Grrl Power #259 – Dirty pool
I told you Maxima fights dirty. This is a maneuver her and Peggy had oft talked about but were never able to employ until now. In the previous page, Max and Vehemence were parallel to the street outside the restaurant, this page starts off with Max having her back to the strip mall. Imagine her pacing around Vehemence while they talk until Peggy gets them lined up and calls it in Max’s ear. It’s another thing I would have liked to have drawn into the page, but since this isn’t a manga and I’m not putting out 12 pages a week, it was a nice little moment of pacing I needed to cut.
Something else I decided to cut was the exchange that wound up with Concretia on the roof there behind Peggy. I’ll just say it involved a claymore and leave it at that.
Firing the Barrett on top of that air conditioner would be SO loud. It would be the loudener. The glass muffler of gun accessories.
I found a cool looking kickstarter that may be too late to save, but might be worth checking out if you like quirky RTS games. The elevator pitch is Robot Apocalypse vs. Cthulhu Apocalypse. Humans are the resources. The machines need ’em for oil, the Lovecraftian horrors need their souls. It’s called Human Resources (get it?) and has a decent pedigree of developers behind it. They need a cavalcade of support to make their goal at this point, but who knows, if they get a big boost today, then tomorrow maybe they get some gaming press which keeps them going for the big final push. If nothing else, their pitch video is pretty amusing so check that out at least. Edit: Welp, looks like Human Resources has pulled the plug. Their projection models weren’t showing anything promising and it was costing them time and money to run the kickstarter, which personally I find worrying since I’ll be running my own for the book in… a few… look, my ability to project the length of my story arcs is clearly something of a stat dump for me, but anyway a kickstarter is… in my future at some point.
I wish I had more time for games. I somehow managed to finish next week’s pages a day early so I indulged a little and got Injustice: Gods Among Us on steam and played through the single player campaign. I’m much more of a Street Fighter guy than a Mortal Kombat guy but it was fun enough, and the story was good, but it did have the problem of Joker getting punched through a stone wall then getting ground up by a mining machine and it only takes off 1/4 of his health bar. That’s the big problem with superhero fighting games (not that there are a lot of them unfortunately) but if it takes 1/4 of Superman’s health bar off, then when Harley Quinn gets hit by the same thing, there shouldn’t even be a molecule of her remaining. I know they had those super pills in the story, but the mining machine thing happened to Joker before he ever got his hands on them. If I made a superhero fighting game, I’d break the characters into tiers, and you wouldn’t be able to fight cross tier, or if you picked a lower tier, then it’d automatically become a team battle, like four vs one or something.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome which I can’t live without anymore, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
—> So I finally took some time and put together a support widget over on the side so I don’t have to pimp myself in the comment all the time. I’ll be able to dive into my vault of gold coins a la Scrooge McDuck soon!
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No dental cavities and perfect body = are you a supervillain or superhero??
I mean, it’s like in the days of those spanish cheap things where the hero wears a tiny mask to the face… and definitely not costume change like zorro…
Well all super powered beings in this universe have a ‘perfect’ body, not just the good guys
That and the two teeth missing were due to heavy hits. Last panel, that’s one of his teeth flying.
Oops, looked like a tooth for a second. My bad. It’s bleeding from his eye.
I hate myself. Bleeding eye AND tooth (the tooth is above the tagline at the bottom). Sometimes I wish we had a five minute redaction period for our comments.
He lost his first tooth on page 254, when Stalwart punched him in the face.
But it looks like he jsut lost 1-2 more to maximas attack just now.
From the looks of it V has lost 3 teeth (upper canine, bicuspid, lower canine) , has major damage to the eye, and from the look of the impact point where Max hit him also has a shattered cheekbone.
Sydney is going to have to loan him her eyepatch.
I don’t think it will fit; the band is too small. Besides, the doctor has lots more of them.
Well, the doctor will probably bandage him and the band is elastic, so I don’t see why she couldn’t give it to him during a visit to his prison cell.
Max has spectacular spatial awareness to know exactly where to put her hand to have it in Peggy’s scope like that. I likey. Teamwork fantastic!
Also, that’s gotta hurt.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE that Max and Peggy have “resorted” to military fighting tactics in this battle – the idea that there is anything like a “fair” fight in a supers battle is ridiculous – reference The Man Of Steel movie where Zod killed however many people because Kal-El didn’t have the stones to take him out after the first murder. It’s ludicrous. Police will open fire when civilians get hurt-the idea that supers won’t incapacitate enemies immediately because of some idiotic idea of “honor” or “chivalry” always seemed counter-intuitive to me. I am SO glad to see that you are not indulging in the stupid, cause the stupid burns. Thanks for the great story and art – you rock
Yeah, honor and chilvary seem things only villains would care about, if you think about it.
chivalry*
That’s got to be sarcasm, right?
Team Defense (which is ultimately what Arc Swat is positioning itself as) have much more to lose than Team Insurgents from making it obvious that fighting to win is about fighting dirty. They should actively EMBRACE the idea that “real supers don’t use guns”. They are public figures, and they aren’t all bulletproof all the time.
