Grrl Power #247 – If violence fails, violence harder!
Hopefully no one is disappointed this fight was resolved of screen. Basically the team dogpiled him with every different sort of attack at once and overwhelmed him. Obviously, Goose’s knife got Death Toll in the butt artery, which is a thing. (Don’t look it up.)
There’s a lot going on in this page but as usual I wanted to include more, like between panel 1 and 2, Sydney saying “Actually I guess a pair of handcuffs would have worked too.” Maybe it would have and maybe it wouldn’t have. Anvil’s choke hold didn’t work, but she was also trying to cut off his air supply, which is more attacky than just restraining him.
The other thing is a reversal of a decision I had made earlier, which is that Sydney’s shield actually is airtight. Originally I had planned on making it so it filters out bad stuff like viruses or sleeping gas the same way it filters out too much light from a laser or too much sound from a flashbang. This way, her incredibly powerful shield has one major weakness, which is she can’t keep it up indefinitely, so if she’s flying so fast she has to put her shield up, she’ll have to stop or at least slow down and refresh her air supply every so often, and it limits her ability to go into space or underwater without additional equipment.
Is it just me, or does Maxima in the first panel remind anyone else of Nathan Explosion? It’s that one stand of hair going down the front of her face, plus I drew her face slightly taller than usual. Consistency is one of the more challenging things about any comic, whether the art is simple or complex.
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Awww. One of his googlies fell off. And the other one is really sore I bet…. ]:-)
Uh… Dagger in butt probably hurts worse than the eyes…
Yes, but what about a knife to the teeth? You’re right; the butt hurts more.
I used to be an adventurer till I took a knife to the butt.
that explains the limp
Oh wait “googlies” wasn’t a euphemism.
)
Uh-oh… Set-up for future battles? I have a feeling Opal and Green-Haired Telekinesis Guy (GHTG) are going to get away at least.
And they were divided into groups, too. Huh, I hadn’t realised. And no, that’s not sarcasm.
Maybe not, he may just have meant him and her, but she decided to retrieve Toll House’s Cookies as well
I like that. But it looks like Max is in the mood to crumble some more cookies.
Looks like she is in a Killing Mood!
Maxis severely pissed off that someone is yanking the victory of all that hard fighting right out from under her nose. Boyfriend has just ripped up a bunch of pavement. Either as a barrier or to shotgun at the team while they are bunched up.
They still have the others they can waterboard for information, including who they are working for and where they met up prior to coming to dinner
Panel six and the lover’s quarrel. Opal is trying for everybody. Getting greedy will be her downfall. Green Hair say “our group”. I think that is just them, A Bomb and Death Rattle.
And still Fedora is an unknown. Nice job Dave.
Well, since it’s established that (at least Harem’s) teleportation won’t go through Halo’s shield, maybe the fast way to stop the escape is for Halo to pop up a maximum sized shield over the area?
Opal getting greedy gives them time to think of that at least, but it’s more likely that either someone else will knock her out, or they’ll get away.
And yeah, Fedora dude is still uninvolved – and can claim to be so even if they take him in for questioning, since he stood off to the side out of the way. “What? Super hero battle! Of course I’m gonna watch!” If there are other restaurants in the area (usually there will be several in one area) it’s pretty easy to come up with an excuse for why he was in the area – “I was going down the street to the seafood place, ’cause I saw that the steakhouse was closed for a function. Then stuff started blowin’ up, so I watched the show.”
After the last bit of fighting I hear this.
Halo, “Where is he?”
Max, “Who?”
Halo, “The guy who was over there by the tree. You know the fedora man.”
Max, “Are you sure you left your force field open long enough? I didn’t see anyone in a fedora anywhere.”
She wants to teleport everyone that why it takes longer
They propably had a core group (Opal, GHTG, Death Toll, Atomic Bombshell).
And the rest just “tagged along” without belonging to the group.
Atomic Bombshel likely cause Green Hair even knew her bombs types (“…just use your Overnuke.”)
Death Toll unlikely cause Green Hair nor Atomic seems to knew he can´t attack (“don’t just stand there…”).
Heavenly Sword likely cause she was leading (as Guesticus pointed out too)
About Hex there is circumstantial evidence that is not in “the group” (“I don’t even know what I’m doing here… whose idea…”).
All the others are uncertain.
Some of the muscle mooks might also have been theirs But that whole first wave folded like a t-shirt. So they never got a chance to get orders.
I would imagine what we have is one real ”group” and a horde of tag-along they hired to serve as the flak. be interested to see who the main group are
– green hair telekine
– opal
– big suit wearing tear marks guy
– maybe heavenly sword (her competence and tactics)
Not Fedorka
Heaven is a possability, she did seem to be leading the initial attack (apart from the 3 beef-heads)
“Because.. space magic” is my new favorite thing
Space magic?
is that like rocket magic?
I think one of the orbs probably produces oxygen.
Like I have said before, they are probably ship tools.
Hmm – One of the orbs is environmental orb and the other? It’s the key and controller to her SHIP. Which she is yet to find! (I’m betting govt has a version of it or a scan can find it.)
Coming soon in ten years real time (but only two weeks away for Sydney and Gang!) GRRRL POWER IN SPACE!!! (let that last word echo and fade slowly) She has to put the orbs into their proper slots… Shields in shield, PPO into weapons, hentai orb into entertainment or restraint/safety system, flight into flight/.engines, telepresence/true sight into sensors and communications, enviro (theorized) into enviro, and controller into controller…
And as a bonus it’s a transformer and can turn into a giant robot too! (or at least fake the accent) .
How’s that for extrapolation…
then again- maybe once linking slots are all filled the center link opens and it allows the orb-ship to be summoned. That’s something Dabbler might have seen or heard of before…of course someone’s gonna make the obvious homage/joke reference to Robin Williams and Mork from Ork….
If Halo does get a ship, will we have to start referring to her orbs as Space Balls?
“Oh, sh*t. There goes the planet.”
