Grrl Power #168 – A harsh lesson in orb management
I don’t know why I gave Sydney an explodey cutting beam. Drawing cross sections of things is a pain in the butt.
There was lots of discussion of Dragonball Z in the comments last week, so I thought I’d link this – A group called Team Four Star has taken DBZ and edited it down to just the important parts (they get all the way up to the androids in just a few hours), then redubbed it (really well I might add – even if the first few episodes are a little rough) and it’s really funny.
Grrl Power is now available on Comic Chameleon, which is an iPhone app that lets you read webcomics one panel at a time, which is ideal for the small screen. (An iPad and Android version is coming) The other nice thing about the app is that 2/3 of the ad revenue they make on the app comes back to the comic author. A paid, ad free version of the app is in the works too. I think it’s just two guys making it. Really the coolest thing about the app for me is that Grrl Power is now listed alongside some rather notable comics like Girls with Slingshots, Dumbing of Age, Chainsaw Suit, Oglaf, etc. The only drawback to the app is that someone has to set up the panels for you to advance through. In this case my wife sacrificed a whole Saturday, like literally 12 hours doing it.
In other news, I lost a hard drive this weekend (two actually… sort of – I won’t bore you with the gory details.) The comic is all in my Dropbox so I didn’t lose anything critical, but I did lose all day Saturday and a few hundred bucks reinstalling Windows, Paint Tool SAI, Illustrator, etc. The next page might have spartan backgrounds or something, I’m not sure how losing a day will affect my schedule yet. On top of that, I renewed the hosting for the comic for another 5 years, so there went my portable drawing tablet fund. That being the case I’d like to point out that if you’ve ever had the urge to support the comic (besides liking/tweeting/telling your friends) the Amazon link in the “What I’m Reading” widget is a great way to do that. You don’t have to buy the book I have linked, just visit Amazon via that link and buy whatever you were going to buy anyway in the same browsing session, and it will drop a few pennies in my hat. Well, it’s a percent of what you buy, like… 6%, unless a lot of people are referred through the link then it goes up… there’s a chart. It doesn’t cost you a dime extra. Anyway if you were planning on getting a next gen console through Amazon, or a $5,000 plasma TV, or maybe even doing all your Christmas shopping there. You know. Just saying.
Edit: With so much else going on I forgot to post this. I recorded myself coloring this page -well, 2 hours of it anyway – which means I got though the foreground characters. The coloring was done in Paint Tool SAI. It’s not sped up or anything as I was trying to show the exact process. Here’s the link.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
i have a question, while watching the coloring video i became curious: what does the artist use to do the lines for this comic?
I’ve done most of the comic entirely in Paint Tool SAI. The last 10-15 pages I’ve been transitioning to Manga Studio 5ex for the pencils and inks, but I still color in SAI just because I know it better. Right now I don’t really like the default coloring tools in MS5ex but hopefully if I spend a little more time with it I’ll learn to like them more. I do the lettering and panels in Illustrator.
What kind of tablet do you use
I have a Cintiq 21UX.
man, my mind MUST be in the gutter… i had to re-read your posts here three times before i saw that you were NOT saying Manga Studio SEX or Cintiq 2 LICKS…
It is a pretty sexy program. I’ve done that too.
A friend of mine uses GIMP, we were at a party and chatting about these programs.
At just the precise moment when the whole room went quiet she said
“Oh that reminds me, I need to get a new plugin for my GIMP”
As I was the only person in the room who knew what GIMP was, I was rolling on the floor giggling as the whole room stared at her in shock/confusion ;)
Man that took some explaining!
GIMP is awesome. And free!
And you can keep it in the basement and only let it out when Willis and Jackson bust into your pawn shop.
Which also reminds me of a conversation of many years back whilst in line at a DMV. Myself and a colleague were discussing how to allow access to higher level commands to unprivileged users, and the conversation used terms like ‘pseudo’ and ‘kill’. There was a cop in line behind us, and after we realized that the discussion might be suspicious to a law enforcement officer we began to explain. At which point he broke in ans said “Pseudo, huh? I just use wrappers.” Many jaws hit the ground that day.