Punched him so hard it knocked the bottom border off!
Be ready to dodge the next one…I suspect that V will get hit hard enough to break the 4th WALL next time.
personally, i find the LACK of a border to be jarring to my “sense of disbelief” for flowing with the pace of the scene as it causes me to pause and re-look at the page, and not in a good way either. i think the whole page should have been border-less, or the whole page WITH borders, not like it is with “just” one panel of the ten, it’s very distracting…
Looks like Vehemence needs both dental work and an eyepatch now.
A .50BMG weapon doesn’t have to be the loudest thing in the area, there are supressors which work for that calibre.
For example a bolt-action rifle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OGbfyYOCRk and a supressed M2 Browing HMG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iK502zQ8rs&t=0m48s which seems utterly bizarre, but it’s real.
While they can be suppressed, it’s nowhere near silent. It’s still usually the loudest thing in an area. Listen to the echo for a better idea of what the people on the other end will hear. The suppressor on this class of weapon is more to make it less painful to fire. The sound and overpressure are quite severe, especially if you need to shoot it from a room or partially enclosed space. If I remember correctly the DB measurement of a 50. was something like being 3′ away from a jet engine for 1 second.
I’m not so sure about that, the first link shows the operator doesn’t seem to even need earplugs (or any other hearing protection) when firing his supressed 50BMG rifle.
The main reason why a supressor a 50 cal is normaly considered a waste of time is simply because the supersonic “crack” of the bullet betrays the firer’s position, rather than the “bang” of firing the round off.
This applies to all supersonic rounds and why very well supressed weapons (such as an H&K MP5SD) bleed off gasses into the supressor cannister via perforations in the barrel to reduce the muzzle velocity to below the speed of sound.
A correction and a nitpick:
1. Suppressed supersonic rounds can be very, very useful. Because of the lack of muzzle blast, most downrange people will reverse their expected position of the shooter by 180 degrees. This is because the whipcrack is longest as the bullet passes, making it seem like the shooter is behind them.
2. The MP5SD is a fairly unique design that tries to guarantee reliable, silent operation. The same thing is accomplished in all other suppressors by simply using subsonic ammunition in the first place, instead of having the gun intentionally slow the bullet. The only problem I’ve encountered with normal suppressors, and what I expect the MP5SD was designed to mitigate, is that subsonic ammunition isn’t always powerful enough to reliably cycle the action of the weapon. Bolt-action doesn’t suffer this.
First off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressor
According to this, the MP5SD’s design achieves its performance as a silenced weapon primarily through the type of ammunition it uses: the 9mm round has an extremely low muzzle velocity, and can be brought down to sub-sonic by almost any sound suppressor. Apparently, most factory-made rounds will work in any 9m weapon with a silencer just fine, without a sonic boom. The MP5D does this much better than most, but almost any silencer 9mm weapon can accomplish this.
Additionally, the MP5SD is NOT the only weapon to lower the velocity of the round being used (although I could not find out which others do this, I do know that at least one Italian gun does the same thing).
Finally, it is conceivable that one could use something like a sabot, or a very carefully designed heavier round, to work as a silenced round even at super-sonic velocities–all you’d really need to do would be to have a round that was sufficiently smooth so as to not create the shockwave known as the sonic boom. This has been proven to work with aircraft, as with the Shaped Sonic Boom experiments by NASA, but I doubt anybody has applied the same concept to bullets.
Muzzle velocity is determined by load and maximum specs that a weapon is expected to handle for a given caliber. I fear that we’re going to start circling subjective, relative terms very quickly here. At any rate, I wouldn’t say that “average” 9mm loads are particularly slow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9%C3%9719mm_Parabellum
Your second statement, that any suppressor will slow 9mm to subsonic, is not generally true. It’s conceivable to craft an argument centered on a borderline round but this is pedantry.
To offer a personal anecdote – I have shot 10 or so different calibers of silenced weapons. None of these started with what would normally be a supersonic round and ended with a suppressed subsonic shot going out.
True dat. A 50cal high-powered rifle fired from inside a room (even from inside one of the booths on the firing range) needs not just hearing protection, but also a heavily padded coverall and coat, unless you like all-over-your-body bruises.
Actually, unless your target is supernaturally tough like V, if you hit someone with a .50 BMG, they won’t hear anything, because they’ll be dead. Even a near miss is sometimes fatal (but not always instantly fatal).
Now, any of their allies that might still be in the area, they would hear the report of the weapon (suppressor or not). And if they’re smart, they’ll run away and hide. There is nothing a normal human could wear that will stop a .50 BMG. They will punch right through a thick masonry wall at 1500 meters and still kill someone standing behind it (if the bullet doesn’t get them, the spalling of the masonry will.) I’ve seen videos of shooters putting holes in a 50-kilogram (110 pounds) cast iron manhole cover at range.
Things that will stop a .50 BMG: An M1A2 Abrams tank, a Russian T-90 tank, six feet of steel-reinforced concrete, or a human wall standing 10-15 people deep will all do the trick. I don’t think many people have the strength to strap an entire tank to their chest.
