Grrl Power #194 – Are kill-beams really ever that discriminate?
I’m actually sure that Sydney could belt off a dozen examples of superheroes getting sued for property damage or wrongful death, the obvious example is The Incredibles, but that’s something that might happen in one out of a hundred titles. It’s basically a non-event, when in the real world being a superhero would probably be nearly impossible from a property damage lawsuit standpoint. I also want to be clear that I’m not bagging on comic books or setting my comic up to be all about courtroom procedure, I just like poking a little fun at the genre tropes. In case you hadn’t caught on to that yet. Also, I would like to see a comic where a super lawyer goes after supervillains.
I’ve always found hitting people with cars a curious strategy. Sure there are some cases where that makes sense. If you’re fighting someone tough but not strong, like a Diamond Jill, dropping a car on them makes sense cause you can pin them under it. If you’re one of those mid range strong guys like Sunspot or Spiderman, there’s a decent chance that hitting someone with a car could hurt more than just punching them, but if you’re Superman? Compared to his punches, hitting someone with a car must feel like he’s wrapping you in a fuzzy blanket. Which, granted, immediately explodes, cause, you know, comic book physics, but still. Superman is called the man of steel, but he is demonstrably way god damned harder than steel. Nutronium could take lessons from him. So if he hits someone with a car, he’s just being a dick to the owner of the car.
So, about the mosaic effect in panel three… I’m still trying to decide how violent I want the violence to be in the comic, the thing is, in addition to liking everything from slapstick comedy like Dragon Half to cute stuff like Azumanga Diaoh, I really like dirty humor like Ebichu or Archer and really over the top peak violence/gory stuff like Fist of the Northstar, Ricky-Oh, Gantz and Parasyte. Those are hard to mix, though Onepunch Man blends slapstick and violence pretty well. It’s funny though how characters tend to write themselves, and with 35 pages of only Sydney as the main character, this comic slid squarely into the cute, slapstick and lighhearted arena fairly quickly. I’m fine with that, and I think it might be a bit of a bait and switch to start going nuts with the gore all of a sudden, so you don’t have to worry about Dabbler bisecting anyone with her sword any time soon. As usual I’m not sure where to draw the line though. Scratches? Bloody nose? Sure. Bullet wounds? Someone getting stabbed? Eh, I think if it’s used sparingly that’s ok too, but a bloody stump, I thought it didn’t quite jive with the feel of the comic, even though it would have only been 20 pixels tall and is imaginary and used for (dark) comedic effect. We’ll see where I wind up going with that, but you don’t have to worry about limbs starting to fly off on every page.
I would like more dirty humor in the comic though. Dabbler will provide a little of that in a few pages. :)
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention, I made the women’s locker room X-Ray poster into an actual poster in case anyone is interested.
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Getting towards the serious stuff now, Sydney.
I don’t know why, but this comic made me giggle. A lot. And Max would not be amused.
Yea, it’s funny how serious stuf draws the most giggles here
as a comic this has to be braking some sort of code
If not, then Dave would be doing something wrong. ;)
Not the car, use the frui4 cart.
Or the sheet of glass, or the pile of cardboard boxes…
MY CABBAGES!
…And such lovely cabbages they WERE…
“KA-BLAM” sigh I lose more clones that way
You have only yourself to blame!
No, I blame their instructors.
And if it keeps up, I will start making examples of them to.
Perhaps they are just distracted by their love lives. Or do your clones?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nNNvB3KFFI&feature=kp
After working in the attic with a filter mask and full-body suit, I think using a spinning sheet/blade of fiberglass would turn people off criminal acts more than flying food carts. That stuff is scary, and MY GOD IT’S EVERYWHERE.
From a sense of practicality, a car is only useful as a missile.
From a sense of scale, a car says “He’s throwing a CAR!”
A fist to the face would look the same between two drunken brawlers and between Superman and Darkseid, but two drunken brawlers aren’t going to be using a car as a bludgeoning weapon anytime soon.
If course, in real life, all that energy has to go SOMEWHERE, so you’d FEEL that punch, right in your bones, from across the street.
And that’s the only reason why it’s done in comics at all.
I guess it’s sorta like wrestling. You see wrestlers on TV, and they hit each other with chairs and ladders and whatnot (I think they still do this, but I’m not sure), and if you look, they’re not using it as a weapon, so much as a prop. It makes this big dramatic noise, and it looks cool, but if you were going to try to hurt somebody with a folding chair, you’d swing the edge into them.
But that said, there are a few advantages to using a car. For a start, you can THROW a car, and you can’t really do that with your fist. So if you need to get somebody’s attention from a block away, a car sorta makes sense. If nothing else, instinct means the villain will duck or something (because, come on, it’s a CAR). Plus, cars, being made of steel, are less likely to break YOUR bones than just punching somebody. When you take the PSI into account, Spiderman’s punch might hit harder than a car, but he can break his hand on a punch if he hits too hard. Steel doesn’t break as easily. Finally, cars break, which means sharp, which means even more PSI, which means you could actually (in theory) hurt somebody like Max with a car.
That said? If I were Superman, I don’t think I’d bother with hitting folks with cars. Cause you’re right, it is a fairly dickish thing to do. And I like that Max has thought about it ahead of time.
I think most people are forgetting that modern cars have crumble zones that would considerably soften the blow unless the engine block hit the target first.
And then there’s the issue of wind resistance. Cars are aerodynamic only from the front, tossing a car will probably present every angle except head on so the airborne speed will quickly plummet. Cars really aren’t that dense, for a super they probably feel like a foam football.
A distraction is probably the best justification for tossing a car: It’s something large coming towards you and blocking your sight to the guy that’s attacking you. Very few people would stand still and wait it out.
The thing with crumble zones: they crumble around the impact point, which means the one you just threw the car at is possibly now encased (at least partially) by the crumpled car, and they would have to use energy to break free, giving you time to get up close or get away (that’s if they have the strength and/or leverage to break free on their own)
you’d feel it…. for like a split second. and then you (and everything else within about a mile) would be vaporized in a nuclear blast. at least, according to Vsauce. ( you tube vid: what if superman punched you? )
presuming Maxima isn’t quite nearly so off-the-charts-that-they-can’t-even-make-new-charts; aka, no planet tossing or punching people into orbit… she would still have to be extremely delicate when punching anyone below her level. . . which is possibly -how- she learned much of the advice that she’s giving out now.
Agreed – as missiles go, a car is pretty useless except for visual effect. A simple fist-sized rock (or cannonball, or even baseball) would be much more effective – even us normals could cave in somebody’s skull or sternum thusly.
Grabbing a rock from a street, ie. breaking the ground and picking up a piece of ground, is harder than grabbing a car, if only because you have to break it first.
Thats why, speed matters.
Depends on the type of street, and how long the fighting has been going on (if you can’t find a discarded beer can, smash the car window and rip off the steeringwheel and use that like Xena’s throwing disc, make sure you do her ululation or it doesn’t count :P)
Perhaps why they’re more willing to do pure fisticuffs fights in animated superhero fights- they can show the pressure waves and the deformation of flesh and air better, and add the sound effects of truly impactful hits.
I have to disagree with the author here. Depending on your power level, a car could be a useful melee weapon. Think of it like a baseball bat, or a mace. The car it acts as a lever arm (assuming you have something like zero-range TK to keep it from falling apart mid-swing), multiplying the force of your swing and greatly increasing the velocity at the impact point. It also increases the mass of the impactor (unless you somehow have a 250kg fist). Momentum transfer is directly proportional to both. Energy transfer is proportional to mass and to the square of velocity.
This works best if you pick it up by the rear bumper and smack the target with the front hubcap. You might even impale them on the axle, if you get lucky.
Will it scratch someone as tough as Superman? No, but it will knock him around far more than Bizzaro’s fists would by themselves.
Well since it was her imagination, maybe you could have done the end of the severed arm looking like a cartoon leg of lamb. Just a clean cross section. Violent but not gory. But I’m not a cartoonist, so what do I know? :P
Didn’t notice that blur at first
Depends on who’s imagination it is: Maxi’s or Sydney’s
I missed it too. But funny :-D
That is a good point. Other than the one time when Sydney’s orbs weren’t awaken during her meeting with the brass and when Maxima was talking to Ari after the press conference, I can’t think of another time that we have really seen what kind of things Maxima sees in her mind when talking or thinking about things.
