Grrl Power #195 – A fearsome commitment
In case you’re not clear what the Hammerspace thing is about, check here.
Sydney’s patented non-sequitur questions were supposed to be a running thing, but I kept cutting those jokes for other content. It is not clear at this time whether they are a result of her ADD or if she’s just being impish. This one feels half and half.
Tangential to Sydney’s power greed here, I never understood why heroes or villains never tried to hoard powers and super gadgets/artifacts. Why doesn’t a bad guy who captures Hawkeye take all his arrows and figure out how to replicate his explosive arrowheads and have a pocket full of massively powerful-smaller than a golfball sized explosives? Or why heroes don’t confiscate bad guys superweapons and add them to their arsenal. Sure, sometimes they’re evil artifacts or there’s some other reason why that would be a bad idea, but sometimes there would be no possible downside to adding the bad guys’ stuff to your bag of tricks, other than it would make the hero OP and create writing challenges. I still think it would be fun to read. The bad guy has defeated a whole team of heroes, and the one guy, lets call him “The Hoarder” cause that’s what everyone else does, he shows up with Excalibur strapped to his back, Mjölnir on his belt, Star Emperor’s comic bracelets, the Chartreuse Lantern’s pinky ring, Apollomese’s boots of fleet footedness, a dozen things in his utility belt copied or stolen from the Trixter, the Trapster, the Tripster, the Flipster, the Flapster and the Candlestick Maker – all that on top of his own suite of powers and the bad guy’s just all “Oh COME ON!”
After drawing Sydney’s slightly baggy jeans and Maxima’s cargo pants, I tend to forget that women’s jeans often to contain way more elastic than mens, which is what makes them so much more “hey look at my ass.” (Also “hey look at my pantyline” and/or “No pantyline? Time to play guess if I’m wearing a thong.”) I drew Dabbler standing there next to Sydney in panel 5 in baggy pants and couldn’t figure out what was off about the picture until I remembered this fact and gave them the vacuum seal treatment. Incidentally, the “Hey look at my ass” factor is why women’s pants as often as not don’t have back pockets (or front). Yes sir, comfort and utility are a distant second and third when it comes to women’s fashion. As a guy, I admit that generally works to my benefit, but if I was a gal I would be massively irritated all the time at clothing that doesn’t have pockets. I won’t even buy pajamas that don’t have pockets.
<– If you enjoy the comic and have a dollar or more to many each month (I assume that would be a tax thing) and would like to support the comic, Patreon is there for 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.
On heroes reusing the tech of those they come in contact with – the Batcave is full of villain’s own junk. Where do you think Bruce gets most of the ideas for the items on his tool belt? He would be completely OP if he wasn’t vanilla human, and had moral qualms about just stealing the tech and items of people he doesn’t jail – just fights. Also, little magic. Because side-effects.
in fact in batman arkham origins he gets about half if not all of his gagets he needs from boss fights.
Oh, the “Stargate” franchise is full of that.
First, there’s the Stargate itself. It’s not only of alien design, but built from a material not found on Earth, naquada. Originally, it’s thought to be of G’ould design, but is later proven to be of a precursor race known as the “ancients.”
Second, is the G’ould tech. They’re the first alien entities the Stargate team encounters. They are immediately and inherently hostile; seeing humans as nothing more than slaves and hosts (as G’ould are actually sentient parasites/symbiotes who give their hosts immunity to virtually any disease, in exchange for completely taking over their bodies.) In the Stargate Universe, the entire Egyptian pantheon describes them.
Third is the Asgard. They are the “greys” from Roswell in the SG universe, and have technology vastly superior to the G’ould (at least initially), but are far fewer in number, and actually come to Earth for help against a common foe. The Norse mythology is based on them in the series.
Lastly, there’s the “ancients.” While they are strictly bound by a “do not interfere with mortals” philosophy, occasionally, one of them will appear as a humanoid creature and share advice usually in the form of vague riddles. (They share a common origin with their blood enemy, the “Ori” who DO parasitically feed off humans who worship them. To ensure as many humans worship them as possible, so that they have the power needed to obliterate the ancients, they “enhance” humans into Priors and send them out as living weapons of mass destruction.) Eventually, the Arthurian legends become attributed to them. (Merlin was an ancient who took on human form.)
In addition, the Stargate team gathers and invents all new forms of technology, medicine, etc by visiting various human races around the galaxy with their own unique tech, culture, and outlook.
In the spin-off, Stargate Atlantis, the human explorers are not above occasionally acquiring and using technology from a race known as the Wraith who parasitically feed on humans as their only food source, as well as gathering unique and interesting bits of random tech from various human or humanoid cultures around the Pegasus galaxy.
I have to correct you, man. It’s Goa’uld. >_<
They actually slightly addressed the fact that Earth has techno-hoarding tendencies in Stargate Universe. The Lucian Alliance formed in the power vacuum left by the Goa’uld, initially just made up of mercenaries and smugglers they end up becoming a revolutionary rebel group that wants to stop Earth from using it’s armada of technology that they had already used to overthrow three separate galactic spanning empires to instate themselves as the ruling force over the Milky Way, essentially replacing the tyrannical Goa’uld empire they had toppled.
SGU had lots of promise, it’s just a shame that it’s budget couldn’t match it’s ambition.
there were also the Furlings and Nox…both super-hippies (but somehow on the “Council” of interplanetary empires with the Alterans and Asgardians)…though the Furlings were killed off five minutes after SG1 found them…and the Nox hid in their flying invisible city.
I actually just finished Stargate:Atlantis on Netflix.
What I didn’t get, is that they DIDN’T take all those weapons from the dead wraith anymore.
And what was more mindboggling: not a single weapon from the Alternate Reality aliens that were attacking the Daedalus they’re on.
In an episode of Batman Beyond Bruce had to don a disguise from several criminal costumes he had and used one of Victor Frieze’s guns to stop Inque a woman mutated by an experiment. She is like a shoggoth only prettier and she is a high tech high stakes burglar. I think it was in the first episode she was in called “Blackout.” We find out the bat cave is lined with flint steel used in battle ships. Even Inque can’t force her way through that when she hitched a ride into it.
That wasn’t pieces of a villain costume, that was the mask and hat worn by Bruce’s childhood hero, The Grey Ghost, who appeared in Batman the Animated Series voiced by Adam West, and whose story was based directly on West’s life, ie he was an actor who played the superhero The Grey Ghost on TV and after his show ended he was typecast and basically shunned by Hollywood. Great episode.