However, your comment about the sound and the overpressure are quite accurate. You *really* want to be wearing ear protection when firing one, unless you feel that partial deafness will enhance your sex appeal. (Yes, I have had the opportunity to fire one, despite being a former Air Force jockey and not an Army sniper.)
I think part of the point Dave was making was that the firing it while it was on top of the air conditioner was going to amplify the noise like crazy.
“Looks like Vehemence needs both dental work and an eyepatch now.”
Yeah…At least V isn’t complaining about how much time he’ll need to spend in a dentist’s chair, like The Ringer did in the Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man # 58 issue. That dude was a real whiner, the whole issue.
Wait, what happened to the tear in the left knee of his pants?
You can’t see it since its hidden behind his right knee.
I actually forgot it, but thanks for the cover. :)
Shouldn’t that be more like, “Thanks for telling me to *uncover* his knee?”
:P
As glad I would be if Human Resources would get to be a thing I am sad to inform you that Uber, the game studio behind HR recently had it’s bit of kerfuffle with their recent game Planetary Annihilation, a spiritual successor to the Total Annihilation RTS.
They promised things they couldn’t held and seem to have stopped developing on it, obviously enough they already had all the money of the backers, mine included so I may be a bit biased. And now they want to start a new game without even finish their previous one? I think and hope this wont be successful as I am not fond of supporting such behavior in the gaming industry, it feels like I got scammed of a great game which was promised to me :(
I think I need more detail. According to this, Planetary Annihilation is launched. Are you saying they didn’t meet some of their stated basic or stretch goals?
I remember seeing it on steam too
As most video game developers have proven over the years. It’s possible to release a game that needs patches. What Moep seems to be saying is that the company refuses to make any more patches for a bugged out game that is being sold now. And is instead focusing on creating a new one.
No Uber couldn’t get the funding on Kickstarter, and closed it down, they just did a poor advertising for the kickstarter and it was only based on word of mouth.
Just a case of bad PR.
Again, I have to ask for clarification, because according to Kickstarter, Planetary Annihilation was successfully funded to the stated limits of its stretch goals: Planetary Annihilation
And the date for Human Resources has not been reached – is it a restart? I didn’t know those were allowed.
On the other hand, virtually no game in existence meets its original target date or the original target dates for its expansion packs, so if that’s what people are talking about I get it.
Uber got the funding for PA on Kickstarter, hit a whole bunch of stretch goals, released the game end of August, AND have been releasing updates about once a fortnight…
Also, the HR announcements claimed that the PA devs are still working on PA, with an almost completely seperate team working on HR.
As someone that did NOT get in on the ground floor with PA so to speak, but a HUGE fan of TA, Supcom1 and despised Supcom2 I feel this is a classic case of lack of perspective on the side of the detractors of PA. The entitlement many backers of kickstarters feel (spiced with a pinch of buyers remorse) has skewed what many of them feel they are owed or what they interpreted the strech goals to mean or WHEN these things were owed them.
When I got the game off steam is was a highly polished multi-player and single-player experience far superior to that of Supcom2 and an extremely worthy successor to both TA and Supcom1. The single player content I found *extremely* re-playable and stupidly challenging while the multiplayer had both co-op comp stomp and versus with technically infinite maps (procedurally generated) and an active community. In fact soon after I got the game a much anticipated (and promised) offline mode was introduced into the game.
With the announcement of HR I was super duper excited because what I have seen and experienced from PA meant that this game could have been a truly stunning piece of gaming history in the making. What I saw form the outside was the team promising something and then delivering it. I was quite surprised at the venom spit by the PA community and the distrust they had for their developers.
I would argue that my view of the situation is in many ways a lot more accurate and ‘pure’ for the specific reason that I knew about PA from the kickstarter, skipped all the drama from the development stages (I have been part of this in other games so I know) and found the finished game having delivered everything I remember they promised during the kickstarter and then some.
So yea I r sad panda at no HR :(
uh… there already was one of those. it’s Called Supreme Commander.
Regarding the Air conditioner: Peggy wouldn’t be using it as a firing platform if it were running as even a small vibration would play havoc with her sights. BTW, what’s that white thingy peeking out from under Max’s shirt on her left side? This is the second time I’ve noticed it. Comm gear?
It is her gun.
The holster for her hand cannon. There is artwork of it on Dave’s Deviant Art site.
I know it is her holster, but I really wonder what kind of hammerspace that has as it is so much shorter than the gun. I have thought of this before but keep failing to ask. I mean that gun is huge, but the holster can’t be more than what 4″ long. The muzzle on her gun should be below her belt by a few inches at least.
Judging by Dave’s art, the grip is right up in her under arm. Pinching and poking. Can we call it a perspective issue? I’m not as tall as Max and a shoulder holster for a revolver with a 12″ barrel nestled comfortably by my upper ribs extended to just short of my belt.
I am 6’2″ and from armpit to belt is only 10″ on me. Even the old shoulder holster I wore years ago with a medium frame auto came to my belt.
Yeah I’ve been thinking about that too and her pistol is ridiculously large for only that little bit to be sticking out now. The problem is it’s in about 30 panels now, othewise I’d remove it entirely from the restaurant on.