They were warned that she’s a NOOB…
NOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sydney is not a fat-sucking no-it-all self-delusional hose-nozzle-holding twat, she is simply a newb(ie) to being an actual Super(hero)
Like I said ‘She’s a NOOB’
NOOB=inexperienced, doesn’t care, doesn’t want to get better or accept help when offered, proud of their status
NEWB=inexperienced, cares, wants to learn, will accept/ask for help when needed.
and suddenly the railgun seen moments ago seems just mildly impressive, seeing as this thing can bisect a tank long ways in half and make it explode.
Too bad her force beam couldn’t just bisect it without the explosion. Remember the beam Gort fired in the original “Day the Earth Stood Still?” No explosion so it was a different kind of weapon. Must change the molecular bonds and suppress any kind of combustion.
that would have been interesting too but most impressive beam weapon far as scifi goes was mass conversion beam where whatever the beam hit it turned that matter into energy instant remote nuke. but i like explosions in every form so this is good too. besides we are talking about cutting a tank here and that beam went though the frontal plate like it was butter we are talking the toughest armor on a tank in case of a current battle tank thats equivalent to to 1000+mm of homogenous rolled armor. about 1600mm when against heat which this might be (and she cut it it bottom to top at an angle all the way though in a fraction of a second) so from physics perspective the cutting power here is far more impressive but people in general find explosions more impressive and visually stunning which it seems thats what dave went for and i cant blame him for trying to please the crowds. kinda surprised the railgun wasnt more of a show.
Gotta disagree with ya on the most impressive sci fi beam weapon. For sheer destructive power nothing I’ve heard of beats Dr. Device (Molecular Detachment Device) from Ender’s Game (loved the book and just re-read before seeing movie).
Not sure how to do spoiler tags on here so if you haven’t seen or read Ender’s Game and you plan to don’t read the rest of this.
It destabilizes the molecules at the target point, causing an explosion that destabilizes any molecules caught in the blast, causing more explosions. It’s intended for space use but then Ender thinks of a new use. The end has him using it on a planet, reducing a large planet to a molten asteroid and a debris cloud
i have read the book and it wasn’t an explosion it neutralized the molecular charge casing matter to fall apart and used that energy to propagate till there was no more matter in range. and yeah i recall them turning entire planets to dust. but i have played xenosaga game series which had U.M.N Phase Transfer Cannon which basically destroyed all particles in a 50 light year radius and that is where the most destructive beam weapon i have ever seen in scifi, it wasn’t particularly impressive really as you just ended up with a very large chunk of space that just basically looked black sure destruction wise that probably took the cake but it just left me wanting to see more, besides in a game freelancer if you watch the original video i single shot essentially blew up the entire solar system, in Andromeda they had a weapon that blew up stars, 28 of which destabilized a black hole, in farscape they generated a black whole that was gona destroy the universe, so level of destruction is not the sole attribute that impresses me after all this is scifi you can push as much fluff as you wish. but far as scifi is concerned weapons capable of destroying planets are nothing new, take for example babylon 5 vorlon planet killer, or star wars death star, or kris longknife hellburner torpedoes, more recent Halo for well halo. so sheer level of destruction is no longer sufficient for a weapon to be impressive, i am sure if i thought about i could come up with a dozen more.
but i have yet to see the movie enders game so maybe in the movie adaptation it looks a hell of a lot more impressive that it seems in the book.
Ender’s Game is only the first of 3 novels in a series, read them all and loved them.
As for blowing stuff up: don’t forget the trilithium-torpedoes used in Star Trek Generations.
Throw one of those roughly human-size things into a sun and you’ve blown up an entire solar system.
Vader and his boss would have loved to have that, methinks.
For an in-universe Star Wars equivalent, see the Sun Crusher.
Orson Scott Card – TOR Science Fiction
Ender’s Game 1977
Speaker For The Dead 1986
Xenocide 1991
Children Of The Mind 1996
Ender’s Shadow 1999
Shadow Of The Hegemon 2000
Shadown Puppets 2002
Shadow Of The Giant 2005
First Meetings 2006 ?
A War Of Gifts 2007
Ender In Exile 2008 (After battle School – The lost years) (Direct sequel to Ender’s Game)
Their are more than three Ender books by OSC
And a prequel series covering the war that led up to Earth trying to train up a commander in time.
First 2 novels already out. Well, I know the first one is published and on shelves.
And I’ve read them all.
I don’t care for Card’s politics, but he is a good author.
