Grrl Power #216 – .50 caliber headache
I’m starting to interleave the fights a little to give them a bit more weight. Don’t worry we’ll get back to Dabbler and Heavenly on the next page. I just wanted to show Peggy being useful for a bit. She watches for ways she can contribute in a non-lethal way, which is easier than you might think when the right super powers are involved, takes a few shots, then relocates. Harem makes for an excellent spotter for a number of reasons, though I suspect that spotter scope she’s holding is entirely too powerful for the range they’re at. See the strip mall in the background of the first panel? They’re probably on the roof of the next big store down the way, figure only about 100-200 yards if a quick spot check on google maps of a similarly laid out shopping center is to be believed. I’m sure those scopes are adjustable, for what they cost they ought to be useful at a number of ranges, but ~150 yards is not exactly a challenging distance for a professional sniper.
Concretia’s powers raise all sorts of questions. If she formed her latest body out of asphalt, how is it that she has white teeth? How do her clothes transfer from body to body? They seem to be her actual clothes, but when she abandons a body, they become stone then follow her to the new body. I’ll tell you how. Super powers. They’re like magic but without all the gesticulating and pseudo latin intonations.
As always I will be at A-kon this year (June 6-8 in Dallas) and, I’ll be doing a panel on Friday. Humor-Based Webcomics 1: Humor in Story. Be sure to stop by!
My fifth Gynostar Guest strip is up! The current arc starts here.
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I love that super power! I wonder what materials it can work with. Just solid rocklike substances, or could she turn into a cake person or a water person if she felt like it?
Maybe she can animate inanimate material? That would have to be a huge cake
Do corpses count as inanimate? Maybe she’s the source of zombie myths?
The former seems viable. The latter depends on how long she has been kicking around. If she is intrinsically a non-corporeal being, she could indeed have been ‘alive’ a long time.
If she went back into the restaurant kitchen and animated some of the chickens in the cooler she could be a poultry-geist.
My guess is that she is some kind of earth elemental. In this case, they would need to call in someone like Gwen to dispel or trap her. Anybody got the number for the Ghostbusters?
Bad Pun is Bad
Awww, why do you gotta go around & spoil it when people are just getting into the spirit of things?
Because puns can get pretty ghastly.
Once they have taken possession of a chain, you can’t just rattle it to exorcise them.
Aw, what’s a little fowl play among friends? Fun’s fun, but at least we’re not turning this comic into a turkey.
*Giant roast chicken lands on your head*
Then she’d be poultry in motion.
DM:”You get hit by a flying frozen turkey”
that was fowl.
and cold.
I am guessing that Concretia is on a diet, so had to avoid that, because she is going cold turkey.
1) I hope she isn’t one of those “I’m soooooo fat” woman (despite being at a reasonable, healthy weight*.
*at least, when she’s not in her concrete form
2) Even if she doesn’t eat the cake, you know she’ll still be chicken it out.
*Tanker of Liquid Nitrogen lands on your front yard*
Cool.
*Oversized Mallard flies into your vehicle*
Bah, when it comes to puns, they’re just a bunch of featherweights.
I suspect the presence of a Poultrygeist…a fowl spirit, indeed!
*Sign plants itself in the ground at your feet* Good one.
Sounds like something out of the Dresden Files… though I believe that wasn’t directly ‘flying’.
True, that was more “Fell out of an airplane by way of a Curse’s effect”
I thought the Pun was in the good zone… in other words badly good, maybe?
I’d lay my bets on inorganic material.
Next you’ll be saying Concretia’s real name is Gladys…
Well she seems to favour concrete/tarmac at the moment. But the fact that she has included the paint in her new body would imply that she can possess more than just that. So water, air, brick, wood, steel etc are all possibilities, until we find out otherwise.
and the second I read “brick” it popped into my head….
“She’s a Brick…. du-du-doo-du House! She’s Might Might, just letting it all hang out!” woo! Commodores, no school like the old school, c’mon people get funky with it!
so if someone threw her hard she would be classed as a flying brick?
I think, in that situation, she would more of a falling brick.
Mighty Might-ay. Like Sydney.
Maybe, maybe not. Many of the most common pigments in paint are mineral of some form. She might have just picked up whatever rock was in the paint.
A lot of pavement markings these days are plastic heat-fused to the blacktop.
I had thought of that possibility and again maybe, maybe not. In my area the plastic lines are typically only on major roads. I honestly can’t think of any businesses locally that didn’t use just paint.
Most plastics are either clear or white intill pigment is added
Fair point. You may well be right. Plus we must not forget that Arc Light have magic at their disposal. The previous HUD speculation about her powers might have had some insight beyond the purely visual. And that implied a limited range of substances.
Over here in Germany, it`s actually plastic/paint with pre-molten tiny glass droplets for the reflection.
My first guess would be that – pending evidence otherwise – she’s limited to solids. So water (unless in ice form) and air are probably out. Might just be ‘limited to solids if she wants to be able to do anything’: Using air could mean that her strongest punch would feel like a light breeze, and she wouldn’t be able to hold anything.
I’m trying to think where I’ve seen her powerset before – I’ve seen someone who could do the same, but most I can think of copy the material, not grab it.
I posit that there is a chance that she can only maintain a ‘shell’ form for a set duration or set amount of received damage, and that she is not a ‘new’ user of her ability; she’s experienced.
Or maybe it’s simply easier to start over with a fresh reprint than to attempt repairs.
Interesting variation. It’s the old animate possessed material trick.
Hmm… going to make arresting her problematic.
It’s funny but when I saw the middle three panels I thought “golem” – the clay statue of Jewish folklore that was animated by magic.
Perhaps aided by the archaic sounding “…hubris thy name be me.” Concretia might have been kicking around for a very long time, if your inspiration plays out. It does not look like swords, bullets or old age would be significant problems for her.
Or maybe she just reads.
Nothing like a rock-solid Classical Education.
Arresting her might be a problem, but keeping her will be even harder. All of our jail cells are concrete boxes.
Funny. Round two only lasted until she got something distracting on her mind.
You could also say that round two only lasted until she got one round in her mind.
Or even better the second round only lasted till the first round.
I wonder if this is going to be a running gag, with her being taken out by the non super members of ArcSwat, repeatedly.
“Quick Gwen, your turn next! And bring Leon with you, Concretia won’t stay down for long. But he will be needing to get on the score table.”
One quick take-down by Gwen later, Concretia is forming her new body when Leon slides his laptop across the car park, just in time for it to be incorporated into her new form.
Concretia: “What, no, I can’t see anything! Gah, a DOS prompt? Select boot mode? And everything disabled except Windows…NOOOOO!”
Cracker (Bad guy’s IT guru): Here. This is a live CD for a Linux distro. Hold still.
But where would she insert it? :)
You don’t wanna know…
If Math is any indication: between the teeth, with force.
Or, if Leon is feeling particularly evil that day, he could slide an Initech printer across the parking lot to be incorporated into Concretia’s new form.
Concretia: PC load letter! What the fuck does that mean?
Oo, oo. Sydney’s turn next. Concretia gets grabbed by the Loghthook and slammed into the force field, cracks and crumbles around the force field.
Sydney: Oh, shit! I did not realize she would break like that! I am so sorry. [ Starting to cry ] I didn’t mean to do that!
Concredia: [ From the other side of the force field ] You little brat! That hurt!
Sydney: [ Tears dry up quickly ] Oh, so you’re okay? Good! [ Evil Sneer appears ] I’ve been wanting to try this on somebody tough enough to take it.
That is something I could actually see happening. But you forgot Syd saying something like “Why can’t supervillans just stay down” before she “Yanks” her.
Not that Harem is a bad spotter but couldn’t her powers used better elsewhere?
