Grrl Power #203 – Backhands and commands
I was tempted to call this page “Bitchslap. OF DOOM!” but I thought that might set me on an irrevocable path.
Keeping it non-lethal in a real superhero fight would be incredibly difficult. Super strength would be a particular offender. (Also any kind of energy beam.) Maxima made some assumptions about that guy before she casually backhanded him across the room. He’s big and muscular, but not obviously armored, yet she hit him hard enough to stop him dead in the air and even instantly reverse his trajectory, knocking him back 10 feet. A regular human /might/ have survived that, after all, you can see fail videos of people riding bikes into trees, doing backflips and landing on their face or neck, walking away from horrendous car wrecks… But – most likely if Max slapped a regular human out of freefall, they would die enormously. For now we can assume this guy was tough enough to survive with a smashed up jaw, a kinked up neck and a concussion. But that’s just it, if he had been tough enough to ignore getting hit by a car, Max’s bitch slap (which is surely this guy’s new nickname) would have knocked him back but barely caused him to blink otherwise. Estimating just the right amount of force to use against an unknown opponent in order to knock them out on the first hit would basically be impossible. A hero concerned with not killing anyone would start all their fights out with the most innocuous of taps and escalate slowly from there… Assuming he didn’t see bullets or cars bouncing off him or the baddie didn’t start the fight by announcing that he was Concrete Man, and the hero being the experienced guy he is knows roughly how tough concrete is.
Oh and don’t worry, the whole fight won’t be the good guys one shotting all the bad guys, but having the heroes dispense with some chaff makes the villains they can’t backhand across the room feel more threatening. Sort of a reverse Worf Effect I guess. Or… setting up for the Worf Effect? I don’t know.
This comic also debuts my first cameo for one of the people supporting the comic at the $50 level over at Patreon, Megan Durham. The options were “you or a character of yours” (keeping in mind that I’m not really a portrait artist.) But Megan presented me with an option I hadn’t considered, “you as a character.” If this tells you anything about my creative process, instead of “rebranding” one of my planned villains, I wound up coming up with a new one, which is our teal haired friend with the 6… things floating over her shoulders. Don’t worry her powers are entirely different from Halo’s. I rather like the powerset I came up with, and Megan will benefit from having her cameo extend for quite a few pages before meeting a suitably ignominious defeat. :) We’ll call her Dark Megan, or better yet, Hex! That way she can say stuff like “Hex yeah!” cause that’s what I do to people who give me money. Actually, so far all the people having their characters cameo as villains in this fight will get a few pages out of it, cause that’s how I roll, because seriously, $50 a month? That is way more than a cup of coffee.
I (and possibly some of the other comic creators in the final 4) chatted with the guys over at ComicMix and suggested it would be better if these final rounds got a bit of an extension from the original Friday-Sunday schedule when none of the comics in the bracket actually posted a new comic. This round now extends to Tuesday at midnight, the finals start on Wednesday and will extend I think through the end of the week, where any of the comics that might advance have another chance to promote the tournament in line with their regular posting schedule, so if you haven’t voted yet, I’d appreciate if you took a few minutes – seriously, open the ComicMix page in another tab then continue browsing for a few minutes, their page is really slow. While you’re waiting maybe you can check out Grrl Power’s competition in this bracket. We’re up against MonsterKind, which is quite nicely drawn. At the time I wrote this we’re ahead, but not by a huge margin, and they could rally. Remember, vote using the checkboxes under the brackets, not any of the links within the brackets.
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 a Bitch slap from hell, it left a permanent dent in his skull.
Broken cheekbone at least if the impact deformed the skin in that far.
On second thought – Bitchslap seems able to change the atomic structure of portions of his body. Cheekbone still being there after the hit is explained by him having done something (conscious or otherwise) to his own bone matter to make it something like very, very hard rubber with the ability to deform and recover.
And he will also need to see his dentist.
I believe he’s at the point where he needs a full on oral surgeon.
Hmmm…My double-entendre sense is tingling…
And that is another reason why I used the word dentist.
Depending on how the rest of his weight lands, he might end up loosing his tongue too.
I’m thinking it would make sense to do quite a lot of research on the durability of potential foes in a superpowered world, so that you know just how hard you can hit them / have to hit them before a fight starts.
Assuming they don’t somehow get depowered or anything, that is.
TeeHee
I wonder what Supermegan can do, since her powers aren’t like Halo’s. They look like wings, but I don’t see how flight alone would make her powerful enough to go up against a room of supers.
I don’t think they look like wings.
To me they look like some kind of energy drone she can send out (acting as sensors or energy projectors).
And given she is still blinking shows a lack of combat experience.
Not sure, but I think it’s her… will-o-wisps(?) blinking… Agreed, though – Hex looks a bit overwhelmed.
‘gratz Megan on your cameo, and on behalf of the rest of us, thank you for your generous support!
At first I thought it was the floating things blinking as well, but the expression on her face seems to indicate that she’s just reacting to the situation below…
…or that by blinking she’s cycling through the information being fed to her by her floating things. They’re starting to look like coins to me now. I’m guessing Meg is a utility/sensory/data analysis type foremost. I would not be surprised to see her start to strategize with blondie next page.
If they’re smart, their strategy would include at least the possibility of an exit scenario.
Seconded, enthusiastically. All you patrons are awesome!
Awww… happy to do it!
+1
To be honest, I’d assumed that it was her spheres that are blinking… Sally-Strobe, foe of epileptics everywhere!
I bet they are energetic time tunnels that allow her to summon and control rampaging dinosaurs.
Now there is an idea with extra minty coolness.
Partly Megan’s actually.
Okay, now I’ve got to know who NotFred is- cause he knows about my long un-updated website.
I’m pritty sure it’s not Fred
Sorry I will tease you a bit more ;) cause you remember me something I read:
“Always widdershins you were kitty crush, comfy, fuzzy, though like a ninja, agile, impactant, willing even to jump out of an airplane.”
By the way: Why “he”? :)
As to the “he” because general male internet instinct- and happy to be proven wrong. :)
You are prone to jump to conclusions I see :P
Well, since the comic will change tomorrow I better answer you.
I knew nothing about you before yesterday, sorry :) Broney’s comment made me curious so I tried to find a picture and it came all together.
You have some pretty interesting sites. I was not going to surf but your “About me”s are funny and striking and kinda rang a bell :)
Let’s see, in the top panel we have:
Samantha Roberta Ingles, a.k.a ‘Sam-R-I’ (and by the way, you know they make sharp versions of those things in metal, right?)
‘Chris-tal’, because his name is Chris, and he is tall. (Gloves? What gloves? I’m sure they have nothing to to with his villain name)
‘The Blue Blinker’, with the ability to confuse long lines of cars behind her on the highway.
Or maybe ‘Frau Blue-ker’, with the ability to scare all horses within the sound of her voice.
Named a character in DCUO Craizee Christall because she’s a crazy clown (joined Joker’s gang to get close to Harley), she’s tall, has crystaline skin, and her real name is Krista Tallasky
If you have ever been hit by a kendo stick (or simply a broom handle) then you know they can be just as nasty, and deadly, as blades
I have been hit by them both steel is harder to catch without a glove. Bamboo and sticks are easy to catch, and you do catch them if you are training for real sword fighting. Look up the MARE Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe, yes Europe had martial arts mostly it evolved around fighting with and without swords spears knives pikes and what ever else you had at hand, it also had some hand to hand but not as much as Asian styles. It teaches you to grab the blade even if you are going to get cut the object is to remove the weapon from the fight or turn it against your opponent. Asian martial arts that haven’t had the old school stuff knocked out of them and there are a few school that practice them teach similar tactic to dealing with weapons.
true but this is a comic and if there is one thing outlaw star thought me is don’t piss of the lady with the wooden sward.
I wonder what shinai girl can do. She’s at least being somewhat smart about this.
Given her choice of weapon she is good with that bamboo sword. It is possible she can also charge her weapon.
Looks like she will have a problem with Math.
Why does everyone have a problem with math? Did they not graduate High School or something?
Math is hard!
Math can plot the paths of multiple objects on elliptical orbits, determine the minimum amount of energy required to divert one to onto a new trajectory, and reliably estimate whether the force of impacting a new target will be below the threshold at which critical damage or death would result, but above the minimum needed in order to incapacitate an otherwise erratic and unpredictable danger.
So what you’re saying is that Math does have super abacus powers?
More like a super-fast slide rule.
She may pose an equal to problem to Math, since we all know Math’s glaring and fundamental weakness which she has the proper gender equipment to exploit!
She is Math’s nemesis: Approx Gal
* badabum tsch *
When she completed her training, her master told her “Now you must choose a sword equal to your power.” She grabbed her Shinai and said “Close enough”. Raising it above her head she called out “I name you Approximate Sword!”
