Grrl Power #186 – Fingers to maximum steepleage!
So remember this page is coming off of the previous one where Arianna was about to suggest somewhat more adverse effects of Maxima’s challenge. Had I planned the page slightly better I would have grouped them differently and had those yellow narration blocks with Arianna saying stuff like “There will be those taking your challenge… as a challenge / looking for revenge / weaving you into their plans.” Or something like that, but coming off the previous page I think it makes sense without that narrative nudge. If today is the first time you’ve seen the comic and you’re starting with this page, then it may be a little confusing.
If you happen to be able to read Arabic, I’m sure you’ll get a good laugh out of whatever Google translate spit out, compounded by me trying to hand transcribe it. It probably reads like the Arabic onomatopoeia for static now.
If you enjoy the comic, please consider supporting it over at Patreon.
Patreon is like Kickstarter for microtransactions. Instead of funding one off projects, Patreon is for giving ongoing support to independent artists you enjoy. It creates a steady source of revenue they can come to depend on to help support their projects or even just pay their bills so they can concentrate on making more of what you love. Thank you!
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.
Deus won’t know what hit him.
Bet he will have a huge goofy smile on his face though :P
So, all these supers gunning for Maxima…
What are the odds they’ll write off the ball juggling loon as no threat?
Not likely after the tank inccedent, also when she protected the press from Max’s demolition/demonstration
They’ll probably writ her off as a team pet after they saw her hanging off the com-ball in mid air yelling garbled threats.
Halo’s (uncontrolled) energy beam wasn’t particularly impressive, as far as supers go. Super villains might notice the forcefield, but again, it’s not unique in it’s ability to protect against Maxima’s show of force. Simply put, she’s small fry (for now).
not with 2 CLASSIFIED powers she’s not
only the smart villains will be watching sydney
call it panels 5 and 7 with 6 a probable
I will bet to panel 3, but of course it is not talking about Max but Dabbler. Some of the others villians must be talking about somebody else in the team too.
3 classified powers, one we know (comm ball), two we don’t.
It’s pritty destructive, she just needs to learn how to control it
Are they all supers? I got the impression the guy in panel 2 was one of those ‘The End is Nigh’ preacher types who sees this as a sign the Apocalypse is upon us.
Could be a normal. But no reason why a super might not have those attitudes too. Perhaps he saw his powers as a divine gift and sign of things to come?
That would be the worst kind: a villain who isn’t commonly perceived as a villain and who can’t be fought using conventional super powers… and someone so stark raving mad he can’t be reasoned with when it comes to his own personal “deity-sactioned” perception of evil.
e.g. the Preacher from Johnny Nemonic
amazing how many problems can be solved with a hypodermic full of air.
or a little TK to the caratide
Or Maxi-powered kick to the ovaries (or testes)
Or a full powered palming of their mug. (Picture the apple in the evil bankers hand in Despicable Me)
(vin diesel voiced badly) actually its a tea cup
No he used that already so he has to use the can key now.
Next time it will be a rubber ball.
What if he has a social power? Like he can influence large groups through speech or always knows how to win any social interaction. He could have a charisma power that would allow a cult of personality. Or he could make people believe they had a religious experience through mental or healing powers.
Pritty sure Deus Ex is not a super.
And I don’t think the demon lord counts as a super. He’s just a demon lord.
The 2 in the shadow probably aren’t supers either, I’m getting an illuminaty vibe from them
Deus has the best superpower of all. Money.
Can’t agree. Money is second best only, at best. And bestest and most wonderful of all superpowers is obvious, of course – as described here.
Gah! My eyes are burning and my brain is shrivelling!
Please provide a clear ‘TVTropes’ warning on such links. I almost got sucked into it. It is bad enough when waking up after being on a half-day long Wikipedia trawl. Especially if you originally only intended to check that you had spelt something right.
You evil bastart. You traped me in TVtropes again
Depending on the version of their` religion some would call them “demons incarnate” others as “gifts of god” and still others would shout any number of things for and against.
Don’t expect all of those shown, and not, to be Supers. They can be powerful criminals, renegade scientists and entities from various Hell dimensions. Not counting any other aliens who may be monitoring the transmissions.
I don’t know, you have some X-men villains like that who look totally harmless and are massive danger. a those end is nigh priest types can be total evil, just look at Trigun as another example, the Priests in that were all major butt kickers and some even carried really big guns….
I’m surprised Ari-whatserface didn’t bring up conspiracy nuts, fear mongering politicians or international backlash.
She is still working on it. The night is still young and Ariana is just getting started.
i think there would be rioting in the streets after her performance! people evacuating cities, flocking to churches; parliaments, senates and governments all over the world going crazy. a nuclear powered lunatic at the head of a large group of demi-gods just told the whole world she was in charge, what she says goes and no one can stop her? forget the super villains, most of the human race is terrified right now.
wait… what? At what point did Max say any of those things? Looking back through the pages, the things I heard her say were more along the lines of: “if you’re a Super looking to break the law or otherwise wreak havoc, you’ll have to answer to us.” No amount of MSNBC-style post-editing or FoxNews-style exaggeration would get us to that level of rhetoric, anymore than military ICBM demonstration launches (there are 3 of them every year, dropping dummy warheads on the Kwajalein Atoll) produce mass-hysteria over nuclear threats.
You don’t give Faux News enough credit. If they can attack a coke ad for INCLUDING non-white and non-english they can attack anything. Not to mention Max is female and not white both which threaten their status quo of 1950’s nostalgia.
Oh, look…another boob who thinks he’s the first person to use the “Faux News” joke.
Dude, when a national poll says that Fox News is more trusted than all the other news sources COMBINED (That’s not a joke, Fox was around 40% and all the others were at 10% or less) it’s time to let go of your hate and turn back from the dark side.
I’m betting you also still think that Sarah Palin actually said she could see Russia from her house, not a liberal propagandist loon on SNL, right?
NO POLITICS!!!! Either of you!!
agreed. I thought I’d be able to walk the line by pointing out the foibles on both sides. Apparently not. My apologies to the greater community here.
[eagerly awaiting commensurate responses from the politicos]
I gotta say…I think you did a pretty good job of walking the line there. And I speak as a die-hard conservative.
You did, I was talking to the other two.
I’m back from 2019 and politics as they are now. Just taking a moment to say: who needs to edit or exaggerate when you can simply gaslight the American/world public?
Puh-leeze. I used that years ago. BTW when they get taken to court they claim they are an ENTERTAINMENT show not news so it’s their claim not mine.
The results of an opinion poll, even if the poll had zero bias* don’t in any way, shape, or form reflect how accurate a news source one channel is over another. Especially when comparing a channel as politically polarized as FOXNews.
*which would, quite frankly, be absolutely amazing since opinion polls are almost always biased either in the way the question is asked or in the demographic of who’s polled.
Excuse me but let’s be honest here the other channels are all owned and bought for by the Democratic party and their constantly telling lie after lie, after lie, after lie, and so on and have also been caught lying about the politicians they don’t want in office time and again, you calling fox Bias is like saying that all the others aren’t, when in reality their even more bias, especially since they refuse to tell any of the truth when it comes to Obama and his racist antics which are even more massive than anything the republicans have ever done.
Okay all real world politics aside I had a weird thought (what else is new?). If we were in a mythical world of say Tolkien’s what kind of political parties would there be?
@#$%^^& Sorry I meant to add.
And what kind of political groups? Maybe PETM People for the Ethical Treatment of Monsters?
Think of the poor dragons. If only you could treat their kleptomania and pyromania they could become productive members of society!
Outlaw Pipeweed! Do you know how many Hobbit’s are addicted to that foul drug?!
The Federated Dwarfish Trade Union supports Honeydew’s reelection campaign!
I’m in the middle of writing an article that begins “It’s easy to think of Order and Chaos as reskinned Good and Evil and in some settings that’s exactly what they are. But think of them instead as ideological slants in a world where the laws of nature are amendable…”
I would read that article so hard that the letters would spin around.
You need to provide a link when you are done!
And the GUL Gondor Unification League. People wanting all Middle Earth to unite under Gondor’s banner.
So … when (who somebody thinks are) the bad guys are trusted by almost half the population, you should stop to regard them as bad guys, just because they’re popular?
Or is that only an obvious TRUTH™ if you’re one of those who already like them?
I don’t think much of the argument from popularity. But then, I hear that FOX’ primary target group are people who do, so that may have something to do with it.
I don’t know – from what I hear, by our standards over here, it sounds like US mass media are all untrustworthy these days. It’s just that some distort by lying, others by omission.