Gosh, HOW could you? I have gotten so visually-allergic against the big-pixel-censoring that it was the very first thing I noticed when my eyes came down to panel 3 :(
I guess I have been reading too much hentai :(
Dave, I’d enjoy the page more without it, even though I don’t like very bloody scenes either. If censoring is unavoidable, I like those best that are done in-scene, like someone’s gushing nosebleed covering the private parts of someone else. (That was the best I’ve seen on dA but I cannot find it right now.)
Has it been addressed what happens if someone other than Sydney grabs one of the orbs? I know that Math has been hit by one and poked one with his finger, Dabbler got hit in the head by one, but has anyone actually grabbed on and tried to use it. Do they only work for Sydney? do they have defense mechanisms in case someone other then their owner attempts to use them?
just being curious, thanks
Check this out – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/370 .
Yes, Max isn’t grabbing the Orbs directly, just the container they are residing in. But if the Orbs can do this to someone supposedly one of the most powerful supers on the planet ….
Good Point: we know the orbs are connected/tethered to Sydney and can’t be removed from her presence, but what happens if someone actually tries to activate an orb. For instance, does the Fly orb work for anyone who grabs it? does the telepresence orb allow anyone to active it and then use it? or do they only work when Sydney wields them? might they actually defend themselves, if someone else attempts to steal or active them.
I was curious if it had already been addressed in the comic or in past comments; if this hasn’t been addressed, maybe we will find out at some point in the future.
I don’t think it would do anything. It’s likely that as well as being tethered to her physically, the orbs also have a psychic link with her that’s needed to make them into anything other than be floaty glass balls. We know it’s present in some capacity from the fact that she can direct their flight patterns with her will alone and she showed during her initial demonstration of them that she could hold the orbs without immediately activating them.
No, other than as detailed in the previous reply. And it really should be a top priority at this stage. If they can be used by others it is both useful (allowing an ally to gain a power) and incredibly dangerous (the same goes for an enemy). Unless they do have defence mechanisms.
Of course, worst case scenario, Halo can yoink them out of the way of grasping paws.
My bet would be that they can’t be used by others. They seem to have safety features built in and the risks are greater than the benefits.
I’m impatiently waiting for Dabbler to try holding 4 at once.
Maybe: “Flight / Truesight / Shield / Lighthook”…?
Err, is it established yet whether “Shield” blocks any other Orb?
For example, if “Shield” blocks “PPO” within itself, then on the first such experiment Syd’s career will be tragically ended. But how would one test such a potentially suicidal combo safely?
Someone should ask Dabbler if there are any races with seven hands.
In panels 11 to 12 of Comic #90 we almost see the answer to that question. Sadly failed to see if the shield was raised before the tentacle made the throw * or not. The tentacle and the Comm Ball are the safest ones to test on the force field, if Sydney has not already done so. Just try to poke them through and see if they can pass.
For the Comm Ball, I am of course referring to the inner orb that Halo sends out to project her illusionary duplicate. That must somehow have passed through the outer shell of its own orb. If Sydney studies how it does that (by opening up a hole or phasing presumably) then it gives a big clue as to how things might work with the force field.
Also, for the inner orb, she needs to find out if it is blocked by other physical objects. If it can pass through walls it is much more versatile than if it cannot. Likewise if it is physical, rather than some kind of projection itself, then it is possible it can be grabbed by an enemy.
As for testing the PPO vs the shield, first Sydney must find out how small an effect she can safely control. If she can light candles without melting them, then it is safe to test vs the shield. Also she needs to find out if she can project the shield to a remote location. Useful in itself for protecting a hostage, for example. But perfect if she wants to test the PPO on the shield without being too close.
But, even if she cannot, and the PPO has a dangerous minimum power threshold, she can always put on her armour suit, expand the shield to maximum size, get as far away from one wall as she can (unless the shield insists on centring on her), and fire at it through a gap in a blast shield or two big steel blocks.
* Thereby being out of shot below panel 11, with the tentacle having passed through the shield somehow. Perhaps phasing through the shield whilst holding the packing foam. Alternatively a hole may have opened. My suspicion though is that the shield is currently impenetrable to the other orbs effects. Thus allowing the connections, on the skill tree, between the Forb and the other orbs to unlock such capability.
The shield do not centered her while covering the press here
Now I am wondering what happened with the “underground” part of the shield, or in general with the shield intersecting whatever. Get it cutted off? Phasing thru it? Keeps anchored?
We know about gases (air) and could bet that liquids will been “cutted off” and retained (like the sand), but solids are an interrogant.
Would be great if it cut thru, amazing combat weapon :)
The actual beam from the PPO is an unknown at this time however we have seen the shield stop the back blast from the PPO’s use and stop one of Maxima’s more powerful blasts. It is entirely possible that it could stop the beam. She could use the beam and shield in tandem if it doesn’t stop the beam by placing the shield around the enemy and firing the beam into the shield so that the bad guy gets the entire brunt of the blast though. I wonder if she can make holes in her shield, if the shield does block the beam, she could make a small hole for the beam to pass through.
I wonder….. Does her shield stop oxygen movement?
OOooh … Good Question …
The orbs will be out in plain sight (when she will be out being a Hero) and Sydney being shor … (Um …) height challenged. Someone taller than her might try and grab one as it floats around her head.
Rule of Funny demands unauthorized users would recieve an unpleasant electric shock.
(That should be reserved for ‘unauthorized with malice’.)
If a friend or a child touches one… A sound effect? “Boo Whaa Eep!” and can’t be moved or activated.
+1
Why do I see somebody clinging to an orb and whaggling in the air? Or Sydney dragging somebody behind her somehow, not knowing.
She would make a great ride at the inaugural (possibly spelt that horribly, but hopefully people can understand what it is supposed to be) ARCHON open day: kids (and daring adults) pay to “Ride The Halo” (and wonder how many pervs show up hoping to ride Sydney :P)
I haven’t seen this idea on the subject before, but what if each orb reacted differently to repel thieves. The comm-ball maybe blinding the holder, lighthook being a molestorb, flight orb spinning them around/giving them horrible vertigo, shield orb binding them in place, and ppo crispy-frying them.
Another possiblility, one of the unknown orbs is to punish anyone holding an orb in whatever way funny. Unfortunately, that would likely still have a visible effect when attempting to use the orb.
The car thing always get’s me wondering in comic books and other action type cartoons and media. I often wonder if Metropolis has a specialized Superman Insurance for when Sups smashes Metallo or whoever with a parked car.
Damage Control, no wait, that’s Marvel. Seriously though, in RL the goverment would probably do just what Dave is doing here, bring them all under government control and train them properly. This isn’t to say they would be used responsibly. I’m guessing they would be just as hampered as our current police or military forces are. At the very least Supers would need malpractice insurance, like Doctors, and the rates would be sky high.
I think different rules would apply in the real world. I see what Dave is trying to accomplish, but in the end it would fail.
SuperVillain is attacking the city killing many (cause when did criminals ever care about being sued).
Potential Superhero watches and doesn’t do anything. Sure they could stop the villain but it would take some property damage and they don’t want to get sued.
Many people die and Supervillain gets away.
I enjoy the comic, but it misses quite a few things, like potential heroes who wouldn’t want to join an organization that tells you right away “Oh hey! These people you don’t know. You have to respect them, call them by their rank or sir.”
In this real world setup Dave seems to be trying to create, I think a lot more people would be dead because someone would sue the first hero who broke anything and the rest would see this and go “Ummm…yeah, no, not going to happen to me.”
It reminds me of the Avengers. When the politician at the end (on the news) talks about making the heroes pay for the damage. Nevermind the damage that would have happened if they stood back and just let the aliens take over.
And suing criminals. Yeah. That pays out so well. :p
Well, I can’t address every eventuality in one page. What Max is doing here is tempering Sydney’s enthusiasm for recreating her favorite superhero battles the first time she sees action. She mentions getting sued by someone for destroying their car, but really the team does have legal defense against certain levels of collateral damage, but for right now it’s better to train Sydney to err on the side of caution and let more experienced team members decide if a particular bad guy needs a knock on the head with a tanker full of liquid nitrogen or something.
+1
One would figure they have the legal defense setup. I’m just thinking such things as being sued for collateral damage in a world with supers wouldn’t happen to the heroes, because without them, the villains would just get away with a lot more.
Special Insurance for Superman for instance, would I would think, be covered just like normal insurance, when you get your car ruined by someone else, like in a hit and run.