I would suppose Math’s arch-nemesis would be Occam, who ignores complex Math, and simply goes immediately for the easiest answer…
Could be, but Approx Gal is way more dangerous cause she is often pretty close while Lady Occam is mostly far away :)
More congressing than actually being smart about this. She’s apart of this whole act of peeing on an electric fence, for starters. While obviously the ringleader, her grasp of the situation doesn’t really seem to be better than the rest of the super-thugs she’s teaming up with. Talking the talk won’t make the fact she’s trying to lead a rag-tag gang against a force they may not even collectively match in dumb super-powered muscle, much less everything else. Hope she’s up for some jail time…unless…
She may not necessarily be THE leader. Could be more of a squad leader in charge (or WANTING to be in charge) of one part of that group.
That would make a lot of sense when you think about it. Unless one has superpowers that can help in this regard (like Prof X’s telepathic link-ups), trying to direct and coordinate a dozen-ish other supers AND keep tabs on the other side all by yourself is simply not going to work. Having your own side organized into a number of sub-groups that work together simplifies things enormously.
I think it’s safe to asume that a normal human would NOT survive such a hit.
They’d probably have their neck broken
I was actually thinking something similar about the previous big dumb bad guy (BDBG)… The fact that his head remained attached after Anvil’s energy discharge indicates a remarkable level of physical resilience.
No, previous guy was APB, or Ambulatory Punching Bag
You mean The Booped Nose
I would be more concerned with massive skull fractures. Hmm, to quote Doctor Dorian from Deadliest Warrior: That would be an Instant Kill.
Right, I wonder why I forgot about the skull itself
I would be a lot more concerned about brain damag… er, forget it.
Mindful of something James Bond once said to Q, in response to Q’s claim that a new weapon of his could incapacitate any normal person.
“There are not many NORMAL people in our line of work ….”
Fairly sure he was talking about their mental wellbeing, rather than (meta)physical atributes
A wise man once said: “Screw context”
Of course, I may be taking it out of context. I may have just made it up.
ok but shouldn’t you bye it flowers and take it to dinner first.
I like how both the big buff guys just jump in without thinking, while the normal looking characters seem to actually be trying to come up with a plan (a little late for that, but still)
They probably already came up with a plan, they’re just having difficulty getting the team to stick to it when everyone wants to be the superpowered speshul snowflake. Ah, for a clear chain of command…
Super slap, super slap, does whatever a super slap does! Does it make…you feel like a noob? Yes it does, because… it is super slap! (Sing to that Spider Man tune) P.S. Are we going to see any spidy powered characters in your webcomic, DaveB?
He always was my favourite. I would like to see some none with his level of power, and desire for independence, rather than an approximation of his power-set. There would be some interesting storylines with the ‘no vigilante’ rules in this setting.
I just loved that Spidey’s powers were mostly too weak to directly take out any tough super. Which meant that practically every victory required strategy or inventive thinking. Not to mention his comic one-liners.
Rather than a spider-powered hero, I think we are more likely to see a spice-powered heroine.
so sydney?
I think Shinai girl is the anti-Math…probably a kissing cousin or something. She learned all about Martial arts fending off Math, his brothers, and her other cousins…
Yup, that stick basicly screams “I use martial arts!!!!”
2 near super human martial artists. Looks like Math is finally going to get a real challange. That should be interesting to see
I’m thinking Math would be more interested in a fight against crystal Sagat there, if Maxima hadn’t gotten there first.
math is probably watching for suitable entertainment from his perch sitting upside down on anvils head
Remember, it’s ‘non leathal IF YOU CAN’
I doubt Maxima would mind if we end up with a few dead villains
Say what you like about capital punishment, but it does have a 0% record of re-offenders :P
Except that is not true for most super stories. They always seem to come back for more or someone reanimates them as some undead monstrosity that can be put down time and again but never ended permanently.
A world of superpowers would definitely have room for resurrection assuming the power levels were high enough, but most comic book resurrections (I stress the derogatory sense of the term) are usually a result of writers trying to top previous stories or editors trying to bring back characters to make sales.
From a reader’s perspective, resurrections only seem to “work” where they’re in-line with the basic concept, feel and vision of the story. Most of the stories that did it well are the ones where the original authors are in control when it happens; the resurrection fits in with their vision or- more likely- was planned even before. It’s usually outside influence and direction that spoils it.
(That said, it can turn out badly even in creator-controlled works. Death means profound and meaningful loss; it makes life, survival and legacy valued and precious. Thus, a story can just become awful where a resurrection overturns that heartfelt loss, rendering all it meant moot and pointless. It has to be done very carefully!)
We don’t know if it’s going to happen here. According to the internal rules DaveB has set, is it possible? If yes, we can rest easy in the thought that DaveB will do it at the right time, at the right place, at the right scale, for the right reason. It’d be sad if he didn’t.
Yeah, problem with being in a world where villains can be put down permanately, it means you also live in a world where the heroes can die for good (and villains are more likely to be the ones ending the heroes than the other way around)
To quote Wolverine:
“Jean would be rolling in her grave… if she ever stayed in it for more than five minutes.”
The Man in the Iron Mask was, overall, a pretty piss-poor movie.
But when the four legendary veteran musketeers are about to wade into a crowd of younger but still battle-hardened musketeers and D’artagnan shouts, “Spare their lives, if you can!” as his battle-cry…
Just…DAMN, man.
Not quite as scary as the Discworld dwarfish warcry: Today is a good day for someone else to die!
Army & Marines have used a similar saying with new recruits: There’s no honor in dying for your country. Your job is to make the *other* guy die for *his* country.
ah yes – Patton. “Much ballyhoo has been bandied about about dying for your country. Nonsense, I say. No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Yup. Style.
Looking out on a vast sea of enemies, stretching from horizon to horizon, the hero glances at his companion.
“You take the ones on the right, I’ve got the ones on the left.”
Although my favourite comes from history. , Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta: “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.”
The reply was “If”. He, wisely, never did.
The Spartans always seemed to have a penchant for being able to say “Fuck you” in the wittiest way possible whenever someone would ask them to surrender.
My personal favourite was the reply to the Persians when Xerxes came to visit. (slightly paraphrased)
Messenger:”King Xerxes asks you to surrender your land and water to him.”
King Leonidas:”You want earth and water? Very well, you can dig it up yourselves!” *Has Persian Messengers thrown down a well.* “Earth and Water? Oh you’ll find plenty down there.”
But of course, almost the entire badass exchange was thrown out the window and replaced with the ignominious “THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAA!” in the movie 300.
And it didn’t stop when Xerxes arrived at Thermopylae. While he waited for his massive army to come ashore he sent a message to the 6,000 amassed Greeks
“King Xerxes orders you to surrender your weapons, retreat to your native lands, and become his allies. In return, Xerxes will reward you with more and better lands than you now possess.”
The Greeks responded: “If we are to be your allies, we will need our weapons. If we resist you, we will also need our weapons. As for the better lands you promise, our fathers taught us to gain land by means of courage, not cowardice.”
But the movie did manage to include two badass war boasts that are in the historic records.
Persian: “Spartans, lay down your weapons.”
*Persian gets a spear to the chest*
King Leonidas: “Persians! Come and get them!”
Persian: “A thousand nations of the Persian empire descend upon you. Our arrows will blot out the sun!”
Stelios: “Then we will fight in the shade.”
Yeah, the Spartans were quite clever with their comebacks: After the Persians ruined Athens, Persian general Mardonios offered an alliance to the Spartans, but his army was slaughtered in the spring of 479 BC. After the battle, Spartan commander Pausanias brought the other officers into Mardonios’ lavish field tent & remarked, “You see what fools these were, who live like this, yet came to rob us of our poverty.”
Wait wait wait wait wait wait.
Are you telling me that the ‘Than we will fight in the shade’, the single most badass thing in a movie made up entirely out of badass things, is historicly accurate?
Let the record show that the Spartans were well-known badasses. If they didn’t think to say it at the time, the survivors made sure the historians wrote it in properly.
I forgot which specific Egyptian Pharoah first used this threat: I shall salt your fields & cut down your trees.
Guessing blondie up there’s going to go for Math. Sword tech vs. martial arts and such. Curious as to what the teal-haired one does.
Bamboo swords are SERIOUS BUSINESS!
Yup. Especially if confident enough to bring one to a gunfight. Where the opponents also have access to tactical nuclear weaponry!
Really? Sending the flying brick superman-expy with the civilians? Wouldn’t that be more Peggy and Gwen’s speed? Maybe one of the Harems for teleporter backup?
*Sigh* I miss Jiggawatt.
