Grrl Power #204 – I guess everyone parked in the back
Yes, Maxima had her jacket on the back of her chair the whole time. You can check. And her gun I guess… which you probably shouldn’t do with your firearm, but it is a private party, the room is full of supercops, and a regular human would have a hell of a time pulling the trigger.
Maxima isn’t dodging lasers and lightning, she’s dodging the people shooting those things at her, the same way a ninja supposedly can dodge an arrow or bullet by watching the person doing the shooting.
There are a few more cameos premiering on this page, but I’ll save pointing them out for when they get a close up. Another thing about this page, I reserve the right to come back and make tweaks to the villains that appear on it. Like I’ve said, some of these guys are chaff, so I didn’t put quite the same amount of time into designing them as I did the minibosses.
Here’s a few links for you.
Amazing! We’re in the ComicMix finals! We’re up against Paranatural, which I’ll admit I haven’t had a chance to read through, but it looks fun. The page they have up now makes me want to find the time. I encourage you to go check them out. Voting is sure to be fierce! Tell you friends! Like! Share! Retweet! Ride through town on a horse with (no name) a lantern or a bell or something!
I made that Status Quola gag into a shirt, cause I thought it would be ok as a standalone gag. And the barcode actually resolves to something now. (It’s just the URL to this page, where else?)
Superbitch is doing a kickstarter for her first book if’n you’re interested. It’s one of my favorite superhero webcomics.
And finally, speaking of Patreon, we finally hit the $2000 milestone, which is pretty boggling to me still. Anyway, it means I’ll start steaming for an hour or so once a week. Or more, we’ll see. I’m sitting in front of the computer drawing anyway so I may as well stream. Obviously that’s only for people who want stuff super spoiled, but I promise not to stream any pages with major stuff on it like the opening of the tube or the skilltree reveal, but those only come around so often. I’ll probably chat and do Q&A while I’m doing that but we’ll see how it all goes since I can’t draw and type at the same time. I’m not sure when I’ll stream, the best way will be to follow me on Twitter, because that seems to be the best way to throw spontaneous stuff out there. I may also settle into doing it at a predictable time on the weekends as well.
Edit: Well that may be a record, four separate grammar errors. I apologize for that. They should be fixed now, if you CTRL+F5 the page.
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.
Anyone know what that white bit of something is in panel three?
A “bandage” from the blondie costume ripped out by Maxima’s wind, look at her arm. It make me laugh each time, those two panels are wonderful.
I think its from her Baton More (or Less) Accurately
Her baton? The Shinai? It has no bandages: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1276
What I assume you’re referring to are metal bands placed along the shinai in order to assist in its structural integrity.
She could also Be wearing Metal Bands on her arms, On that Note I am referring to the grip of the Sword. Didn’t see her in the last comic with the sword. But the “grip” would be wrapped or bound in a leather or tightly bound cloth as to lighten the impact force on the wielders hands.
on that note it could also be from her forehead protector.
It’s Dave’s idea of a visual joke: It is her word balloon deflated.
Ha :) Nice.
In a b/w comic a squiggle over the head is often used to indicate a dark mood. I think this is that kind of thing. Though I like the deflated work balloon idea – she is looking kind of deflated, anyway…
If I may point out the way her hair is drawn on all previous pages my guess would be that it is what she was using to tie her hair back.
except that since her hair is all going off to the side, the tie would also be going that direction, not up.
But you had me in agreement for a moment.
Pretty sure it was the ribbon from her hair.
“…overall estimates on the number of supers ARE way off.”
No, ‘is’ works just fine
No it doesn’t. If it said ‘the overall estimate’ that would be a different story.
She says “the number of Supers is way off”
However, “number” is preceded by “of” , making it part of a prepositional phrase and thus the verb form should be plural (i.e., “are” instead of “is”) to make it agree in number with “estimates”.
Marry me.
BANANAS =D
Wouldn’t it be funny, to find yourself engaged, just because you made a pun?
I don’t think my wife would find it all that funny….
I’m no grammar nerd, but although we’re talking about multiple supers, isn’t the object of the sentence the (singular) number? In which case I’m perfectly happy to see ‘is’.
You could say “there are a lot more supers than we thought ” ‘are’ instead of ‘is’ in the original sentence sounds wrong to me.
No it is not, the “overall estimates” (plural) are. Also DaveB fixed it.
Nah, he just gave in to grammar pedantics
Especially given that when people speak they don’t always follow the proper grammar rules.
If it was author exposition it would have deserved fixing, but as a character’s speech it could have stood.
Agreed, and it seemed fine the way it was to me
How about the fact that not everyone speaks perfect grammar?
but remember…Max is a closet nerd. Probably a straight-A student before she became a walking tac-nuke.
Nerds and straight A students are not the same….
I doubt Max is the kind to get the grammar of that wrong.
An old debate.
Poersonally I think you should put it in the right grammar but if you don’t it is no problem.
Unless you do Yoda or whatever.
Unfortunately, the reality is that people tend to look down on those whose grammar is less than perfect. Also, bad grammar will quickly start to become confusing, and will make many of DaveB’s fans go elsewhere.
Other then the meaning Harem is “snickering” about what is “hump the Barrett” suppose to mean and what is “lightstorm”?
Plenty discussed in previous comments: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1280/comment-page-1#comment-64884
‘Hump the Barrett’ is possibly referring to Harem carrying in Pegs big gun
Military slang: Humping means to carry/transport on one’s person, as in, I humped that 150 lb. rucksack all over God’s creation.
Yup. A Barret is a .50 Cal sniper rifle made by (who else?) Barret Firearms Manufacturing, Inc. Since they weigh in at over 20 lb. plus ammo, Harem obviously has a lightweight payload. :D
“Humping the *******” is military slang for transporting by hand, or IOW carrying it on your back like a camel (hump, get it?).
