Grrl Power #178 – Maxima DGAF -or- The cliff has been hanged
Ok Maxima’s done being a jerk/diva now. The question is how much of it was calculated on her part to put out that honey badger vibe, and how much was her actually not giving an eff.
I suspect Maxima’s sudden departure wouldn’t have caused an actual “boom” simply because she’s not quite big enough – after all some of the noise a gun makes is the tiny sonic pop from the bullet (assuming supersonic ammo of course). Maybe I should have made the sound effect “Sonic Bloop” or whatever onomatopoeia comes in between pop and boom. Boop? Somehow a Sonic Boop doesn’t have the same impact.
And yes this page had to end on the cliffhanger cause I couldn’t fit the reveal on the page and do it any justice.
Is it just me or does the pacing suddenly feel especially slow now after two weeks of double updates? I experimented with drawing two pages side by side this week to see if it would speed me up at all. It does, but not much. Really only when I’m coloring, and even then not by much, but that’s fine, anything that helps I’ll probably stick with.
I’m also working on setting up a Patreon account. Several people donated using the recurring payment option, which I very much appreciate, but for some reason those automatic payments failed, even though the regular one-time donations worked fine. Having a Patreon account will create another option for those interested in setting up something recurring. The hard part about setting up a Patreon account is actually coming up with rewards that don’t take a huge amount of time away from actually drawing the comic, and also don’t eat into potential rewards I might use to kickstart the book, like PDFs of said book. I know I could just set it up without all that fancy stuff, but obviously it would do better if I could give back something.
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funnest part of all this is if you look up the old term used for a sonic boom
max just gave them all a blowjob rofl
Oh yeah, leaving on that note wasn’t menacing at all. Max is starting to look like shed make a better villain now,
She’s not a villain. She’s military. Her only concern is getting the job done, that’s the whole point of this part of the story.
Yeah, because military means she can’t become a villain. :p
If the idea of the comic is to show off powers in the real world, and Maxima is this much of a jerk with that much power, why would anyone think she couldn’t become a villain?
Generally speeking, I’d say that the Military consists entirely of villains trying their best to be good-guys.
I mean isn’t that kinda the point, go out, kill people, destroy property and buildings, even do a bit of pilfering all with the overall intention of saving lives, freeing the opressed and promoting the country they come from…
Villains (or villain like people) working for the good cause == military.
Like the Vikings!
as a military member, i’m gonna have to disagree with that. there is much more than going to kill,destroy, pillage and so on.
As a military guy (27+ years) I agree with you talantus…not villains, but sheepdogs. Toyloli, some sheep can’t tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf, but there is a significant one. Check out Russ Vaughn’s (vietnam vet) poem on sheepdogs to get our perspective. People have made youtube videos and posters as well as lots of reposts on various blogs.
He hits a similar point that you do: to the sheep, wolves and sheepdogs are both carnivores. Sheep are uncomfortable around us, but you have to understand that sheepdogs love their sheep and will protect them from the wolves…as Elfguy mentioned, the media does not bother to make that distinction either. We are carnivores and therefore bad.
We are omnivores not carnivores or herbivores. We can also change the Earth.
I don’t think the Iraqis are happy with what the military of the USA has done to their country. Made it 100 times worse than it was under their last dictator. (Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11,2001 attack. By rights the USA is as guilty for similar actions in Iraq as Germany and Japan had been in starting World War 2 for the same reasons that add up to war crimes.)
OK GUYS… ENOUGH WITH THE POLITICS…. if i wanted to read the flame wars this type of stuff starts, I’d read the bloody newspapers and watch the news on TV…
Night-Gaunt, I would happily deconstruct your declarations here, one at a time, but scantronb is correct – this is an inappropriate venue for that discussion.
Suffice to say you are displaying several misconceived notions in your statements.
Again, to avoid politics, I will not go into the specifics, but the statements you made in the second paragraph are either bare opinion or straight-up counter-factual to well-known public facts, the simplest (and the only one I will address) being that we were legally already in a state of war with Iraq, sanctioned by the UN, and Iraq violated the cease-fire agreements multiple times, so from a legal perspective, we did nothing wrong, by anyone’s view of the law. The other statements you made only slightly less clear-cut.
When the sheepdogs are eating other groups of sheep instead of fending off the wolves, you understand why their sheep get nervous.
Look closer (and remove the wool from your butt): those are not ‘other sheep’, they are ‘wolves in sheep onesies’
To most of the mainstream liberal press corps, the military ARE villains. Thus Maxie’s animosity, I would guess.
