Grrl Power #219 – Mach the knife
This page has two Patreon $50 supporter cameos. U. Kaya Yavuz submitted our speedster, Silent Shadow. Unlike Hex, who we haven’t seen the last of BTW, Silent Shadow is one of Kaya’s characters, repurposed temporarily for this appearance. I’m glad SS is a speedster, cause it’s not something that I had originally included in my supervillain mix. In my opinion, super speed is the single most overpowered superpower besides the obvious ones like reality control or time travel, and it’s a big part of why Maxima rates so high. It’s also why Silent Shadow had to use his first two attacks on people he had no real chance of hurting. Arc-SWAT will take their lumps, but I didn’t want one guy incapacitating half the team within seconds of his debut. Still, in one page he gets introduced, then gets three attacks with one good hit.
The other cameo is down in the bottom left of the page, courtesy of Shana Hills. She volunteered the fact she’s Australian so the first thing I thought of was “Where women glow and men thunder” so naturally she glows and has lighting powers… which isn’t to imply that Shana turns into a boy when you throw hot water on her or anything. Those are just the first superheroey powers that came to mind. She’s not out of the fight yet. It’ll take more than just getting hit with the Easy Bake beam to take out the mighty Glowbug.
Heatwave is one of those characters who is especially vulnerable in a fight. Normally she would wear kevlar or something, but right now she’s just floating and glowing. Yes, she has her heat aura, and that’s bad news for anyone trying to grab her, but it doesn’t do anything against lasers or bullets. Usually in comics, the guy with the heat aura can use it to vaporize anything trying to hit him, but bullets move really fast, and the amount of heat required to vaporize copper jacketed lead in the fraction of a second it’s passing through the foot or so of heat created by the aura just doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know the math, but I’d guess it’d have to be millions of degrees. That sort of heat would radiate outwards like a nonstop bomb. Even if you say that the aura power contains the radiating heat, then essentially what you’ve set that character up with is a disintegration field. They’d be able to just walk or fly through any surface at up to the speed of a bullet, including a mountain of (copper jacketed) lead like it wasn’t there. So heat/fire powers in my universe can’t do that. It just breaks too much stuff. The best Heatwave can manage is extending her aura out and creating violent turbulence to throw bullets off course. That assumes whoever is shooting at her is on target. If someone is spraying all over the place, the turbulence can actually steer near misses into her. Hence the kevlar.
Oh and Dabbler isn’t summoning another sword in case that’s confusing. She can recall Soulreaver from where ever it is, I just didn’t have the room on this page for a panel showing it disappearing from where it hit the tree.
A-kon is this weekend! I’ll be doing a panel on Friday. Humor-Based Webcomics 1: Humor in Story. In case you can’t make it to the panel, I’ll wander by the Antarctic Press table quite a few times, and it would be cool to have a meetup for lunch or dinner one night with people. I’m not sure how to organize that. Best I can figure is to post updates to Twitter, and here on the page during the con.
My sixth (and final) Gynostar Guest strip is up! This doesn’t wrap up the story arc (which starts here) just my contribution to it. Come see Gynostar be bendy!
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it’s kentucky fried bad guy on the menu it seems.
and oh god dabbler. “I SAID I GOT HIM” hehe
plus heavenly sword” i SEE YOU BACK THERE”
then WHY don’t you GO GET HER? hehe
Because the Dabble-gangers (yes that’s what I’m calling them) are penning her in.
+1
since they don’t move i thought they were illusions lol
Depends on how ‘solid’ they are, Heaven may simply not be able to ‘push through’ (can totally hear Heaven singing this song :P)
Also depends on how quickly Dabbles can create them, specially when she’s not even fully paying attention
Love “Dabble-gangers”! That needs to be canon. :)
Yes, as Picard would say, “Make it so!”
+1
I think that’s just her seething in outrage over Dabbler not sharing her Shonen Manga interpretation of where they both fit into this big ol’ fray.
Remember, Heavenly Sword is sporting, and wants to take Dabbler down Bushido/Chivalry-style. It also looks like she didn’t know Dabbler could do this….Or if those glamour-clones are “mammary-trapped” or anything. Best wait for another opening, or at least don’t charge in Bebop and Rocksteady-style, yes?
Ouch, toe horror.
Heatwave will probably add steel toe boots to the Kevlar after this. =)
She is still wearing her street shoes there. No protection at all.
Heatwave has minimum level flight. She may not be able to wear heavy protective foot gear (or body armour), and still get off the ground. When we saw her flying at the bomb range, she was only acting to guide the helicopter, not to carry a coach.
Her flight may be an extension of her heat powers, basically by creating a thermal updraft.
You know…this is probably my favorite part of reading Grrlpower…well, aside from the comic itself, obviously, is reading the comments where my fellow comic geeks sit around and try to come up with the whys and wherefores of how the various team members powers work. :) As a LOOOOONG time PnP and PbP roleplayer, it’s one of the things my friends and I would do as well. We’d be spending a long weekend gaming and during breaks…usually watching either Saturday morning cartoons after having been up all Friday night or watching some movie relevant to the genre of game we were playing…and we’d sit around and discuss how so and so’s power wouldn’t work in a realistic sense, or the consequences of a specific type of spell. It’s one of my fondest gamer memories. :)
That’s all I really wanted to say. I’m a HUGE fan of this comic, and Dave has totally poisoned me so that every time I watch a superhero movie now, all I can think about is how unrealistic the consequences of all the mega fights are. :)
Now I just have to live up to all the trope talk I’ve set up leading up to the fight. :)
No presure
You can do eeeeet!! :D
Dont worry Dave, we have faith in your geekitude. :)
Woo hoo I’m a comic geek!
Congratulations! I am so proud of you…
… hang on, does this mean I am a geek too? Or a nerd? Which is the variety that is not especially competent with computers?
I think you definitely qualify as a proper geek Yorp, computer skills (or lack thereof) not withstanding. :)
Heatwave will probably get stitches added after this. The wrap around her foot will make wearing a boot, steel-toed or otherwise, problematic until the bandage is removed in a couple of weeks.
The difficulty being, how would steel-toed boots react with her super body heat? I think metal tends to draw heat.
Steel toed boots are not the only option these days. Composites of various sorts are actually better. Lighter, nonconducting and able to take a harder hit than steel in proportion. For Heatwave a custom carbon composite would be a good choice. It is temperature resistant and extremely light. An external layer of bullet-resistant material would be a good idea.
Considering she held a aluminum can in her hand as she was melting it and the only problem she had was the Carmelized soda? I dare say she can stand a hot-foot.
Yes, but the boot becomes useless in terms of defense once melted.
Heatwave’s clothes are not on fire here, even when Shadow stabbed her and caused a power surge. I guess ordinary protective boots would be fine for her.
Metal is conducting, but Heatwave has excellent control, as Arianna said in the press conference. She can focus her heat beams, and her heat aura surrounds her and doesn’t even affect her clothing (or those cam-specs she is wearing, are those part of lightstorm?), so I’d say metal boots would not be affected by her heat aura/beams.
Don’t forget that the ‘Arc-Doc’ has healing powers… she may not even be using a bandage by the time she goes to bed.
My thinking exactly, I’ll be surprised if she won’t start wearing steel-capped boots after this episode.
Between that and Maths tooth thing, which do you think is more painful.
The tooth splitter definitely. But I have more sympathy for Heatwave.
That is one experiment I would definitely not volunteer for….
IMO, there’s a lot more shock value (remember that shock from an injury can be fatal even if the injury itself isn’t) in Math’s creative use of toothpicks.
Feet are fleshy and can absorb the shock from impact a little bit, though the cut would definitely hurt. Teeth are rock solid objects that will resonate more powerfully with the shock of an incoming object, and a knife thrown hard enough to wedge between teeth has a lot more force behind it than one flying through a soft shoe. Also, gums are much tighter than feet skin, making a split rip open faster, especially when you scream.
So I’d say the tooth stab hurt much more, especially after Math ripped the knife out.
A few questions.
First, if the speedster is moving at top speed, how does Harem manage to de-teleport in time? Is her reaction time akin to that of a speedster, is her use of other selves as spotters giving her enough lead time to react, even though a speedster shouldn’t be visible as more than a blur, if even that, or is she blessed with a small measure of precognition to account for her incredible reaction time here?
Also, is the cornrowed gentleman the first mortal casualty we’ve seen, or is he merely going to be badly burned?
What exactly is Dabbler doing to create these clones? Are they sort of hard light illusions? They don’t appear to be mobile, but if that’s the case, why isn’t heavenly sword simply jumping over them or sidestepping?
Finally, Harem doesn’t show up in the Who’s Who.
Glowbug and her partner got flash-burned but it doesn’t look too bad. Even if all one of the Harems saw was a blur, there was time to react. Shadow almost got her anyway. But close didn’t count here.
Also, Maxima just finished warning everyone that their enemies included a speedster. Even if SS was travelling too fast for Daphne to see him, vorping out of there might have been a precautionary measure.
Dabbler is a sorceress, so the clones can be magical in nature. And I’d say that means they can laugh off the laws of physics.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – A.C. Clark
Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science – Agatha Heterodyne.
First time I’ve heard this one :D.
+1
here ya go, Anifreik:
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205
Thanks! I like it!
Oh boy, a 12 year archive dive…
*tanks full, check. Regulator operational *puff-puff*, check. Mask clear, check. Dive, dive, dive!
See ya in the funny papers, kid.
I have not found better. Enjoy. Keep a watch on your sonar, you might see me down there again soon, too.
“Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don’t understand it.”
– Florence Ambrose, Freefall
Damn, beat me to it!
Any technology, no matter how widespread, is like magic to the majority of the members of the culture utilizing it. – Me
Seriously, how many people do you think really understand why the light goes on when they flip the switch, much less how their microwave or cell phone operate?
I used to work in retail.
The lightbulb-thing alone?
`nuff people, more than `nuff.
Ask someone “How does a telephone work?” and look at the faces they make as they try to figure it out. Alas the answer is “Far too few”
Try explaining how cell phones work some time… I have better luck knocking down reinforced concrete walls with my head. And that was back when they were mostly analog (hint, they’re nearly all-digital now). Most of the time I enjoyed my time as a technical translator, but there were times…
IIRC Cell Phones are at their hearts radio transmitter/receivers. The microphone translated the sound waves into electrical signals which is than translated into a RF signal and relayed via the towers to the recieving unit where the speaker in the earpiece translated the electrical signals back into soundwaves via the magnets and the diaphragm on the speaker. (Yeah I know Layman’s terms but I’m not an engineer)
I want to get my paws on this magic.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
From the Dresden Files.
I shambled out onto the deck, unconcerned about the rain ruining my leather duster. One handy side effect of going through the painfully precise ritual of enchanting it to withstand physical force as if it had been plate steel was that the thing was rendered waterproof and stainproof as well-yet it still breathed. Let’s see Berman’s or Wilson’s do that.
Sufficiently advanced technology, my ass.
Unless it’s acid rain, water should have little chance of ruining a leather jacket
it still has to be cared for, neatsfoot oil and so forth. Dresden’s duster on the other hand cannot be damaged (as far as I remember anyway)
That depends on what his top speed actually is. “Speedster” does not necessarily mean faster than the eye can see.