You never saw Hancock the movie then? He saves a whale (by throwing it back out into deep water) and gets into trouble by GreenPeace (or their openly piratical offshoot: Sea Shepard, can’t remember which) because he happened to also sink a boat that got in the way (and because he throw the whale by it’s tail) or when he stopped the runaway train, some stupid beep-hole commented on how she could smell the alcohol on his breath
To be fair, he stopped the train by causing it to derail and get all crushed- when he could have just pushed the car the train was headed for off the tracks.
Hmmm, thought it was a runaway train, only saw it once
Most of the counterarguments aren’t all that relevant anyway. Maxima and Sydney both have decent ranged attacks and cars are too bulky to make good swing weapons. For that you’re better off going with another comic book standard, the light pole.
Or six hellagrams.
Stop saying “Hella!”
Hella no! :P
Uh oh. I detect the possibility of a hella lot of puns.
If we use it enough, hella could become the SI prefix for 10^27.
For the record, Earth is 5.97219 hellagrams (acording to google).
‘Thrillieved’
I think I have a new favourite word!
Also you get the sense that Sydney is chewing over the word ‘lighthook’, trying to get it to feel right.
She’s just not happy about not being allowed to use ‘Molestorb’, and pretty much anything else is a dirty word to her, ‘Lighthook’ is just the one that leaves the least amount of bitter aftertaste in her mouth (and concidering the heat of the foods she tends to put in her mouth, has to be pretty bitter to register)
The Lighthook. Favored weapon of all pirate Jedi and Sith.
Heh, another detail I did not spot on first read through.
Isn’t Shulke a lawyer? So, wouldn’t that mean she is also a Super Lawyer*? And she does go after Supervillains… oh, you mean using their Lawyer side more than their Sue-per side
*fairly sure a lot of people (in and out of the comics) would consider her very super, swell even ;)
Yeah. And some of her most interesting stuff came from that. My favorite was when she represented Speedball (I think that was his name) during Civil War.
Yeah, I thought the lawyering bits in the latest She-Hulk were my favorite bits, but it seemed that every issue had to have a fight in it still.
I’m looking forward to a SheHulk movie.
Hopefully a comedy with some action bits.
Of course, a 7 foot tall swimsuit model/bodybuilder would require
CGI that hasn’t been developed yet.
I think the trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy got the green skin right.
They’ve already done 7 foot tall blue babes with tails, so the She-Hulk would be easy. BTW, I like She-Hulk, lots. Girl got spunk.
I meant musclely without being too musclely AND stacked but not too stacked AND out of the Uncanny Valley would be very difficult.
This isn’t the correct forum, but I’d also like to see a reimagining of
“The Incredible Shrinking Man” where {****lost carrier***}, but it would have to be
direct to video.
What about using Chyna? And who cares if the actress is or is not ‘natural’, jealous cows will still claim that she had surgery
She has…well…yeah.
Google Heidi Vuorella, if they could CGI her taller, I think she would be a great fit.
Denise Masino would be an excellent She-Hulk… if she wasn’t only 5’2″.
Shoot her against green screen (then recolorize her) around 3/4 sized props.
At 5’2″, she could play the role of Bruce Banner’s cousin, BEFORE she was “Hulk-ed up” by that transfusion from her cousin.
Starts powering up Tentecletron to send after Guesticus
She Hulk works for a law firm that as often as not, represents some of the super villians, as well as the superheros.
Maby, if she went into sueing them for wrongful damages and taking them for their money it might just work.
Let’s not forget that in “The Incredibles”, there was “Gazerbeam”, whose civilian identity was a lawyer. In fact he was lobbying for the civil rights of supers.
There’s also Matthew Murdock aka Daredevil, who actually uses his super powers to help him with his lawyering.
Shame he was not a better lawyer. That way he could have furthered the cause of justice, rather than perverting it with vigilantism.
to be fair, how many judges will take “I just heard His heart rate increase by 30 beats per minute” as proof.
Possibly those who would accept polygraph evidence?
which in many states can only be given with the suspect’s consent and are problematic in being used as evidence.
Polygraphs can be skewed my several factors some of which you can control. Plus it mostly measures what you BELIEVE to be true rather than the absolute truth.
Yeah, I gotta admit that the She-Hulk is my favorite super. I’m a bit of an amazon-chaser.
This is a terrific update! It’s a pretty good critique of stuff we commonly see in comic books.
Also, Maxima’s nerd cred is showing.
Why am I not suprised that Sydney knows how much the earth weighs?
also, in true nerd fashion, she’s bad with names, but has eiditic recall of every random factoid ever
So true.
I wonder if she could use lighthook as a grapling hook?
Folks have suggested that, and possibly, yes. Not that she would need it if she was able to use the Fly Ball. But if she was already committed to a different pair of orbs, including the Light Hook, then it would be a handy way to do some swashbuckling.
Rather than a grappling hook, I’d be trying out some kind of harness that attaches to an orb and using Sydney’s innate TK ability with the orbs to fly and maneuver. So far we know the orbs can apply force to Sydney (Math vs Sydney), are really strong (stopping Max) and given the speeds she’s moved (Jedi in the hizzouse/Nitrogen) them can move relatively quickly so I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. That should be plenty for localized movement while still leaving her hands free for two other orbs (say, light hook and shield).
Actually, if there were some way to manage it, the non-flying/teleporting members of the team might have a similar harness for Sydney to provide them movement in near proximity. It would also be great for escorting a VIP, or bringing along Leon because he needs to go onsite to access an isolated computer system, or even bringing along an embedded journalist to make Arianna happy.
Momentarily ignoring the gravitic effects, from a strictly flight-based functionality, the flight orb is redundant – any one of the orbs would allow her to fly, as long as she could continue holding on to it (of course, she’d probably hate to depend on her upper-body strength to support her during that flight…
Still, in a pinch, there’s no reason she can’t use the shield or lighthook orb to carry her around
All of this is asuming the orbs are capable of lifting her in the first place.
Concidering that there is an orb specificly for flight, they probably are not.
You have to remember that the orbs are capable of moving in relation to her with great power. There is no indication that they are also capable of pulling her along. If they could, there’d be no reason for a flight orb
I have to disagree with you on that point – Math successfully planted her on her face by putting one of her legs in the path of an orb, and during her level-up scene, she was literally hanging from the orb like an angry sloth on a tree branch
So she could lock a few orbs in place and use them as stepladders.
That’s a pritty big step away from actual flying
For the orb to fly with TK it just needs to provide force independent of her body. We’ve seen that happen, but it could be that she has to direct them relative to herself which would either result in tricky mental gymnastics to make it work, or wouldn’t work at all. Even supposing that she can’t move herself, being able to stop suspended in the air is a huge benefit as she can swap out the Forb for another without the need to land. It wouldn’t be the first time that one ability has additional uses, and Dave has already said that applying supernatural abilities with outside the box thinking (power stunts) is going to be one of Sydney’s specialties. Even if she can use TK to carry herself around with any of the orbs, I don’t think the Forb would be redundant considering it provides (likely) much faster movement, minor shielding abilities, and gets rid of those pesky g-force things when accelerating or turning.
jee and Quanqued make some good points supporting the use. Which I think are fair for improvised, or situational use. However they would be both a lot more dangerous than one might think and of strictly limited duration. Grabbing hold of a ball by one hand and suspending your full weight from it, in the middle of a fire-fight, invokes more than one scenario for immediate and bloody death.
Likewise people are a lot less capable of holding their own weight up by their own hands for sustained periods than TV and movies would have us believe. Sydney may have reasonable arm strength from being a swimmer, but unless she has also trained as a mountaineer, I think improvised use would be best reserved for emergencies where she has no other choice. Mythbusters confirmed this (probably in one of their movie Myth episodes).
One aspect which would make routine use inconvenient, if not downright dangerous is that they are not designed to work that way. Consider that their default behaviour is to spin around Halo’s head, and you see my point. At the very least Sydney would have to be constantly concentrating on overcoming that standard behaviour (especially if not in her hand, but being used to harness a VIP). And we know that she has… issues… in that area.
Ha! Yes, I can just picture the fun when they starting spinning for a level-up. That would be most unfortunate. Frankly, that happening during any sort of situation where Sydney’s relying on her powers could result in unanticipated complications.
By the way, for those of us outside USA, “sextillion” here means 10 raised to 21 (10e21).