You awfully reminded me a kids show I watched nearly 20 some years ago. There was this Bear (lets call him teddy) and a yellwo caterpillar. Show started light-weighted with a Gargamel type evil wizard and a tech genius who reeks science. Than they found some crystals each with individual powers in the middle or close at the end of show there was a submarine that can be only operated with a crystal and oh evil wizard turns out to be part of an evil organization and they had a different crystal too and when all crystals were put on ceiling of evil organziations building the prime evil gained incredible pwoer etc etc. Can’t remember the name of Show but it can be ‘Teddy Bears Adventures’ or Adventures of Teddy bear :P
Teddy Ruxpin maybe?
If Sydney gets her own space ship, her first stop will be Mars so she can moon the Curiosity’s cameras.
Yeah, it’s like a really old comic series (believe it was the “Outsiders” or something, not one of the DC or Marvel titles): these people were given powers and one of them changed colour depending on what power they were using, one didn’t seem to do anything but it turned out it provided a bubble of air/oxygen that tey would need when they ended up on the moon, if they had known that at the start and went straight to the moon before learning how to control/use their powers… well, things would have turned out nasty for them
Actually, it was “The Outsiders”, and it was a DC title – the one starting in 1985, which featured GeoForce (Terra’s older brother and king of Markovia), Black Lightning, Metamorpho, Katana, and the one you mention, who’se name ironically, was Halo. She had a bunch of different powers, and could use only one at a time, while changing colors depending on which power she was using.
Ah, minor correction – it started in ’83, and GeoForce wasn’t king yet until later on.
No, it wasn’t a DC title
Possibly got the name of the comic wrong, but these ones got their powers on a runaway SanFran trolley car, at one point they fought some bad guys calling themselves “TNTNT”, the one who changed colours was a guy
Definitely not The Outsiders then. That sounds more like Spectral from the Strangers by Malibu comics in 1993. Unlike DC’s Halo, Spectral wasn’t a corpse being driven around like a puppet by an amnesiac alien energy being who didn’t know they weren’t human. (Yeah, the Outsiders got weird after they got rid of Batman.)
Was that the one with the gynoid that became sentient?
Yup. “Electrocutie”
That was it! The Strangers, knew it wasn’t a DC title :D
Really going to have to dig out the old comics (or at least, make them more accessible)
I guess when Nemesis power fails it really fails. Everyone who’s been saying it’s not fair to pick on a guy who is only defending himself are going to has a stroke over the fact DT is laying there bleeding while Max worries about Sydney getting mildly incoherent and dealing with a mass getaway of the unconscious mooks. I guess those two still have some fight left in them.
Aaaw, I thought we missed a bonus page when I saw him on the ground.
Understandable that you skipped the fight though, that’s gatta be a nightmare to even try to draw
Just picture one of those classic cartoon dustballs that a big fight kicks up and you’ll get the general idea. Add a large anvil for the big finish.
Unfortunately, our large Anvil is likely still unconscious. I think it may have been Maxima’s particle beams for the big finish. Either that or getting sharply goosed by Goose.
Not to mention, all the people who would complain about the fight (either because of the duration, or some aspect of it)
Actually, this is a good idea for a vote incentive (hint, hint…)
Yeah, it actually would be. Just one big panel showing DT at the center of everyone’s attacks would make a pretty sweet vote incentive.
Finally ArcSWAT vs Green Hair and Opal. This is gonna be good.
Are those symptoms of low oxygen or high carbon dioxide or both?
Headaches are a symptom of both. Bot sure about lightheadedness. The babbling confusion is low oxygen.
You sure that ‘babbling confusion’ is not a natural state of Sydney? o_O
Well, yes. But it doesn’t really sound right.
She’s ‘babbling confusion’ relative to her natural state.
Lightheadedness is a symptom of low oxygen.
Babbling confusion,
That’s the natural state of Sydney today,
Woo, hey, hey.
Sydney does not babble. Her train of thought just switches tracks alot.
Like a shopper on a citywide spree, using the subway.
Carbon dioxide. Only a small increase in CO2 is needed to get headaches & stuff: from 0.4 to 1%. The corresponding drop in Oxygen is not really noticable.
correction: 0.04%
Still, the point stands.
Thanks. I didn’t realize how little CO2 constituted too much.
That’s an increase in CO2 of 25 times. Not exactly insignificant.
but isn’t the a normal exhalation around 6% CO2?
Definitely! It’s a change from 0.04% CO2 and 21% O2 to 1% CO2 and 20% O2. The increase in carbon dioxide is noticeable and unpleasant, but the decrease in oxygen isn’t really.
It’d take a really long time to get to noticeable levels of CO2 though.
Going by 20 breaths per minute, 1 breath being 500ml, and CO2 content being 4%, that’s 400ml of CO2 per minute, or 0.4l.
Now, if we assume her forcefield is a sphere of radius 1 meter (it is probably larger, but 1m should be close enough), then it contains ~4200l of air. 1% of this would be 42l, which means it’d take 105 minutes at 400ml/minute for CO2 to climb to that level. So her forcefield would have to be up for something like two hours before any CO2 poisoning symptoms appeared.
(Not that you’d get any symptoms from a lack of oxygen in that time; CO2 increase = oxygen decrease, so oxygen levels would only drop 1 percentage point.)
Something that needs to be pointed: in a sealed environment/bubble, dioxide is always on the increase and oxygen on the decrease, in other words, with every inhalation the volume of oxygen is being depleted and every exhalation the dioxide is being increased
He addressed that in his last sentence. His math and logic checks out and lightheadedness and confusion are also Hypercapnia symptoms. with a safe operational period of 90 minutes with a 15 minute buffer there’s quite a bit she can do in extreme environments without additional equipment but it is strictly a EVA situation thing.
Yes, but she was talking a fair bit during that time. Would it not speed up the consumption rate significantly?
Not so much. It would be all the running around and other physical work she has been doing that will increase her CO2 levels.
And then it was more float around looking for an issue, fly to where needed, smack something with mentally controlled Lighthook, teleconference The Fedora Man, etc.
20 breaths per minute might also be low, not sure how much activity she is doing but if she’s running around and panting she might do more. Still, I don’t think this fight is close to an hour long.
