Grrl Power #254 – Sydney’s auditing a class at Acme Looniversity
Since the noise Sydney is making is hard to spell, I’ve included an .MP3 of it. The original tongue sound effect was achieved by someone wetting their finger, then popping it out of a bottle, then looping it, so it’s questionable how accurate Sydney’s imitation of it is. Harem has a lot more life experience under her belt than you’d expect for a nineteen year old, but that’s to be expected when you can do two or more things at once from the age of… I don’t recall when I said she first got her powers, I think seven? Anyway, she’s read way more books, had more part time jobs, and definitely watched more TV than almost anyone on the team, (except probably Dabbler or Zeph.) The point being, despite only being nineteen, she knows full well what Sydney is imitating. She just hasn’t quite figured out why. Not that anyone under 20 automatically wouldn’t, but the younger you are, the less chance there is that Lo0ney Tunes was a staple of your childhood. Heck, there are people reading the comic who will be graduating high school this year or next who weren’t even born when Space Jam came out. Yeah, I just made a bunch of people feel old. Myself included.
Anyway, realizing this while I was writing the page, for a split second I considered explaining the joke (for Harem’s benefit), cause as we all know, jokes are funnier when someone explains them to you. Actually, I think some jokes can be funnier when explained, but that’s everything to do with delivery.
You can see a hint of Anvil’s undies on this page, which is intentional but not necessarily intended to be lascivious. It’s more like, there are things that superheroines would have to deal with that superheroes wouldn’t as much (besides being thrown by your hair), for instance, if you’re dragged in to a super throw down when you’re wearing a skirt, there’s a pretty good chance a photo of your panties will wind up online or in a tabloid. Sure, Captain America could get his uniform torn down to just his tighty whities, but it’s much more likely to happen if you’re wearing something flimsy or revealing to begin with. Not that Anvil’s outfit was really revealing at all, but it wasn’t made of kevlar either. I’m setting up for scenes later on where the gals sit around at lunch and commiserate about such things. Of course, drawing Anvil in a battle damaged dress isn’t the worst part of my day or anything, I just don’t want to be too gratuitous about it. :)
Last comic I said that this page was the second half of a double page, which then got rewritten as a double. Here’s the original, which ended with Sydney tricking Vehemence into punching Anvil. It’s not… bad, especially if you imagine it as the second half of the previous page. I like the rebound line, but it sort of felt like it was missing a few panels that explicitly showed Sydney grabbing Anvil and yanking her in front of the punch. The challenge with sequential art is figuring out what you need to show and what you can assume the reader will be able to infer. That’s 101, 102 is concerning yourself with pacing on top of all the 101 stuff. You’d think during action you could cut out more to quicken the pacing, but then OnePunch Man releases an entire chapter that’s just the camera spinning around a character while someone jumps from tree to tree in the background.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey. I’ll make a permanent link for those somewhere on the page eventually.
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I love the flying crashing destroying that Sydney makes Anvil do and I so did not miss the irony that she not only dropped an anvil on someones head but made a road runner noise just to emphasize that. I laughed to hard I couldn’t breath. I do hope that actually did something because how fun wiht it be if he shook it off?
A friend of mine had a t-shirt that I absolutely loved. It had a picture of Wile E. Coyote * throttling the Road Runner. With the speech bubble reading “Beep beep now you f#@&er”.
Far preferring the noble predator, to the foul bird, I felt if a fitting end for the latter. Of course, if the Road Runner had been as cute as Sydney’s impersonation, that would have been another matter.
Apologies if this duplicates any previous comment. Have been rather too tied up to keep up to date with them.
* Genius, by profession
Sounds like a bit of nepotism there, preferring the closer relative. =OD
Woof!
OH MY GOD
It just clicked.
Sydney is making Roadrunner noises… because she dropped an Anvil on him.
Dave, that’s genius.
Nice catch! That went right over my head.
Well that and her meds are probably wearing off.
Plus a lack of food.
….. Well now I’m just humiliated I didn’t get that.
It IS genius, though. Hats off to you, sir.
Don’t worry you weren’t the only person sloe to get it:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2498
Vote Incentive is flat colored– get to voting though, ranking has been falling steadily this week.
We need 75 votes to get back to 2nd place.
Nice teamwork, Scoville! She’s certainly acquitted herself admirably for an amateur.
Hell she’s doing better than some of the professionals.
I just realised something, a classic thing to happen to objects like Sydney’s orbs (floating objects basically) is to be grabbed and thrown or hit far away, but as we’ve seen earlier Sydney can only travel so far away from them and not even Maxima can move the when they’re at their limit and Sydney doesn’t move. That’s their biggest weakness totally gone and I hope some Gillian tries to throw them away sometime in the future
What I like best about this episode is that it nicely illustrates exactly how Sydney’s ‘confusion fu’ works: Everyone else is thinking strength vs. weakness, tactics, etc. Sydney’s thinking Loony Toons. Her methods may not always get results (see: Dabbler, Math), but when they do they come out of left field precisely because she’s on a different wavelength than everyone else.