IE 6.500.000.000.000.000.000.000 tons
An european (and Latinamerican) “sextillion” is 10 raised to 36 (10e36)
Also “tons” (USA) means “short ton” (2.000 pounds, 907 kg).
The equivalences are:
6.5 x 10e21 short tons (Syd number)
5.8 x 10e21 long tons
13 x 10e24 pounds
5.9 x 10e24 kgs
Ok, it seems I can’t help it :)
That Syd said is the mass of the Earth, the whole thing, not just “rocks”, which there are only in the “thin” (half hundredth) upper crust.
Molten rocks still count?
You can count it, yes, it is mostly a matter of composition. Along time heavier elements tended to go deeper so the proportion varied from surface to center.
It is kinda gradual so you could argue how much different needs to be to say it’s not “our” rock anymore.
Earth is about 6500 km on radius. The first 30km (average), the crust, is what we all can call “rock”. You also can count in the upper zone of the next part, the lithosphere, with is mostly solid and have similar composition, and go to aprox 200 km deep.
The next part, the asthenosphere, is both plastic and far richer in metals and metaloids than the others. It is a good point to place the limit :)
The inner 3500km are metals, mostly iron, with the last third solid.
Don’t forget the hollow bit with all those dinosaurs in it.
+1
Hahaha :)
Actually the core is more metal than rocks.
Extremely hot, but compressed so much it’s still solid
True, but at sufficient temperature and density, almost all (basically everything except hydrogen & helium) matter becomes metallic, including the mineral substrates we call “rocks” – so is it really fair to discount the metals from that category?
Doesn’t everyone know the mass of the Earth offhand?
That reminds me of a test data generator for a database I use at work. If you ask it to make fake businesses, it fills their mission statements with buzzwords. The end result is gramatically correct, but harmful to anyone in posession of a brain. “We use crowdsourced IPv6 to leverage cloud networking…”
Any chance of a link? :)
I’ve been working on my business plan for the past month, and feeling pretty burned out.
It’s not web based; it’s part of the database software. I’ll get a bunch of samples when I go to work on Monday.
I generated 20 lines with the format “I am a job title for company name: mission statement
I am a Strategic Hygienist for Metagy LLC.: Resellers of InterNet broad-band application development content for the home.
I am a Associate Director for PicoDyne.com: On-line distributors of virtual multi-media devices and pharmaceuticals for the home.
I am a Assistant Director for KwalCalc Associates: Resellers of open-source Enterprise data warehouse consulting for the home.
I am a Associate Accounts Rep. for Accumo Associates: Providers of high-performance quantum database connectivity for the Fortune 50.
I am a Strategic Sales Rep. for XenaWare Corp.: Resellers of high-touch ISO 9003-ready voice-enabled media for the home.
I am a Global WebMaster for MetaData Gmbh.: Leaders in breakthrough object-oriented graphical pharmaceuticals for discriminating investors.
I am a Assistant Director for BioTech Associates: Resellers of just-in-time quantum voice-enabled consulting for the Fortune 5000.
I am a Associate Marketing Manager for Macrogy Partners: Leaders in high-tech broad-band devices and media for the InterNet.
I am a Senior Systems Engineer for TeleSys Corp.: Developers of high-touch ISO 9003-ready application development content for the Fortune 5.
I am a Laboratory Accountant for Telemo Associates: Leaders in high-touch optical application development connectivity for discriminating investors.
I am a Strategic Director for InterNet Inc.: On-line distributors of open nano-cold-fusion powered media for the Fortune 50.
I am a Associate Support Engineer for AccuTel Partners: Providers of scalable optical forecasting content for the Fortune 500.
I am a Strategic Systems Engineer for MicroTel LLC.: On-line distributors of scalable hyper-instrumentation pharmaceuticals for the desktop.
I am a Executive Product Specialist for CyberSystems Group Ltd.: On-line distributors of breakthrough satellite-based voice-enabled services for the enterprise.
I am a Associate Support Engineer for DynaMatix.com: Resellers of breakthrough optical instrumentation services for the Entertainment industry.
I am a Strategic Developer for OctoComp.com: Leaders in cutting-edge financial InterNet technologies for discriminating investors.
I am a Strategic Research Asst. for IntraMatix Gmbh.: Resellers of just-in-time Linux-based forecasting connectivity for the Fortune 500.
I am a Executive WebMaster for XenaLateral.com: Providers of cross-platform ISO 9003-ready application development consulting for the home.
I am a Global Product Specialist for TeleSonics.com: Developers of cutting-edge Y3K-certified instrumentation pharmaceuticals for the Fortune 5000.
I am a Global Administrator for InterSoft Partners: Providers of high-performance digital InterNet media for the Health Care community.
DAVE! In previous page I said Hancock is best superhero movie I’ve seen. This time I say this: your comic is better!
Thanks! I enjoyed most of Hancock but I thought it kind of fell apart at the end. Still, a good concept.
Actually Hancock is obviously based on a comic, I almost sure is named “The bitch”, that I read before the movie. I did not see it credited anywhere though. Sadly I could not found it right now.
It is about a prostitute single mother who gain superpowers and is invited to join the local legion of supers, a bunch of stereotyped mind twisted versión of the classics (Superman, Batman, Wonder woman, et cetera). The comic is pretty irreverent and politically INcorrect. She is even worst that Hancock, there’s some gore and a bit of no so explicit sex.
All the weird scenes in the movie are version of similar ones in the comic. Except for the final part, the romance and good boy stuff, that in the comic is totally different and as depressed as the main plot deserves.
I have seen the movie. I havn’t read the book. But even so my comment is “possibly, possibly not”. The basic premiss that overlaps is that you can have a hero who is not as heroic and shiny as they are normally shown. Once you do that and start looking for ways to illustrate it you can likely come up with very similar bad habits, which in turn can lead to common scenes. Even the examples about super lawyers and construction firms being brought up here show that such ideas come around more than once. So a strong case can be made for independent development even without having seen both.
Or there may have been a deliberate homage, perhaps acknowledged in ‘the making of’. But there have been numerous examples of parallel development of ideas in all sorts of fields, including ones that it is easy to prove such as by means of papers being submitted for peer review in science. And many instances of papers being published in an obscure journal or foreign language, where it would be unlikely the researcher could have found them even if being diligent. I came across one just yesterday. But there are so many like it, it is pointless linking.
In conclusion, just because there may be similarities does not automatically mean there was plagiarism. Of course, if it was ripped off, then that is another matter, and I hope they get the book thrown at them. Or the comic… or a really heavy phone directory. Maybe a car.
I can bet that if you read it you would have no doubt :)
Your judgement can be sound, I will grant you that. But even if they were almost identical, you would still find that one had actually been written by a million monkeys. Or one of seven billion humans. I get the two mixed up. All you primates look the same to me.
The same way the idea for “Jurassic Park” (which was written/published in ’81) was first seen in the 1st Prog of 2000AD which came out in ’77 (Judge Dredd didn’t debut until Prog 2)
By the way, I was just giving my opinion that it was based on. I did not say that there was something illegal or wrong, I could not possible know it.
It’s called “The Pro”. That’s why you couldn’t find it. :)
OMG! You are rigth, thank you very much :)
I had that tingle :)
Eh, given the synopsis on the wikipedia link, I’d say that there’s no evidence that Hancock was based off of “The Pro.” The only link between them that I’m seeing is the idea of a non-standard super hero, an idea that’s been done time and time again over the years.
Granted, the wiki synopsis could just not be fleshed out enough to allow for parallels to be drawn but I find it unlikely.
For some reason, “lighthook” brings to mind the whipfist from Prototype, and a scene of Sydney going all “Airjack-*” on tech based villains. Or mythologically themed ones – “Airjack-Dragon” FTW!
Airjack Ha! Sounds like going a variation of airguitar, if you get my meaning.
Ah the whipfist. 360 degree slo-mo civilian bifurcation. That game was fun.
For sake of curiosity I read some reviews. Most of those say the same. But I totally liked how Embrey is big damn hero at the end and saves Hancock’s life.
Regarding the graphicness of injuries: if it’s ‘justified’ by the storyline/page, then sure, but this page was just a “this is what could happen if you do that, so don’t” bit of warning, so blurring it showed the seriousness without showing the gore
The Molestorb! Get your fetish themed superhero toy!
I can already see Arianna thinking of merchandizing it that way. (As well as Dabbler, Harem, Maths and some others)
There are probably already some fetish sites dedicated to Sydney already in that world.
