Grrl Power #173 – Biiig Bada Boom
I knew this was always going to happen from the start of the comic, Maxima going a little gung-ho in the demonstration. It’s funny how much the comic has changed in little ways since I first started drawing it. (I have roughed out pages of this whole scene from 4 years ago that I’ll post once we’re past the next few pages to avoid spoilers) I hadn’t put nearly as much thought into the whole PR angle beyond them becoming celebrities, and now this page with Max cutting lose does seem… well, the more I think about it the dumber it seems of her. People can be convinced that superheros are a good thing… fewer of them will be ok with “Daisy Cutter” walking around their neighborhood. Maxima just really doesn’t care what the public’s opinion is of her. This is all about scaring bad guys into not being bad guys. Plus it’s probably been a while since cut loose like this. Why not entertain and terrorize at the same time?
Oh and one thing I didn’t establish in the comic is that they’re not standing right there by the parking lot. They walked like a kilometer further down into the range, so the shockwave from this isn’t going to total the Osprey or anything.
I made a video showing off the relative power levels. I was planning on doing this for a number of powers, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Coming up with an appropriate clip for level 4 and 5 powers is easy, the 1-3 stuff is much tougher. For instance, for the marksman ability, there are at least two scenes I can think of off the top of my head where someone intentionally shoots bullets out of the air with their gun. That’s perfect for the level 5 slot, but then what’s a good clip for Level 1? James Bond taking out 5 guys with 5 shots? Then what’s Level 2? Doing the same thing from horseback?
Anyway, here’s the energy blast levels. Like I noted above the mid level clips are somewhat less distinct, but I have a breakdown under the video on YouTube.
Here’s a direct link in case you don’t see the video: https://goo.gl/7qveBL
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On the Dragon Ball Z scale, this is barely a Saiyan fart.
Barely a Saiyan Fart. But at least Maxima didn’t need 4 hours of screaming to achieve it….j/k
Don’t forget the additional six hours of dire warnings about the danger and/or impossibility of the effort.
So, SO true. xD
Meh… once DBZ went abridged, it is now reduced to just a half-minute of screaming and a sarcastic joke and/or pun :P
That saiyan sneeze or it a saiyan way of saying hello
Has everyone missed the part that Maxi was talking about the entire Archon team, and not just her self, stopping bullies and other Super-thugs?
Wart’s face in the first panel: he is thinking “Okay, maybe I couldn’t do that!”
Lol, you’re right
The next question being.. How long before someone comes along to test the strength of this challenge?
No matter how big the gun you display, SOMEONE is gonna think theirs is bigger.
Or worse, some shmuck with mind-control powers is gonna think, “Hey, if can I take control of HER…”
Than we have Dabbler who can keep her busy while the rest of the team takes care of the badguy.
Or everyone else try keep Max busy, while Dabbler takes care of the badguy, if they need someone imune to the mind control
I would almost feel sorry for anyone who tryed to mind controll halo
Sydney mind controlled. . . From the controller curled into a fetal position and rocking and mumbling to everyone locking her up and putting mittens on her because she acts sane. . .
ooooh! I want to see how Sydney reacts to mind control. At the very least, it should be easy to tell that she’s acting oddly. No one can fake being The Mighty Halo.
Again, forgetting the fact that Maxi wasn’t talking about a single gun (no matter how big or payload), she is talking about an entire armoury
So.. My first comment on this comic. I guess…
I love Maxima!!*_*
Welcome out of the shadows.
She’s alright, ain’t she?
She’s ‘Golden’ ;)
There was a real-life USA world war 2 pilot who was making a landing with absolutely his last gasp of fuel on an airstrip he hadn’t been able to raise on the radio — because it had been taken by the Japanese. Realizing this at the last possible instant as he came in, because the bunker cannon was swiveling to track his plane, he took one shot with the fighter’s mounted gun at the bunker at the end of the strip — and put the bullet straight down the barrel of the cannon, exploding the shell in the barrel and taking out the gunnery crew. I think I’d call that level 3 marksmanship.
Jea, good one.
Level 3 Marksmanship, a.k.a. “Dumb Luck”
Source?
You know I love this comment section as much as I love the comic itself. The people here always put up the best valid arguments and talks I’ve read in a long time.
And are generally respectful of other posters, even if their views differ
If you enjoy that, you should check out the comment sections for The Adventures of Wiglaf and Mordred. Great comic with great readers.
take a look at worm comments
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
same for the ones at Wapsi Square…
As a question/theory about Halo’s shield, could it be absorbing the non-ambient energy thrust upon it in order to strengthen itself against further assault? Thus why attacks on it insofar have been so ineffective?