Probably less than you think (see above post). The most physically demanding thing she’s likely done is gesticulate and the talking/yelling only uses slightly more oxygen (it’ll knock it down a few minutes). The lighthooking is mental activity which like talking is considered a free activity.
Would the fact that she’s been talking, yelling, ranting, fighting (by using the flighthook), and gesticulating excessively account for her having used her air up faster than normal?
a persons body size weight and fitness would influence this by how much of the volume in the shield is person not air and an unfit person will need more o2 than a fit person
I thought Sydney had been magically affected or something since CO2 buildup is very noticeable long before mental effects appear.
Sydney is a little less inhibited about motormouthing than most folk.
If the shield is completely airtight, I think you drastically underestimated the amount of air that it can hold. She would have noticed the CO2 buildup before now if that was the case. However, the flow does seem to be limited. Maybe the sheild hardens to air over time, so for a few minutes you wouldn’t be able to tell/
Also, couldn’t she just override the time limit by expanding the volume and then contracting it?
Or she dropped it briefly off panel at some point. Perhaps when she was lugging sleepies around with Harem. In fact the Forb was in her right hand in #243 and in her left in subsequent comics so we can say it dropped briefly while she was switching hands.
Also noting that Sydney has been both preoccupied AND on something of an adrenaline rush for a while – lots of supervillains, shooting, property damage, threat of injury, that sort of thing all happening around her.
On that basis, it seems quite plausible that she would not notice early symptoms of CO2 buildup. It’s only becoming obvious now that things have calmed down somewhat.
That’s my take as well. According to a chart I found most of the lesser concentration respiratory symptoms take hours to a month of minimal necessary exposure to show up (with duration decreasing as CO2 concentration increases), Mental symptoms supposedly take about 30 min at 6% and 6 min at 6.5%.
Wait, someone stuck a combat knife in his arse?????
SYDNEY!!!!
No. You can’t blame her. She has an air-tight alibi.
Yeah, posted that before reading the Author’s Notes, the other culprit/suspect would have been Harem :P
+1
Seeing as all these action heroes love showing of all their scars, etc, they got during all the various combat they’ve seen, I’ll love to hear how he heroically discribes getting stabbed in the butt
DT: “They cheated.”
Nah, more like: “They tried to backstab me, but they used that short rookiee who couldn’t reach high enough!”
Gives new meaning to being goosed.
His rear defenses were penetrated.
Could be worse, he could have accidently shot himself in the ass with a poison crossbow aroow.
Doctor says you’re gonna die. Opps I thought that joke needed a punchline.
But not in a Shakespearen sense?
Sooo, if Sidney’s shield is airtight, how does sound get trough?
Because space magic, or does the shield virbrate in a way that allows the continuation of soundwaves?
Stick a plastic bag over your head. It’s air tight and you can still hear.
( WARNING: Do not stick a plastic bag over your head )
Anyone who does gets a Darwin Award!
See, warnings like that, and “Don’t reach under mower deck while mower is running.” are the reason some people survive long enough to get elected to congress.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
You owe me coffee! I’m just glad I didn’t get it on the keyboard.
Too funny!
Sooooo going to steal that!
Warning: Coffee may be hot!
) )
——
| | <–(They include a picture of a hot cup on the side of the hot cup)
\ /
|__|
Here is a list of a few more.
https://udel.edu/~pollack/Acct350/Handouts/Wacky%20Warning%20Labels.htm
Usually, a specific warning of something obvious in an owner’s manual came about due to somebody not thinking it was obvious enough. When they added the warning ‘do not place hand under running mower’ you know somewhere a guy said to his buddy ‘Hey Lefty! They put your rule in the manual!’
Do not recharge, put in backwards, or use.
Battery
if you cant use, then what do you do with a battery?
Do not use for drying pets.
Microwave Oven
I read some there was an old lady who had a small dog, which she just washed, she tried to dry it in the micro (then sued the manifactures when the dog died, since there wasn’t anything in the manual saying she couldn’t)
For indoor or outdoor use only.
Christmas lights
where else are you meant to use them?
USE REPEATEDLY FOR SEVERE DAMAGE.
Taiwanese shampoo
so it shouldn’t damage, if you only use once or twice
…Internal.
I used to work at a store that sold brownies with peanuts in them. Label: Peanut brownies. Wrapper: transparent, so one could peanuts in them. Warning: May contain peanuts. No kidding!
Not enough warning labels
I’ve also seen a “Warning: May contain peanuts” label on a package of Peanut Brittle. I wish I’d bought it so I could take a picture, as I haven’t seen it since. I mean… “May” contain? You mean you aren’t sure if your main ingredient is actually in there?
Even worse: “may contain peanuts or tree nuts”–seen on a bag of mixed nuts.
While this is clearly a redundant and stupid warning, the labels are standards set by the government. Which leads to cans of peanuts using the standard warning for any product which might have come into contact with peanuts during manufacture.
I have to wonder about the many stories of idiots misusing products in ways which should be crystal clear even without a warning label. The woman who microwaved her dog to death, for example… It’s called a “microwave oven“. Would she have set her gas oven to 350f and popped her dog in to dry it off after washing it? After all, that’s just how you “dry” your Thanksgiving turkey after brining it.
Just how long did she piss on the toilet seat before it occurred to her to lift the lid before going?
True, because the thin plastic acts like a membrane. I was wondering if this was also the case for Sidney’s shield.
Jamie: Give us a break.
Adam: Do not do anything you see us do on the show.
Jamie: Ever!
Okay, this page is really showing Maxi’s true colours: the colour of evil psycho *unpronounciblepronoun*!!
“No one escapes alive!”
Maxima rejects and disrespects authority, while establshing herself as the only authoritative figure. Yeah, I’ll be more surprised if Maxima doesn’t turn out to be a major villain at some point.
She is THE authority on the site in this situation. Obviously she establishes herself as the figure of authority there. She’s in charge of combat operations.