On a side note, what merchandize based on this site are you selling?
P.S. I wonder if the insurance companies are going to start selling Super Insurance?
Rule 34: “If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.”
Rule 34b: “If it doesn’t exist, the Japanese have it.”
I wonder if Arianna has learned what hentai is yet. :-)
Technically most of the mini-comics are not canon. Personally though, unless it is a clearly silly ‘what if’ that makes no sense contextually, I view them all as being what happened. So to my mind, the girls did all get around a PC and show her. And Harem then needed some quality alone time in her room.
All 5 of harem, at once.
It was right there in the main comic: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/490
No, that’s what is referred to as the ‘mini-comic’, at least for this site
I think he was referring to the “What’s Hentai?” line, not the ‘sketch’ at the bottom
The last we saw in canon is Sydney promising to send some links. So the possible options are:
1) Arianna is still unaware as Sydney has not had access to a PC yet.
2) The links were sent off-screen, when Sydney had a chance. Therefore Arianna is now clued up.
3) As 2) above, plus the scene when she received them played out as in the mini-sketch.
Any of these are possible, without violating canon. I just prefer to go with 3) in my own mind.
Dabbler’s “I think I know those guys!” cracks me up.
There’s no real merchiandize yet.
Most of us are still hoping DaveB sets something up so we can throw money at him that way (I can’t do the patreon thing for example)
The only super laywer I know off in super hero stuf is Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight
I believe Matt Murdock was a pretty heavy hitting lawyer as his day job.
There is also Harvey Birdman. Though he isn’t actually a superHERO, more a lawyer who just happens to have superpowers.
And I believe She-Hulk is a lawyer as well.
Birdman used to be a super hero. He was solar powered, could fire energy beams, and create energy shields, as well as fly.
I know. Harvey Birdman is a parody of that character.
Ah, I remember watching Birdman. Was one of my favorites of the old Hanna Barbera superhero shows- never liked Space Ghost quite as much.
Also remember the little toonami segments with Avenger and the “Get me a coffee” button?
Also Jennifer Walters a.k.a. She- Hulk
Dent wasn’t a super hero, he wasn’t even a supervillain, don’t recall him ever having gained any actual powers, just like how Joker and Penguin aren’t technically ‘Super’ villains, just villainous genetic freaks
I think in some continuities Joker gained immunity to most poisons- like he was immune to the nerve-gas that Joker Gas was.
The whole “Throwing them through the building” always seemed funny to me. It’s cool to look at, but if they’re so indestructible, it does nothing to the person being thrown.
It would just up my insurance and motivate me to move to Smallville…
I always wondered why for instance the Terminators threw people around rather than say break their necks or ripped them in half. Seems stupid and illogical. Even a bitch-slap by a metal hand could kill but NO toss the dangerous human around so he has time to fight back.
The only reason that comes to mind is freeing the “hands” so as to deal with some alternate threat. In the first “vigilante” movie, the genre savvy police officers actually lampshade the actions by Nick Nolte’s character.
Police Sergeant: “Muggers go for grocery shoppers.”
Cop: “Why?”
Sergeant: “Because shoppers have money, and their HANDS ARE FULL.”
+1
The answer is because it looks good. If you watch the ‘making of’ for instance, you get to find that the reason why the terminators hit each other over the head with sinks and the like is because they are everyday objects that we, the audience, know are tough. So it carries the emotion of ‘ooh, that must have smarted’.
Despite doing little more than knocking sunglasses off. And clearly not being of use in disabling or destroying a Terminator. Using a metal spike as a spear, fine, that is proper terminator logic. Especially if you do not want to risk getting a shock from the other terminator’s power core by sticking your own bits into them.
By the way, that is one valid reason for throwing cars. If your opponent has some effect which is harmful to you. Carrying cryptonite, being spiky, or on fire or whatever. Plus it reduces the risks of him hitting you back physically. Not all super-strong heroes are also invulnerable. Even though they seem to crop up together all too often.
One other option that springs to mind is if the hero cannot fly and needs to hit something airborne. Or simply does not have time to reach an enemy before they do something nasty to hostages. Of course, as Dave points out, those all have serious risk of collateral damage. But, in some circumstances, you have to accept an accidental risk versus certain failure otherwise.
Why do I think the last part of that was inspired by Mr Incredible’s take out of Syndrome?
It is harder to dodge a car than to dodge a fist. Swinging around large heavy objects really helps you bring down martial artist types or guys with danger sense.
Good point. Although it does not make their danger sense any less effective, it just makes it harder for them to dodge out of the way in time. With a better grade of precognition they could just stroll out of the way, before you even noticed they were in the area.
With the force-field orb…. Sydney can resize it at will, apparently. Does Sydney have to be inside of it, or can she project it elsewhere and be outside of it? If so, she could throw it around a bad guy and reduce it to 1mm size. Whatever comes out of there when she releases it, it won’t much resemble a bad guy any more. This is done in John Varley’s THUNDER AND LIGHTNING series.
She’d also have to be careful not to squish herself if she was inside a force field and she shrank it too small. Maybe the orb is intelligent enough to stop, say, 1mm away from her skin. Hope there’s some air exchange through it.
the “weapon” demonstration to the press showed that it’s not controlled mentally the ball has runes that change it’s size (and possibly how the shield behaves) on it. as for crushing a villain she’s meant to be a cop not an executioner.
+1
By the way, someone tried to match the orbs holograms in panel three here, and final panel here against the skill tree?
Remote force field projection could be one of the level ups.
It didn’t crush, it dissociated the elements. As I recall, it resulted in “instant rat…just add water”.
A great line…. I really liked it.
She could also, instead of slamming things into the Earth, just throw them out into space at escape velocity, or, if it’s in line of sight, into the Moon or Sun. Given some interesting angling on the toss to overcome orbital velocity stuff. At escape velocity, the Sun would take a good while, giving the miscreat some time to think on things.
I don’t think that the force to lift a car is strong enough to throw something into orbit.
…. Unless that something is extremely small.
Raw strenght is not the same as speed.
You’d need to be able to swing the tentacle EXTREMELY fast in order to get the wanted effect.
EXTREMELY fast here means 11 kilometers per second.
It’s virtually impossible to accelerate anything with a tentacle in the space of a few meters (or hell, even a kilometer if the tentacle were to somehow get that lenght)
If you also take the atmosphere into account (which you should, because this planet HAS an atmosphere), than it gets even more impossible, because air drag will slow whatever it is you throw back down to terminal velocity (for a human that’s roughly 200km/hour)
It’s not easy to calculate what initial velocity a human would need to break orbit after being thrown, but estimating a practical height of the athmosphere of 120km, an initial velocity of 30km/second should do it. (Very estimate here)
Now, a body travelling at the speed of 30km/s would cause a sonic boom that would definitely shatter glass for a great radius around the path, and the friction-heat would cause it, while it lasted, to leave a trail of plasma in its wake, and said plasma would quite likely expand explosively.
In short, trying to throw someone up into orbit would likely be the equivalent of setting off a low-yield airbursting nuke, and seeding the upper athmosphere with a little bit of ash from the body (unless it was super-resilient in some way). That is commonly known as a bad idea, but with comic-book physics it can work.
It is impossible to throw something into orbit even ignoring air resistance. If the object is not self-propelled, the initial trajectory of the object is going to be part of the orbit. If you extrapolate the initial trajectory backwards you’ll see, of course, that it intersects the ground unless you’re throwing exactly horizontally (and even then, that means the orbit is going to get a couple of feet from the ground on every loop, in which case the air resistance or just hitting something in the way will take care of it.)
So just throw a series of cars at it, to push it further out. There can’t be any harm with that technique, now could there…
As early as Newton was proposed to launch it horizontaly from a high mountain :)
Of course it always will return to the mountain height but you can force the orbit as much eliptic (below escape speed) as you want and at least let it last more :) The outcome will be the same though.
So you can’t throw something into a stable orbit, true, you need at least a “apogee kick”, but you do can throw it UP to orbit.
Also you do can throw something OUT of Earth, as had been saying. To the Moon for example.
Whee! I am glad to see that my idea of how to get payloads into orbit cheaply, and in an environmentally friendly way, has not yet been picked up by someone else. Or at least they have not also updated that page on Wikipedia. I still have time to get myself credited as the originator of the idea.
*wags tail*
Now back to more important matters…
You are so mean :)
Unless she built up momentum first by flying upwards to the speed she needs, and then adding the force of the throw. May increase the speed she throws the person, oh, wait, I mean object.
