Grrl Power #200 – Something finally happens
I enjoy good small talk. My favorite scene in all of Django was where the guys were all talking about how shoddy their hoods were. It added nothing to the plot but it was amusing and gave dimensionality to otherwise flat characters. Same thing in the movie Amadeus, with the guys in Emperor Joseph’s court bickering about what language the opera should be in. It’s all just flavor text. I say this because I could write a dozen more pages of them sitting around the table and just talking, but I figured a few weeks ago, it would be funny to have my first big fight start right on page 200 so people can say “I like that comic but it took 200 pages for anything to happen.” since superhero comics are measured by the fights. Hence the tongue in cheek title for the page. There’s nothing in those small talk pages that won’t work if saved for later, so that’s how we’ll roll. I would like to do a page I thought of that starts with Harem saying “You know what the only thing that sucks about being a girl is?” and Sydney immediately rebutting “The ONLY thing?” I could do a dozen pages on just that.
I may be breaking some rule by turning one of those “wink wink” jokes intended only for observant readers into “the joke” for a page. (By which I mean Harem’s prophetic soda selections.) Even Peggy seems to be in on it now. Maybe there’s a trope named after that sort of phenomenon, but it’s funny how throwaway gags can become a thing. The prophetic soda happened because I needed something to color in on the can on that first page. It was just a “hee hee” moment for myself, but then it happened again, making it a thing. I guess it’s an official unofficial power of hers now.
Get ready for some action. Buckle your… buckley things. Pilgrim hats I guess. You know with all the buckles we attribute to the pilgrims it makes me think they were into hard S&M. Too bad the whole buckle thing is one of those widely held misconceptions. Still, I prefer my image of the pilgrims greeting the natives in gimp suits.
Here’s a bonus mini comic for you guys to celebrate page #200: (You can click to embiggen)
<– I’ll just leave this here, you know, in case you’re curious.
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.
That’s the face of a man who spends way too much time thinking about butt rape.
Pitcher or Catcher?
Neither. Referee.
thats his power : both : at the same time
IMO, more like “whatever he wants”.
You can bet he is a super and so his skin will be tough to penetrate. He would need that to utilize super strength or he would rip off his skin at the first wall smash.
Maybe he just makes sure to stretch before any strenuous exercise?
Wow, this IS on my 20th birthday. I think I may need to buy a print of it or something at a later date, once I actually have money again. But seriously that dude is probably toast. I’m not sensing long term antagonism in his future.
I /would/ totally donate to patreon but lack of a job made it kinda iffy for the time being ;.;
…unless, by “long term” you mean milliseconds.
He didn’t mention which super team would be shortest lived, thus (assuming that’s his behind him) it could turn out to be one of those Pythia-type prophecies.
First off – ARCHON had to see this as a possibility. Sniper teams may or may not be on standby.
Second – We now get to see how lethal super combat is in Dave’s world. Half or better of the ARC team could put a fist through a normal human, and it is (probably) difficult to tell just how hard you can hit a super without killing them.
End result – There will be fatalities. Police try (usually) to capture people… Military people in a combat would default to ‘shoot to kill’.
Yes, I was wondering whether ARCHON will even attempt to pull their punches. This is essentially a premeditated attack by an organized terrorist group on a military team. In our world, the only choices they would be offered would be “surrender” or “die”. The only motivation to keep any of them alive would be to interrogate them about their organization.
I don’t think a sniper team can do anything Max can’t already right now
A .50 caliber round would have to rate at least three dots on Dave’s power scale for body armor. Forcefield I am not so sure, but assume an anti-vehicle round or the equivalent and you would still need a three or better.
How many of the published profiles have defenses that high? Maybe half the team, *if* the sniper can be ignored at three dots of defenses. ARCHON snipers would be using special mods and depleted uranium rounds so I would rate them a four dot threat.
This is, of course, if there are in fact snipers already in place. Any decently competent bunch of bad guys would have checked for this or they deserve what they get.
I just hope it’s not going to be as bad as the supe combat in The Boys.
Congratulations with reaching page 200! Woo-hoo!
Congratulations with three years and seven months!
Congratulations with nothing happening until now!
And congratulations with it *still* being day one! :)
wow it really is still the first day
Nope its still a flashback happening within the first day of the comic. :)
You know, I don’t know if you guys have done the math, but these guys to show up in a group like they have this quickly implies that creating ARCHON as a military force instead of a civilian police group may be a case of “too little, too late.” The fact that they could show up this quickly, and with this little warning, implies that some sort of professional respect and/or a full-fledged leader with very extensive resources has to exist in the supervillian world. Both of which argue for an already existing organization, whether centralized or decentralized, that would be making itself known very, very shortly.
Think about it. This is less than eight hours after the demo. Even on an airplane, it takes an hour to cross Texas. Direct flight time from North Carolina is something like three to four hours on a standard aircraft, depending on where in Texas. Add some time for connecting flights, and it’s pretty easy to spend six hours or more moving from from Charlotte to Houston. So, within two hours, probably no more, somebody has managed to bring together ELEVEN super crooks who want to take a shot at this team, probably all of them ALREADY in the southern half of the country, and gotten them onto planes headed for Texas. So, in short, the supervillian organization everybody has been denying ALREADY EXISTS! It already exists, it has both numbers and organization already, and it is explicitly hostile to any force of law and order arising to police Supers. Which means that it is already planning to openly challenge the United States military for global dominance.
Then, when you consider airfare costs, it gets worse. I did a little checking, and a nonstop flight (which will attract a LOT of attention) from Charlotte to Houston would cost about $500. Times 11 villians, and you’re probably looking at something like $5,500 for one way trips. Plus time for villians, plus potential legal, medical, and other costs, plus, plus, plus…the numbers add up fast. My guess is that somebody just dumped something like $50,000 on getting these guys here in such a way so as to make sure they were untraceable, and completely recoverable. And if this WAS NOT caused by the guy Harem has been spying for, that means that either ARCHON is rotten to the core, or somebody had a spare fifty grand lying around their base, “just in case.” Actually, probably quite a bit more than fifty grand, because people who can throw this kind of plan together this fast ALWAYS have contingency plans, which plans probably cost even MORE money.
That’s the kind of money you’d expect to spend for a war, not for a heist or some kind of criminal/intimidation operation. This is government-class spending, folks. Corporations or the mafia could not afford to pony up this kind of change. Forget “would not without threats.” They COULD NOT pony up the cash to support this–business runs on too tight a margin, except in the very earliest stages of an industry’s emergence, to be able to afford this kind of outlay just to make a point. People joking that Russia, or perhaps China or Iran might be pushing this op might not be too far off, since there’s not too many countries who would be prepared to spend that kind of money, and most of the ones who WOULD, CAN’T.
And that means that this assembly started even before the press conference. These guys might not be trained, I’ll grant you, but that will change. And, regardless, they represent somebody and something that is VERY dangerous.
This…is a problem. One that puts anything Arianna could have imagined to shame.
or a bunch of them can fly/teleport and take others with them. Also the $50,000 your estimating was spent to get them there by conventional means is a drop in the bucket for many major corporations and practically every country on the planet.
Ya… can see some villain nicknamed “Wormhole” (a cringe worthy one not his choice) who can make a ‘here to there’ passage near instantaneous. Would eliminate air/ground travel and make Friday Night Drink get-togethers soooo much easier.
A super with wormhole abilities would probably be one of the most dangerous ones in existence if they knew how to use it properly.
Or even more dangerous if he didn’t know how to control it. Can you imagine opening a portal to outer space or the sun?
Yes. Opening portal to outer space above the opponent and “vacuuming” him through IS classic usage of wormhole powers.
And if they couldn’t stop it? It would drain the Earth’s atmosphere away from it’s gravity well.
Getting sucked through your own wormhole is a classic example of lack of control/practice
Yea, hooking up your house’s plumbing to portals is all well and good. Until it goes wrong. Getting crushed arse-first through your own toilet can really suck.
As in the movie “Ghost Ship” with that lawyer from The Good Wife (and the nurse from ER)
Yeah, but why? Wouldn’t it be more profitable (and rewarding) to simply replace all the major airlines, and then sit back and retire?