Harem can get out of the way because she can see the enemy from five different viewpoints. This allows her to correct for speed distortion, see patterns, etc, and thus, react BEFORE he can get to attacking her. If he was just focusing on her, that might be a different matter, but he’s not, is he?
It’s sort of like the whole Jedi thing of reacting to an event before it happens. It doesn’t necessarily make your reflexes faster, but it does make it LOOK like they’re a lot faster.
Which brings up one of the big weaknesses of a speedster: if their reflexes aren’t just as fast as the rest of them, they’re surprisingly vulnerable. I remember one comic where Spiderman had to fight somebody with super-speed, and dealt with it by sticking his arm out and letting the guy run into it. Although a lot of comics don’t really mention that kind of detail, that’s the reality–super-speed requires super-reflexes to be truly super-broken. Otherwise, a little bit of luck and/or planning lets a person turn a speedster’s speed against them. The Flash can go toe-to-toe with Superman because the Flash’s reflexes are just that damn good. Other comic speedsters, even with the same level of speed, can’t (I don’t think, anyway–I’m not aware of any direct fights to prove this). If Silent Shadow doesn’t have the reflexes, then he’s an offensive powerhouse who can be very easily taken out…if you can catch him.
Superman isn’t the best comparison of anything. He’s to the point where it is canon that he is as strong as he is needed to be.
The latest X-men movie has a good representation of a speedster in Quicksilver.
yeh, i liked how they represented a speedster – with aviator glasses to protect his eyes ! :p (not enough speedsters take care of this little problem – a simple bug in the eye at those speeds would be devastating ! :p
I liked that detail as well. And it also demonstrated just how OP super speed can be if you have the reactions to back it up.
X-Men Spoilers: [spoiler]I mean seriously, what was it? Six guys down in the time it took bullets to cross half a room?[/spoilers]
Pinkie Pie: Cupcakes?
Rarity: How did you—
Pinkie Pie: Eh, we had a good half second before we got sucked back out of the comic, and the Maretropolis bakery was only sixty-five blocks away!
Yeah, Dash (in The Incredibles movie) found out about the bug problem…
I laughed my ass off when that happened.
From what have seen so far, The X-Men QS is so vastly superior to The Avengers QS it makes The Flash in his prototype lycra running leotard look stylish
Shame neither could get his hair correct (if they can make Jackman’s hair look like Wolvies, they should have been able to do the same for QS, but again, The X-Men’s version looks better than that dirty used floor mop they plunked on The Avengers’ version)
Was Spider-Man’s speedster opponent named ‘Super-Sabre,’ by any chance?
That’s what happens (Heatwave) when you aren’t wearing the proper gear. Plus Shadow’s distracting her almost BBQed his supposed teammates. In fact, I think he did do more damage to his own side. Stalwart barely noticed him and Harem dodged. Heatwave may be hurting, but she is in no immediate danger. Assuming Dabbler has something going for her this time.
Looks like Dabbler put up a wall of illusionary Dabbs to entertain HS for a moment. HS’s sword seems to break them up temporarily but is not able to destroy them. I imagine the wall moves enough to block any attempt to just go around, so HS is frustrated until she gets creative.
He’s done it now. As the saying goes, you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, and you don’t mess with Stalwart’s custom tailored suits. If he positions himself correctly on the next pass we can find out what happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object.
Stalwart wielding Archilles, or maybe Anvil stretching out her arm just in the right moment to kip him in the chest/head.
As seen in Gregor Comics, when he handles a bunch of rash heroes.
Seems I didn’t get the link right. And the comments section has no edit… :(
Try two: I am a clutz.
of course she isn’t wearing the propper gear. they where at a resteraunt
thats the point of a surprise attack is the target is not prepared for you :p
that is the point of a suprise attack, you do NOT blow up a wall, then patiently wait for the enemy to get into their gear and assume formation. you just go straight in and kick ass
ok, so it failed for these guys, but my point stands
They’re called Dabble-gangers (see first response to comment # 1).
Maybe there’s a non-combatant on-staff with healing powers.
Those baddies look toasted rather than roasted. 1st degree burns?
Yes, there is. The doctor introduced in this page: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/704
and then confirmed to have healing powers in the following page: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/709
But she did not come out to the post-press-conference dinner. Repairs to Heatwave’s foot, Anvil’s new green blouse and Stalwart’s shirt will have to wait until they are back at base.
Logical enough, in that the healer may A: currently be on duty, thus at the Archon building B: not want any of the attention associated with field-duty, or C: actually be a contractor with a contract that requires discretion/anonymity.
“the Easy Bake beam” LOL. Might be the best gag on the page, and there are some good ones!
So, Dabbs conjured some magical clones to keep HS busy, it seems, interesting tactic. Jill of all trades and a one girl squad.
“Meep!” Hahahaha
If I was a speedster I would carry a kukri knife and a pistol with a large ammo clip and a laser sight that has armor piercing ammo.
The thing about superspeed is if your mind can keep up with what your body is doing. I for one would rather have super speed perceptions than just being able to move at super speeds, if you know what I mean.
The idea of firing a gun at super speed came up in Ghost In The Shell. The cyborg characters need special guns modified to keep up with their reflexes. It just gets mentioned in passing with no detail. A speedster would have to match his trigger pull speed to the gun’s mechanical limits. That may be why Shadow is using knives. A super-fast throw could do some damage, if he hits the right spot.
Well, If I know I’m about to go against supers, I would at least carry a couple of hatchets. Or as I said before a kukri and a gun with armor piercing rounds. Because just because they might be bullet proof to regular ammo, dosn’t mean they can’t be killed with AP rounds.
Guns would still be useful. Just not part of the speedy shtick.
You have obviously never seen what some of the quick draw artist out there can do with a properly built gun.
Look it up, you will be amazed and entertained. Plus a little bit frightened.
Ok.
Mmm. That did not look frightening to me.
Try this speed shooting.
Argh! forgot the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHG-ibZaKM
That was what I was talking about.
Thank you for the reference, I’m bad at that sort of thing.
I think the thing was “How do you use a gun when you outrun the bullet?” If you fire on the move you run the risk of the round leaving the barrel 50 ft from where you pull the trigger. Or hitting yourself with your own shot, either by getting there before the bullet, or literally running INTO the bullet in mid-flight.
Plus, you can train yourself to move at the speed needed so the weapon will not break while speed shooting.
If I were him, I would carry a supply of tungsten darts. If he’s so fast, he should be able to throw them with supersonic speeds (voila! instant AP gun with long rod penetrators) or subsonic when silence would be desirable. Damn, even a handful of buckshot or steel balls would be lethal at close distances. Or small rocks…
Cold Steel makes a couple of things like that. They have this one weapon that is basicly just a rod od steel with a point on both ends. thown hard enough it will make a deep big wound.
The Cold Steel “Torpedo” an even break bricks if it lads sideways!
Thank you, I’m bad at remembering names.
The Germans used something similar in World War I. Dropping bucket loads of iron rods out of their Zeppelins. Not a particularly effective weapon, but a terrifying development, given that attack from the air was an unknown phenomenon at the time. Should a batch land on a crowd, the sheer number of missiles would ensure a number of casualties. And there were few survivors of a direct hit. It would penetrate the entire length of the body.
By extension, a tungsten telephone pole (large, heavy, aerodynamic, and extremely heat resistant) dropped from space would hit the ground with the equivalent power of a small nuclear bomb.
So we are going for crater-creating events, are we? Not quite an extinction-level event, but significant, none the less.
That was the only good scene in the new G.I. Joe movie. The rest of it felt like it was written by an 8 year old. Well, even the inanimate tungsten rod scene was dumb considering the fuel needed to get it into orbit, but at least the special effects backed it up.
I gave up on the GI Joe movies when I realized that they turned the single best female character of the show, an intelligent, strong, badass intelligence agent the Baroness into a weak willed victim of circumstance to be rescued. And when I got five bucks to watch it at home, I did not change my mind. The whole movie franchise is crap.
Good Ranma 1/2 reference by the way.
And if you remember each one of those launchers had at least 6 of those rods each. I didn’t like the sequel as much it seemed to be done by different people. Didn’t like they way they went with the Baroness. Still an enjoyable movie. You still have all the cartoons. Maybe in 10 years someone else will try.
You are describing Project Thor, invented by Jerry Pournelle and used in his book (with Larry Niven) Footfall.
In Footfall the rods were shorter, about a meter rather than a telephone pole (if memory serves, it’s been many years since I read the book) , and they were used to destroy things like tank battalions traveling along roads. Just drop them like targeted rain and wave goodbye to the tanks. No amount of armor is going to prevent a kill, and even a hit on a tread is going to at the very least disable the tank.
AH!. the Rod From God weapon system.. yeah, that would be a good one, though just because HE can move that fast doesn’t doesn’t mean the weapons impact will as bad as one of them hitting.
in WWI, iirc, both sides used flechettes thrown from aircraft. I saw one once at the US National History museum, iirc. It looked much like a 45 caliber RIFLE bullet, made from steel, with sort of fins forged into the back. It has been almost 40 years, so my memory may be inaccurate. The text with it stated that they could disable trucks, or if they hit a man in the head, penetrate his helmet, his body, and exit his foot, or some such… Terminal velocity INDEED.
Yeah, if you can move fast enough you don’t need a gun to launch lethal projectiles and you can throw stuff that’s got more mass so it hits harder than a bullet would anyway. Plus, the nice thing about using your super-speed to throw is that if your perceptions can’t completely keep up with your run speed you don’t need to worry about tripping the way you would if you ran over to and hit the other guy (and you also won’t be injuring yourself by hitting someone invulnerable, if it turns out they’re too tough to hurt).
That’s the point of the new railguns the US Navy is testing. Throw something fast enough, and the kinetic energy will be easily higher than of any explosive of the same mass. With super speed, hard, dense, fin stabilized rods should be the most deadly weapon possible without NBC payload.
“Anything moving at Mach 3 is worth it’s weight in BLAM.” (i.e. the kinetic energy of something at that speed is roughly equivalent to the same mass of high explosive)
Or for you Mass Effect fans: “Sir Issac Newton is the deadliest sonofabitch in space!”
“That is why you check your damn targets! That is why you wait for your targeting computer to give you a damn firing solution! You do NOT “Eyeball it!”
*polishes super-massive black hole gun*
Mmm. No, I must not be picky, he is clearly talking about what bald apes might be able to build. They probably will not last long enough to develop one of these beauties.
Is it rated in Gs or Us for mass fired
G’s for galactic masses.
So you are using lightweight ammo?
I never use less than 1U mass rounds.
Careful how you hold that. The recoil on a gun that fires ten-million-ton bullets is not to be understated.
The recoil absorption mechanism diverts the energy to a pocket dimension in the stock to help generate the next black hole for ammo.
Slightly underestimating the mass there. By a number of orders of magnitude. But, yea, point taken and thanks for the tip. Remote operation is vital. I really should not be playing with it, in a populated galaxy.
*pops it away back in it’s extra-dimensional storage, and ensures the security features remained fully effective*
(catches singularities being juggled) you don’t counter set the transit gravity shell to avoid consuming the planets atmosphere and have the shell collapse on impact with your target? (resumes juggling)
If you deploy the weapon against a single planet, the only atmosphere that is not likely to be sucked up, is on planets in remote solar systems. Nothing from the nearby stellar system(s) would survive, including the most massive suns.