Kinda makes me wish I had either said something sooner or just stayed quiet. :-/ Sorry Dave.
Most rooftop HVAC units have an electrical disconnect on their exterior, shutting it down would only require flipping a switch.
Not even a switch – the equivalent of a copper bar or rod attached to a handle in a fuse clip – just pull it out and toss aside.
Unrelated to today’s comic, the Sydney quote on the Patreon ad is outstanding. So relatively few other people have ever even heard of that movie, much less actually seen it. Well done, sir.
It was Airplane before Airplane was a movie. I meant to have Sydney say it during the press conference but I never managed to fit it in.
If you can manage to fit in a “Big Jim Slade” reference, you will forever be my hero.
Keep knocking his teeth out and maybe he will be embarrassed into withdrawing or surrendering.
Hmm, I wonder if his teeth are the source of his power lol. As long as he has teeth, he can fight?
If that’s true, Max is going to go at him with some pliers. She is really pissed.
Then again, she might think pliers too slow and just grab a sledge hammer.
I think her fist is doing better than a sledgehammer; a sledgehammer would break too quickly.
“I’ll just say it involved a claymore and leave it at that.”
I think that’s the best sentence I’ve read this month.
Realistically though, Max should have her pinky out for the hand signal there. Because the Barrett is pretty metal, all things considered.
Having been around enough claymore mines going off in my time I would rather be around the .50 cal going off than in a somewhat enclosed area like Peggy is when one goes off. Makes my ears ring just thinking about it.
Care to expand a bit on the care and feeding of claymores? I’ve had limited experience with them, and it was more than 20 years ago so I don’t remember what the safety range was said to be and so on. I think it was something like 300 or 500 yards over an open field, but the memory is fuzzy.
Unless modern ones are different they have nearly a pound of plastic explosive inside them so they make quite a bang when they go off. Just look at an episode of Mythbusters when they set off a pound of C4 for the usual results of that. The “FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY” side has a bunch of steel BBs that it throws forward and shreds anything within 15 meters and will put the hurt on anything up to 50 meters. What video games and movies don’t show though is that they have a blast zone around them because of all that explosive. We would try to keep them at least 5 meters away though I once had my steel pot dented by a chunk of one because I didn’t duck enough into my hole.
So in the comic it looks like the claymore went off right around the corner from Peggy. While there is a decent structure there that would stop or deflect the main blast the sound would get reflected around all those concrete walls. She probably has hearing protection in but something like that you can actually “hear” through your bones.
the design hasn’t changed, and won’t until they come up with a better explosive
it’s like with mamma (the M2HB) you just don’t mess with perfection.
Well…I think Vehemence just had the…
*puts on sunglasses*
…favor SPUN against him.
…and then he got punched in the face.
Playing dirty? Nah.. I’d call it.. ‘Efficient’
But I can only imagine how a bullet in the eye feels. Ouchie!
Well, yeah, that makes sense. We can only *imagine* what it might be like, because if we ever *actually* felt it even once…
when fighting and in war if you aren’t cheating you aren’t trying hard enough.
Another Mercenary Maxima I think. You ought to drop it off at Schlock Mercenary.
There is no “Overkill.” There is only “Open Fire” and “I Need to Reload.”
A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head.
There are few things in life as riveting and exhilarating as being shot-at without lethal effect!
A few “military” maxims that fit this scene Quite Well.
“If I have to reload then things have gone to hell.” Favorite quote from “The Good Baron” from the Living Death Campaign in the the former RPGA network. He met his end at the end of the campaign with dignity and a few well placed satchel charges.
Its amazing that for the most part Vehemence (and most of the other villains gathered) ignored Maxim 47.
Don’t expect the enemy to cooperate in the creation of your dream engagement.
Aside from a few instances its been a fairly dreamy engagement for ArcSWAT… which is what happens when the other side shows up expecting you to “cooperate” in their dream engagement.
No plan survives contact with the enemy. Sometimes they don’t even survive contact with your own troops. Witness the first two testosterone queens. At least Max knew this and kept options open.
As I see it, Overkill has far, far better results than Underkill…
It’s only cheating if there’s evidence left over afterwards and someone is alive to tell the truth.
Only the winner gets to write his biography.
Otherwise, history books might make some strange turns.
+2
I prefer to think of it as fighting sensibly.
that’s cheating. I approve
Cheating is ABOUT winning, so yes.
Forgot who said this quote, but it’s from The Dresden Files: “A fair fight in a one on one duel only gives me a 50% chance of winning. I don’t like those odds…”
sounds like Harry.
Okay two things: Panel five – The Face! XD
Last panel: Flying tooth. Thank you for adding such a nice detail =)
ANOTHER TEAM COMBO!! I know there are more kinds of teamwork than this but for me this sort of thing really drives home the feeling of them as an actual team instead of a line up of super buddies or something. This just fills me with huge levels of happy joy! ^0^
If Vehemence gets through this with another chance to act I would be worried that he will see this as some kind of “betrayal” of the little Duel Between Honorable Warriors thing they had going on (He’s the only one who really had a chance to agree with that but we are discussing HIS mindset here) and decides to attack her team in earnest as “punishment” for her calling in help (especially right off the bat like that). I don’t know how fast he really is but if she is all over into armor and strength maybe he can weasel over to someone squishy. A fast armored opponent is the only one who could do the hostage or victim shield thing to Maxima.