I have a friend in a Pathfinder game I play… He is a monk that is responsible for ruining most attempts at stealth we have made.
The reason for this?
He has a knife that turns into a lightning bolt when thrown. He has a tenancy to yell “LIGHTNING BOLT!!!” prior to using it.
Everyone make a fortitude save or go def temporarily.
It has NEVER FAILED to bring in enemy reinforcements, and even once brought troll and giant armies together on a shared border. And don’t even get me started on his ‘You fool of a Took!’ moment.
Anyway, Jiggawatt… Nothing against people who throw lightning around, but the cons out-way the benefits in my experience.
Can’t the dude just put away the knife or only use it in situation where more reinforcements can’t or won’t be called? Either his monk used Int or Wis as a dump stat or his player has Int or Wis as a dump stat.
Sounds like a Leeroy Jenkins type of guy
Always fun to have those in your party. It’s always so boring when everything goes perfectly fine
Commander: “Admit it. If you were on a station where everything worked, you would go crazy.”
Engineer: “Maybe.”
*Console explodes*
Engineer: “But I’d be willing to give it a try.”
-DS9
Gotta point out: Jiggawatt’s lightning crackle probably won’t be some sort of beacon that pulls in more supers, as opposed to your friend’s monk’s knife calling in armies. In a different, appropriate setting, Jiggawatt’s power would be okay.
Oh, I wasn’t saying that Jiggawatt is an ideal combatant here, she’s just my favourite.
No, cause Peggy and Gwen are primarily offensive types: that is, they have a lot of firepower (relatively), but they can’t take a hit. When it comes to defending civilians, they’d be just about worthless.
I’m guessing that, eventually, Halo’s going to be the team’s designated civvie escort, just because she can combine “flies” with “hard to kill” with a healthy does of “you’d BETTER take her out first.”
Otherwise…yeah, you’re going to need a flying brick, if only to take the hits for the civilians.
I still think that keeping Hiro where the bad guys are concentrated is a better idea than having him get low-priority (for the villains anyway) targets like the waitstaff out of there. If you wanna argue the protection angle then send Achilles. He’s not much stronger than a normal human but can take EVERY hit without issue.
Maxima’s kind of a flying brick + energy blasts. But I think that they’ll focus on taking the enemy down so fast that there isn’t time for civilians to get hurt, judging by the last two pages. :)
Maxima doesn’t micromanage, she told Hiro to take care of the civvies. He’s a Major so he’ll likely delegate that to his subordinates like Amorphous and Achilles.
Do Amorphous and Achilles always work together? Are there set squads or is it mission-by-mission?
They are best friends, and long term partners before recruited into Archon.
So you know they can work tougether. Probably have a couple of powerstunts specific to their combo of powers.
Only makes sense for them to work tougether here
Fanfic fuel.
Like panel 2?
I figured step 1A would be all civvies in the Halo bubble. But I guess Hiro could whisk them all away…
Hiro’s just going to roll the Halo bubble over to the Civvies and just be all like: “Halo, shield these guys. You guys, make sure she doesn’t try to touch anything.”
Halo is not a giant hamster!
You are right. That would do a disservice to the attention span of the hamster :)
Are you sure?
Kinda thought the shield was for the breach so they didn’t keep trying to get in the same way.
More likely Maxima want’s Halo out of the fight.
Remember that Halo is untrained and her powers largely untested. To Maxima she’s an unknown quantity. Far safer to have her hide behind her incredibly powerful shield and leave the actual fight to the personell that have been cleared for active duty and who’s abilities Maxima is more familiar with.
Halo has to keep her shield up, predictable.
I wonder what she’s going to use to fight though.
Fly and smash into people? Reach out with the molestorb? Or try to protect some civilians?
Just protect civilians, but perhaps she may itch to get into the fight. She’s Archon’s newest member and has explored and trained with her powers the least in the group. Keeping her out of the fight in defensive mode makes her useful without making her a combat liability.
That said, knowing Syd’s lack of impulse control…
She’s joined the team a matter of hours ago, she has zero training and minimal experience. The one time she used her beam attack in public, she almost vapourised the press.
“Keep your shield up and stay out of the way” is pretty good advice at the moment.
Good advice, yes.
Will Sydney follow said advice for the entire duration of this fight? I really really doubt it.
I think people are starting to Flanderize Sydney a little here- sure, she’s shown a tendency to be spasmodic and a little crazy even in situations of danger- but those situations have all been with normal, knowable dangers- guys with guns- or around friends/good guys.
This is, for lack of a better word, REAL danger. Syd doesn’t know who these people are or what they can do. She’s got no training, no experience. She’s never been in an actual super-powers fight, and she’s not inherently violent (goofy ‘knaw your kneecaps’ violence, yes, but not ‘spill your guts and laugh as you bleed out’ violent).
Once things get going, she’s probably gonna be perfectly willing and eager to stay out of the way in her impenetrable shield.
… Except that she IS the central character.
Which says to me that, rather than sit nice’n’safe behind her force bubble whilst her teammates do all the heavy lifting, at some point Sydney WILL get directly involved.
But she’s also genre savvy. I suspect that she will either do as she’s told (with a few “But I can do…”s) or she will see an opportunity to do something smart (if impulsive and funny) and take it.
She can be as genre savy as she like, the first fight of a comic is not going to have the main character hiding in a corner
just got the image of a molestorb-powered wedgie on some random enemy here. she may even be able to do it through the shield. “But I kept my shield up the whole time.”
Technically she was just told to get and keep her shield up. She wasn’t directly ordered NOT to fight. It may have been heavily inferred in some of the last day’s scenes that she is untrained and wouldn’t see action until she was but I don’t know how much trouble she can get in if she follows the order to keep the shield up and ALSO does a little fighting. Attack at will was one of the overall orders… I think its a grey enough area for a completely untrained newbie that they won’t be able to yell at her much. Specially if she succeeds.
What I like is the balance between your comment and the various replies. They are all true, to a greater or lesser degree. By mixing in a lot of realism with the usual genre tropes, DaveB has made this situation fraught with danger. As we saw with Halo in the bank, she has the same survival instincts as everyone else. Until her buttons get pushed. But she doesn’t get the “you will automatically succeed because you are the hero” card. Because, in that fight she would have died, were it not for Maxima’s intervention.
Sydney has probably not forgotten that yet. Whatever she does, lives will be at stake. It will be interesting to see how she handles it. Provided she feels she has pulled her weight on the team, she may be content with just getting through the fight and not covering her hands with innocent blood. That is an interesting dynamic for the focal super entering their first big fight.
Comedy rules, but the Gwyn Stacy talk, keeps an edge on the danger, despite that.
Do recall that Sydney was in no actual danger in the bank (it was a setup). Since she is completely unaware of that fact, your point stands, however.
Probably the best second orb is the presence orb. Being able to fool people into thinking they took down a member of the team – as long as her own team doesn’t fall for it too – could be useful without putting her in any danger.
Actually, “stay out of the way” wasn’t remotely part of Maxima’s order. More like “protect yourself first, probie, then worry about the fight.”
She could keep up the shield and use the Comm orb to “Badger” the bad guys. :)
Nya Nya can’t hit me Halo
I doubt it will be so much of the nya nya and more of the colourful diatribes she is becoming famous for.
Halo uses Taunt+Bluestreak, it will be very effective.
maxima suffers x points ulcer damage
maxima is migrained and unable to act
I think that the comm orb would be the most sensible choice. Using the truesight to watch out for illusions and glamours.
And, of course, BADGERS!
There’s another good reason, too–Sydney just got a power-up to the comm orb. Which means that she’ll probably use it, if only to see what it will do.
If she got enough XP to level up during the team demo, then she will probably get enough out of this encounter to get another upgrade marker-dot. Assuming she does more than just stand around pretending to be a snow globe. The orbs may have a pesky one level per day limit to make things harder on the player (sorry, ‘user’).
Using the shield is all fine and good but what happens when the building starts to collapse…
She could probably fly out of it since the shield bubble would give her a pocket of breathable air, and we have seen that the fly ball can move much more weight than just Sydney.
Just use the embiggener to push it off, or combine with flight orb to go out the top.
The building stops collapsing when it drops enough to rest on the force-field. So long as she does not move too much, the building will stay standing. At least for now.
They appear to be on the top floor so nothing but the bad guys and the roof will fall on them. Maybe I should have phrased it as “what happens when the floor gives way?” we know Sydney can use the flight orb to fly herself, but what about everyone else in the shield? Do they just sink to the bottom of the shield bubble or do the sides of the bubble keep the floor that’s in the bubble from shifting? and since Sidney is always in the center of the shield (I’m assuming on that point) if she flies while the floor is collapsing outside her shield with people in her shield does the floor inside the shield stay stable? (Hope I made that clear enough. Not always able to get what I mean across…)
Well Halo has a lot of useful powers, and Maxima doesn’t want her one-shotted in the first round of combat.