Yes, already knew what ‘hump’ meant (to add an extra meaning, it can also be used to refer to ‘Wednesday’, as in ‘hump day’ or ‘have managed to get over the mid-week hump, all down hill now until the weekend’), just couldn’t remember what ‘Barrett’ was but knew it meant one of Peg’s guns, just wasn’t sure which one in particular
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWBhP0EQ1lA
Nobody read the comments?
The Barrett is not exactly non lethal. Even if you hit someone in the leg, the hydrostatic shock could rupture their heart (if not, it would certainly open the femoral vein, bleeding them out in seconds).
On the other hand, I wonder if a rubber bullet fired by a Barrett would be lethal if it hit center mass. Probably stun the target if they were wearing body armour or break their ribs if not.
If you had a sniper-accurate “rubber” bullet with equivalent range to normal ammunition, the answer is Yes. Depending on the model (I don’t wanna go look) the Barrett is sniper-accurate out to over a mile (1800+ meters). If the bullet survives being shot that far accurately, it has enough energy to do bad things to the target regardless of exact composition.
The only rubber .50 cal bullet that I know about has a much shorter accurate range and is intended for use against vehicles, not people: https://kitup.military.com/2011/09/rubber-50-cal-bullets-effective-kit-or-battlefield-folly.html
Pretty sure that she’s not going to be shooting those.
You might want to ignore the range for now.
My guess the Berrett is meant for fleeing opponents and I doubt Peggy will move too far away to get in position.
I cite range purely to give context of the pressure that the bullet has to withstand. 50 cal is a BIG round with an insane amount of range – a Barrett is not at all suited to less-than-lethal ammunition.
I think it’s just a typo, and the author wants a harem to hump to Barrack.
It’s in relation to setting up Peggy.
So obviously it’s something Peggy can use. Peggy is a sniper. She needs a sniper rifle.
A Barret is a sniper rifle
Does Barrett even produce any other firearms?
I only know them for their sniper rifles and anti materiel rifles (which are just bigger).
They probably make a lot of rifles but the one I know of is the 6.8mm assault rifle….the M468. It fires the 6.8 mm cartridge that special forces wanted, more powerful than the 5.56 but smaller and more accurate than Warsaw Pact 7.62.
Harem meant both. As in carry- teleport the rifle and she also meant “Hump” as in “Grind upon” the big phallic piece of iron…she’s probably done that before to piss off max and peggy or will use that to drop a “bomb” in on a conversation just to see Peggy and Max’s reaction.
As in –“Careful with ‘Barret’ Peggy, he and are close…you know as in intimate? I see why you like big guns so much, gal! Who could blame you?” >>PORT<<
Yep, remember Harem has a thing for new experiences and loves to pull the chains on the uptight. Especially those uptight with their personal gear she's got to port all over who knows where. She could instead be out experiencing new things instead.
After the humping, It probably needs cleaned. She should take a shower with it afterwards.
Did anyone else think of “Barrett” as the man with gun hands from Final Fantasy, or am I the only elder nerd on here?
***Slowly raises hand***
Your not the only “Elder Geek” here. I go to “Cons” dressed as a Colonial Marine.
I rembet when Pong 1st appeared on the scene.
ELDER GEEK THOU ARE NOT!
Guess this explains what those floating things around Hex are (or at least one aspect): they are a portable Laser Show, only thing missing is the Human Fog Machine, or Dry-Ice Man
…and Pink Floyd playing in the background
IN a Heros game we fought “PINK FLOYD” he had an always on 4 hex LSD field – he was already so messed up it had no real effect on him. He could disbelieve away anything that didn’t KO him right away and could imagine up some really really scary crap that was all to real to anyone not yet affected by his LSD aura.
DaveB, just in case, “Grey” and “BlueShirt” at each side of “Hex”, and “BombShell” (the running blond) and “Ice” at each side of the burning tree, have no shadows over the floor.
Things having or not having a shadow is often used as a clue for what is real and what is an illusion.
Good point :)
Although at least the blond one looked pretty real.
I just noticed that she’s still running two pages later, and she hasn’t gotten very far.
Actually I am not sure she is running, if you notice there is a yellow energy ball coming from her, I think that is just a “throwing” gesture. Or maybe she is chasing Max as well.
The point of such illusions is to fool the enemy long enough for the real ones to get in their shots first. These aren’t infiltrators after all.
Sydney’s “true sight” should be able to tell for sure.
True. If Maxima let her leave her hole :)
Shield and telepresence ball. Plus whispering into the mic or just pointing or some other sign.
Unfortunately, the projected Sydney can’t see through illusions,only the original.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/660
We don’t know that for sure, anymore.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1171
My suspicion is that the true-sight upgrade allows her to break illusions/invisibility. In her demonstration she could see through them, but the others could not. Sydney would have to point out each illusion individually, as a spotter, without such a feature.
From a writing standpoint, that theory does make more sense/interest than the “truesight now extends to telepresent copy.”
I mean, if it IS the “copy gets truesight” option that would mean a limit was introduced without our knowledge that the limit could exist, and was then removed before mattering.
We know that the limit existed because of how Halo demonstrated it. Or failed to. She could see, the other people in the room could not. Whilst it was amusing in that instance, it would limit the worth of her true-sight in situations like this. Not that the upgrade could not be other things. It is just a possibility. Note though that breaking invisibility and illusions is a lot more powerful than just seeing through them. Especially if trying to convince a sceptical audience.
“I have told you 100 times that the Queen is a lizard, can’t you see?”
If she has Truesight and an actual LOS of the field, just give her a laser designator and have her highlight the real foes. Unfortunately, ‘shield’ and ‘truesight’ tie up both hands, so she’s gonna have to say stuff like “only twelve reals, big guy shirtless red pants, blond gal in Powergirl knockoff, red guy on fire’ etc. etc.” Gonna be like doing play-by-play on a Final Four game…..