I don’t see this. She’s been in the Air Force–a very hierarchical authority structure–and played by the rules enough to not only stay in, but to steadily raise in rank. The only real “authority” we have seen her flout is Ariana’s and neither of them are in each other’s chain of command. The only one higher in the ARC pecking order is General Faulks, and I do not remember any instance where she rejected his authority over her. She is willful, yes, but not insubordinate.
+1
Here’s a page from Grrlpower:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2013-12-19-GP0175.jpg
Here’s a page from Irredeemable:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Vf98RpA0Uws/SwUtCBuzlJI/AAAAAAAAAR4/V00_L2wOLts/s1600/Irredeemable+8+interior.jpg
I’mma just leave these here for now, and when Maxima becomes a villain, I’ll dance around in my underwear yelling, “I TOLD YOU SO! I TOLD YOU SO!!”
And I will, mark my words. Heck, I might even upload a YouTube video…
Besides the fiery background, I see no relation between these two.
And like Thor already said, she’s done no such thing as “reject and disrespect authority”.
I would be more inclined to believe that such a scenario was likely if it weren’t for Sydney’s demonstrated ability to get her to pause when she starts getting too serious. As it stands, the only way I see something like that happening is if someone hurt Sydney really bad and Maxina’s superiors forbade her from going after the responsible party/parties.
Any of her team really but Sydney especially. For her no man left behind is alive and well. Mess with her team and she’ll mess with you. It’s both a strength and weakness for her.
Her feminism also is more tempered than people would like to believe. Sure she has issues with the way people treat her because she’s a woman, especially one with an incredible build but do you really think she’d put with Math and his lechery, much less have been to recruit him if she were the man hating bitch some paint her as.
She also appears to at least respectful of chain of command in a general sense but isn’t afraid to figuratively bust her commanding officer’s chops or give him a warning look if he says something out of line (which of course he’ll heed while impotently asserting he’s in charge). I also see her disobeying or countermanding any order she’d consider unethical.
I’ve read Irredeemable too, or did for the first bit of the run (up until around that issue actually), but it seems to me like you’re really stretching here. In the Grrrlpower one, she’s deliberately putting on a show of scariness for the benefit of cameras and trying to scare criminals straight. In the Irredeemable one, the villain protagonist is looking scared while Scylla (or was it Charybdis? I forget which twin) rushes him, drunk on power. Apart from some visual similarities of glowiness and fire, these are unrelated images.
Maxima’s a military woman that’s having to take on some police type duties, and it won’t be a smooth or easy transition for her as far as I’m concerned, but I don’t see her destroying Singapore or turning to crime and mass murder. She’s clearly willing to kill the enemy if she deems it justified, but see again: military.
Indeed she used to special ops rather than MP duty. She recognizes the need for the latter and that as the most powerful and highest super in the US military, she’s the most qualified to take commend but that doesn’t make her have any experience as a LEO. She’s also gotta really deal with the public relations end for the first time. She’s used to a do the job quickly and efficiently so no one else gets hurt and leave the cleanup for others position. Now she’s gotta make sure the public doesn’t have reason to lynch her team. It’s not an easy transition even if it’s agreeable one.
Uh, yeah, Uhlrik, you don’t see anything abusive or wrong with using fear mongering to intimidate the public? “Don’t get out of line, or I’ll fucking kill you with nukes!”
I don’t understand why people are defending Maxima after she pulled that stunt in the desert! That’s not only unethical, but also foreshadowing! You don’t just build up a scene like that and not leverage it later.
We know she takes things into her own hands after seeing her discipline Harem herself. That’s what she does, and I find it absurd that nobody else sees Maxima as this way.
I believe Max has the potential to turn evil in the future, but that is why Sydney has the orbs in my opinion.
Because that stunt was A) perfectly within her authority, B) harmed no one, and C) wasn’t directed to the public, but THROUGH the public, to a subset range of individuals with powers and god-complexes. Those of us who see reasoning behind those issues don’t consider that event to be damning, but deliberately characterizing. The Daisycutter Impression was not this trope. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun
It was an in-setting variation of this trope. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EstablishingCharacterMoment
No one is contesting that Maxima is a bit of a Blood Knight, but that doesn’t equal ‘Villain’, or even necessarily ‘impending villain’. In fact, it’s quite likely that the arc we’re liable to see is Sydney’s influence SOFTENING the Blood Knight tendencies.
She IS the authority right now, being the senior officer on site
Not saying it isn’t possible for Max to be evil down the road, but disrespecting and hating authority is not one of them, at least not in the present.
I don’t see what’s wrong with “no one escapes”. well DUH no one should be allowed to escape.
Was the butt knife REALLY necessary?
Specially seeing how it was Goose’s knife
This is a case of justifiable adding of insult to injury if I ever saw one.
How could even ask such a question?
Of course the butt knife is necessary.
The use of unnecessary force in the apprehension of FWtDT has been approved.
The use of unnecessary force to apprehend Periwinkle Butt Sniffer was mandatory. And really satisfying for everyone but him. I think the readers’ imaginations can paint a more vivid picture than Dave could. No offense intended to DaveB of course.
Oh definitely, I had Sydney teaching him about hentai… the hard way.
I hate Illinois super villains.
I have always loved you Herr gropenfuerer.
Have you ever noticed that John Shuck and Henry Gibson never did another movie together? That means something.
It wasn’t Shuck in the car with Gibson.
Very simple shield test:
-Active the shield while on land.
-Submerge in a pool
-Expand shield while under water
-Observe effects
Does the shield suddenly somehow let water in? Or perhaps some other effect?
According to the theory I came up with below it should let the water in.
They don’t want Opal to get away? She doesn’t seem to have any defensive capabilities, so it shouldn’t take more than a gust of pepper spray or a well-aimed taser to take her down. Also, Peggy can probably put a well-placed shot through a meaty portion of her leg if all else fails. Can sniper rifles fire rubber bullets?
Of course Sydney is now equally as vulnerable. Considering that green-head was flinging around things telekinetically (apparently), Sydney will be in a complete world of hurt if she does not get that shield back up.
It was implied she has combat capabilities when telekinesis dude was first attacked by Jabberwocky.