Only deploy it if an entire galaxy has pissed you off, and there is nothing redeeming within it. The effects would disturb systems even on the far side of a galaxy.
Personally I like it for it’s cosmic art potential. You can make some really pretty swirls.
You guys ought to read some of the Whateley Academy stuff. There’s a character with Density manipulation that uses exactly those items, for exactly those reasons, due to a quirk in the conservation of momentum in their powers.
Super speed and kinetics are a nightmare for writers. Something moving at supper speed, well, psychics. Your feet are hitting the ground with not tons of impact force, but tens of tons, just touching someone as you run by could transferee lethal kinetic energy to the target. Things shattering, wind at your passing picking up debris and hitting people and stuff, a wake of fragments fallowing you, somewhat.
Picking up a block of wood and running at someone then just letting it go could hit with devastating results. All this seems to assume the speeder can withstand the high energy impacts of your feet hitting the road, so to speak, the high wind, and the small impacts that dust, hitting bugs ect will have at these speeds.
Personally a shrapnel round with more peaces then they can grab should take out a speeder quite nicely.
I believe Prototype I remember that project, before it was laughed out of the office, it was I think called Thor. The idea that kinetics’ at hyper speed could be a viable alternative to nuclear weapons. The speed needed was well over normal reentry speeds. Fuel and time made things impractical, just about have to fire it at the moon use the whiplash effect and well, too much time, guidance problems and generally everything about it. The energy to accelerate a projectile up to the necessary speeds for a city leveling event, or even just taking out a block was way over what it would take to do the same by conventional means.
Iirc project thor was the one that would be used to take out tanks with terminally guided penetrator rods from orbit. The project AXE that would have been used to target Warsaw pact airfields and staging areas made more sense to me. The penetrators, which might have had an explosive warhead too, were to be boosted by the first stage from a decommissioned Trident 1 missile. A suborbital trajectory would then have deployed the terminal bus, which would have dropped penetrators on the target. I Think this was before GPS had proven its devastating capabilities for guidance. Critics claimed that it would have been mistaken for a nuclear missile launch, but that makes no sense, as it would have been fired from land bases on NATO territory, primarily Britain. NOT from Submarines…
You claiming that the only nuclear missiles are stored on Subs? o_O
A much better-than-average example of writing about such a form of hyperspeed can be found in The Whiteboard.
Everyone else’s POV starts here: https://the-whiteboard.com/autotwb1059.html
Doc’s POV starts here: https://the-whiteboard.com/autotwb1067.html
Darn! ya beat me to it…
Of course, you could also manage speed by keeping strength constant and reducing mass.
Legion of Nothing accounts for this- the most “Powerful” super on the team is the Speedster, with pretty much complete invulnerability and incredible super-strength. They’ve got a Regenerator Supersoldier, a Tech Head, and a couple of Glass Cannons. The Speedster is still the Brick.
Physics time:
terminal velocity=escape velocity
earth’s escape velocity=11km/s
E=1/2mv^2
E=.5*m*11000^2
Energy of kinetic bombardment=m*60500000
Energy capacity of TNT=4.18MJ/Kg
E=4180000*m
Ratio Space drop:TNT
60500000/4180000=
14.47
Transporting lots of explosives is hard.
Transporting a metal stick is not (far fewer space shuttles explode unintentionally than explosives)
TNT must be carried, the vehicle carrying it is useless.
Tungsten must be carried, its carrier can be part of the payload.
Compared to a nuclear warhead, the orbital strike falls far short, delivering less than 2% as much energy per kilogram. On the plus side, you don’t risk irradiating civilians (the media hates that).
Go to the moon,
mine some rocks,
throw them at the people you do not like,
easy
Personally, if feeling genocidal, I would just give this a nudge in the right direction.*
A far better use would be to re-position it in one of the main Lagrange points, to serve as material for construction of a long-term off-planet base for humanity. With sufficient emphasis being placed on self-sustainability, it could even provide a safe haven, for a viable population, to survive the planet-killer catastrophes that Earth can sustain. Assuming that the period of inhabitability was not too considerable period of time.
* Note that genocide is illegal in most jurisdictions and is morally questionable. Even with the best of intentions.
“NOT A CLIP” it’s a MAGAZINE – UNGH!!!
Major pet peeve. A few rifles use clips, think Enfield or the M-1. A Magazine holds ammo for direct feed. A Clip feeds an internal magazine. They are not interchangeable. If you’re gonna talk guns, learn the proper lingo, please. It’s not just you, it’s that your post hit that “button”- I’ve been arguing with Gun Control nuts over the weekend. Like GI JOE said, the more you know…
I gots a sea ring pin for you. It don go to a M-160. Makes it go for thbt to ratatatat.
I suppose what SS did technically counts as a…*snicker* “friendly FIRE”.
Gave his “buddies” a whole-body hotfoot. They may want to have a little talk with him after the fuss dies down.
Alas I was too slow.
But seriously, he should’ve seen that comming. He probably just doesn’t care for his allies.
I wonder if super speed also includes super speed thinking? It probably has to unless he keeps running into walls.
He should probably fight Marth once he’s finished with Jabbawonky.
Whatever Dabbler is prepping may make that difficult. Speedy may end up running through one of her portals and needing all his speed to stay ahead of the local wildlife where he lands. Or just the best solution to any speedster. The one-inch wall. That is it appears one inch away from his nose. Isaac Newton handles the ugly details.
other solution, pack him into Dabs hammerspace and let him rot, or maybe just make him hover above ground, so he won’t be able to run
At those speeds, Albert Einstein is more likely to have the more appropriate explanation. See Special Theory of Relativity.
I don’t think Shadow is even up to supersonic levels, at least not in this fight. Whether he’s holding back or operating at optimum, if not maximum, power is a question that may get answered when Dabbler goes after him. For a really offbeat attack, how about she boosts Shadow’s power about 200%? “I can’t… WHAM!” “Was that last word stop or turn, ya think?” “Whatever. It was his last word until the docs unwire his jaw anyway.”
More like crack him out of the full body cast.
A high speed crash with no safety gear. Allowing for protection from the effects of his own power, all that may be needed to put Shadow away after that might be a mop and bucket. Speedsters are deadly even to themselves in the wrong circumstances.
You don’t know what kind of body armor he has under that coat. Plus you don’t know what type of super speed powers he has. There are many diffrent types.
The various threads concerning Required Secondary Powers and Speedsters says it all or enough to get by on at least. If Maxima can have a personal force field and be a speedster, so can Shadow. Still, a wall should inconvenience him somewhat.
trying to keep from getting into the territory where Fight scenes are shown by flying viscera hitting the walls.
A Game Master friend of mine once put it this way, “Killing a character is easy to get over. And the player will just keep making the same mistake. What you need to do to make them remember is paint the character blue.”
Now would be the time for a “sticky air” spell.
Not necessarily, though. He might just have to plan out his route before he starts moving, which would limit him to short-range bursts of super-speed if he doesn’t have a long line of sight.
The time shell theorem. Ya the speeder is in a personal time shell, where everything is at normal, for him/her in that bubble. It’s the world outside that’s really slow.
Seen what coming? That by sticking a knife in her toes would boost her output?
Speedsters. So darn annoying. And always so cocky, too. :)
Nice thinking by Heatwave. I wouldn’t have thought of such an incapacitating tactic.
Then Shadow comes along and messes everything up. Vicious, reckless and doesn’t care about possible side effects of his attack. Heavenly Sword’s opposite number it seems.
Just saw the new X-men movie last weekend. The scene where Quicksilver does his thing, was one of my favorite moments of the movie, and has given me a new appriciation for speedsters (and indeed how overpowered they can be).
Nice to see a speedster introduced here right after that.
I like speedsters, but I disagree that any speedster is OP. Only those with the (warning, tv tropes can and WILL ruin your life) are actually OP.
I mean, SS obviously does have them. Otherwise that knife would be so hot from just air friction that would burn his hand. His clothes are not precisely aerodynamic, either, so he’d be naked in a second, and without super-reflexes, he wouldn’t be able to hit a fly, because he’d be moving forwards too fast to react. Not to mention he doesn’t wear googles, and the air in his eyes would blind him, and a single dust speckle would feel like a bullet to him, in his eye.
So it’s obvious that SS has superspeed, level 3+ I’d say, also super reflexes, 3+, plus a field that protects him from friction, some kind of kinetic barrier, range touch, level 1.
Also, any speedster share the same weakness: they basically multiply the force of any attack coming from the direction he’s moving towards. Have Sydney create a forcefield just in his path, and it’d be like throwing a wall at him at his current speed. Have maxima throw him a punch at her max speed, and you basically would have to add both their speeds to calculate the impact. Speedsters are almost by definition, glass cannons, because of this fact.
Is there such a thing as a functional, effective speedster who does NOT have the R.S.P.?
The Mindmistress webcomic had a character, named “Hyperspeed” I think, who had boots that changed his personal time frame. They pointed out the dangers very well. He had to be very careful when running to not run into anything, at his speed anything stationary would hit him like it was moving 600 mph (his speed). Even in his protective outfit, raindrops hit him like sledgehammer blows if he moved too fast.
Super speed through time distortion would be dangerous for any number of reasons. You’d need the usual suite of required secondary powers, and probably a few extras to survive.
Consider moving at just twice normal speed this way. That would require you to slow your passage through time such that you’re experiencing 2 seconds for every second others are experiencing. Here are a few of the effects you should expect:
1) It would get very dark. Incoming light in the usual visible light band would be infrared to you, and you’d be seeing UV instead. Both the sun and artificial light sources would provide you with much less illumination in your altered band. Colors would go wonky. UV-blocking windows would be effectively opaque.
2) It would get very cold. Heat is a function of kinetic energy of particles–their movement. From your perspective, they’d all be moving half as fast, so everything would be half the effective temperature it was before…and that would be on the Kelvin scale. So, if the air were 30C (~303K), it would be effectively around 151K to you–about -122C. I don’t have a handy reference point for that, but it’s colder than dry ice and not as cold as liquid nitrogen. (The fact that heat transfer would be slowed to half would protect you quite a bit, but I don’t think you’d want to stay this way for long.)
3) You would get very hot (relative to your surroundings). The same calculations apply the other way, too. Your 37C body temp would appear to jump to ~137C. Your touch would boil water, burn flesh, and melt many plastics. You’d glow a bit, as your infrared output would shift into the visible spectrum.
And all that’s just for going at double speed, which barely counts on the speedster scale.
That would be COOL. Someone needs that as a superpower now.
Honestly, you could probably make a pretty awesome super-universe just by having individuals with abilities that are relatively minor compared to the “Big Names”, but are fully scientifically and logically thought out through cause and effect.
Very interesting post. Covering points that I had not considered before. Ones that would require specific adaptations* on one hand, but offer interesting off-sets to compensate.
The most notable of which is the heat build-up, from friction and/or air pressure, that is traditionally cited as the biggest problem, for speedsters. A mechanism that could even out the heat build up, say storing any excess for later use, could nicely offset the cooling problem you detail. Allowing the character/creature to maintain their body within a reasonable heat tolerance range.
