Grrl Power #262 – No two ways about it, that’s an impressive punch
Maxima’s nose is probably in pretty dire shape about now.
I know some people were thinking this fight was disappointingly one sided, some thought it was cool she was kicking butt, and others were waiting for it to turn around. This page is obviously going to please one of those groups more than others. I definitely could have gone the direction of establishing Maxima as the big bad to cap the fight, and originally I had a scene like that in my head, not necessarily in the comic, but way before I was turning all my daydreams about these characters into a coherent story, but I have something a little more robust planned now, I think you guys will enjoy it.
Seriously you guys drawing rubble is so tedious. This page should have had way more as the top of the pylon shattered… really watching Mythbusters has shown me how dusty non-Hollywood fireball explosions are, so really the last panel should just be a big dust cloud with Vehemence’s fist and Maxima in silhouette, so I’ll just claim artistic license for leaving it as clean as it is. :) I have new respect for any artist that’s had to draw lots of rubble though, especially those debris strewn mangas. Granted most mangas have dedicated background people, I imagine that guy gets to do most of the scritchy rubble detail. I’ll be glad when this fight is over, but as you can tell, we’re not quite there yet.
In other random superhero news, the latest Wearing the Cape book is out, which has always been one of my favorite superhero novel series. It’s called Small Town Heroes. I’m not reading it yet as I just started another book but it’s definitely next in my queue.
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.
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I have the sinking feeling that Vehemence has the same power of GUTS, and the HULK… just a Berserker’s RAGE!
I’m thinking it’s a tiny bit more subtle, and mystic. He’s fuelled by Violence and/or Vengeance (both of which sound a bit like Vehemence); or, in other words, he needs others to hit him before he can hit back hard. For instance, Vector’s spinning cloud of death gave him an opportunity to power up, so he walked into it. And he hasn’t bothered to dodge a single attack of any kind, despite being able to move fast when it suits him.
Or, in other words, he’s an aggro absorber, the way Anvil’s a kinetic absorber. Possibly he might be countered by everyone joining hands and singing kumbaya, but probably only if they did so from a safe distance.
That would also explain why he arranged that little battle royal earlier, then just sat back and waited till everyone was finished before stepping in.
I knew it.
And I LOVE IT
the one thing I have never really understood. if you can punch a guy thru a steel wall or 4 feet of concrete then why hit that same guy with a tree or concrete why not just use your fist since it will hurt more?
Additional mass, to amplify the force involved in the strike. A fist is still just made of flex and bone, a few pounds. Adding in an extra ton of concrete and steel, even if “softer” than a super-fist, is a huge increase in mass for a given strike
It might not meet common sense standards, but to illustrate it, think about this. Strength and speed are two different things. The force of a punch in newtons is equal to the mass behind the punch times the velocity of the punch. This is why boxers throw their weight into their punches, to add extra mass, because the strongest muscles in the world can still only move so fast. You can be 10 times stronger, but with the same mass and velocity, you’re not going to push any harder.
At some point, the lack of the ability to produce extra velocity means the only way to increase the amount of energy imparted into an opponent is by increasing mass, since velocity can no longer increase.
Another way of thinking about it is this… If you could put a 10,000 horsepower engine into an old vw beetle, you’d have one rediculously overpowered car, assuming you could solve all the problems with the extra torque and possible damage to the chassis from popping wheelies every time you accelerated…
Now, with that much power, you should be able to pull a trailer with a 40,000 pound load, just like a tractor trailer, right? No. There’s a reason semi trailers sit nearly a third of their length over their tractor’s rear end. It’s because all the torque in the world doesn’t mean jack when you don’t have the traction to actually pull it. The best treaded tires in the world aren’t enough. By having the trailer over the rear end like that, and putting a sizeable load there, you’re increasing the weight being applied to the road by the drive wheels, thus increasing traction and allowing it to pull the trailer.
So basically, Maxima is rediculously strong, or rediculously fast. If she’s in rediculously strong mode, she can’t be rediculously fast, so she needs some other fashion to increase the strength of the blows, such as picking up some rediculously heavy object to increase the inertia behind a blow, since more velocity isn’t really an option.
i gotcha so we are talking about shooting a pebble at the speed of light destroying anything in its path with kinetic energy type of sceniro. or extra power/mass. cool now makes sense.
Your comment made be wonder….
If an asteroid were going to hit the Earth, would we all be saved if we just put Anvil at the precise point of impact?
Yes, and no. she would have to find something to exert that kinetic energy…or she could just push the space rock back into space…
doy.