After all Peggy still has to relocate the traditional way.
well Harem has other bodies to do other things and for her if one gets hurt they all get hurt so having multiple of herselves getting hurt can be a problem
Not really. she can only teleport/reqct to something one of her can see. by taking that spotter position, she’s giving her other 4 bodies full access to the battlefield rather than only 5 close uplines of sight. so right now you have 4 people who can teleport anywhere in the battle, rather than 5 with a more limited window
plus, there’s not much she can do herself (only as strong as a regular human girl right now) that’d compare to working as a spotter in a super fight.
Only 3, she said to the armory buy she was dematerializing one of her selves to increase survivability (read strength etc).of the others. So the current schoolgirl Harem is like 1.25 X normal human, right?
No, they’re all 2x as strong. Each copy doubles the strength of the others when un-teleported, so a single harem is 16x as strong as a normal person.
No, she was going to store one of her selves to help carry some of the gear (probably the Barrett), doesn’t mean she couldn’t bring that one back out again after the supply run
When there’s only one Harem her physical strength is almost equal to (Unboosted) Anvil.
Don’t forget that Harem is not just spotting for Peggy, she is also doing so for herself too. She can only teleport to where she can see. So if one of her bodies has a commanding view of the battlefield, Harem can respond to any crisis or opportunity that may arise on it.
Phe is waiting for a suitable moment to run ‘Operation Lightstorm,’ and needs to be able to judge the situation, in order to maximise the effect and minimise the risk to herself and her allies.
Wait: “traditional” ie hoof it for relocate? Doesn’t Harem do a 2 pass teleport (Peggy, gear) , to the next location she has spotted?
Peggy far outstrips Harem’s weight limit.
Wouldn’t say that Peg “far outstrips” Harems weight limit
Well, considering Harem’s weight limit, maxed out, is somewhere around 50 lbs, and Peggy is a muscular adult woman (if short), then, yeah, I’d say 100-120 lbs “far outstrips” 50.
Yea, I have been wondering about that. If Peggy has a vantage point across the street (per Dave’s comment above), she must have gotten there somehow. She is a trained sniper, used to operating in war zones, so she could have hoofed it over in the first place. Taking advantage of cover to avoid being spotted by all the villains in the car park. Which would account for what she has been doing up until now.
DaveB previously indicated that the Arc Light members got relocated, probably by Super Hiro, flying them a bit further down the same complex. Which I can envisage, if he does it by going out the opposite side of the building, to where the villains are approaching. That way the squishies he is carrying would not be exposed to attack, as he could fly below roof height. Until far enough away that they would not spot him going up onto the roof.
But he could not pull the same trick if having to cross the open area where those villains are fighting. So could not have transported Peggy that way. As for Harem, I am under the impression that she is not capable of carrying someone with her. Although, I must confess that I am not sure, due to the variable weight capacity she has. Depending on how many bodies she has out.
Rule of thumb though, if she had to de-teleport a body just to carry the Bartlett, I am guessing that Peggy would be above her maximum capacity, even if she went down to just the one body. Which means, hoofing it is the only option, that I can see personally.
I expect Harem teleports the Barrett and as much ammo as she can while Peggy makes a run with the rest of the gear. A much lighter load lets Peggy move faster.
Plausible. It is a hefty piece of kit, designed to destroy machinery, rather than people. If she is doing that, then it shows she has a high degree of confidence in Harem. I imagine it would be hard for a sniper to surrender her weapon, and trust in somebody else to return it to her when she needs it. But she does have other weapons too, so I think your idea is sound.
Well, Peg had to have trusted Harem enough to bring it to her in the first place
Indeed. But there is a big difference being in a station-house bash, surrounded by intrinsically tough super-colleges, and being out in an isolated location, with a super pissed off with her and hunting her down. Any delay in getting her sniper rifle, in the first place, would just mean that she needed to keep her head down, until it came.
Note that I am not implying that such trust is lacking. Simply that if they are using that tactic, then Peggy is literally putting her life in Harem’s hands. If Peggy is counting on Daphne being there, when she is needed, but Harem does not arrive, in time, then Peggy could easily pay with her life.
Your speculation wanders too far afield. You correctly pointed out that the Barrett is an anti-materiel weapon. It also requires a decent amount of time to line up a target and take a shot, due to it’s mass*. There is almost no situation where Peggy is actually worried about a supervillain where not having her Barrett would be a disadvantage. If you are taking fire as a sniper, you move. You don’t sit there and exchange rounds. It is simply not a tactical weapon, and I don’t care how many movies show bodybuilders one-handing things like a M60 or even worse a M134 Minigun (I’m looking at you, Predator), it doesn’t happen in real life**, and it shouldn’t happen even in a comic book when used by an unpowered human such as Peggy. In those situation she would simply have to rely on the other firearms she is no doubt carrying.
* That Peggy got a head shot on a moving target on the first shot makes her one of the best marksmen in the world. It also makes her one of the worst, since only an idiot goes for a head shot. You aim for the center of mass, and you will get a kill even if the round only impacts an arm or a leg.
** Yes, I’ve seen YouTube videos of idiots one-handing their M60. Most (maybe all) of them have the sling around their neck. None of them are going to be accurate, nor are they going to be able to do that for very long.
Conceded. I can easily construct circumstances that would substantiate my argument, but yours is strong for the likely, general situations.
In support of Dave, mind, Concretia was not a moving target. She was static, in horizontal terms. Having been standing up from a prone position. Plus, having done that, she had completely stopped, to flex her knuckles. Combined with the easy range, making a head shot a lot more viable.
Yes, even top snipers have to play it safe, to maximise their chances of success. But the very best, in any field, can rise above the normal limitations. Compare Tiger Woods, at his peak, versus just about every other pro. Once in every generation or two you will see somebody, in any given field of expertise, doing things that everyone thought was impossible, or only achievable by a fluke. Except they can pull it off consistently.
My rule of thumb for Peggy is that if an elite sniper, under ideal conditions, could reasonably pull off a shot, then she can get away with it, even under less optimal circumstances. In this situation though, we don’t even have to do that.
We also don’t see any of the rest of the battlefield. It’s possible taking a center-of-mass shot would have increased the risk to someone else on the team.
And she’d just seen Concreta shed a body and reform out of new material – going by what we’ve seen, a hole in Concreta’s chest may not be an inconvenience – she’s not breathing, and she doesn’t have a heart. Not being able to use your hand is an inconvenience, as is not being able to see or hear (which a headshot might be able to do).
So she needed to do actual damage, and a headshot is more likely to do that – given Concreta’s powers and abilities. (Since limitations are unknown.)
Bartlett = Pear. Delicious, but not very Dangerous.
Barett = Rifle. Dangerous, not at all Delicious.
And now you know. ;)
I will probably get it wrong again. The Barett does not have it’s own Who’s who entry. ;-)
Yorp, you ever play Final Fantasy 7? If so, just bear in mind that the black dude with a gun for an arm shares his name with the same said .50 Cal rifle (in the English version, anyway). Maybe that will help. :)
It’s “Barrett”, actually.
Having had the opportunity to fire a Barrett, I would have to disagree with you. I found the experience quite delicious.
Personally, I think Harem would just about be the perfect spotter. Her copies, even if most are busy with other tasks, cover the battlefield from a wide variety of directions.
… Which means that, with H’s directions, Peggy may not be able to fire her .50 cal around corners, but she certainly can shoot THROUGH corners at targets more or less concealed from her.
I’m certainly glad you explained this scene, since I was totally lost re Concretia.
I love how the bay markings form part of Concretia’s new body. Instant makeover.
But it shows her to be a coward – look at that yellow streak down her back.
+1
Ok, seriously? these puns are starting to cross the line :P
Yea, I guess we better draw a line in the sand on this one. Otherwise folks will be picking up on the yellow theme and making foul wordplay. Poultry issue though it may be, it could make a bee-line to a pun chain.
The pun is mightier than the sword.