I’m not quit sure why DaveB thinks we would mind if he “showed” more of whats happening. Maybe later on yes but right now when we are all happily trying to figure out how the team works and everyone’s abilities etc… I bet almost no one would mind seeing a few more of the conflicts here. Even if most of them were chumps. *shrugs* It still gives great insight into things.
In the strip https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1506 he demanded that they pile on if they wanted to have a chance. So if they double-team or attack him en masse, he really did ask for it.
Yes, that’s how he SHOULD see them seeing it.
I kind of think in his little world he proved to them with his display that they were the extras in this play and should have the sense of theater to bow out once he had earned his audience with Maxima who is his idea of a “real” opponent and the entire reason he is here. He’s seemingly otherwise intelligent but his whole warrior fantasy thing is seriously screwing up his logic in a few key, and potentially lethal, areas…
If his brains aren’t mush now maybe he will see the light with his one good eye and counterattack just as dirty.
Too late for that I think. Every time he tries to get up now Max will hit him with more strength in her punch. If he tries too hard, V will get a lifetime of concussions in one fight. Assuming he lives, that ends his career.
Maybe so. Kinda think he has something else going on or an unusual source for his powers but maybe DaveB wants to get back to what this comic is really for: The moments Between Fighting.
BEHOLD THE AWESOME POWER OF THE BITCH SMACK! THE AWESOME SYMBOL OF CONTEMPT AND SCORN! IT SHALL RING FORTH FRM THE HEAVENS AND LAY DOWN EVEN THE MOST AWEFUL INFIDEL IN IT”S ALL MIGHT WAKE!!!
PRAISE THE GREAT BITCH FOR LENDING MAXIMA THE HORRIFIC ATTACK WHICH BROUGHT THIS BLASPHEMER LOW!
Amen!
What next?
How can we top this?
I KNOW! WITH THE BITE OF A THUMB!
Even better, a little dog saunters up and piddles on his shoe.
Wouldn’t his head be a better choice? I mean if he’s down show absolute contempt right? lol
Only if he’s a Montague.
I like how with the bottom border gone it makes it seem like Maxima is saying “Is it still better? Is it?” as she punches him to oblivion.
Also if Vehemence doesn’t have at least a broken jaw I’m going to be disappointed in Max for holding back.
If you look close, V’s head is vibrating. His brain is rattling around inside his skull like the clapper on a bell.
I’m hazy on the physics, so please correct me, but V’s reaction to the sniper bullet seems overblown. Previous bullets, although of lower caliber, failed to do anything but bounce off. A punch with what we presume to be the weight of several tens of tons behind it didn’t even leave facial bruises (though it did take a tooth). Unless we’ve confirmed that V must be aware of attacks to soak them, it seems like Peggy’s shot should have left him with a lump of lead with an imprint of his cornea on it and little else.
Some back of the envelope calculations making some generous assumptions for the bullet (maximum found slug mass / speed) to the punch (only a portion of reported mass / untrained fighter punch speed) still indicate that the punch would have been something like 3 orders of magnitude more force. Even accounting for a smaller area of impact, that’s a bit…
Part of the reaction is the reflex to pull his head back and close his eyes. Almost all the hard hits have caused V to yell in pain, so he’s not immune to that. The bleeding says something got hit hard enough to break his skin. Whether it’s from the eye itself or the skin around it that would hurt.
Even if it didn’t damage him, it did poke his eye. Most people automaticly move like that if they get poked in the eye
Um…yes, he shrugged off the smaller rounds. However…
The round Peggy fires is a .50 BMG round. This round was designed for a machine built to shoot down planes, and beat out the German-designed 13.2mm TuF round as said machine gun ammunition because the German round, which was only designed to destroy tanks, could not perform to the same level.
I will repeat that, as it’s so bloody ridiculous: the .50 BMG round DELIVERS MORE ENERGY TO ITS TARGET THAN ANTI-TANK RIFLE ROUNDS.
To break down the numbers: the (probably) 9mm rounds being fired at Vehemence earlier delivers about 520 joules of force–enough to instantly accelerate 520 kilograms to moving a bit more than two miles per hour if friction does not get involved. Given the size of the bullet, that’s a hell of a lot of force, and will be sufficient to perforate most humans or near-humans without any real effort.
The .50 BMG, on the other hand, delivers between 14,000 and 18,000 joules of force. How much force is dependent on how far away from the barrel the round is–the longer distance, the greater the force (which is ridiculous on a whole different level, but we’ll get to that). To give you an idea of the force involved, this is about the same amount of energy required to accelerate your pickup truck to 30-35 mph from a standing start, applied instantaneously. It’s about the same amount of energy that Vehemence would take if somebody up and threw a car at him…except that, because it comes so fast, he never has time to block or to brace himself.