3, is outdated. just to let you know. Orson Scott Card has written a few more Ender specific ones. One was a short story, another was an Ender’s Game first year of Battle School novel. And Speaker For The Dead had 2 sequels to it before, making it a 4 novel Ender series just with those 3 after Ender’s Game.
And Taulsk just put my sci-fi geek knowledge to shame
It is easy to type a list when the books are sitting less than 3 feet away. I never sell any book unless I truly detest the writing style of the book. I have a small collection but it has some good authors and series. I have near a thousand books in the fantasy sci-fy genera.
(Steven Brust has the distinction of being the only author to piss me off with his change of writing style in that I did not sell the books after reading them through but actually put bullets through them. The Vlad Taltos series beginning was well written but then the change of the last few books and the Khaavren Romances all are confetti because I will not inflict that abuse on an unsuspecting buyer.)
sorry about the rant
If I may jump on the rant wagon, I had a similar feeling for a novel once, but it did not end with firearms. I had read several Asimov novels and got around to ‘Nightfall’. I had never quit reading a book in the middle before, but in this case I made an exception. I simply could not buy the premise enough to keep reading. FYI, for those not familiar with it, the setup was that an inhabited planet was in a system with 6 suns. As a result, there was never a time when one was not showing, so the people would not know what night was. Once every few years all the suns except the smallest would be on one side of the planet. The twist was that the planet had an ‘unknown’ and yet apparently huge moon that every 2000 years would eclipse the smallest sun sending that side of the planet into darkness. This (of course) happened during the story sending the planet into hysteria and causing the collapse of civilization.
My problems were
1) how do you arrange and keep 6 suns close enough to each other to have relative equal brightness to a planet, and what could be the orbit of the planet?
2) how does this planet have a moon large enough to eclipse the entire side of the planet, and stay in that solar conjunction long enough for the entire planet to rotate under it? And yet, it is unknown to anyone on the planet, even their astronomers. Even if they did not have night, have you ever heard of tides? Why did the moon never eclipse another one of their suns to show its existence?
3) This was a repeating cycle, but there is no mention of previous occurrences in their history. A plucky archeologist in the book was trying to warning everyone that he found ash layers in all their cities repeating every 2000 years. This means that multiple times civilization was destroyed so thoroughly that not only written but oral history was wiped out. Not just locally, but on a planetary scale.
4) The cause of this repeating apocalypse was the ultimate terror of…. the dark. Really? Every last person on the planet went completely insane when the lights went out? They had no movie theaters? They had no mines? No one ever closed their eyes when they went to sleep? No one thought to have something like a flashlight in their toolbox?
well i think you just turned this from a rant wagon to rant train. i too keep a collection of books and till 3 years ago i had all paper books never bought a digital one running out of space and em unwilling to part with em so i had to compromise and its worked out well so far its a bit of a letdown when i don’t have a book to add to the shelf at the end tho but other than that its all good. i have not read any of Asinofs work but the premise does seem quite a bit of a stretch, and i have found an author whose book i could not stand as well but i haven’t kept it or remember the authors name of the books title i do remember it happened and more than that is unnecessary information. i absolutely hate it when an authors ends the book in a cliff hanger and then you got to wait a long ass time to read the next one its even worse when its a damned good book (Patrick Rothfuss i am looking at you right damn now). so i think all of us who actuallly read have found a book of this type and some perhaps may suffer though it some will just put it away and some will figure all books are like that and never read again (i blame high schools for this for picking generally really damned boring book and labeling them classics NOBODY CARES! we want to be kept interested intrigued not bored out of our minds that is not how you encourage people to read especially not young people, who here has enjoyed “The Pearl” by Hemingway? (while in High School) hated that damn thing one of the longest book i ever read (relatively speaking seeing as the boredom stretched it way out of damned proportions” and i have 0 problems reading books 1000+ pages long among them “Way of Kings” by Brandon Sanderson (he writes good stuff in general anyway), and well “king killer chronicles” by Rothfuss, “Honorverse” by David Weber” or “Game of Thrones” from George Martin (and yes i am aware that that is not what the series is called).
and thats my penny in for the rant train.
IMO all Asimov’s plots tends to suffer from looseness. A lot of.