*Mushroom cloud appears over your city*
*Looks at his ammunition stores* Dangit, low on ammo again. Gonna have to start repurposing some of these old satellites soon….grumble, grumble…
Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Oberon’s Third Law: Any sufficiently fast and/or massive kinetic strike is indistinguishable from a nuclear bomb.
MDS’s Fourth Law: Any pun that stinks bad enough to clear the room is indistinguishable from gas warfare.
While most orbital / asteroid strikes are very similar to nuclear weapons, as far as energy released, amount of kinetic energy transferred, amount of debris thrown into the air, etc., an asteroid does not tend to render its immediate area radioactive, unlike the nuclear weapon.
Can anyone else see her spirit-thing? Also, does she have a real body, too?
Wait and see on both, I think. For the latter, we do have a clue, in that her spirit form has clothing. On one paw it could be a reflection of what her physical body is wearing, from where ever she is ‘astrally projecting.’ On the other it could be that she transformed totally into spirit (or has always been spirit). So a clue, but not one which really helps resolve your question, until we get something else to link it up with.
For real magic you don’t do pseudo Latin, it is reverse 12th century BC Latin as found on the Linear B tablets.
I believe you meant ‘Indus Valley script’, not ‘Linear B’
:P
Who cares comment is entirely self-consistent. Both the period and the link to Latin are associated with Linear B. At least in as much as it being one of the ways used to interpret it. Whereas Indus script vastly pre-dates Latin, and was in the Indian sub-continental region, as opposed to the Mediterranean. So has no link to it whatsoever.
But your point is valid, if implying the argument ‘older is more likely to be linked to ancient magic’.
Linear B also predates Latin. Its association was with Greek, not Latin.
Yes my bad. I meant Greek. Went for that time period since Hermes Trismegistus started to show up in legends.
Yep. That was why I mentioned the bit about the association being to do with interpreting it. I think it is more to do with international convenience, for translators, than there being much in the way of linguistic similarity between the languages. But what there is will doubtless be stronger than any connection to the Indus Valley languages.
I was actually using the Indus Valley scripts as an example because we still haven’t decoded them. Just like the Linear A/Linear B scripts, which are only known from a scarce handful of sources. (Though I admit it’s been a while since I checked on any translation progress, or lack thereof — it’s not high on my to-do list.)
Bang, Bang baby
But, where is the “Kiss Kiss”?
Math and Jabberwokky are making out in the background.
I thought they were fighting? Oh, wait, martial artists. I get it.
Get a dojo, you two!
Little disappointed, Peggy the marksman, and she has her non master eye closed….
Round two ended by Peggy’s round one….
Well that’s the kind of knowledge you don’t actually have until you really use it.
To explain: Ever looked through a scope with 1 eye and started getting headaches? That’s because you have the other eye closed.
The way you actually do it is keep both eyes open, but mentally phase out whatever the other eye sees
Actually? No. I have never gotten a headache looking through a scope with one eye closed. Can you provide links to materials on this I would like to read up on it. Thank you.
My source is teachers and experience at the university
AS someone who actually WAS trained as a DMR (designated marksman rifle) user. when using a scope past 4x… and peggy SHOULD be using an 8-32X variable you DO close your off eye right before squeezing off the shot on a long range target.
the Bindon Aiming Concept which uses both eyes, is best for engagements below 300m.
Also, (sorry Dave) calling bullshit on the Barrett being a bulpup weapon. there is only ONE Bulpup sniper weapon system out there right now and that’s the DTI series, which looks nothing like the Barrett
Also, her off hand should be under the butt of the weapon, either adjusting a monopod at the rear for elevation, squeezing a sand-sock, or supporting the butt of the rifle for making elevation adjustments
Here is a photo of it, if you don’t believe him. You are correct though, in saying that it is not ‘out there’. As in it is not in mass-production/sale yet. But it is under development and there are prototypes.
Peggy has connections.
Peggy has not only her connections, but she also has her own workshop in Archon HQ too…
From what we could see of it it, her work area seemed fairly basic. Suitable for performing maintenance and simple repairs or modifications, but not completely re-tooling a weapon into a new configuration. But, of course, that was just one corner we were seeing. An expanded shot, of the room, might show a lathe and other heavy metal-working gear. Likewise we know the building has an armoury within it, which doubtless also has weaponsmithing tools within it. Which Peggy would have access to as well.
Not to mention the helicopter workshop, which would have tools that she could certainly utilise. So, one way or another, she would indeed have access to the tools. And I would be disappointed if she did not have a decent set of mechanical and engineering skills to go with her combat ones. Obviously that would fall outside of the normal career paths of helicopter pilot and sniper. Which are diverse enough already to be stretching what one individual might have acheved.
But, I can envisage the ‘best of the best’, in both fields, choosing to get their hands dirty, in the workshop, in order to get more out of their machines, tools and weapons, than their peers and enemies can. I know that expert advice from one aviator, famous for setting long-distance flying records, managed to significantly increase the flight range of US bombers, in WW2, by applying his extensive engineering knowledge. Ironically, not in re-tooling the engines, or even optimising them. But simply in giving advice in how to change their flying techniques, to emphasise fuel efficiency.
Likewise I love the fact that small one-man workshops, along the Mexican border, can turn out handguns that can pass for classic weapons, made by the famous American companies. And have even seen some of their own experts, off the record, admitting that the best ones are every bit as good as the mass-produced weapons. If not better.
So, if at some point, Peggy pulls off a shot that even marksmen readers say would be beyond the maximum effective range of a weapon, it will not strike me as being unrealistic for her to have pulled it off.
Great looking rifle. The only personal issue I have is that I’m left-handed. Bullpup style rifles try to stuff the empty cartridge in my left nostril. Very distracting.
Didn’t barrett make an older bolt action bullpup?
Yes, the M82A2 . It is no longer manufactured. Somehow, even with lightning bolts and fireballs going off nearby, I do not think firing that, or the XM 500, will go unnoticed. Rapid relocation, to another firing position, is in order.
Mind you, it would be interesting to see how folks who have fired an M82 or XM500 believes it compares. As all the comments seemed to indicate that was a faked up demonstration.
What Kaian said.
When I was taught to use a rifle, I was always told to close my left eye, which, being left-eyed and left-handed, meant I had to work even harder in order to aim, as rifles are designed for right-handed use.
Additionally, every astronomer I’ve ever known (or seen) has looked through telescopes with their other eye closed.
Also, people using monocular microscopes close their other eye too.
Well, I have no sniper experience, whatsoever. But can contribute by mentioning an old photographer’s trick. Which is, prior to committing to a shot, to look at the scene with your off-eye. That way you can see if somebody is about to walk into the shot, from out of your field of view. Plus you can spot if there is a shift in the lighting (such as an approaching cloud) or some other significant change, in the wider field of view, that might cause you to re-consider the shot.
If you decide to commit, you switch back to your viewfinder eye, and take the shot.
This. You use both eyes for quick target acquisition, one eye (by closing or mentally ignoring the other) for fine adjustments.
Also, that weapon would be overkill for regular human targets at a range of less than 200 yards. I am by no means a sniper, but I am a decent marksman and can hit a 12″ target consistently at 200 yards. I imagine Peggy’s grouping at that range is less than 2″. HOWEVER, since the targets are supers, and, as Peggy said, bullets are merely annoying to some supers, the power of that weapon may be entirely appropriate.
There’s no kill like overkill!
Or to quote. There is no ‘overkill’. There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘time to reload’.
Maxim 37
Overkill is far better than underkill, any day…
I was taught to fire a rifle, use a monocular microscope, and take pictures with my off-eye open. For rifles that includes grandfathers and uncles separated by a great many miles, and also drill instructors and range instructors. Holding one eye closed is not a natural position and will be more fatiguing over time. It also requires that you use muscles rather than relaxing as much of your muscles as is possible, which makes for a more accurate shot.