Only, she actually already could break illusions, seeing as she made Dabbler drop her glamour and X appear when she pointed their presence; they didn’t voluntarily supress them when pointed at.
No, both Dabbler and X dropped their illusions because they knew the jig was up. There’s no point in being invisible when somebody is pointing right at you; https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/641
And as you see here; https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/630 Dabbler said Sydney “saw through it” she did not say Sydney “made” her do anything.
Sometimes it just means “feet not touching the ground”.
It’s possible that BlueShirt is just a little short flyer (as in, under 3 feet tall, but perfectly proportioned, either just small or can adjust his size)
I’m not great with grammar, but is “the possibility that some of are illusions” correct. Should it be “some are illusions” or “some of them are illusions”
I meant to include that I’m talking about panel 4
Looks like someone corrected the mistake
Yeah sorry about all the grammar errors today. :P
keep pumping out awesome comics and we’ll remain in a forgiving mood.
=OP
Remember, not everyone speaks with perfect grammar, Dave. Just so long as we not have going from one extreme to the other unless the person doing it is doing it to be funny and/or snark. :P
The way I look at it is that pointing this stuff out shows that we care about the quality of the comic.
But what if one of the characters’ traits is that they have bad grammar?
FWIW, I wasn’t complaining, merely pointing out a (possible) motive for why people do so.
it’s true that many people don’t speak with perfect grammar, but that typically manifests itself in poor sentence structure (e.g. “where all the women at?”) or “inventing words” (e.g. “that was way funner”) – it seldom involves dropping words out of the middle of a sentence, which is the most common form of Dave’s easter eggs. That said, it seldom makes the comic confusing or unreadable, so they usually don’t bother me (or, I suspect much of anybody else here) – TBH, I think it’s just become a tradition for us to grammar check the comic for Dave, so he doesn’t have to burn pre-posting time on it ^.^
You’re just crowdsourcing editing and proofreading. ;)
Very efficient.
If you are ever looking for people to tell you how you are wrong, look no further than the internet.
I disagree.
=OP
it’s also a good way to hear how you are wrong even when you are technically and/or legally right.
I love the guy just randomly setting a tree on fire.
“Yeah I was gonna fight, but they look really powerfull, I’ll show them by nurning down this tree here!”
Also yeah, paranatural is friggin awesome, especaially JOHNY!, was rereading it yesterday and laughed like heck!
Just commented about that :) A “show off” did not occurred to me, good one.
Think of the xmen. The kid who manipulated fire. He needed a starter source before he had anything to play with. The tree? It makes a handy dandy fire source that most would not think about to estinguish amongst all the other chaos.
Pyro
The burning tree puzzles me. If Maxima flew over them someone has realy bad aiming.
1) light tree on fire.
2) lob tree into building crowded with thine enemy.
3) roast marshmallows. Chat about the hard day at world-domination club.
Having just ordered ‘don’t kill them if you can help it’ , adding a Barrett to the mix is like saying ‘but please find excuses where you can!’ If its super-powers, we’re looking at people, not material that needs dealt with, and a Barrett does not wound lightly. Hit anyone without super toughness, and they’ll need a coffin. With super toughness? They may still need new limbs, or they may just no-sell the shot. Either way, I’m not sure it’s an appropriate weapon for the setting, but if its being brought in as reserves, I’ve no issues. You’ve just been ambushed, plan heavy till you know the full story.
Peggy is the team sniper. She may well have unusual ammo. The traditional ‘rubber bullet’ or paint rounds or…
Remember, they a military group. Standard procedure when attacked is to respond with lethal force. Maxima is trying to not want to do that, however, when it’s all said & done, she is about to let any civilians or any of her team die.
*sigh* she is not*
Don’t kill if you can is not really the order that was given.
It was more a ‘If you can knock him out, there is no need to also kill them’
“Engage at will and watch each other’s backs. Keep it non-lethal if you can.”
The way I read this I could restate as: “Engage according to standard rules of combat, protect your teammates. Only attempt less-than-lethal tactics if you see an opening for such.”
Peggy doesn’t have to aim at people. She could just do distraction shots, shooting the ground or things near the targets. I mean if your standing there and the ground explodes a couple inches from your foot, you’re going to flinch.
anti materiel rifles could wound or kill normal people with the kick up from inches away, if I am placing the term correctly, even a standard M16 can wound with a bounced round or rocks thrown by the impact. M16 or AK47 kick up is normally blocked by sturdy pants but a higher power round generates more dangerous chunks that can travel farther.
You could also say that the Barrett is added insurance. It is hopefully not needed but if half a bad guy being left over or a heavily wounded/dead teammate the bad guy is going to get the bullet.
Yeah that blue-haired girl with halo-esque things shooting lasers is intriguing. I wonder if her power is related to halos or if they’re like Rajin’s tomoe drums?
aye sir i was thinking the same thing
Question for our author/artist. Imagine how busy that panel with all the blasts aimed at maxima would be if DaveB had added every sound effect too!– Question is: What sound effects are occurring in those panels? No room in the panel really for such, but you could list them. (Big evil grin). It’d give use more to argue about…you know- sound effects vs apparent power and effects of the blasts.
Wow I didn’t even think about adding sound effects to those shots. I imagine certain shots will get them as they appear on less cluttered pages.
You missed a golden opportunity there man! You could have stuck “the Filmer” in the top left corner, back by the road, recording the super fight!
Now that would be freaky. Given that he was an imaginary creation that Sydney and Joel made up.
And we have Syd`s natural superpower revealed!
Maybe Joel`s?
Make imaginary stuff come to life, or become imaginary stuff yourself.
Well, he has that one down pat. ;-)
Where’s the Annoying “You can’t touch me” semi-vigillante-semi-villain guy? He gonna appear well after the rest of these villains are pacified?