I keep expecting Monty Python quotes from Sydney
Give it time, this is still the first day afterall :D
How do we know it has not pasted midnight already?
It was still sunny when they started the after-conference party
It feels like years. I guess it is because I make long term plans, like Stone Henge New Years Eve 3,000. It just messes up my time-sense.
Will see you there, don’t be late :P
That is a lot of dog years.
We are using dog years? OMG! I am 11,098 years late!
… Do you think anyone will still be there?
Whines *covers head with paws*
/silently offers Yorp a party favour and a can-holder hat
Wouldn’t be a party without you :)
Your post made me think of the episodes of Batman: The Animated Series that involve Batman’s collection of villain artifacts in the Batcave. They’re always interesting, especially when villains break in and it’s a Goldeneye 64 everyone-grab-a-new-weapon free for all.
Amusingly enough, if you follow the link here on the site for the Collective of Heroes, you will find a comic called “Honor Brigade”, and the first major bad guy they introduce is a vastly wealthy guy who has purchased or stolen a huge collection of power items and gizmos used by various heroes and villains in the past.
The problem with heroes keeping and using items they confiscate is that doing so changes the character. That works all right for a limited series, but not so well for ongoing comics.
Consider the Batman. He’s vastly wealthy, amply capable of creating gadgets and gizmos, and has run across all kinds of weird stuff over the years. If he felt like doing it, he could put together a suit of power armor that would make Iron Man jealous. Doing so would make fighting crime on the mean streets of Gotham city kind of silly though.
Consider Achilles. Why wouldn’t he find a nice Big Frelling Gun to use? He could use something with an insane amount of recoil, the kind of thing that would break a normal man’s arm. It wouldn’t hurt him any.
It would change the character quite a bit though.
If you really want to bend your brain, start pondering how the world would be changed if some of the more common items of super hero tech were to reach the public domain. I don’t know what exactly most of those super-suits and ray guns use for power, but whatever it is, it would make the oil and gas industry obsolete. If you can make a suit of power armor fly, it should be pretty trivial to make a flying car. There would be robots of all sizes and descriptions. Cybernetic replacements for anything you might need to replace. Holographic displays instead of televisions…
which basically all feeds into the Trope “Reed Richards is Useless.”
A good number of the heroes are useless.
If Bruce Wayne really wanted to rid Gotham of crime (at leat the petty kind), he’d just have to make sure nobody would NEED to go criminal (which would also make sure the big villains would have trouble to get henchmen). So, give every homeless/jobless a chance go get better and earn an honest living. There’s so much good potential lost on the streets these days…
That was actually addressed in universe. Even Bruce Wayne isn’t THAT wealthy. Besides, in Gotham, most, if not all, of those mooks don’t WANT a “job.” They want to be criminals, despite how dangerous it is to work for psychos like the Joker, two face, or Killer Croc. There’s even an entire episode devoted to a guy who took up crime, not because he was poor, desperate, or stupid, but because he wanted the notoriety. After a series of misadventures (ironically starting out with tripping on a clothesline and taking Batman with him off a roof), he finally gets it, in prison when all the various BIG WIG criminals he literally stumbled across got hoist on their own petard trying to nail him and he was the “big name” in prison.
Yeah, maybe Ra’s’ idea of wiping Gotham off the map wasn’t so bad in hindsight.
the city really is a giant craphole…but what do you expect when you put mass murderers in an asylum with a revolving-door policy?
The Empowered main villain collects and uses the Heroes themselves. After dead to be precise, kinda magically bound.
We will never likely see flying cars in real life though, at least not as something widely available to the civilian population, even if the tech was possible. Mostly because of the following reasions:
Accidents. People tend to crash cars. Many still struggle with the blind-spots already in place, and now you have to worry about what is above and below you as well…. Not to mention those thrill seeking morons that might very well go offroading above your house… Drunk drivers smashing into second story windows, pile ups on the freeway causing a rain of cars to fall down on whatever and whoever is unfortunate enough to be down below…
Terrorists. Three words, flying car bomb.
Criminals. It isn’t unheard of for smugglers to use planes to smuggle stuff. Now imagine a plane with a vertical takeoff that could blend in with the lines of flying cars in the sky above. Throw in the idiot bank-robbers and now high speed chases become even more dangerous.(See the above mentioned accidents.)
A majority of your reasons would become invalid within the next 20 years or so.
1) Google already has cars that can drive themselves without any human input, ergo, with flying cars, the driver would only control the last mile of the trip, most likely after landing. The rest would be handled by a form of air traffic control/computer routing. Kinda like how Amazon is developing a system to allow a type of drone to deliver your package autonomously
2) Higher end cars today have automatic breaking to keep the driver from rear-ending the car in front of them, even if the driver is going 60 and the car in front is completely stopped. Combine that with the sensors that can keep you from drifting into other lanes of traffic and indicate/avoid vehicles in your blind spot, (assuming a vehicle could be in your blind spot after taking into account reason 1)
3) Sure, there’s going to be bad people who take advantage of the system, but they’d do the same thing they’re doing now, fly outside of registered flight paths.
4) Flying car bombs? Same response we have now. Scrambled fighter jets that can be off the ground and on target in less than 10 minutes. Currently more than enough time to get on location since I would suspect a flying car can’t go anywhere near as fast as a fighter jet. Plus there would be no fly zones that are going to be based off that response time.
5) Bank robber criminals. Same answer as 3 and 4. Add in the avoidance tech that would be built into the vehicles (reason 2) along with reason distributed networking capability (Reason 1 and onboard networking with nearby vehicles) would render accidents moot. The bad guys wouldn’t be able to get their vehicle close enough to another vehicle to cause a crash because the computer would be able to respond orders of magnitude faster than the human wheelman.
The technology to allow flying cars to move without danger is pretty much here or will be within the next 5-10 years. The biggest issue why flying cars aren’t available right now comes down to making a car shaped object fly safely. It’s not very aerodynamic, so it would have to work off of some form of vtol capability, which is pretty tricky to master. It would also require a better fuel system/energy source than what we current have.
When all is said and done, once we can figure out how to get a car itself to fly safely and can power it, everything would fall into place in relatively short order.
So, in other words, the world from “The Minority Report?” Sorry, but I don’t fancy the idea of some miscreant remote control cracking the OS on my car and using it in all sorts of ways, dangerous or otherwise, law enforcement or not.