When a news channel calls itself “News Entertainment”, they have already acknowledged that they are not a serious news source. News isn’t supposed to be entertaining, it is supposed to be informative.
I’d be interested to see exactly who was polled in the poll which found Fox News to be “more trustworthy” (than who?) Because if it was primarily Fax viewers, then that only confirms the fact that Fox is able to tell outright lies to their viewers over and over and the viewers are simply to lazy and/or uninterested to do any fact checking and learn the truth for themselves. In other words, Fox simply panders to their audience, and that audience is getting exactly what it wants and has zero desire to hear that the world is not actually flat.
This is how the term “The Fox News bubble” was coined, from observations of a self-contained and self-reinforcing ignorance-fest.
I’m not at all sure what the SNL parody on Palin and their bit about how she can “see Russia from her house” has anything to do with the discussion, but if you’re interested in comparing citations of false news stories, I’ll let you give me any network news channel you select and will go up against you and Fox. I am confident that I will be able to list more false Fox stories by an order of magnitude.
Entertainment Tonight is just a digital glossy tablet (similar to The National Enquirer, but on TV), but people flock to that for their news and entertainment
People also flock to The Daily Show for news, which only goes to show that popularity isn’t a good measure of just about anything. Including ‘trustworthiness.’
A big segment of the UK populace is jaded about the whole political system. And avoid any party political broadcasts, voting or the like. Some going so far as to have complete dis-interest in the news. It is ironic that the politicians found that the only way to reach that segment of the votership is to appear on ‘Have I got News for you’. A long-running topical news quiz which satirises the news and so appeals to even the jaded audiences.
More than one political career has been ruined by a bad appearance there. Whereas several (including the current mayor of London) have made their career leap ahead by coming across well on the show. As the panellists and host have no compulsion about going easy on the guests, they can have a very rough time of it. Which makes things even more fun for the audience. Nothing better to chill out for the evening than seeing a politician being savaged on TV.
Formerly Secret Super Paramilitary Police Declare War against all law breaking private citizen supers. Will super speed j-walking bring down the golden hammer? More at 11.
+1 Made me chuckle!
Common now, Max is good for business!
Selling bomb shelter kits, buy now! Before This Happens (Show Max) in Your Neighborhood!
Stock up on emergency supplies now!
30% off depleted uranium ammo while supply’s last!
Now the ones who want sups on a tighter control have just been given the fear of the public to help them.
How many worthless laws have been passed in your country under the words, for the protection, to help, and my favorite, to guard against.
about 50% of all Laws?
I’m not going to draw out this scene much more with every possible hypothetical. The politicians and general public reacting in any number of ways is basically a given, and people can play out those scenarios in their heads however they like. This page is more about foreshadowing future events and players.
Are we allowed to use hashtags? I’m gonna go ahead and use one anyway.
#managed
Seriously. Thanks for not getting caught up in the politics & just sticking with the story. I love this comic.
+1.
Speculating on every possible hypothetical is our job, after all.
We’re limiting ourselves to the possible now? Since when?
Good point. I stand corrected.
Remember the two Infinite things.
There may only be one infinite thing…. nobody’s completely sure about the universe.
I am sure about it! Whether I am right in my certainty is another point completely.
Fair enough. XD
I like how this comic addresses “fear the super”, but keeps the focus more on “comedy” than the all-too-overplayed “dark and edgy” angsty angle (I’m looking at you, X-Men).
And Batman and Man of Steel, etc, etc. :P
I like how you put the foreshadow in an example used by the goodguys.
Obviously Arianna can’t really be talking about the demon and Deus Ex, as she doesn’t know about those (she knows who Deus is, and it’d be hard to believe she imagines a demon looking for Dabbler while talking about Maxima’s show).
Very nice
She’s getting there – for now, she specifically said this was what was probably happening in amongst the supers
HMMM, i think panel 4 is an old aqquaintance. MABY,
Oh, you mean from when she blew up the mosque?
The one she presumably ‘took care of’ already, aka the one who could fight her to a standstill and is supposed to be pushing daisies.
That was this guy’s big brother. This guy is even more powerful. He does not know about Max knocking over the mosque, but he want revenge for what that infidel woman did to his highly respected brother. So what if he was a nut-job? He was still this guy’s big brother and he will have his revenge!
no it is probably the guy she “killed”. because if I rember correclty there is a comic rule if a villain is killed off “camera” they can come back any time
And if they say ‘he’s dead… as far as we know’, than it’s also already a guarantee that he’s still alive and plotting revenge
I am rereading 52…at least for heroes, they can die on camera and still come back.
You dated a mummy? :-O Does that mean you consider her to be a MILF? Or if she wasn’t a mummy at the time, just how old are you?
Maybe he’s also a mummy
Heh, looking at the physique below the bandages, perhaps your gender allocation is more appropriate.
yeah I dated your mummy and she said that you are a very bad puppy
*Raises leg and marks DR.REVENGE‘s feet*
Tosses Yorp a hunk of Jerky. “Good Boy!”
“Takes Vale’s newspaper rolls it up smacks Yorp with it”
*Grabs the newspaper, taking it back to Vale and folding it out flat for her, at the last page she had been reading. Then finding her slippers and bringing them to her. Curling up in front of her feet. Finally sticking tongue out at DR.REVENGE.*
“throws YORP a “Sydney” snack”
*Runs out of the room, eyes streaming, sticking close to Vale and Deus, figuring they will know where the haz-mat decontamination chamber and rapid response clean-up crew will be located.*
Leaves room 30 minutes later in a haz-mat suit carrying a sealed container.
Says, “Sir we found what can only be described as dog doo under your desk. It is from there the attack originated. It will be taken to the lab to be analyzed, with your permission of course sir.”
1. Exposed to bio-hazardous material associated with a super-hero – CHECK
2. Has acquired an arch-nemesis – CHECK
3. Cute innocent animal sent off to megalomaniac mastermind’s laboratory for experimentation – CHECK
4. Said laboratory also containing the most advanced technology on the planet designed for use with the foremost super-hero organisation – CHECK
5. All this taking place in a universe where the super-hero laws of serendipity trump the laws of physics – CHECK
One mysterious beneficial accident and escape later:
TADA! A NEW SUPER HERO IS BORN!
The cybernetically enhanced Yorp bounds off, celebrating his super-schoville abilities, vowing to liberate animals from vivisection laboratories, free Tibet and try to join Arc-bark, the Archon K-9 unit.
As possible as panel 4 maybe for Max’s past Villains, Panel 3 is a definite for Dabblers. Looks like that burning will end up heralding his return.
No no no! it’s His Coming! He never did see a Urologist about that issue.
The villain in frame six… pink bunnies, love hearts and a mouth shark.
YES! I love it! It could be a Halo arch enemy
Oh, that seems very suitable, like it.
That’s ’cause she’s had that mask since jr. high school. The shark was a bad decision when she was drunk and in college. What amazes me is that she still fits in her jr. high mask. She must be built like Sydney. Actually, based on the mask, she strikes me as responding to Sydney’s shenanigans. Mayhaps Sydney has an arch-nemesis?
Well Sydney did say always expect ninjas. The ninja isn’t an enemy Halo made, but an enemy Sydney did. I wonder if some of Sydney’s apparently ridiculous tics, are due to her getting the balls the ninja should have had.
The images on the TV behind her are all of Maxima.
She is my favorite already. I need that mask!
They will be the greatest of adversaries. Their first confrontation will begin with melodramatic and poorly thought out one-liners, go straight through the entire rest of the team being demolished, and end with mexican food and an all-night anime marathon.
It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot that Archon (well Arc-SWAT anyway) could do about Xanatos-type, non-super villians. I think Maxima’s really just encouraging them.
Especially if he just fell in love with Max.
Poor Max.
The things he’l do just to have some flowers delivered….
You got that vibe from Deus too?
I think Deus fell in love with his own plan, and now he found out Maxima would fit perfectly into the center of that plan. So he’s in love with the situation
and her boobs, he totally trying to grad em on the screen lol.
Xanatos’s greatest ability was the Xanatos Gambit, where he was able to engineer a master plan where whatever happened, he won. Of course, in most situations, the good guys won as well, because many of Xanatos’s outcomes largely revolved around him getting something which the good guys could not stop, didn’t care about, or just didn’t know about, usually money.
And yeah, I saw the “challenge accepted” coming a long way off, I can only assume that Max realised that this challenge would draw the really tough guys to her, its basically the problem with advertising how strong you are, next thing you know, universes greatest warrior has crashed into your city demanding you fight him.