I sure hope Infront Steakhouse has it’s supers insurance paid up. (Infront Steakhouse was from the now-gone superhero MMO City of Heroes and was an obvious pun on Outback Steakhouse)
I miss that game so much. :c
*sniff* Just yesterday a friend showed me a screen shot taken of our heroes, outside Atlas Park city hall, in the last few seconds before the end of the world.
I didn’t get into the game until it was nearly over…What torked me off royally was that I know that I’m not the only player that prefers PvE over PvP, but the whole ending of the game was centered on the PvP battle. I had a full roster of heros & villains mixed but could only get up to about level 15…AND THEN THE GAME WAS OVER FOR EVERYBODY!
The end of City of Heroes cemented for me that I will never, ever, EVER play another NCSoft game. If they can treat their loyal customers like that, they won’t get any more of my money.
Two words:
Molestorb WEDGIE!
Three more words:
Molestorb Wet WILLIE!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_pranks#Wet_Willy
insert I’ve seen enough henti-orb joke here. now slap yourself for making that joke.
I just got a visual of a lighthook wet-willie, which looked remarkably similar to Marlon Wayan’s gloryhole scene in Scary Movie…
Well Plan A, The Krazy Kat (throwing bricks), seems to have gotten Arc SWAT’s attention. Next up, Gun And Run (ranged powers keep the opposition’s heads down while maneuvering for new positions). Keep their bricks busy covering the more vulnerable members and, with luck, innocent bystanders. Maybe a classic Mad Minute. Unload everything they’ve got into the building until it collapses. It will take time for the heros to dig out and they again may be distracted by civilians in danger.
Of course if this bunch are that coordinated, I’ll eat my Capt. Video Secret Decoder Ring.
Enemy After Action Report.
“So… Tell me what happened.”
“Well, we threw our bricks at them one at a time, just like the super-villain manual says.”
“And how did that go?”
“They had bigger bricks.”
So it’s a Brick waving contest?
“They had bigger bricks.”
“what do you mean bigger?”
“well sir if we compare theres to housing bricks we were using lego”
Ok, you guys made me LOL
But LEGO is the ultimate Caltrops compared to plain ole clay or calcite bricks.
But they only hurt when you step on them!
Well, they *tried* to step on Anvil & Max…And got hurt.
They (ARC) weren’t using building bricks, they were using entire granite slabs.
[insert obligatory “it’s not all about size” comment here]
Tell that to the Artillery guys. Sometimes, an extra 50 millimeters really does matter.
Cue the snipers snarking:
“Well if you Artillery boys could shoot straight you wouldn’t need the extra two inches, hurr hurr.”
Shiva-9 says snipers is funny.
scary dragon say snipers are gun ninja. now sneak back out of my room stove-top.
“Shoots at dragon from over the horizon with “GodsLightbulb””
Weeell, those first two guys certainly looked evil, the two chocks on the other hand, well, no-one said bad guys are exclusively evil, many are just opportunistic rogues. And bad guys certainly don’t have to look like bad guys, though in many comic universes, bad guys who don’t look completely like bad guys usually end up being good guys. But Dave likes to rewrite the stereotypes… sometimes anyway.
Well, i’ll just see how this plays out.
Still thinks it’s remarkable how organised this group is, to organise an attack right after the press conference. They were clearly preparing for something…
Insufficient data at this stage, but appearances can be deceptive.
All we know is that a bunch of supervillains have assembled in one place. That’s it. End of sentence.
We don’t know, as yet, how long this supposed group has existed. For all we know, they only just gathered via social media that afternoon. Or this could be a ‘Six Degrees Of Separation’ thing – a smallish core group (or two) who quickly gathered reinforcements by various means – called-in favours, family/friends, former cellmates, straight-out hire/bribery, etc..
However it was done, we will presumably find out more as the fight progresses.
… Which is also to say the exact opposite COULD be true – that this bunch have been around for ages, but chose to step out as a group today.
But, as I said before, insufficient data right now, and this is far from being the only possibility.
Looking at the lack of coordination I would hazard my guess more towards just recently getting together.
Heck, they may just all happened to show up at the same place and the same time with the same goal in mind. “Hey, are you here fer da same reason I’m here? Kickin hero butt? I’m wit ya.”
I tend to discount that one myself.
However, coincidences happen. Also noting, some coincidences that have taken place in reality totally outshine anything one is ever going to find in the comics.
Example one: In Florida, during the first meeting ever of a neighborhood’s new crime watch, a bale of marijuana crashed through the roof and nearly hit the guy in charge. This really happened, but the chances are so low that fans of a fiction series would bash it for being too unrealistic.
Maybe…but maybe not. It’s a fact of life that a huge number of people tend to view things like this as being more about getting the most power and then dispatching it to the trouble spot, not as about being able to project it efficiently. If the bad guys are like most people, they probably figured that getting enough bricks in one place was going to be enough to rip the guts out of ARCHON, and leave the rest for cleanup.
This is part (a very large part) of why the US military is so effective compared to other militaries all over the world. The US military trains to make sure that different components can work together, know each others’ weaknesses, and know each others’ strengths. For all the legendary rivalry between service branches, enormous efforts are taken to make sure that the Marines, for instance, can deploy inland as part of a combined arms force, alongside regular Army divisions. The end result is that ARCHON, for instance, is able to display power out of all proportion to its actual size and throw weight, because it can adapt more rapidly, and more effectively, than other groups.
Basically, if I’m reading the situation right, we’ve got a group of super-villians who are all Sydney-level, at best. Yeah, sure, they’re good. Yeah, sure, they’re powerful, and they’re hard to stop. But even your local police department could take them down, if they had a SWAT team willing to absorb casualties and the right equipment and training.
To be honest, I’m a lot more interested in the concept of non-lethal super combat. I’d always just assumed combat between supers was non-lethal anyway–the concept that Spider Man might accidentally punch somebody’s head clean off never occurred to me (or to Stan Lee, I’ll wager).
I bet Stan Lee *did* think about that…I’ve read several Spider-Man comics where it’s specifically mentioned that he deliberately pulls his punches until he knows whether or not the baddie can take it. Spidey even makes quips about it during battle sometimes: “What are you complaining about? You should say, ‘Thank you Mr. Spider-Man for pulling your punches & not taking my head off.'”
peter more often holds back because while stronger and thus can muscle brace to an extent he is not enhanced durability so risks breaking his own arm when punching to hard
Lack of coordination does not completely exclude the fact that they are a long term group though.
They had no compitition until now. Without competition, Bitchslap and Superboop are only natural in jumping straight in. They are supers.
So they may already know eachother for a long time, they are not used to facing something that can beat them.
So beeing used to them destroying everything in their way, they figured that, if they group up, they could easely destroy archon
Supervillian Flash Mob!
I was going to say the same thing. Luckily, I scrolled to see if anyone else had the same idea. :D
Aha! And now we know Megan’s power! She can cause flash mob’s from random groups of people and the result is automatically posted to YouTube…
Wow, “Mass Create Super Villain”, that is both awesome and explains why the guys were impetuous, as they had only just gained their powers and wanted to find out what they could do.
Become road-kill apparently.
In a stunning coincidence, they were actually on their way to the restaurant for a private supervillain function, except nobody told them that Archon totally stole their reservation.
They’re understandably perturbed. Some of these guys came from out of state!
The honest truth about supervillains is that in Real Life, about 90% of them would have been permanently taken down by a SWAT team’s sniper the instant they paused long enough to give the sniper a clean shot. Another 9% would have been neutralized by whatever heavy artillery was necessary, with the possibility of collateral damage being weighed against the possibility of letting the SV continue causing havoc. The other 1% would be the SV smart enough not to make a big show or the ones committing non-violent crimes like theft, fraud, blackmail, or serial jaywalking.
Any SV that are not bullet-proof should realistically be neutralized by Peggy on a rooftop or Harem with a tranq gun. The rest should be picked up by Max and slammed into the ocean at Mach 2.
I’m wary of statements like that. We just don’t know because superpowers don’t exist in real life (not trying to be a smartass, just sayin’).
In a superheroic setting, we don’t know how many supers are capable, one way or another, who are invulnerable to bullets. This ranges from being straightforward bulletproof, to intangibility, to superhuman reflexes, etc.
Also, if that was the standard operating procedure against supervillains, you can be sure most of them are going to think of neutralizing snipers in various ways. They can just go after them ASAP and kill them. They can take hostages. Mastermind-type supervillains will manipulate people and events so a shot can never be made. So on and so fourth.