Hello Chad,
I remember a very old science fiction story that revolved entirely around a hit and run fatality cause by a flying car in a world with even more automatic safeguards than what you describe. The cars in that story were equipped with automatic controls that even prevented them from traveling below a legal minimum altitude except when landing (lands slow, straight up and down only), pretty much everything you list and a bunch of other things. I can’t remember the name of the story right now, or the author (though for various reasons I suspect Larry Niven) but I have read it a couple of dozen times at least.
The victim was a 6 year old girl who was standing on the balcony of her home, 12 feet off the ground, and was struck by a vehicle traveling at speeds beyond the built in governor limit, and over 100 feet below the legal altitude. The perpetrators were a drunken moron who liked to break rules, and his friend a mechanical savant who had managed to crack safeties that had been infallible for decades, he had disabled his vehicle’s automatic controls, all of its governor/limiter devices, and had removed its “Black Box” automatic recorder, though he was not aware of the second “Black Box” that was a standard hidden feature in all vehicles (the second one was always disguised as another part on the vehicle, in this case a large bolt was actually the casing for the very small recorder). The two perps were given very different sentences, the driver (drunk fool) was executed and his organs and tissues harvested, the savant was sent to a base on the moon to spend the rest of his life working to make the vehicular technology even safer with no possibility of return or parole, the sentences were carried out within 2 hours of the fatality.
The point of my telling you all of this is just to say that, no system will ever be perfect, anything people come up with to make it safer, someone else can and probably will figure out how to get around/disable. Not that I don’t want a flying car mind you, just that it may not really be a practical idea.
The bigger point should be: advances like flying-cars should not be prevented simply because of “what-ifs?” or the fact someone could get seriously/fatally injured (heck, people get hurt all the time from scissors!!)
True. That is always a possibility. But think about this. Most passenger jets are flown for almost the entire trip by autopilot except under unusual circumstances.
I have figured out a technology which would negate all of those negative points. Ie. it would make personal air cars viable in our lifetime.
Plus I have researched all the basic principles and shown that they are scientifically valid. Likewise for most of the engineering principles. And have found a working prototype for a related technology which could be adapted to plug the gaps I have not covered.
Shame I could win the Olympic Gold Medal for Procrastination…
You may want to put down a deposit on your coffin before making an advance order for your air car.
I’ve seen some actual flying car prototypes (and an aircycle) on youtube. Trouble is, the things are expensive, only prototypes anyway (so lacking a lot of testing and features you’d want your aircar to have), run through fuel in minutes, and are not covered by current regulations, so probably would be illegal to fly from your driveway. Drive it to the airport, and fly from there to another airport, and then your destination. But having to use an airport takes a lot of the fun out of a flying car…
Prototypes are expensive. Mine would be exploiting a totally new technology, so would be especially expensive. However it is using something that is already getting cheaper and more familiar. Plus which there are incentives to mass-produce for other areas of industry. So, once out of prototype, the costs would fall dramatically.
And, importantly, there would be no particular limit due to rarity, once an effective mass-production technique had been put into full effect. Several working demonstrations of principle have been done on that front, such that I am confident that the same paradigms as exist in the computing, mobile phone and car industries would be able to bring the costs down to a manageable level.
The prototypes I have seen for the related technology are fully featured and specced for aircraft. Adding a radio and pair of fluffy dice would be no problem. No need to add car number plates though. There would be no need to crawl around on the ground.
Mine is highly fuel efficient. If we could switch the planet to using it instead of infernal combustion engined vehicles, society’s fuel consumption would plummet. Not that I would anticipate cars vanishing overnight. Especially as it is not a direct substitute, so would not be good for a number of roles. But it could replace many aspects of current vehicular transport.
It would follow the same rules and regulations as for building and operating a helicopter. If your driveway is suitable for that, then you can use mine there too. Obviously if it was as popular as I am implying and there was a massive overnight demand for it, then air traffic control would be hammered. It could not cope with co-ordinating all current car traffic suddenly having the option of entering air space.
But, the plus side is that the technology would be intrinsically a lot safer than cars. Further, as others have mentioned, we are fast entering the era where even regular cars can be automatically controlled. It would just be a matter of integrating autopilot technology with work being done to allow cars to form ‘trains’ * and/or other techniques to lighten the load on air traffic control.
I would anticipate ‘air trains’ * for high speed travel when approaching congested areas, such as cities. From which you could ‘detach’, as you approach your destination and want to slow down. You then steer to your garden, say, or the flat roof of your apartment. Or one of the demolished multi-story car-parks that has been re-purposed as a flying-car park (very different structure needed).
* Google, amongst others, is working on ‘land trains’. You move your vehicle into position at the rear of a convoy. Engage autopilot. Which co-ordinates with the ‘land-train’ in front, keeping you at safe distances from each other. Then, when you want to exit the convoy, you disengage autopilot and drive away. The same as you would if you had reached your exit on an interstate and wanted to move out of the fast lane. Exactly the same techniques could be applied to an ‘air-train’ as with that. Except that it would also control the altitude.
frell i still miss farscape
Well, as far as why tech wouldn’t be used: Worm has a pretty good reason. “Tinkers,” or capes whose powers fit into the category of making super-tech, aren’t just regular-people-but-smarter. Typically, the power gives them the knowledge and ability to make their super-tech, but it also allows them to keep it running – nothing they make works maintainance-free, and none of it can be kept running without their superpower (not a procedure that can just be taught) and/or tools with similar restrictions. If you had a tinker make a hundred hoverboards, they’d need all their time just to keep the boards working.
Oooh, another Worm reader…. Hi. (I have read, and now recommend, Worm)
Anyway, that basically explains the problem of super-tech. If you’re capable of building a suit of POWER ARMOUR, in A CAVE, from A BOX OF SCRAPS, chances are that either you have some sort of superpower, or your mind works so differently to the feeble brains of us mere mortals (would that count as a superpower? I’d say it would!) that explaining it to us for mass production would be impossible.
And even if you could, maybe you’re worried that that could very quickly lead to an apocalyptic war.
Plus, there’s the fact that things would get very complicated if you could, and we’d go from superhero to sci-fi. Which could actually be quite cool, but if you don’t want to write that, there’s plenty of good handwaves/reasons why it wouldn’t work.
In the Worm universe, Tinker-Tech is actually leaking into the public domain, and the setting is recognizably not Our Earth.