Not (yet) canon.
I dub the woman, in panels 2 and 3, the “Cross Your Heart Bra”, due to the emblem on her head gear, and the fact that she is a bra and not a bro.
In that case, it’s spelt ‘brah’ with an ‘aitch’
She reminds me of Kingdom Hearts thanks to her broken-heart headband and cleavage keyhole.
A shinai? Man, they’re letting folks call ANYthing a keyblade these days, ain’t they?
no, the cleavage window in her outfit (a la Powergirl) is shaped like a keyhole
But she’s secretly a doctor specializing in uniquely female problems in her day job. That’s right, in real life she’s…
(drum roll please)
Dr Shinai OB/GYN
and next update we discover her hero/villain name is shinia-A-pain. (puts up pun defenses.) no one said that all the powered people gathered here knew they had been aimed at heroes before the attack began some could have been [tipped] to villains in the steakhouse by a villain trying to distract them.
“waits patiently for a gap in defenses”
We needs to know more about the apparant Field Commander of the bad guys: she has a broken heart headband, and a key hole ‘bewb-window’
And she’s carrying a ‘mighty big stick’
But in that case, shouldn’t she be speaking softly?
Was wondering if anyone would catch that :D
Is not THAT hard :)
Neither are you or so i have heard.
I am sorry, honey, I was just tired. Not that you are not pretty enough. Honestly.
that’s ok dear
The way Hex is standing, looks like she is upset/angry/cross with Maxi :D
It might be she has to do that pose to make the beams. Pew-Pew Pose!
Probably, just seems more anger with her knees turned inwards and her elbows tucked into her sides almost like someone holding her from behind
I have got to do what to activate my power? As if pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE was not bad enough! And, no I do not care if it allows me to teleport, I am not going to cluck like a chicken whilst moondancing!
Still better than the way Mind’s Eye has to activate his truth force power
What. Has. Been. Seen. Can’t. Be. Unseen!
You bastard! Why did you put that link there!
***Goes off tho hijack a “Brain-Bleach” Tanker truck***
Might be from effort in shooting of the beams (or from shooting so many so soon after each other). It kinda vaguely resembles a DBZ ‘power-up’ pose.
OK, if Maxima is anything close to as fast as has been implied (she can disassemble a gun and do the holder’s taxes before they could pull the trigger), step 1 would be to put a nice solid strong-human-strength punch in every gut in the parking lot. 1 second later, those that aren’t on the floor gasping for breath get a gut-punch twice as strong. Lather, rinse, repeat. In 4 seconds, the field should be reduced to those who have significant super-human toughness.
“In kung fu, speed determines the winner.” Kung Fu Hustle
Speed is generally the most powerful super power, as you can do stuff to them before they do stuff to you (even if you wait until after they start trying to do stuff to you, if the differential is high enough).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1280/comment-page-1#comment-64973
In kung fu, maybe.
In super-fights, there are a lot of counter-powers, such as energy-drain auras or electrified skin, to keep in mind. Heck, someone could have the ice-clone power from Mortal Kombat and not even be where Max punches while incapacitating her.
I won’t be surprised if she starts doing sweeps to take folks down quickly, but it’s definitely worth the time to do a round of assessment while she’s delivering orders to her non-speedster allies.
Heck, it’s also possible that “Lightstorm” is Harem delivering that human-strength punch you recommend.
When she said Lightstorm to harem, I instanzly thought it meant to zwleport in and telwport everyone’s clothes away. This way they would know who’s serious about fighting and who just joined later.
Maxima is a hard one to know for sure. Supposedly she has a certain strength and durability built into her but the truly awe inspiring levels of power come from her shifting around what ability she is “Maxing” at the time. So perhaps reaching true “Flash”-like speedster levels significantly reduces other abilities. Like maybe her defenses or strength. This could be a bad thing if some of them have passive powers or bodies that are dangerous to hit. At least I assume power management choices like this are how Dave intended to make Maxima’s fighting require some strategy and therefore be more interesting to watch.
Small quibble here that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere: shouldn’t Maxima have known whether Harem could “hump the Barrett” before they came under attack and the possibility that she might need to do so arose?
That calls for Maxima having not only a good estimate of Harem’s power range (reasonable as team leader) but of the precise distance between base and the restaurant on her head, on the fly. Do you memorize distances to all places close to work where you go to lunch/snack?
It’s like expecting cops to keep track of distance to every doughnut house from their precint or patrol area, just in case. :P
I doubt anyone beside the teleporter would care(need) for that much detail.
Their chokes have “GPS, maps and a bunch of other stuff”: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1029
Sorry, the transponder, and it seems Max is not wearing one.
Maxi and the others don’t need the same wrist-restraint Halo was issued with, they all have their chokers (remember, Halo’s wrist-restraint is more than just a transponder)
I don’t think Harem needs distance. She just needs to know where her target is. And she’s familiar with Archon HQ.
The only real question here is wether Harem can teleport WITH the Barret. If she couldn’t teleport between HQ and here, she couldn’t do equipment runs.
And knowing if the equipment runner can carry a piece of equipment that’s vital to another team member IS something that Maxima should know.
Ofcourse, than we couldn’t get the hump the Barret laugh we get now
Not mentioned before, but there could be an inverse relationship between distance and carrying capacity, the further Harem has to teleport the less mass she can carry. She might be able to move 100 pounds (say, more or less) from one side of a wall to the other (removing things from a locked room), but shows up nude from teleporting halfway across Texas.
DaveB stated the max weight without relate it to the distance: when having all 5 bodies out, around 25 lbs.
I’d be willing to bet that Max has a very poor sense of weight. For example, we’ve all heard that ants can cary about fifty times their body weight. If you look at any given ant and any given feather, how often do you think you could correctly guess if the ant can cary the feather?