Of course, a lot of the reasons that Xanatos won “either way” was because as Gargoyles was a kids show, Goliath wasn’t allowed to actually kill Xanatos.
It wasn’t the fact that it was a kid’s show that kept Goliath from killing Xanatos. The “Never Say Die” trope was heavily averted in the show, after all. People were killed on screen in Gargoyles, and more deaths were mentioned to have occurred off-screen, and yet others were implied.
What kept Goliath from killing Xanatos was Goliath’s morality. It was Goliath’s belief, as stated in the pilot episodes, that the only time that it is acceptable to kill was in the heat of battle. To kill at other times was murder. And Xanatos rarely faced Goliath’s clan directly in battle.
And now that I think of it, he also had Puck as a bodyguard. But the point that Goliath rarely bothered to go after him directly gave him Joker Immunity.
Have you already forgotten the battle suit which Xanatos was wearing in more than one episode? Guess you must have, especially since after his first fight in it where he removed the helmet and saw he was who was wearing it.
Wouldn’t this be the point? I mean, better that they come after Max, than they go after somebody like the Mayor of New York, or the President, who cannot easily stop them.
I mean, basically what Max did, for all those really powerful and dangerous figures, was paint a huge target on herself. Well, to be honest, on herself, and on Dabbler, but Dabbler had to figure that was coming, no matter what happened. The only other figure shown that I would really worry about, if I was a villain, was Achilles. Let’s face it–invulnerable is a REALLY dangerous ability, particularly given that he could backpack a nuke into my base, and that there is sod-all I could do to stop him. Sydney…Sydney I would not take seriously until she got a better control of her powers. Although, to be honest, what that basically means is that I would kill her as quickly as I could, just to make sure she DOESN’T become a threat.
But…yeah. Make Max and Dabbler the main targets of every wacko, fruitcake, and lunatic out there, and you’ve succeeded in half of Archon’s goal already.
I still think that when it comes to alien warriors, the best bet is to not challenge them, directly or indirectly, they seldom come to a place unless there is a challenge, course, that doesn’t really apply in these examples
The best example of a Xanatos Plan was of course the Emperor Palpatine aka Darth Sidious who orchestrated both sides of a war he started. He would have won either way.
Palpatine’s real advantage wasn’t the fact that he was running both sides of the war, it was that the people on both sides of that war were a bunch of morons who weren’t able to see any of his obvious manipulations.
Palpatine actually ended up losing that, the “good guys” found a loophole that broke out of it. Xanatos never quite had that problem.
Who the blody crap is villain nr. 6?
his version of the joker
Based on her having grey hair, I am thinking it is Sydney’s mother.
She’s only 42, poor thing…
Lisa Frank. Having people move on from her binders sent her around the bend.
I wonder how much of this page is actual foreshadowing, and how much is just Arianna’s imagination
I am hoping it’s all real :)
panel 3 and Grrl Power #176 – Intergalactic baggage for forshadowing
Well, d’oh.
And we said it was Maxima’s ‘Great Burning’!
Who knew he/she/it would be watching some sort of TV?
Any self respecting demon lord has cable these days
They don’t have cable.
They own it.
don’t own it just write the stories and direct
No they just run the customer support. Who else but hell would make you take a day off work then show up 3 hrs late with the wrong order and equipment.
no they just own the shopping channels and the infomercial products.
read the fine print on the sales contracts carefully!
So basicly there is a villain opperating almost everything
Yup, that’s where they get there operating cash.
All of it and all of it. The broadcast has been seen by the whole world. The world has a lot of people amongst it, and a bunch of super villains too. Arianna’s generic speculation just happens to parallel actual scenes that are playing out. As did Maxima’s.
Yes, that’s what I realized to.
Maxima can’t possibly be thinking about Deus, asuming Harem is a double agent and not a triple agent.
I’m also asuming that Dabbler didn’t tell anyone about her little suspicions about the demon after the event.
And the masked person is way to specific to be inside Arianna’s mind.
The only examples that might be from Arianna’s mind are the first, and the 5th (2 guys in the shadow)
Gangsters, check.
Religious fanatics, double-check.
Demons, check.
Terrorisst, check.
Secret societies, check.
Busines-villains, check.
Super-loonies, check.
Syd: “It’s gonna be one of those days, isn’t it.”
Syd: Time to fuel up the “Fusion” reactor
Keep your glasses on this time. Binocular vision is so handy when wielding orbs of awesome power.
ioun stones
Big Balls.
(Really bad out of tune singing)
She’s got big balls and I can not lie
You other supers can’t deny
she has more and bigger ones than you
Well yeah. And hers can level up. Your point?
” SHE HAS THE BIGGEST BALLS OF THEM ALL”
apologies to AC/DC
“And everybody comes and comes again”
“My balls are always bouncing
To the left and to the right
It’s my belief that my big balls
Should be held every night”
“The social papers say I’ve got Great Balls Of Fire!”
If Sharkmask were to call out Halo, would the event be promoted as a Masked Ball?
or it could be a costume ball
Can anyone here read Arabic?
I am sorry but when are we supposed to be afraid of Deus? Cause so far I am rooting for him. He seems more like a backroom good guy than a badguy. You know those good guys who pull the strings from the shadows so to counter the same type of bad guy. I mean he seems so pleasant but also loves the “Villian” image. But of all of them the Cleansing dude is the creepiest. Challenge Accepted dude the least interesting. Arabic dude is the most intimidating. The demon is a demon. The sticker ninja chick is the most interesting. And finally the shadow people are the ones I am sure are going to F things up Royally somehow.
I like Deus as well. Though I think he intends himself to be a villain, not just look the part. Unfortunately for him, but not for us, he also seems to be one of those less than vile villains. Like when Max has had a hard day, she goes to take her boots off and finds that he’s tied them together. She screams DEUS! and he runs off woop woop wooping away like Curly of the three stooges.
I could be wrong and he’s an A level threat, but he seems too fun and stylish for that.
Deus is just a loon who wants to be a villain. As is evidenced by both his appearances.
Either way, I love Deus. He makes me a happy jerk just watching his antics.
Perhaps Deus is hamming it up, for a reason. He comes across as PLAYING the villain. But compared to Max, he is not at all threatening. Perhaps he is the political enemy Max has made. A lot of temporal power, and having ridiculous fun humiliating her.
i don’t think its max per se as archon in general. i think he alluded in earlier comics that he didn’t like archon having all the power…..
OMG! he’s LEXX LUTHER!!
Closer to Lex Luther cross with Mr Myxpzltk(Probably misspelt)
So close.
Mxyzptlk. (Mix-e-zip-tulk)
was it different for the Superfriends cartoon? I seem to remember it more as “Mix tl plict”
His name was Sir Mix-a-lot, okay, happy now? Good, carry on
You’re all wrong! And Right! It’s KltpzyxM .rM!
Wait a second…
NOOOOOOooooooo………*
Deus is probably more like Dr. Drakken.
A total loon who tries to be bad, but just can’t punch through it all.
So, for now, he’s the kind of comic-relief baddie you just want to pat.
I think sticker ninja is probably a single mom villain with and her little kid puts those on her mask, and she doesn’t care because: 1) She loves her little rascal 2) She’s a ninja, whose gonna live long enough to tell anyone about it?
When she walks past a mirror:
“Billy! How many times have I told you not to put stickers on mummy’s mask of evil!”
At a soccer game, one woman near her has a son who blatantly fouls her son. She stabs the woman and no one notices, including the children until they try to get the corpse to take them out for pizza afterwards.
So, she’s an ordinary soccer mom. What self respecting one doesn’t know how to kill you with any random item in her purse?
And that includes eyeliner
She’s probably like my mom is like. So you know, maybe a jackhammer in the purse, flame thrower, tactical nuke, potato peeler. An ice cream scoop, and a lifesize statue of Theodore Roosevelt made of Velveeta.
So looks like we have:
– mafia supervillan
– religious fanatic
– the demon
– misterious probably bad guy
– the puppetmaster
– Sidney’s nemesis
???: “I got my powers from these magical stickers!”
Sydney: “Wow, do we seriously have to fight this guy?”
???: “Don’t mock my powers, besides magical orbs are clishe.”
Sydney: “Dude, I’m a girl and I have more balls than you”
???: wow got spare panties that got to me anyway look closer I got the better chest “lil boy”
syd: can I PPO her now?
max: no I want to discuss these character sheets she wrote up
Dabbler: My INT is WAY higher than that!