Worst case scenario: Supervillains don’t hold back. Being in the merciless crosshairs of government-sanctioned killers (who are sanctioned even in a moral sense!) tends to give them less incentive to play nice.
I would recomend reading a book called wearing the cape. Good book about someone who newly acquired super powers in a world where super powers exist.
I remember watching an episode of COPS growing up and having the cops show up at the site of a drive-by. The guy who was the “victim” was a big, samoan looking dude. Apparently the bullets were small enough caliber, and the guy was strong/muscular enough for the bullet to bounce off his calf muscle. The found the bullet in his sock or something.
Point is, if you’re talking about someone who is super strong, unless they shred their muscles/skin every time they use their super strength, then they’re going to have a level of invulnerablility to allow them to use their powers.
ERRATUM:
“we don’t know how many supers are capable, one way or another, who are invulnerable to bullets.” should be
“”we don’t know how many supers are, one way or another, are invulnerable to bullets.”
The original statement is grammatically correct if that’s what you were trying to fix. Think of it like this: “In a superheroic setting, we don’t know how many supers are powerful, one way or another, and are invulnerable to bullets.” The meaning is different, but the intended sentence structure might be easier to understand.
Okay, thanks. Grammar-wise, I figured there’d have to be something following that “capable”. The sentence I originally had in mind was “capable of avoiding damage from bullets” to cover more than the most literal form of invulnerability to bullets (bullets bouncing off the super’s skin harmlessly).
Have you considered that Maxima’s team is the SWAT team? They’re literally called ARC-SWAT.
Peggy’s the team sniper, and she absolutely will “permanently take down” the supervillains if she has the opportunity. Harem’s doing the “equipment run”, which presumably includes fetching Peggy’s favourite guns.
Second, note Maxima’s order to “keep it non-lethal”. They’re trying not to kill the bad guys (which is the correct decision, they’re soldiers not judge-jury-and-executioners), which is difficult to accomplish with sniper rifles and mortars.
I think this fight scene is going very well and the heroes’ strategy is sound. (The villains, not so much.) And it’s only been about a minute since the big guy dropped in, so there hasn’t been time for any other police officers or soldiers to make it here.
Actually Arc’s plan isn’t so much ‘try not to kill them’ as it is ‘don’t try to kill them’
Which is a subtle, but very important difference.
The first one would include risking that the villain can keep fighting, because you don’t want to put him down for real.
The later is prepared to permanently stop the villain if there is no other option, but would prefere to just knock him out/tie him up/something else
Second, note Maxima’s order to “keep it non-lethal”. They’re trying not to kill the bad guys (which is the correct decision, they’re soldiers not judge-jury-and-executioners), which is difficult to accomplish with sniper rifles and mortars.
Well yes they are if things get hairy. Soldiers kill that is their main function. Their chain of command sends them out. No laws or rules usually. Just destruction and death.
there are always R.O.E. even on staff duty the DOD and unit command will determine proper response to hostile actions. bomb threat or sniper report or hostile operative on post often the procedure is recorded in a file at the desk to be referenced as needed.
Others have already made good points but here is another for THOR – a police SWAT team needs to be there in the first place to do the shooty killy thing – if Boston has demonstrated anything, in contrast to police shows, a whole lot of bullets go flying and the normal target might get wounded or riddled in their body weight worth of bullets, but collateral damage is guaranteed. A whole lot of collateral damage.
The 90%+ kill rate is Hollywood optimism at its worst. To turn your scenario on its head, look back to the first Die Hard movie. The baddies were prepared and took out the SWAT teams and their armor with little to no effort on their part. And those guys were just normal mercenaries pretending to be terrorists. They were prepared. Toss in the existence of supers to the equation and your SWAT teams are 100% nullified/terminated with a first strike to HQ. The others times the bad guys have been and went before the team is even mobilized to the situation site.
One of the favorite sayings that the NRA likes to use is “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” There are way too many people who buy the Hollywood version, where the good guy will quickly assess the situation, calmly draw his weapon, and accurately take down the bad guy with one or two shots. In reality? Not even in the ballpark. Besides the difficulty in identification, there’s the problem that people don’t tend to give you a nice clear field of fire, an adrenaline rush, and you’d really like to not be receiving return fire as well. All of which is not conducive to anything resembling accuracy. It amounts to “Duck down, point your gun in the general direction and pull the trigger, hoping you hit the person you should.”
not really. You just don’t shoot if you don’t have a clear target period.
You get out of the line of fire if you can. If you can’t you make yourself a smaller target if possible.
Use bodies around you if need be.
Then when you can take the shot w/surety, and only then, do you take the shot.
You try to “Stop” the target from causing more harm. You never ever really shoot to kill either. You shoot to stop. Death results many times due to this, but stopping them from causing further harm is the sole intent of the action of firing your gun.
If you can’t get a clean shot, you don’t take it. Anything else is panic fire.
There is gun training and safety classes for this, you know.
Reality is, someone who is trained and has prepared well enough, and is familiar with their weapon and environment has a better chance at stopping such an event.
What ^^ wrote above is full of fallacies.
Well said, Brodder. Real life situations may be chaotic but part of the training is aimed at cutting down the chaos and letting a person effectively deal with it.
Very true, but it ignores a pretty critical piece of information.
In real life, after the first one or two supers gets taken down using extreme measures like nerve agents or heavy artillery, the rest will get the hint VERY quickly: super-powers do not make you immune to death, and there’s a lot more normals than there are supers. The LAST thing you want is to convince the normals that you cannot be held in a normal jail, because they WILL kill you if they see that as the only option. So what would end up happening would be a tacit agreement, where the supervillians stopping acting like indestructible jerks, and the world’s law enforcement agencies didn’t just kill them on sight.
This is a large part of the reason why the KGB and the CIA stopped attacking and killing each others’ agents and their families: it started getting to expensive when the other agency replied in kind, so both groups just sorta…stopped. In the late 40s and early 50s, it happened. After that, the practice stopped. Spies you recruit, obviously, are not part of that equation, and there are always regular security forces to deal with, but, still.
Ultimately, civilization depends upon two things: the threat of naked force, and the existence of options that do not involve exercising that naked force. The existence of super-villians implies a situation where naked force will have to be exercised. The existence of super-heroes merely responds to this reality.
Unless the Supers just stand around letting you get your heavy artillery in place that won’t help you. Lethal gases? What would the world community say? What would they do to you? If some one is able to say get your troops to fire on each other or on you what would you do then? Conventional weapons of war would be useless in this environment. You would need new tools like EM and Sonic weapons.
Let’s avoid the term “real life”. Even if we apply as much logic and sense to a “realistic superpowers” scenario, we just don’t know how things will ultimately turn out.
More specifically, the proposal of some sort of mutually understood “let’s not go all lethal” agreement between villains and law enforcement seems to me as quite optimistic. You’re citing a (truly) real life example, but that doesn’t mean both the CIA and KGB, etc., were totally avoiding direct physical conflict that resulted in harm or death in all the years they operated after said truce. For that matter, intelligence agents are very disciplined individuals, following their orders closely as much as they operate independently and on their own initiative.
Such is not the case with hardened and desperate criminals. No such civil agreement exists among them. They follow only themselves. Many of them are well aware of their mortality but are still willing to fight it out or terrorize people on the right side of the law. That’s even while the law IS after them. And I’m not talking about scenarios wherein they can still play law enforcement’s preference to take them alive: I’m talking about guys with guns blazing who’re well aware that the response to that would be lethal force. Some of them even escape with their lives doing such.
It may well be no different with supervillains. You cite heavy artillery and nerve agents and whatnot; in a world of superpowers, it may make little difference because of the wildness of the variety and nature of possible superpowers. The realization of mortality and consequences may lead one to surrender- but it can also lead one to the opposite conclusion: they’ve got nothing left to lose so they might as well go all out in a desperate gamble to triumph.
Furthermore, that all assumes a rationally thinking supervillain who weighs out the risks of either course of action, whether safe submission to the authorities or a desperate and possibly last stand. You can argue that serious, objective reflection is likely to lead to the former and not the latter. A person who chooses to just chuck it all to heck is likely instead to do the latter.
In the end, we just don’t know, especially in a hypothetical superpowered setting.
It’s funny that I started off with a caveat about “real life”; ironically, I just realized that even in real life, we also don’t know. Too many of the tragedies involving violence we’ve seen is because of unforeseen elements and events that occurred outside of the expert logic we employed.
Unless those “extreme measures” causes the rest of them to panic and lash out at anything near them…
I don’t mind cliches that much, but can we PLEASE get a male super-strength-type character that for once does not look like a Pink Hulk Covered With Additional Bulges?