The thing about Tinker-Tech isn’t so much the actual gadgets though. It’s the scientific principles behind those gadgets. That hover board, for example, was an anti-gravity device. What -else- could be created with an understanding of how gravity works and how to manipulate it?
If the writers don’t restrict super-tech to the supers, the setting either changes beyond recognition, or you get stuck with the Reed Richards is Useless trope, because it obviously -should- be changing, and isn’t. Worm did some of both.
Grav-control tech? A good place to look for what could be done with that is the Honorverse. Most of it’s mentioned tech (Architecture, vehicle propulsion and warfare) all involve Gravity-Control in one form or another.
Two of my old City of Heroes characters actually played with this idea. One was just a regular guy who worked cleanup after super battles and kept souvenirs. He eventually figured out how to fix a little of the stuff and use it, and signed up as a hero. The other grew out of a painfully punny name; a large portion of his family were heroes who used alphatech and arcane devices, and all of them died in the Rikti War, leaving him to inherit a super-arsenal–winged boots, magic sword, alien energy shield, etc. He was called “Heir Power”.
There’s a GREAT JLA story called That Was Now, This Is Then what actually has the hall of confiscated items/trophies of past missions in the watchtower as a plot point. Including using some old supervillain’s power rod against the new threat. I highly recommend it, it’s in a trade. Very cool parallel plots, too.
I really don’t mind characters evolving in interesting ways, even if acting logically would wind up making them OP. That does however have a tendency to create a bit of an escalating arms race.
Why go for Hammerspace when you haven’t even learned the power stunts available to your current set of powers?
Lighthook + PPO : Grab Touch em together and point blank through the tentacle energy bolt.
Lighthook + FFO : Grab at range and engage FF over that spot (It centers on some part of the holder, so the tentacle could ‘be’ the center)
Lighthook + Telerpresence : “Badgers!” with a trip line behind them.
There are always questions, Maxima. You should know this by now.
On the pants – yes, it is a pet peeve. It’s getting harder and harder to find a simple pair of cheap jeans with pockets. It’s gotten bad enough that I’m as likely to buy a pair of guy’s pants and alter it as I am to get a pair from the women’s side. It’s even worse with skirts. I LIKE wearing skirts once in awhile, but finding a good, practical one with pockets is well-nigh impossible….it’s a good thing I know how to sew.
One word: Utili-kilts. Not just for guys.
Kilts are generally too short. I prefer ankle-length, or at least mid-shin.
I’ve heard that women’s pants are largely without any real pockets. I’ve commented to some of my lady friends that they should totally just go utility belt if they can’t find a decent pair of pants with pockets. Start a trend, move to pouches and utility belts!
I have seen some very cool pouch belts on gals here in Santa Cruz in recent times. Don’t know if a local store sells ’em. They look like something you’d find at a ren faire, perhaps, but likely they could be found on the net somewhere.
I think it’s stupid women can’t get a decent set of pockets. I get it, a bulging pocket ruins the lines and gasp! makes women have stuff on their hips! I don’t know any reasonable women that would pass up utility to avoid looking like they’re carrying stuff on them. Especially with purses.
If you got two utilikilts and sewed them together, they’d become one ankle length cargo kilt!
Hmm. There’s an idea. The second one would have to be a larger size so the flow wouldn’t be interrupted, but….Hmmm….
Ok. I now know what my next sewing project is after the elf leggings and the adjustable dresses for my best friend’s baby daughter.
You know elves? And there I was boasting about how I petted a bambi!
XD Not in this world, unfortunately. I was referring to a style of leggings usually attributed to elves. Trying to make attractive, comfortable, and practical pants for winter weather here where it tends to get well below zero.
You mean the ‘Peter Pan’ panto-pants?
Not sure what you mean by that. What I’m doing is taking an oversized pair of sweatpants and altering them to effectively be a warmer version of those leggings that lace up the sides. Testing the design out on a friend first, since it requires a certain amount of tailoring, then if it works making a couple pairs for myself. And yes, they have pockets.
L.L.Bean has a nice line of flannel lined pants. Not sure if they offer womens sizes but they are VERY warm. Picture jeans with soft cotton insulation sewn on the inside.
I used to get the carharts polar-fleece lined ones XD But part of the idea is that this is dirt cheap. Seriously, eight bucks for everything, including the lacing. I can’t get ANY women’s pants that cheap, unless I go to Goodwill or something.
If you come up with something that is functional and looks nice, might I suggest you approach Utilikilts with some samples and perhaps suggest an additional line of kilts that cater to the more style conscious.
There’s an idea *grin*
Unfortunately actual brand-Utilikilts are far from affordable as a day-to-day pants replacement, but this is an area that Kalietha’s sewing skills can be put to use – a couple yards of canvas/twill, possibly some softer material for a comfy liner, and apply said sewing superpower; presto – $120 utilikilt for ~$25
Your pants problem is easily solved, find the nearest military surplus store and buy some bdu pants ( from the laides section of course).
I’ve always assumed that heroes (or villains) don’t just steal and hoard other tech for a variety of good reasons:
1. They don’t know how to use it. It seems like a really, really, really bad idea to be in possession of a weapon you don’t know how to use. It’s like that warning you always hear regarding guns: if you have one, you better damn well know how, and be willing to, use it. Otherwise don’t; you’re just arming your potential assailant.
2. Cost-Benefit Tradeoffs: Just because it’s possible to install a railgun, missle launchers, 20 feet thick steel armor, standard turret and machine gun, minesweepers, radar, and a kitchen sink in a tank, it isn’t a good idea to do so. Other of the high risk of friendly fire, trying to install all that stuff would likely take away the main advantage of a tank: being an armored mobile asset for ground troops.
3. Usually, just because you’ve “won”, doesn’t mean it’s over. The heat of the moment or some other imminent task kinda distracts you.
the main reason FOR taking tech from a villain is to study and create countermeasures in case someone does something similar down the line
Agreed, and a
goodeffective hero/villain is one who spends time training and/or studying, so adding an extra gadget (or 9) shouldn’t really be a problem, as long as they don’t try and use it until they at least are confident it won’t be a hinderance in the fieldHmmmm… You have a point. All superheroes should hire 2 crack teams:
One specializing in retrieval & cleanup to swoop in and snatch tech
Another entire department of R&D scientists to figure out what the hell the tech does and how it does it and how to utilize it.