Except for that he always has to be designated driver. I wouldn’t trust wormhole guy to pilot his teleportation while under the influence. probably end up in a wall… or the ocean… or space.
I think you are seriously underestimating the amount of money some people have.
Also, 50k, or even 500k, is not goverment level spending. 50k is not even spare change for a first world goverment.
Whoever is leading these guys is somewhere on the top of the underworld. Those guys have Lex Luthor kind of money. They wouldn’t need to fly any of these guys commercially, they have private means of transportation (not a chance in hell you could EVER transport that big guy through commercial means without getting attention).
Either way, this WAS Maxima’s plan.
Draw a big target on yourself to draw out the big threats.
Now instead of having to track them down after they commit a crime (and no doubt murders. I don’t think that big guy has any other use than bashing skulls), now they can round them up right here.
I have no doubt about half of them will escape, but the rest probably be neutralized
Definitely. Some Lex Luthor-ish type would not blink at tossing out 1 Million to each (IF they succeed — gotta keep them motivated!) so 50K is chump change. Same for most governments… they spend ten times that on hiding their graft, cheating, corruption and holiday ‘I was hiking in the mountains’ excursions.
Leaking their current whereabouts to some of the stupider villainous supers out there is probably a bit extreme, even for Arianna. But not for Deus. Until further notice, I blame the ensuing explosion of unconscious wannabe supervillians on him.
@whlindsa. I think you *may* be reading too much into this.
At this point, I’m unconvinced that this is an organized group. Could just be a few villains who got together (Social Media For Supervillainry? Yikes!) who each then called up a couple of buddies/ex-cellmates/relatives/favours.
Also, as I said before, if these guys were properly hardcore (and not just a bunch of posers in tights), they would have just blown down the entire building with everybody in it, then picked off whoever crawled out afterwards. Instead, they just knocked out a hole in the roof and began making introductions. Stereotypical comic supervillain behaviour. So far, anyhow.
Well thought through arguments. Plus counter-arguments by other commentators. One additional point worth considering when looking at this from the point of view that this solely a response to the press-announcement is that it may not be. That may have just been the pre-requisite before open action could be taken by the party behind this.
The specific reasoning behind this is that we know the government have passed laws in setting up ARCHON. Now a certain amount of subterfuge (such as not specifically mentioning ‘super powers’) could have allowed the debates to occur in public. Which may have happened. I do not know for the U.S. but the U.K. have provision for secret parliamentary debates. Not just where the TV cameras are turned off (and they are only pretty recent introductions in the UK anyhow), but where the participants are sworn to secrecy.
If something similar happened in the Grrl Power U.S. government, prior to the press-conference, it would explain the discontinuity of the press being nominally unaware * of supers and yet the fact that it has been addressed in government, in order to form a new branch of the military, to counter such threat.
Either way, there are a large number of people in power who knew the open secret. And what two people know is not a secret anymore. However, the masterminds (or foreign powers) behind this attack would not want to tip their hand and reveal the source of their leak, if they had prior knowledge. So they would patiently wait until the information was public knowledge before striking. But they would not want to loose the element of surprise, so this is absolutely the best time to strike.
But no last-minute assembly and transportation required. They will have been sitting in a local motel stewing, waiting until the cat was let out of the bag, and the “Go!” signal was given to them.
Or, of course, it could have been an impromptu gathering as described in the start of the thread. Not all masterminds would necessarily have US political contacts, after all. This is just showing a plausible alternative scenario.
* We know that the public at large have conversations about supers as if they were real
, but even in our world we can witness people talking about UFO abductions as being real. However the mainstream media do not give credence to it. So prior to the press-conference such talk would have been in a debunking or sceptical tone in the mainstream-media. All this based on Arianna’s speech and the press-corps reaction to it. They were not all “Yea, yea, we know this stuff already”.
That guy look like he’s got the wits of a bar of adamantium, so he might be excused to drop into a room full of damage looking for some collateral. Although Maxima will probably try to keep property damage to a minimum. After all, every ruined steak goes out of her paycheck.
On a different note, Dave, you might need to work a bit more on Goth Harem’s face. In the last three pages, her face looked different from panel to panel, and not much like a Harem at all.
I don’t think militairy field commanders need to pay for the damage they inflict…
They are not cops. They are soldiers
Would anyone want to try making them pay for the damage?
Besides, put a PR spin on things, and the steakhouse could become a busy tourist spot. “First official super team fight area”
Crossing my fingers that my Patreon reward means my face gets to be on a supervillian!
Yup! Sorry I didn’t email you back yet, but I just finished inking the page on which you appear. :) The weird thing is, I had to come up with some powers for you, and… I kind of like them. So it turns out you’ll actually appear on a few pages before an ignominious if somewhat humorous defeat. :)
Well, I say you, but you know, not YOU you, just the villainess based on the photo you sent. :)
I AM SO EXCITED!
Hope you get to become a recurring bad girl (but in a good way) and not just one fo the first casualties
Honestly, I’m just excited to be in the comic. If the alternate universe version of me dies the most ignominious of deaths I shall toast her off with a beer and spam it to all my friends. :)
Defeat doesn’t always mean Death
And we get to see her being questioned in jail a few times too. BTW, you do not get to complain, “I wanted you to shrink my waist. Why did you not increase my cup size? You could have given her more muscular arms and legs. I want to be taller!”
Advertise this stuff!
More people will be interested with bonus rewards that good.
Also people might like to see what you do with a specific power set they like.
Awww~! I thought the burly brute was a bowler-wearer. Bowler hats are cool…
Yea, that guy needs a hat.
A hilariously small hat
Perhaps a propeller beanie?
No, a Fez.
Seriously, that guy would look hilarious in a Fez.
Stick a bowtie on him and complete the look: Complete and total Douchenozzlespittinghose
While he might look better in a Fez there is already a propeller beanie and spare necktie(not a bowtie unfortunately) in the restaurant on a mounted skull on the wall, I think if he’s not killed or totally knocked out of the state someone (Syd) should put those on him once the fight is over and he’s lying there unconcious/semi-concious, possibly missing a limb or 3.
“waiting for the fight to end with a pack of multiple colored felt tips”
and an invitation card for dabs and harem to join the fun. or did you mean you had the felt tips?
I has felt tips all are invited.
A fez on THIS guy would NOT be cool…
Buckles… Some of my fav Futurama quotes:
“Seatbelts to maximum buckling!” – Fry
“Everyone, Buckle your sphincters!” – Leela
Or commonly said by fighter-jet pilots: Pucker factor 10 !
I like the phrase that RAF pilots use, when massively outnumbered. For instance, during the Falklands conflict. “This is a target-rich environment.”
there is no overkill just firing and I’m reloading
You guys are all misreading the situation.
Negotiation comes first. You need to know the name of the person you are about to imprison.
Secondly, Maxima is going to say something like “You are under arrest for the destruction of private property.” (and if this were I-Robot) “Will you comply?”
I doubt these guys are here to talk.
That was a pritty clear attack. Good enough reason to strike back hard
Perhaps. But no one has been hurt yet.
Standard super-hero policy is not to strike first. That way you command the moral high ground when the other guy knocks you to the floor ;)
Intent is enough: he showed intent by smashing a hole in the building, and he showed intent by openly threatening their lives
also they are military more than superheroes. the rules are different
And if you look back to the Maxima-Halo-conversations you will see that they will not act like comic book superheroes.
That just reinforces the point: if you are in the military, and someone takes a shot at you, you are allowed to shoot back with enough fire power that they don’t/can’t do that again
Pointed out in another comic (one that I rather like in spite of the typos and misspelled words).
https://www.magicalmisfits.net/index.php?id=719
and where the distinction between a police action and a war is drawn.
https://www.magicalmisfits.net/index.php?id=716
words do not authorize lethal or near-lethal force even if threats of death, hostiles displaying potential to fulfill that threat such as the entry through the roof can with the proper escalation of force onthe other hand……..
They aren’t really standard super heroes though.