Or a strength-type who can use more than a few brain cells at the same time?
Stalwart?
Yup, Stalwart is pritty damn the anti cliche for that.
A male very strong guy that likes to dress in suits.
Hell, he even took off his shoe to make sure it didn’t get damaged when kicking the tank.
+1
I feel that these over muscled dumb thugs types are villains BECAUSE they’re this stupid :P
“durrr, i am strong, no one can stop me!”
*Proceeds to get all free ride con the anvil express, next station intensive care*
Ort’s comment reminds me…
Yo, DaveB! I gotta question for you.
When designing Sydney, did it ever occur to you to make her a physical bruiser instead to contrast with her small stature and nerdy looks? The “Cute Bruiser” trope is still somewhat rare and definitely charming and fun.
Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE Sydney’s concept of her orbs giving her powers while also being a way to avoid (and contrast against) the “Most Common Superpower” trope which the comic runs on with almost everyone else. I ALSO LOVE your idea of giving her a myriad of powers- I LOVE the “Swiss Army Knife” superpower set idea.
That said, you could have easily given her the orbs AND the bruiser/tank/flying brick power set. I ask all this out of curiosity. Thanks!
I liked the little girl in the movie Zoom (I think that was the name). Picture an 8 year old girl who wants to be a princess and can toss cars around.
She was 6, and yes, she MADE that movie. “Princess” was her superhero name, by her demand.
“STOP! You’re just singing the alphabet. Your voice isn’t even super.”
“It is too soopuh!” (Throws table, which smashes into matchsticks against the wall.)
Dragging the couch over to sleep next to someone else was good, too (“Cindy, that was attached the wall.”).
I agree the rest of the movie was a little lame and hackney. But a 6 year old tossing a forklift (with a load of weights) in a tantrum is just too funny. I mean how do you tell her NO when she can punch through walls? And I believe he said it was Bolted to the wall because part of the wall came with it and the steel beams grinding on the what a horrendous scraping sound. Still makes me giggle.
Maxima was originally called Ultima when I created her, and at that time the character I had named Maxima was almost exactly what you’re describing, a waifish (but still adult looking) woman who could lift an infinite amount of weight because she could cancel out its gravity. (or gravity’s effect on it, you know what I mean.) Eventually she got retired and I gave Max the name she has now. Skinny/lifty Max might get a little redesign and show up in the comic at some point in the future still.
i had a char like her in a game once she stood 2 ft 4 in tall and could control gravity she was also super dense because of her power her code name was G. she could also control gravity around things she could see but she was scared of highs.
Working theory: Testosterone and super powers mix particularly badly in this world. It is not that there are more girl supers, simply that more of the girls get to survive the development of powers, long enough to be counted.
Ohh, I like that.
Of maybe the smarter ones consider consequences and thus don’t become rouges. Subtle use of a superpower could net you a lot more than criminal activities. Both muscle-heads could have gotten muti-million dollar contracts in sports if they were smart.
Interesting.
Suplement theory:
Super powers on males come with a strong increase in testostorone, which results in increased aggresivity and ‘alpha male’ feelings.
Combined with the super powers, this only reinforces the self image given by increased testostorone, wich increases testostorone even further.
This cycle helps push males into supervillainy faster. Especially those with physical powers
Counterpoint: The portions between male villains and male heroes seems to be somewhat even. However, going along with the Testosterone Survival Rate hypothesis, it seems all the known male heroes exhibit something beyond Testosterone in their personalities. Zen Masters, Shapeshifters, and Soldiers. All requiring both adaptability and discipline. The known villains are two brutes, and they’re both one-shot by Female Sebastian Shaw and Female Colossus, goddesses in their own right.
Counter counter point:
The male heroes we have seen so far all seem reasonably intelligent and well adjusted.
Asuming ‘gaining superpowers’ is randomly distributed, and does not take intelligence into acount, this could be the factor that deceides between villain or hero.
Kind of like alergies, which form randomly. Sometimes the body goes left when it deceides the initial responds to pollen, and sometimes it goes right.
Ofcourse anyone with actual knowledge of how the imune system works is going to laugh at that comparison, this is extremely oversimplified. But it is sortof how it works
I kinda like that one because most of the criminals I’ve dealt with weren’t too bright. Not saying there aren’t smart ones but hearing how some of them get caught makes me think that a lot of them are maybe not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
they managed to find the drawer? I’m impressed at the intelligence they showed.
The allegory wasn’t wrong. Criminality usually being a decision of the desperate, intelligence wouldn’t be taken into account. Nobody was “desperate” to be a hero, so there had to be some intelligence involved. Although we’re dealing in a world where supers are rare, so naturally you’re going to have the higher-intelligence criminality who are not desperate and can see a way to cheat the system. Actively attacking a team of superheroes doesn’t seem to be an action such villains will take, which I’m betting we’ll see after the dust settles.
The theory has possibilities.
One other thought I would add is this. What is the average age at which an individual either acquires powers or discovers that they possess powers?
If the answer is something in the teen to early twenties bracket, that is something to consider here. I’m not saying this is true of ALL individuals, but there is a strong tendency for females to map out their lives in detail from an early age, whilst males are still treating fart noises as high art. Not everybody, not all the time, but this differance does seem to exist between the genders.
So a teenage female who discovers she has superpowers MAY be more likely to use those powers responsibly (or, at least, less destructively) than a teenage male in the same situation.
I am not being sexist. Far from it – I just accept that there are differances between the genders and that the development of each tends to happen in different ways at quite different paces.
It must have been some time since you have had to deal with teenage girls.
Thugs and jocks in general macho things up, show off and show the other guy who is boss.
Guys will walk up to an opponent and punch them in the face. maybe give them a kick when they are down and walk away.
Girls in general though are nasty, vindictive and will go out of their way to hurt others and destroy things and people that get in their way and do it clandestinely. Girls will vandalize their targets things. Use booby traps ranging from tacks in shoes to razor blades in text books. The list goes on. Mind you there is the occasional girl who will just walk up to someone and punch them in the face or kick them where it hurts irrespective of gender and just keep walking.
I’m a father of a tennage girl, thanks.
And I am married to someone, and a brother to someone else, and a brother-in-law to someone ELSE who were all teenage girls at some stage of their lives. Plus having clear memories of being a teenage boy, and of what my alleged peers and equals were like.
That doesn’t really counter his statement. In fact you both basically said the same thing, that males would be more likely to jump in ass-first and punch their way out (hyperbole is fun) and females would be more calculating.
So, basically, supervillains are immature?
This gives Anvil’s taunt last page added kick.
hmm… I would argue that the presence of the classic superpowers (strength, speed, resilience), especially if they expressed at an early age, reduces the internal need for the individual to mature and socialize well, because there are fewer ways to compel good behavior. It’s been said over and over in commentary over the years here that power corrupts. The earlier that corruption sets in, the deeper impact it would have.
So, the supervillains are spoiled brats.
+1
Well that probably is how they became supervillains.
They have be mature now (in a special way), but growing up as spoiled brats with power, they may have come to expect the world to bend to their every will, AND be able to make the world bend like that
Which is a dangerous combination
It could also be possible that social expectations could play a part. A guy who suddenly develops super-strength and invulnerability would pretty quickly polarize to “Smash things”- whether that’s “Good things” or “Bad Things” is then up to circumstance. But also, a guy with power may assume that he needs to then find a position to use that power blatantly- Military or Law Enforcement or acting against those. This would be part of the “Male Instinct” of combat and dominance testing. I don’t actually think that the smart ones would go professional athlete in this case- that’s more of a path to either villainy or military, because it’s a regimented circumstance focused on attack and defense and physical superiority. The intelligent ones would find a circumstance where their superstrength gives them a bigger edge- construction (seen) or art (I’d love to be able to sculpt iron with my bare hands) or leveraging their abilities to get work in research laboratories or manufacturing facilities.
Females who suddenly gain superpowers, on the other hand- I feel that in our culture, a woman who gains ‘in-built-power’ would, instead of going straight to instinctual ‘use’ of that power, compare herself to ‘powerful women’. They’d be more likely to follow role models than self-instinct, and most “Powerful Women” tend to be in political power or headline social change or have ‘star power’- “Women power” tends to be rather less… destructive… than “Male Power”- notable Men of Power tend to be warlords or generals or military conquerers.
There are exceptions, of course, which is why there are plenty of female villains and plenty of male heroes, and why Maxima is head of a paramilitary team instead of doing rescue work or running for office and Kenya isn’t off modelling, but that’s the gist of what I think may happen here- This is, of course, before Public Superheroing- that’s gonna change everything up.
Interesting.
It is true that, on avarage, females mature faster (emotionally) than males.