Teleportation is probably just one part of her powers.
“You want me to…” is vague enough that you can infer any sort of implication you want out of it. Given that her powers that have been shown so far are to open up tiny wormholes and teleport, it is most likely that she was going to use one of those powers to move Jabberwocky away from green-hair or vice-versa.
And given her demonstrated powers, it is hard to imagine that she could throw up a wormhole to protect herself from Peggy’s bullet, even if she did know that Peggy was nearby. And that doesn’t take into consideration a passel of Harems surrounding her and hitting her with tasers, pepper spray, or baseball bats.
Don´t mean to be nitpicking, but Opal is not able to teleport, she uses Wormholes.
Big difference.
Wormholes can be used offensively as well as defensively (granted, that goes for teleportation too).
I already said that, if I was on that battlefield with that power, the only ARCSwat-members still alive would be the ones that could withstand a .50in Bullet at Point Blank range to the head. That is something a teleporter can only do if he risks actually being at point blank range.
So Yes, Opal is VERY dangerous, if she decides to be. Better catch her and keep er sedated in a cell.
You make a lot of assumptions on how the power works. Opal may not be able to harm a living thing with her power.
For example, momentum may not be conserved between entrance and exit portals. Instead, anything she ports arrives at a dead stop. Any extra energy causes damage to her. So if she tried to portal a bullet, her head might explode.
How can you know?
if it’s a Wormhole, that defines the power. A wormhole is a short cut between two points in space (think Portal), and should have no effect on the state or momentum of the object, the only two factors you would change is location and orientation (forward ‘into’ the wormhole is forward ‘out of’ the worm hole, ie is relative to the worm hole, not the rest of the world).
Of course, her power might be slightly different than that, but then it’s not strictly speaking a wormhole.
I’m not sure where you are getting your definition from. The information I am able to find is much less cut-and-dry.
Sound is kinetic energy.
You know Dave himself specifically uses the word “teleport” to describe her ability in action, right?
If Peggy fired at Opal, Opal would be dead, at the least (if they managed to get her into surgery in time) in need of a new leg
Max’s thinking is it would be a bad idea to let someone who can teleport others get away. It would basically render any sort of super jail ineffective.
How do you even jail someone with teleportation abilities?
Unless the teleporter has to meet certain conditions to use their power, it almost sounds like this series needs some sort of power-disabling superpower.
Or “acupuncture cuffs” like those in Kung Fu Panda. xD
Depends on the teleporter, Harem you just need a big ball och stuff tied to her, and the mass would stopp her
Harem? that’s the old “Ball and Chain” bit, remember she can barely ‘port the Barret.
Harem do not port what she do not want to, otherwise she would be stuck for anything in contact with her, the couch for instance.
Put an explosive, or a shock collar with a tracking signal.
that doesn’t work too well if they can control what teleports with them. Harem would have to be put down if she ever went rogue. No real way to contain her.
Ask Maxima :) https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/558
Poor Max, she’s surrounded by civilians. Although after this they may get just a little less casual.
Actually, she has distance and line-of-sight limits in practice, see: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1302
So a boat in the middle of the Pacific, or a space/lunar station should be able to hold her fairly easily. The trick is to get here there, and not to leave anything there that she could use to escape. If you blindfold her onto the boat and make sure she can’t see out of her cell you could probably still have a crew and propulsion on the boat.
Think again. Hint: the last panel of that page.
Considered, and integrated into the above. Familiarity extends distance, it doesn’t negate it: Enough distance means that even the most familiar place is out of reach.
She can reach her childhood home from hundreds of miles away – the middle of the Pacific is an order of magnitude further than that. If that’s not far enough, the Moon is another two orders of magnitude away.
(And you might be able to mess with ‘familiarity’ as well – buy the farm and turn it into an industrial park, and she wouldn’t be able to recognize it.)
Oh, I do think the Moon (three orders actually: 10e2 to 10e5) could do it assuming a lot of things, not the boat though. I was mainly referring to the “distance and line-of-sight limits” assertion.
Anyway, the “get her there” part is a thing.
About familiarity, I do not think it mean with the look, the farm for instance likely already changed along time (paints, repairs, expansions), and she can’t actually see the place at the moment anyway. I take it as familiarity with the geographical position.
Sorry, I missread the “…another two orders…”, you were right.
I’ll agree ‘get her there’ is a problem. And I think the boat would work, but I’m not sure – it’s definitely borderline.
From my read of the Dabbler’s Science Corner, it’s a bit more than geographical position – it’s the environment and hazards as well. She needs to know it well enough to be able to find a spot where she can ‘land’ safely – if it’s close she can tell without much issue, but it’s a bit like throwing a dart – if it’s a long ways away, she really needs to know what the target is to hit it directly on.
Which is why I suggested turning it into an industrial park – paints, repairs, small expansions wouldn’t effect that sense much. It would need to be a real change of the landscape: Tear down the old buildings, bulldoze the land flat, and build something entirely different. Not something superficial, but a real change to the area, and to where is ‘safe’ and where isn’t.
About the boat, I finally realized a simple cheap way to avoid the major problems I was seeing (maybe the same as you) and it can also work in almost any structure (placed far enough of course) so you are right, the boat would work :)
That is an interesting point, I did not see it that way before.
However I still think it is just geographical. There are always people, animals, vehicles and stuff moving around, so she can’t never be sure beforehand no matter how well she phisicaly knows the place.
Take note that at https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/345 we saw her teleporting to the inside of an ambulance she was not seeing (the inside) and she did not know nothing about. And DaveB stated:
So, if she can safety jump to the farm, that “pre-sense” need to work on her long jumps too, and if large objects were moved, I think she still could find a safety point by trial and error.
Nonetheless, the scale you suggest could actually raise a doubt. I will keep it in mind :)
I figured that she has to ‘reach’ for each trial in the trial-and-error approach, and has to start the aim over for each reach. If she knows the area well enough, she can reach to it and hit it fairly routinely, but she has to actually hit it. The ambulance I note she appeared in the center of: Easiest spot to work out where it was, and most likely to be open. (It’s also implied that she could have ported to the parking lot without any issue – it’s a moderately well-known location for her.)