Yeah, but I think Maxi would still do more damage if she maxed out speed and armor as far as possible utilizing the constant mass x increased velocity scenario. Armor up to keep from doing damage to her fists…
“force of a punch in newtons is equal to the mass behind the punch times the velocity of the punch”
No it isn’t, Newton’s second law is F=mA not F=mv stupid, you’re don’t even know the difference between momentum and force and you never should have been allowed to pass elementary school science let along high school physics. You just got pwned by someone whose screen name is dumface, congratulations on that.
But the Acceleration in F=mA is dependent on the velocity of the fist doing the punching. The punch strength is the amount of Force applied to the face. The acceleration of the face is caused by it equalizing speed with the fast moving fist. The velocity of the fist relative to the face is where that acceleration comes from. so F=mA, but punch=mv
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/why-does-f-ma-instead-of-f-mv.622711/
resorting to name calling places you in the”ALL CAPS teen” category . dont be an ass
Would it be considered “name-calling” if I referred to someone as being a Richard Cranium?
Only if they were smart enough to pick up on what it meant without having Dad explain it to them. :)
If Maxima was just pounding away at Vehmence with her fists, she’d be very vulnerable to a punch in the face. The concrete didn’t completely protect her, but it gave her more time to really get some damage in.
Also, the extra mass helps.
The real answer?
It looks more impressive.
From a physics perspective (source: Master’s degree), at the weight class where your character can throw the tree she’s probably better off just punching as that will provide much higher pressure on the guy’s face.
I don’t know if that’s the “real” answer or not. Although at this point it might be time to grab Achilles and “beat a motherf***er with another motherf***er”, although it would depend on how Achilles’ personal invulnerability worked (based on how momentum wasn’t canceled out earlier, he’d probably make a good bludgeoning weapon for Maxima).
Like I expected, he’s a combat junkie. The reason he sat most of the fight out was so that the chaff would be sorted out and removed from the battle field and let leave the best still standing.
I wonder what would happen if Sydney enclosed him in a shield bubble by himself and left him there until he ran out of air?
She doesn’t have the power to do so. The shield is always centered on her.
Ah. That explains it; I was wondering that myself.
Cpt. Obvious
Still going strong!
The shield thing seems to be the fan equivalent to DaveB forgetting to draw Sydney’s bruise and blood. Sydney just encourages blind spots in people??
I attribute it to wishful thinking (“No one ever thought of this before. I’ll better post this now so everyone can see how smart I am!”) and posting before reading. Even more common is the failure to read previous pages of comments, and that’s probably how this came to be the fourth post on this comment page.
Then there are a lot of new readers who might have come here from TWC or some other site and speed through the archive not reading the comments. Let’s face it, reading all the comments for all the strips is a herculean task. I will gladly admit to having skipped most of the comments when I went through the archive. The comments was something I started following once I had caught up with the comic and had to wait for each new strip to be published.
When I don’t feel like reading through all the comments, or don’t have time, I usually just use the “Find on Page” feature of various browsers and type in DaveB. This not only gives me everything the author says it also catches most after the fact “word of God” comments by others. But if you do it from the beginning you can quickly gather most “Words of God” with out reading anybody elses comment…
I have a horrible memory though so I will admit to needing reminding. Maybe I should go back and cut and paste all of DaveB’s word of God comments into a file?
Your response had 3 words in it! Your screen name is Captain Obvious! You are probably less than 200 years old! My real name is actually not dumface!
The shield is centered around her center of conscious thought. What if the upgrade point spent in the telepresence orb allows her to focus another orb power _from_ the telepresence point?
That obviously isn’t the case, as the shield emitted around the telepresence version of Sydney was able to pass through Vehemence when he was still being nice.
The telepresence “shield” is exactly what the telepresence body is – a hologram or equivalent. However, the press conference shows her expanding the shield to cover the reporters without being in the exact center of it, so she can be off-center.
Sydney can be off-centre? Really? *giggles*
I’d say she can be a wee bit more than that. ;P
The pages you are thinking of are these:
Grrl Power #170 – Serve and protect… eventually
Grrl Power #173 – Biiig Bada Boom
Grrl Power #174 – You got your explosion all over my press conference
Though it’s a theory I do not adhere to it has been argued that Sidney was shown “off center” in these panels was just so David could get her in the picture and that it should not be considered as a proof of her being able to move about relative to the shield.
As I see it unless David says anything else these panels are just as valid as any other in the comic, and she is able to either move about inside the shield, or she can create the shield with herself off center, but still inside.