I have no sniper training, but I can see where these rules might not apply, since a sniper does not typically fire a great number of shots, making fatigue much less of an issue.
I once tried filming hockey games for our local team (I had a friend who did it full time and they asked me to sub) and the recommendation was to keep one eye in the viewfinder and the other open to watch the rest of the rink so you can track what’s happening. I tried it but trying to split my attention gave me a headache (also after a few minutes my vision got wonky since the viewfinder was slightly blue tinted). If you can do it it’s useful for situational awareness but I don’t think it helps with concentrating.
Concretia has Peggy going through her head…
Well, yeah…That Barret pegged her pretty good.
One difference I noticed in her ‘spirit’ form – her hair is a bit mussed with a stray strand to her left side and being much looser in the back than in stone form. What does that mean? It means the art detail is great. :)
So, have Math and Wabby moved out to the parking lot, or is that just a ‘snapshot’ of what they are doing?
They have probably been dancing around and stepped outside for some fresh air. Either that, or both of them instinctively jumped out the window when Dabbler started swinging her sword with intent to do mayhem and major property damage.
ready to try again..and again…and again… until you give up missy? hehe
villain leader: what? parky rage quit! that wasn’t in the game plan! (pulls out rpg manual) options? options?!
but THEY DON’T EVEN LET ME GET RDY…
in cartoons they give you time to transform HEHE
One shot, one.. whatever.
I think that there is a pool of warm lime jello, that she could possess, somewhere nearby.
Ghost hair is harder to fix than normal hair apparently.
Addenum: I’m pretty sure she’s gonna be a major threat someday when she decides to go for a bigger body.
She certainly would be, whenever she develops that ability. You are right, to imply, that she should have gone for a big body, now that she is outside. The fact, that she has not, is probably a significant clue as to her limitations, as opposed to her imagination. It may be an absolute restriction on her. Or one that she is working on finding a way around.
Concretia could potentially destroy a whole building by “possessing” the building or making a body out of its foundations…..That could be potentially dangerous. Also, if she make new bodies out of inanimate material,Is her size limited?Could we see a GIANT CONCRETIA!
Seems to me that Concretia may have an upper limit on just how much material she can utilize at any given time. Specifically, about human-size.
… Or, she MIGHT be able to make herself bigger, but that comes with its own set of problems – difficulty in coordination, maybe. If she goes to being 50′ tall, but it is all she can do just to remain upright at that level, then it isn’t much good for taking down other supers – except maybe by accidentally falling or stepping on them.
Then again, you get the problem that you can’t just scale a body up- a fifty-foot human, for instance, wouldn’t be able to stand, much less fight, due to the structural integrity of muscle and bone. Concretia can escape some of that, but a big enough statue moving around is still going to have problems when the weight on top exceeds the capacity of the body’s ankles because of force multipliers involved in impact.
Or, to put it another way, it’s possible Concretia’s powers don’t completely negate or compensate for physics and, bluntly, physics suck.
Imagine if she took the Statue of Liberty…
Quick get Jackie Wilson to start singing. Or Bill Murray if the situation is desperate.
So far she is known to use two materials: concrete and asphalt. Although commonly known as “strong” for their high compression strength, both of these materials have incredibly low tensile strengths. If you tried to make a huge body out of either, your arms would fall off under their own weight. If she can only turn into rock-like substances, this could explain Concretia’s lack of hugeness.
Another thing to keep in mind is that she obviously cannot repair the bodies she creates – or it is just easier to create a new body than to reassemble the one previously used.
Yeah, well, if you try to apply real world physics to a comic book then the Sandman wouldn’t be able to assume a man sized figure at all, much less stretch out huge arms of sand to make roundhouse punches with. You’ve got to assume that the poser to animate includes the power to change other properties as well. Or Concretia could just inhabit a marble status, but not make it move at all.
Well sure, you need a ghost comb.
Love this strip, especially the title. The “non-lethal” rule reminded of a line from Terminator 2 when Arnold knee-caps a guard. “He’s not dead.” :)
(sorry, actual line: “He’ll live.”)
I roared with laughter through most of T2, to the somewhat startled reaction of those viewing it with me.
But nothing made me laugh harder than “There are 216 bones in the human body. That’s one.”
’cause, y’know, there’re 206.
Terminators have detailed anatomical files. They probably just count up the number of bones directly, including the sesamoid bones, and ignore the human convention of not adding those to the total. The latter of which, as you say, does come out to 206 bones. Which would approximately account for the difference. Given that the total number of bones will vary from individual to individual, especially at different ages, it is reasonable to accept an average.
But it is indeed funny given that Terminators ignore received wisdom. All they really want to know is how to break them.
It isn’t the Terminator that gives that line. The “216 bones” line is spoken by Sharah Connor, who can probably be forgiven for getting her trivia wrong.
A bit of humor from the book you might enjoy. As they pull up to the guard post outside the mental hospital, John gives the Terminator the order not to kill. The Terminator has to figure out how to do this. He looks at the guard, sees all the points where shooting him will be a kill shot, marks those as off limits, and shoots the guard in one of the places that isn’t marked.
It’s not like Terminators come pre-programmed with “How to just wound.”
I can hear her saying it, now that you mention it. And, yea, you are right.
Nice info about the book. That fits well.
You know, if you play your cards right, you could have two hundred and sev… *broken nose*
206 teen bones?
Ok, that rates a “groan”.
Hey, comics aren’t just for adolescent people ya’ know…
Yea, I loved that scene. The other touch that really got to me, following on from that, was when Arnie was firing the mini-gun from the window. Shooting up all the police cars.
Terminator vision:
Total fatalities = 0.0
That scene always made me wonder: what does a terminator consider to be a partial fatality? Is it at all like a partial pregnancy?
Could be they run odds on unconfirmed kills.
Assists? 2 Terminators both attack the same target for 0.5 Fatalities each?
I figure that the terminator were counting “partial fatalities” like severed limbs & such as the number to the right of the decimal point…When excessive bleeding is likely to be fatal but the target isn’t dead yet, with that last number indicating likelyhood a wound will become fatal if not promptly treated.
Cunning violation of the frame layout, with Peggy’s gun barrel. Very clever 3-D like effect. Plus clearly ties in the cause and effect of the two panels.
*takes off hat to DaveB*
Give that hat back to Maxim! Or was it Oggie? Maybe Dimo?
They will have to come and take it! If they can.
Careful, they can be sottle.
Just remember: where you see one, you have more than one you can’t see
But, as I always expect ninjas, I will be suitably prepared.
They are not ninja though, they are what eat ninja
Anything that can effectively sneak up on a ninja consistently enough to consider them as prey is a force to be reckoned with…That sounds like it could be the legendary Nocturnal Grue.
Ok, so I focused on the first panel. Without additional information, I’d say Jabberwokky is about to do some uncontrolled spinning, given that she can’t be falling all that fast with nothing to propel her down, and Math’s impact has been shown to be…forceful.
Can Peggy see the spirit form or is that what Harem’s ‘scope is doing?
Seems as if the characters have knowledge only available to the writer and readers.
Dunno, possibly yes, possibly no. I doubt it is due to the scope though, as Peggy seems to just have conventional military gear. Either both Peggy and Harem are seeing the spirit form, or neither are. Dabbler would be another matter, but we should assume Peggy is limited the same as any other soldier.
Not at all. The body has animated, ie is physically manifested and fully visible in panel 6. Then stands up. Has a leisurely cracking of the knuckles in panel 7. Then gets shot in panel 8. No mysterious spirit vision required (if it is indeed invisible to mortals).
Probably as simple as Peggy and Harem being in the right place to see Concretia as she reformed, and then taking the shot.