Anvil: I didn’t know Strength went that high…
Heatwave : What’s a character sheet?
im hoping panel 4 is actually just a super hero… who happened to have the US army, including Maxima, invade HIS country. to probably trying to sort out his own country relatively non-violently when along comes the US army, blowing stuff up etc.
think what would happen with say 50s era superman if the USSR invaded USA
I think masked girl would work great against Halo, yes. Her mask is so… all around places.
Also, demon wants to kick Dabbler back!
Please, more.
he just wants a second date, and the medication for what dabs gave him last time
Panel 3 should have read:
“1.2.3. on Dabbler hiding on Earth!”
‘Cuz Dabbler is really involved in a multi-dimensional game of “Kick the Can”.
Panel 4:
Your mummy be so old, she doth farteth dust.
And Deus’s Henchwoman in the background: “Great.He’s groping the T.V. isn’t he…”
“Again!” sighs
Or else:
“(…heavy sigh…) Note to self: remember to Windex the screen tonight after he’s asleep.”
hahaha let the challenges begin
I think we are a little short on the Who’s Who panel. Several guys have speaking parts, but they don’t show up. Ah, the mystery continues.
No introduction yet, no who’s who pannel
Yup, thems the rules.
I hate to say it maxima, but Arianna paint a much more realistic picture. People who are planning something bad arn’t going to stop just because their risk just went up. After all, you can’t be everywhere at once and you still have to sleep (you can’t and you do, right?). They’ll gamble that they’re not important enough, you’re too busy or they’re in and out before you are warned, etc. Plus, if they have any brains, they know you have to worry about things like collateral. And if you don’t, and are going to kill them anyway (which is kind of the message now), they’re not going to hold back anything, or surrender.
Actually, I find Maxima’s scenarios to be more realistically portrayed. If saying the more optimistic options out there. Arianna’s are less realistic, but in keeping with the genre. And a super-hero story without over-the-top super villains to fight would be less dramatic. So I think it is wise of DaveB to keep that in the mix of genre tropes he decided to run with.
Sorry no Max’s view is a joke.
Those people most likely to be a criminal or terrorist are those least likely to be effected by shows of force. These groups are already fight organizations that are larger; more powerful and better funded then them. They either simply don’t care or are so removed from reality they can’t see a why they could lose (think dude in panel 2 “GOD’s on his side” *eye roll*).
Shows of force are only really useful in effecting those least likely to stand up and fight in the first place.
I don’t think Maxima honestly -believes- that her show of force will stop anyone. She may claim to think that, but that’s just to annoy Arianna.
What Max is counting on is one of the cardinal rules of super villains. “With great power comes a massive ego.” She expects that every bad guy who saw her challenge will come after her before they actually get around to doing bad things to people who can’t defend themselves.
I think that’s partially right- but Yorp’s got it a little too.
It’s gonna have to do with the three levels of Morality. People in the first level don’t do ‘bad stuff’ because they don’t want to get punished. This is a ton of the ‘low level’ baddies- muggers, gangers, the sort of people who don’t know any life other than crime, and who can’t think outside of themselves and what they can get or will be done to them. They’ll be the ones scared pantsless at Supers going supernova on them.
Then there’s people of the Second Morality level. They don’t do ‘bad stuff’ because it’s against the law. Now that Maxima has basically said “We’re saying doing supervillainy is illegal and we’re the police”- they’re going to definitely think twice. This is basically what the construction worker was doing. It may seem like he’s declining the job because of perceived potential punishment, but it’s actually because he was probably convinced in the first place with an argument like “You got superpowers! There ain’t no law against opening a bank vault, is there? Who’s gonna say no to you…”- basically, one person who he (theoretically) trusts says it’s okay to do it, but this show reminded him of the illegality of it. Remember that perceived invulnerability or immunity does strange things to people.
Then there’s the Third Morality Level- this is where the SUPERVILLAINS hang out- this is the level where what you do and don’t do depend entirely on your personal values- you save puppies because it’s the right thing to do- even if you’re ‘saving’ them from a puppy mill that legally owns the little guys. This is where Jihaadists are, and Crusaders. It’s also where Luthor-type villains hang out- their sense of ‘I’m more important and shouldn’t have to listen to laws while getting what I want” means just that- they don’t listen to laws, or fear punishment, because they think that getting what they want is the most important thing.
The more pragmatic villains will agree with you, Osk, & then point out that this only works for the FIRST caper. Archon will start sifting for clues & hunt them down before the NEXT caper is even close to being ready.
Being reasonably prudent and not an OCD-sufferer (successful villains aren’t), I’m researching EVERYONE in that little video (reporters included), while planing my caper anyway. The only thing that’s really urgent… hacking their computers before the security upgrade she just forced can be implemented!
I have my own take on it if I’m going to be a villain, firstly I would step back and yes, not do my first crime. I would check out my opponents and find out everything about them before I continued. Then I would plan all my crimes in advance to get them done within a 12 hour period all within that 12 hour time. I would then set each crime location with traps as I did them set to cover the weaknesses of each of my soon to be heroes. Which since I’d be a villain to me the heroes are the real villains. That being the case its ethical to kill them off since their my villains. After hitting all my locations within that 12 hour period I would go totally straight and plan out my next set of crimes waiting a good 2 years before making my next set of hits. I would see how my traps worked, what heroes survived and how, looking for weaknesses and ways to take out the survivors if their are any during that two year period, then use the same 12 hour timetable to hit all my next group of targets and revise all traps left in place for that set of crimes. If however I don’t manage to take out any of the heroes with the first set of traps I’d go totally straight and stay that way as it would be pointless to make a second attempt which all of them would be waiting for.
If I were to be a villain, I would commit acts that are so innovative that they are not considered crimes. A bit like contemporary chemists who design new drugs that give a high. Except I would prefer a victimless crime*. But it demonstrates the principle. Until the compound get added to a list of restricted drugs it is not illegal (assuming that it does not fall foul of regulations regarding developing medical drugs or some other technicality like that). Not unless new catch-all legislation gets passed. Which the UK, at least, at least is attempting.
Of course just what I could do would depend on what super-powers I had access to. But, say I could dimension travel, there would be a whole bunch of alternate Earths out there all with interesting things. Including some where the Cullinan Diamond had not been discovered. Others where some of the artists we consider great masters were under-appreciated and who’s works can be picked up cheap. Not to mention simple inter-dimensional commerce, if you can find some way of operating in bulk, without having to handle each load directly yourself.
* Of course if it genuinely has no victim, then it is hard to visualise it as being a crime. But you can bet the taxman will think differently. Because whatever it is doing they will want to get their slice of it. Remember, discretion avoids legislation. Just be sure to pay whatever is already covered by existing legislation, even if you keep the rest of your multi-billion dollar industry quiet.
Gotta side with Maxima in this one. Any big plot in motion won’t be stopped by her intimidating display, but it wouldn’t not happen is she played nice either. Anybody looking for a challenge or vengeance on one of the team might start moving now, but it’s not like you’d be able to prevent them from finding out the same things once you went active, so worst case scenario they move a month or two faster than they otherwise would have. I don’t see much in the way of negative results which could be avoided by anything less than hiding the team’s existence from the world forever.
Meanwhile, all the “street level” supercrime, thugs with powers doing relatively small-scale stuff? The ones who would be absolutely no trouble for a serious superhero, but impossible for beat cops to deal with? If you didn’t scare them, you’d be spending all your time catching bank crackers and such, and a lot of people would get hurt in the process. By making it clear that supercrime will have to answer to this kind of raw destructive force, you massively reduce the amount of low-level supercrime.
seeing as basicly all crininals and terroists already fight groups lager, more powerful and better funded then they are but stil fight and brake the law. thinking that max’s little party trick is going to make anyone stop what they’re doing is a joke.
it simply not how these groups of people think.
That may be true for most criminals and terrorists, however many low level supers will be doing it for the money. they realized that being immune to bullets alters the risk reward ratio, Maxima is altering it further. now they have to think, i can take the police no problem, but that crazy golden explosion lady … not worth the risk. Some supers will ignore this but they are the kind of people who were likely to commit crime anyways. So in the end Maxima’s ploy was to dissuade the average person who now had powers.
The whole lot of you forget one LITTLE thing. How many of these “Low-Level” Supers might decide to SIGN ON to ARCHON? Think of it. Take the guy from the last page who was gonna pull the vault door open. If he was needing cash that bad, why not sign on to Archon and get a steady (And probably fairly large) paycheck? Maybe in the Clean-up or S&R units since he was working construction and would have a fairly decent grasp of how say a ton of concrete would shift if he moved this beam that way.