Yep. Sydney always expects ninjas & knows that no one expects badgers.
Badgers. Apparently terrifying.
or the spanish inquisition
The Roadrunner is my ringtone. This made me snort with laughter.
You know those times when Wile E. Coyote would draw a tunnel on a mountain, only for the Road Runner to go into it like it’s an actual tunnel, then W.E.C. tries to chase and smacks into it like a painted rock face? That’d be an interesting way for Halo (telepresence orb) or Dabbler (hologram shenanigans) to deal with a speedster.
don’t give him more ideas he’s already admitted to having to throw some away because he has to many and that one has been done enough.
Wow, five pages of comments. And with something like 5,000 comments on each page, I really don’t have the time to read them. So I’ll just say, and at great risk of repeating something which has been talked to death already, that this has got to be the longest Lighthook we have seen so far, and by far.
I’m a bit confused at the whole “I weigh as much as the space shuttle” thing, because if V can actually lift that much it shouldn’t be as painful as his reaction seems to indicate. Sure, I can dead lift a few hundred pounds, and having a few hundred pounds land on my foot would hurt me a lot. But I’m also not armored to the extent that rocks shatter to dust when they hit me, and V wasn’t doing anything at all close to a dead lift with that uppercut.
The thing is, your strength and toughness is more or less constant at any given time. You don’t augment them with super-powers that make you stronger them more you boost.
Stalwart stepwise [i]increased[/i] his density to the point where he could over come Vehmance’s relative invulnerability, then used that to estimate the mass multiplier he needed to pin Vehmance down. However, Vehmance demonstrated that he could muster [i]yet more[/i] force.
Whatever is Vehmance’s power set, he’s really enjoys using it. Maybe it’s “The bigger I grin, the more I bulk up! You won’t like me when I’m this happy.” Or maybe he’s just really glad to finally be able to cut loose and pump up his power.
Kind of an “anti-Hulk”?
All right. Who heard the actual road runner raspberry in that last panel? (Raises hand)
Those two were part of my childhood. That noise is embedded so deep in my brain, I will never forget it. I have to constantly re-read basic math, science, grammar and history but I can reel off a blow-by-blow account of any Roadrunner cartoon sequence given a hint to start.
Maybe vehemence’s power is the ability to counter any power that knows, (which would explain why he was watching the battle) so he couldn’t counter the weight until he knew how much it was.
Or not. He was just being sardonic.
Nah. Otherwise Sydney’s shield could not stop him. So far the only super powers he has demonstrated are strength and toughness. The speed Sydney commented on could just be training.
One interesting thing about speed, one of the factors involved in how fast a person can move is the strength of the muscles involved. When running the speed is mostly caused by how fast the muscles used can expand and contract,and the strength of which they can have you moved forwards.
That is why many people with super strength are sometimes super fast.
Superman’s original base powers (strength, speed, and toughness) were all able to be explained away by his body having a very high muscle density as a result of comming from a super heavy world. (flight evolved in the comic from him being able to jump extremly high. That was caused by strong muscles involved in jumping)
you realize that foot stomp is right out of the movie, “Kung Fu Hustle” The old foot stomp attack…
If Vehemence does the toad-style headbutt against Maxima I will seriously lose it.
it is clear her power’s drawback is debilitating brain damage/alteration. the orbs bound to her and in so doing made a place for themselves in her brain…none too carefully of course
You think she wasn’t always like this? Nah, dude, that’s the oxygen deprivation. As someone who experiences it regularly due to medical issues, I can say from experience that it’s kinda like being drunk. Suddenly stupid ideas seem AWESOME, and your mind/mouth filter breaks down, not that Sydney had a good one to begin with.
It’s such a shame that Wile E. Coyote is only remembered for his obsession with chasing down the roadrunner when he should be remembered for his fanstatic talent in painting realistic still life tunnel scenes.
which often end up being single use wormholes
Nuh-uh. Ex: Roadrunner goes into tunnel, Wyle E. Starts to but truck comes out –running him over. That’s two use my friend. ;)
Then again, one would think that a supposed “super genius” as he billed himself to be would figure that selling those paintings would probably earn him enough to pay someone else to catch roadrunners for him.
For that matter, “If only Acme sold non-birdseed foods, amirite?”
Or if W.E.C simply used all the money he’s been spending on rocket skates and spring loaded boulder throwers and just went to a grocery store and bought a few roasting chickens?