The stage of emotional maturity could very well play a very important role in deceiding what course is followed.
An adult that develops super powers will, without doubt, develop differently than a child, or a teenager in puberty in the same situation.
Ofcourse, parental influence is also going to be a major factor
Far as I remember Harem got her powers as a small child, one day there were two of her suddenlyand currently she’s only 19 so 5 bodies might not be her max. From the bio “Harem’s copies all started out identical but she has customized them over time, dying and cutting hair, buying individual wardrobes for them, and more than one has a number of tattoos.” Really surprising that a young woman that can be in 5 places at once *and* teleport didn’t develop into a incredibly spoiled adult is amazing. She may be mildly spoiled but doesn’t seem too immature thus far.
Don’t ditch the fart art.
See, it rhymes. That means it’s art right?
Sorry, I’ll just go to my corner now
The average realizing could be teens, sadly the guy who suspects immortality since 1540 keeps screwing the stats.
The sex balance in this comic so far has been pretty much 50/50 so far.
I get a feeling that Testosterone Dude over there is overcompensating for his power. *sugary voice* Those are some really pretty sunrise-coloured crystals you have there on your arms *end sugary voice*. Hence the being a blood moron.
Hah! I love it!
Yes I thought of that but didn’t have room for it on this page. If he ever shows up again he’ll definitely get teased with stuff like “Hey Gem, where are the holograms?” and “Ooh! I want to paint my nursery the color of your thumb, come with me to Home Depot!”
Thank goodness he just had sharp things. If he was anywhere near as powerful and majestic as Taric from League of Legends, then it would have been a much tougher fight. The guy can use a combination of energy and physically based attacks to put you near death, heal you fully, and then pummel you again for good measure. Amusingly he looks like Rio from Gem and The Holograms, makes references to the show, and has gem-based powers.
Not really a “blood moron”, just a moron. I think DaveB missed another comma:
*sigh* “Second blood, moron.” (Because Anvil already bloodied APB.)
Off-hand Backhand
“…or the baddie didn’t start the fight by announcing that he was Concrete Man…”
But… but what if he only CONTROLS concrete, but isn’t MADE of it? Our “thou shalt not kill” hero shalt be devastated!
My brick in one superhero campaign where we were essentially super-powered spec-ops and she was the hero-fangirl ended up killing three people the entire campaign (and allowing/facilitating one more)
One she killed because she’d had trouble with him before (he was telekinetic) and didn’t realize that due to someone else’s power his force field had come down and she haymakered him straight into the ground with 45 Strength, including double knockback.
She followed that up with the Presence Attack of a single word and looking around at the guy’s minions with a horrified “did I do that” expression on her face.
“Ooops”
however, she doesn’t count him because they resurrected him later.
The guy she allowed to be killed was an illusionist that tricked us into fighting the government supergroup we’d been allies with….mostly because we had no other way to contain him than to kill him….and couldn’t prove he was an illusionist….I probably wouldn’t have chosen feeding the guy to the extradimensional horror summoned by one of the characters…but oh well.
The second guy she killed, she did it on purpose knowing that she didn’t know anyway to permanently kill him. So when she threw him off the space ship into vacuum she commented that he’d be back as soon as he made planetfall on a life-sustaining planet and hopefully that would be billions of years later. Ironically, since her powers were dimensionally based and the only way to kill him was to take him out of his native dimension, she could have killed him permanently just by using her entangle attack (yes, a brick with an entangle attack)
She doesn’t count him because “he’ll be back”.
The last person she killed was a minion that had two separate force fields and he died the same way the telekinetic did.
That she counts.
Re: Non-Lethal Super fights….
You know for all the complaints about HP systems in RPGs they are reasonably accurate for this reason: It is practically impossible to judge how a human will react to any given wound. There have been big strong men who got nicked by a .22 on the arm and dropped dead of shock and women who get shot multiple times in the face and walked down 10 flights of stairs to the ambulance.
That having been said, the possible range of both damage potential and HP is very large in a supers game. Particularly if the GM isn’t enforcing the balance limits and assigns random power levels. (E.G. Dr Doom vs the guy who can pee plaid.) So yeah, going full force on an unknown super? Risky.
I’m a bit concerned about what will happen when the rest of the team engages. Thus far, only 3 individuals have committed an actual, identifiable crime – the 2 now-unconscious bricks (assault), and the kenshai (conspiracy). The rest have done nothing more prosecutable than loitering (so far), and attacking them places the team on the wrong side of the law, as it’s been described in-comic
You are forgetting Association.
I am not forgetting association – it’s not a crime, at least in the US
Presuming that they are, in fact, a group, they’re first, chargeable with conspiracy to commit assault with the intention of causing serious harm, as well as trespassing, since the roof of a restaurant isn’t part of it that is intended to be visited by customers. Destruction of property, reckless endangerment, disturbing the peace, attacking law enforcement officers (since ARCHON’s primary purpose has been announced to be defense against supers).
And the bad guys (and girls) can’t hide behind “But I didn’t know they were L.E.Os” because it’s been firmly established that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
I must disagree with you on that point, at least for this moment in time, because they, in legal terms, have not demonstrated that they are a group – only a few members have been observed communicating in any way, and the rest are just… standing around, which again, is not a crime, even in the proximity of wrongdoing. That’s not to say they aren’t persons of interest or that they couldn’t be arrested – just that until they’re actually observed demonstrating hostile intent or performing hostile action, they’re just bystanders.
Bystanders who just HAPPEN to be trespassing and not running in reaction to invasive super-powered activity.
However, my comment did start with the presumption that they are a group.
From the Cornell Law School online legal dictionary, “Trespass is defined by the act of knowingly entering another person’s property without permission.” https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/trespass
They’re on the roof of a restaurant, which doesn’t appear to have a ‘rooftop garden’ seating area, or that any existing rooftop seating is closed (supported by lack of lighting except that coming from the hole they’re standing around), which would therefore be, at best, a restricted-access area. If you barge into a restaurant’s kitchen, that would be trespassing if you don’t have permission, or remain after told to leave.
fair enough – well argued. So we have tresspassers that may also be preparing to commit assult and battery, are suspected of conspiracy and vandalism (possible act of terrorism), and one possible inciting to riot.
“…and not running in reaction to invasive super-powered activity.”
“I did! I ran closer to tweet about it!”
The team just has to go up there, tell them they are under arrest and go with the flow:
They run – resisting arrest.
They fight – resisting arrest.
They stand still – problem solved.
They teleport away – OK, here it gets a bit tricky.
I’d guess teleporting away also counts as running.
Just ganna be dificult to find them again
an other charge “Failure to render assistance to Police” you have a duty of care to tell a Cop “But Officer I saw everything” if you did when a cop tells you to move-along, your not expected to endanger yourself or do anything physical (unless instructed on that 2nd one), just keep out of the way and act as a witness.
On the roof sees oficer coming pulls out cellphone and starts recording the action to sell to newsoutlet.
Cop can take a flying leap I am now protected.
Wonder about the blue haired girl with orbs of her own.
They don’t look like they have seprate powers so they might all do the same things.
It’s not about the power of the villain, it’s about the type. I’m hoping there’s one villain in here that gives them all HELL by being beyond the typical definition of a Super (strength, force, etc).
The biggest problem would be some kind of tactician who can direct the fight efficiently.
But the attackers look like they were hastily assembled without leadership.
I’m still not sure if they all just accepted the challenge (or at least wanted to take a look) or if someone put them together for a test while watching from afar.
you know what,, i think we have just met mathew’s future wife there,, the shinai girl,,,you know the classic bad girl ”good guy” romance
Eh… Mathias seems to be too much a lech to be interested in a girl in the particular manner you describe.
If anything else I could picture the opposite. Bad girl wants to tie him down, both literally and figuratively.
Unless she happens to equal his lechery and they start leching off each other.
I just noticed the clever defense strategy of the guest villain. She knows she will be going up against heroes with morals. When one tries to attack her she will flinch and say “You wouldn’t hit someone with glasses, would you?”. This will cause the hero to pause long enough for her to escape.
She is Meg, a super-rich but bored socialite who sponsored a group of super villains just for the adventure of it, her team name is the ‘Meg-a-Millions’.
Her team consists of:
Herself. Her six hologram generators allow her to appear in multiple places at once, “Meg-a-Plex”.
We have already met some of her team, the two bruisers “Meg-a-Hurts” and “Meg-a-Ton”.