Perhaps the villain in panel 6 has a 5 year old daughter or niece who found her mask somewhere, and put stickers all over it?
Also of note is that Deus has the same painting on his wall as Mrs. Boonliang has in the King of Siam.
Unrelated:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/355389852/mysteries-of-the-arcana-chapter-5
(Only 9 hours left! Spread the word!)
Mrs. Boolangs is the original Dues’s is a copy.
I think villain #6 is a wacked out female like in Sky High. The stickers are a clue.
But she recycles.
I’d be more worried if one of them was reacting to Sydney’s Power Orbs and ignoring Maxima altogether. Somebody, somewhere has to know about those things and sooner or later this broadcast will reach them. THEN things get interesting…
Not if they have been dead for a billion years. Well, probably not, anyhow.
I think they are actually quite young. Like in the negative numbers. As someone sent them from the future for Sydney to find. So that she can learn them and use them to deal with what must be dealt with. And this also explains why they cant be scanned as it would reveal their maker.
Plans within plans. Perhaps Maxima is hoping for this kind of reaction and dangles a bait in order to flush the villains from their hidey-holes?
More than likely.
I’m dead, am I? That’s much better ….
Is that what he said?
p.s I can read Arabic, but I don’t understand jack squat
it is not Arabic, it is squigglese
Looks more like Farsi to me, similar alphabet related to Arabic like Greek is related to the Roman alphabet. And he’s not a mummy, he’s wearing a turban and a cloth over his face but his neck and shoulders are bare.
Maybe he’s like Skeletor where his face is all messed up but the rest of him is super buff.
The arabic doesn’t make sense at all.
If you’re at all interested in making it accurate, I could help, I guess?
Someone was able to reverse translate it, though all that means is he managed to feed it back into google translate. It says Dead am I? So much the better. if you want to provide something that reads more naturally.
Sounds like my Bulgarian (/Cyrillic ).
Reverse-engineering the Google translation, I would guess that the original input was:
“I’m dead, am I? So much the better.”
(Note that I cannot read the script or language. That’s just a natural phrasing that gives the right output.)
How did you reverse translate that? I’m guessing you have a way to type in Arabic text? That’s exactly right actually. I guess my transcription of it was pretty decent.
What I did was put Google translation in Arabic to English, activate the onscreen keyboard and try with the most likely symbols :)
Just in case, what I meant was that I played with the Arabic symbols until what I wrote matched what is shown in the comic, then I took the english version of that.
I got a few key words in English from mavericking’s post, put them in the English->Arabic translator to see which bits of script they matched, then put likely phrasings around them until I got an exact match. It only took a couple of tries. There are actually several variations on “So much the better” that produce the same script, but that phrasing fits the situation best.
incredibly unlikely, especially given the page he’s on, that might mean that he’s reformed, and glad they aren’t antagonizing him anymore. Would be so funny if this turned out due to how unlikely it is, but could definitely be played up for laughs.
Us Yellowbeards are never more dangerous than when we’re dead
What? How do you conclude that he’s reformed and glad they aren’t antagonizing him? To me, it means “They think I’m dead, it means they don’t look after me and I can plan my revenge without worrying too much about being discovered before it is ready”.
I agree, and it does depend on what meanings don’t get translated. I didn’t read the statement then determine he may be reformed, I looked at the “devil’s advocate” view that he may be reformed and looked at how the statement would fit that scenario, as it was slightly more vague than “challenge accepted” or “the cleansing is at hand.”
Again, not a conclusion, just exploring more possibilities.
Wait, this is a hyper-modern organization that supplies high tech equipment, and Vale is reading a newspaper? This is a clue! She is actually in her 70s or 80s and her powers make her look young. “You know, Vale, you can read the news on your phone.” “*sigh* Kids today.”
she pretty damn hot for her ’80s then =P
You know a paper reads much easier than a tiny phone right?
Showing your age there bud. It is not how easy it is to read, it is how cool you look whilst doing it. Or so I imagine. Not doing either activity.
I’m only 22 :(
Personally I think people look stupid reading from a phone.
If he had said Tablet, than yes. Tablets read just fine, AND give acces to news websites (which gives way more news than the paper)
Than again, sites usually don’t have those nice cartoons
But you can get Grrlpower on a tablet and you can’t get it in any paper!
I can also get it on my PC
It also makes a wonderful discipline/attention tool
Interesting: I’ve always felt the opposite.
Newspapers are large and unwieldy, uncomfortable to hold open, and require repeated re-foldings per article as the article jumps between pages in order to read comfortably.
Phones keep the whole article in one clean column, were designed to be comfortably held in one hand, and can order the news by the categories that interest me, not some stranger that happens to hold the title of “editor.”
Tablets have the trade-off of being not quite as comfortable to hold, but requiring less scrolling, coming in possibly a little below phones but way above a newspaper.
This is coming from the POV of a 30yo American male, if anyone feels that is relevant.
True that reading a paper in a chair is a bit of a nightmare.
Don’t have those problems on a table though. Which is where I usually read them. While waiting for for a haircut
I used too have a HUGE paperback collection because they were cheaper and more portable than hardbacks now I really enjoy my e-book because it holds tons of books and is easy to use. I can add books from my computer or wireless straight from the book store. The only downside is not all books are being converted to digital. Some of the books I remember are not available but I hear the Library of Congress is converting all THEIR books. Damn am I drooling? :)
I AM drooling :)
and any book out of copyright is/should be available for free as an ebook/pdf due to lack of printing costs.
5″ screen the best balance, hard to get though.
alright people, its getting a little too personal here, time to dial it down.
The simple answer is that it’s hard to tell what she’s doing from that distance if she’s just holding a slim silver rectangle. So newspaper it is.
The details on these last two pages makes me feel that both reactions are realistic, but on the other hand the sheer number of examples on this page makes the problem with Maxima’s logic very clear. Her power display was only ever going to dissuade the lower classes of super-criminal, the ones that are usually only after money etc and would never stand a chance against her anyway. The higher-tier supervillains, the ones that could actually pose a genuine threat to both her and society in general just see her as a challenge, a potential boost to their reputation or some kind of cog in their plans.
She’s basically Superman scaring away people like the Rogues or some normal bank/armoured car thieves while attracting the likes of Lex Luthor or Darkseid.
thus my earlier assertion that Max is leading Arianna down the primrose path to get to exactly the place of Max’ choosing. Her response to all this would then be, “and all these threats that will be focused on those of us that are supposed to handle them… what would they have been doing otherwise?”
But just think about the maths for a minute. There are bound to be way more low tier, weaker villains than there are world-class dangerous ones. Archon only has so many heroes to go around. If they are spending all their time mopping up small timer villains they will be overwhelmed and unable to deal with the really big crisis when it hits.
So in scaring off a lot of little players, she is actually clearing the field for the big, unavoidable, fights later. A very sensible strategy.
One that also encourages a lot of minor supers to keep to useful industries rather than slipping into crime or vigilantism. A strategy that might in sheer economic terms be worth more than Maxima’s weight in gold.
maybe not, remember that only a small percentage of the population actually are supers. so they might be able to do it.
also don’t forget that archon is not only comprised of the people showed in the comic but also of a lot( I’m assuming) of other operative( super or not) remember those warhammeresque soldiers? there might acutally be a grunt force behind our team.
don’t forget that ARC accept both supers, people with items or exceptional skills, meaning someone with enough( fair, A LOT) of training might cut it. matt? peggy? they are ”normals”( unless proven otherwise)
X? somehow i really don’t think he’s the only ninja in archon,
there might also be more divisions than arc-swat, arc-dark, etc.
who knows, maybe there’s and arc-world,arc-mon(ster) hell there might even be and ARC-FAIR(Y) for all i know.
Dave has said that there is a lot more happening behind the scenes that we are not seeing. why not that too?
and finally as pessimistic as Arianna is, it would be wrong to dismiss the actual good that actually was achieved from max’s actions.. who knows, maybe she even motivated people to JOIN archon? would wouldn’t want to be near all those babes ? lol
I’d even join them for helping Arianna with the accounting.
While there, I can have enough fun, as long as I’m able to reason my presence with the supers.
And of course I’d probably be able to get some nice pictures thanks to a certain hacker there.
You can’t tell me he doesn’t have his ways to do that.
yeah, but trying to schedule the time to get in that locker in the shower room without getting caught must be a pain.