That said, and to be fair…
(at the end there is a MAYOR spoil on “Nightfall”, you are warned :) )
Each sun HAS different brightness, in fact the last remained sun is the palest one. The orbit is other matter :) Clarke have a clever version of that situation (a tribute you could said) in “Childhood’s end”.
No, they have not movie theatres nor flashlight, they have not artificial light technology. Actually they have a way basic technology at whole.
There’s no a proper Astronomy science due that there is almost nothing at sight in the sky to study.
It is supposed that at each “apocalipsys” the civilization is TOTALLY burned down, no records, no books, no files remains. And a VERY few people survive with a lot more urgencies than make history books.
Last but not least, darkness gives people anguish and creeps, but what actually drives them crazy (the last push) is the sight of the unaware and never before seen… stars.
Just in case, let me repeat myself: all Asimov’s plots tends to suffer from looseness. A lot of :)
Asimov wrote the short story “Nightfall” in 1941. At the time, the science was well within acceptable limits for a Science Fiction short story. The novel was done as a collaboration with Robert Silverberg in 1990, two years before Asimov died. Clearly the novel version wasn’t anywhere near as good as the award-winning short story.
Asimov was one of the Grandmasters of Science Fiction, and his contribution to the genre was immense. It would be a real pity for someone interested in science fiction to miss out on his earlier works. I’ll admit that his later works weren’t his best. The man wrote hundreds of books, by the way, and not just science fiction. It was his proud boast that he had something published in his name under every category of the Dewey Decimal System.
Probably the thing he was best known for was his Robot stories. Perhaps you’ve heard of a short story collection called “I Robot”? The movie with Will Smith doesn’t do Asimov justice, although you can recognize his influence.
Ever hear of the Three Laws Of Robotics?
1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2.A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
That’s Asimov. Those three laws appeared in one of his stories in 1942. He wrote a ton of short stories, and not a few novels, exploring the ins and outs of those laws. How do you define, in terms a computer can understand, what a “Human” is? How do you define “harm”? What happens if you order a robot programmed with the Three Laws to “Get lost”?
By now, his stories are a bit on the dated side, although they have aged surprisingly well. It can be a real surprise to read one of his novels and then look at just how long ago it was written. He was one of the giants, and if you know what to look for you can still see his influence on the genre.
Okay, I’m joining the rant train.
@O.B. Juan
I think a lot of your objections come from the fact that you initially don’t buy the premise. For example, it’s no wonder that they go insane from the dark; this is a people (indeed, an entire ecology), which has evolved under circumstances where darkness simply doesn’t exist, except in deep caves or far beneath the sea. This is a civilization where not a single person has experienced actual darkness in 2,000 years. You think they might react to it a little different from you and I?
The lack of history is also explained in the story: When the darkness hits, they freak and start lighting fires to keep it at bay. They literally burn their own civilization to the ground, including all their books, buildings and fields. Chances are that every such event is followed by a major population crash. That’s why nothing but the vaguest myths and rumors survive.
As for why their astronomers have never figured all this out before now, remember that this is a people where the idea that anything actually exists “out there” is completely foreign. In this society, an astronomer is the equivalent of our ghost hunters; they’re cranks.
They’ve never seen a star. They’ve never seen any sign that anything exists in the entire universe except their planet and the six suns. Their entire civilization is built around that view of reality. They just don’t know any better. Telling such people that the tides are caused by some unknown object out there would seem completely bizarre. They wouldn’t take you seriously for a moment.
And that’s really the point. This story is all about how environment shapes thinking. The point isn’t how the exact orbits of the six suns work. I certainly don’t know, nor do I care much; that’s not the point. The point is to think about how different our minds might work if we lived under other circumstances. However, if you get hung up on the technical aspects, you never get that far.
Not really a beam weapon, and I suck for not remembering the title of the book it was in, but it was a mass conversion bomb – took matter and converted it directly to energy, and it was powered by… Another mass conversion bomb. Typical use was to fire it at a star, converting a size able percentage of the star directly to energy, and killing most anything in all directions for several light years (supernovas tend to do that…). Not happy with a civilization that defends its home system well? Pop one of these off at a nearby star.
i just remembered the most impressive beam weapon in scifi. thing you must get is its not the most impressive because of its power but cause of how it goes about blowing stuff up. and the weapon is “Discontinuous charged particle beam cannon” basically it fires a beam into discontinuous space making it essentially disappear and instantly reappear at a target location making it possible to bypass any and all defenses line of sight not necessary, it can fire at any point in the galaxy from any point in the galaxy, every defense planers worst nightmare. a weapon you cant track, find, or defend against, and is still quite damned destructive. perhaps not blow up a planet destructive but still damn.
and this piece of scifi hails from the universe of “Schlock Mercenary”
The really scary part? It’s now in the possession of an AI(or more accurately, the AI is now inhabiting the physical hardware of said device), which has the disturbing habit of referring to itself in the third person..