How about we avoid real world politics, except for typos, and religious talk. If we want to talk about the political ramifications and effect on religion with a world where supers are a real thing that’s fine. Talking about real world politics and religion is a minefield best avoided.
Total agreement.
Payday came around so I felt it was time to finally make a donation to this awesome webcomic, enjoy $100 from the UK!
Thank you for helping out a great comic. +5 Internets to you.
I’ve wanted to donate for a while but as a student it hasn’t been viable until today, I only wish there was a larger donation option.
Well, on behalf of us who do not have the means, a big thanks.
Figured I’d top it up to an even £100, fingers crossed there will be a comic on Thursday!
As someone on disability who has to juggle whether or not to pay the utilities or eat (internet being part of our city services so is paid with the electric) I wish I could donate. Thank you, for supporting this comic that keeps some of us going. LOVE the art work, the concept, and Sydney.
I got it, thank you very much!
It may be the hentorb having a “7-way”…
I think Halo would have a different expression if that were so.
I think DABBLER would have a different expression if that were so.
Please please please PLEASE tell us we won’t have to wait 7 days to find out what’s up with sydney’s orbs.
We can tell you, but we’d be liars.
Well, I would think that a single panel reveal page could be done in relatively short order.
well, i take that as a GOOD thing… otherwise you’d have said “or we’d have to KILL you…” :p
It’s a party in the CIA!
I’m going to guess they are using the lightning from the atmospheric disturbance to charge.
Here’s hoping for a Thursday update.
No need at all. Just pop into your time machine and sneak a look now.
If you do not own a time machine, click to reveal how to get one:
I will tell you in a week’s time.
That made me laugh out loud
Yorp, i both love and hate you!
That won’t be possible, Max broke it after the…”Incident” in her bathtub…>_> <_<
Well, really they’re not that significant……Oh! Right! The floating balls! Yeah, wonder what’s up with that.
Maxima, OUT.
[micdrop]
(EARTHSHAKING KABOOM)
Ariana: “Can we please not drop the $50 microphone? Thank you!”
The middle ground between a supersonic boom and a bullet snap or a whipcrack is a kind of giant “Thwack!” Check out youtube videos of rocket sled testing and you’ll get the idea.
My guess is that 6 of the orbs are now rotating around 1 of the “unknown power” orbs. A beam of energy is flowing from the force field orb to the central orb, then out to the other 5.
Or they’re in a line, sweeping back and forth rapidly, spelling out strange glyphs in the air advertising alien “enhancement” drugs (which Dabbler can read, of course). :p
that or they are lined up straightening horizontal line and all the orbs are moving one by one back and forth like you know one orb hits the other orbs and makes chain reaction each time the out orb comes back
Like a Newton’s Cradle?
Oh those lovely details… like Maxima’s slightly asymmetrical smirk… *-*
Btw, I just tried to google “the cliff has been hanged”, including the quotes. And unlike several other events where google decided to give me nothing but nonsense & off-topic stuff, it didn’t this time:
1 Result. Exactly one ^__^
This is T-shirt-worthy, I say.
Scrolling down too fast I saw panel five first from below. So there was Dabbler talking about Sydney’s orbs while her own “orbs” were the first thing i noticed in the panel.
Dang subconscious mind. x_x
Typical of Dabbler to be checking out Syney’s orbs.
Dabbler checks out -everybody’s- orbs, hehehe.
i was thinking for recurring rewards you could like once every few months do a wallpaper that people who have donated get access too or medals or buttons or marbles like syndey’s orbs :D just some thoughts
Seems more like Maxima’s accelerating a lot of air backwards in order to fly. so the newsies being thrown around like that is less out of place than it seems. it’s a lot like trying to walk behind a turbojet during takeoff. only… more-so
Actually, *MOST* of the noise from a bullet is the supersonic ‘boom’ depending on where you’re standing. For large bullets, when you are near, it’s the powder discharge, but go 300 meters out down range (SAFELY Please!) and you’ll hear the difference. For a Large, un aerodynamic object (like a person…) the noise increases dramatically. (caveat to my own argument: If she can create an aerodynamic telekinetic ‘shell’ around herself, the noise level would drop).
HOWEVER, regardless, a person sized object going supersonic that close would create ‘A heck of A’ boom, -more than enough to shatter windows and/or eardrums…
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_boom#Perception_and_noise for further comment and sciency’stuff.
One other science question I can’t answer off the top of my head (or even the side of my head). If Max is accelerating from 0 to Mach 1 in what appears to be about a quarter mile (or less), how many Gs is she experiencing?
a LOT more than a normal human can.