Wireless cameras dude
That’s what the local tech-geek is for.
I bet he has cameras already all over and is selling the stuff on the internet (possibly with Arianna taking a huge chunk of the profits for keeping quiet about it).
Remember Nabiki in Ranma 1/2?
Aren’t you glad you didn’t say that “Ari was taking a huge load”?
Aren’t you glad you now have that image in your head? :P
You are welcome :D
And Archon has cells being readied for long occupancy just for them.
So Max’s Taunt power puts a panic status on trash mobs, clearing them out, and the press conference buffed its AoE from “line of sight” to “planetary”. :D
so the first villain looks Kinda like Freddy Krueger. Lets Hope not. Unless a Margaret Simpson Jr, is around there all screwed against Freddy Krueger.
not quite Freddy would run from Sydney. And what Dabbler would do to him would be a pornographic nightmare for Freddie
Of these, the only one I’m really worried about is panel 5. This is not to say the others won’t pose a credible threat, but an enemy that steps up for a fight is an enemy you can fight. The illuminati- / chessmaster-types that manipulate events to actually incorporate the good guys into accomplishing their own agendae are much more difficult to find and/or neutralize. Always beware the deep player!
Personally, it’s the zealot in panel 2 that gets to me. Zealots tend to get lots of collateral damage in by roping weak-minded innocent people into the mix. Ever heard of Jonestown? Waco? Yeah, that’s something that Maxima can’t fix by nuking it. Which was why it was dumb to flaunt in the first place.
I have opinions and they’re on the internet.
2 and 5 are probably the most dangerous.
Everything else can more or less easily be dealt with.
Normal gangsters? They’ll just get to have an ‘unfortunate accident’ if need be.
Demon? Dabbler defeated him once,
But any religious fanatic can and WILL find away to attract and manipulate the pliable masses and shadowy organizations have a tendency to have contacts and powers you just CAN’T fight against.
If that dude in p2 wants to tell the world the supers are demons, who’s about to stop him when he’s demonstrating infront of Archon? And especially if he manages to find a way of exposing Dabbler as what she is (He’d actually be RIGHT with her).
What if the dude in p2 sees Max as an angel or something alike and starts a spree of something bad?
Shadowy organizations can probably manipulate and rig anything against the supers.
Starting with simple bad RP, going over to suing them and finally punch through anti-supers legislation.
Arianna: Dabbler is NOT not a Demon! Her Power just mutated her body in a more extreme fashion than Maxima’s did.
And that’s just moments before her family shows up.
The Alien, the Succubi, or the Doppleganger sides of the family?
An alien, a Succubus and a Doppleganger walk into a pub…
And Dabbler bounces over “Daddy!!”.
And every male faint from blood loss through massive nosebleeds.
Not just males
Seconds out, round 1.
The guy in the second panel… yeah. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with those fellas. It’s really cliched to see cops and clergymen as bad guys, but they also make really easy, really creepy villains.
Yeah I tend to dislike “insane” as the primary motivation of a villain because it’s the hallmark of a 2 dimensional villain. That’s why I actually really don’t like the Joker. Why is he doing anything he’s doing? Because he’s crazy. That’s the only reason he ever needs to do anything.
One of the things I’ve struggled with since I started doing the comic was coming up with villains, because I wanted villains that, if not sympathetic, at least had motivations that people could buy into. After all, very few people actually think of themselves as villains, they can justify their actions as necessary if not downright good. Of course, sometimes people are just crazy, and I wanted to have a spectrum of villainy.
Although now that I think about it, I’m kicking myself for not making this page a 3×3 grid of panels and secretly making all the villains laid out according to the D&D alignment chart. After all, the Lawful Good paladin can be a mass murderer if he feels you’ve sufficiently offended his god, right? Hmm. Well too late now. :)
Aw, does that mean we won’t ever see a villain who’s motivations are Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn?
+1
Shame about the alignments. It can be fun interpreting the categories. I can remember one DM complaining when I went for a Chaotic Neutral character saying “you just played one of those!” But, whilst I kept within the technical requirements for the alignment, and wholly within the spirit, the actual characters played vastly differently. Although they pigeon holed in the same alignment category, the way that they viewed the world and their attitudes, motivations and desires made them dramatically different in actions, personality and whether you would want to be in the same room as them.
I’m currently playing a Chaotic Neutral character myself. I’ve avoided the whole Chaotic Neutral is an excuse to play evil when the DM won’t allow evil characters. I’ve also avoided playing Chaotic Neutral as insane. He’s got distinct goals, is achieving them in a clear to understand manner, and can be almost trusted to be around.
He started off with a motivation of doing his thing to stay entertained. He does what amuses him regardless to how it affects others. He’s amoral and deceitful which means while he will do the right thing half the time, he’s not doing it because it’s right, but because he chooses to do it. While this makes him look insane there’s a fine line he hasn’t crossed yet.
I essentially created him as a parody of all the Drizz’t clones. He’s an escaped drow that acts as close to good as he can, but he’s still a drow and no matter how much he hates his culture and cuts other drow down, he still lived with them for most of his life and can’t just shove away a lifetime of cultural education. So he concentrates on what he can concentrate the most on, amusing himself even at the cost of others.
Your words on the Joker were the echo to my own, up until Brian Bolland’s classic “The Killing Joke” – the story where (among other things) Barbara Gordon was confined to a wheelchair. While it wasn’t the guaranteed certainty of an origin story for this character, it gave the audience a way to justify the Joker’s insanity, his malice, his obsession with Batman, his dangerously random unpredictability. It gives you a chance to comprehend him, without asking you to root for him.
That said, your basic point is still valid – & worth repeating: Portraying insanity merely for the sake of insanity is (at least IMHO) a symptom of lazy writing. If there’s no reason behind a character’s insanity, then the audience has no motive for engaging with the character.
In the same way that “Nobody Is A Villain In Their Own Mind”, or
“A Character’s Choice – However Stupid – Is The Best Choice They Were Able To Make With The Data They Had At The Time”, It’s important to remember that insanity is a legitimate (albeit failed) attempt to make sense of the world around them. Too many people (including writers) assume that insanity equals stupidity, when in truth the act of “thinking differently” is STILL an act of THINKING, & a high-IQ is no guarantee of sane behavior.
Some have argued that if the Joker’s motives are kept hidden, then his character will appear even more dangerous, more of a threat to the heroes. While I appreciate this story-telling logic, I still feel that the audience can be allowed to know his motives (at least partly), even if the heroes are kept unaware.
Hitler and a few others prove that crazy =/= stupid. Howard Hughes was definitely crazy (towards the end) as was Tesla but they were both incredible geniuses.
Tesla, yes. Hitler, no. An intelligent, manipulative psychopath, granted. But not a genius. To be classed as the latter, he would need to excel in his primary area of expertise. Which he did not. Making a great many very flawed decisions.
What he was good at doing was implementing his and others visions. Such as the autobahn. But that is more a sign of how much easier it is to do such things with the power of an absolute dictator, rather than it being a reflection of his own innate intelligence.
And even then his blinkered attitude in driving towards some goal made him blind to opportunities which lay off his own narrow path. Not a trait you would expect in a genius, who should be better at seeing and acting on the greater picture.
Hitler was, by that definition, a genius: his rhetoric convinced Germany to go to war in support of policies which were cruel, sometimes stupid, & occasionally completely self-contradictory. Oratory genius, not military.
Hitler’s biggest mistake, besides attacking Russia at the onset of Winter, was thinking his genius led to being a tactician in war. He was not. And after 1942 the British stopped trying to kill him because he was winning the war for them! There are parallels where Hitler was assassinated and someone more competent was in charge. Someone who could have ended the war with Germany still independent. There are some nice scenarios some Historians have worked out where that could have happened. Glad it didn’t in our set of worlds.
Re-reading your comment, I am probably doing you an injustice. I see that the genius remark was directed at Tesla and Huges, not Hitler. Sorry about that.
Exactly I meant to make that clear. While Hitler clearly wasn’t stupid he wasn’t a genius or we might live in a very different world. He was crazy and that was a serious flaw in his plans.
Really the problem is that most people take the word “genius” and even the word “intelligence” as such all encompassing terms. The problem is what exactly is Intelligence in the first place? Computational ability? Memory? The ability to blurt out how many matchsticks just fell on the ground or learn a new language or pick up on body language? Hitler was undoubtedly excellent at social manipulation and political shenanigans, but history reliably tells us that his strategic prowess was lacking. Dabbler has fantastic computational ability, pretty good memory and a knack for languages, and is better than average at quite a few things, but entirely average in a lot of other categories. A genius by most measures but not a 10 in every category.