Might explain the patterning we saw on it each time it was struck
Hmm, maybe overloading it would be the weakness. Not failure or explosion, but making it super dense and crushing the occupant under the extreme gravitational forces
I love the face on Halo in panel 7 ^^ the “i know whats coming and it will be epic” face :P
also the nova/black hole effect is looking great :D
I would love to have seen panel 8 as the resident imortal knocking that small soon to detonate energy ball into the hole.
A mega earthquake would have been added to the standard damage caused.
You mean Achilles? That would also be a great way to demonstrate his powers.
Ah I can see it now. Panel 5, Achilles being pulled into nucleus of the blast “weeee.” Panel 10, Achilles flying off towards the horizon “Waaaahoooooo” as his voice fades into the distance.
And two days later NASA announce that they have finally pinpointed his location and are requesting funds to begin constructing a rescue vehicle capable of returning him to Earth.
::Sees Energy Blast 4. Then 5:: Well that escalated quickly.
Though really, I would argue that “blast” 5 is not a blast. What? Preposterous you say? Well it’s simple really. It’s actually a line of energy that then creates explosions. It is a phase transfer cannon, so to speak, inducing an energy reaction, rather than merely being one itself. A “Blast” would be a focused amount of energy that detonates on contact. However, in this case, our beam “slices” material, that then explodes. This is a common energy attack in anime (you can see Xellos use it in Slayers Next in a flashback, for instance), but we can’t really call it a “blast” in the technical sense.
/pedantic.
Reading wereworld : “Where’d her lower breasts go?” and “Her tail is detachable?” Great comic btw, like how the author avoided the “everyone is a porn star” trap that so many artists fall into. Meaning that Steve’s penis can’t be used to bludgeon someone to death.
Seeing Sydney’s “EEEEEEEEE” face, I would recommend a Depends addition to her action suit.
Yes, she does look like she is crossing her legs in the last panel :D
Okay, I have reread this page several times and now have a different take on what I saw first time through. Last page Max threw a something ball at a distant tank that spun and ate downward. This page we see it digging (2), digging (5) and then coming back up in panel 8 ??!? And then it explodes at ground level in panel 10 … So Max can telekinetically control her bomblet attack?
This explains why she could so casually toss the bomblet at the distant tank because as long as she could se it, she could course correct it to the tank. From that could she do things like throw one of these around a mountain to hit the other side?
I believe it’s kind of akin to this in the control sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eaCRYd_4ro
The original sphere had black dots in the middle. I think physics just put them together. By means of blowing them out a thermal geyser for want of a better description, into a vortex which drew them into the center and joined them with some heat and pressure applied. (original nukes used C4 to fire 2 lots of the explodey stuff into each other) Pannels 2,5 and 8 show the black bits being drawn together into a small ball.
Two different explosives in one attack for an approx timed second detonation.
I dont think she would have used a throwing action if she didnt need to, or used a basic arc if she was showing off her power and ability. I doubt she can control the vectors once released.
Pannel 2 = thermal geyser / pannel 5 = vortex / Pannel 8 = formed ball
all 3 pannels show the black bits closing together till they form the ball.
I believe the description action best used is that they melted / burned down rather than digging.
I love Arianna’s reaction to Maxima’s demo. the fact that both realizes how much bad PR is going to be generated by the idea that the us as personnel that is as dangerous as any WMD is funny as hell to me.
I LOVE the look on Sydney’s face in panel 7, she knew what was going to happen, and loves it.
I think that in panel ten should read “Big bada BOOM”…
Sorry, I didn’t read the title of the strip before I posted the comment, please disregard.
I’ll now slink back into my den with tail firmly between legs and pout profusely…
I was thinking level 5 Dragon Slave from Slayers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecbTsBMeBy8
Or the Death Star destroying Alderan
A C- on the DBZ-scale? More like a D.
I sort of read it as “Maxima just released a somethingorother that dug a big hole right down to the molten mantle, and we’re about to see a volcano where there wasn’t a volcano before.”
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was between 12 and 18 kilotons of TNT. It pretty much leveled everything within a mile of ground zero. It took out most of the city.
On October 30, 1961 the Soviets detonated the largest bomb thus far in history, at between 50,000 and 57,000 kilotons (50-57 megatons) of TNT. It created a fireball about five miles across. If they had dropped that on a city, everything within about 25 miles of ground zero would be gone, and the blast wave would knock over houses and give people 3rd degree burns out to 60 miles away.
Now -that- is a Weapon of Mass Destruction, and it was made 60 years ago. What do you suppose they have to play with now?
The blast Maxima has just created is impressive, but compared to a nuke, it’s a wet firecracker.
who knows this might be her wet firecracker :P
I agree. At this point we have no idea what Maxima can really do if she goes all out.