F=m*a, and vf^2=vi^2+2a(xf-xi), so if Maxima weighs 70 kg (which is a little light; I’m 6’4″ with small muscle mass and weigh that much–and I’m a guy), then the force is 9.554 kN or 2148 lbf or 974 G’s, given your estimations of Mach 1 and 1/4 mile are correct. However, for the dot on the screen, it’s likely closer to 1 mile, so the force would be 1/4 of the above figures (which is still about 24 times what a fighter pilot can endure). In addition, she would likely be burning like the Apollo heat shield on reentry.
Whoops, did that wrong–G’s are still acceleration. With that in consideration, it’s 14 G’s for 1/4 mile, and 3.5 G’s for 1 mile. In other words, if it’s a half mile or farther, most normal people would endure it (though the drag might still catch them on fire, and they’d have trouble breathing).
Maxima is certainly big enough to create a sonic boom. However, a sonic boom only occurs at certain angles, so it’s likely she only boom-blasted the sky.
Certain angles? How so when sound travels in all directions?
its not a matter of what direction the sound is going, but when that sound arrives – the compressed “bow wave” of sound that we interpret as a sonic boom can only occur within the wake of a body moving at supersonic or higher speeds. From behind, the same sound is perceived as reduced. So from behind a supersonic-moving body, what you’d hear would be a long, drawn out, low-intensity sounds of engine roar (if any), and air-movement, so a muted “woooooooosh”
So what you are saying that if the space shuttle was traveling toward Florida from Texas and reentered the atmosphere between them the people in Texas would hear whoooosh and the people in Florida would hear the twin sonic booms?
well, the third dimension makes that tricky, but roughly, yes.
an easier analogy is the classic police siren, doppler effect illustration – when it’s moving toward you on the road, it’s louder and higher-pitched, then after it (hopefully) passes you, the pitch and volume both drop noticeably. A sonic boom is the same effect, just to a larger scale.
The basic way a sonic boom works is that you have a bunch of sound waves piling up and all hitting at the same time, because the source of the sound is moving towards you and thus sound emitted at a later time also has a shorter distance to travel (this is related to doppler shift, which occurs when the sound source is either moving away, or moving towards you at less than the speed of sound). In any case, this means a sonic boom can only ever occur forward of the object creating the boom, and actually is a cone at a characteristic angle depending on speed.
Maybe it would be a sound like a whole crowd of people saying “whop”?
dude. you cannot leave me hangin fer another week. WHAT ARE THE ORBS DOIN?!
Something funky!
*Sings* Play the funky music, Blue Orb!
Could the Orbs be recharging or absorbing all the energy Maxima just expended?
Yup.
Is it just me, or just Pinkie just not look right without lipstick in the first panel? I atually thought she was Peggy, at first. I kind had to look bak and forth between panel one and two.
*Is it just me, or does Pinkie …
It does distinctly change her face enough that I can see where you are coming from.
Weirdly though in panel 4 she is unmistakeable, despite having no lips!
Actually, she looks more like a pink-haired Math in the first panel to me o_O
Soooooo is colored lightning a thing? This seems surreal. I thought electricity was blue?
Lightning can come in a number of colors, from whitish yellow to blue, to a purpley pink. idk which one is the strongest, but what i do know is that it can also come in sheets, and often times, they carrot-top, that is, there is more lightning above the cloud when it discharges is than below, so if you were to get a side view, it would look like a thin carrot on the bottom with a huge bush on top. i think the purple lightning is the one that most frequently does this (sorry if i’m ranting)
The colour of something that glows depends on it’s tremperature. Our sun for example, is white.
The atmopshere has a much bigger impact though, filtering wavelenghts. That’s probably the reason the lightning is red.
Alternativly, the lightning is not natural, and is forming something evil. That would explain why it’s still there after so long
THIS IS NOT EVEN MY FULL POWER!!!!!!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneWingedAngel
This Maxima is fully armed and operational!
When Dabbler asked Sydney “what’s up with your orbs”, given Dabbler, I assumed she was talking about Syds breasts, such as they are. You know, being more of her inappropriate/pervy self.
It made me laugh.
The reveal:
sydney’s orbs are skywriting,
We <3 U Mx
(1234567 yup that does it :)
Gotta say. Not really… liking Maxima much right now.
Seems kinda like she’s excessively powerful and lording it over people like a jerkass.
Sydney must continue to disrupt that attitude.
Halo is the arch-nemesis of the monologue.
seems like a Superman/Batman hybrid, and a touch… parental. Unfortunately, tough love can feel a lot like bullying and intimidation if not done deftly, and Max is a bit of a sledgehammer
Nice visuals DaveB it is practically animated for us. I can picture it perfectly and hear it. People were obvious knocked off their feet by it. Such fast air displacement. I suspect where ever Maxima lands the local temperature will rise for a time. All that friction generated a thermal wave front.