I agree. Just from my own experience there seem to be many factors to intelligence. People who are extremely talented in one field are near useless in others. Even someone with a genius IQ can be dumb about certain things. And I’m not talking about the “Nerd” stereotype.
He was a nutcase who just happened to press the right butons with the people.
If you read his book ‘Mein Kampf’, you’ll quickly find that it’s full of more bull-s*+# than the bible.
He could have probably won the war up to a point, but the fact is that he wasted too many ressources on concentration camps and extermination of people he didn’t like.
His two other major mistakes was trying to take on Russia (starting towards winter even) and then letting Japan pull the US into the problem.
To think that the Germans actually let an Austrian arts-college drop-out lead them into ruin…
And yet you’re good with it for Sydney!
Seriously, “insane” is not a motivation. It’s an adjective you apply to the more unconventional motivations or means that seem particularly out of synch with your desired ends. The problem is, we don’t necessarily what the motivation is because they aren’t obligated to tell you their back story. Take for example the most recent Joker of the movies. Now some supervillains would find an opportunity to say something like “I was sent into Middle East supposedly to restore peace and order, but I was betrayed by my country and barely survived. Afterwards, while I was recovering in a little shack and checking out my ripped-up face, I thought about it, and realized that that those SOBs were the ones who created the chaos in the first place and made me a part of it and I decided to get my payback by creating chaos a bit closer to them. Do a little spreading of the love.”
Still insane but now explained insanity. But the Joker wasn’t an explaining kinda guy.
Yeah, the real issue with the Joker as a villain isn’t that he’s insane, it’s that his version of insanity just means doing random stuff all the time with no plan or goals.
I’ve often noticed that the following holds true.
Hero: Chooses good over evil.
Villain: Chooses doublegood over good.
You know who I’m talking about. The folks who have to crack eggs to make omelets. Generally, if you use the phrase “New World” its a tell.
Joker isn’t insane, He is as sane as just about anyone else. The Joker is Pure Evil, To cause harm because of Insanity neutralizes the evil. But the Joker causes harm because he can, and because it makes him happy.
other Villains Kill because they have to, Because it’s what they know, or because they are just misguided.
The Joker Kills Because He loves Destruction, Mayhem, and don’t forget the Murder.
Not insane, just evil, true evil in all that evil can be.
The only thing I really like about the Joker is the completely non-canon suggestion that the Joker is insane because he’s the only person in the DC universe who is aware of the nonstop continuity reboots, and he knows he can kill anyone or even set off a nuke in Gotham and everything will be pretty and perfect in a year or two.
Two Words:
Groundhog Day.
Awesome movie. I could watch it over and over.
Interesting to note they are doing a sequel. Doubtless it will just be more of the same.
I like it more the earlier “12:01 pm” (short story, film, remake) from where “Groundhog Day” was allegedly plagiarized.
Joker has found the truth and it has set him free
Much like Deadpool.
Inspired by the Sith Code?
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
…
that… is AWESOME
My one peeve about the joker was how the animated series always gave him the over-the-top gag props for the latest week’s episode. I think one show had him driving a tank shaped like a giant gumball machine that shot giant balls of goo/acid/gas, etc. It looks good visually, but how does a supposedly deranged individual organize and pay for the manufacture, delivery and operation of what would have taken months and possibly millions to create? All, this from a guy operating with a handful of lackeys from an abandoned hotel/nightclub/warehouse? (They seemed to have a LOT of those in Gotham).
The good old way?
Rob a bank.
Or funding from big business, like Lex.
We may never know how much of Joker’s madness is from the soaking he took in those chemicals (that his exfoliated skin & dyed hair never recovered are mute testament to how harsh that “bath” was). Perhaps it was merely (as was once suggested) that he had a “bad day”, & his new look was just the last straw. Perhaps both…?
Or perhaps he’s a totally sane man who’s in such extremes of pain that all he can do is lash out at the world – trying to ease his suffering by sharing it.
Wasn’t he a Bank Robber before he became the Joker?
He was actually an out of work comic who was doing front man work for a crime gang to get money because he had a pregnant wife. She died while he was “working’. Shortly there after he had his run in with Bats which led to him becoming The Joker.
Hmm, if you tie that in with Dave’s non-cannon thing it would mean there could be a point to his actions. He is trying to get a reset to the way his life was not as it is now. Tho that would be what his subconcisious mind is working on not what his shattered conscious mind is doing.
First you’d need to nail-down whether-or-not “The Killing Joke” is to be taken as canon,
& if so, whether Joker’s shattered mind remembers his past accurately – based on Bolland’s story-telling style, there -is- room for doubt, you see.
(at one point in the “fun-house”, Joker refers to his memories as being “multiple choice”)
–
The “Red Hood” story was first seen during the “Bill Finger” artwork-era of Batman’s mythos, when Gotham sported many huge advertising-displays atop many of its buildings. Bolland’s “spin” on the original story portrayed a security guard (recently fired from a playing-card factory) who’s recruited by the “Red Hood Gang”, for his know-how of the plant’s security. He accepts this job because his pregnant wife needs better support than an unemployed husband can manage as a failed stand-up comic. In this “reboot” he’s seen as little more than a patsy & a tragic victim, while in the original version, he was both the gang’s boss & the inventor of the “Hood”, which functioned as a versatile combination of disguise + head-protection + gas-mask + diving-helmet.
The key to “Giving Insanity a Reason” is *NOT* whether-or-not you share that reason with the audience. Rather, if the Writer understands the Madman’s (twisted) logic, it becomes easier to devise motives (& design crime-plans) that will make sense. The character’s story will almost write itself. Sharing that back-story with the Audience is secondary, & might be withheld to make the villain seem more mysterious.
Being insane works as motivation for lots of terrible things in real life, but they’re not great (or at least a very specific type of) villains. More horror/thriller stuff than cape stuff.
What makes Joker a great villain is that he’s a SHOWMAN. His plans don’t make sense, he doesn’t have a goal – but ideally, each thing he does is flashy, funny, or clever somehow. It’s all in the timing.
Know what I do like, Dave? Robocop and Zorro. Robocop is the one movie franchise where cops are always good guys, and Zorro is the one franchise where the clergymen are also always good.
The thing is… crazy still has an ideology. Even crazy villains should still have beliefs and motivations. The only difference is that their psychological issues will push them into specific patterns of thought.
Ok, so I’m just curious:
What are the biggest ways for such villains to actually take advantage of Archon’s public announcement?
-We know it’s possible to have a double agent inside Archon, so sabotage/subtle misdirection is a way to try to nullify them.
-In addition to the former, we know they don’t exactly do a lot of background checks before “hiring”, because Sydney. And the information provided on camera includes enough to let people draw this conclusion.
-Maxima’s “bring it on” has inevitably lost them a lot of good will, politically (Senator shouting at Arianna certainly only the tip of the iceberg). It seems likely that there’d be a super or villain in a position to manipulate them on that front.
-Maxima has basically announced that she’ll take anyone one, no matter how disadvantageous the situation is to her. Imagine a super with ocean manipulation powers wanting to fight her on the sea floor. And if that doesn’t seem like enough of a disadvantage, you can keep stacking them up. Max is patently not omnipotent, asking for challengers on any set of terms is begging to be put in your place.
-Any super that manages to avoid seeming like a super (a la manipulation powers or something) should be completely able to fly below Archon’s radar.
-Anyone willing to kill as a means of “punishing” the existence of super-powered cops will be very able to make Archon look helpless, super or not. Maxima showed her ability to defeat challengers, not to keep anyone safe or maintain respect for law and order.
-There’s the obvious possibility that Max isn’t the strongest super around, and even if Max didn’t go full throttle, she’s still tipped her hand in a big way, in this case.
-Manipulate Archon members into damaging property and then tie them up in court. Their resources on that front cannot be endless, nor are they capable of fulfilling their mission without risking being sued.
-Many members, not just Sydney, have demonstrated distractability. It seems very plausible that you could draw a member away and deal with them one-by-one, which really weakens their options for how to fight back.
Anyone have other ideas?
Whilst this route might work short-term, if it becomes too effective, then it will end fast. Politicians get scared the same as everyone else. And if their first line of defence is spending all their time in court defending against law suits, and the country is descending into chaos with super-villains rampaging out of control, then legislation will be enacted granting them some form of immunity from prosecution. Exactly the same as happens with the military in times of war. And for the same reasons.