“Long Gunner of the Apocalypse” indeed .
indeed the ultimate in indirect fire in the hands of a mad AI i don’t think scary even begins to cover it.
Long-gunner Of The Apocalypse. The long-gunner has gotta come out as one word for the acronym to work.
whats your point point?
LOTA has a name thing.
Do not antagonize anyone with a name thing when they wield a hyper powerful laser that can manifest its effect inside your bedroom without having to deal with trivialities like atmosphere, walls, or that 6 miles of rock between you and the dangers of weather.
Just saying, its in your best interest to refer to LOTA properly. Mind, if you live away from the central US, antagonize away, I’d probably be safe from any reprisals.
Forgive me if my assumption is wrong, but are you perhaps referring to Peter F. Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga? It would be Judas Unchained in this case.
That sounds about right. I’d also heard that there’s now more books in the series for me to read…
wow (for all the replys)
Narf
Thanks for the excellent work. You make reading comics fun again. If I buy anything from Amazon I shall use your link. Thanks again for all the hard work that goes into Grrl Power… it shows how skilled you are.
Thanks!
I don’t seem to see the link discussed…. Is it that I’m using firefox? Or can you clue me into where the link is?
If you’re running an adblocker you won’t see it as it’s in an iFrame. I’ll add a direct link when I get a chance.
Read the author’s note under this comic and it should become clear.
All right, all right, I’ll break down and tell you the secret. It’s in an adbox to the right of the every author’s comment labeled “What I’m reading.” Click the book to get to Amazon and browse from there
And if you’re using adblocker, for goodness sake turn it off for the comics you support, because those ads are the how they GET your support.
Indeed :)
Random thought/ quote for the day:
BeepBeepZipBang!
Loony Tunes quote seemed entirely appropriate.
TFS DBZ is funny. TFS Hellsing Ultimate is an absolute scream. The scary thing about that one is it actually *makes more sense* then the canon series. A bored, crazy Alucard is far more entertaining then an Emo one.
The “bitches love cannons” from the second episode was funny..
The “bitches love cannons from the just released 4th episode? It sent a chill down your spine the way he said it..
The funny thing is (in the manga anyway) bored and crazy was Alucard’s stick.
What the hell anime, what have you been doing while I was away?!
lovely, lovely comic, and awesome style
kamehamehame wave meets no friction due to flying equals spinning sydney… love the total overall effect here, looks like Halo’s gonna have to learn how to juggle
also curious if there’s now an interestingly-shaped glass half-pipe along the path the beam traveled in.
A note on the realistics of this scenario – if the orbs are activated by only touch, and that is sand in the forcefield, Sydney has just killed herself. It is almost impossible to move in large quantities of sand, to let go of the orb and deactivate the forcefield, so unless Sydney can deactivate with her mind or if her ability to move the orbs telekinetically comes with a lot of force, to push the forcefield orb away from her, she will suffocate quickly.
In the last panel, her last expresion is “Pah!” I assume she’s spitting out sand.
Don’t use the R-word. Not here. This a comic about Superheroes, Magic Glowing Orbs and a Succubus/Alien/Something Superscientist.
Mentioning the R-word is like asking a Cow to teach you riding a Tricycle. Actually the question to the Cow actually makes more sense.
Not “magic” super science. it is only “magic” to the primitive. Like a lighter.
so we are back to basically “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science
and then there is the paranoid version “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a really big gun”
It’s only paranoia if they really aren’t out to get you.
ahh for Success breeds complacency Complacency breeds failure Only the paranoid survive
“Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!” — Agatha Heterodyne as Cinderella (https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205)
They’re not automatically on when she’s touching them. That could cause dangerous and hilarious situations if she suffered from hand cramps though.