Light would actually be the most tricky one to overcome. At lower speeds, big and/or efficient eyes could overcome the problem. Higher speeds would probably require alternative means of sensing.** But sensible tactics can make sight viable for a wider range of speeds, albeit by accepting some compromises.
For instance you could simply stand still for long enough until an image formed. The same as we would use for a long-exposure photo. Except, rather than having to try and keep still, and ruining the exposure, via fidgeting and intention, you could simply reduce your speed until you got enough of an image, in order to conduct whatever action you are undertaking. Say checking that the corridor ahead is clear.
Then a good memory, or virtual navigation system/map could fill in the gaps as you sped down it, blind. And just hope that there was not some small detail like a trip wire, that you could not make out in the distance.
* Either being incorporated into a super power automatically, as part of the package, as the genre seems to default to. Or, for a sci-fi, fantasy or horror setting, the adaptation could be explained by specific mechanisms, separate to the power itself.
For instance a creature that found a more efficient way of moving fast, could gradually evolve bigger, or more efficient eyes. Similar, in principle, to the ones that exist for critters which live in the light poor depths of oceans, for example.
** I have this funny vision of the fastest supers having to travel around like a blind person, with a cane, or patting down things to identify them.
Bit late to the party, but:
Darker? yes, finite number of photons at half the rate means half the light. Your eyes will compensate by pupil dilation though.
Frequency changes? No. Thanks to relativity, the speed of light is constant regardless of your frame of reference. You could be travelling at 0.99c and photons would still be traveling past you at c.
(c being the speed of light)
Doppler effect could have some effect but too small to be noticed (with light. Sounds would be noticeable)
Cold is debatable, sure, radiated heat sources would be half as hot (if not inside the time dilation field).
Assuming the field covers your body and a small area around it (clothes, things you’re holding etc) the air molecules ‘trapped’ inside would still convey the same amount of energy to you as they are similarly affected.
Likewise your body will generate heat relative to the local timeframe.
In short, you’d notice the lack of heat from the sun / IR based heat sources, but ambient heat levels (warm air) and body heat would be unchanged (to you)
Sound counter-arguments.
The problem with your counterpoint is that we’re not talking about changing the speed of light. We’re talking about changing your speed through time. If you reduce the rate at which you advance through time so that external events appear, from your perspective, to take twice as long–and thereby enable you to theoretically move twice as fast, it will change your perception of light. Frequency is a measure of the oscillations (cycles) per second of an energy wave. If you are perceiving a second’s worth of external events across two seconds, then you will perceive (or not) half as many cycles in a light wave in a given time. This is distinct from light speed: the beam of light may reach at the same time it otherwise would have, but from you perspective, it will be redshifted and deliver only half as much energy per unit time.
A bubble of time distortion would provide you with some protection–in fact, I imagine that at least a small one would be required in order for you to function at all–but it would only offset some of the issues. Instead of just you glowing/burning things/freezing things/changing color, you have a bubble of air doing it.
The point at which the power becomes really scary is when you can use it on things other than yourself, though.
Nice isolation of and explanation of the key point of your contention.
My follow-on thoughts drift out of hard science somewhat, and get a bit philosophical. We know that colour is subjective. What one person perceives as one colour, another might not. Even when you remove individuals with the various forms of colour blindness from the equation, you still get differences between test subjects.
We know that the human brain is extremely adaptive, and have conducted experiments on messing around with peoples’ vision and seeing how well it can modify itself. One example that springs to mind is fixing the volunteers up with goggles which inverted the field of view, via mirrors. Within a short period of time (I forget exactly, but think it was a day or so), the brain adapted and they were seeing everything normally.
So whilst a machine being subjected to the time distortion effects would experience the change in spectrum, a super-hero’s brain might be adaptive enough to cope. Given the opportunity to adapt, anyhow. Especially if the speed was turned up gradually, allowing the brain to keep correcting for known errors (“no, my hand is not that shade, I have not been anywhere near a bottle of fake suntan”).
So the raw data coming in would be as you say, but the way the heroes brain interpreted it would be to keep things as familiar as possible. For that light which remained within the range perceivable by humans, anyhow.
Another possibility is the adaptability of the power itself. As you touch on with the time-bubble line of thought. Presumably the subtleties of super-powers are either under the control of whatever created them in the first place (say the programming built into Halo’s orbs, if they are technological items) or they are influenced by the super hero’s own mind.
So the interaction of the brain, seeking to keep sight understandable, and the power, to selectively manipulate the flow of time, could allow a speedster hero’s power to adjust time specifically, for the incoming light, to keep it all within the optimum range for human perception.
Yes, there would be less light falling on the hero/villain’s eyes, so things would gradually become dimmer, as they sped up, compared to the outside world. But, without even realising that they were doing it, the colours and basic ability to understand the sense, would remain consistent.
Carrying on from my previous reply, it allows a solution to one of the problems posed in your earlier comment. Namely point 1) the issue of things getting darker.
Have a look at this article on MIT research . If you extend the arguments from my previous reply to incorporate that discovery/development, it is easy to see that even super-speeders could retain sight. Albeit that they might need rather specialised eyes or heavily adapted brains, one way or another.
Oh bother. I had been looking for another article, but got bored and settled for that one. But failed to read the small print. That one seems to be an active emitter technique, rather than a passive one. So does not really serve the purpose. The research I had been looking for was a way of filming around corners. Showing that, even with a very few, reflected photons, you can make out enough to see outlines and basic images. I had assumed, from the headlines, that this technique was using a similar principle, but it is not.
I can’t even remember if it was a news item or a TED talk I originally spotted that in, and have lost the enthusiasm for hunting it down. But the images they showed were very impressive, given that the photography was done off non-mirrored surfaces, with no direct line of sight.
Even without a link to that though, my argument remains that somebody with super speed/ reactions/ thought processes, and a suitably adapted brain to optimise those capabilities, could pick up and interpret the sparse incoming photons well enough to navigate by. The images they saw might be a lot blander, than the detailed vision we are used to, but should be fit enough for allowing their powers to be usable in a meaningful way.
Well, I didn’t say they’d be unable to see at all, just that it would get dark. It would become harder for them to see small or subtle things. Which, come to think of it, might account for how easy it seems to be to trip speedsters–you’d think they could easily move around or over obstacles, but not if they don’t notice them.
Active emitters present another issue: they’re emitting energy faster and at higher frequencies. Double your speed, and your flashlight becomes a UV sunlamp–other people won’t see most of its light, but they may feel it, and it will cause things to fluoresce. Not a big deal at that level, maybe even useful. Higher speeds, however, present the possibility that you’d be waving around a high-output x-ray source, which is not very nice. (Come to think of it, at that point, a lot of things would go rather transparent/translucent to you.)
If we know of any, should we R.S.V.P.?
If any of you have ever accidentally clotheslined someone while pointing at something and the guy isn’t really watching where they are running, you know that if they are moving at super speed when that happens two things will happen. One, you will be very suprised. Two, the other guy will be on the ground with a broken neck.
The principle is that to the speeder everything else is slowed down so much that punches are like stationary objects to them. Let alone literal stationary objects. It depends how they work, of course, but if they simply have a higher time rate than everyone else, then it is exactly as Dave says. They can simply stop short of the wall then step around it, or climb over it.
Maxima is a super speeder herself, so ignore her, as the two power counter each other. But someone else throwing a punch is like a statue to them. Even a bullet (if they have Maxima level super speed) will hang in mid-air, for them to do with as they like. Admittedly if they do not have super strength or armoured skin to go with it, they are probably best just avoiding it. Or putting some object in it’s path to deflect it to a more useful trajectory.
As for the adding the two speeds together bit, check out Mythbusters explanation for how physics does not work like that. It is very counter-intuitive, but the two speeds are not added together for purposes of calculating the effective damage.
To put it another way, two cars each travelling at 30 mph and colliding head on, do not sustain damage equal to hitting a wall at 60 mph. Rather each would behave exactly as if they had separately rammed a wall at 30 mph.
But, all that said, returning to super speeders, if they have an inferior type of power, where their perceptions and reactions are not correspondingly fast too, then you are perfectly right that their power would be crippled. Not to mention if they had no means to compensate for friction, the problems of air compression and similar nasty side-effects.
This is an important principle to know. Some day you may be involved in a crash, with options limited to just two choices. Hitting a stationary bus, full of school children. Or hitting an oncoming bus, travelling at the same speed as you. But which you can see is empty of passengers.
Ethically, clearly the only option is the oncoming bus. The only likely casualty, other than yourself, will be that bus driver. But, you will be rewarded for your moral choice, in that you are at no more personal risk, doing that, than if you were to hit the stationary bus. Slightly less risk, in fact, as you will not have lots of little bodies being thrown around, which might hit you.
Yorp old bean- I’m not sure if mythbusters explained that wrong or what, but hitting a stationary bus is not the same as hitting a mobbing bus coming right at you.
in the case of the car vs wall and two cars coming at each other, the kinetic energy in the latter is doubled but it is then applied equally to the two objects of equal mass- so each only gets half.
(imagine those metal ball knockers they put on desks- the two balls hit each other, and each transfers equal energy to the other; so they both bounce back the same as if one had hit a wall)
now imagine one ball is much, much bigger than the other.
school bus hits car, both going at 30 mph? odds are, the school bus wont even stop.. it may slow down a bit.. but it has waaaay more energy than the car does. ( 1/2 Mv^2). If it’s a semi coming your way, it will just keep rolling on.
( I know Jamie has run cars over with semis before)
now its possible for the forces to balance (like in the show) even with unequal mass; just change the velocity. I once saw a motorcycle flip a van, but the motorcycle was going over 140 mph.
of course, then you have other issues like elasticity, angle of impact, moment of inertia..
either way.. ‘don’t do this at home’
This is correct. In a car on car collision, you’ve still got 60 miles per hour of crumpling, it’s just split 30-30 between the two cars. If one of the two objects does not crumple, like Maxima’s fist, the other object will take much more damage.
It’s the same reason why jumping onto a trampoline hurts you less than jumping onto concrete – because the trampoline deforms and the concrete does not.
I saw it on TV, it must be true! :-P
Need to look at the inertia from each side of the equation that is Mass of the bus/truck and it’s speed and current accel vs that of the car hitting it. Bus’s total inertial energy mass is much greater than the car’s at those speeds. Objects will continue in one direction until an outside force acts upon it and the greater the force, the greater the change imparted. Basically subtract the car’s inertial energy mass from bus’s and that’s the total energy it will take in damage. Then the remainder of the bus’s inertial energy mass (usually in form of kinetic energy) will act upon the car making it move in another direction. That’s energy transfer in kinetic form. Speed bump comes to mind. SO for the driver, hitting the bus full of kids is the smarter option. The bus can absorb more of the car’s energy mass (which includes the kids- but they will be acted upon more easily if not secured or braced) – at 30mph hit the stationary big object. No matter what it’s holding/containing. It’s not a moral issue, but a pure physics issue. The moving bus will basically kill you. You will likely survive the impact with the bus, and at 30mph your car will be destroyed using up most of the energy in an impact. The kids normally would barely feel you hit the bus. They might get tossed off feet or off a seat-any extra damage from glass or striking a crumple zone. But normally minimal.
Then each child’s parents sue you for a couple of million and you die in poverty. Hit the moving bus and hope for a quick death.