Basically, I think she can use trial and error, but the trials get more difficult the longer the distance. At some point it’s like trying to thread a needle on the other side of the room: Sure, trial and error will get you there, but you’re more likely to miss entirely than to hit, and nearly hitting once won’t really help your next try.
No defensive? I ran a Gate type teleporter in Champions/Hero system and had plenty of attacks tricks:
Open portal to Mariannas Trench and shoot stream of water (random shark/squid/fish) at target. Open portal to lunar orbit next to a target and lock a limb while doing damage to it. My character had a limit of smaller portals the further away the destination portal was so the space one was a quarter inch wide. He also would rig up heavy weights in his warehouse base suspended by a thin wire. Open a portal that cuts the wire and you get a portal attack as the weight falls through and comes out going horizontally at the target. He got good enough to have several small portals going at once –so he would get a weight going up to terminal velocity by having it fall from one portal directly into another below it a few feet. Then the attack would come out a third portal as he redirects one toward the target.
And that does not even cover opening portals that match up to the fronts of guns on tripods in his warehouse, while reaching through another set to pull triggers.
And while yes they could make a .50 rubber bullet, it would still be lethal.
If you can’t come up with the defense tricks based on that, think of a portal under battleship armor plate sections (bought as scrap) that move themselves just by their own weight, with the portal sliding them horizontally at the end. Water to put out fires. Sand/Oil/ball bearings dumped in front of melee attackers. Portal a web trap in. If you have the finesse you could even set up a portal a millimeter under concrete and watch the hero fall through to someplace in Bosnia when they break through the concrete…
Some of these portal based tricks sound rather like Saga of Soul. And more…
If he had built an evacuated tube for his falling weights, terminal velocity would not have be a limiting factor. On the other hand, at some point, they would have been going so fast it would no longer have been possible to use them as weapons without causing mass devastation.
XKDC did a very nice dissertation on something similar. I think it was the baseball at some fraction of light speed. Once you get to a certain speed the heating from surface friction is nothing compared to the radiation and energy release from atoms being smashed like bugs on a windshield.
Hate to be that guy, but possible missing word in the first panel?
“Nemesis made it look like HE had every power,”
Yup, I’ll get that fixed.
Wow, that went fast! FWTDT is down! I once also thought about handcuffs, but than, could it really be that simple? Apparently…
I also love how Sidney jumps around in her head. Without mouth-filter! Hilarious!
About the airtighness of her shield: I think she’d need either an oxygen tank or some really good carbon dioxide filters. Especially for space or submarine missions…
One small mistake:
1st panel, second bubble should be, I think: “Nemesis made it look like HE had every power, but he had only any power.”
Stick a plastic bag over your head. It’s air tight and you can still hear.
( WARNING: Do not stick a plastic bag over your head )
god’s sake. This site always messes up my replies
Dave’s been working on the issue, it looks fixed for the moment.
Jamie: Give us a break.
Adam: Don’t try what you see us do on the show.
Jamie: Ever!
Honestly I think it’s kinda weird Sydneys shield does not let air in someway… It seems like a bit of an oversight on the part of whoever made the orbs in the first place. The shield could still be limited in that she can’t bring anything inside of it with the pseudopod thingy or something.
It’s not supposed to be a permanent structure
Maybe the designers didn’t do that much breathing. Or one of the Shield Orb slots makes it selectively permeable for extended use.
… Or maybe one of the “Mystery Orbs” has some kind of Life Support thing.
Or it could be a setting she hasn’t deciphered like the “Embiggener” option –she needs to find the control that softens the shield to gasses. Or one that opens up the firing port for the PPO, that one could quickly become a necessity. What I really want to see is her with a small backpack with several harnesses that fit over the orbs that allow here to fly using the shield and carry passengers –if they can maintain position when Max is really pulling (see the bank robbery aftermath) and fly at her control, then carrying a human body weight under it in a harness should be nothing.
Not that weird if their creator factored in poisonous gases. Especially the kind you don’t see or smell until it’s too late, if at all.
Sweet, new page.
When Sydney’s shield expands or contracts it probably deactivates and then reactivates slightly further in/out at an incredibly high speed thus giving the appearance of expanding/contracting without causing any air pressure issues.
This could possibly be used to replenish Sydney’s air supply by expanding to 2 or 3 times it’s normal size and then waiting a few moments for the fresh air to circulate and then restoring the shield to it’s normal size. While it’s not a perfect fix it should allow Sydney to extend her air supply for several hours depending on how large she makes it before restoring it to it’s normal size.
If fresh air is not able to enter through the shield-membrane, then expanding would make things worse: same amount of air/oxygen, but in a much larger space, which would mean less oxygen
Which is why I think it deactivates and then reactivates slightly further out thus allowing air in when it expands.
I was thinking it does kind of like a soap bubble, as it expands it actively pulls air in.
Aaand, now we know Maxima is a Mass Effect 3 forumite. Or at least aware of some of the memes.
DaveB: Are you sure that’s his butt? The femoral artery carries most of the blood flow in your leg and has a reputation for dropping people if it gets cut. The frame is ‘true to life’ if the knife hit the upper end of FWTDT’s femoral artery and Goose would know the human body has a vulnerable point there.
I suspect comic exaggeration. He is simultaneously on fire, frozen, punched out (note the missing tooth on the mask) and bleeding all over the place. Goose also knows where to put a blade for maximal distraction; right in the hip bone.
from Dabbler’s fists, he’s also been Lightning-struck
Maybe that was the real reason for the butt-knife – a convenient (and humorous) lightning conductor for Dabbler’s use.
Green Hair still doesn’t have an official file name. I called him Boyfriend somewhere above. BB Boy might work. The Tosser?
Bwahahaha.
The Tosser is brilliant.
I can just see Leon giving him that name and it would definitely stick with the public.
Me and a few of the other have been calling him Chia Pet.
I saw that but forgot to add it in. My bad.