But over-thought and impractical conclusions are pretty much the hallmark of a “super genius.”
All I can think of is a song by Tom Smith called ‘Operation Desert Storm’ which is about the Roadrunner and Wily E. Coyote. One of the lines was ‘I could buy General Mills with what I spend on parts’. Another was ‘My line of credit with Acme is ten years past due’.
To be honest, I get the noise Sydney’s making, but like Harem I don’t understand why she’s making it. The Roadrunner didn’t have much to do with dropping anvils on Wile E. He did it to himself by accident, sure, but as far as I know, Roadrunner was never the cause.
Let me try this again…
But it’s quite fitting that he did throw Anvil straight up, and now she’s coming back down again… OK, she got a bit of help with the down part, which he didn’t expect, but I think it’s still close enough to rate a meep meep…
You know, the ironic thing about that cartoon is that in reality coyotes are much, much faster than roadrunners. A regular old human is about equal with a roadrunner.
But it’s quite fitting that he did throw Anvil straight up, and now she’s coming back down again… OK, she got a bit of help with the down part, which he didn’t expect, but I think it’s still close enough to rate a meep meep…
And that was supposed to have been a reply to Whomever just above…
Sorry for the confusion.
For the trivia hungry, there IS an episode where WB apparently responded to a deluge of letters regarding the audience’s frustration with the Roadrunner’s Marty Sue status, and actually LET the Coyote catch the Roadrunner, but they couldn’t just let Wile E. Coyote eat him, that would be the end of the show. So what do they do?
They have the Coyote chase the Roadrunner through a pipe, the pipe gets smaller and smaller until both are smaller than an insect. Wile E. actually notices this and points it out to the Roadrunner. They then run backwards through the same pipe. The Roadrunner returns to normal size while Wile E. remains insect sized. Wile E. then actually CATCHES the Roadrunner when the Roadrunner stops to consider the situation. Wile E. looks up, the Roadrunner “meeps” once in a very deep and ominous tone. Wile E. then holds two signs up to the audience. “Well you wanted me to catch him.” and “Now what do I do with him?” The episode ends at that point, unresolved.
I was shocked that nobody had put a link to this comic on TVTropes’ entry for yet, so I took care of that.
Apparently I wasn’t paying attention to my tags well enough. The Anvil on Head page. Blargh.
Considering this page, that’s one hell of a strong shield that Sydney has. Maxima would still have been pulling her punches out of not wanting to kill Sydney if the shield did break, but I doubt this guy is and it still held
Both Maxima’s strength and Halo’s shield get a five-star-rating on the cast sheet, so it is possible that Maxima couldn’t break it at full strength. Considering what may happen I doubt she will ever try.
I kinda wish Dave had one of those “ask” tumblrs where the characters themselves interact with the audience just so Anvil could find out how many people now have a crush on her :P
Lots of people try to have a crush on her. It doesn’t work; She just absorbs the kinetic energy.
:p
According to the current page she has a crush on Vehemence…. ;)
OOOH! its a reverse fastball special!!!!!!!
Was just catching up on my GrrlPower reading (been sick for a week or so and didn’t even want to get online…really *REALLY* sick), and I thought I was going to bust a gut when I read this. Sidney and her Road Runner impersonation killed me. Of course, I didn’t get the rest of the joke til about 20 minutes later (ironically, I was actually standing in front of the fridge getting a coke when it hit me) and I immediately had to log back on. I was laughing so hard at that point that I had to get my wife and have her read it…she’s not a comic book fan, but she loved Looney Tunes when she was a kid…she gave me the ‘dumb hubby’ look, but then when I explained that the redhead’s name was “Anvil” she lost it! :)
Fantastic job Dave, both with the jokes and with the comic in general! GrrlPower is at the very top of my ‘F5’ list of webcomics, and with good reason! :)
ACK! Forgot to close the link!! SORRY!
That was supposed to read standing *in front of the fridge*
Hah that’s great!
My my, Anvil wears some racy lacies, doesn’t she?
He should have given his weight in tanks, not space shuttles…
Dropping an Anvil…genius LOL
I personally don’t think you need to add too many gags per page, adding “Toasty” is funny, but maybe a bit too cluttered back on that page….
So, wait. Is stalwart’a “secret power” the ability to change his weight?
I don’t know what Sydney’s doing either. Could someone please explain?
Am I the only person who love Anvil more the Dabbler’s battle/human form more.. I mean.. my god she is a buff Amazon but looks look lovey in her outfits. …. But man that lace dose her more anyways. I love this comic and its fun to read over and over again.
The whole shuttle? Or just the orbiter? With or without payload?
How does not one speak of Roadrunner?
Is simple yes of conversations so good?
Meep Meep!