Actually, that’s already there. They are a governmental force, and the government is ultimately the one that decides if they *can* be sued. You are, after all, requesting that the government pass judgement on a law suit against itself. The US government is unusually accepting of lawsuits (in comparison with other governments, current and historical), but there are plenty of situations that they simply don’t allow the prospect.
Governments are answerable to the courts. Up until they enact laws which make them exempt from the laws of the land. At which point you have a tyranny. Regardless of whether that government is nominally a benign one such as a democracy or republic. The basic principle is and always should be that nobody is above the law.
What I was proposing was a limited immunity from prosecution, under appropriate circumstances. And that would be applicable either for military personal conducting legitimate operations in wartime or in these circumstances Archon members operating in their official capacity.
Typically governments enact parallel legislation to provide compensation for those who suffer losses. Just as a fireman may have to smash down your front door to put out a fire, so might the military or super heroes have to damage property or risk friendly fire. Provided they did so under a legitimate need and took reasonable precautions to limit the damage then it is right that they should not fear court action. Equally the citizens affected should be able to claim compensation from the fund, as they will not be able to use civil court actions.
However such immunity should not extend to personnel who choose to abuse their position and the situation. Perhaps destroying property for the fun of it, rather than any operational need. Likewise it should not extend to government individuals, unless they are obliged in their official capacity to make decisions that affect the situation on the ground. And even then they should have no more protection than those in the front line.
‘Home rule’ in goverments are frightening.
Yes it is real and does exist.
I would use the public. Get the people up in arms and past simple active protestation. Spin the whole thing so that important members of the civilians get in with the politicians to gum up Archon itself. Maxima would still be dangerous but without a support team she is severely limited. Especially given that she’s a military person and that can be a crippling weakness.
Such a tactic would be especially effective if the villains also began framing Max and possibly other members of Archon for vigilante executions of petty criminals, started some rumors about unlawful surveillance or imprisonment without trials, ect.
Because, let’s face it, ARCHON is going to by its very nature be a very opaque agency and will have difficulty defending itself against such allegations.
I would also dummy up some medical reports “proving” that prolonged just being around exposure to super powers can various cancers much like Ozymandias did to Dr Manhattan. That would produce a NIMBY effect and force Archon to dispel the rumors, costing valuable resources by way of money and time. And the best part is that even when they quash the rumors, they’d never truly quash them. There would always be some people, influential people behind on the latest news.
Reputation: A lifetime to build, seconds to destroy.
One slight problem. what if Archon is the RESTRAINING force for Max? Remove a wardog’s leash and what happens?
Then she has to deal with what’s left of weakened Archon and myself. If she can find me. That’s the beautiful thing here. You can do this all from hiding, even in full view. And if done right, she just intimidates me thinking I’m just another jerk civilian just making her life horrible and not a super-villain working on destroying Archon and then take them out one at a time.
This is why the psychological tactics villain is stronger than the punch punch smash villain. Lex Luthor is dangerous because he can out think Superman and work the public, not because he’s physical all the time.
They did a criminal background check on Sydney, and probably a financial one too (they knew she co-owned the comic store).
Maybe next time, they should perform sanity checks
No, no. You only do that when you see a horrific sight. Such as your friend’s severed head bobbing up and down in the stew-pot. The fun part comes if you fail your san roll. Then you get to enact a whole new phobia or mental disorder.
All hail Cthulhu!
Friends head in a stew pot, PLEASE be original, How about waking up to find your long dead S.O.’s head between your legs asking if you want some oral.
Oh, I confess, I was just citing a textbook example.
The thing that gives you a severe penalty on your SAN check is when you notice that you are seeing the scene in a mirror. And realising that the ‘stew pot’ is actually your distended skull, opened up, and the meaty chunks that your friend’s head is bobbing in are actually the steaming grey matter of your own brain.
Unable to control yourself, you reach up with a ladle and scoop out a nice meaty portion. One of his eyes and a shrivelled up piece of your brain. Instinctively you know that it is the bit which contains your memory of your true existence and eternal torment. You bite and taste the fetid juices and blood. Your memory being torn painfully from you as you bite down and swallow.
You blink, confused for a moment. You had a creepy sensation of somebody walking on your grave. But everything seems to be normal. Just another boring day, without even an update to look forward to until Monday. Sighing, you bemoan the pointlessness of your life and wonder just why your friend is late. You were looking forward to having him for dinner.
+2 to you
Wow :)) What’s this week Yorp? New pills? :P
Something tells me that Ms. Villain Number 6 is gonna be Sydney’s Nemesis, i get the feeling she’s as much of a spaz as she is.
Yeah, I definitely get a “Harley Quinn”-vibe from her.
Kinda an off topic here, but I gotta ask: how the hell did that demon find that news feed?
Perhaps we can imagine all planes of reality as being equally contiguous, & he’s been “trolling” through this “Altiverse” for any sign of Dabbler…?
If so, then his search-network, much like a spider’s web of trip-lines, could well be (in a cosmic sense) right next door, rather than being so distant that light-speed limitations might become a factor.
I wonder what the author’s answer will be…?
No indication that he did. He probably felt the splash of cosmic energy as an irresistible blast hit an unmoveable forcefield. And focussed his own vision on the area.
Ur it could be that he felt the power he sent to create his hearld has just been unleashed
Who says he saw the newsfeed? She used an active power from a weapon that cuts across multiple dimensions (in the demon-stration) and the demon noticed… Dabbler hasn’t been using any of her ‘loud’ powers so far in the comic, just the racial effects and illusions.
I’m calling almost of them.
The Demon Overlord, Deus and the Arabian. Those are definite villains. Or complications at the very least.
The rest …
The wannabe kingpin? So much fun to be had there.
The religious crackpot, oh, you gotta have those. ((nothing against those of various religious beliefs))
The players hiding in the shadows. Positively drools potential.
The mask covered villain … maybe not. But depending on motiff, maybe.
I get an illuminaty vibe from the shadow guys
My only “call” is that the Demon-Lord has *NOT* found Dabbler…
…he’s found his missing Power-Orbs!!!?!
Thus, when he said “Found you”, he was using “you” in the PLURAL sense!
Then he should have said “y’all”. We have the vocabulary, let us use it. And yes, that includes y’all demons out there too!
Thou shouldst be aware that “you” is second person plural, not singular.
Actually it is both, in modern parlance. Despite my attempt to have it re-designated as the singular. But my campaign shall continue, despite resistance.
That would be “all y’all demons”, FTR
Optionally, but not to my taste I also decline to say the sentence in a hill-billy drawl.
Well I live in the south and though sometimes it does seem like hell I’m pretty sure it’s not. Though Pat Robertson see’s demons all the time I hear.
No, I’m pritty sure he’s refering to Dabbler.
Where do you get the idea that he isn’t? I’m quite curious
The Orbs can only be seen though DIRECT observation … remember … so anyone watching though what ever means … would NOT be able to see the orbs. So it is highly unlikely that the Demon was referring to the Orbs.
syd’s halo is visible in the standard spectrum by camera the skill tree was not
No, Dabbler said the skill tree couldn’t be seen by the camera’s. She never said anything about the orbs themselves
If the light that comes off them can not been seen or detected even by Dabbler’s scan … would it not stand to reason the they could not be seen other than by direct observation?
Ref … https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/621
Of course I could be in error (wouldn’t be the first time).
Plus she also said that the skill tree was not visible as well … even to her cybernetic eye.
Ref … https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1167
Villain #4 perhaps that’s head trauma wrapped in bandages thanks to Max. He might still have issues with that.
Perhaps the mosque was occupied and he was a survivor. A moment like that could have sent Mister Rogers into cold blooded evil. And it would be a hell of a motive.
Mr. Rogers, huh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WgT9gy4zQA
I’m inclined to think he’s guy who was an even match for Maxima and is supposedly dead.
Panel 2, All I can think of is Reverend Henry Kane from Poltergeist.
RING RING “called it!”
Heads up. My security sw stopped an intrusive attack from one of your ads originating with ads.thehiveworks.com. The attack source addy is: 199.167.132.217
That sucks, I’ll keep an eye on it. Thanks for the heads up.
Seems to have hit a lot of webcomics. Many I’ve bookmarked (but not this one) have been flagged for spreading malware. I guess the advertiser was fed infected adverts.
I freaking love this update even if 90% turns out to be imaginary.
totally unrelated to everything else.
zero, i love your name and avatar!
ZERO FTW|