A very reasonable question. If Halo’s capacity is fixed and unchanging, then yes. But practice probably changes things. Maxima has a big team, so it can be hard keeping track of changing capabilities, over time. She might know one member can throw a grenade a set distance. But only if they have been keeping their hand in. I imagine mental super powers need practice, just like anything else. If Harem had been letting hers slip, so might her capacity.
Or, it could be that she has been gradually training to carry larger loads. An aim may have been to carry the heavier weapons. In which case, Maxima would just be checking that Harem had progressed as hoped.
Grrr, even after suspecting that I had a wrong name, I got distracted, before checking, so still did not spot that I had put “Halo” in instead of “Harem” in the first instance.
“Sends “The Spellchecker” to deal with Yorp”
Correction it will be “the Typographer” from
https://evil-inc.com/
I say we get Meta Man to go to work over here!!!
https://evil-inc.com/comic/meta-humor/
I believe that might be Yorp’s alter ego.
It could be that she was asking whether Harem was both a) Able to carry the Barrett, and b) could get to it. Then again, having Harem carry what I assume is a massive sniper rifle (as they aren’t all that heavy) might be an oddly specific request, hence the need for a question.
It is heavier than you imagine. Because it is designed to take out things bigger than people. Such as missile launchers and stationary aircraft. Although it can be used as a traditional sniper rifle, it is technically an anti-materiel rifle.
Doesn’t mean that the weapon has to be transported assembled. Harem can make multiple trips.
Still…it’s really nice of the baddies to move every-ones cars out of the way before starting a fight…unless one of them has the power to shrink things and that was his/her way of contributing to villainy.
As the title of the page says: “I guess everyone parked in the back”
Also, the place was reserved for Archon tonight, so it would only be their cars, and they were moving around by bus earlier.
I still remember in Basic when we were told we’d have a 10 klick hump. I think the giggling stopped around midnight.
Looks like there are more than enough villains gathered here to take on the heroes.
I notice that no one else has mentioned Maxima’s tactic of getting the villains to shoot up into the air, instead of allowing them to continue to shoot more damage into the building or nearby bystanders. Of course, Max can’t really do much about those ranged powers/weapons that use projectiles since they have to come back down *somewhere*, but she’s reducing the overall risk to civilians & property be getting herself up in the air.
I thought that went without saying…she’s clearly got a firm grip on tactics due to her military background, which includes situational awareness and attempting to minimize collateral damage, despite lefties’ insistence that anyone in the military tries for the most civilian casualties they can get, that’s completely untrue. The target of the armies of civilized modern countries is to take out aggressors without killing innocents.
No guarantees if you’re dealing with the military of a banana republic or socialist dictatorship, however.
It is my fervent hope that her tactic has not just damaged the moon or started an intergalactic incident.
Relax. It would take 4.3 years for one of those beams, at light speed, to get to the next closest star relative to to our solar system.
It will be a long time before we need to worry about retaliation, since there are only 8 stars less than 10 lightyears from ours.
I suppose…assuming the beams are all limited to lightspeed or slower.
If we can see them, they should be. The main question is, after 10 light years, would any of those beams be a threat? Unlikely, since the fact you can see them means they lose energy as they travel, and they also most likely spread out as they go, so the energy of even the most coherant of them would most likely be spread over an area of millions of square miles at a range of 10 light years.
This depends on why we can see them, and what we’re seeing.
If we’re seeing the beam itself, yup, it’s probably not FTL.
If we’re seeing the trail of displaced particles as the beam shunts them to make its way through a dimension directly adjacent to ours…well, who knows? Physics with several imaginary parameters is typically back to simply making stuff up.
I admit freely that I’m mostly playing devil’s advocate here. From a writing perspective there’s not much to be gained by making the beams faster than lightspeed (most folks’ reflexes are such that the time you have to react to a bullet or FTL-Beam is based entirely on the speed with which the device or person launching the attack aims it) unless the writer’s specifically out to start an intergalactic incident, or have some kind of speedster “quickest-ever draw at high noon” scenario.
Totally love the point about “if you can see a beam from the side, it’s losing energy.” Reminds me of a sci-fi somewhere – someone complained that the futuristic devices didn’t whirr or hum, and the future-folk were like, “why would we waste the energy on doing that?”
In the header Dave writes “I’ll start steaming for an hour or so once a week. Or more, we’ll see. I’m sitting in front of the computer drawing anyway so I may as well stream.”
Are you going to let us view your spa treatment to open your pores, or are you going to broadcast a long rant about something that really ticks you off?
We get to watch DaveB cook his vegetables.
so instead of doing crimes all sneaky and plausible deniability of supers involvement like… they attacked the most powerful groups of super cops on earth instead. Darwin awards are denied solely on grounds of Maxima team not playing dirty.
“Maxima team not playing dirty”
It’s been what, ten seconds? Give it a minute.
Even if another arc branch infiltrated and organised it?
This was too quick and their numbers are overly large for this to be impromptu action.
So…Let’s say that there are thirty odd enemy superheros out there…What the hell are they doing there? Why are they all working for a presumably evil organization(Presumably Evil since it’s attacking a Government Agency in Public and causing massive destruction). Why are so many people OK with that? Like Sydney a the other guy said at the beginning of the comic, there are soooo many other job options for a guy that can crash through a building and lift cars and parking dividers. Even the ones that only have blasty powers could find something to do that didn’t require them to make themselves and enemy of the state. This seems really, really stupid on all their parts. I can understand maybe a group of ten or so getting past/ignoring these problems, but thirty? Out of a likely population of 600 in the US? No way.
Motivations are unknown. They might range from Money to “Marvel said the mutant registration act is evil” to “They are holding my daughter hostage.”