There is also the stupidity of forming out of material that has a bright yellow reflective stripe bonded to its surface. It may be early evening, but this a a Grade 1 stealth fail. Also as to the head shot it’s entirely possible that Peggy was lining up another shot and this target of opportunity happened. This happened to me doing photography. Originally was focused on something close to the horizon and had a graceful large bird fly into the frame, I instantly followed the bird and came away with 6 nice shots of a Blue Heron in flight that I have yet to reproduce using a modern digital camera.
Yeah she’s visible. Concretia’s ghost form is really just her while she’s phased. She has a solid body but can stay phased for extended periods of time.
There’s bound to be some limit to Concretia’s power. Range, time. weight, material, number of bodies or composition. If she could possess anything why didn’t she use metal? Much better durability and bullets would either bounce off or go through without much collateral damage.
Agreed. If she goes for tarmac/asphalt a third time, we can conclude that she is either rather slow on the uptake, or she has some restriction which is limiting her range of options. Maybe she just can’t bend the metal? A normal person could not bend asphalt, of course, but she has super strength. So that would have little restriction for her. But metal might be stiff enough to slow her attacks, and make them a bit too easy to evade.
its also enterly possible that physical characteristics such as strength are determined by what she makes her body out of. or even the more complicated the strcher the longer it may take to for a body.
for example the road is a solid mass of one substance. were as the metal in a car has lots of “holes” in its dysine that would need to be filled in.
Concrete and tarmac are both composite materials with an aggregate and binding agent.
Well, metal bending did take several seasons for an earth bending genius to learn in Avatar so maybe she just needs time. :)
A normal person would rather break a (very small) piece of concrete than bend it. In fact, concrete is rather unbendible(?) – unlike most metals. But concretia appears as if she bends concrete/tarmac all the time while moving her body. Very interesting power, borders to magic, IMHO. Not that a (near) magical super power would be unlike in any way. :)
Concrete is very strong in compression, but it can be bent. Albeit only to a certain degree, before it starts to break. That is why steel is placed within it, to keep the concrete under compression, increasing it’s strength. Clever architectural design takes advantage of the bending though, to allow skyscrapers to shift in high winds. Get it right, and the structure simply flexes, but does not break. Make it too rigid and the concrete will start to crack and fail.
Likewise for earthquake-proofing of concrete structures. You need to ensure that buildings, bridges and the like are able to move with the vibrations, rather than attempt to resist them. The earthquake will win that fight otherwise.
Concretia is simply very good at doing that kind of thing, via her super power.
Yes… I have even read of experiments to create concrete springs out of so called “micro defect free” concrete or something alike. That was about 30 years ago.
But even in that light I see no way to bend a concrete finger from straight to fully bended (as needed to make a fist), even very slowly. Asphalt, yes. Steel, too, with a lot of strength and not too cold and not too fast. Concrete requires supernatural superpowers, I keep that standpoint. :-)
Do we even know exactly how she does it?
Yes, we do know exactly how she does it. She is a superpowered human and this is her superpower. That’s how.
How does Crusher Creel remain animated when he “absorbs the properties of” glass, metal, concrete, etc? Because it is his superpower to do so.
Also, I’m related to 2 people in civil engineering business and am aware of the fact that concrete consists of sand, stones of different sizes and cement. All this together can take some “bending load”, even better when reinforced with steel and even better when prestressed, but I still would say that it is very far from being flexible.
So you’d need to “bend” stones, sand grains and the cement (glue) in between which, btw, develops crystals while hardening. Without super powers that would be like trying to bend rock, a rather brittle kind of rock, even.
That’s why I always thought the “coolest” earth type elementals were the ones with internal temperatures so high you could see glow through parts of them. Presumably different parts of them began to melt or melted at different temperatures so their bones and outer shell stayed solid while their innards were at various levels of flexibility depending on need (muscles, liquids for pressure based movement or whatever).
Concretia is either as you say moving things by “magic” or maybe those parts of her shell’s joints that have to move the most are powdered but appear solid because of the way her energies hold them in place. That almost works. Best I can do off the top of my head.
Despite her present, temporary, name, it is worth noting that at present she is not animating concrete, but asphalt. Which is a lot more flexible. Just think how soft it can be on a playground or how spongy it can get on a very hot day.
Not that you could get an asphalt statue to walk around mind you, even with motors in it, but that is what super powers are for.
She might simply need to to immerse her entire phased body in a material in order to form a material body with it. Most walls would probably be too thin, a single chunk of metal big enough for you to do that would be rare.
The ground, or whatever is making it up may just be the only object of sufficient dimensions to form a body from.
known limits [besides normal superhero limits like standing around bragging while foe makes hamburger of you]
Stunable. Math has time to dispose of 3 foes and tangle with a 4th plus a little talking before Concretia can act again. Probably not too long, but it is possible she is now out of the fight.
Body is fragile/temporary. She is falling apart as we see her here. Not clear yet whether this is due to damage or she can only hold together for a brief time. Damage seems the more likely.
Possible limits
may have to use materials close at hand. While asphalt can be nasty stuff, it doesn’t rank a lot of other materials, many of which should not be far away. [use part of light stand maybe, or car, or…] She may be unable to move without merging with something.
“Body is fragile/temporary. She is falling apart as we see her here. Not clear yet whether this is due to damage or she can only hold together for a brief time. Damage seems the more likely.” – now thinking about it, since concrete is already unbendible, she would break it herself while moving already. Her power seems to prevent that. Therefore I conclude that pure physical damage to one of her concrete bodies would not break it as long as it’s under her conscious control.
Then why did she decide do abandon her body and get a new one instead of repairing it?
I have no idea.
My guess would be some difficulties arising from mixing materials of differing durability and flexability
So then…. how does Concretia die if she becomes ephemeral after a headshot…?
Is dying a necessity? Personally I view it as optional.
*checks diary*
Yup, events in there up until 3,000 AD. I really don’t have the time to lie down on the job.
Thats what time travel is for.
I am doing that, as we speak.
Technically speaking, *everybody’s* a time traveler. Being on the Earth as it moves through space (time being measured relative to the speed of movement), we travel through time at a rate of 60 seconds per minute.
It looks like if the shell takes enough damage, she has to bail out and form a new one. Peggy saw the new form shaping up and then broke it. If the first shot was insufficient, Peggy has 9 more just like it. For all we know, the real Concretia is sitting at home while her astral form possesses non-living matter.
OK. DaveB says that is the real Concretia. She phases to get a new shell. And apparently phases out if the shell takes damage.
More likely she simply remains phased while controlling a ‘shell’, would be easier than believing she was able to phase in the precise millisecond the bullet hit the crunchy shell but before it passed through her squishy center
Makes better sense. Also takes care of pesky questions like how does she breathe with a solid gravel chest.
She was ephemeral before the headshot. She was just carrying some asphalt with her.
Agreed. Think of it as being phased and having zero-range matter animation. She can animate material that is in the volume contained by her phased body. It would also explain why she has not made a big body yet.
Math is showing off again and deliberately being flashy to make things more ‘interesting’. Looks like he’s using some sort of a jump kick to meet Jabber, which is probably about the least optimal strategy he could’ve used.
For every action, there is an equal action in the opposite direction. If you are properly braced, your strikes have the ability to apply MUCH more force, because your stance is providing that force, enabling you to use your entire body rather than just one limb. When you are in mid-air, you have nothing to brace against, and so you are relying entirely on your momentum to deliver impact. Which is why very few martial artists will actually use any sort of jumping techniques in a real fight or tournament (well, there’s Capoeira, but that’s as much dance and style as combat).
If Math had kept his back foot planted on the ground his opponent would’ve, at best, face-planted into the pavement. By doing some jumping spin kick thing (the swoosh line originates well below Math, so I assume that is meant to imply that he’s mid-air), he’s robbed himself of most of his potential power. So they’re probably going to both land in relative proximity to each other.