Now, remember how I said that the energy delivered went up as you got farther from the barrel? This works exactly opposite how most bullets work. Most bullets will gradually slow down, as the air resistance involved applies more and more force in the opposite direction. Eventually, this becomes so great that, even if the round were able to hit a target, it would not do damage. Most rounds, of course, get pulled to the ground long before that becomes an issue, but for some, such as the 9mm Para, it actually does have a noticeable impact on the range of the weapon.
The .50 BMG round works a little…differently. Well. Actually, what it does is almost the exact opposite–the .50 BMG round will continue to accelerate from the time the round is fired until it actually hits its target. How it does this remains a mystery, as it seems to violate several of the most basic laws of physics, but this occurrence has been repeatedly measured and recorded, and is now accepted as a proven fact. The US Air Force has, in point of fact, devoted a large chunk of its research budget over the course of the last seventy years to figuring out how this happens, and, to the best of my knowledge, has come no closer to an answer…although they have gotten some very good new planes out of that research, including the world’s first supersonic jet fighter.
It remains one of those mysteries of ballistics.
Citation, please.
I did a non-exhaustive search and didn’t come across anything regarding the “magical” properties of the .50 BMG round. Could you link a source? I’m inclined to write it off as hyperbole at least as you describe it. The bullet, as you write, if fired straight up would have its rounds leaving orbit. Were this possible, the space program would be significantly cheaper.
While I appreciate that the rifle is powerful, its rounds really shouldn’t hold a candle to the amount of energy Stalwart punches with, even assuming that he’s an absolute novice, which I assume he is not. Consider for example his introduction, in which he nonchalantly boots a 60 ton tank into the air. I’m not going to attempt to run the numbers, but I’m going to assume that if you shot the sniper rifle at the tank, there would be a loud noise, but the tank wouldn’t move.
Funnily enough the tank kick is way more impressive than his foot stamp or his “weighs as much as a space shuttle” comment.
Military technology always gets a big downgrade in superhero or monster stories. Same with steel and concrete or other symbols of strength. It’s a long-term cross-media Worf Effect.
Anyway, the important thing here is to learn the difference between momentum and energy.
Momentum is your mass times your speed, kinetic energy is the square of the speed times half the mass. Both are conserved but in different ways. Momentum is always visibly conserved on the macro scale while energy may look like it’s gone because you can’t see all the tiny atoms that are now moving faster or the bonds between them that have broken (excluding, perhaps, that ragged rip in your skin where the bullet went through).
For example, a one ton car gently rolling at a mere 0.5 m/s will only have 125 J of energy, but will have 500 kg m/s of momentum (you’re going to be knocked over if unbraced but probably not seriously hurt). A particle beam weighing only a tenth of a milligram at at 500 km/s will have 50 kg m/s of momentum but will have 7500 J of energy (you probably won’t be knocked over but you’ll definitely have a hole in your torso).
As a side note, for the bullet to get to orbit would require a speed of 8Km/s if there was no air resistance, giving an energy of over 1.5 MJ, a hundred times that of a sniper rifle (with air resistance it’s simply impossible, go fast enough and you’re just shooting a hypervelocity plasma jet).
It’s been years since physics I’m afraid, and it was never my specialty. Modifying my back of the envelope calculations with your input … the punch still wins. Not by as much, but the punch is still an order of magnitude stronger. Still, given the small surface area of the bullets point of contact, I will concede that it would have an impact based on facts as presented. Possibly enough even to put out V’s eye.
Yes, I agree that military hardware is often nerfed for fantasy settings. Even in real life it can be difficult to comprehend the destructive potential of modern weapons. I myself have read that some tanks weigh 60 odd tons, but I don’t know that I appreciate the fact. Its hard to appreciate that being mobile.
As for the bullet, I was speaking to the magical projectile “which accelerates until it hits it’s target” without itself having propellant beyond the initial firing as proposed by whlindsa. I may once again have the physics wrong, but assuming that such a thing did exist as well as making a number of other assumptions regarding the properties of that acceleration, as long as the “magical” acceleration was greater than or equal to the acceleration in the opposite direction by gravity, you could toss these magic bullets skyward and they would eventually escape the gravity well.
I was being gracious earlier – .50 (or any other bullet for that matter) doesn’t work like magic. “Citation Needed” was a gentle prod for him to either A stop lying, or B go do some research instead of taking what his drinking buddies have told him as the truth.
the accelerate outside the barrel does happen with other weapons/rounds just to a scale it is not made a deal of 9mm peaks speed inches after the barrel then decelerates just like the 50cal does slow after sufficient distance didn’t note it’s speed peak was farther from the barrel during mil service but didn’t look for that info.
There may be some small effect from muzzle blast that I’ve never seen any information on or heard about, but I am quite certain the measurement would be too minuscule to matter. As soon as a bullet leaves the confines of the barrel (where the expanding gases can act to accelerate it) it is slowing down due to air friction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_velocity
I did mis-state the distance on the small arms it was supposed to be less than an inch
Hmm…
Methinks it’s time for a trip to either The Straight Dope, Snopes, TruthorFiction…
or XKCD: What If?