They are soldiers
I have been umming and arrring about whether to counter that, but there is a distinction. A very important one, that has bearing at this very moment at which the comic is frozen. Although they are a new branch of the military, have military ranks and organisation and will doubtless follow military discipline and rules of engagement in warfare, they are nonetheless a police force.
The expectation of society is different for the military compared to the police. In the broadest terms, former are expected to kill a nation’s enemies, whereas the latter are expected to maintain peaceful conduct in society. Which also means that they have as much of a duty to protect the life of somebody who is disrupting the peace, where it is reasonable to do so, without risk to others. Whilst this is also true of the military, if operating in a civilian environment, there is a lesser expectation.
There are many mechanisms involved but, at the end of the day, it is that difference in expectation which, when in a grey area that could either be interpreted as open conflict, or as a disruption of the peace, such as in the final frame above, we could forgive a soldier for defaulting to a combat response. Whereas we would expect a police officer to attempt to restore order and/or go for an arrest, whilst reserving the use of lethal force as a last resort, once all other options had been exhausted. Or if there was a clear and present danger, and no time to attempt other responses.
Right now the guy is talking, not swinging his fists.
Always figured they were Military Police: best of both worlds
Still not quite the same animal. Military police have a different role again. Their job is to police military personnel, rather than civilians (broadly speaking again). Which is harder on one hand, as they are dealing with a population of people specifically trained and equipped to kill. And easier on the other, as such personnel have much more limited rights than civilians. So not quite what we have here. Dave is right to label them as ARC Swat. Just get out a SWAT regulations handbook and it will tell you what they should be doing in the next comic.
Barring the Sydney factor.
. . . . What makes you think anyone is thinking of arrests?
If Maxima has done her job, every member of her team. With Sydney being the one exception, having only just been hired, and thereby being untrained. That is not to say that they would not be allowed to use lethal force (Peggy is right to draw her weapon so that she has the option, if it proves necessary). It is just that they should be thinking about making arrests, and judging whether the risk of doing that outweighs the risk to human life (their own included) which may be involved.
The fact that Peggy’s gun does not have smoke coming out of it is a good sign that she is doing precisely that.
the fact peg could shoot to disable is within her skill level provided the gun can hurt him and keep him hurt unless he has enhanced speed\agility
I am sorry, but the “shoot to wound” is a myth (in fact, it is not even Legal to do this). Even the best sharpshooter, who could hit their mark every time without exception knows this.
Legs contain massive amounts of Arteries and Veins (especially the thighs). Thighs are particularly difficult to apply a tourniquet to.
The stomach is bad also, because that is where the liver, kidneys, (bowls, I have been deer hunting, YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW, tasty meat though, just had to throw the bad part out). Also, if guts are falling out, special procedures need to be follow for bleeding control.
Arms are better then legs, but even harder to hit.
Most law-enforcement, military, and civilian conceal-carry people know that you do not try “trick shots” when lives are on the line. Aim for the Center of the Chest.
*nods* And then there’s the little problem these days where if you don’t shoot to kill, and the shootee lives, they are prone to suing.
Even if the shot doesn’t kill them, it will still (in most cases) stun/slow them down if not knock them off their feet (like when `Les played ‘catch’ with Dabbles’ railbow)
Standard procedure is to:
1) Fein interest in the baddie to get him talking about his master plan. You may get some good intel.
2) Pretend to be interested in joining his group and try to seduce him (leave this one to Dabbler)
3) If it looks like there is going to be a fight and they may gang up on you, insult the leader so he utters the obligatory phrase “Stand back, he’s/she’s mine!”.
4) Get him to challenge you to compete in some contest that he thinks is rigged against you.
5) Hired guns on their team are in it for the money. Ask what they are being paid and offer to triple it.
Peggy, that is the only appropriate reaction for a gun expert. the next step is a called shot to the eye. even if you don’t crit, so long as you hit and he doesn’t have some kinda ridiculous healing factor he’ll be down and you can move on to the other’s outside the building.
Haha, you got killed by a normal
In the terms of GURPS Supers RPG, I think both Peggy & Math would be considered as “Super-Normals.” Totally, mainstream human but with skills or talents that would be hard to distinguish the difference from actual powers.
Math has near super like reflexes and skills though, there would be atleast some dignity in getting your ass handed by him.
But if he got knocked out by a simple gun, he’d never hear the end of it
Yeah, it’s probably going to be a long time before Math hears the end of how Sydney swatted him upside the head with one of her orbs earlier. To be fair, it was the first time he met Sydney & had no idea what her powers are or what her orbs could do. He made up for it afterwards, though…In an appropriately humorous fashion.
Humourous but not mean-spirited
not eyes shoulder or knee as they are less likely to be fatal and equally likely to remove the recipient from the fight plus easier targets.
Oh dear lord I hope Sydney’s “never sneak up on me” instincts kick in right here and this guy gets an orb to the face before anyone else can even react.
She activated HEADDESK reprogramming prior to the press conference. Her initiative bonus is still there… she just has a 50% chance to hold her first action.
I can totally picture Maxima slapping him in the face so hard his neck breaks, without even looking at him.
“Stuff happened holly S&^%” I think he means congratulations on reaching 200 “No I…wait yes…maybe…”
Happy 200 Dave! Love the mini-comic, well both of them really, can’t wait for thursday!
It is thrusday :P
I think you mean monday
The look on Kenya’s face in the last panel is terrifying. Somebody is going to be Very Badly Hurt.
That should now become a common achronym in the comic: VBH = Very Badly Hurt
“Yeah, he got VBH in that last scuffle.”
“What was his VBH rating?”
“7.4, maybe?”
“On the Richter scale?”
“Yep. King-punched right in the face.”
Or at least here in the comments XD
That is (almost) an actual legal term in the UK. Theirs is GBH where the G = grievous, so Grievous Bodily Harm.
Of course they are going to attack where there are civilians –read: hostages against Max being able to go all-out on them. That said, someone should be trying to take Sydney out early to keep her from using the force field. That someone is probably going to be the second person be flung out the hole.
Personally I am hoping for a Naruto special: “A thousand years of pain!” with the Lighthook.
Think Proctologist Sneak Attack…
Well Impalement is an old and nasty form of execution. She could do a “Through and Through” job on him and go in through the out and out through the in. But that’s really not her style. Much more likely she will grab the guy and do a Hulk v Loki thing. Maybe use him to batter the next contestants up in “Whack a Supervillain”.
I hope if it does happen that way.
The one she hits is coming up thru the floor.
“PING” 100 points
I notice a lot of people are assuming this is going to be a real fight…
And a lot of people are assuming that Sydney will fight competently…
^_^
Even in the bank she fought competently. She took down a natural-born superhero using nothing more than untrained martial arts! What she is is unorthodox, not incompetent. However much Math might pretend that he let her do it, she took down one of the world’s best martial artists. Yes, beginner’s luck had something to do with it. But her strategy was sound enough that luck could come into play.
Luck isn’t the same as competence. Also, the bank didn’t end so well, what with that bullet Max had to catch. Ditto with Math, given the rematch. Also, the cast page has Sydney at a gimped power level because, as her profile says, “there’s a large gap between power and application.”
It’s probably going to be a long time before her contributions to the action scenes consist of anything beyond huddling behind her shield and giving the others advice.
I did not claim otherwise. But luck is tied up integrally with competence. The incompetent inadvertently maximise the chances both of bad luck, and an enemy’s competence overcoming them, whilst minimising the opportunities that good luck might bring them. Either failing to spot it, when it comes, or not optimising circumstances to allow it to happen in the first place. Whereas a competent person will do the reverse.
However, competence has to be judged according to the training and capabilities of the individual involved. You need to compare like for like. In both the examples I cited, Sydney behaved competently if erratically. She was far more effective than, say Suzy News, would likely have been in the bank. Assuming she has no self-defence training either.
Of course Suzy opted for the non-erratic response of keeping her head down, and waiting for the police. But that is not the issue, once fighting kicked off, Sydney made a good attempt, given her untrained skills. Against an armed robber, the odds of it going well are remote. Which is how it turned out. But she did take out her share of the opponents!