Mind you, considering Math’s proclivities, that’s probably the plan. After all, who can resist grappling with an amazon chick? And he’s certainly an expert enough martial artist to be able to at least somewhat predict his opponent’s moves by now, so he’s probably already got the boob-faceplant-snap-picture maneuver already planned out.
I don’t think the point of that move is the kick. Judging from the excellent grabbing opportunity of his left hand, the backwards angle of his body and the foot firmly planted on Jabberchewies knee, he’s about to flip throw her backwards, or plant her head in the ground. Or something else grab related, that left hand is close to another of his favored targets.
It may look a little weird because of the perspective and focus, but his left foot seems to be firmly planted on the ground for me.
Looks more like Jabber was doing a jumping attack, and he braced and blocked it with his foot on her knee.
With a presumed follow up of him grabbing Jabber and throwing her in the direction his foot was going (so up, and than down again behind him)
You’ve got it exactly. There is even art representing the impact of Math’s foot on Jabberwonkie’s knee. He is using the Bruce Lee technique of the intercepting fist, and attacking anything he is attacked with.
Hey, this means Math is back down to three!
KDA counting is so much easier when the voice of (presumably) God cries out all of your countable accomplishments.
Yes! Go Sydney! You are catching up, even when not featured on the page. :-D
*wags tail*
No, he still took out that body.
She just respawned. So still counts as a kill
Some of the tougher ones are going to be multiple assist kills. I just give everyone who make a serious attack 1XP for the takedown and 1 more if they actually used teamwork. If Peggy and Harem have been watching the bricks that went down in the preliminary posturing, they get the teamwork bonus for nailing them if they get up like here. And the spotter gets her point too. Without her the sniper just misses too much of what is going on.
Hero system XP or otherwise?
I’ve always preferred Hero System from the old Champions on up to the 90s stuff. That’s when I stopped playing. The adaptability was as good as any generic system and the rule set played fast and furious when the dice came out.
Fast and furious when the dice came out? Ya gotta be kidding me, right? The worst part of Champions was when the dice came out.
Player One: I use attack A on opponent B *rolls to hit*
GM: *Calculates if it his using Player One’s attack skill vs. the target’s defense skill* Ok, you hit.
Player One: *Picks up 18D6 and rolls them.* Ok, let’s see… Now I have to add up all the dice to see my normal damage, and I do 18 Body damage for 18 dice, plus one for every 6 and minus one for every 1. *Two minutes later* Ok, it’s 63 stun and 18 body, just like you’d expect from the average of an 18 die bell curve!
Yeah, occasionally it would be slightly different, and rarely it might be different by a large degree, but not enough to justify actually having to roll all those dice and add them up two different ways for every single attack which lands.
A much better system would be to have each attack (above, say, 10D6, which is going to be all superhero attacks and some mook attacks, leaving the lower damaging attacks to their less steep bell curves) do exactly average damage, and then roll two different colored D6, if the “drift” D6 is a 1-3 you add the body of the second D6 score, if the “drift” D6 is 4-6 you subtract it. And then you either add or subtract the total of the 2D6 to the stun score. Easy peasy, and much, much faster.
I should qualify that, I suppose. Compared to other systems of the time (GURPS, I’m looking at you) it played fast with experienced players and GMs. Also we would only use the full damage rolls when it was important to a PC or a major NPC. Mooks got compared to average rolls.
thats actually a pretty cool superpower shes got there :) and whoop my favorite sniper rifle makes an appearance!
Is that M107? Barrett-produced anti-materiel riffle?
Barrett XM-500. Basically a bullpup version of the 107. Lighter and shorter. Perfect for a short female sniper on the go.
By the way, on account of this:
Considering that when I was in the (Swiss) army, we learned to hit man-sized targets at 300m (328 yards) with our standard issue rifle and no additional help like a scope. And not combat troops only. Any soldier carrying a rifle had to. I’d say that is quite a reasonable assumption. ;)
Dave, shorter might be nicer, but lighter and being bolt action will make the recoil more severe. Watch “Future Weapons” from the Military Channel with the M107, and you will see he talks about how much nicer that semi-auto makes the recoil. Also says that after several rounds through a bolt gun would be very painful. Remember snipers fire a lot of rounds in practice.
True but it still benefits from the muzzle brake an likely she works out to compensate for the difference.
Working out is one thing, but the guy from “Future Weapons” was fairly good sized and an ex-SEAL. So, if he was saying a bolt .50 will wear you out, I doubt Peggy would be in better shape.
On the bolt question see below.
I just remembered one other aspect of bullpup rifles that may come into play it technically should have the same barrel length as a M107. It just runs back into the stock area and the trigger is left in a natural position. Also it is semi-auto, XM500s all are.
My mistake on thinking it was a bolt gun. I must have been thinking of the M90 now that I actually look it up, instead of just using memory.
I’m glad that got cleared up. I think I’ve seen more than one post calling the XM500 a bolt action rifle. I’ve never had the pleasure of firing it (or any Barrett *sob*), but I’ve seen it fired. And as corrected, it is a semi-auto action.
But I’m a bit unclear on why you’d think that a bolt action would mean higher recoil? The only recoil reduction a semi-auto enjoys over any other kind of action is the tiny amount of gasses used to work the action. I don’t believe this would make much of a difference, and I’ve fired a fairly large array of rifles of various action types, including a .50 cal (which although on the ground and not vehicle mounted was so nailed down that the recoil was nill. Just press the thumb tabs and enjoy the show, the weapon isn’t even braced against the operator at all). We don’t get to see what Peggy has bracing her bipod, but it should be taking some of the recoil. She should have a better firing position as well, but I guess she’s forced to take what the terrain offers her.
This did answer my question of a few pages ago about how she intended to use the Barrett and also follow the “try to keep casualties down” order from Maxima.
Well, I have fired a few rifles and shotguns too. I have felt the difference in a semi-auto and a bolt in .30-06, (of course there was weight difference as well). But, with the .50 I am mostly going by the ex-SEAL sniper’s review from the afore mentioned “Future Weapons”. The recoil action of the bolt mechanism does offer some reduction. The M107 also has the moving barrel not on the XM500, so I don’t know if it will also give that reduction either.
Peggy is going to make sure Concretia keeps losing her head. Now that they have observed her power, Arc Light will be figuring how to keep her from rocking out.
Keep her from rocking out? Easy; play Brahms at full volume.
Play some Pick Floyd or Grateful Dead. Concretia looks like a ‘stoner’ to me.
Pumps up the Dread Zeppelin little kung-fu fighting this morning.
“Concretia” is Joel’s name for her, from when she was made of Concrete or Rock. Now she is, er, was asphalt and paint. I would suspect that means she can make her body out of any inorganic material, assuming asphalt is inorganic which is debatable. It was once organic in any case. That’s quite a bit more powerful than she first appeared to be. Even if her next body is from one of the cars, for example, the Bartlett will still work on her. =)
Ooops, “Barrett”
She actually calls herself Anima, cause she can… you know, animate stuff. Having her say “Hubris, thy name be Anima.” would have been confusing without explanation and I didn’t want to bog down the page with that stuff. It will be straightened out eventually.
Interesting choice, since “anima” originally means “soul”.
You mean Leon. Joel’s probably closing up the comic shop right about now.
Ah, she does not do well in fights on salt flats.
“Bwahaha! Knee befor-”
*water cannon*
Or on a beach.
“Aha. Now I’ve got…” buried under a pile of C&D orders from Marvel.
stands as an unstoppable C&D structure before sticking her tongue out and asking what else you got
Ceasandisistia sounds far more sinister than Concretia. But could have problems with being highly flammable.
Not to mention that even villains have standards.
“Ques loud reptilian roar”.
Followed by a large “plop” of indescribable foulness on her.
Everybody knows when Godzilla goes.