It does raise the question however of why the bad guys seem to be so much better at recuiting than the good guys. It’s entirely possible that the badguys have access to the one fellow who’s super power is to detect other supers.
Or the tech to make them.
You mean, like a Super Soldier Serum, or Mirakuru?
Have to remember: Evil is more fun (plus they has the cookiees!)
I was just thinking about that – there seems to be a better than average chance that Deus is behind this raid. Deus, who runs a megacorp that specializes in high-tech, military-grade equipment. Could he be outfitting norms with gear that emulates superpowers to bulk up an existing team with only a few actual supers in it?
‘Behind it’, possibly, even probably. But giving them equipment that can be traced back to his own company and himself, I think unlikely.
He is going though a arms-length third party, like LexCorp, to supply the “bad guy” team. Don’t you just love an arms maker that supplies both sides?
So that is a supervillain blitzkrieg? Lasers, ice and fire but no real lightnings?
There’s a white zig-zag bolt in panel four. That’s good enough for me.
Oh, wait, I was mistaken. The one tossing those looks like anice guy.
pretty sure those are ice shards
DaveB under comic comments allude to “lasers and lightning”.
Here is my sum up: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1280/comment-page-1#comment-64972
Heroes gunna lose. The villains have batman on their side, he’s standing left of the burning tree at the start of the furrow. Black outfit, cape, yellow splotch on the chest… just standing around calculating his move.
Batman is highly overrated and isn’t as great as the bad writers and the hyped-up circle-jerk fans would lead you to believe. I HAVE OPINIONS ON THE INTERNET!
Well, Batman, as a fictional character, is as good as the writers make him. However, it is up to individual opinions wether he should be that good.
Yeah, noticed him as well (forgot to comment on it :()
Batman meh.
If it was Dr. Doom then you worry!
All you would need with good old Dr Doom is…
a) have squirrel on your shoulder.
b) turn to it and say “Didn’t Mom talk about this guy once?”
He would leave FAST!!!
nope cause then the 100 Doombots show up
Here’s what Archon will do with Batman
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/955
I wonder if the bad guys have been working on artificially finding and encouraging the development of powers in those who might not have “budded” or perhaps they are outright producing supers. This battle might be their way of probing one of the few agencies capable of policing their actions and simultaneously cleaning up the misfits, insane, weak, or otherwise unstable/unreliable of their experimental supersubjects.
Judging by some of their conversations, actions and tactics. I’d say no. They don’t seem to be of the necessary smarts or working together to well for that to be the case.
In some ways, they seem almost thuggish compared to how we’re seeing Maxima’s team start to warm up to start engaging and taking care of civilians. They may be a gang of some kind or possibly several groups converging as one on Archswat. But then that doesn’t really explain how they were able to find them at this restaurant so quickly and quietly.
There’s no real coordination of who’s in charge it seems and two already did stuff that was incredibly stupid already. Heck, the one by the tree might be a super, but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything and a few others seem to be watching to see what Archswat will do next. The group is acting really odd for a group that just decided to attack a police force with potential military training to use their super powers, I wonder if anyone in Archswat will notice this oddity with their opponents?
Well, we are kind of looking at the Military VS College Kids Paintball scenario.
One side has an established chain of command, clear lines of communication, If/then rules of engagement, formal training in how to use their weapons TOGETHER for maximum effect (Ex: setting firing lanes), and above all: experience.
The other side has a bunch of people who think they are L33T snipers.
Heh, since my comment was about some organization throwing a random selection of their misfits, weaklings, unstable (as well as mentally unstable) and other experimental “failures” at ARC as an information gathering probe your comment about them being disorganized, thug-like, and in some cases unintelligent is basically agreeing with me.
So, um, I’m glad we could agree! ;)
+1
Well, considering it’s a bit suspect that a group of supers like this were all able to get together and find the team at a restaurant. It does seem suspect that they might have been given a bit of help.
But them actually being in this group of unorganized supers seems unlikely. If a shadow group has set this up and is watching, they’re probably keeping their involvement and presence their at a distance. No sense sending your good baddies for a simple intelligent run like this, if that’s what it is. ;-)
Correct. They wouldn’t send their good baddies but their worst baddies. By this I mean disposable.
I’m saying this might be some evil organizations “rejects” from a creation program quickly gathered and thrust in this direction with false hopes, money, threats or candy to be thrown away like trash in order to gather information.
The supers they had the most hopes for are safely back at Evil HQ training for the real thing later or possibly eating popcorn watching their old looser classmates getting themselves pasted.
I think our two trains of thought are compatible. I agree with what you are saying. Nothing in my comments seems to be opposed to what you are saying? Or I am having a really bad brain day. In which case I better make this my last reply. Sorry if that last one is the case…
Tomorrow’s after-incident meeting:
Maxima: Those guys we are now holding in the cells …
Halo: Or in the medical area!
Anvil: (to Halo) Actually, the injured are being treated in their cells.
Maxima: Um, yes. As I was saying, our attackers last night knew exactly where we were. That is too much of a co-incidence. Somebody must have told somebody where we were going.
Hiro: Most of us wouldn’t have had the time. We were escorting the reporters to and from the artillery range followed immediately by changing for dinner.
Leon: 3 calls were made in that time. General Faulk called the Joint Chiefs (well that was the phone number anyway) and Ariana called two newspapers.
Ariana: I was returning calls regarding the press conference. I definitely did not talk about where were going for dinner.
Faulk: I was calling my Washington liaison to see what the feeling on the hill was about the public introduction of Archon. Your dinner plans were definitely not important enough to be discussed. Oh, and Colonel, we will need to talk alone after this.
Maxima: Yes sir. So did anybody else talk to anybody about where we were going?
Harem (Thing 1): Why is everybody looking at me?! Who would I tell?
Anvil: You did not go to the firing range. You had plenty of time to talk to others. Did you teleport off-base while we were away?