Yea, I really did not think that through, before spouting it out. Which is bad, because it makes the former, correct post, seem less credible.
*sigh*
*lies down, covers face with paws, and looks dejected*
Hands Yorp a “Make Sure Brain is Engaged Before Putting Typing Fingers in Gear” sign
That’s okay. It happens to all of us.
No, in the theoretical perfectly balanced head-on collision, it would not be like hitting a wall… it would be like hitting Sydney’s shield, or Superman, or some other theoretical “immovable object”. Hitting an actual wall is NEVER like that – the closest would be hitting a solid block of steel with a mass many times higher than your own vehicle and buried deeply enough in the ground that it does not move. This would be the “wall” you are comparing it to.
Hitting an actual wall provides MUCH MUCH MUCH greater cushioning in comparison. Not to mention that the bus from example out-masses you greatly and would therefore squish you into paste. In fact, as long as you an in a reasonably small car, even hitting that bus full of school children would likely not hurt the kids unless you are traveling at a VERY high speed, as that bus would also out-mass you greatly.
This…is nitpicking of the highest order. I, for one, am perfectly happy with substituting the word “wall” in place of “huge immovable object of unlimited mass”.
“a solid block of steel with a mass many times higher than your own vehicle”
Translation: a train
The other speedster RSP that no-one seems to talk about is some form of gravitational pull. Otherwise the first step or two would push them up and they would have to wait for the standard downwards acceleration to bring them into contact again. Technically a speedster wouldn’t even really need centripetal force to keep them up: if they can maintain contact with the side of a building as they do with the ground, they could run straight up it.
Then again, if they are moving that fast, their mass could be large enough to provide enough acceleration, but that would just cause even more problems than I could even think about.
Part of the necessary suite of powers for a speedster is the ability to ignore friction when necessary, and to cancel out inertia (either of which could be an extremely dangerous ability in its own right). Traditionally, some speedsters also get the reflexes/time slow to go with it, but some don’t. Logically, however, the ability to move through time faster that other people/objects would have its own price, however, in that objects that are stationary, like, say, grass, would be able to slice you up pretty good, as they can’t flex and adjust to the pressure a speedster puts upon them. Thus, in order to be avoid being splattered by things like grass, you would have to be able to give a little bit of time to things in your immediate vicinity, which would mean that bullets would travel at normal speeds around you.
One speed move I saw on the old Smallville series that got me riled up was:
– The bad guy shot at one of Clark’s friends standing in the street
– Clark runs past the bullet to get to the targeted person
– Clark body blocks the person and shoves him to the side to get him out the the way.
My reaction to this was, Wait. Instead of getting hit by a one ounce object traveling at 1000 fps the guy got hit by a 200 pound object traveling at 1500 fps. The force of impact should have just caused the guy to be splattered all over the street like a bloody water balloon. Even if he did survive the impact, he was still shoved sideways at an initial velocity of several hundred mph to avoid the bullet. He would have hit the nearest wall hard enough to go right through the building.
The only way out of this is to invoke the old ‘protective aura’ effect granted to objects that Superman carries at high speed. Apparently, this field is voluntary. An old Superboy comic had him learn this the hard way by being asked to deliver a package and it burned up from air friction during the flight.
I am not sure that the Smallville Clark in the above episode would know to do that.
i was playing a Super Hero game as a speedster but I did a slightly different take on the speedster character. He was about as fast as an Olympic track runner and agile as a russian ballerina. However, he had an enchanted pair of Escrima sticks that broke bones, slowed down his targets, and allowed him to attack three times faster than a normal human being.
So while he is already faster than you, as you’re attacking him, you’re getting slower and slower until you’re moving at a crawl. And this is happening within mere moments. Probably my most OP character I made ever and no one in that group could pull any arguments about physics against him. Not a traditional speedster, but still hit a few of the tropes for a speedster.
I had a character in a Champions game (well, I’ve had many characters in many Champions games, but that’s another story entirely…) who used a Cosmic Power Pool to represent super speed effects. Singularly OP and entirely logical-ish. My final analysis of super speed is similar to my final analysis of most super powers: the RSP is the ability to give physics the middle finger and make it twirl.
Fun side note- that speedster was one of the only characters I ever made who flat out disliked food- and he had to eat ALL THE TIME!
My guy eventually gained the ability to imbue things with speed and fling them within the bounds of momentum and physics. The more aerodynamic, the slower it would take to lose speed and distance so he was using ball bearings as shotgun blasts among other things. He didn’t ever pick up the required secondary powers so making other things fast was the best he could do.
This all required energy of course so he was a chain smoker because that gave him just one more weapon and the nicotine gave him just a bit more energy. Imagine a flaming wad of paper pushed against your skin. Now try dodging that same wad of paper travelling at high speeds at your face.
Didn’t Clark stop before pushing his friend through a wall?
And, if he is faster than the bullet, why didn’t he just catch the bloody thing? Or, better yet, seeing how he is so strong, just stand in front of the friend and take the hit without killing his friend personally?
Every time I see superman speed into a building, all I could think of is that he definitely must have some inertia related power, otherwise any door he opened would have instantly shattered into a million deadly shards of flying wood.
In DC-verse speedsters have the speedforce, that is shared with stuff they carry, etc, giving them the RSV. The better ones of the speedsters can even do stunts with this, such as instilling some of it into experiments to make chemical reactions happen faster, or instilling people with it, causing them to suddenly and ‘inexplicable’ speed up.
That is a pet peeve of mine. Speedsters doing something to an un-speeded person, usually picking them up then running off at the speed of sound, or your example of them being shoved. The other one that kills me is a person falling at terminal velocity being caught 3 feet from the ground, which are all really the same thing. A sudden massive change of inertia.
Smallville isn’t the only one to do that; I saw the same stunt in one ‘Generation X’ comic (‘House of Corrections’).
– Bad guy shoots at a hero (Skin, iirc)
– Hero shapechanges (Paige/Husk)
– Speedster runs alongside the bullet (with a “Super-speed. Great.” comment)
– Speedster tackles ally out of the path of the bullet.
My first thought when reading that page was “You were running beside the bullet. Why didn’t you grab it?”
“Toasted villain on a stick. Get yer toasted villain on a stick here. Two for the price of one!”
two please! *Hands Yorp a juicy beef femur*
A super-speed demon barber. Yipe!
Watch your tail. He looks like he loves the stab in the back style. One pass and you get docked, if your lucky.
*curls tail up, between legs, with a worried look around*
Just so long as he does not come after my hair!
*SWOOSH!! and Yorp has a Mohawk*
Swoosh and Yorp is Yorpette.
Something else I noticed. SS is tossing a knife, but all his sheathes are filled already. Where did he pull that one from? Another, hidden sheath? Which begs the question as to why he’d pull his holdout knife out first, rather than saving it as a, well, holdout.
He has a sense of style. He doesn’t want to spoil the symmetry of the coat unless he has to. All his main knives are under the coat, reached through the pockets.
He ha sheaths up his sleeves.
He has more sheathes strapped to his leg. You’ll see those on the next page.
That makes sense. Thanks.
…is “Mach the Knife” actually his nom de costume?
Because that’s horribawesome.
Never mind, I just saw the “Silent Shadow” thing.
You’re not the only one who thinks “Mach the Knife” is a cool name. :-)
Although the amount of mayhem and bloodshed this guy can do in a short span of time greatly disturbs me.
It literally took me an hour to come up with the title for this page. Just as I was about to go with something lame like “Heatwave now either has 4 toes or 6” or “Foot trauma” suddenly Mack/Mach hit me and now this is one of my favorite page titles. I do kind of wish SS was my own character now cause that’s totally what I’d call him.
I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t call him that or better yet what Arc-light calls him since he kinda forgot to introduce himself it may even become an annoying joke for himself sicne all news and such will call him Mach the knife instead of Silent Shadow.
Oh and U. Kaya Yavuz here so it is as good as canon to call him anything you like.
Silent Shadow is actually combination of my two old Table Top RPG characters. One is Silent Shadow a dual wielding expert of night caste from exalted games. Other one was Eidolon a character I made for an Xavier Institiute game with Marvel Super Heroes RPG (diceless one, with stones) I had Silent Shadow made with City of Heroes Character generator and when I was looking for a character for patreon I stumbled upon it and though ‘why not’ so Silent Shadow you are seeing now born. I left most of decisions to Dave B with the exception that character going to be a super speedster and I am very pleased with the result especially the teasing cut on Stalwart was priceless nad there is the bonus part on making Maxima mad and getting a dance with succubus :P
I gave Dave some ideas about SS’s powers iirc but it is his comic and he decides which ones to use and which ones to not or how effective each of his powers are. My guess on sheated kives are however (was not part of original character) he loses many knives during fights not becuase he throws them but just leaves the stuck ones behind :P
You know, that’s actually a good point. This is the one chance most of these super-villains have to make sure everybody knows their name, and most of them are passing it up. So they’re going to get tagged with these kinds of names whether they like them or not, and it’s going to be bloody hell to get them changed.
Actually it would probably take alot less heat than you think to vaporize a bullet, the high heat would drastically decrease the density of the surrounding air, making a zone below irons vapor pressure, and the bullets would be small, preventing them from dispersing heat through the wonderfully conductive properties of metal. Still a lot of heat that i can’t calculate with no sleep, but less than would be expected.
Couple of considerations on the “heat shield/aura”:
1> OK, you melted/vaporized the bullet, but you didn;t do diddly to the kinetic energy of the bullet. Instead of a solid bullet impacting your tender bits, you now have a jet of molten/vaporized metal with the same KE, plus all the heat of fusion/vaporization it picked up on the way through the heat aura. A review of how HEAT rouds work will lead one to the “Munroe effect” (where the actual armor piercing is performed by a jet of molten metal)
2> You had to melt/vaporize that bullet very quickly – probably in microseconds. That took a lot of energy (temperature not really important here, just the energy transfer). How fast can your aura replenish that energy? And the amount of energy depends on the size, composition, and number of bullets. It takes a heckuva a lot more energy to handle tungsten than lead, and it takes a lot more energy to handle a full load of 12 gauge shot than a single 9mm. So, how long will your hypothertical heat aura keep vaporizing bullets when you are on the receiving end of a several folks with full auto weapons – think Tommy Guns with 100 round drum magazines unless you want something more modern like a helicopter with a minigun?
If you can actually vaporize the bullet with a heat field, a large amount of the kinetic energy will be lost by the excitation of the molecules of the bullet (they want to fly apart very quickly) For this to be sufficient to kill the forward momentum enough to render it safe though we are probably looking at close to an order of magnitude MORE energy than it took to just vaporize the round.
And looking up how much energy it takes to vaporize JUST the copper (at about 300kJ/mol), I think Dave has the right idea with “Heat powers are NOT going to work that way in my universe” approach
But when you vaporize the bullet, in mere microseconds, you are effectively exploding it – vapor state takes up a lot more space than solid state, some of the excited molecules formerly known as bullet would indeed move in a direction away from the target, but others would be moving even more quicky towards the target. I expect the net result would be about the same – less vaporized bullet hits the hero, but at a much higher velocity.
Thank you guys. I was looking through the comment trying to remember the term “Monro Effect”.
