxima’s blast.
Hmm, I wonder if Halo and Maxima had to get there ahead of the flying buses so that the buses wouldn’t be buffeted by the shock wave from the test?
Gonna go with ‘a little “A”, a little “B”‘ for not hearing. Attention deficit has an interesting secondary symptom: once you’re interested, you have a hard time breaking your attention away. And, Sydney specifies that it was ‘loud’; they could essentially be shouting at each other and Sydney hasn’t a clue.
I suspect that avoiding the buffet was a beneficial coincidence; the press conference was scheduled prior to knowledge of Sydney and her abilities. ARC probably just took advantage of the situation to slip in some capability testing while the newsies were being loaded up and hauled away.
Kevin …
ADHD … a point I forgot about in my original post as to why she hasn’t heard them arriving. I can get that way myself (as I do have ADHD), completely tuning out everything when I get engrossed in something I find ‘currently interesting’.
If S.H.I.E.L.D. can stealth an aircraft carrier, then Arc is allowed to stealth a little old helicopter. Besides, that much noise reduces the pleasure of the ride and interferes with the lecture/data release.
So seeing that level of destruction from Gold’s beam, And that Syd’s Shield had a Refracted Reaction to it, If that Was not the MOST powerfully devastating beam Maxema could possibly through, I Doubt Syd’s Orb could of handled stronger, That being said, In the event they are A. Magical, B. Alien tech, or C, based on something somewhere in between, It is likely that they have the ability to adapt to prier conflicts and acquire stronger defenses in the event they meet the enemy combatant again. That is going on the assumption the orbs exist at all. I have a running head theory that the orbs are Sydney’s own mind creating a Visible object to utilize her own latent supernatural powers.
Plausible theory. One anomaly that would require explanation though, if true, is why she does not have the physique and typical appearance characteristic of other supers in this setting.
If she already has the superpowers, than why can she only use them by touching the orbs though?
And why would they suddenly show up while diving at the keys?
Given the nature of the theory in question, and my own, I will take a stab.
Her appearance could be any or a combination of factors, self image, actual use of powers VS mere possession etc, besides, the racks are impressive, but not required to be smokin. As far as needing to touch the orbs, a self limitation, or that’s just how her power manifests itself, like an incantation or symbol. Finding them? Sydney, alone in a remote location, imagination running wild, maybe she just let off on trying to hold herself back a bit, for all we know this could be mild for her.
I tend to think of it less as the orbs having powers, and more as the orbs representing a capability, and Sydney having the ability to empower them.
It’d been discussed a few times already that the patern showing on the shield has nothing to do with it’s beaking point. Rather, the patern is simply what shows when you apply some pressure to it, and is the vissual effect of the shield absorbing/defusing the energy.
If you look here https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/526 You see the same patern, and that definitly NOT was it’s breaking point, otherwise it would have never held up against the recent onslaught
It’s also possible that while the orbs are A) magical, B) alien, C) ???, they are limited by the amount of power they can draw from Sydney. So their technical power limit would only be … what Sydney is capable of. They may be far stronger, but they can only draw as much energy as her body can handle. So her current power level is no real indicator of what she may in time be capable of.
She could also be ‘less endowed’ if you go the route of ‘they’re just manifestations of her mind’ as the idea that the powers were nascent, thus not affecting her physical development. This could of course, to her job, lead to her body starting to … ahem, grow.
Bugger. Last sentence should be …
“This could of course, to her joy, lead to her body starting to … ahem, grow.”
Dumb fingers not liking to work.
Yea I like that version alot better.
So basicly, the orbs amplify the users powers? I like that, very plausable in the way of it being some form of alien tech.
Sydney would not have enough power herself to be a super, but when amplified she’s pritty damn strong.
Also makes a nice question popup about what would happen if Maxima somehow had control over the orbs
Attack of the 50 foot Maxima?
…ok, who released the chaos butterfly and let it flap its wings??
Abandon Earth!
Ok so…is it just me, or did Sydney’s color change color in coordination to the Shield Orb?
Many pardons, I meant collar*.
Ahh, your clarification did not pop up until after my reply, below, had refreshed the screen. Which does require a different answer.
Check out DaveB’s earlier reply: http://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1043/comment-page-1#comment-45777
Not just the shield orb, every orb. They all glow and any time Sydney, or any other person, object or wall is near to one, their glow is picked up and reflected. There is a hell of a lot of subtle detail that DaveB has embedded into the comic. The final panel being a prime example.
The quantity of other light in the area would affect how much orb-glow we actually see.
Now wondering if the amount of glow may also vary for other reasons. Already been established that the orbs have a kind of “sleep mode”. It is possible they may also glow differently (more brightly?) when actively used or even according to Sydney’s emotional state.