…Unless of course the superhero’s power is like time manipulation or something and is able to manage to fit in that extra time and energy to steal tech and figure it out on top of the usual superhero and normal life activities.
If you got it away from them, then it clearly wasn’t good enough to merit study.
*looks at the almost perfect globes taken out of buildings, and the earth around them.* Gee I can think of one reason someone MIGHT want to study some devices.
Took me awhile to understand what you were referencing (you are talking about Terminators, aren’t you?)
A few other effects than time travel might have a similar result:
* Disintegration
* Teleportation
* Implosion grenade
* Nano tech (in a variety of tasty flavours)
Yep, five check marks on the desirability front, including the Terminator option. We will ignore the ‘X’ in the ‘giant termite breeding ground possibility.
Termites don’t make prefect (or near perfect) spheres. They tend to go in a direction they find “tasty” and keep going that way (making more nests as they go) until they run out of food.
No, no. Giant termites. Not those dinky little things. I had the small variety eat one of my houses, so am fairly familiar with the buggers. No, the big ones lay huge acidic eggs that eat perfect holes in the surroundings. The MiB cryptozoology division would have covertly wiped out the whole lot, if it were not on the request of Hollywood. They make good stand-ins for giant ants in the monster movies. Humans arn’t good at telling the difference.
Implosion grenade…methinks someone’s been watching Warehouse 13.
Would love to. However have never seen an episode of it. If I am lucky, I get to see TV once a year and did get to see a trailer of it. So I know what you are talking about. Maybe I will get to see an episode or two when visiting friends this year.
implosion grenade
warp grenade
vortex grenade
fusion pulse grenade
and so many others that I have run across in 30+ years of gaming
Simon R Green’s Nightside series features the Collector, and also a villain that steals powers. Pretty nifty. Also, Stargate uses this idea often.
Stargate is BASED on the idea.
Starting with the Goa’uld, and then the humans generally wanting to go the same way.
Even their space-ship tech is mostly nicked…. acquired, I mean.
“Heroes” had a bad guy and a good guy who could accumulate powers, and while it was pretty interesting for a while it didn’t take long before things escalated to where they were far to powerful for anyone but them to be narratively relevant.
Peter Petrelli and Sylar.
Yeah, how come Heroes hasn’t been mentioned on here that much anyway?
Another good series (methinks) that was sadly cancelled after only one season, was Alphas.
Nice premise there.
NO, don’t mention Alpha’s! Now I’m going to be up all night worrying about why Gary was the only person awake in grand Central Station. :(
I had an experience using multiple items in a D&D campaign back in the day. I had a character who I designed as a dwarven fighter and as the result of very good dice throws had an 18+ strength. Over several campaigns and one very expensive purchase he managed to put together the combo of a +5 Belt of strength, Gauntlets of Ogre power and a Hammer of Thunderbolts. This arrangement allows all the bonuses of each to add together. He ended up with some ridiculous strength number of 23 or 24 and some ungodly (actually Norse godly) amounts of damage in combat. For a while there, I was basically playing Thor. The GM eventually got tired of how unbalanced the combat was against his minions and held an ‘intervention’. Apparently my character had pleased the gods with his deeds and was ‘invited’ to join them in their realm. Refusal of their offer would be an insult resulting in immediate smiting, so I decided to retire him as a half god instead of all dead.
You have a nice DM. I would’ve loosed even more ‘godly’ monsters on him. I encourage my players to be uber so I can throw over-level chaos at their feet *laughs evilly*
Had a character almost like that. my DM basically arranged for him to get Trapped, Body and Soul in a staff and thrown across the Multiverse until the next campaign where he wasn’t pimp-slapping the gods.
Heh. When it comes to the really powerful items, in my games, I always remind the players that the items have a history (therefore baggage), a name, and are recognizable, especially if they have visual and/or auditory effects. Many a fun adventure was initiated when the heroes found out that somebody else wanted the item really, really badly, and that someone took the time to study the group and come at them prepared for the encounter.
XD I only did that sort of thing once. Some pretty awesome armor that was haunted by an insane paladin, who gradually took over the wearer and started trying to turn him against his companions…
I like the lion’s head shield for that. Big lion head shaped shield that can make bite attacks. Make it intelligent and the head actually moves as it talks to you. Make it a little mad or just a sarcastic smartass and you have a highlight of the campaign.
Some of the campaigns I have created began with that level of power as starting equipment. It is only a problem if just one character has the power, rather than it being balanced. A good DM can always find challenges for a party.
But if only one member of the group can meet the challenges then the job gets a lot harder. You have to find make-work to keep the weaklings from feeling that they are pathetic and useless. Or stomp on the over-powered one ’til his guts squeeze out of his feet.
Or find a way to power up the weaklings *grins*
See, a good GM’s mind at work!
Mind you, a good stomping is really great therapy. Hell on carpets though.
It is not the gear that makes a character deadly.
It is the ability to use what you have VERY effectively.
Powers or gear that is.
Yeah, last campaign I was in, my drow was not the most powerful or deadly, but he had environmental control abilities. So instead of front line WAGH! or healing teammates, I was creating obstacles and traps mid battle to make the opponents life miserable. I was also an invisibility killer by making a light mist that would touch the invisible enemies and give the sniper a beautiful outline to blast.
You are obviously a good player, one who would be a welcome addition to a group. The problem occurs when you get someone who is capable of turning a pen or a torch into a deadly weapon. And I am not talking a character with deadly training like Riddick. But a player who can do that in any situation with any innocuous props. Believably, in continuity and with consistently predictable lethal results. With ‘average’ gear and powers for a campaign they are formidable players. If they get their paws on the powerful stuff, they become nigh invincible. Without deliberate planned intervention by the games master.
I am one such player. Which makes my job as GM a lot easier, if you consider that ‘it takes a thief to catch a thief’. Fortunately I am also a player who prefers character interaction, party dynamics, and general roleplaying/adventuring. So whilst I use such tactics to survive in a tough situation, and ensure that I have strong options available in an emergency, my characters do not become an overwhelming nuisance in day to day play.
But, of course, there is always the situation where a character feels that Fate is conspiring against him, personally, and decides to hit back. Hard. In which case I have been known to (literally) destroy whole armies of significantly higher level enemies, with access to ridiculously overpowered abilities themselves. To put some numbers on it, for an instance where that actually happened, one AD&D character was somewhere between 9th and 12th level and managed to organise the party to achieve such a feat. His cut of the XP, should the rules allow you to get more than one level, would have taken him to approximately 50th level!