*LOL* Loved the whole comic. I think maybe a sonic FWOOMP might have worked too….Also remember, that it’s not just the air displaced by Maxima leaving, but also the air rushing back IN to the vacated area. which in turn can be pulled via surface tension of atoms by the displaced air. Leading to first people flying one way, then another, then all over from disturbed atmosphere. And much fun will be had by all the watchers.
I’m picturing the runway scenes in Pushing Tin
Hmm… didn’t even think about the rewards… pages = rewards? In my mind at least.
Same here
You are giving back something. You’re already giving something! You’re giving us a great webcomic, so stop beating yourself up, and save the rewards for the big-funding kickstarter projects!
Being the perv… er, fan that I am — my mind went somewhere totally sideways thinking about ‘what happen to Sydney’s “orbs”. Then I recalled her alien orbs and did a *head/desk* thump. I really need a life outside online comics…
She can do something MORE powerfull??? Just what the hell IS she?
A golden Elf, of DOOOOMMM!!
Hey Dave, Quick question.
If we start donating to you, will you be able to quit your day job and update more often?
(PS: I LOLed when you mentioned that the pacing felt slow, mainly because we have been on the same day for the last 3 years.)
PPS: I still love the story, do not change a thing about that. I just would like to see more updates, more often. In fact, the current pacing is just about right in my opinion.
If I could do this full time I definitely would – which would result in two comics a week instead of one (and it’s not inconceivable that I could get it up to 3 a week but I don’t want to overpromise anything) Even though people have been really great with donations so far, it’s probably not wise to rely on that as a sole revenue source. Once I have some stuff to sell, like a book, it’s more likely that I’d be able to do this full time, but who knows what will happen once I set up the Patreon account.
speaking of which – how’s the job search looking?
Panel 1: “How are supposed to write about anything but this!?”
is missing something…
never mind, was already spotted on the first page of the comments :-)
….. what if Sidney is the firey harbinger O_____O
My guess would be that they are dissipating the energy they absorbed from Maxie’s nuke bomb attack.
No no no, the orbs have become anthropomorphic/’humanoid-manifestations’ and are have an aerial orgy
why can maxima be heard from the other side of the shield? if sound gets through wouldn’t the sound of the explosion have pretty much deafened everyone in the shield? or maybe since sound is kinetic, is anvil absorbing it?
if someone shone a blinding light into a camera, would the tv screen you are watching the cameras output on, cause you harm?
Actually it does. There was a famous case about 15 or 20 years ago, that a flashing of lights in an amine caused passing out on childrens who were watching TV (there is even a Simpsons epsiode about this). Today however there are filters on camera lenses ‘just incase’ so your point is valid to a degree and it was explained in previous pages comments that Halo’s shield filters dangerous elements but lets non-dangerous ones.
I agree with your conclusion, as regards Halo’s shield. It is discriminatory and only blocks dangerous levels of light/sound or the like. Likewise you are right about the instances of people getting affected by flashing lights on TV.
However that does not disprove cy414‘s statement. The gist of which is that the dangerous intensity of the laser is not replicated over a TV transmission. The ‘passing out’ you refer to, if my memory serves me right, was actually due to epilepsy. Certain types of lights, such as flash photography, can trigger an epileptic fit.
That case was notorious because there were many people affected who did not previously have epilepsy. Some may have been undiagnosed and others may have been latent, but either way they are individuals who have a predisposition to epilepsy and the flashing triggered a seizure. Ie the lights alone would not cause any problem to the general population if they are not already either epileptic or borderline epileptic.
As you rightly say, TV companies go to lengths nowadays to avoid airing programs containing such footage. Or, for breaking news stories or the like, where they do not have time to properly analyse the sequences, they will issue a warning such as “the following reporting contains flash photography”, to allow those who know themselves to be at risk to avoid it.
Significantly though, although it requires fairly bright lights, the intensity is not the key issue but rather the danger is the pulsing nature or the pattern of the lights. Just shining a bright light continuously would not trigger an episode. So cy414 is perfectly correct to say that a laser would not cause someone harm if they saw it on TV. It would not burn out the retina, for example, even if the original was strong enough to do so.
In conclusion, you do not need to duck if a Jedi swings his light-sabre on screen, it will not decapitate you. Even if you are watching in 3D!
That would be the infamous Pokemon shock incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon
Interesting, reading that I note that there was more to it than just photosensitive epilepsy. But at least I was right about bright lights alone not being harmful on TV. Without strobing/flashing.