Personally, I vote for Randall Munroe’s take on it.
Already been done
https://what-if.xkcd.com/21/
And his numbers are bullcrap
You need to learn the difference between force, momentum and energy.
There were bullets described in the novel ” von neuman’s war” which acted as self sustaining ramjets in atmosphere. I usually like the author, but I don’t think it holds up. There was a solid fueled rocket propelled AP round designed for the A10. Iirc it had the same penetration at 1800 m as the standard round at 1200 meters because it maintained its initial velocity at longer range.
First bear in mind the comic uses mostly book physics.
That said:
The bullet is giving him 15KJ (because realistically speaking it isn’t going to transfer a noticeable amount of momentum).
The most the punch will do is accelerate V’s head to around 10m/s with his upper body going a bit slower and little movement on his legs. That’ll only transfer <10KJ (V probably weighs around 400Kg) and over a larger area.
Eyes are soft, and eyelids are thin and fragile. This usually holds true for supers, though things like “soft” and “fragile” become somewhat… relative.
That .50 looks awfully small i think.
It’s a Barrett XM500, which is a bullpup design. Several pounds lighter and a few inches shorter. That said I may have scaled it slightly too much.
I doubt it–Peggy probably had the barrel shortened even more, to fit in with the semi-close quarters nature of the fighting she expects to deal with.
Close-quarters sniping?
Just what she’s doing here. Spit in his eye at less than 100 yards.
That’s some pretty hefty spit there…
The right tool for the job.
If you want Peggy to have a lot of toys…..don’t forget this 25mm sniper rifle by Barret.
Also the .338 LaPua actually puts out more power at a longer range than the .50.
https://www.weaponscache.com/forum/nfa-class-3-title-ii/1917-barretts-xm-109-25mm-sniper-rifle.html
Forgot the link.
I dunno, I buy the size. It’s not like she hit him with something really big, like 20mm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_handgun_and_rifle_cartridges#mediaviewer/File:Rifle_cartridge_comparison.jpg
https://www.hightech-edge.com/wp-content/uploads/50-browning-and-20mm-cannon-rounds.jpg
“If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.” (unattributed)
Alternative takes #’s 1 & 2:
“If you find yourself in a fair fight, you’d better hope the other parts of your plan are calculating the best moments for them to strike.”
“If you find yourself in a fair fight, [and you were losing before] your opponent’s tactics suck.”
Hey! Peggy!
Careful with that thing!
.. you could put someone’s eye out! …
Groan. Groan!
That was so so bad. But its so so accurate, which is what makes it so so bad.
I think if we could zoom in on the gun Peggy is holding, it would have ‘Red Ryder’ written on the side of it.
The potential problem here, even considering the “super” nature of the target, is that if Peggy puts out someone’s eye, a bunch of skull fragments & the rest of their pulverized brain is going to follow the eye…
She’ll have to keep an eye out for that possibility to try preventing it from happening.
I still say Maxima is made of Something like Copper, Gold, and Platnum alloys, with her blood being electrically conductive plasmid, Her skin having Copper alloy base would explain her colouring. Also I still bet Venohman is like the guy with a super shield that only lets air through (and Food), how ever perhaps Super evolution realized Franks shield was overkill and needed to be able to allow other stimulation threw.
Or perhaps in the same way that Frank Loved to eat Venohmance got is thrill from fighting.
So I’ve just recently finished watching a Animated show called Max Steel. And its gotten me thinking about V’s markings.
I figure he has a Turbo mode or something along those lines that he will shortly be releasing. With a comment along the lines of “Finally a Worthy Foe” that and a whole bunch of glowing.
Max Steel? They released it to DVD? *googles* Oh they remade it in 2013 with better animation. I remember the 2000 era animated show.
is on Netflix as well.
I giggle a bit every time I see Vehemence’s “wut?” face.
Max’s tactics and attitude seem to keep throwing him off so much his face defaults to a totally dumbfounded expression that looks ridiculous (in an awesome way) on his giant frame and super-masculine face.
V keeps expecting the rules of the fight to be his choice. So far that hasn’t been the case. Right after Halo tripped him, he should have quit.
Forcing your opponent to fight on your schedule and upon your chosen ground is almost as good as changing the rules without letting him know.
I’d say that Max setting him up for a shot from Peggy was definitely Her “Schedule”, not his.
Keeping him fighting in the area with lots of buildings where snipers could easily hide (and the softies could avoid the worst of any flying debris) was her “chosen ground”.
Peggys non-expression is even better though
Same here. I’d even go so far as to say that V’s face (& dialogue) on the last panel of the previous page would make an excellent meme-pic with the caption “Mind Blown!”
Then again, panel 7 on this page would also be good with that caption too…
I know long hair is a very bad idea for any fight but damn it looks cool on Maxima, at the speed she’s moving it almost looks like she’s got her own Super Saiyan thing going on. :D
Unlike Anvil grabbing Max by the hair and pulling her off her feet would leave you clinging to a very angry ICBM heading for the stratosphere.
This had me laughing! Thank you.
You’re welcome.