Then there is the one who can transform into various animals, ‘Meg-a-Fauna”
The one who controls and amplifies sound waves, “Meg-a-Phone’
The one who attacks with a set of razor-sharp diamond-hard teeth, “Meg-a-Bite”
The one who attacks with electricity, “Meg-a-Watt”
The one whose skin is made of a shell of living rock, “Meg-a-Lith”
Aims ALL orbital punishment wepons at O.B.Juan.
she will suffer meg-a-damage. rimshot
*gigglefit*
Okay Question: why are they attacking? (I know.. I’ve been waiting for a super fight for -ages- and this is totally awesome!! … but really) What do they stand to gain? there are no grudges to settle so…is this really a “I have super powers lets F*** THINGS UP!!!” fight? Are there really groups of bad guy’s out there sitting around in abandoned warehouses going “man I hope super hero’s show up on the news or something.. This is kinda lame and boring” Also.. the glasses girl with the blinking lights she’s totally thinking “why the hell are we doing this again?” XD
We don’t know yet. It’s been about 30 seconds since they appeared.
Logically they probably consist of some pre-existing organized group of supers which are part of somebodys 7 step master plan for world domination and they are trying to take out the team on the basis that they are both natural foes and a great way to make a statement.
OTOH the incredibly poor team work and organization on display imply they may be something of a more ad-hoc nature.
I’m sure we’ll find out at some point.
Nah. The poor organization and lack of teamwork just means that they’ve never been formally trained in group combat. Group combat is an entirely different animal from one-on-one fights, because you have to be able to know for a fact what your compatriots will do, when, why, how, and to whom they will do it. That’s why, in Iraqi Freedom, Hussein knew every aspect of American plans for his overthrow, and still couldn’t stop it. The reality is that ArcSWAT is simply going to have a faster decision loop, and be able to use it to make their team function in a cohesive manner, than are just about any of the foes they come across.
Loosely quoted;
“I assure you that my companion’s actions are indicative of nothing… Least of all rational planning.”
I think they are attacking as a preventive measure(ish). Namely they know that at some point they are going to end up in a clash with ArcSWAT, and therefore are (Trying to) chose the most advantageous time and place.
My guess is that this is a, very poorly organized, preemtive attack.
Archon is a direct threat to all super villains. So if they band tougether and take them out now, than the villains have free reign after that.
Hex yeah! I love it Dave. I’m looking forward to seeing my dark alter-ego’s defeat.
So is Hex part of her name? Hex=6 and she has 6 whatever-they-are’s hovering next to her head.
oh hex-tecy, please set me free. (to tune of witchblade’s XTC) powers rendering persons happy-giggly or causing hallucinations and panic.
Personally, I’m just waiting for one of those ‘Pay-up’ moments where somebody hands another a nice bill; even possible at the same time on either side.
This.
DaveB, THIS has to be seen!
+1
Definitely looking forward to an actual exchange. Given ARC’s propensity for recruiting, I’m tempted to believe that someone from the villain side might be “scared straight”. It would give Sidney a training buddy too.
Heartbreaker! Hex! You’re both up. Nobody else has lost their silhouette yet.
I love Maxima, her >>I still don’t give a f***<< moves makes me laugh. XD
We know Max can ‘max out’ certain powers/ability to increase their potency, I just hope she doesn’t have a creepy voice saying “Maximum power!” in her ear. I also doubt she has a stealth mode.
Well drat. I was kind of hoping that this whole fight Maxima was going to sit out of. Given she already proved how badass she is I thought she was going to sit back and show the world that her team can kickass just as well without her (It would have been great for publicity and striking up fear in the supervillian world).
Well she kinda is.
She’s taking the role of team leader. Directing the rest, and flying around to see what needs done where.
She’s probably holding back to give backup where needed. She can be next to any teammate that needs help in an instant, and pull them out of trouble
Shouldn’t Maxima’s dialogue in that last panel start with “Major, take care of the civies.” Unless there’s a character named “Major Take” that I missed somewhere along the way..
Major Hiro (the big Asian guy) is the second-in-command for the team.
I think the point is that grammatically there should be a comma after “Major”.
But people ain’t grammatical. They is colloquial. ;)
Personally, I think Max is talking fast and didn’t bother to pause for the comma…
Makes the difference between:
“Let’s eat, Grampa!”
And
“Let’s eat Grampa!”
Commas. Grammatical superheroes, saving lives.
fairy tail wordsmithing horrors
I’ve always assumed that the “start with light taps to find out how tough this guy is so I don’t accidentally kill him” thing is why fights with, say, Spider-Man or Superman take so long.
Dave is into Honor Harrington, too?
All is forgiven!
Did nobody else notice that Blondie ordered the crystal hand guy into battle by saying “Tics” so that could be his SV name, and that when Max hit him the depression in his face was “spoon” shaped?
Because of that I wouldn’t be surprized if Super Megan’s glowy things were attached to her back and gave her the power of flight ala Arthur. If Blondie throws her shoe I’ll know we’re being had.
Nooo, she was trying to say “No more testosterone fueled tactics” when the stupid crystal hand guy jumped in the middle of “tac-” and “-tics”
Ah, that makes sense…. but would ruin a perfect opportunity for a running gag.
Orders of goodness are going out. The squishies are saved, scoping out the enemy, greenhorn given direction and even supply lines being addressed? Very nice. :)
I don’t know if I would judge her for “accidentally” killing him by using misjudging his hardness. He attacked their military police unit with a high likelihood of superpowers (fun looking crystal hands) which is essentially attacking them with a weapon of unknown but possibly quite high power. I don’t know what the laws in this world are but I think that sort of thing would OK a heck of a lot of force on her side. Just to be safe. Tough question though. Made harder by how strong Max is. If she and her team were a bit weaker I would say the officials would have to recognize that they couldn’t take the chance with too many “probing” attacks but since so many of them and especially her are the heaviest of heavies maybe they could start out with some lightly thrown bricks or something to test for hardness. But too much fooling around puts the civies at risk again no matter how strong Max’s team is… They need one of those Vegeta goggle things (except one that actually works). You would think the techs or their alien tech friend could come up with some “guns” that bounce some different kinds of energy off of an opponent to test for durability to certain attacks. Wouldn’t always have time to use it but would certainly keep the body count down when there was time!
As Vegeta found out a simple number is not enough to judge an opponent. When I was reading Dragonball I thought someone else must have built it for these stupids (at least stupid outside of combat).
When possible I actually created and used such spells in computer games, a simple spell with as many energy types or effects as possible. Just to determine which big spell to do next.
Actually, that could be the new ability of the Com Ball. Threat assessment / analysis.
Another cool ability would be invisibility. And would totally fit in with the telepresense for the badger jump scares and for leading enemies away from the civilians.
Ambulatory Punching Bag actually used lethal force when just by entering the room (as alluded to by the comment about landing on someone today), so he was clearly a legitimate target, even without the subsequent threats. I think Bitch Slap’s aggression also marks him as legitimate; military units are usually given a lot of leeway in this kind of judgment. (However, this is one of the reasons military units generally don’t operate domestically.)
The bigger question is the people up on the roof, as others have commented. If they haven’t attacked yet, are they legitimate targets? In our world, you might look to see if someone is holding or (especially) pointing a weapon, but in a world where someone could be able to kill with an eye beam without moving a finger, do you have to allow them to take the first shot? If so, you put your forces at risk; if not, you potentially put innocents at risk. Rules of engagement are tough here.
This is very true. And some of them might actually be minor powered fanboys come to see the Arc folks. Or they might be holding an American Hero (ala Idol) event to see who could join, all set up by the strategy villain around a core of big dumb bricks. Thus a crowd of obvious supers –but mostly non combatants until Arc goes on the offense.
Well that question could probably be easely solved by informing them that they have 5 seconds to surrender, and lay down flat on the ground (or roof).
Anyone not surrendering WILL be asumed dangerous
In our world so authorized peace officer is required to wait for the enemy to shoot first. Civilians aren’t required to do so either. As an example, here is a summary of the rules for legal self defense in my state:
1. You are not the aggressor in the situation.
2. You must reasonably believe the threat is imminent. (Note that imminent doesn’t mean immediate in this context, it means that action is pending).
3. You reasonably believe that the threat presents a danger of sufficient magnitude to justify the use of deadly force.
4. You reasonably decide that the use of deadly force is necessary to avoid or prevent a threat to yourself or a third person.
Part of #4 is the “duty to retreat” which doesn’t apply in homes in this state.
My take on it is that since the super-villains have already initiated action and have had members of their group state the intent to kill members of Archon, and appear to have the abilities to back up those threats, Archon’s in the clear to shut them down as hard as is necessary. If some of the villains manage to live through the process, they can count themselves as lucky.
I’m pretty sure that gang members can’t get much traction with a “we didn’t touch them” defense for standing around while other Gang-banger buddies assault or murder someone. I’m guessing that the justice system in this comic is going to be about the same.
“No” not “so” in the first sentence. Blame it on lack of coffee…