Dang, you have high expectations. I would hate to be an employee of yours come review time! You are seriously expecting a comic-shop owner, with zero combat training, to win against one of the very best martial artists in the world? Yes, she had the option of raising shields and blasting, but she kept to the spirit of the event, and restricted herself to just using the orbs like fists. Another erratic choice, but competently executed none-the-less. I certainly could not have gotten through her whirling orbs, and I have had martial arts training! But Math has a heck of a lot more. She was simply outclassed.
Maxima: 9 Halo: 6 (including adjustment for inexperience). So, untrained, Sydney has 6/10ths the power of Superman* ! Whilst what you suggest is one of the options available to her, I really do not see that it is the only realistic one. And, given her erratic precedents, I would be betting on her doing ‘something unexpected’.
* When she can freely use her superpowers, which she could not at the bank and chose not to against Math, because it was a fisticuffs duel. She has some similar constraints here. Especially given that Maxima has only just briefed her against ill-considered use of the PPO. But she did not ban Sydney from acting pro-actively. To the contrary she gave some advice on how to go about it!
I’ve always thought Luck would be an AWESOME superpower. Depending on how far you can take it. With incredible luck Sydney could take out Maxima with one shot.
Oh yea, totally. Piers Anthony gave that power to one of his characters. Who seemed a comic fool, like inspector Clouseau. In actuality he ranked amongst the most powerful of arch-mages. Absolute control over luck makes you invincible against anyone who does not have a similarly overwhelming power.
But give it to someone in a super world, with the usual rationales like ‘oh he got his power being hit by lightning in a fluke accident’, and his powers could go up geometrically!
He need simply hang around nuclear reactors, wormhole experiments, anti-matter containment fields and so on. He will be like a weirdness magnet in places like that. Everything that can go wrong would go wrong. In precisely the right way to bombard him with un-natural energies, to grant him yet another power!
Marvel did that: Domino. In one issue, she charges a number of prime sentinels (the human cyborg ones) with a ball of explosive in one hand. The next scene she’s in is her waking up in sentinel custody with minor scrapes and bruises and “A bump on the head that you couldn’t even call a minor concussion.” (X-Force #68)
You do realise her first words will be “you are under arrest”, his response will trigger hilarity/chaos/one huge hole !
military POLICE, not the regular “looks like a big bad, have an orbit” kind of team.
I love Anvil’s look. Max just looks annoyed, but Anvil … looks like the thoughts going through her head include, “Just when I had a chance to relax.” as well as “my new outfit!” followed by, “excuse me, do you know how much this blouse cost me?” followed by a low blow to said idiot who disrupted dinner.
I can think of about a thousand ways this is going to go down, and none of them end with that guy conscious.
Conscious? He’ll be lucky if he ain’t singing soprano (or higher) after this incident.
I do believe you are thinking of Castratto. That’s the pitch you get when you destroy a boy’s nuts before his voice breaks. (In Rome the priests would booze and drug the boys, have them naked in a bathtub and fondle the lad’s nuts as they slowly crushed them) Done afterwards doesn’t work.
They were considered some of the best singers of their times.
Not that you need go back to Ancient Rome. You can listen to an audio recording of a castrato.
I wasn’t talking about ancient Rome. I mean Rome as in the capital of Italy.
Yes people, it is official, Catholic priests have fondled boys until they wore the kid’s nuts off.
Oh my, I only saw this comment quite a long time after it was posted — You are wrong, Corruption. Castrati were “created” until roughly the end of the 19th century by specialized barber-surgeons. The bathtub thing was real (to relax the poor boy), the boys were given laudanum and quite a fair amount of liquor to dull them, and the castration was carried out by means of your old-fashioned knife. By a barber-surgeon, the only ones allowed to do it.
Priests had nothing to do with the procedure. Saying that “Catholic priests have fondled boys until they wore the kid’s nuts off” is false and misleading. It was already sad enough to have lots of kids being castrated for music’s sake; no need to add sensationalistic and demonstrably false things to it.
The Catholic church was one of the main “clients” for castrati as singers, indeed (it had to do with not allowing women to sing in church choirs and stuff), but the *most* important client for castrati were the kings and nobles of the time, as well as some of the top composers of the era. Handel wrote his most famous arias for castrati (who were usually given the “heroic” parts of whatever operas were being written), and the most famous of them all (Farinelli) spent most of his life as official singer for the court of Philip V of Spain.
As an addition: No, you won’t develop a high voice if you are castrated in adulthood after your voice has dropped. As a second addition: The main reason why castrati disappeared during the 19th century was that they were slowly going out of fashion. This is exemplified by the fact that in 1748 pope Benedict XIV tried to ban the practice of castrating children. *The population basically rebelled against that, because they wanted to hear their music*.
Also, the last great operatic castrato (Giovanni Battista Velluti, 1781-1861) made his fame and his career… *IN ENGLAND*, a place not particularly famous for being very pro-catholic in the early 19th century. He also was a prodigious Casanova who had countless affairs with women of the high society, whose husbands apparently couldn’t understand that a castrato’s genitalia are in working order. The ladies were extremely happy to get in affairs with him because they could be sure of not ending up getting pregnant out of that.
So, TL;DR: The whole “castrati” thing was already fucked-up enough to not need the addition of fake, misleading and false statements.
My mistake, not the end of the 19th century, but roughly the middle — the practice was banned by the government of the newly unified Italy in 1861 (it helped for it to take that, unlike in 1748, the castrati were going out of fashion).
How many leave him alive, and not needing major surgery or therapy?
If Sydney gets him, he’ll probably need both surgery (due to Sydney’s relative inexperience) AND therapy (because, well, Sydney is Sydney, after all).
+1 !
BV: I swear by yoda I will never do it again!
syd: swear to grathaaa….. wait did you say yoda?
I like Daphne’s updated freckle distribution. It feels more natural. I’m not sure how long they’ve been that way, so maybe that means they’re less distracting or something. Of course now I’m checking to see if they’re in the same place in every panel. Something has to fill that hole in my brain.
As demonstrated in the last panel, it looks like Anvil’s shelf is big enough to hold a whole lotta crumbs…
I feel Maxima’s comment to Anvil is out of character as a superior officer.
Also, it isn’t the first day Anvil has that/those there.
Maxima is the commanding officer, but Kenya is a fellow officer and a friend. Plus, due to that association, Max knows whether she would find it offensive or not, and can judge her jokes or non-pc comments accordingly.
It would be inappropriate to say that to one of the ranks, but there is lassitude for non-pc behaviour at the officer’s mess-table. Which, technically, it is, despite being in mixed-company. And things are a lot more relaxed in this unit. The culture and operational needs of a particular unit can have a lot of bearing on the day-to-day behaviour within it.
also the way max said it was supposed to be discrete to avoid embarrassing her in front of noncoms/enlisties such as commenting on breezes to point out missing head gear.
Also, they could also be currently off-duty, which I believe relaxes the regs.
Anvil’s shelf doesn’t seem to be big enough to hold the crumb that came down through the ceiling…
Welp, somebody just signed his own arrest warrant. Shouldn’t have done that to Anvil’s blouse.
Wait, is he talking about ArcSWAT or his own team?
OH, sudden theory! :O What if Dave just WANTS us to think this big muscle guy is going to get punched thru the ceiling, but he actually has some not-obvious power that is going to give him some sort of advantage, and that’s why he was sent in first? :D
You are obviously correct.
He could have the power to fix his relative location in space* (not time) so that no force on earth could move him.
*(Note that if he were truly to “lock his location in space” the planet {as it is part of the expanding universe} would leave him behind near instantly)
Consider also, If he is a super strong individual, how big of a MULTIPLIER do you think having that much physical mussel would give you over someone muscled like Anvil?
That ‘fix his relative location in space so that no force on earth could move him’ thing greatly depends on structural cohesion of the surface he is locking onto (ie, if he is locked onto the floor, just pck up the entire building and toss it into a volcano, after evacuating it of everyone except ‘Les)
A. K. A. The Blob from Marvel.
Given that Maxima demonstrated super-strength and power blasts on TV, any *competent* counter would have to have some sort of energy absorbtion ability (“Anvil + energy bolt absorbing” type) or insane healing (Wolverine style). That or he’s a masochist.