I should note that he was not over-equipped or powered. He mostly only needed access to low level abilities and a single 5th level, standard, spell.
rifts.
Have one on the players or suport npcs be a Chiang-ku and let them treat the party to Drinks and “body art”, or just convert the Superhero ability’s to MDC. It does not take much to create someone who can shrug off direct hits from W80 warheads.
Then give them a Gliterboy for body armor…one that a techno wizard tricked out.
Always kind of puzzled me why in shoot-em up games (like “Medal of Honour”) you could ever run out of ammo: just take the time after killing the enemy to swap out their weapon and keep looting the corpses of any others you come across (it was pretty much always the first thing did, also because their weapons tended to be better than the one you started with)
In Doom you did, and I think as far back as Castle Wolfenstien you could. Doom being the first proper multiplayer FPS.
I love the scene in Last of the Mohecans where the hero is chasing a line of enemies. Using nothing but single shot musket weaponry (and the odd swing of his tomahawk). Yet never having to slow down, not for a single pace, let alone stop and re-load. Kill, Loot-them-before-they-hit-the-floor, Kill, Loot-them-before-they-hit-the-floor… The dude knew how to do it!
If I was Syd,
seeing as the teleporter technology is small enough to fit
within a cybernetic arm, while not interfering with the
normal required activity of said arm
I would ask if the technology is small enough to be
placed inside a bone, replacing the marrow
or if the technology could be contained within a titanium copy
of one of the main bones in the arm,
and said technological copy to then be surgically implanted
replacing the natural bone.
I would say start with the less extreme option of seeing if the tech could be incorporated into the wrist GPS mapper/scanner (that Dave occasionally forgets to draw). Plus, changing the batteries in an implanted device can be a real pain, literally.
or necklace or pendant OR A BAG! (snicker) sydney and her bag o’ tricks!!
Not if it runs off the persons natural bio energy.
Power consumption by that method would be tricky. The human neural network works on the level of microvolts. Have you tried to figure the power-curve for a teleportation device (even with small-weight items to teleport) to run on microvolts? At least in a full cyber-arm, there’s some room for powerful (but small) batteries that would probably have to be changed very frequently.
What I’m saying here is that, if Dave wants to retain even a small level of “reality” & without compromising all reason to maintain “suspension of disbelief,” high-capacity batteries in a cyber-arm might be believable (especially in Dabbler’s case, who might even add a touch of magic to make it work), but teleporters powered by human level neural-charge would not work.
As suggested above, Dabbler might be able to come up with the equivalent of a kind of armband or belt (with room for her quasi-magical high-tech batteries) for Sydney’s use. Even so, it probably wouldn’t be enough for Sydney to teleport anything larger or heavier than small-arms weapons. I’d hate to see the results if Sydney tried to store her orbs someplace that must be accessed by teleporter though. Remember how strongly they’re “attached” to her…
Overall, in general, Dabbler is loathe to allow her technology into anyone else’s usage, even among her own teammates. I guess Sydney will just simply have to do without it…
microvolts? Sure. Not powerful enough for a transporter? Agreed. Powerful enough to send a small signal to a pocket dimension anchored to it, which contains a generator and a teleporter? Possibly
+1 and +1 to the microvault problem. Personally I like it when a technology solves its own problem though, as happens with this one.
Those with access to teleportation technology should not have an energy problem. There is an abundance of energy sloshing around all over the universe. It is just usually in inconvenient places. A rock on the top of a mountain has a lot of potential energy. A star even more. You just need to use your technology to access one of the sources that is easy to convert for your purposes.
Dabbler’s cyber arm might be powered by little drops of the sun, or anti-matter, or succubanium. And, before too much of it is expended, teleport a bit more into the reservoir.
Not to mention the change in energy states that different heights, speed etc that would need some type of energy absorption.
Energy absorption is indeed what we are after. Oh, you think it might be a problem? Only if you have the inferior type of teleportation, which does not allow correction of velocity relative to destination. And if you do, then you need to ensure that the power source is only tapped from somewhere similar enough that the differential will not overload whatever shock absorption capacity you have. Ideally capturing as much energy as you can from the shock absorption too.
I would suggest that as a second function of the orbs poster bag. She is never without it.
why not try for a dna pass coded belt or watch unit instead of replacing working limbs or bones? The contained bone transplant is a very good idea if could be done. the biggest probs with bone transplants are the invasiveness and possible infection later but we’ve seen a doctor who could fast track a sarachi chili eye burn injury into one days heal so the above wouldnt at all be impossible…
a la kamen rider? ( seeing sidney say HENSHIN!!! KAMEN RIDER HALO!!!)
Ahh, but Sydney is a mistress of interpreting body language. It is probably too subtle to be picked up from our vantage point. But a shift here, a change of inflection there, in the tone of her voice and Halo knows the subtext.
“I am a demon. You try and touch my technology and will stuff you, mount you, and have you dangled in a fiery pit in hell for all eternity. Without my toys.”
“Besides which, they also need magic to work and would not function for you if you tried to modify them with technology”
Why do I get this weird sibling feeling from Dabbler and Sidney?
Those two have such complementing personalities it is funny.
DAVE! Regarding about heroes/villains “why not”, it reminded me about web comic where heroes go to little munchy side of things: By The Book
https://bythebook.smackjeeves.com/comics/1454256/pg11/
And I’ve got question too: now that Sydney’s origin is nearly all told (I hope), will you devote own chapters to other major characters as in Spinnerette chapters 0 and 0.1?
Yes I’ll eventually do origins, or at least pepper in bits of their history here and there. Max’s will probably be told 1-2 pages at a time throughout the story. Dabbler will have a mini-arc eventually, but the rest of this day will be focused on getting to the end of the day.
Not sure if it’s a trope yet (never going to that site, ever) but that should totally be the main example of “The less you know, the more you can do (or get away with)”
I don’t know if there’s a term for what you are describing, but a close second would be the ever loved Noodle Incident. (No relation to the FSM, although I’m sure someone has a noodle incident that describes the two meeting…). Heck, I bet at least one of our supers has been Banned from Argo, and in a properly done set of backstories, there will probably be a missed moment of awesome or three. Knowing our artist, a Negated Moment of Awesome will be in the bunch, but not any sort of pasta event…
Heh heh, love that song :D
I know the trope you mean.