It could work on the same principle as the Prismatic Sphere spell from DnD (The Prismatic Sphere is basically a multi-layered force field which has been wrapped around the caster to form a 10 foot sphere).
The third layer (yellow) Stops poisons, gases, and petrifaction. Since it stops gases it should also stop Oxygen, yet you never hear of anyone suffocating.
Probably because Air is consider an element rather than a “gas” like poisons
Also, how long is the spell supposed to last at that size anything that drops within 30-60 minutes would be adequate for many encounters.
<< Was more into FASA's Battletech and Star Trek games than DnD
Obviously time to go to bed, making too many typos.
Don’t you mean tyypos? =OP
that sure is an anticlimatic end of fight
be it for the whole group or even just “mr bad pun”
Reminds me of maxim 37: There is no ‘overkill’. There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘time to reload’.
“It’s only overkill after the fact”
“Isn’t that overkill?”-“No, this is a sure kill.”
Train of thought:
—Opal can place her portals at range. That means even the subdued / tranquilized villains are at risk of escaping.
—Thus are recurring villains born.
—On the other hand, how many of those villains are going to be willing to have a rematch after the rather thorough spanking they got? There is probably going to be some major attrition.
—Of course, only the weakest and/or smartest are going to stay away next time.
—The testosterone poisoning cases are likely to be back because they have something to prove. Which means there will be meat shields for the smarter villains.
—The above probably includes FWTBT. Now there is someone with something to prove. I wonder if next time he is smart enough to wear real armor and not just some pretentious uniform. Or maybe coordinate with someone with a major offensive power, e.g. Bombshell. That would make him far more dangerous, but, given his ego, seems unlikely.
—Chia Pet better really be on the ball if he wants to stop ARC Swat from taking down Opal.
Let them escape the tracker watches on the captured one will let you know where they went. and maybe more
Yeah, was thinking about the monitor watches as well
Sorry Max, superhero rule 1093 sub-section 14a states that the villain with green hair always gets away. For instance, has anyone EVER managed to keep the Joker locked up for any length of time?
1) Capture Joker
2) Place loaded gun against jokers head
3) Pull trigger
4) Place the now incapacitated joker in cell
no problem
5) See sales of future Batman comics go way, way down.
and how many time have you seen the comics industry resurrect said villain with extremely torturous and brain-twisting logic in order to regain those lost readers… therefore even if you see the dead body, that STILL doesn’t mean that guy is going to STAY dead…
Hell, It’s easier to keep Kenny dead.
Of course heroes don’t do that sort of thing, just like super villains, whom having caught the hero insist on demonstrating their superior intellect by placing the hero in an elaborate trap guaranteed to kill the hero, then remembering a prior engagement (like robbing the bank) and leaving the hero to escape.
I doubt FWTDT could be a threat to the team anymore.
They now know his weakness, and it effectivly makes him powerless against them
Definitely a one-shot gag in his present form. If he is a gadget-user, he may make a comeback as the new and improved model.
FWTDT alone yes
FWTDT coupled with an illusionist and/or a teleporter is still incredible dangerous
think about the fact that he has the second best defense of all characters introduced so far
Halo’s weakness: eating beans the day before. The air in the shield would need refreshing quite a bit more often…
I wonder which power up will let her control shape and permeability?
So Sydney’s collar needs a second item embedded , A custom low power Carbon Monoxide sensor with a beeper/ link to wrist unit.
Existing tech that the guys over at E Systems off of N Loop 635 would make a single chip solution out of.
NOTE: IF one used an Air Quality Sensor around HALO, then her pepper binges might set it off.
I would assume it’d go into her pip-boy
A CO sensor will not be that useful. People tend to exhale CO2 instead. So put a Carbon dioxide sensor on her wrist unit. Putting one near her face may generate too many false positives, especially with the lack of air movement inside her force field.
And you can now safely shrink that ugly thing. If Apple can make a watch sized computer that links to a smart phone’s GPS, Leon can as well.
what Syd has now might be a quick slap-together”Need this New Thing NOW!!!!” version. Give Arc-Tech a week or two.
“The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer”?
You can’t shrink it too much, or the pipboy skin won’t work for it…
The shield being airtight doesn’t limit its’ usage in space, it makes it useful in space.
It has a time limit until the air inside goes stale. Extra air like a SCUBA rig would be a big help.
Which she 100% knows how to use. Although maybe not a full rig. Certainly a smaller emergncey tank would be a smart inclusion in her personal kit. There are all kinds of smaller medical O2 tanks, which can be fitted with regulators and masks (not that Halo needs the mask inside her shield).
A friend of mine uses one to get into and out of buildings (restaurants, offices, hotels, basically everything) , due to his extreme allgery to cigarette smoke particulates, and the way people inconsiderately puff away directly infront of buildings giving us all hits on their second-hand death sticks.
It does indeed. Combined with the flying orb, she has completely free movement. Only needs an air supply. No need for klunky spacesuits
Halo: Yes, I made it. It took a couple of days, but I am standing on the moon! Time to crack the next SCUBA tank. I better check the CO2 scrubber, too.
She kept up with Max without effort. It might not even take a day. Still, Sydney might do it just to do it.
I wonder if Sydney’s shield actually has to surround her. If not, she can maybe do things like make a shield bubble in front of her when she flies really fast, allowing her to be safe in its wake.
I’m not sure I’d want to be in the turbulent wake of a fast-moving sphere…
That’s what she did when she went for flying lessons with Maxi: she didn’t have a full bubble, just a nose-cone
Actually, I AM disappointed by it being offscreen. Yes, I’d deduced the solution, but I still wanted to see it put into practice, not just the end result. Death Tolls’ reactions would have been amusing.
If they actually get away, I’d be interested to see if Death Tolls learns a way to deal with that. A Nemesis Power that you can CONTROL could actually be a very, VERY dangerous power. Yes, if it is ONLY usable when someone attacks you, it’s kinda eh, but if he can extend it to “keep this Nemesis running, and use it on other people around me too”… that’ll be nasty.
Glad to see you here Ryk.