Harem (Goth): What was I going to do? Teleport the hatch cover handle of the tank? Even all five of me together couldn’t have teleported anything significant.
Colonel: That is not the point. Did you talk with anybody about where we were going last night?
Harem (Pretty): How? I didn’t know about dinner until after everybody else came back. So who … could … I … tell? [Suddenly furious] Excuse me! *VORP*VORP*VORP*VORP*VORP*
Dabbler: (to Halo) I get the impression she actually knows something, but I could be wrong.
Halo: I don’t think you’re wrong at all.
Did one of those guys just chuck a massive gold bar? While the feat of strength is impressive, what’s more impressive is how that villain obtained a gold bar that large. But it’s completely unfeasible: any normal person you chuck it at is dead, sure, but if you’re throwing weapons at someone who is invulnerable then gold is a poor choice. Gold is soft and malleable, and really any thrown weapon is almost certainly going to be difficult to retrieve. And now you just disarmed yourself from the most expensive thrown weapon ever.
And obviously they’re going to miss, and when that brick comes down I hope it doesn’t land on someone’s car… or someone. And those lasers in the air? If a plane is flying overhead then they’re at high risk. These criminals have no sense of decency at all :-P
That Thrown Object Discussed Here:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1280/comment-page-1#comment-64874
Though, the color threw me at first too, since white is the default color for concrete. I guess all the energy beams and stuff are giving off a lot of yellow light around that area…
Gilt by association?
That’s the parking divider others have mentioned. You know, the concrete block they put at the end of parking spaces sometimes. It’s not gold, just painted yellow. I think a wide spectrum of beams are going up, probably including lasers. Yes, it’s very irresponsible and risky on the villain’s part. The survivors will be charged with Reckless Endangerment among many other things.
If I were to have my car wrecked by a thrown weapon, I would like for that weapon to be a huge gold bar. Would kinda make up for the loss of the car.
A lot of the time, parking lot wheel stops in my area are wood (half or full logs) rather than concrete. It may be a caber toss.
Wow, quite a few in the parking lot. But they don’t seem to even be as a gang of supers though. It seems unorganized somewhat, like this group might have just come together for this fight.
Should be interesting once this is all cleaned up and they start to question those they manage to capture. Talk about “mixed nuts” when looking at this group.
I would bump the guy over by the tree a few steps in priority.
A) He is not sticking near the others, so won’t get snagged by an AoE or by whatever will sweep that other part of the parking lot.
B) He is using cover and distance, meaning he has half a brain or more.
C) With no flashy firepower, could well be something more subtle ( CC? Telepath? Another possible sniper) or simply an observer, but just like that 8-9 year old girl carrying quantum physics book in a bad part of town after dark, something is up with that one.
He may also simply be a civy rubber necking while walking by or maybe a super he might have been part of a chat room for this group and heard a bunch of them were planning something.
He is one of Dave’s paid cameo appearances. “Hey, I said I would put you in the comic. That’s what you get for a $1.98 donation.”
As for Crowd Control, cue Halo flying out of the steakhouse, landing (Keeping her forcefield up the whole time) and using Lighthook to tie them all up.
We don’t know the maximum length the Hentacles can be yet, or course.
So far she managed three. Another question is also what range she has.
And one problem is that her shield is transparent (so far) and at least one kind of attack seems to be a laser. And as we know from the rule/reality lawyering from the beginning she has no protection against that.
watch for the one by the tree….
There’s a bloody shady looking guy by the tree! Watch out for that one!
He will be dead soon. Trees are spontaneously combusting already!
So forgive that this question is probably already asked somewhere in this gigantic chain of comments, but what does Max mean by “glass cannons”? I am currently assuming that means supers that rely on ranged firepower with a relatively normal human body.
Pretty much. It originates from a descriptions of Magic Users in dungeons and dragons…extremely fragile, but they are the ones that get to toss fireballs and lightning bolts.
thanks for the confirmation. I have a feeling I will be lost on some of the lingo as the geek is not strong with me….yet. Also have never played D&D minus the Eberon online one and from what I have heard they are quite the far cry for each other. Please note that the word geek was used in a non-derogatory manner I was raised with a parent whom would be on par with the parents of Boo Radley in “To Kill a Mockingbird”(also please note this is a bit of an exaggeration). Thus little “geek” exposure for quite some time.
Geek is almost never derogatory these days. Most of us are proud of it, in fact. :)
“And the geeks shall inherit the earth and there shall be a great retribution on the bestowers of wedgies and swirlies.”
But only the meek geeks will inherit the Earth. And, I, the humblest of all, shall rule them!
The Bible says that the meek shall inherit the Earth (Matthew 5:5). The geek shall inherit everything else, after we invent the star-drive.
It’s hardly just DnD anymore
Glass Cannon is a term in every MMORPG I know. And I love playing them.
It takes skill to be competitive and survive as a glass cannon, especially in PvP
The angle of the thrown parking divider seems wrong to me: if you look at the scene closer, it appear that the one closest to Maxi’s head in the last panel (the one just below Bodie, not the one on the roof) is the one who threw it (seeing how they are standing by a parking space with a missing divider/barrier)
And if you look you will see a thick but very translucent yellow line between that character and the flying divider. If you look at the nature of that travel or speed line you will notice it has a “curl” or loop in it. That loop is supposed to tell you that the divider is spinning while in flight like a helicopter blade as opposed to flying straight like an arrow. That’s why it doesn’t line up right. The lasers around it mimic speed lines and confuse the issue further I suppose.
Yes, had missed that yellow-trail, thank you
What I’d like to see, and I bet this is the case (it’s usually safe to assume large numbers of people aren’t this stupid) is that somebody in the background baited all these fools to attack the heroes in order to run analytics.
I think you will find the reverse is true. Teams of 4 (in my experience) is where you start to see a decreased average performance per individual added.