I learned about it in one of our IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) classes because that is what the enemy was doing at one time in Iraq and Afghanistan. The would take Copper and cut them in such a way that the enemy could create a penetrating shape charge that could penetrate armor on a tank.
Like you said, it is the same basic principle as Heatwave trying to vaporize a bullet. All it will do is melt then sear flesh. Like those sulfur rounds used back in Korea by the Chinese.
I have the perfect way to deal with Shadow *dumps a load of caltrops all over the parking lot*
A thoroughly under-us ed weapon. Always carried some in D and D. A million uses especially if you can use poisons or other fun things to coat them with.
Caltops were originally referred to as “Hoof Destroyers” because they were developed for use against horses. They are significantly less useful against people because people are more agile and can step around them. I agree they are useful in D&D, game mechanics being what they are, but in real life they will only slow someone down.
That is true with full-sized caltrops at normal human speeds. Try a bucket full of Lego-sized caltrops with a dude moving at super speed. It could easily be incapacitating. Assuming they’re made of a material and in a size that can penetrate the shoes, of course.
After all, increase the speed, increase the reaction distance. It doesn’t matter how good his reflexes are if there is nowhere safe for him to step in the first place.
They don’t even have to really penetrate footwear, picture instead a lot of old metal jacks (the toy, not the automotive tool). Stepping on them can mess up your footing, and traction, both things that could be a nightmare to ground-bound speedsters. Make the footing or traction unreliable, and they can’t use their movement to anywhere near full effect. They’d be better than BBs or marbles, since slopes would be much less influential on their distribution.
Not to mention: instant Tap-dancing shoes, he won’t be a Silent Shadow for long :P
Ball bearings/marbles way more fun, and easier to get.
But they have the disadvantage of rolling downhill.
Then try a banana peel or 12
My favorite thing was to combine the caltrop spell with fell weaken. Not only do they get teh penalty for caltrops, but also a -4 to str.
Agree. Or oil. They are at a steakhouse after all. Have Harem go into the back grab a bottle of oil and next thing you know SS is sliding down on his ass.
The appropriate place in a restaurant to grab oil when you intend to use it as a weapon would be the deep fryer. 5-10 gallons, already nice and warm.
Have you ever tried to move hot grease around?
That stuff is more likely to get on you than the target, and the next thing you know you have deep fried fingers. Think safety man!
Consider the coefficient of friction of mayonnaise. Or the house dressing. A 5 gallon pail needs more aiming but the results are YouTube worthy.
Mayo (the commercial kind, I dunno about the homemade variety) is just vegetable oil emulsified in a bit of water, so naturally it’s going to be bad footing. Also slightly less likely to flow away downhill than straight vegetable oil.
Great plan. He does not seem to be a top-tier super-speeder, so they might work very well against him. At the very least slowing him down, and forcing him to keep checking his footing. Which will make him vulnerable to other attacks.
yeah, the slow-down was the main thing, the screaming if/when he got his feet pierced by a couple dozen roofing tacks is just a bonus.
Depending on what shoes he is wearing that may not be a problem for him. On the other hand even if the caltrops don’t penetrate, they are not a good surface to run on. Not up to ball bearing status but still unstable ground. Then the fall gets the result you were hoping for. And getting caltrops yanked out of your butt is humiliating. Just the come down SS needs for his jerky attitude.
was either roofing tacks or shortened 20 penny nails, take your pick XD
In the Bureau 13 game I always opted for shoes with Ballistic Plates hidden in the soles. Useful for all sorts of step-on menaces and traps.
In the Discworld MUD, and my own homebrew game that I’ll eventually publish, those are called priests. They do, after all, save your soles.
Even if you have thick soled boots and they didn’t penetrate, you’d have a bunch of metal stuck to the bottom of your boot, and in this case on asphalt, SS would be sliding around like a deer on ice until he pulled them out.
DO IT, DOIT, DOOOOIIIIITTTTT!
please?
That could also show if he’s only a Runner of if he’s a Full-Form Speedster like The (Various) Flash.
*looks over his records> OOOHHH I forgot I used to use these! DragonBane, Metal-changing (I forgot the enchantment name) Caltrops!
Mmm, I wonder what Dabbler is conjuring in her hand. Too small to be the railgun. And clearly she would not be wasting critical time getting ready to use her score-card again. Not at a moment, like this, when she is still bogged down in her first fight, and the good guys are taking casualties.
“Sticky Air” is my bet. Ever seen a fly in a web?
Agreed, that would work well. But it is my impression that is the cybernetic hand, summoning something from the lab. As opposed to her casting the sticky air spell. She cast magic missiles with one of her right hands previously.
One Noisy Cricket coming up. A near miss will blow Shadow into the next time zone.
Betting inviso-sticky web, but it will go comically wrong…like all his clothing being ripped off along with his eyebrows maybe…
One dozen decent knives: $355
One men’s maroon button shirt: $45
One sound FX added to the comic strip: $25
One cybernetic dimensional rift weapon summoning system: §589 (GalactoCreds, about $4.7 trillion dollars if Earth tried to invent it)
One 55-gallon drum of of aloe sunburn gel: $213
Bantering, even bickering, with your bestest buddies as the bad guys go down: Priceless
This is why this comic needs an upvote system.
Yea. It certainly cuts down on the amount of spam needed to give just acknowledgement. And, now that we are getting the odd bit of trolling, a downvote system would not hurt. Likewise one that had a vote to delete. I think the two should be distinct, just because one does not like a comment, need not mean it should be deleted. But, we do have our fall-back system, for now.
+1 to both of you.
What you’re calling for is Disqus, minus the BS that they have been dispensing lately.
Well, I was thinking YouTube, more than that actually. The thumbs up and down are nicely intuitive. And you can report inappropriate content (even though they try hard to conceal the option), which will be passed to moderators, for potential deletion. The latter would put an unacceptable extra burden on DaveB though, given the fact that he is his own one-man support team, hence tweaking it to say a vote.
I have been linked through to Disqus a couple of times, and just found it weird. The topics that had been under discussion were not featured in sight when following the link. Contrast that to YouTube,* where you can be linked not just to the video in question, but the specific part of it, down to the second, that is of interest.
That may have just been down to incompetent linkage by users, but if a program requires competence to use, that is a bad mark against it too. As a result of which, although it had the opportunity to draw me in, it failed at the first hurdle.
I can guess at it’s function, but really could not be bothered to learn the features. I had a brief look at it, but none of the topics, floating around, had any bearing or interest to me, and I did not fancy learning how to navigate around the program.
* Not that I am suggesting the two programs are anything like each other in intent. I am just showing the ease of linking and intuitiveness of use, for them, in contrast to one another.
Dabbler’s IQ seems to be overrated. She got her backside handed to her in at least two sword fights, then she meets an expert swordswoman and instead of pulling an Indiana Jones on her she uses a big sword and gets whacked again. Now confronting a speedster she’s using a sword once more (I hope that she will teleport something more useful to her other hand). Or her EQ (*ego* quotient) is even higher than IQ…
She’s not planning on using her BFS against him. She was just finishing retrieving when he dashed across the parking lot. Rather, she’s prepping to teleport something else from her lab in the last panel.
The sword may just be a diversion (and she needed to summon it back, before somebody picked it up). But check out her summoning hand in the final frame.
Yep, the new gadget will hopefully be more useful. But Dabbler pulled the sword out of her pocket portal and is still holding it in the last panel. A hand and a part of brain occupied with a hunk of metal which seems to be only marginally useless in the current situation.
Until she casts super speed on herself! Then she is bringing a magical sword to a knife fight.
Dabbler is going to use something else as Greyman and Yorp pointed out, but I agree with you. Taking on HS in the area where the latter is obviously strong was a horrible idea. We were banking on her “losing” to HS as actually being some sort of illusion or diversion but it turns out that she would have been half her former self without Achilles’ invulnerable intervention.
Here’s hoping that whatever she’s whipping up now is a smarter play than what she’s displayed so far.
The problem with supers (and actually the only reason why all the superhero stuff can work in comics and movies) is that the whole concept is based on warrior culture and legends you would find in about any primitive civilization. Achilles, Gilgamesh, Cúchulainn, name a culture and you will find a hero with super powers.
This warrior ethos requires boasting before fight, single combat instead of ganging on an opponent, using equal weapons, and makes cooperation between supers almost impossible because each fights for his or her own glory. If the ArcSWAT managed to weed out these ego-based behaviours from team members, they would have become ridiculously over-powered.
I don’t think the superhero genre necessarily falls apart when the characters fight smartly rather than boastfully. As far as superhero stories are also morality tales, then one important lesson is that bad stuff happens when you act irresponsibly and recklessly- especially when you have superpowers. Many a superhero story- many of them great ones- is about the setting aside of ego and the realization of the burden of power. They don’t boast or make a show and instead have to act seriously because the consequences are too great. That’s one of the differences between those legends you speak of and the superhero story, especially the latter as a modern, multifaceted form of literature and the former as one-dimensional, one-sided larger-than-life myth.
This has actually been touched on a number of times here, whether we have Max trying to guide Sydney into avoiding her own possible Gwen Stacy moment or when Max was worried about Sydney getting sand-blasted by her own energy beam. Even this update is an example of that, with Heatwave being the first to get hurt among ArcSWAT. Heck, Dabbler almost getting impaled with you and I criticizing her decision to go sword-to-sword with HS is part of it.
If Dabbler is just acting out a universally and historically set warrior ethos, then we just saw the dark side of it: her pride nearly got her killed. The legends we read about of proud warriors handicapping themselves to show their skills are all stories of the ones who actually won- how many died and failed in their show of might, forgotten out of shame or remembered only as a victim? Reminds me now of Hector and Achilles during the Trojan War.
I’ll jus make the point.
Don’t confuse IQ with Ego…..
I’m sure Dabbler knows that she isn’t great at sword fighting (she’s already said so in the comic), but that doesn’t mean here ego will allow her to back down from a sword fighting challenge (or the fact that she evidently enjoys sword fighting).
Having a high IQ doesn’t mean someone is good at everything. Dabbler’s smarter than the average bear but most of her IQ comes from her phenomenal mathematical ability. You’re absolutely right that her ego is getting in the way of mopping up Heavenly Sword though. She does think herself above most humans, which to be fair she is at most things. After all, Heavenly Sword could only have 15-20 years of training under her belt, and Dabbler’s been sword fighting for over 160 years.
I think it is absolutely vital not to make every hero a tactical genius. Aside from that being unrealistic, it is just boring. Far better to have heroes with foibles which makes them interesting but not pure, efficient killing machines.
It also balances the mistakes that villains make, stopping the trope of heroes always making the right calls, and villains getting it wrong. Plus there is the realism element to consider, it is all well and good for us to second guess every move, but in a real fight, we all make mistakes. After every Judo session, there would be some matches where I made mistakes. So much as I would like to think that I would always make sensible calls, I know that, in actuality I do not always.
So keep up the good work. I think you are getting the balance just right. You are keeping heroes teetering on the brink of danger and disaster, without having their bodies scattered over the car park. And, if they do start to fall, it will be a domino effect, given how heavily outnumbered they still are.
Also, being smart is one thing, but thinking fast is a completely different one. I know that from my own experience: I can’t find solutions quickly, although I do find them given more time.