Just remember it takes 8 minutes for the light of the sun to reach Earth. Once an object is thrown into space, make sure it is in the right direction and nothing like Venus is in the way.
If the person/ object is going off course, see if you can nudge it back on track with the energy blasts.
As much as we would like to throw nuclear waste into the sun, there’s a big problem.
(Over and above all the little problems.)
Earth is on the rim of the Sun’s gravity well.
Sure, there are planets even further from the sun, but to send stuff into the sun
Would take 3 times the velocity of sending it to interstellar space.
(TheMoreYouKnowdotGif)
but if you throw something blindly into deep space to paraphrase a line from ME2
“Once you throw this can of s#!t, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you throw this, you’re ruining someone’s day, somewhere and sometime!”
Unlikely. There is something called “probabilities” playing there.
Yea, but Lady Luck has a dark sense of humour. She will make sure that it goes wrong… in the worst possible way… at the worst possible moment.
See what happened when Super Dino tossed that asteroid into orbit around the sun? You can guarantee that Clark Rex* was saying to him “that is bound to get sling-shotted round and hit us…”
* And I know what you are thinking! “We have never seen them both in the same room at the same time now have we? Maybe there was more to it than the glasses disguising him.”
How about a Voyager or other space-probe hitting some spacer’s windshield? I think they’d be kinda pissed that out junk ruined their ship.
“Dangit! That’s the third ‘First Contact’ probe this week! How do we keep running into those thing?”
If flying saucers are in the area, you really need to stop dropping your soap when showering.
The point is you can launch it toward something where you can control what it will most likely hit, or you can basically put on a blindfold and throw it in a random direction and hope an alien race doesn’t pop up in a couple millennium, towing what amounts to a garbage barge and mad as hell because it smashed into a colony ship.
On the rim of a gravity well or not does not matter.
In order to get something to fall into the sun, you need to cancel out the orbital velocity (the speed at which the earth moves around the sun)
Earth’s orbital velocity is roughly 30km/second
So we need a spacecraft that can accelerate our debris up to 30km/second, AFTER it is in orbit
It already costs 11km/second to get into orbit
So we need a total accelration of rhoughly 41km/second to get something into the sun.
From earth orbit, you need about 41km/second acceleration to escape the solar system.
That’s not including the 11km/second you need to get into orbit.
So no, it’s cheaper to make something fall into the sun than to make something escape it.
Both are to expencive to be practical with large amounts of waste though
To hit the sun isn’t all that hard… after escaping earths gravity-well, you don’t have to deccellerate the full speed of earths orbital velocity, it would be enough just to deccellerate enough for the objects orbital velocity to fall below the velocity for a stable orbit around the sun, and then letting the gravity-well of the sun do the rest of the accellerating, effectively free-falling into the sun. One would have to beware of slingshot effects though.
Actually in your scenario you’d simply get a eliptical orbit, but the eclips would still be stable
I’ve always been curious why people think that deposing of relatively rare elements in a place where we could never extract them again if we needed or wanted to is a good idea.
Because, let’s face it, as dangerous as poorly stored nuclear waste can be, we simply have no idea whether the stuff will ever be useful to us in the future.
Nuclear fuel reprocessing is an area that we are getting more efficient in, so you make a good point. However I would feel happier dumping the stuff in the sun (which generates more than enough of it’s own, so should not cause any more harm), than storing it in inadequate leaky containers in proximity to habitation, cultivation or fishing (ie, most places on Earth). Which we have more than enough evidence is common practice nowadays. Let alone what might happen to each and every one of those during the next 10,000 years of human civilisation.*
* The usual terms and conditions apply as to the likelihood of humans surviving even that long. Survivability odds can go up as well as down. Past performance is no guarantee of future success. Your investment in the human race can be at risk from a variety of catastrophes, both man-made and external. Please dispose of your deadly waste in a responsible manner.
I read that the nuclear waste storage site tried to make
warnings that would span the millennia.
A picture of 55 gallon drums with a skeleton next to them.
Not sure if they were ever satisfied with the result,
then the site was nimbied.
That would be a little too uncontrolled and lethal for what is essentially a police officer. If they can fly, they get away. If they can’t fly, they are killed and/or made almost impossible to retrieve.
Throwing a super into the air does make sense in a lot of situations. (Unless they have flight powers.)
Into orbit is probably just overkill considering the level of power required.
That is one way to safely put the bad guy in an safe shooting range for energy weapons. Max, Sydney etc then could freely open fire from the ground. Even if they can fly then evading the shots and trying to escape could get them out of the populated area.
WHAT? … WHAT?
Comic Books Aren’t Based On Reality???
I feel so deceived!!!
Depends on who you ask.
There are poeple who see modern physics as “optional”.
modern physics?
That sounds like they didn’t exist until recently
It didn’t. Bear in mind that it is a term that we use to describe something. Something that we know we do not fully understand yet.
Even Newton was an alchemist, until he invented the field. Someday we will discover that the physics we know today is actually mis-understood at a fundamental level, and will then have a better understanding of it. Perhaps the people of that era will decide to re-name the new field to distinguish it from the quacks who went before.
Of course, in their day the alchemists were the knowledgeable men that society looked to to provide answers on the unknown (in parallel to consulting priests and the like). Every forward-looking court had it’s court alchemist to advise it. Much like the politicians of today have eminent scientists to advise them.
Every generation thinks that their wise men have got it right, and that all that can be done is to refine what they currently know. Until a fundamental discovery is made that changes everything…
Or scientists that are good at argumenting for their world-view being the correct one anyway. Or that says what the politicians wants to hear…
+1
He he. Sydney got some good punchlines there.
Goes with all the punching she has been doing before now. ;)
:-D Very true.
Has she punched anyone since her ‘reprogramming the brain’ moment?
She did ‘punch’ Math with her orb, which may have been after that scene. Not to mention the various other incidents of (provoked) random violence in the space of just one day. Lifting someone up by his tongue and slamming him into the ground. Two instances of punching so fast that a teleporter could not evade the blows. Attempting to pummel an extra-planetary ambassador with a chair. And successfully doinking her on the head with the orb.
Not to mention challenging the greatest martial artist in the organisation to a fight. Which definitely was after that incident, albeit not actually having a punch thrown. Is it any wonder that she has everyone thinking the worst*?
* See Dabbler’s hand raised protectively, in the final frame. “Not in the face!”
Punching Math in the face was previous to the brain reset. Also the reset was just about “reaction to surprise”.
that’s not Dabbler, it’s Harem… Thing #1 to be precise.
*nods*
On the plus side you get to see my brain pigeon-holing system in action. ‘And in this box we have females who have been attacked by Sydney.’
Way things are going, you might need a bigger box.
no just some toys for the girls to enjoy tossed in, they like the tight intimate atmosphere
Wasn’t all of that before her “reprogramming the brain”?
prefer the molestoorb to be honest.
It is a funnier name, but not a politically correct name, nor (much more importantly) a name that is marketable to children between the ages of 6 and 12, at least those who’s parents are paying attention to such things.
All 5 of them?
Do people like that still exist?
Poor kid
What? Kids being molested/abused because (hopefully) their parents weren’t paying attention (hopefully only in the sense that the parents weren’t knowing about it, or worse, partaking in it)? All. The. Time!
That is something completly different than what is discussed here. No need to bring that up
This should have been the plot that “Hancock” was. And yes, I had to look it up on IMDB, it was that bad.
The only bad part of Hancock, imo, was that forced romance crap at the end
Since today’s topic is realism, I have a pet peeve I would like to air. (He gets so lonely cooped up in that crate all day). Spiderman makes a great comic to draw for an artist since he can be shown in any pose on any surface. However, they usually fail to grasp the GRAVITY of the situation. Even putting him in the small-but-wiry class, he still has to weigh about 150 pounds (68 Kilos). If he tried to hang onto a wall made of standard half inch drywall, the force would just pull big chunks off onto his hands. Plus, he is always seen hanging from a ceiling or light fixture. Drop ceiling type panels are little more than loosely compressed cardboard. You couldn’t support a hanging plant let alone a hanging human.
Yea, you’d need some extremely impressive upper body strenght to be able to causually hang from your arms, and than you’d still get tired pritty fast
O.B. Juan’s point is the key one. The weakness of the structures he is attached to. But strength is not a problem for spider man. He can hold 10 tones above his head. He may look weedy but he is actually super-strong. Just not as strong as most of his opponents.