I don’t think he’s ever fought anyoen with this combination of strength, skill, and teamwork so it’s throwing him for a loop, liguratively and literally.
I don’t think he’s ever fought anyone, period.
Seriously, who could he fight? He doesn’t want to kill. Supers are rare. Even of that crew, 99% of them would be like punching gelatin for him. Using Archon + opponents are examples.
Vehemance punches:
Sydney, she splats
Anvil, good punch.
Dabbler, she splats
Hiro, he dies (presuming at this point that Hiro < Stalwart < Maxima)
Stalwart, good punch
Maxima, good punch
Math, he splats
Heatwave, he splats
X, he splats (guessing here)
Harem, she splats
Achilles: good punch
Mr. Amorphous: Unknown, I'm inclined to think good punch
Jiggawatt, she splats
Villains:
Vektor, he splats
Opal, she splats
Atomic Bombshell: she splats
For Whom The Death Tolls: good punch
There are a lot of others I can't remember off hand, but it seems fair to say that if a super is one in ten million the number of supers that Vehemance can fight without holding back or killing is maybe a fourth of that?
We are seeing his teeth knocked out all over the place. If he'd been in this kind of fight before, he'd be super gap toothed, but he showed up with a full set of pearlies. Add his comic book behavior in and I think what we've got is a guy who hasn't been in a real fight before, but thinks he wants to be in one.
I recently had another idea. He might be a guy who knows he is going to be dead shortly. Either through something like rampant cancer all through his body, or his mutation might be causing him to age very rapidly, possibly at an accelerating rate. This might be the only way he can leave a mark in history. Even if he’s not going to be remembered as a hero, he will be remembered for being a major part of the first recorded super team battle. And though no one will probably ever know it he did help to clean up a bit amongst the super villains by setting this group up for Archon.
Yea, I admit it is a long shoot, and not something I really believe. But V is such a weird guy I’m not yet prepared to say it’s impossible.
So, watch “The Shootist” lately?
Nope, hadn’t heard about it, but now I’ve got something to look forward to.
John Wayne’s last, and it had “Opie” in it.
Gooood movie.
One of the best.
I hope we see a payoff later on with Peggy and the claymore. That idea and mental image is too cool not to use.
Look behind her. That’s bits of Concreta post claymore. Who do you think Peggy’s been blasting all fight? The claymore is just one last “nope, stay down” on the subject.
Interesting though, Concreta and Budget Halo (Hex) maybe the only villains that get away from this fight. Although I guess Maxima could have super speed snagged Hex off panel.
Hope Hex got away and Sydney and them keep stumbling into her at like the coffee shop or something (Causing Hex to keep trying to find a way to sneak away to Comedic effect)
Looked like Maxima was about to get her Sailor Senshi on.
I hope the first half of the next comic is Maxima following up here and really pounding the point home that this is game over. But with the way these things usually go, we’ll see some escalation from Vehemence.
Scary people aren’t so scary once they’ve been poked in the eye.
Many many moons ago, in a tabletop rpg, my Judge Dredd-verse character ended up in a grand melee, dozens of well-known characters on each side, cross universe. This was an entertainment game at a wizard’s convention, death would only sideline you, everyone would be returned to their native universes in perfect health after. No Lawgiver, only some melee weapons (at that point) and magically-charged mithril knuckledusters I’d picked up. At one point, the GM tells me…”you are now face to face with the The Thing (from the Fantsatic Four), and he has the other team’s color on…what do you do?”. My immediate answer? “Go for his eyes, claw-hand attack. He’s invulnerable, but if those baby-blue eyes are any indication, he’s human. He’ll blink. When he does, dive past him and leave him for someone else to fight…” It worked! That was a fun session…
The famous quote “Gods don’t bleed” comes to mind after Vehemence’s reaction to drawing blood from maxima. Anyone else?
Ah, but the saying should instead be “Arrogant Gods don’t bleed. Clever Gods bleed when it would make you lower your guard or your expectations. Crazy Gods just like a good fight.”
Heh, I like how “Can you take a bullet to the eye?” is a metric for invulnerability.
Shooting him in the nuts may have also worked as a decent measure of his armor but not all supers have those so the eye is a better unit for comparison across the board.
Well, for a target that actually *has* them, it would be a good test to see if he lives up to the “balls of steel” trope…But in this case, male or female, “Eyeballs of Steel” also works.
A similar combination attack was used in BAA Last Order. I guess Peggy is using copper jacketed hollow point instead of armor piercing discarding sabot rounds to keep it less than lethal here?
Remember kids; the “I raise my hands in surrender” gesture is also frequently the “Put a bullet through this guy” signal for snipers. Make sure your playmates keep their arms at their sides.
If thos goes on much longer that poor fellar isn’t gonna have any teeth left. I must say I like him, classical Boisterous Bruiser with a side order of Ham
I think it won’t be long before this “ham” is tenderized. He’ll be ripe for the grilling (interrogation) afterwards.
Any chance that he winds up with egg on his face?
Probably…He tried to approach this evening in a mood for “fun & games,” but the yolk’s already on him.
Appears that ambushing them wasn’t good enough of a roos-ter actually work.