As somebody who has a really high IQ, I can tell you from experience that Dabbler’s reaction is by no means unusual. When you can quickly and correctly solve any problem handed to you, or pick up almost any skill you need several times faster than the average bear, it starts to become really hard to imagine somebody being able to beat you. Dabbler’s decision to go with her (admittedly) really cool sword to beat HS absolutely reeks of some of the stupider decisions that I’ve made, so I can tell you that her decision is very likely in line with her purported IQ.
In my experience, to be honest, the biggest difference that a super-high IQ makes in a person’s intelligence lies in their ability to recall information, and in their ability to quickly make connections on the fly. Basically, a really high IQ might allow you to see options that other people don’t, but without the experience and the training to back that IQ up, that benefit is rather more limited than most people realize.
I believe, and my own experience has sort of born this out, that brilliance, of the kind that most people associate with genius, can and must be learned–it is not something that a person is simply born with. For those individuals like myself, who ARE born with that kind of super-high IQ, it can be as much of a handicap as anything else–since we don’t have the time to think of everything, we can’t ever really be sure that we’re as smart as we think we are.
To put it another way: I have an IQ that can no longer be measured accurately. My aunt, who has an IQ of 72, can consistently out-smart me, simply because she can use her intelligence more efficiently and directly than I can. Can she beat me in chess? Absolutely not. But can she come up with answers to questions that are better than mine on a consistent basis? Yes, she can, because she’s spent almost sixty years learning how to do so, and I haven’t. Granted, my answers come much faster than hers, but that doesn’t make them better…just faster.
As another with a high IQ I can attest to that. I could probably teach most of the college classes I’ve been in, and yet I’m working at a gas station and spending twice as long getting through college as my peers.
If you’re not “in your element” so to speak, a high IQ or quick intelligence can even be detrimental, leading you to overlook the obvious in favor of your own “Clever” solution.
Heatwave is actually a good example of this. What’s she doing? She’s off the ground and overheating a pair of enemies. Is she boiling the asphalt beneath them to get their feet stuck and impeded their progress? Is she trying to make explosives from flour sacks? No! She’s using her power in a direct and efficient way, most likely how she’s been trained.
Whereas Dabbler is screwing around, ‘distracting’ her opponent with illusions and goofing around, when she could probably have gotten HS down with a knockout gas pellet or a ‘disarm’ spell- things that are probably simple, common, and strewn all over her grimoirs and labs, but which she isn’t thinking of because they’re too simple.
I believe Dabbler might just put him on ice.
A short fast flight up an ice ramp into YouTube history. Bully For Bugs (start at 4:30 mark) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1GA16OY6NQ8
Gah! I was just thinking it is a good thing he can’t throw as fast (or would it be hard to be accurate at fast speeds?) because if he could throw it as fast as he was moving, HW might’ve lost part of her foot! *cringes in pain*
All he needs is practice, practice, practice.
DaveB pointed out in his notes that Heatwave’s aura causes massive turbulence around her, which throws projectiles off their intended path. That knife was probably headed straight for her chest (I’ll avoid the Princess Bride quote for now) before it went off target
Mmm….
Something about dodging in the fire swamp?
Maybe a Miracle Max quote, on the lines of being almost dead?
Or the nearly incomprehensible line about the fireproof cloak thing?
I was thinking more towards the end…
Westley: “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours”
What? Did Heatwave kill SS’s father?
I calculated the approximate power output of the heat aura required to melt a speeding bullet… Assuming it’s a fairly high velocity round (~1200 m/s) and a lead bullet (4.2g, .128 J/g*C), I end up with an approximate power output of about 700kW, if all it needs to do is splatter over her as liquid metal. If you want it to just fall out of the air, obviously, you’d need more wattage. Considering that you have to spread that out all over her body, that would indeed require a pretty serious output.
I couldn’t find a comparative list of superhero powers, but xkcd did a what if on Yoda’s force power output, clocking him in at around 19kW. (https://what-if.xkcd.com/3/) I feel like this would make an interesting thesis topic: on the balance of superpowers and how audiences feel about their heroes being “overpowered” or not.
…I was born a nerd. I will die a nerd. Only my nerdlings will mourn me.
They will add your name to Tv Tropes.
DaveB:
“In my opinion, super speed is the single most overpowered superpower besides the obvious ones like reality control or time travel, and it’s a big part of why Maxima rates so high.”
Oh, yeah. Super-agree.
Anyone here ever play the superhero squad-based strategy game Freedom Force? You eventually get a speedster late in that game, the Bullet. He is the last hero you get (IIRC) so your ability to level him up and give him extra superpowers is limited- but super speed on its own is all you need.
There were times in that game where some blaster enemy would have a continuous beam of damage coming at your heroes- and lucky for you, he’s aiming for the Bullet. With some careful but easily done commands and positioning, the Bullet will outrace that swinging arc of energy coming at him, rendering said attack moot and useless.
More memorable than that, there was this final mission sub-stage I was stuck in, doing it over and over. It takes place on a small platform floating in the middle of nowhere, and any character- including your heroes- who falls off is lost. It didn’t help that many of the enemies there had knock-back abilities while the main boss could hypnotize your heroes into joining his side. Eventually, I decided to try rushing the boss as soon as the stage started before he did any of his hypnosis shenanigans. The Bullet sped up to him and started laying punch after punch into him, sending him reeling and unable to use his charm powers. Pretty soon, the boss fell over the edge from the repeated small knockbacks and I finally beat that stage.
I know just how powerful speedsters are in comics and writers usually have them do utterly incredible, reality-breaking things. But here, in a computer game where the game designers had to tone things down for balance and challenge purposes, the ability to move fast and hit hard was in itself still a huge advantage to players who included Freedom Force’s super speedster in their roster.
Are there any supers in Archon with just low level powers? Brooke/Heatwave seems the least powerful, but even she’s got a 4/5 and a 3/5 ability.
actually Heatwave’s flight is only 1-star,Syd’s Close-combat is 1 star, Dabbler’s pretty much 2-3 star in a dozen different things but not overwhelming in anything.
I guess you could say that Heatwave can’t go… toe to toe with that guy…
Are you saying that she has been ‘de-feeted’?
Melting the blacktop in his path, if Dabbler misses, could be a good payback. Jamming on the brakes could break Shadow’s legs.
Depends on how quickly she can recover from having a knife in her foot!!!!
Or whether Max orders her out of the danger zone to let Arc Light provide first aid. That sound more realistic. A pressure bandage and something to numb her foot and Heatwave can provide fire support from outside the melee, if she’s up to it.
I like how you put some actuall thought into how your superpowers function in the universe you’ve created. A lot of authors just slap on whatever looks the coolest or flashiest and never give a second thought on how the powers actually function or interact with things and the myriad of effects they can potentially create.
I agree. Shows he is a proper nerd.
Couldn’t they, ya’know, just trip him? I mean, at THAT speed….
Just one among many options. Most of which turn his speed and inertia into weapons against him. I bounced off the ground at about 30-35 mph way back when. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet and leather jacket, I’d be very dead and and been a closed casket job because no way they could have prettied me up without a face. Or most of the rest of my hide. Speedsters may be overpowered but if their power is used against them, the results are deadly.
Lighthook cloths-line at 144 km/h (Lighthook moving in sideways, otherwise stationary, SS running at 40 m/s). Sydney for the win! Shadow to the high-security hospital with a really scrapped up back (the entire length, from outside the vision processing area to heels).
I have a problem with the name “Silent Shadow”. He has no actual shadow powers and it looks like he could easily dole out some lethal damage. I suggest that he be renamed “Silent, but Deadly”.
(feel free to pass this on to Leon)
He, He, He. Ha!
That is so evil.
Ahh, but given his cool looks, I think Dashingly Deadly would be more appropriate. Leon aught to watch out who he chooses to insult. If the guy has some magic protection amulet, he could easily track him down, with super speed.
Yeah, but “Dashingly Deadly” isn’t a fart joke, so it’s automatically inferior. :P
The fart joke is: “Silent but Violent, Loud and Proud”
The thing is, all speedsters have the showy level of speed, sort of like how strong hulk is.
Make more speedsters that are fast, but not “Bullet” fast and it won’t seem as overpowered anymore.
I hope this comment doesn’t get buried in the avalanche of the standard 350+ comments.
But this is specifically addressed to the Mighty Creator of Grrrl Power: Dave…
Wouldn’t it be an idea to separate the hero’s/heroines from the bad guys/girls in the “Who’s Who?” ?
Right now you have Heavenly Sword smack in the middle of Maxima and Heatwave.
Especially because not every ARC-Swat member has a throat tag next to their names (like Stalwart).
Seasoned readers will see it right away, but I had to take a second look at Stalwart to see if he’s a good guy or a bad guy :)
Oh yeah, I forgot to include Stalwart in the Who’s Who. I suppose there’s something to be said for calling out the bad guys in the Who’s Who, the problem with that is it assumes there will always be a clear line between sides. Not every encounter will be black and white, and what to do with characters who haven’t declared a side or are suspicious or just being introduced to the story? I’ll leave it up to people to read the pages and figure out who’s doing what. :)
I was going to say that maybe a different color scheme (light red instead of light blue) for the baddies might be a good idea, but it would be the same problem.
It’s not really a problem now because the character have been introduced recently, but it might become one in the future if a character we haven’t seen for months suddenly appears or some such circumstances ….
Personally, I think that the system used by Mansion of E is the best, in such circumstances. It has a vast cast list. So every time someone pops up who has not been seen for a while, you get a ‘last seen here’ link. That way you get no spoilers, giving clues as to whether they are now a white hat or a black hat. But you do get reminded of where you last saw them.
Or, of course, if someone can get the ball rolling setting up the basic framework of a Grrl Power Wiki, we could update those details ourselves. Rather than a simple ‘last seen in this issue’ field, we could literally list every page that each appears on. So you could, for instance, follow the story from Peggy’s perspective, by just looking up each of her entries.
An alternative system, is if an add on can be loaded to annotate the comic. I have seen a few of those, and some seem workable. That way, we can transcribe the dialogue and note the actions of various characters, on each page. Allowing, once enough of it had been updated, us to directly search through the comic, by character name, to find any mention of them.
I think I can manage a Wiki setup when I get back from my bowling tournament tonight :)
Whee!
*wags tail*
Good luck on the tournament. May you be in strikingly good form.
alas: 21 out of 26 :(
When it comes to tournaments, the pressure seems to be too high to properly focus.
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/
Register, and if you can: you can put it full of data. If not, there’s gotta be a ‘contact admin’ link or something that you can request access to create pages from.
Have seen a couple comics like that: they list everyone who appears, and when you click on their name it brings up an archive showing every page they have appeared in
Yeah, make the bad guys entries baby pink, that will really piss them off…
You got a point there… if they’re neither good nor bad it’s an issue. But still, if color schemes are possible: light blue, light red, light yellow could do the trick. :)
Color coding used to be a very standard thing in our Champions campaign. We used Cardboard standups (“cardboard heroes” from Steve Jackson Games) for the characters, and each standup had a little plastic stand (or “shoes”). Because the plastic stands came in different colors, the heroes got white shoes, the villains got black shoes, unknown/unaffiliated supers got green shoes, and the innocent bystanders got red shoes.