I think one of the things that can be used to justify Spidey holding onto ceilings is that some parts are more stable than others. If we used suction cups to pull ourselves across a ceiling, sooner or later we will hit that bit where they paint has condensation forming above it, and will peel away at a touch. But Spidey can sense the dangerous bits, without even needing to think about it actively.
Plus spiders can dangle from a thread, and float through the air. It may not be a listed power, but it is entirely reasonable that his unlisted powers include the ability to lighten himself. Some spiders are light enough (and have specialised ‘feet’) to be able to walk across the surface of the water.
“O.B. Juan’s point is the key one. The weakness of the structures he is attached to. But strength is not a problem for spider man. He can hold 10 tones above his head. He may look weedy but he is actually super-strong. Just not as strong as most of his opponents.”
Unless his bones are also extremely reinforced, no he can’t
The human femur (bone in upper leg) has a compressive strenght of about 2090kg.
2 femurs, so the upper legs will shatter if they have to hold up a weight of over 5000kg
Femur is the only bone I could find this info about, so that’s not counting the weaker bones in the arms, or the cartilage in the spine, which would definitly give out under such stress, resulting in serious spinal injury even if the rest of his bones can hold out.
Than there’s also the fact that you probably can’t get enough grip on the ground in order to lift it.
Unless you are exactly under the center of gravity of whatever such extremely heavy object you are lifting, you will simply fall over.
And than finally, if he CAN survive all that:
Will the ground handle the extremely increased pressure of all that weight on 2 feet, or will he just sink through the floor?
I would submit that the comic-book physics concept of Contact TK works in both directions: Spidey places his hands (well, gloves really) or webs on an object, which gains the molecular stability to be lifted from an awkward angle, even from a weak point in its structure. Likewise, his contact with the ground/wall/ceiling strengthens that surface to support the added weight and angled forces…
That’s not how his powers work
Wait until the NEXT retcon by Marvel.
This is the point where a writer introduces “tactile telekinesis”, or some such technobable, to wash their hands of the whole “real physics that makes cool powers impossible” deal.
additionally, he MUST have a strengthened skeletal system because he’s been shown multiple times lifting cars and pianos and large chunks of buildings, etc
The point I was responding to was regarding him being able to hold his own weight. Which he clearly has more than enough strength to do. As for the 10 ton bit, that is just canon. Figuring out how he can do it is another matter.
But we already know that he has super-human capabilities, so saying that he can’t do it because a human can’t is not really a strong argument. If physics requires that his bones be stronger than human to do it, then clearly his power is doing that, by one means or another, or else he could not do what he does.
It depends on how tough the floor is. When he is doing such feats, he is usually standing on concrete or similar. Plus you failed to take into consideration my final paragraph. If part of his power (albeit unlisted and certainly not cannon) is that he can reduce his weight to allow him to behave like a spider, then perhaps the same mechanism allows him to offset the weight of the load he is carrying?
And, as I pointed out, it is not like he is the strongest super out there. Everything you said applies even further to all the much more powerful villains he faces. Let alone the Hulk or Superman. Super powers break biological limitations. Plus, even if they do not break physics laws, then they are finding some sneaky way to get around them.
Yea, my favorite super power to ruin is flight.
The only reason Sydney is capable of flying really fast is because she has a seperate force field.
Impacts with bird can smash through a windshield of a plane, imagine what it can do to a human’s face.
And if you can go really fast, there are 2 ways you can deal with that.
Either you have normal human reflexes. In which case you can fly fine up high in the air, but if you tryd the same thing in a city you’d smash into a building before realizing you past the crime scene.
If you have super human reflexes, you can fly around in a city at extreme speeds, but your normal life would seem EXTREMELY slow.
If you can run 3 laps around Paris in 2 minutes, imagine how long you’d have to wait for an egg to boil
“imagine what it can do to a human’s face.”
=>
Or to hold a normal conversation. Just imagine how many simultaneous conversations someone with super-speed or super-intelligence would have to hold in order to keep themselves from getting bored? If only there was some medium by which they could say a point, perhaps writing it in text form, and then waiting until … eventually… somebody noticed it. Do that in enough different places and they could converse with the collective psyche of society, rather than just the individual parts.
Regarding the Fly-Ball, do not forget that DaveB has anticipated such problems and has indicated that the Fly-Ball includes limited buffeting protection, even without the aid of the Forb. He, rightly, anticipates that it would be boring if she could only use the one in conjunction with the other. Although such limited protection would also provide some protection vs air-strikes, it would not prevent humiliation or other comical side-effects.
I thought the flyball’s own protection was only enough at low speeds?
Though who knows, maybe upgrades to the flyball will allow for better protection
That would come under the ‘limited protection’ part
To be fair to the Hulk, he [i]does[/i] have much larger hands and feet than other heroes- more surface area to spread the load out on- and also seems to be more likely to actually obey the laws of physics- breaking things is kinda his forte after all.
The contact surface of the average car is about four palmprints. So, yes, quite likely the surface would manage.
yeah but its damn cool when someone throws a car at someone else
I think it was Emp in Empowered who said it makes much more sense to drive a car into a supervillain instead of throwing it at him because the kinetic energy delivered is much, much higher. She actually took Superhuman Studies at college/university and I assume her creator Adam Warren at least researched those things a little bit.
Property damage is just one of the many reasons why superheroes would be more of a problem than they are worth. “I caught the bankrobber but destroyed small business and countless apartments on the east side” is not something people will appreciate.
Also, knowing how the people in charge think… if New York actually had Spiderman, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four etc … then the city would probably downsize their police department, let many fire fighters go and perhaps even the military would employ less “ordinary” soldiers because they’d become obsolete.
That was a PowerPuff Girls episode.
$10,000 stolen from bank recovered, $3 million bridge destroyed.
“It’s on our flag!”
it was. And in another case she went to pick up a car to throw it at a giant nautilus menace. Her first attempt to pick up the car resulted in the bumper coming off. Her second attempt to throw the car succeeded. But the car bounced off the menace, narrowly missed her and smashed into the building behind her. Than the old couple that owned the car showed up and asked her if she had seen their car. It was parked right here.
That would really depend on how hard you can throw it. If you can chuck a car at ~60mph, then it’s about an even break. If you can throw it at mach 2 (without it instantly disintegrating somehow) then obviously that’s the way to go.
if you can throw a car at mach 2, then a simple punch will go through most materials (possibly including some supers). If you can fly at mach 2 near the surface, then doing so into an enemy would be a valid, probably lethal, attack
If you ever do decide to go with a graphically violent scene, you might take a page from Unsounded: make it so completely over the top that there’s no way anyone WOULDN’T be uncomfortable with it. It provides a dramatic tonal change, but people will be so relieved to be away from it when the scene ends that they won’t want to feel like the comic has gotten any more gritty than it was.
You know this is the internet right? I know people who can watch the grossest horrors you can possibly imagine and go ‘meh, seen it before’
Sometimes we show it to uninitiated and laugh at the responds
What horrors? My family photos? shudders
Yea ok, those were pritty scary
cthulu is still receiving therapy for that and I don’t mean the one that chats on this board.
I’m sure that Dabbler is already providing dirty humour under the tables, two invisible arms and all. Maybe a little more.
First time Wolverine gets sued was by Magneto. He won and took Wolverine to the cleaners and his Adamantium Skeleton for good measure as well… I mean it’s not like Magneto wasn’t just out for a flight when all of the pocket change from everyone in the world was attracted to him. He just needed it for his parking metre.
Ai, ai ai. If that goes on than there is nothing to learn anymore in the tacktikel combat lessons ^^
To learn more about heroes and law, read The Law and the Multiverse: https://lawandthemultiverse.com/
Honestly, I picture picking up a car and hitting someone with it as the Superhero Version of picking up a Baseball Bat and Hitting someone with it. Yeah, I could just sock the guy, but the Baseball Bat adds that much extra power, if just by having a Lever right there in the attack.
Yea, but if you are superman and you can wack the villain through a concrete wall with your fists, using a car does nothing extra.
Either the guy was already dead from your fist, or he’ll shrug off the car just as easy.
So all it does is destroy someone’s car
Depends on the level of vulnerability of the people in the fight. I would agree with that for Spider-man strength level but superman strength would be reduced like if chose a feather duster rather than a baseball bat.