The point I was trying to make is that as impressive as Maxima’s display is, it’s really nothing compared to the destructive force many nations can bring to bear. People have been talking about that tiny little blast as if it compared to a Weapon of Mass Destruction, which suggests that many folks have no idea what a real WMD can do.
Maxima takes out Mosques, not tyrannical Islamic nations.
“It was just one Mosque – and that was an accident.” Or words to that effect. :)
This is prretty durn good at gauging the effects of nukes on locales of your choice. Equal parts interesting and scary.
https://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Tsar Bomba (the Soviet supernuke mentioned) wouldn’t just destroy a city, it would remove most of the geology UNDER said city, and of whichever state / province the city was in.
BUT. our Max can deploy one of these from her hand a what appears to be a moments notice and minimal effort. at least with nukes there is a pretty decent degree of prep time required to launch one.
There are two reasons why no government has built larger nuclear weapons.
A “standard” fusion bomb first detonates a group of fission explosions. These provide the energy to compress the deuterium and tritium core creating the fusion explosion. The Soviet Tsar Bomba was a 3 stage bomb. Fission igniting fusion, igniting an even bigger fusion blast. Every time another nuclear stage is added it increases the chances of a “dud”.
Second; The physicists pointed out that a good portion of the 50+ megaton blast dissipated into space. As the blasts get bigger more and more is wasted from a military viewpoint.
That is why the biggest warheads top out at 3 megatons. Anything more is wasted.
Certainly.
In fact, after looking at a few youtube vids of bomb detonations I’d guestimate Max’s explosion at only a few tons of TNT equivalent.
Commenter ‘michaelmcfakename’ on the first page of comments estimated that the blast force was equivalent to ~9 kT of high explosive. Commenter ‘Jo’ later elaborated on some of the underlying maths (second reply to this root post).
Assuming that estimate to be correct – and I have no reason to argue – Max’s energy blast would be in the same sort of range that the biggest conventional explosives share with the smallest nuclear weaponry.
A good level 2 (maybe even 3) marksman scene would be from the movie Harlem Nights starring Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.
At one point, Murphy’s character is pinned down inside a store just below the front window by 3 gangsters (one of them Arsenio Hall), 2 of whom have tommy guns. Murphy can’t see his attackers. During a pause in the shooting, he pops up and fires off 3 snap shots before ducking back down. When no more shooting comes, he looks up again and realizes he killed all 3 gangsters, much to his own surprise.
Some possibilities for shooting.
There are varmint shooters who regularly take out groundhogs — a target about the size of a poker card — at up to 300 yards.
Ed McGivern shot a 5 round group in 0.45s that you could cover with a silver half-dollar at 15 feet, with a .38spl revolver — twice.
Adolf Topperwein shot over 14000 2.5″ blocks out of the air with a .22 rifle, without a miss. They were thrown across his field of vision. John Huffer, who later broke his record had his 40000 or so wooden blocks thrown from behind him, over his shoulder.
MOA groups at 300m … with a handgun. Nobody’s ever done that for real. If you want to be crazy, make it a handgun with open sights and a short barrel. And have him/her shoot offhand, instead of sitting or lying down.
Feel free to look up various feats of exhibition shooters, to get an idea of what can be done.
is it just me or does sydney look like a kid in a candy store?
So the energy blast levels are logarithmic?
Note, Adolf Topperwein might have been using shot cartridges in his exhibitions.
MOA with a handgun at 300 meters? Depends on the handgun. Maybe with one of the scoped bolt action or single shot ones.
Look up Elmer Keith’s handgun shots at game.
Shot cartridges? I don’t know. I know that the blocks mentioned generally had .22″ holes in them, and that he shot over 40,000 blocks at that exhibition; 14000 was just his longest streak without a miss. Finding that many .22 rimfire shot cartridges would be really hard, and keeping it quiet impossible, especially since he wasn’t loading. His wife was a shotgunner of noteworthy skil; is it possible you have them confused? And Elmer Keith did do some crazy stuff with .44mag revolvers, like take down deer at distances some wouldn’t attempt with a rifle, but he did stuff like that sitting, elbows on knees. Most handrifle shooters prefer to shoot sitting or prone, not offhand. So I think something that consistently combines two or three records would make a fitting level 2 or 3 marksmanship power, especially when you’re combining rapid fire with long range.
And so Maxima blows up the Earth to prove her point.
No matter how much I examine this, I can’t figure out what’s going on in the lead-up to the explosion.
Energy Blast Level 6: The Yamato’s Wave Motion Gun..
reminds me of the whole “our very strength invites challenge” spiel from avengers