May he has both super healing and is a masochist? That might help explain his stupidity.
We should not forget the rest of that team behind him. He may be buffed to hell by all their powers. Sent in to soak up the hero aggro, and confident of his own safety, due to the host of protections his allies are granting him. And clearly able to dish out his own fair share, looking at the state of the roof.
Or he may just be a decoy.
hmmmm..could the big guy with the funky hair be the shadow guy from box #5 episode 186?
The grin made me think he was panel 1 guy, but he lacked the face…thing (scars? tattoo? mystic rune?).
Current super-silly theory based on the guy’s super-silly hairdo: This guy will turn out to be invincible until the water’s knocked out of the indent in the top of his head. Maybe also knockdown-resistant too, just so he isn’t a lame encounter.
Kappas represent!
I don’t think that is water. He has blue hair so I just think it is the stubble from a shaved head.
My guess is if a guy with blue hair married someone with red hair the child would have purple hair.
Wait a minute….. Daddy!!
I don’t think it’s water either – I expect DaveB would have made it more obvious (and possibly included some other kappa reference, like a shell). I just think it would be really cool.
Peggy’s pulling out her gun, or as I like to call it, “Sydney-kryptonite.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589
You WOULD have to link me to one of the biggest gigglefit-inducing pages of the comic…
This is still #1 for me.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/370
So many giggles!
That IS a good one, I’ll grant, but the first one still ranks higher on my list.
This is my fav but that just maybe because I used to antagonize my sister till she reacted almost exactly this way.https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/250
And you survived? How many limbs do you have left?
Well she was a lot smaller than me and her anger was short-lived. Although I did once make her so angry she threw a whole place-setting at me. Can’t imagine what she thought the spoon would do to me. :)
Ahh, you missed her subtle philosophical point then. There was no spoon.
There is only SPORK.
Does one of the bad guys in shadow have spider hands?
No, just fingers
His superpower is fingerhands. His superhero name: Bob.
Mmmm. His Overconfidence goes to 11.
So. He’s either very very stupid, doing his level best to get a lot of energy directed at him, or just very very hard to hurt. So far, there is no real evidence of any of these three possibilities, although ‘stupid’ definitely has appearances in its favor.
Whatever would he use a whole lot of energy for? Maybe he can do Anvil’s trick of getting stronger the harder someone beats on him?
I don’t want the first fight to be a total pushover scenario. But between Maxima and Halo it’s sort of hard to imagine them winning the fight at all without winning it very very quickly and decisively; those power suites do not make long-drawn-out brawls likely.
Ghu knows what the villains have got though. Toss somebody able to teleport his buddies around into the mix, or an invisible speedster or something, and you could still have an interesting fight.
I think you’re all wrong…
Sydney, HUNGRY… and surprised.
I wouldn’t be too surprised to see her go ADD spastic on them and the next few pages being how she deals with each one. And just how surprised they are that the weakest looking member is /has BEATEN them / captured them. At the very least she will lighthook him and throw him back at his friends or raise her shield to hopefully protect the vulnerables / servers etc.
My thoughts are that the very next panel is Sydney calling “Dibs!!” And then, Sydney making this guy an object lesson of how the Molestorb really works.
Put the “Fear of Orb” into the rest of the villains and school her co-worker not to taunt the vegetation.
Dang it,
“….not to taunt the vegetarian.”
I wouldn’t taunt the vegetation either…who knows if there’s a shapeshifter in that mix.
Aha! You have cracked it. The dumb brute is just a decoy. The deadly attack is coming from… the baked potato!
Nope. It’s the broccoli. Don’t you know it’s really an alien lifeform? Not native to Earth?
NO! It will be the TOMATOES!
“ques theme song from “Attack of The Killer Tomatoes”
*headdesks and hides* My brother got so obsessed with that movie in HS that it became a prime annoyance of mine…he was watching it 2-3 times a week minimum…
Perhaps there was a little sibling rivalry going on because part of the theme song talks about them eating his sister.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYt0dpeyAU8
Possible. But he’s always been prone to watching something to death and then not looking at it for years.
I used to annoy my sister with the song “Short People” and woke her up once with Pink Floyd’s “Time”.
Songs aren’t as likely to annoy me. Substituting the words to hint broadly at my crush on the other hand…well, I was a teenage girl.
Vegetation works!
uhhh…. Anvil… debris shelf!!
Someone needs to give Sydney an energy drink, only good things could happen from giving her not-lethal amounts of caffeine,and vitamin B, and who knows what else.
No… no… NO… These supervillains are IDIOTS! Why are they attacking all the heroes at the same time? Who does that? They’re attacking them when they’re all together, and aren’t even doing it properly! Who… what!?
It’s like this: you can look up so much information about your local police. You can get names, and from there it wouldn’t be hard to find addresses or relatives. Cops don’t have secret identities, yet you never hear about criminals hunting cops. Why is that?
Because it’s just plain dumb! The moment you even hint at messing with one cop you end up having the entire state on your ass and you’re dead faster than you can say “cop killer.”
And here we have the dumbest of the dumb making a very poor attempt at attacking some of the most powerful god-like beings on the planet. Why? What does that accomplish? Where’s the profit?
And not only are they doing the wrong thing, they’re doing it the wrong way! Most of Archon are invincible. It’d be like if I tried punching a brick wall: all sound and fury signifying nothing!
Probably the most successful villain I’ve ever seen in comics history is from Batman: Impostors. Winslow Heath murders hundreds of innocent people, escapes Batman, and even gets Batman to realize he’s a tool. (Honorable mention for Ozymandias).
Yup, these guys are toast. Yorp, any thoughts?
I’m not Yorp, but perhaps the First Bank of Evil (Points if you get the reference) decided the threat that this “hero” team represents needed to be put on a scale of 1-10.
Theory #2: The First Bank of Evil are the people in the middle of that villain reactions.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1189
It makes sense if they’re trying to go the “surprise superweapon” route. The villains know all the heroes’ unclassified powers, but there’s no information going the other way. We have eleven unknown quantities (plus anyone out of sight or invisible), who probably know each others’ abilities and have planned out the best way to combine them.
The heroes have no idea what to expect – if they knew to expect telepaths or speedsters or whatever, they’d come up with appropriate defences. But for the duration of a single fight, the villains have the upper hand. Naturally, the next time these two groups meet, the outcome will be a lot more clear (hopefully the good guys will have the advantage), so I can only conclude that they intend to make sure there won’t be another fight.
i.e. these guys are shooting to kill.
… OR they’re sending their most gullible lackey in first so they can get some idea of how ARC-SWAT behave in a combat situation. And the other 10 are going to run away if they determine that they can’t handle the fight.
If they know all of Max her powers, they would NOT attack a group with her in it.
They’d first try to isolate and kill other less powerfull memebers. Or try to attack Max while she is alone.
And it isn’t like they are attacking Ironman while he’s out of his suit (thus weak).
This more like trying to shoot Superman while he’s at work. He’s not going to be any weaker.
Actually, attacking Superman while he’s out of costume is safer because he has to worry about his identity. These guys do not.
Also they already threw away the element of surpise. Maxima, being the competent military officer she is, is probably already counting shadows, and forming a stratagy
The cops and the mob have an agreement. The mob doesn’t put contracts out on cops in retaliation for doing their jobs, and the cops don’t go just killing every single member of the organization, and possible the families as well.
Mobsters have gotten into trouble for trying to break this agreement.
And there you make a very good point. Every era where new technology or tactics changes the face of combat introduces an unknown imbalance. One side has an advantage, but is not necessarily aware of how to counter a similar attack against themselves. As a result of which, combatants can often fall back on tribal ritualistic combat codes. Or invent more complex ones such as codes of chivalry.
Super hero/villain codes of conduct are largely arbitrary. But the mobster one you cite is a close real-world one to what might inspire such to realistically evolve. In this case the villains do not want to get labelled as mass-murderers, so do not just set off a big explosion. Plus, if they can get the heroes to swing the first punch, then they are technically reacting in self-defence. Having only actually inflicted property damage and made an implied, but not direct, threat.