When you get to 20-30 (high-school classroom) the ability for the group to make decisions quickly is just not there except for the most basic problems. (Unless a leader has been selected)
Then you get bigger than that, and it just turns into a mob. Rule of thumb with mobs is that the average IQ (regarding decision making) of any given member will have effectively dropped by half.
See: Mob Mentality.
And in my own D&D experience, we had a game get to 14 people. Quite the mess, as most groups generally ‘wing it’ to begin with.
This is exactly the situation outside the steakhouse. A bunch of units with powers (read: PCs) waiting for the Arc team (trolls or some other monster) to charge out of the cave.
The PCs plan: Wing it.
Yeah, this is the primary reason why most groups in MMORPGS tend to cap out at five to six people: any more, and you can’t keep track of your team-mates effectively. Running a raid with just ten people is something of a nightmare: you MUST be able to trust that not only are your team-mates predictable (almost to an extreme), but that YOU are predictable. You CAN run a raid without a clear leader and chain of command with just ten people…but it’s not easy.
Running a raid with twenty to twenty-five people will almost always require at least two “commanders”: one to handle the actual combat end of things, and one to run the logistics and support end of things. One person can handle this, yes, but it takes so much time that you almost have to dedicate your life to it.
Running a forty-man raid? We used to have to have those damn things run by a council of six: raid leader, scout/pull leader, healing leader, quartermaster, and tank leader.
And, of course, if ANYTHING went wrong, it was the healers’ fault. Which meant that my guild’s rules specifically included the provision that, unless the healers themselves admitted fault, it was not their fault.
In retrospect, that was actually probably my smartest move as one of the council of six.
You guys are implying that I think the Shadow (as I’ll call this mysterious hypothetical mastermind) is coordinating it. No no. He merely riled up the mob to go after them, perhaps guiding them to that spot. Hired somebody to throw the first punch, etc. He didn’t care if they were organized, he only cared how Maxima’s team were organized, how they specifically responded to threats. The mob is certainly not taking orders from him. Hell, they probably don’t even know the Shadow exists.
Not at all, although I have suggested as much beforehand.
However, that said, by and large, if these people AREN’T coordinated in some manner, I’ll be very surprised. I would suspect that there is at least one group of somewhat coordinated supers among the bad guys, probably numbering no more than four or five strong, who have worked together before and have some idea of what to expect from some of their fellows. Sad to say, the rest of the supers here are so much cannon fodder–they’ll get in each other’s way as much as anything else.
That said…I have to tell you, I can’t really think of too many kinds of supers whose powers couldn’t be used for combat. Just to give an example, the flying guy: depending on how fast he flies, he could use anything from simple sonic booms to dive bombing attacks for weapons. Presumably, since he works at rescue jobs, he could easily carry at least two to three hundred pounds of explosives and deliver it with pretty close to pinpoint accuracy if he needed to. Other super-powers could be used for combat purposes in other ways, depending on either power or mindset.
Basically, I guess, my point is that combat (or any other kind of contest) is about maximizing advantages to overcome disadvantages. As witnessed by the presence of Peggy and Math, ordinary humans DO have the ability to at least keep up with supers…so long as they can control the fight. Supers have a few more advantages, but the same principle applies. That’s how Math fights, and how he wins–he seizes control of the fight early, and maintains control of the entire fight.
Which goes back to the current strip: why can Max be confident that they’ll win, even with so many more combat-capable supers than they expected? Because they’ve got control of their side’s actions, and the other side does not. With that kind of advantage, numbers start to become largely irrelevant.
Sadly, the entire group’s first response was “Shoot Superman,” despite the fact that she went on live TV casually withstanding the force of a small-scale nuke. If it’s organized, it’s organized very loosely or very poorly. I think she’s dodging blasts up there just so she doesn’t end up naked in the sky. Still, the data drained from this fight would be insanely valuable to someone who was to put together a team to attack Arclight.
As one of the commenters said, some of those blasts may do something non-physical. Max may well be immune to the destructive energy but mind control or something is worth dodging.
Hmm, no one has commented on energy whip guy yet.
Without being a speedster they just don’t seem that harmful to Maxima even if that thing extends out like Goku’s staff. Maybe they will be an issue once the others come out to play!
Well with the range he has shown if Max is not expecting it she could have lots of trouble with him
If its long enough or has some kind of extension I suppose she could blunder into its airspace. Even as a trained military unit how often do you see combat with that has to be thrown out to the sides or behind you before being launched forward in a series of curves in these modern times. Still think it would have to be faster than a normal whip though. Which it may well be. Since they are on the roof we may learn more of them shortly if they don’t have to dodge some CC or AOE strategies of the ARC team just about to explode out of that hole!
Definitely an interesting weapon but I think we need some more opponents for Lightwhip to engage before much comment can be made.
“energy whip” = dessert topping containing a high percentage of sugar and/or caffeine or other stimulant.(not to be confused with a desert topping containing a high percentage of sugar and/or caffeine or other stimulant.)
I called him “LightWhip” :)
You only named him no coment wasattached
I was sharing not correcting.
A natural 20? No, no, no, that it way too high.
Roll 3 natural 20s in a row, then the odds come out more realistically based on Max’s power set.
A natural 20 scores you a hit at that speed. Now you have to get through her high natural armour class and extremely high hit points.
Attention: We are starting to lose the vote wars.
PLEASE VOTE to make Grrlpower win!!
https://www.comicmix.com/mix-march-madness-webcomics-tournament/2014/04/09/mix-march-madness-2014-championship-paranatural-vs-grrl-power/
If they have more money or are more willing to spend it then I guess they win? I already gave my one vote and it looks like voting is closed for ordinary voters. But thanks for the link. I would have no idea this site existed without it. (and now that the voting is done I shall forget all about that site… )