So, the most severe punishment she might suffer is to animate within a pile of manure…
Have you seen the latest issue of By The Book? With a manure covered Steam Knight fleeing from the owners of said manure (anyone who has doubts on the sanity of gnomes should read it, and remove said doubts: they be poo-crazed :P)
I am not sure anyone in By the Book is sane…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
That was great! “Well, ready for round two….BANG.” That warmed the cockles of my military heart.
Gotta love snipers….at least the ones on YOUR side.
This is precisely why my favorite weapon in Titanfall is the Kraber AP Heavy Rifle — 1-shot kill against human-scale targets, and it’s the only weapon with noticeable lead time. (Noticeable = multiple body-lengths when target is at full speed.)
But oh, is it ever satisfying when you destroy the enemy team with it, because you can’t aimbot with it.
You need to predict movements; they KNOW you have skills.
I am really hoping he does really AWESOME with Concretia. Maybe a giant Concretia ?
Spawn camper!
Well…that was quick
*ding, ding, ding* Seconds out…seconds back in, pick her up, sponge her down and get her back on her feet for round three.
That wouldn’t be when the 20mm comes out, would it?
I can see that dealing with Concretia long-term is going to be a problem. If she can simply leave whatever body she’s in and form a new one there doesn’t seem to be any way to truly disable her or imprison her, or (for that matter) to kill her if one felt it necessary to go that route.
Well, she’s just a human after all.(See what I did there?) Just tire her out. If not physically, then mentally.
She will have limitations to her power, it is just a matter of finding them and exploiting whatever they are.
For example, someone above made the good point that she may need to have a solid substance big enough for her to fully enter and possess. If there are gaps, like in a car, she could not use her power. In which case ensure that her cell has enough gaps that she cannot possess any of the materials used to make it.
That still leaves the problem that she could simply keep phasing through the walls/floor until she eventually found suitable matter, beyond the prison. Here it is worth noting that DaveB indicated that she is phased and not a spirit. Which implies that she needs to breathe. Plus, unless she has more powers that we do not know about, she is unlikely to be able to see through solid matter.
Combine those two features, and you just need to ensure that the walls are thick enough that she will not be able to safely pass through them without running out of air in her lungs. So it would need to be a big prison, but it is possible. And, if she cannot see, then it need not be huge. Because, once she has travelled into the substance any distance, she would quickly loose her bearings and move in circles (everybody does without a point of reference). If she were to risk it, she could just end up suffocating herself.
Of course she might develop the power stunt to phase just her mouth back into a gap to breath. But, after she was re-captured, from that escape, the prison could be modified to have gas in the voids. Or it could be built that way to start with, by insightful designers.
or a series of thin plastic she can’t use with a layer of water before a layer of glass to thin to use then water then plastic then glass if it is in the middle of a lake (not at the top or bottom) she then has huge amounts of water to get away from before she can dephase and she has no air outside the cell to breath while trying to escape.
Assuming you’re right about dis-contiguous materials being unsuitable for animation, simple steel bars would be sufficient to hold her, so long as the wall beyond the bars was thick enough to prevent her safely phasing through it. Putting the cell deep underground would eliminate the need to construct a large facility, as natural rock could very easily serve that purpose.
Yea, I had been thinking underground too. But with voids carved into the ground.* Without those she could just use the rock as the raw material for her body.
One other solution just sprang to mind. But it is incredibly spoilerific, so I shall keep my peace.
* A technique that I developed to counter attacks by phasing burrowers and teleporters in Terraria. The holes allowed you to see approaching burrowing creatures, before they struck. But had to be small enough to prevent teleporters from being able to get into them and fire missiles at you.
I love coming up with architectural solutions to problems. Provided the time spent in construction is balanced by being useful in the long term, then it is worth doing.
The thing about using “thick enough walls she can’t phase through it” You can see her leaving a hole in the parking lot when she forms a new body. She could tunnel through simple by making a body and leaving it to make another and so on.
Yea, that concept would only work in conjunction with the theory that she cannot use a small amount of material or one that has big gaps in it.
Mind you another complication is her super strength. Put too many holes in things, and she will be able to just punch holes in them, or bend bars open. If a big prison has to be made out of very hard and therefore expensive materials, it may become an uneconomic method of imprisonment.
Some villains you just have to drop them into their own dimensional prison.
This was my thinking as I read it also. I would say Concretia/Anima could prove to be a serious nuisance if she so chooses. Seems to me she’ll have plenty of chance to gain combat experience against ArcSwat with (given what Dave’s said about no power dampeners in the Grrl Power world) little chance of getting/remaining imprisoned.
I’ll also be interested to see how much damage she’s willing to take to a shell before she discards it as useless :)
He actually said no generic power blockers. The possibility of blockers for one specific power still exists.
Plus there are numerous ways of countering any given power, without negating the power itself. Simply find an effect that it strong enough to oppose her ability.
You can fight fire with fire. Or with water. Or Ice. Or vacuum. Or sand. Or fire extinguishers.
Nonetheless these are the first villains we’ve encountered and I would like for some of them to be given the chance to develop into something more threatening long-term and I quite like Anima here. Even if she has been (with the exception of Mr. Amorphous and Achilles) the butt of some whoopings already, I personally hope she gets out of this one and “lives to fight another day” as it were.
I really see this as a psychological factor. Since she started human or apparently human, she seems to think that her form needs to be complete to function. The bullet passing though her head destroying the physical form would indicate that it is not the way to disable or kill her. If she can get past that mental outlook, she should be able to keep animating and bashing into things until the legs were destroyed. Think the Black Knight from MP-HG as a ‘rock’ zombie
I like how Concretia isn’t particulary pissed about getting beat so fast by Math. She’s just like :”Well, I got cocky, better not do that again.”
That is dangerous. An opponent who calmly assesses her error and learns from her mistakes without any drama. Plus being a decent brick, Peggy’s head shot aside. Her next shell will form behind cover if she can move far enough away before restoring the shell.
Wait a ghost in a shell? DAVVE!
… Depending on whether or not Concretia figures what exactly happened to her.
She MIGHT deduce that she was just headshot, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she immediately figures out where the shot came from.
I’d dive under a car, form the new shell then flip it up and keep moving fast. get into a close fight or back into the restaurant. Not knowing Dabbler and Heavenly Sword are going at it like two runaway Cusinarts.
Left side of her face took the most impact damage, logic dictates the object came from that general direction.
Actually looking more closely, assuming downward angle, it would be coming from her 2-3 o’clock high.
… Or maybe an upward angle from the opposite direction.
Depending on circumstances, it is possible that a bullet might make a much bigger mess leaving the target than entering it. Yes. I know she is asphalt at this point, but I think the possibility is still valid.
For as close a real life example as you will ever see, check out this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJM0YBrILGI
If you don’t want to watch the whole thing (I’ve come to despise the History Channel), watch from 5:30 for a specific situation involving firing a Barrett through a cinderblock wall at three targets who were effectively under full cover and concealment. And then tell me you don’t want one. :-D
For anyone who doesn’t want to watch the video, all three insurgents were killed with the single round.
Err, you got the convention totally the opposite way around to normal. Rather than hiding it, you should say:
WARNING: This clip contains graphic recreations of people being killed by explosive bullets.
And, no, that does not make me want to own one. Not, I hasten to add, that I am saying that as a put-down. It is simply an honest answer. One of my friends joined a gun club and went from my kind of attitude to eager gun collector, in short order. I doubt I would be any different. And have even looked into joining one myself, at one point. Only not doing so because the nearest was inconveniently far away.
Likewise it would be hypocritical of me to praise the armed forces, on one hand, but put down enthusiasm for the tools of the trade, on another. But would be very happy for it to remain strictly in the hands of the military. There is far too much potential for abuse. And amongst the earliest use of these weapons was in the hands of terrorists.