In such a scenario, they are hoping to beat the heroes (otherwise why would they be there), but are playing it safe, in case they are over-estimating their abilities. On one hand they are playing with the codes of conduct that exist in their society (like a gun-fighter trying to get the other guy to draw first), and on another they are, consciously or unconsciously initiating an opening gambit in ritualised rules of combat for the new age.
Which can actually work. Even if it does not match the precise police code of conduct or legal guidelines, if the villains and heroes can come to a working understanding that allows them to face off, without there being the fallout of all-out-to-the-death warfare, then it can benefit both sides. Which means, in the long run, that harsh punishment will be levied by both sides on anyone who breaks ‘the code’.
A real-life warfare analogy being that in WW1 troops on both sides were issued with serrated bayonets, designed to inflict maximum damage and make healing of the wound almost impossible. An informal code grew on both sides of the trenches that you ‘lost’ any such weapon. Prisoners who were caught in possession of them were shot on sight. A common alternative was to sharpen the entrenching tool. Which turned out to be a lot more effective (in getting a clean kill) in close quarters, than a bayonet.
Officers turned a blind eye because they did not like to see the unnecessary suffering those weapons caused. And did not want to suffer from such themselves. So sought to get regular bayonet replacements. As a result of which, even without an international treaty, the more effective weapon fell out of common use. Just because of codes improvised on the battlefield.
This reminded me of the anime “The Last Exile.”
Enemy ships (both armmed and armored like a WWII battleship) would broadside each other at point blank range and have troops of MUSKETEERS (yea, guys with rifles) shoot at each other.
The side with a higher % of casualties lost the engagement.
The winning captain would offer the other side a chance to surrender.
IF the enemy refused, THEN they would use ship to ship weapons on each other.
So they never started combat with the most effective weapon. It was ritualized combat, and it made me think about how different cultures wage war differently.
@Yorp – My own understanding of the ww1 ‘serrated bayonet’ story is that the whole thing was a grotesque over-reaction, to put it mildly.
Basically, the engineers of one army (I think it*might* have been the US, but am not certain of this) were being equipped with a new-design bayonet/machete that had a serrated edge on the back. This meant it could be also be used as a saw – very useful for an engineer in the field. Then some other parties started flipping out over some lurid news claims about the new item, with the results you mention.
Apparently, it was OK to burn a man alive with a flamethrower, snuff him out with poison gas, blast him to bits with explosives, or disembowel him with an ordinary bayonet – but putting a serrated edge on that last was beyond the pale. It wasn’t even meant for frontline service, basically just a simple weapon that was also a multi-use tool.
Then too, there were also major strictures against the use of incendiary ammunition. Aircraft could use them if specifically attacking balloons and the like, but pilots needed written permission from their COs because, if captured, they could otherwise be executed for this.
Then too, bayonets were not very effective weapons by the 20th century. If they ever were at any time.
Sure, they look kewl in parades and, if a bunch of guys charged with them at you, they would LOOK bad-ass – but soldiers were usually better off using their guns as actual guns, with possibly some rifle-butt use as necessary and their issued bayonets retained as basic knives.
Bayonets were generally a ‘last-ditch’ weapon, and always heard that the serrated edge was added by the trench-troops (the same as sharpening the shovels)
That does happen too. But at the other end of the scale. Namely when the codes of conduct have broken down. If the other side have committed atrocities, you do not just want to kill them. You want them to suffer long and slowly, with no chance of recovery. A serrated bayonet is just a very personal way of making such a point.
They are using pretty poor tactics, yup. Either you do not engage the police or you do so in order to win. The latter is not an option that any regular villain will win. Not using straight out fighting tactics. Maybe guerilla tactics and mis-direction though. Which could be happening here. All may not be what it seems.
But it could just be a dumbass who has no tactical planning.
If I were to engage a group like Archon, I would realise it had to be done in earnest and with devastating effect. Clearly they are not worried about collateral damage, or they would not be attacking in a restaurant. If operating with similar consideration, my opening action would be to use a massively devastating attack like an explosion. To kill as many of the squishies (such as Sydney and Math), before anyone even realised the fight had kicked off. Once they are alerted to danger, they can activate defences or take evasive action to avoid any attacks.
Another consideration that I haven’t seen anyone comment on.
A Xanatos Gambit.
Send in Hired Muscle. Tell them to beat ArcSwat.
If the Hired Muscle beats ArcSwat, I Win.
If the Hired Muscle fails, I’ve seen their tactics. I Win.
If the Hired Muscle are captured, they have a personal reason to beat ArcSwat, ala Revenge. I Win.
If any member of ArcSwat is injured, their combat effectiveness is reduced. I Win.
In short, as a Criminal Mastermind, this overt and seemingly stupid use of supers actually works in their favor. So long as the Hired Muscle doesn’t have a Name or a Motiff backing them to give ArcSwat a Direct Target.
I like the cut of your jib, Kent. But the gambit hinges on the mastermind not revealing his identity in some way. If they capture and interrogate Hired Muscle it potentially could lead back to the mastermind.
And the tactics either way are just bad. Yorp is right: a proper blitzkrieg would start with an explosion that would kill Math, Halo, and anyone else that isn’t invulnerable. Then separate Maxima from the group using hostages as human shields.
But this is a strategy that still ends with the villains losing because it never works. It’s too blatant, too open, and ARC is too well-equipped to handle it.
“Why are they attacking all the heroes at the same time?”
Because Maxima baited them. Y’know, that whole explosion thing you think marks her as a power-hungry sociopath. This is exactly the contingency she was anticipating, although perhaps on a more rapid schedule than she’d have expected. By challenging the egos of people who believe themselves nascent gods, she was able to get them to come out of hiding and directly at the people who could take them, rather than taking out their ambitions on the general populace. Tell me again how bad an evil it makes her.
Look, no one is saying that they’re smart… but it does take some deliberate understanding of human psychology and how it reacts to abnormal amounts of power to set up a challenge like this, and a sociopath who has trouble conceiving of other people as people would have difficulty with the concept.
+1
And it turns out that all this apparently inconsistent behaviour actually makes perfect sense, by the end of the arc. Have faith in Dave.
Sometimes the whole point of a threat or an instance of trash talk is to get someone dangerous to come at you stupid, rather than coming at you smart on their own terms, because it makes them less dangerous if you’ve tricked them into not thinking things through.
They’re attacking like idiots because they got called out by Maxima. This is EXACTLY the scenario she was trying to engineer. She wanted the hazards coming at her, and at her team, not at the civilians in disparate uncontrolled and unpredictable events.
Okay, so in four years I forgot I posted, and got redundant. Mia culpa.
Two words: Collateral Damage.
It will happen.
Way, way, -way-, too many badguys there.
One of the things said at the press conference was that the incidence of criminal behavior among supers was no higher than among the normal population. In the US right now, one person in 32 has a criminal record. The population stands as just under 320 million. That would be 320 supers for the entire US, and out of them, about 10 would be criminals.
Every single supervillain in the US showed up at the steak house just hours after the press conference that announced the founding of Archon?
I’m betting a small number, under 10, of real super-powered goons. The rest are street scum and mooks. And someone knew about the grand unveiling before the fact. He’s had time to gather or lure potential rivals into position for Arc SWAT to do a mass wipe-out. Clear the board for his grand plan.
I totally agree with your sentiment. Two points though. One is their estimates may simply be wrong. Two is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The instance of criminal behaviour, amongst those who gain super powers, may be considerably higher than in the general populace.
I would not feel the urge to sneak in and look in the girls’ changing rooms in a gym. But if I had a super power and thought I could get away with peeking? Still probably not. However many would, and, unless I faced that situation, I do not know if I would give into the temptation myself. Anyone doing so though will have become a criminal. And once you have taken the first step down that route, the others become easier. Not to mention the possibility of trying to cover up such crimes if they get exposed.