But because the knowledge of the players would evolve as the game progressed, the standups would change shoes on a semi-regular basis. So, the little girl in red shoes would suddenly get green shoes when someone noticed her yo-yo (or kite, or balloon, or whatever) had no string, or when she got scared and in the course of running away got airborne. Or she’d get black shoes if she suddenly energy-bolted one of our teammates, or white shoes if she seemed to have something the villains wanted and was doing her level ninjutsu-trained best to keep it away from them.
Anyway, color coding the background of the characters in the who’s-who section could easily work the same way. Here’s Heavenly sword on a red (villain) background, and if she does a heel-face-turn at some point in the future, or if it turns out she is actually a decent person who got tricked into this attack we’d start seeing her with a blue (hero) background.
Or if you don’t want to make that kind of schtick, you could color code by known group affiliation, where known Archon personnel get a blue background and everybody else is coded by group, if known or just some neutral color if group affiliation is unknown. Pretty much everybody in this fight who isn’t Archon has no known group affiliation at this point; we sorta presume they’re part of the same outfit, but we have no idea yet what that outfit is. Anyway, reporting group affiliation doesn’t necessarily imply where their real loyalties lie or what their real values are; only what’s known so far about them.
How about just separating out ARC from the others?
the color coding ideas, while cool and all, will be more work in the long run to keep up to date than they will be worth, especially for some characters that switch sides (Harem?, Heavenly Sword?)… do you go back in the archives and swap out ALL instances of their old color code to the newest color code? but that would cause problem during archive binges, as that color code would incorrectly portray that person in the past episode… or?…do you leave it alone as an indication of exactly when they swapped allegiances?… that alone could cause problems because just the color change on a character we’ve previous “known” was a good/bad guy getting changed to the opposite would be a spoiler for people that notice that change before the actual comic shows the switch… then comes the problem of exactly WHEN do you make the color switch? in the current comic that they actually DO the act? (it would be a spoiler) or AFTER the fact for the NEXT time they show up in the comic? (then you have to remember to change it if they don’t show up for a while)
Bah!… just list the who’s who in alphabetical order… no fuss, no muss… ignore good guy/bad guy distinctions. no color codes to keep track of, nor needing to explain to the readership what they mean..
DAVE hey! Will Sydney do something soon that earns her nickname “big guns”? That’s what Anvil calls her in first group panel just before flashback to her comic book store. It’d be perfect time for Sydney to make entrance in next page. Or for Peggy to shoot his foot.
She sliced a tank in half and blew it up…
That was cool, but not nick-worthy. Earning a nickname of that magnitude would take something on the order of wiping out a squad level attack force single handed. With one shot.
Sydney-“Take THIS”
Shhhhh-BOOM!
Anvil-“Dang girl, call out the big guns, why dontcha?”
Can you say Molestrorb trip?
It may be an Aussie thing in panel 6, but I am not familiar with the practice of using ‘lightning’ as a verb (outside of describing weather conditions).
No that’s just me. I like verbing things.
I think it’s bad Australian same as it is bad American. But some people think it’s a cool thing to do.
Well fortunately it isn’t bad English.* That fellow Shakespeare established precedent, on doing what you like to the language, to make it more interesting. He made up all sorts of bollox, on the spur of the moment, and much of it is still in use hundreds of years later.
The meaning was very clearly carried, so it served its primary purpose. And the secondary purpose, namely to make the sentence amusing, was achieved too. The dictionary makers just need to keep abreast of the cool kids.
* Of course this argument might not work so well if sitting an English exam, so be sure to check how liberal your exam board is, before trying it.
Speedsters are only overpowered if you are using the wrong game system. I used to run Champions games, and Speedsters were never a problem. Having lots and lots of attacks per turn is -hideously- expensive in Champions, leaving no points for powerful attacks or defenses.
I don’t think we’re referring to Speedsters in gaming systems specifically as overpowered, but the whole powerset as it tends to show up in fiction (when it’s accompanied by a corresponding increase in rate of perception and reaction).
For truly ludicrous example of why Super Speed is so overpowered: Metro Man (from Megamind)
Most speedsters aren’t THAT fast, but when you compare what a normal human can do compared to someone that can break the sound barrier on foot without tripping and splattering across the landscape on the first pebble they come across? Same end result: If you think you’re fighting a speedster, he’s probably just humoring you (or super, super egotistical!)
I didn’t express what I meant very well.
Supers in comics have relative power levels. A guy that presents a reasonable challenge for Batman amounts to dandelion fluff when set against Green Lantern. A guy who can give Thor a good fight completely outclasses Spiderman. Figuring out those power levels requires having a set of rules in your mind with which to judge them. Using a game system like Champions might give you a more objective standard.
Champions is -very- good at making relative power levels apparent. If I were ever to try and write a comic like this one, every Super I put in the story would first be written up using something like Champions so I could make sure I didn’t make any glaring errors in terms of power level.
I’d probably run test fights using my game system before I tried to present the fights in the comic. It would help me be sure I gave full value to the powers each participant had.
So that’s what I was talking about when I said that Speedsters are only overpowered if you are using the wrong game system. Champions does not underestimate what a Speedster can do. If the rules you use to judge power level are properly done, Speedsters aren’t any more overpowered than any other type.
In Champions, you have to pay points for your speed of travel. You have to pay more points depending on how maneuverable you want to be while traveling at speed, and you have to pay a whole lot more points if you want to be able to move at that speed without lowering your defenses. It’s not easy to run at 400 miles an hour -and- dodge incoming attacks.
In Champions the number of attacks you can make in a given amount of time is a completely different thing from a power that lets you travel fast. Getting loads and loads of attacks costs a Metric Truckload of points.
So imagine sitting down to write up Silent Shadow in Champions. You figure how many attacks he gets to make. You figure how fast he can move. You figure how well he can turn. There goes a huge pile of points, but you know exactly what he is capable of. My bet is that you won’t find yourself thinking how overpowered his power set is. You’ll be thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of points. This guy’s relative power level is much higher than I first thought.”
The super-speed travel power, in City of Heroes, was fun to use. But did very much need the rule that stationary objects were no danger to heroes. You could hit a brick wall and just bounce off, with no damage. So, whilst I thought I would never get the hang of it, when I first saw speedsters zipping past me, in the blink of an eye, I managed to learn the knack. Not my favourite travel power, but an interesting one.
Now, if there is anyone out there developing a new massively multiplayer online game* that does not want to make all walls safely padded, then a different technique is needed. The super-speed power would need to have built in collision-detection and avoidance built in (or as an upgrade). So that you could travel through a forest, like the speeding bikes in Star Wars, and the game automatically shifts you from colliding with each tree.
Obviously, if you are very good, then you will be avoiding the trees yourself, so can choose your path. The less skillful will just have to be trying to correct their path frantically, if they drift off their intended route. And, of course, when no suitable safe route is available, it should slow you down as fast as the power allows. Maybe bringing you to a safe stop prior to the collision. Or maybe you end up finding out how much damage hitting a wall at speed actually does.
* There are lots of other tricks you can pull in a solo game, such as literally slowing down the rest of the world, so that you can experience the superior time-distortion type of super speed.
Yeah, in DCUO if you take “Super-speed” as your Movement style you’ll just run up a building if your in movement mode, but you CAN get hit and knocked out of it if you do something stupid like try to run right through the middle of a battlezone.
You are the first person have seen who has played DCUO (everyone else has played City of Champions/Heroes/Villains)
Have one speedster so far (will be making a 2nd one in a couple months), not only do they run up the side of a building (and along the side of it), they can also Leap Tall Buildings if you jump while they are ‘climbing’
To be honest, as many things as DCUO did wrong (having “classes” for powers instead of the Champions or CoH system, borked grouping, over-expensive subscriptions), the travel powers are the best I’ve ever seen.
My Favorite character is a Flying, Twin Pistol, Mental. Keeps me out of a LOT of firefights when there’s a relatively few truly ranged enemies.
Since you mentioned SW speeder-bikes, I`ll accomodate you with the in-universe joke.
Scout trooper: those white dudes you see riding the bikes in Ep6.
“What is the last thing that goes through a scout-trooper`s head? His engine.”
Two tactics not discussed involve sight with our speedster.
A blinding flash of light would surely slap the brakes on, and a nifty net of near invisible monofilament would probably slice and dice like a Ginsu knife.
I approve of the former. And it would be readily available to SWAT personnel, in the form of flash-bangs. So good idea. The latter would only be available to Dabbler, but she is the one acting now, so that is fair enough. However it is rather an extremely icky option. But, a viable one, as he is endangering life.*
* It comes with a severe risk of friendly fire though. Not to mention being deadly to even clean up afterwards. But Achilles would be able to save Dabbler from loosing more limbs, if they dig him out first.
Oh, I don’t mean “mono” like sci-fi mono. I mean like fishing line mono. Only at high speeds, would this be…as you said…icky.
Friend of mine tried to run a GURPS game where the point was to kill superheros but with only normal human characters. First super was a flash expy, my idea was immediately a razorwire mesh to slice-n-dice him. We ended up rigging a hallway with explosives to kill him but forgot to make the threat super-worthy so it didn’t work out.
I hope Heatwave didn’t kill those two. Yeah, I know that IRL police confrontations the death of a suspect is always a possibility but… the paperwork is still a bitch.
Yea, not to mention that most forces, or their associated judiciaries, would require an inquest. Plus poor Brook would have a heavy emotional burden to deal with. But, a big battle like this, with the gloves off, it would be unlikely for everyone to survive.
Science time, here! The Most common handgun round used is the 9×19 Parabellum round. The average mass of a round is 8 grams, and consists mostly of lead.
Assuming the bullet starts at room temperature, and discarding the thin copper jacket, the energy required to vaporize the bullet into a harmless cloud of vapor (actually extremely toxic to breath in) is 8.877 KJ of energy, which isn’t a lot. Like, at all.
It takes 49.67 KJ to bring a soda can up from room temperature to it’s boiling point, which Heatwave did rather quickly earlier.
But you bring up the amount of time the the bullet it in the heat aura! The average 9mm bullet is moving at 410 m/s! It covers about an inch in 95 µs ! That’s fast!
To Vaporize bullet in that time heatwave would have to be capable of putting out 93 Megawatts of power! Assuming that the heating is radiative, we can calculate how hot heatwave must be in order to melt those bullets. She would have to be at 5259 degrees Celsius! That’s really hot! Like surface of the sun hot.
AND thus, unless she could spot the incoming bullet(s) and focus her powers on “JUST” that single bullet EXTREMELY precisely, which would imply sub-pico-second reflexes (doubtful), instead, she’d have to have that amount of power, or more, radiating over 100% of her surface area for practically the ENTIRE TIME that she expects to receive incoming fire… and just the act of ATTEMPTING to vaporize ONE BULLET would cause massive amounts of unforeseen damage: namely she would melt the surrounding rock/cement/asphalt, cars/gas tanks would most likely explode (or at least get set aflame), trees would burn, people get incinerated, etc… yeah… no… Dave has already said that in his world the powers don’t work that way…
As much as Silent Shadow is a pretty cool-sounding name, Mach the Knife is so much better.
Heavenly Sword is in the character box with Our Heroes. Could it be that she’ll be making a Heel Face Turn at some point in future?
That box is not just for the Heroes, but for anyone who has been introduced and named (Cree and Jabs have also appeared on the list)