I do wish that my mind did not turn articles like that into thoughts on how to weaponise a perfected version and time its deployment as a precursor to an invasion or terrorist attack.
Note to NSA : I guess you are reading this, following that bunch of keywords. Hope you are all feeling well? Happy new year. Keep up the good work of stopping the terrorists from blowing us up. Just remember to keep everything in moderation. You are there to serve the public, not oppress them. I guess you can add this note to my file you hopefully have archived in the “mostly harmless” section.
That would require a way to control all TV channels though.
These days with so many channels there won’t be that many people watching the same thing at the same time. Not to mention TV on demand, and computers.
A better idea would be to time it so that everyone thinks the warning is a false one. Like at new years eve, with all the fireworks going off, noone pays attention to loud bangs. So that would be the perfect time to shoot something (a full invasion wouldn’t be masked by it obviously.)
Emergency broadcast channel.
Pretty sure we don’t have one of those down here
Contact your local authority and request information on public broadcast contingency planning in the event of nuclear war or other catastrophe. You will likely find (provided that it is not classified) that there is the capability to transmit emergency information from a studio somewhere in a nice little bunker. The feed from which would either go out to one of the major channels with messages being sent out on any other surviving stations to tune to that one for information.
Or it will feed to all of them, to ensure that everyone turning on their TV immediately gets the critical news. Likely called the emergency broadcast system or something similar.
Still haven’t fully completed the change-over to Digital (one region is still recieving Analogue transmissions), only really have 3 main networks not counting Sky/Pay-TV (and one of those is in financial troubles)
Presumably because the shield isn’t perfectly opaque to sound? Sound passes through walls too. It probably got reduced by a lot though.
A Sonic Boop having your nose booped at sonic speeds. Kittens, puppies and babies prepare to be Sonic Booped
Sonic Poob would sound kind of weird, yet strangely punny, and I can name at least 2 (maybe 3 if Math was there) who’d get a kick out of it.n (Imagine if Math had of been there doing the scottish jig on reporters heads? and no one noticed)
I forgot to add something… Two things Who wants to bet Maxima Goes Super Villain? She has the mind set for it, the Cockyness, The disdain for Civilians (while not wanting to enact casualties shes got the first steps to an “I kill them, Because I must protect them, From themselves!”) and the Grandiose Narcissism mentality.
My other Bee Coin Wager is that super evil Maximus will be short lived when either Halo or someone else Gives Max a wake up call. You know, Just because you have the biggest guns, and most powerful Sonic Applause, doesn’t make you super powerful.
Geee, what an original thought…
Maxima is a soldier, and thinks like a soldier. That’s not the same as a villain…
Why is it that everyone suddenly calls someone a villain, as soon as they show off a little? Like you wouldn’t if you had that kind of power.
You are indeed correct, I wouldn’t. I would present myself as weak and unable to carry a simple bag of groceries without turning into a tumbleweed. Of course that’s because I come from the line of people that prefer to underwhelm my enemies, then overwhelm them. (that is of course saying I would be a super Villain) How ever, If you reread when I stated, I didn’t even mention Maxima’s Over Use of High Powered ability, I did However reference some street brawler general.
Actually, I’d avoid using powers in public as much as possible, or at least do my best to not be noticed. I’ve actually had a theme of making characters following that guideline, down to a halfling psion masquerading (with a huge, huge, huge bonus to disguise).
Regarding the sonic boom:
Depends on her speed. Simply breaking the sound barrier would not “bark” much more than a heavy rifle for someone Maxima’s size. Moving significantly faster than that so that she pushed air out of her way and created a long “tunnel” of vacuum could multiply the sound. Moving far faster than even that so that her pass ionized the air would result in sound and visuals similar to a line-shaped thunderbolt. Though the hypersonic thunderbolt would only begin to appear at speeds of Mach 25 and higher.
Guys like the Flash and Superman in comics that can move thousands of miles in an instant? These guys should be leaving behind them an actual blastwave as speeds of that magnitude would impart thermal and kinetic energy to the surrounding air comparable to thermonuclear bombs. After all, the blastwave of a nuke is created precisely because ~45% of the bomb’s energy is absorbed by the surrounding air, superheating it and leading to the explosion we see.
There is a similar problem with high speed trains going through tunnels. The train causes a high pressure wave in front of it that comes out the other end as a loud bang/boom/pow/whump/bamf/whatever. The train companies have had to add large baffles to the tunnel exits to reduce the effect. End result, we now have train tunnels with silencers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_boom
and multi-ton bullets going through them.
Personally, I’m hoping that we’re going to get a reveal on one of the two unknown orbs powers.
Sounds like one very reasonable surmise to me.