I don’t know it’s name, but I couldn’t find it in https://tvtropes.org/
It may be something like “not knowing it’s impossible” or some other thing.
Found it!
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AchievementsInIgnorance
Gravitational Cognizance? (subset of https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GravityIsAHarshMistress)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PuffOfLogic ?
Yeah, it’s been done over at Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, but it refers to how time travel works:
https://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/im-not-gonna-waste-any-time-here-theyre-in-the-future-now
Don’t believe it was so much Sydney being greedy, but more like ‘she saw something cool and wanted to have it’ (but more in a magpie kind of way, ie attracted to a new shiney power than base greed)
To put it another (probably clearer way): she wanted it because it was cool (and it was Hammer Tech Space) rather than simply because she wanted it
Most of the practical women go for the slightly baggier men’s jeans, with the “don’t show my crack” and useful pockets. I hate form fitting jeans(triple that for lowriders). That is not to say that you cannot see my curves, just that I’d rather them not split in embarrassing places because they are vacuum formed to my body cutting off circulation.
Another bonus for tailoring men’s jeans is that they are not made of spandex that shreds after a dozen washings, and are usually tougher, and cost less than the women’s versions.
Being the daughter of a tailor, I’ve watched my Mother take in inseams and shorten hems enough that unless you really pay attention, you’d never know my jeans didn’t come like that.
Oh, and I even know how to make them look girly so that even if you suspected they were men’s jeans, nobody’d believe it because men don’t usually wear ribbons, beads, or enbroidered appliques.
I’d much rather be able to move and yanno, be able to run away from an enemy, or even beat the snot out of any guy that thinks grabbing my rack is perfectly normal.
Until the fashion industry tires of making fake clothes for real women, I’ll get practical clothes and tailor them.
On the subject of taking tech and re-purposing it, Iron Man is about the only one I have ever seen do it(although it is more like he saw it, once, and figured out while beating the crap out of the bad guy how to re-create it, with half a dozen improvements).
He has a room full of armour set up to fight nearly anyone you can think of, and is constantly building more.
If any of you have seen the armored adventures version, in this one he did this before he was a legal adult while his character was building.
Rhodes kept telling him it was a bad idea to do so, as it was changing him, and not for the better.
Having him build those suits before he became a man totally takes away, imo, the impact of him making the MkI out of scrap iron
*offers a high five for another woman who regularly alters clothes in order to be practical*
i aggree about the jeans,,, i hate low riders or form fitters,, but what i wear is almost worst:)
i wear highriders,, with adjustment straps that make it act almost like a corset,,,
+1 for having a mega Shaggy sandwich in your gallery
+1 for likewise having elves (is there an elf-convention going on today or something?)
+1 for provoking a high five from my nominee for unofficial fan club president
*adds up on paws* One, more than one. Oooh, you haz many pluses!
There was a major story arc in the Iron Man comic many years ago called “The Armor Wars”. It was turned into a graphic novel under the same name. The fun starts with Tony Stark taking apart a set of captured power armor to study how it works. Supposedly that was standard operating procedure for him when he wasn’t busy saving the world.
That’s standard opperating procedure for any self-respecting mad scientist/techno-geek when they get their hands on someone elses ‘stuff’
DaveB, just in case there is a new contest on Top Web Comics
I’ve never heard of ANY of those comics… and I’ll bet that we could wipe the floor with the top two there, right now according to the stats shown… “The Demon Archives” at only 217, and “Doodling Around” at only 96…
Crazy Sunshine is a great webic
I would do my duty and vote. Be it once off or once per day, along with the regular TWC vote.
Okay no cybernetic arm what about a cybernetic tail? Detachable of course!
Oops already discussed. Man not used to being around people who think like me.
. . . . we think?
What? And have Sydney get distracted by it and attempt to catch it? o_O
Or hang from the ceiling with it?
Depends on if it is prehensile or not (but knowing Sydney, she would try and hang from a Yorp-tail :P)
Woof!
Of course succubi go to the bathroom. They flush the souls they have collected to hell there.
Also, are we about to hear why Dabbler is using the glamour-form generated for Sydney as her public appearance? She told the reporters she has a different battle form, maybe she’s going to change her public appearance frequently?
dab liked it, thought it neat, and needed one that looked human for the PR circus so hunt someone that could provide viable disguise form quickly or use the one she likes provided by a team member she will have regular access to and is already in
…And that’s why Sanitation Engineer is such a $#|++y job…
That comment about hoarding artifacts reminds me…
Based on the events of the Tomb Raider “Legend” and “Underworld” games, Lara Croft is capable of wielding both Excalibur and Mjolnir. If not for the 2013 reboot, Lara Croft, by way of being able to use those items according to the myths associated with them, would literally be Queen of All England and Goddess of Storms.
Having a goddess for a queen would not implicitly be a bad thing…
well, that would bring a bit of legitimacy to the phrase “it’s my God-Given Right to Rule!” as opposed to just some ancient ancestor that was stronger or more wealthy than everybody else back then and just claimed it for themselves and everyone else just went along with it. until today when we have rulers that literally think that it IS their right to rule because “god GAVE them” the right…
She did.
wait…… storm queen ?? please excuse twitches richelle mead dark swan series is never going to be the same.
I believe the Tabletop RPG “Continuum” had Greys as time-traveling future humans, though I might have the game wrong. City of Heroes had the related idea of aliens (specifically the Rikti) as mutated humans from an alternate reality.
There were several multi-powered villains in Superman and Batman–
Composite Superman-all the powers of the Legionnaires Looked like half and half Superman and Batman but with Brainiac 5’s green skin.
An a guy who had all the powers of the Gods of Olympus. It started with “Z” for Zeus.
The “aliens” as future humans or surrogates for advanced human/insect hybrids was on the latest batch of “Ancient Aliens.”
its obvious, one of the powers of the telepresence orb is hammerspace, or teleportation
Shhh. Only to us illuminati.
(blink blink) Star Control 2? I LOVED that game! There’s a functional modern version of it? What about that Star Control 3 project I read was tabled? O.O
RAPID-CLICK!
(minutes pass)
(guilty presses of the back button later)
Oh, great page! Even if I don’t comment often, I’ve really been enjoying your comic. Keep up the top-notch work! ^_^
Note that Max didn’t actually give an answer to Sydney’s question…
regarding Lare Croft.. no she would not be Goddess of storms, she would be an unlucky gal who would one day have a large redhaired god show up on her doorstep demanding his hammer back :P
We know how Croft would solve that one too. Hammering would likely be involved.