Very good point to know, I was seeing hints on both ways :)
Thanks
Why are you postulating a scenario that is manifestly not true? The orbs are mentally controlled. They don’t trigger the moment she touches them. Holding them is necessary but not sufficient to activate their powers and if she can mentally turn them on she can mentally turn them off.
Even assuming they were only touch activated, all she’d have to do is flip right side up…
Good point, I suppose, with the fly orb. :)
So I guess 3 dots on energy projection for Sydney means “high power, cruddy control”, whereas for Dabbler (also 3 dots) it’s “moderate power, good control”.
It means 9 Stars for Power. +3 Stars for Cool effect -9 for Chance of friendly fire.
note to self: when firing MAH LAZERS, stay out of blast zone range…
… Um… What does a full-power shot look like?
Trumped up to 11? Probably like this:
https://www.ditl.org/picweapon.php?WeaponID=24&WeaponSubID=2&ImageNo=3
With a result of this:
https://www.ditl.org/picweapon.php?WeaponID=24&WeaponSubID=2&ImageNo=4
Nope. It’s still missing the explosion along the path. Her area of destruction would propably be three too five times higher/wider.
A video of this demonstration needs to go viral. Every time they show up to battle evil they’ll just threaten to loose Halo on the adversary.
anti-heroes will start attacking her just to distract her from the rest of humanity.
Tony Stark: We have a Hulk.
Maxima: We have a Halo. Shows video of above demonstration.
Thus averting a possible Avengers vs. ARC battle royal, which probably would have destroyed the Earth.
What very DEFINITLY would have destroyd the universe
Alex, I’ll take things that would make Cthulhu say, ‘you know what? I think I’m just gonna go back to bed today.” for one thousand.
Batman: We have a Superman. He can use all his abilities at the same time.
Hulk: Hulk Smash!
Halo: Oops.
Superman: Now look at the mess you two made. Now I’ll have to clean it up.
Is the fact that the unknown purple orb flew into her hand significant? Will we finally find out what it does?
Purple isn’t unknown – that’s the Forb(?). Brown and Green are the unknowns – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/793
Brown isn’t unknown, it has the power to cause spontaneous explosive diarrhea.
I hope to see dive-bomber tactics here – fly up to 14,000 (air!) feet or so and drop to freefall. Telepresence orb next to the target to check accuracy while she hits it with a PPO barrage, switch to flyball and shield to evade any counterfire.
Telepresence for accuracy is a great idea! She seems to have no orientation problems with it
A great page, so many things happening together.
Force field sand jacuzzi totaly unexpected. And hilarious :D
Should not Maxima touch her throat instead her ear to talk to Syd?
With practice she should be able to disable without destroying the tank. Hit the treads and main gun. One day she might do that. Until then watch out when she fires the big honker!
With all the closeups of hands, etc; a nasty thought…
If Sydney LOSES a hand she’s holding an orb in… odds are, she’s just lost control of that orb, and the ability to grab another one…
ick.
well, if the purple forcefield orb just managed to assert itself in her free hand and save her bacon… maybe one of the unknown orbs are of a healing nature and might be able to prevent that from happening?
Did it move on it’s own, or did Sydney just have a smart moment though?
I guess neither :) She did move it under panic effects.
Why did the tank explode? Did someone leave a round in the barrel?
Most likely, Sidney just caused an explosion in the gas tank. Somebody drove that tank onto the range before the demonstration began. Either that, or the explosion is the result of the destabilizing of certain e-m bonds in the tank’s material.
Max carried a decommissioned tank to test on. That thing was stripped to just it’s frame and armor
Take a look at the beginning of the first page of comments, that topic was largely discussed there.
so how does an explosion caused by an exploding beam become somehow a mystery as to its source?
I was wondering how Sydney could make an exploding tank hilarious. You are awesome!
——
I’m an amazon prime junkie. I’ll buy stuff through the link. :) One problem. I can’t seem to find the amazon link. I saw the little box… but there was no link to click? I think I’m blind.
Alternatively, I too enjoy donation buttons and buying physical copies. :)
I can’t seem to find the link either. I tend to buy the books you recommend in your comments so I won’t mind using the link to get to amazon.
ditto
The link is in an iframe that pulls the cover art over from Amazon. If you have an adblocker running you won’t see the link. You can add an exception for this site to adblock (the only other ads I have on the page are non-flash ads mostly for other webcomics) but I should probably add a non-iframed link as well.