Personally though, the thing that most interests me, about Peggy’s weapon, is the fact that it is an anti-material rifle. I find it refreshing that there is a gun who’s primary purpose is not to take life. The single best use of it that I saw listed, amongst some good ones, is for the navy to shoot the engines of high-speed vessels, being used for piracy.
Just like Peggy, above, using the weapon to overcome deadly opponents, without taking life.
While a Barrett may be a sweet weapon for shooting through the engine block of a car/truck/boat/plane (planes on the runway being a particularly good target), it is also capable of being used to take down human targets. As demonstrated by the video I linked. And if it wasn’t a Barrett, it would have been some other sniper rifle, with the sole difference being that the three insurgents behind the wall would have been safe to potentially kill people on the snipers side of things.
Don’t hate the weapon, hate the political situation which made its use necessary.
No hate here. As the saying goes, “Make zombies, not war.”
which is why I like her so far. She’s not as “cliche”-acting as nega-knucklehead or Fainting Dolly was. (Something Dave does a VERY good job of avoiding unless there’s an actual reason, BTW.)
“~150 yards is not exactly a challenging distance for a professional sniper”
~DaveB
Although hitting a target at that distance may not be particularly challenging for a professional sniper, hitting a target in the eye probably counts as a decent accomplishment.
Well, she’s good enough to play with super heroes. Thanks for your input tho!
At least she and Math are now close to each other again. She can ask him “Excuse me. Could you repeat what you said inside? I didn’t catch the end of it.”
Boy that would be annoying okay new boy let’s go *pop* ahh man shit.
This also reveals/confirms that Concretia’s “body” is a shell of material, so she’s presumably lighter than you might expect from her appearance. That jibes with Math’s ability to send her flying.
i dont know her fingers look solid
They probably are–she would want solid hands/fists so they don’t break when she hits people/things, and also because the extra mass would enable her to hit harder. The head, on the other hand, appears to be hollow. Perhaps she can choose how thick to make the shell in various places.
my opinion is that the bodies change depending on how the bodies are made for example
body 1 more prep time so more solid maybe mor durable?
body 2 made on the fly more hollow and maybe less durable?
Both bodies are/were solid. What you are assuming is a hollow asphalt body is only the large amount of the asphalt head which was blown away by a .50 round. If the view wasn’t somewhat obscured by the phased Anima, this would be more clear.
Quick note about sniping:
If Peggy is shooting from 200-yard range using a large-caliber rifle equipped with recoil compensator, everyone in the area will know exactly where she is after the first shot is fired. She should get ready to change position quickly, since there are supers with ranged attacks.
Large-caliber rifle can cause verly loud and highly visible muzzle blast, and a recoil compensator (“muzzle brake”) will usually make the blast even more louder and visible. This is a major problem when using sniper rifle in build-up areas and in low-light conditions. The muzzle blast will also kick up dust and damage shooters ears, while the brightness of the flash may mass up with shooters ability to see in low-light.
This is the main reason why we were issued sound suppressors. Properly designed modern supperssor reduces or eliminates muzzle blast and muzzle flash, without having any effect bullet velocity or accuracy. While supersonic bullets have loud flight sound, sound suppressor is still very usable, since it is very difficult to pinpont the shooter’s location from flight sound alone.
PS. Since ARC personnel are using headset radios, I assume that Peggy and Harem have custom-molded “talk-through earplugs” or sound-cancelling “smart earplugs”. Othrewise the large-caliber rifle with muzzle brake could cause serious damage to their ears.
The fighting in the parking lot is creating a lot of noise and flashes from the energy users anyway. That should allow Peggy some help by distracting the opposition a bit. If someone does notice her and counter attacks, Maxima is already providing air support. Or just throw Achilles at them.
All battlefields have distractions. Snipers have to re-position because, unlike supers, they are not bullet-proof themselves. If they rely on hoping that nobody spotted the shot, they will have a very short career. And that is ones going up against mortals. Against super heroes they need to be more careful, not less.
Plus Peggy would be doing a poor job if she expected Maxima to bail her out after each shot. She is there to provide support, not to be a squishie that needs nursemaiding. The next time we see her, you may have difficulty picking her out. Now that the villains know there is a sniper around, she needs to make sure they do not spot her, before she spots them.
I think the point was that it is hard to pinpoint a sniper in the middle of a fight where everyone else has lasers and explosives.
True, but no self-respecting and capable sniper would ever count on “they might not have noticed”. I was a simple infantry radioman in the army and even we got taught “shoot – take cover – change position – shoot”.
Shoot and move is SOP. Peggy and Harem are on another roof by now getting a new angle on the next person who looks well-armored. As well as keeping Anima in mind.
Who’s to say she’s just 200 yards away? She’s on a super team, and the world record for a confirmed sniper kill is 1.5 miles (she won’t want to be that far away, obviously, especially with her friends and allies close to the targets, but there is a middle ground… if she’s moving between a series of positions about half a mile away, it’d likely take a speedster, supersense, psychic, or massive area-of-effect opponent to get back at her… OK, that’s not exactly zero risk, but it’s hard to find a context that is, with supes, and presumably there’s some kind of plan for each).
Drat, just saw the word-of-author on this. Sorry, we are talking 100-200 yards.
That was an unexpected and a bit surprising power.
I guess they should not take Concretia totally for granite. :P
DM: “Concretia throws her old head at you”
Oh…I don’t know. I think that they’ll just chalk that one up for another future win by Math if he FELDS like SPARRING…with her again. He’ll knock her out coal again…she’ll exclaim, “SCHIST! I thought I had him!” She lose her marbles because he’s such a slippery, serpentine type of guy….
I’m not even sure if those were puns
Yea, those were mining the depths. Sinking to the obsidian blackness. Slated to eventual derision.
So many puns flying around throughout this battle scene…Maybe Concretia’s about ready to say “Frack it” & go home or something.
“Frack it…..”
Oh…well done. Very indirect….
My sum-it-up theory: advanced technology in the sports bra/lycra shorts combo that allows phasing and fusing. It covers all three issues and is just as believable as magic.
You claiming that the power comes from her clothes and herself? Well, they do say “the clothes maketh the (wo)man”
*and not herself
Heh heh, that was sooo cool, ArcLight is going to have to update her listing :D
Does raise the question: how do you stop a power like that?
Can totally see Peg tracking Cree around and popping every body she Cree-ates, until Cree just turns in some random direction and asks the mystery (to her) sniper: “Can you please just give me a break and stop spawn-camping me?” :D
Concretia has shown some ability to learn. If she gets sniped again she will change tactics. Or just bail out on the party, if possible.
She oughta be able to run around in phase mode, looking for Peggy, and upon finding her, make a body of sheetrock, plaster, paint, wires, and either wood studs or metal framework. Possibly some insulation.
Ooh, or better yet, the floor under her, causing her to fall AND having a hardish body to fight her with.
In her phased form, she cannot be shot. But the instant she takes on a body, Peggy will shoot it full of holes. Unless Anima can fly, getting under Peggy is gonna take re-locating her, entering the building and going up to the roof. Even if she can, Dave has said her phased form is visible. Harem will see her coming. That’s her job as spotter. And that’s when Arc SWAT will show why a team beats a mob. Anima will be standing on her own personal Ground Zero while people try to see if they can affect her phased form. She may move to the top of Dabbler’s to-do-in list. I’m sure she has a phasing phaser in her lab.
It is also likely that one of the magic-using ARCs has a spell or something that blocks, wards or otherwise contains spirits, ghosts, astral projections, etc.. May or may not work on Concretia, but it would be worth a try.
Gwen is keeping an “you don’t see us” spell going right now. Mr. Zoeng may have some prepared magic gimmicks on hand. But if it is gonna take high tech or magic Dabbler is the first choice. Of course, she is a little preoccupied right now.
Yeah, well, I meant “in general” there, not necessarily in the current tactical situation.