Depending if it was a porno or not would determine what type of hammering.
That would be a bad time to be “the nail that sticks out”…
That made my eyes water and my legs cross.
Redhaired? Since when was Thor ever a Gingerbread?
Read something other than Marvel comics for your Norse mythology, Thor has always been a redhead except in the Marvel Universe.
Wasn’t thinking about Marvel
Because of the second panel i can now imagine Maxima with either a German or Russian accent.
“I never understood why heroes or villains never tried to hoard powers…”
Sylar, from Heroes, did. He was pretty good at it.
How to stop an exploding man…
Need I say more?
There was an episode (or maybe more than one) of Aeon Flux (the original cartoon, not the crappy movie) [spoiler]that had these strange looking ‘aliens’, Aeon’s nemesis/ex-lover wanted to eradicate them, but somehow Aeon (and possibly him) ended up in the future and it turned out they were evolved humans
I remember a cartoon from about a decade ago. Took me ages to find it, since I didn’t remember the name or anything, and I only ever watched a couple episodes of it anyway, but I did find it, and it’s called Xiaolin Showdown. And it’s basically exactly about villains and heroes fighting over a collection of super powered items (called Shen Gong Wu), trying to amass the biggest hoard.
I remember thinking the premise has a lot of potential, but sadly it got the Saturday Morning Cartoon treatment of needing every plotline resolved in 22 minutes. Also it had a kind of Power Rangers-y feel to it. But it had some cool powers and stuff, and sometimes you got to see them being mixed and matched in creative ways.
He who dies with the most toys wins.
He who dies with the most toys…Is still dead.
That is the fate of everyone. Except Achilles. His is loneliness.
Only till I resurrect.
There was a Marvel villain that basically did the hoarding thing through being rich. Alexander something. His deal was that he was nearly as capable as Batman but without a tragic backstory so he just kept winning at everything and trying to find new challenges until one day he’s fighting the entire Avengers with carefully collected super-gear. It wasn’t quite as suicidal as it sounds since he set up the fighting area to separate them at first, though I think some of them managed to find eac hother again by the end– it’s been a long time since I read that storyline.
I can tell you why heroes do not hoard tech. Boredom.
They only need add one piece of tech to their arsenal which gives them overwhelming power to learn that. At which point they either retire to the old heroes rest home for the bewildered. Or they bury that item and pretend they never looted it!
It happened in one campaign I was in. Got hold of a pocket watch that could let you travel in time. In a setting that had no defence against it. Bear in mind that the GM was not sensible enough to keep that out of my paws in the first place, so do not expect any cunning interventions to resolve that from him. Such as having it pick-pocketed.. Every problem we faced could be solved by going back in time to when it was just about to become a minor issue and stopping it from getting worse. Pretty much without even needing to vary that pattern. Campaign over, start new characters.
Long time reader, first time commenter.
FINALLY, someone who shares my rant of ‘wtf is wrong with women’s fashion where the %@#! are all the pockets?!’ instead of shrugging and telling me to just deal with it!
Godsdamn I hate western female fashion.
Solution: Learn to sew. Get really really good at it. Start new fashion trends.
wanna chocolate?
Got closer to reality this time. In the interest of learning without being creepy, here’s a pintrest page of women wearing pants: https://www.pinterest.com/malpne/women-in-pants/
Women’s pants are often cut closer to the crotch, but unless you’re wearing super restrictive/a size too small pants (and some women do) they won’t rub up all the way into the crotch. And then it generally looks bad when they do. Also, the chafing. And the pinching. and the wedgies. And you’re pretty much required to wear a thong which IS a wedgie.
Not all women’s pants are super stretchy, a lot of the tighter ones are actually linen. Also, in a lot of the pants with “fake” pockets, the pocket is there but with a loose seam holding it shut so that they don’t open while on display in the store. You just remove the thread and bam, instant tiny pocket that only fits about a 5 credit cards sized space. And looks like a ugly square on your butt. Not that I ever let that stop me, because damn not having pockets is stupid, purses are far to easy to loose.
But really, I manage to make it through life without a eternal wedgie and with pockets, as do most of the women I know. Who all happen to be crafters and nerds, not fashionistas. Go figure.
Great to hear a more balanced audience. However, you failed to point out the funniest photo on the page you linked!
Even though an insightful commentator, obviously possessed of a good sense of humour, wrote “This is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
:D Easter eggs like that are for people who click on links.
All this talk about hording people’s tech and powers and no one mentions Big Blue himself Megaman? He’s been doing that since game one. I am disappoint.
There’s also the possibility one of the inactive orbs is a teleporter waiting for another spark to activate
“The Hoarder” sounds a bit like Marvel’s Taskmaster. He can copy other folks skills simply by watching them, and carries copies of skill-based weapons, like Cap’s shield.
I remember in the Silver Age Superman occasionally using a super gadget he confiscated from Luthor or some alien menace. For a while the Avengers had a spacecraft in their hanger which originally belonged to a villain. And who *hasn’t* used one of Doom’s time platforms? :-)
There are multiple reasons not to copy someone’s gadgets. One of the most common is that they only work for the person who makes ’em. Or maybe they’re fueled by baby harp seals’ tears. :-)
I can see the problem you are pointing out. Easy enough to set up a tear-extraction production line. But harp seal fur is softest and fluffiest in babies, so looses value dramatically if you let them grow up.
As far as the weapon hoarding goes: Just like Dabbler and Halo, most superheroes have their weapons tethered to them.
Even in some one off cartoon like the “Herculoids” in several episodes Zandor and company would use the ships of their defeated enemies to go off planet when they needed to.
Funny you should mention that “hoarder” concept, because there’s an issue of Deadpool where it’s revealed the Punisher actually DOES steal high tech weapons from all the villains he fights.
He ends up coming after deadpool with the Unicorn’s helmet, Whiplash’s electrowhip, the Green Goblin’s glider, and a bunch of other things.
Deadpool even had to stop and confirm that what he saw was real and not a result of his craziness.
I have a character concept who find things, takes them and adapts them to himself. That includes anyone he has to fight. So if it was in the Batman universe he could have batarangs, Penguin special umbrellas, Joker throwing cards etc. Some things he finds are broken so he figures how they work and maybe improve upon them etc.