Best use of that then would be to bring the steel testing pillar, or equivalent, with her with that orb and whack goons baseball style with it. Alternatively, going with the first name of that one, enemy probe/choke as means of interrogation/subdual.
funny comic, it just goes to show just how unreal some of the battles I’ve seen in comics play out. As for the severed arm. If you just show the arm missing, but no blood spurting out, it should be OK, and still not be rated NSWF. but that’s just my opinion.
But then it’s not as much of a “realist consequence”.
Contextually though, for this particular instance, it is either Sydney’s or Maxima’s imagination we are seeing here. And it is more than reasonable that they would put that in either for a laugh, or in Maxima’s case, possibly out of unconscious force of habit, from a lifetime’s worth of exposure to such from the media.
Blood would be spurting everywhere and she would die from bloodloss.
The car thing is a hold over from the days when cars were made of (lots of) steel and Superman was not so neigh invulnerable. Comic writers,seeing that classic supes cover forget that car weighed a lot more than most modern cars do.
Supes used to be not invincible?
Power creep.
Early Supes used to be only able to “leap over tall buildings” and such. He’d get hurt by giant robot fists or cannonballs. Then writers slowly began to make him more and more super, until they had to introduce green rocks as his one weakness to give him a reasonable challenge.
And magic, red sun light, and stuff.
Yup, yup and yup.
Yeah, well, Supes gradually leveling up over the course of time didn’t have the same kind of “graphic interface” involved, like Sydney does…
True, but Supes has “downgraded” considerably in the last 20 or so years. For example, there was a time when he could go into space, time travel, go interstellar AND combinations thereof without raising a sweat.
Actually, Kryptonite was invented for the weekly Superman radio series – it allowed the actor to take a break for a week or two (while another actor supplied suitably-pained groans and unintellible noises of agony) to get some personal time off without putting the show on hiatus. The idea of making it “his only weakness” came much later for the comic.
this is QUITE a point of view on old comics hehe
I can think of a couple of reasons you might want to hit someone with a car or other large heavy object. Reason 1 is that you might have trouble using your full strength when you’re moving around an object as lightweight as your first. That tends to argue more for carrying around a large hunk of iron, but in a pinch any large heavy object will do. Reason 2 is the flyswatter principle, for when you don’t really need to do maximum damage, you just need to hit.
Yeah, basically it’s the same as swinging a club instead of your hand: You get leverage, and you don’t damage your hand.
Now, a car isn’t the best club (lamposts/telephone poles are probably better), but the principle applies.
If you use a car as a flyswatter, you’re just being a dick to whoever owns the car
Spoiler alert: No clicking if you have not seen My Super Ex-Girlfriend yet. Seriously, there is a big spoiler in this clip.
Of course some supers just do not care about that. It feels gooood to whack somebody with a car, van or signpost.
*sigh* Someday a nuclear plant is going to blow up because of a missing “/” or the like.
I shall have to refrain from watching the clip then. That would be one of the movies that I own but just haven’t gotten around to watching yet.
3rd reason: you just hate that type of car or recognize it as being owned by an @55hole.
I’m not so sure throwing someone into the ground is such a good idea either, from a civilian safety point of view. Sure, a collapsed sewer isn’t going to hurt anyone (usually; there could be maintenance workers underground), but how about a collapsed subway station? Or potentially even worse, a damaged subway tunnel that causes a subway train to crash?
And there’s still the potential of damaging gas and electricity lines, and therefore causing fires.
True, but if you simply must to smash somebody into something, the ground is usually the best available option.
Dave, as to your commentary about “where” to draw the line on ‘showing injury’, my thoughts on the matter.
If the injury doesn’t do anything for the scene or upcoming scenes, then no need to go into details. PoV shifts are wonderful for implying serious wounds without actually showing it. If a character getting injured is critical for the current scene or upcoming scene, then maybe go for a PG13 level of ‘detail’ (helps avoid Angry Parents that way. Maybe not all of them, but at least you won’t have All of them after you).
In short, think about what you could expect (injury wise) to see on … well, soap operas. They’re a bit stronger on content these days than they used to be, but they’re still pretty mild (especially compared to cop shows). Also, if you can’t imagine seeing it on public TV without being censored, then it might be going too far.
If you were publishing this as a book, you could do whatever you felt comfortable with, but you have to deal with people of all ages and creeds reading your strip. So you have to find a happy “middle ground”.
The above are just some ideas on how to do that. Panel three could have gotten the point across without showing Any Detail by her leaning against the wall so you can’t see the stump. The blood on her face and the wall makes it clear what happened to her.
It really depends on what nation’s TV you are thinking about.
I’ve seen american TV shows that put a censor thing on someone’s mouth as they used a swear word. Like WTF is that supposed to do?
Same with a middle finger. It’s not about seeing the finger, it’s about knowing it’s there. And if someone raises his hand like that, you KNOW it’s there
Regarding the lips bit, it is only reasonable that if society feels something is offensive enough to be ‘bleeped’ that similar respect be paid to the sensitivities of the lip-reading community. Mind you we can all lip-read some stuff.
One of the best uses of that (IMHO) is the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. They use National flags to block it and a bit of the language to bleep it. So basically a french flag and “oh la la” in some cases to cover the swears.
I never get tired of this PS238 strip :)
That’s similar to what they did to Nick over in Skin Horse: they didn’t change his attitude or stop him from swearing, they just put a filter on his vocalizer (the funnest part was when he learnt to use ‘Pork’ as a swearword, until the filter adapted and started to filter ‘pork’ :D)
Ugh, as someone who occasionally mutters about how completely idiotic it is to censor words, that annoys me. The words used to relay a message should matter anywhere near as much as the intention and concept the words depict.
In a similar vein, for those of you who remember Home Alone. Think back of all the times Joe Pesci’s character ended up muttering, “fridge.” That was a replacement word…
Ahh, now that is a different matter all together. Personally I would get rid of any bleeping. I am perfectly comfortable with strategic swearing in conversation. I have to judge my audience, but a well-placed expletive can make a point much more dramatic, or amusing, as may be the case. Prudish TV companies would hate interviewing me in prime-time. :-D
Craig keeps calling his stage manager a “racist” because he bleeps his “Scottish”. It’s a running gag.
Just learn to swear like Sydney. You’ll note most of the words she uses wouldn’t be censored. I don’t get THAT creative with my cursing (no, I save that for coming up with nice, multi-paragraph insults) but even so I doubt mine would get censored either – they usually depend on what I’ve read recently. Common ‘swears’ for me are ‘fewmets’, ‘Light’, and ‘Mother Night’. Points if you know what those are from.
Mmm, can’t think of a single source that has all three. Light is rather generic, so there are many possibilities. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Mother Night. Anne Mccaffrey’s dragon spoor is fewmets.
Interestingly enough I came across fewmets the other day, whilst being taken on walkies, and managed to track down the… depositor. Who allowed me to stroke and pet it! Which really was an awesome experience. And the point where I wish I had a camera to hand, was when Buffy joined in. She was very hesitant at first, seeing a strange creature with budding horns up close. But after a bit of mutual sniffing she had her tail wagging away. And they became firm friends. Sooooo cute!
XD They’re from different sources. And fewmets is the usual term for dragon droppings, not original to McCaffrey. The other two are USED as swear words in the books they’re from – and I admit, Light was too generic. But if there’s somewhere other than the books I have in mind that uses Mother Night as a swear, I’d be interested to know where…
Coming in ~6 years later, I know, but are a couple of those from the Wars of Light and Shadow series by Janny Wurtz?
All they did was change the word, not the intent, plus they made his filter in a different font so you could easily see it is supposed to be him swearing (and the fun part was trying to figure out what word he originally meant to say, and sometimes, the filters were funner :D)
When it comes to bleeping out offensive language, here is a good story.
The actor who plays Dave Lister on Red Dwarf did a behind stage interview after preforming a stand up comedy sketch for a charity.
In it he swore for a bit with the censor on, and at the end said “Ha, you just said (censored) in Morse code!”
Valid points all. I should have specific what I meant by “TV” a bit better. Of course differing countries will have differing views on what is acceptable for “public” TV. I’ve seen stuff that airs “publicly” in England that would be borderline cable only over in the US.
As to censorship was referring to visual censorship (either via mosaics or requiring higher ‘ratings’ to be considered acceptable), not “bleep bleep you stupid bleep bleep bleep” and then “bleep bleep!” followed up with a “bleep off!”
Still, the rest of the commentary I made stands as food for thought.