I’ve been here for a while, just not commenting. :)
I think a simple panel where ArcSWAT makes a group pose with Death Toll sweating in response would’ve been sufficient.
My biggest issue isn’t even the fact the action happened off page, but that there was no transition from last page to this one. Until I read the description, I actually thought a page was missing. So, yeah, I like the page, but I’m also disappointed as well.
Well now that we know that it’s air tight can she put it on others in a smaller form?
Not until she upgrades her skill-wheel to allow her to form the bubble without her being inside
Peggy can propably stop this escape by shooting opal in the hand/foot/other non-dangerous but distracting area when hit.
Wich of course means they first have to take down that rock barrier for her.
With that gun? There is no ‘non-dangerous but distracting area when hit’
As Peggy is rocking .50 BMG that rock barrier better be damn thick to be of much use. It can of course obscure Opal making it hard to get a clean hit, but the debris from a few .50 slugs punching through that barrier should be enough to distract or possibly even kill her.
Even without that barrier there’s not much you can do with a .50 BMG sniper that could be considered non lethal. Sure you could try for the legs or a hand, but IF you made it it would mean what you hit ceased to exist, and having a hand or foot blown off could still kill Opal.
So if Peggy is told to take her out, then Max or her superiors will have decided that Opal has to die and Peggy is going to aim for a center of body shoot.
Then there is of course the possibility that Opal actually has a super power category defense, and then a direct hit from a .50 BMG could be anything from life threatening to an annoyance.
Actually a gun of that caliber would shoot right through those ‘protective’ rocks
Interesting effect of the .50 BMG: when it hits living things, or even parts of living things, they tend to explode – it’s messy (think shotgun slug hitting a watermelon), and generally doesn’t leave a lot of slack for survival.
Peggy taking the shot against somebody trying to escape, that hasn’t taken any offensive actions… it might be legally defensible (she was in a supporting and coordinating role, and was thus a legal target), but does fall in a fairly dark grey zone, morally
The effect you mentioned is called a ‘hyperbaric shockwave’, and it’s caused by the stuff (like flesh) being suddenly–nearly instantaneously–by a 200gr bullet having limited expansion room because of the other stuff all around it. Because the shockwave travels ahead of the bullet, it extends the wound track as well as widening it. All bullets do this, but big rounds like Peggy’s .50BMG have a particularly severe effect, turning even the slightest grazes into major lacerations and soft-tissue hits into bone-shattering amputations. That said, if I were going up against supers, a Barrett would be my daily driver.
I just couldn’t resist a bit of pedantry.
+1
Geez. If anyone read the Worm web serial, you know what a Stranger-type power is. So far Maxima’s team is showing themselves to be extremely vulnerable to anything the likes of Nice Guy, Grey Boy, hell even Imp would make short work of a lot of these people.
And how long until they find an S-class threat that can’t be fought?
Grey Boy isn’t stranger. I don’t think he has any stranger abilities at all. Of course he would wipe the entire team in short order, but so would a lot of other worm peeps. Eidolon, Shatterbird, Crawler, Bonesaw, Sleeper, Sion, String Theory, Doormaker, Contessa, The Custodian, Skitter, Lung if he was pumped, the Faerie Queen, Panacea, Dragon, Defiant, Siberian, Noelle etc. Okay, actually some would have trouble wiping the team, but they could inflict horrific damage.
While Max and co attack, Harem should port onto FWTDT and ride to the destination. Forward recon. Having said that, I am betting heavily that it is Sydney that ends up riding him to the backup lair. (No porter worth their salt goes directly to the main lair…)
The fact Opal needs to ‘lock on’ implies there will be so stowaway/hitchhikers
“Worth her salt” is kinda questionable. This wasn’t a very organized assault. These people seemed more a quickly-gathered mob with some sub-groups that know each other.
I don’t think the shield can be air tight or sid would have been in worst shape before now. Most likely it dose clean the air just not fast enough for sid assuming the orbs are alien tech/magic perhaps they were made for someone who burned air slower and perhaps had more hands? I have a bad feeling they are going to get away. David may be putting off the containment issue for now.
Lest we forget, this whole kerfuffle can’t have been going on for longer than a couple minutes total
Around 8 minutes +/- 45 seconds by my count. Several guesses though.
Note: I did not take into account this page yet, nor the off page Death Toll defeat (that one will be a wild guess by sure).
Going by one guy’s calculation’s of how long it take for CO2 to reach a level for those hypercapnia to kick in to kick in 45 minute to an hour and a half depending how physically active she was.
I did say portal girl was the most dangerous and deadly of the bunch…if her portals are two way especially. She has sense superpowers or people reading/range skills or minor mind reading if she can “Lock” on to folks too. Even if her portals get smaller the farther they take or bring something, imagine a small two way portal in say the photosphere of the sun opening at a mm in front of a hero…zorch won’t cover it.
I think this is where Sydney still loopy uses the Lighthook in the implied Hentai-cle way we all expect or to YOINK people back out of the portals, that or she uses her Comm ball to walk through and see what’s on the other side and where it is…
Tosser/ChiaPetman ‘ Hah Dodge Area Effect!’ (actual game quote from fighting a dodge specialist type speedster) – “I can both ‘pitch and catch’ at the same time, your attacks are useless.” // Sydney raises an eyebrow at that “loaded statement” (google it at yer own risk) // “Oh yeah? So this would be your thing?” — He gets a goose he’ll never forget and will make him popular in prison…
No one escapes.
Then either there are a lot more supers than government scientists figured, someone is making them, oooor this is gonna be a slightly less amusing comic fight wise with such a high percentage of the earth’s supers being mopped up in the first fight…. I mean it still leaves aliens, alien tech, experimental mad scientist stuff from earth, forgotten elder gods, hidden intraterrestrial hollow earth beings, demons/spirit/possessed, artifact possessed, Kaiju and natural disasters among others to fight but it just wouldn’t be the same without some good old fashion super’s to lock horns with now and again.
And don’t forget ninjas….
Or the pirates!
All I can say is:
“Annnddd DEATH TROLL IS DOWN!”
Is that all you can say or just all you’re willing to say?
=OP