Found it! I completely forgot that I had adblock…
i was expecting a very serious overkill moment as an lots of slag and shrapnel and a FULL STOP WHAT moment from Maxima while repeating should have tested the power on that before demo. (or should have classified that one)
Because it’s hilarious when such a power goes awry if one isn’t sufficiently trained in using it?
Nice power, could have cut better, was expecting a more earth-shattering kaboom. 7/10
It is certainly not my place to make suggestions, since I have no skill or training in the subject of drawing. But I’m going to do it anyway, sorry.
I was a little confused by the last panel, and it took me a bit to figure out Sidney’s condition because she was so far away in the background. But it occurred to me that simply reversing the perspective by putting Sidney in the foreground and Maxima in the background would instantly solve that confusion.
Just trying to help.
From the person who misspelled Sydney’s name!
Yeah I was trying to show that she wasn’t 50 feet from the audience when she shot the tank, but you’re right, that would have shown what was happening with Sydney better.
Explodey cutting beam???
So when is is cutty and when is it explodey???
It is cutty before it is explodey and it is explodey after it is cutty :P
awesome
I think that anything it cutty then go explodie
My impression of the PPO’s power is that it must have either a mental aiming component, and Sydney is just physically pointing it in the direction she wants, or it has a considerable recoil similar to a firehose. Possibly both now that I think about it…
Also unless the perspective is off Sydney almost got taken out by an airborne tank. Since we saw she was quite high in the air on the previous page that’s impressive.
If I remember correctly DaveB said it was an anime style beam and that’s why it explodes. But if I were Maxima I’d be having everyone checked for radiation. That was a major explosion. There aren’t that many types of explosions that could lift a tank that high into the air: chemical (no way), heat/plasma (Sydney would have been cooked by the sand in the force bubble so no), nuclear (everyone would be dead), and atomic (unlikely for the same reason as nuclear). Antimatter isn’t even worth considering. Given all that, if there isn’t any radiation then the explosion isn’t a side effect, it’s by design and may actually be the main effect. Someone mentioned earlier that it looked like a villian’s weapon. I’d have to agree.
The efficiency of an explosion is related to it’s source, not how big an explosion it is; with enough old fashioned black powder, properly shaped, you could certainly flip a tank, or even cause a mushroom cloud [it’s quite easy to find mushroom clouds caused by non-atomic explosions]…. now how much you would need would be rather ridiculous, but yeah, chemicals could totally do it…. of course, this is an energy beam, and these are superheroes, so for all we know it’s a “Q” energy beam which has the properties of cutting and exploding things
What I want to know is, what kind of moron leaves the tank loaded with ammo when you’re testing out supers using it as a punching bag?
If they were wanting it destroyed, it would have just enough fuel to drive out there, and nothing hazardous inside, except maybe one or two tank rounds if they wished to shoot it at one of the supers for show.
What makes you think it was loaded?
They have supers. Why drive it out there when someone like Max can simply _carry_ it there?
Max was busy racing Sydney there, and all the other supers (at least the ones who COULD conceivably carry a tank) were all busy ferrying reporters to the weapons test site.
Max spent at least a little time ‘setting’ this is up before ‘fetching’ Sydney for testing. So she could have put the tank there.
Also I suspect this is really just a high intensity energy dump beam. Because pump enough energy into a solid and first it will break away then explode, doesn’t matter what kinda either.
She wasn’t really racing though. Max can go a whole lot faster than that
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/388
The tank could of been set up yesterday. This was planned for a while.
and again which part of explodey beam makes the explosion a mystery?
I would guess the blackish part
The blackish part of the beam, or the words?
Hum…
in the word of Sydney seriously https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/490 “It makes explodey beams. I probably shouldn’t demonstrate it in here.”
It looks like Sidney grabbed the tentical orb and not the forcefield one. Am i wrong?
Yes, you are wrong, if you look closely the Shield-orb has a |> triangle in it, the Groper-orb looks more like squiggles
DB I just have to say I love the art, that molten sand trail with gasification out to five feet on either side.
The slowly cooling down line that glows like it’s at magma temperatures at the start (end?) of the line.
The last panel where the sand by the wreckage of the tank is frozen.