My numbers were off a little bit. In https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/955 we are told that the incidence of supers is higher in developed nations, and there might be as many as 600 supers in the US. That would mean the total number of supervillains in the nation would be around 20.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/962 makes the point that “there is no correlation between having powers and increased rates of sociopathy or any other deviant behavior.”
So to address your first point. “The estimates could be off.”
That is true, but if so, why bother giving them in the first place? From a writer’s point of view, the purpose of the Press Conference was to give out a bunch of information to establish the setting in a way that wouldn’t bore the readers to death. Telling lies at that point would be -terrible- writing.
My estimate of the percentage of criminals in the populace could be off. I went with the highest reasonable estimate I could find, the percentage of the population with a criminal record. 1 person in 32 has a criminal record. According to FBI data, for 2010 (data for more recent years is not compiled yet) the number of arrests accounted for 1 person in 23, and if you want to pay attention to only violent crimes, you are looking at just one in 248.
In point of fact the most accurate measure would be to go by violent crime statistics, since anyone who would actually show up for a fight with Arc-swat is by definition a violent criminal. Out of a possible group of 600 supers, that would be 2.
I’d say that as many as 20 supervillains for the entire US is a generous estimate. There should be far fewer than that. To have as many as 11 of them show up at the steakhouse just hours after the press conference is Way, Way, -Way- too many badguys.
Now, your second point, that people who have powers might show a higher incidence of criminal behavior. Aside from the fact that Arianna specifically said that they do not, consider this:
The aphorism “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is talking about a specific -kind- of power. It is talking about political power, the ability to make other people do what you want them to do. It does not apply directly to most super powers.
The incidence of criminal behavior does not rise based on people having abilities or options not available to others. If you buy a car, you have a good deal of power people who do not have cars lack. One of the ways you could use this power is to ram the car into people you dislike. Does that mean people with cars become corrupt? No. Just having a power which could be used in illegal ways does not mean you will use it to break the law. That decision is entirely a function of the sort of person making the choice, not the presence or absence of the power itself.
Having the ability to get away with breaking the law is not something exclusive to supers. Normal people are often presented with opportunities to break the law in ways they believe they could get away with. In point of fact, not many take those opportunities. The majority of people are honest. Were it not so, society could not function.
“Power Corrupts” came not just from political power, but it is used as a warning that when power is given to someone that sets them apart from their peers, there is a tendency to believe oneself better than ones peers. The greater the authority and disparity between the two, the higher the chance of corruption.
Superpowers inherently set people apart from their peers, and thus would likewise have a corrupting influence. I would argue that because of this tendency, their would be a higher percentile of people becoming criminals due to it. Having a car, something very commonplace, does not set someone apart.
“If you truly wish to see someones character, Give them power” look at what they do when they know they can avoid consequences. In psychological surveys people when confronted with a scenario where they had 100% immunity of any moral, spiritual, or ethical consequences to their actions will openly state nine times out of ten that yes, they would break the law. And one out of ten are lying.
Almost no one gets tickets for j-walking, so everyone does it. It is still illegal due to the danger it presents to pedestrians who could cross on a ‘bind’ section of road, or the drivers who might crash trying to avoid them. Speeding is illegal. Running a stop sign or a traffic light. Nonviolent breaking of laws happen all the time, so don’t pretend like everyone is doing that they are supposed to.
Aside from the law, most people do not harm people for two reasons, Empathy and Damnation. People do not want to be hurt, so they do not go around harming others as that could end up with them getting hurt. Social Contract theory covers this for the most part. Many also believe in an afterlife and act in a manner generally prescribed by their faiths doctrines.
One way or another most people do NOT believe they will get away with something. THAT is how society functions.
The ability to compel obedience via threat of negative consequence is “power” in the political sense of the term. This form of power has, historically, been shown to have a corrupting influence. The aphorism about it also warns that the corrupting effect is directly proportional to the lack of checks and balances on those with political power.
Having powers, in the comic book sense, is not in and of itself a corrupting influence. That’s why comic books have super -heroes- as well as super villains.
I disagree with the contention that feeling set apart from one’s peers, even feeling superior to them, causes corruption. People born with red hair are set apart from their peers. People who are above average height, or with greater than average intelligence are set apart. There are loads of people with superior athletic ability that sets them apart. I haven’t seen any sign that any of these groups has increased rates of sociopathy or deviant behavior. Well, maybe red-heads…
I concede.
The only issue I would counter stems from this point:
Political power is just one means to an end. One can gain power from many sources. Politics is the most visible one, granted. But not the most common one. Social power, whilst having some overlap, is still distinct from politics. So we can see a pretty girl exercising power over peers in the playground. An truly beautiful and/or charismatic one having greater power. And it can corrupt. A case recently brought to conclusion in the UK had two men aiding and abetting a (fairly pretty but presumably charismatic) woman in concealing and continuing to abduct a series of three murders.
Every parent has social power over their children. Every person has influence, and thereby some power, over their friends. Where such power is great, so too is the potential for abuse of any sort. But the most obvious, for the purposes of this discussion, is the ability to drag others into criminal behaviour. You support that argument with:
Here your analogy breaks down, because we know that whilst a given pedestrian is not in a car, there are plenty of others around. Super powers are something extraordinary that others (barring other supers) do not have. However, running with the argument despite that, we note that the police do have cars, which are purpose bought to be optimised in pursuit, they are trained in such, have radio contact and can co-ordinate with other police, can use a range of anti-car measures and have helicopters and other tools available.
That is an awfully long list of reasons against using a car to commit a crime. And they would not exist if not for a simple reason. People do use cars to commit crimes! And, unless there are such extensive counter-measures they will continue to do so. It is how Bonny and Clyde were so effective in robbing banks. Which is why the FBI was formed.
You are right to say that it is not a simple matter, given that there is clearly morality and self-control involved too. But there are very few people, at one end of the spectrum of moral conduct, who we can truly say would be immune to corruption. And they are so rare that we have a term for them. We call them saints. And even they do not achieve that without overcoming their baser natures.
The rest of us have a daily moral battle. If you see a banknote on the street, do you report it to the police, as you should do? Or do you look around, check that no-one is watching, then put it in your pocket? If you do, what happens if you gain a power that allows you to detect unguarded bank notes everywhere in the region? The greater the power, the greater the temptation.
If you could simply teleport all unclaimed banknotes in the country into your house, with zero risk, would you do so? No one knows about the bank notes. You would not be doing them harm. And you would never again need to fear your children going hungry or not being able to pay medical expenses for them. It would be strictly illegal mind.
It is possible to use just about any power to selfish ends. And the line between selfishness and illegality can be a blurred one.
If you have the crappiest power going, the ability to make coloured spots appear on a surface, you may still fall foul of the corrupting potential of being able to do that. Give a bully a permanent dose of luminous purple and orange spots, and you will discourage anyone from picking on you in future. You may then ask his girlfriend out on a date. If she agrees, is it because she found your new confidence attractive? Or is it because she is afraid that you will give her permanent disfigurement, if she refuses?
Darn it, I must have selected the wrong correction to a typo – “abduct” should read “conduct” in the paragraph about murders.
There are a number of different definitions of “power” and ways to achieve it. The type of power I believe they are talking about when they say “Power corrupts” is what I define as Political power, the ability to compel obedience through threat or use of force.
What makes this particular sort of power so dreadful is that it is used to make people do things against their own will. You -force- them to do as you wish them to, they are not given a choice in the matter. It is difficult to treat your fellow man in this way without becoming corrupted in the process.
You brought up “Social Power”, the ability to gain obedience via offering of reward. I am not convinced that power of this nature is inherently corruptive. In this case you are not taking away the ability to choose. You may be tempting someone to do something they would not normally do, but in the end, it is -their- decision, not yours.
Super powers are a different sort of power entirely, although having a super power might be a way to -get- political or social power. This is what I was trying to get at with my analogy about cars. There are things that are counted as super powers which can be duplicated via technology. People who have access to those ersatz super powers don’t show increased rates of sociopathy or any other deviant behavior.
Flight is a super power. Buying an airplane will allow you to fly. People who buy airplanes don’t show any higher incidence of criminal behavior, and there is no real reason to suspect that someone with the super power of flight would either.