The best is Syd, doing the flailing Ostrich. (Ostrich, A word I had a monstrous time finding, would you believe the dictionary, and encyclopedia could not find it, the way I was spelling it, yet youtube did).
Be afraid…
I found a teny tiny plothole. Isn’t Maxima suposed to press her throat when she wants to activate the mic? Instead of her ear
She still has an earpiece and something went BOOM!!!! nearby. She may be doing the “Finger in ear after explosion” bit.
Yeah probably. Ooh, I know! She’s already turned the throat mic on (with superpseed) and she’s just putting her earpiece in. :)
But they were pushing it the entire time while talking in the other pages, rather than switching it on and than off when done
Put your hand in about the same position Max has hers. She’s using one finger to press the earpiece in, helping to block out background noise and make the sound more clear. She’s using her thumb to press the throat mic button. Standard Operating Procedure for a high noise environment.
Well damn, you are right.
Dunno if it was such a great idea to show what Halo can do. Because it looks like utter uncontrolled chaos, caused by a mental unstable super. Not that great of advertising supers. Actually every person in its right mind would learn real fear – enemies and friendlies. :D
Well, now Max has nothing left for her demonstration. Still funny as hell!
When I noticed that you renewed the hosting for 5 years, I really wanted to make a joke about being done with the first day by then.
That is very much the plan.
I’m staying sceptical…
“Like sands through the Power Orb, so are the days of our Sydney”
In todays episode of “How could things possibly get worse?”:
1) Sydney realizes that her PPO can be used like a pen to write with.
2) She wonders what the range of this ability might be.
3) Syd stares curiously up at the Moon.
Uh oh. She owns a comic shop. She knows about the Tick! And she is borrowing a telescope on her next night off with the full moon up. Anyone else remember the “CHA” in every remaining episode of the animated version of the Tick!
SPOON!!!
I love this comic!!!! Sydney amuses me everytime :D Keep up the amazing work! :D
Thanks!
I would like to applaud Dave for bringing about a wished for slice of the tank. Expected the boom at the end of it as well as the tank just got jolted with electricity, magnetically vibrated, flipped end for end and then sliced end to end before the remaining fuel has a chance to come back out of vapor form.
Mildly surprised at the amount of sand apparently caught in the Forb, but it might appear worse than usual as the flight orb could have pushed the remaining sand inside all to the outer edge while Sydney is trying to clear her eyes and throat.
I am also holding out for there being a force feedback on the PPOrb that makes it kick based on the strength of the attack, so a tighter lower setting beam would compare to this setting like a bb gun to a .50 cal sniper.
Sliced tank? It’s on the other end of the buffet. Wait – that’s sliced [i]tuna[\i]. My bad.
Why does her force field bubble look like the bottom half is full of sand? Sydney was flying when she kicked off the blast ray, right? Her force field shouldn’t have picked up a load of sand from up in the air.
I find it interesting that the blast was two beams which combined at the target. That leads to matter/antimatter or some other kind of beams which are harmless of themselves but combine to be very powerful.
only one beam. what you see in the first panel is the beam coming in from the top center. the other thing you see is the track Sydney made in the desert when she missed and moved the beam over to the tank.
also, the sand inside the force field is the sand that got kicked up by the explosion. is was in her vicinity when she activated it.
Now that you’ve explained, I see that you are correct. Without the explanation my mind saw two beams, one yellow and one an angry red-orange sparkly beam, meeting at the tank.
It’s a shame Sydney was so inaccurate with it, to have to track it across yards of desert before finding the tank, but I guess it does have a bit of a recoil. Kinda makes it useless in any situation with civilians around that she doesn’t want to accidentally bisect, however.
I just re-looked at this page after reading all the comments. I swear it looks better now than it did when I first saw it. What is that? Have I been watching too much Warehouse 13?
probally did touch ups or the power of the PPO AKA THE LAZER at work
*Hides Michelangelo’s paintbrush behind his back*
I know not of which you speak.
Awesome comic….. but I’m wondering if its just my sleep deprived little mind or if there really is a ‘smug looking face’ in the cloud of smoke right under Sydney in the last panel.
Now that you mention it… can kinda see the face as well
It’s safe to assume that Joel’s not gonna live this day down anytime soon…
especially the sand-globe above.
Sydney is good propaganda. Makes you want there to be a government agency that controls people with special powers.