Where things get kind of iffy is that most characters with super powers have powers that make them -dangerous-. They can compel obedience via threat or use of force. This is where one kind of power might give you another. This is also where the question comes in about if just having super powers makes a person more likely to become a criminal.
Does having the ability to force other people to obey you via threat of force cause higher rates of criminal behavior in those who have it? According to DaveB, in his universe, no, it does not.
In my opinion, the same is true in the real world. I have no way to prove this though. It’s just my opinion.
Do you consider Jedi to be evil? They have the power to change other people’s will, with a phrase and a wave of their hand. Is that not the very definition of power corrupting? Not only do the victims have their freedom of will taken away, but they do not even realise it has happened! And yet it is portrayed as being a good thing.
If you still contest that super-powers do not have the potential to corrupt those who may not have otherwise been corrupted, look down at your feet. You will find that path leads to Hell.
To counter your flight argument let us give the power to a spotty teenage boy. Prior to getting it he was normal. One thing he would like to do is peek into the girls’ changing rooms. He can’t. Not without a serious chance of being detected. Or extraordinary effort. So he goes about living life as a normal person. We do not go about turning idle fantasies into perverted reality.
But you have granted him flight. So he re-considers that urge he had. Now he can easily fly up to a window, that is not overlooked from other vantage points. No effort required. No noisy aircraft. No filing of flight plans, or months of study and acquisition of a licence. It just takes a moment’s thought and he is up there looking in.
Needless to say, because it was so easy and requires no thought, the plan falls apart. One of the girls looks up and sees him. Reports it to the police. He is caught and goes to jail. Having acquired a record as a sex offender.
Would it have happened without the super power? No. Would everybody who gained flight do that? No. But the power has the potential to corrupt, by virtue of giving you options that you did not have before. Until you gain your own super power, you have no idea whether you would give into those temptations yourself.
Do I consider the Jedi to be evil? Well… that can be a kind of fun argument. If I was the game master in a Star Wars game I would give out a Dark Side Point every time someone used the Jedi Mind Trick™. In my opinion, Qui-gon Jinn in the movie The Phantom Menace was well on his way to Sith-hood. He was even willing to use the Force to cheat in a gambling game.
The Jedi were normally portrayed as being Good Guys. They were supposed to be the guardians of peace and justice in the Republic. If you care about justice, then you cannot go around using mind control on people.
Is having a super power inherently corrupting? My thesis is that no, it is not. Could having a super power cause you to experience temptations other people do not suffer? Sure. What I have been saying is that whether or not you are the kind of person who gives in to temptation has nothing to do with whether or not you have super powers.
Take your example of the Spotty Teen-Aged Boy. Like many boys, he experiences the temptation to try and peep into the girl’s changing room at school. Like most boys, he doesn’t do it, in part because he knows it is wrong, and in part because he’s afraid of getting caught. Then one day, lo and behold, he gains the ability to get to the window and get a good look easily. Does it make any difference at all if what makes it easy is a conveniently placed ladder, or having gained the power of flight?
I say that what matters here is that he’s again subject to temptation and has to make a decision. It doesn’t matter why the question has come up, only that it has. What he does will be a function of his own moral character, and it has nothing at all to do with the presence or absence of super powers.
Another way of looking at the same issue is to point out that while having super powers might present new and different temptations, even people who don’t have powers are constantly presented with temptations of their own. Everyone experiences temptation. Not everyone gives in to their urges. I don’t see any particular reason to believe that having super powers would make a person any more or less apt to give in to their darker natures.
One of the better known heroes in the Marvel universe is Professor X, the leader of the X-Men. Professor X is a hero who possesses the power of Mind Control. He is -very- careful how he uses that power. He recognizes the danger it presents. I submit that he is an example of the fact that just having a power, in and of itself, does not make one corrupt. What matters is what you do with your abilities, not what abilities you have.
To my understanding, the “power corrupts” axiom stems from the ability to use one’s power (of whatever sort) to escape negative consequences for one’s actions. Lack of negative consequences, be it punnishment for wrongdoing or the results of bad decisions, can lead to a skewed worldview or a sense of entitlement. Either of these can prompt criminal behaviors in persons whose morals or ethics aren’t strongly fixed. The temptation to use what power one has to get what one wants & avoid the cost becomes stronger the more power one wields.
You may well be right. I had not considered it from that angle, but your argument makes sense.
Nicely put. Pretty much what I was driving at. Somebody who has firmly grounded morals will not be swayed by getting power. Everybody else will be at risk via the mechanism you described. Having lived on three different continents, and been exposed to all walks of society, from the very richest to the very poorest, in ample measure, I think more of the public would be at risk from gaining power than not.
Try this test. You gain the power to give other people absolute power over yourself, irrevocably. Any command they give, you would have to follow. Of course anybody of unshakable morals will not abuse that power. So you can freely give that to anyone you trust implicitly. If most of society is trustworthy, then you can safely grant that power to most people that you know.
You can ignore anybody you do not know well. Ignoring everybody indicates you trust nobody at all. How many would you give that power to? How many would you not give the power to? If the latter exceeds the former, then you are of the same opinion as me. If it goes the other way, please sign a document granting power of attorney over you “to the bearer” and post it to me. *
* For your own good, you clearly need to be put in a safe, padded, environment.
It’s less a matter of not trusting and more a matter of they and I might not agree on everything – and no matter how much I trust them, I have no wish to be ANYONE’s puppet. Even if they think they are telling me to do something for my own good. I highly value my freedom, and that includes the freedom to make my own mistakes and learn from them, thank you very much.
Sadly I now have graphic proof of
the point I was making. Have a read through that article, and you can see how granting social power over other people allows them to be turned into slaves. Just check out the numbers at the end, where they compare the situation prior to the rules change to after. We are not talking a minor shift. It went from some bad employers to a heck of a lot of evil slave owners. All through being granted social power over another via visa laws.
Doesn’t even require laws. I remember hearing about a study a psychology class did at some college – half were designated guards, the other half prisoners. This wasn’t official or anything, it was all ‘playacting’ – they could walk out at any time. But less than a month later the ‘guards’ were acting like brutal monsters and the ‘prisoners’ were just taking it, no longer even thinking they could leave.
Such trials are not meant to be conducted any more, on ethical grounds, as they prove to be all to easy to replicate. And it can be done in minutes, rather than hours, with the right set up. All you need to do is convince one person that they are doing something for a greater cause (say in the interests of the advancement of science). And the other you need merely convince that the one tormenting them has the right to do it, because they are an authority figure. Just put a lab coat on them for that to happen.
You can easily turn any person off the street into a torturer, in minutes this way. Getting them to administer progressively stronger electric shocks. As an example, drawn from one of the more notorious real-life experiments (albeit that the person being shocked was played, in that trial, by an actor).
Something many people seem not to taken into consideration, it is entirely possible that some of the attackers present do not possess actual superpowers per say, but rather very potent mundane skills (like Math), sufficient firepower (like Peggy), magical abilities (like Gwen) or simply technology sufficiently advanced to go toe to toe with some of the lesser meta-humans (power armour, freeze rays, etc…). Admittedly, a decent percentage of them are quite likely do have some, given the nature of this comic and what we can see of them thus far, but that could be a factor to explain the statistical discrepancies.
Harem may have just opened a can of Supervillain Blitzkrieg, but I think everybody else is about to open a whole case of Whoopass.
I just love Anvil’s face. I have that look on before shit goes down hard.
Also: Let there big carnage and superpowers!
Oh, good, the entertainment’s finally arrived.
Nothing beats attending dinner AND a show…
But if I were a normal civilian there, nothing would be better than a hasty retreat.
Harem sure is lucky that this guy has his entry. Else she’d probably have made Syd snap.
Also: I vote for Syd using the MolestorbHentorb/Lighthook to hammer Archilles into this dude head-first, or at least sweep the shelf of villains with him.
Lastly: These dudes sure as heck didn’t read the Guide for Evil Overlords.
(Syd probably knows it by heart, just in case.)
She probably contributed to the suggestions from which it was compiled.