This makes sense, though it certainly doesn’t alter her inability to bubble-grab big-shot villains and wait for them to run out of air, as so many (SO MANY) have suggested. I wonder how many of them played Force Field defenders in City of Heroes.
the problem i’ve just come up with is we don’t know if the shield was designed for that kind of use
it may just as easily pop from internal force as a “safety feature”
So would gases attempting to expand into the vacuum of space count as an “internal force”? That’s worrisome…
It might not have upgraded to that level YET, but there are a whole lot of unused spots for upgrade-points to go into.
I’m just wondering is Sydney will get enough point to fill out the entire tree 100%, of if this is going to be one of those things where she needs to pick a specialization.
picking a spec will be difficult if they can’t read the descriptions on the tree…
Dabbler’s on the case!
Well, if I had to guess, I’d say there’s probably an offensive spec, a defensive spec, a mobility spec, a battlefield-control spec, and a tricky spec (which orb is which should be fairly obvious I think). Plus room for two more.
the orbs are (probably) not a game/toy. They are in all likelyhood tools made to empower the user with a variety of highly useful abilites.
The levelup mechanic is probably part of a tutorial program that gradually lets you unlock functionality when and as you demonstrate sufficient proficiency or need for it while using the device (refering to all the orbs as one device in this case). It is however, as said, not a game, and is probably not designed with the same principles as we would have in a game. Ie there’s no sane reason to limit the device to being able to spec for offensive vs defensive potential.. you max everything out as far as the device is capable of having, there’s nothing gained by Not having the tools make the user extremely overpowered because you dont Want them to be “beatable” by whomever they are put up against.
Ergo, odds are you can indeed fill out the entire tree eventually as you master the device, though how long that will take is anyone’s guess, some skills take years to master after all.
What’s really needed is a key to for the balls skill tree. When Sydney just happened to assign a “skill point” there were no indication of in what way that changed, enhanced or added to the abilities granted by the badger ball. As far as we know she still doesn’t know what, if anything, happened. So a key or a manual for the skill tree would be most welcome.
I actually suspect they do come with some sort of nifty self explaining interactive users guide, only Sydney have managed to bypass activating it or accidentally disabled it not realizing what happened. It could of course be a function of one of the two unknowns, but if so I suspect it’s just a small part of that balls functions. But that’s just me speculating.
Alright guys here is my bet, I’m probably totally wrong but I have a few reasons for saying this. Firstly, The winner of this fight will be Halo. Why would I say this? That’s a pretty easy answer actually.
1. Who is the main character of this comic with whom this comic started out with?
2. Who in the comic seems to be the powers guru both understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the people their fighting at this point?
3. With the powers that Vehemence has shown up to this point who is the least likely to beat him, I’ll give you this one, Maxima would be least likely to beat him especially since she just gave him an opening.
4. Currently the hero everyone seems to be mostly undervaluing because of how new she is with her powers is also Halo.
5. As shown in the opening where she uses her gaming lawyer initiative in the campaign, Halo has shown herself to have an above average knowledge and ability to judge powers, how they work and how to beat them.
6. Now then looking at everything above and the fact that Maxima and most of the other members show up in the opening when she goes back to the base then it would be likely to assume that they win this fight, however since Max just messed up and got slammed, and most likely very hard by the looks of the drawing then how could they win? Someone has to step up, either with her own powers, or using a combination of powers used by other heroes in the group to subdue or even take down V. I submit that this will be Halo because it would follow the humor factor of the comic and would also come out of left field totally blowing most people’s minds. Nobody, except maybe me and a few others, would expect it. You also have the way the others were acting toward her at the start before the flashback. Her rank in the flashback if I caught it correctly being Corporal. What would earn her an upgrade in rank? Maybe say taking down V as he was about to remove Max? This is all conjecture of course but it could very well be the answer. As for max in this fight, I’m thinking she is done, she left an opening for an extremely powerful enemy. One opening like that can be an ender in a fight like this and also bring her down hard. She was also maximizing her powers in attacking so her defenses would have been lowered, and when she had her defense maxed out she got a broken nose in the exchange. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have her defense boosted because she was trying to crank out the damage and not trying to defend herself as much as she should have,
As Arious said:
She was also maximizing her powers in attacking so her defenses would have been lowered, and when she had her defense maxed out she got a broken nose in the exchange. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have her defense boosted because she was trying to crank out the damage and not trying to defend herself as much as she should have,
Yep, I suspect that Max is out. Though being a “family-friendly” comic and the fact that her head is in one piece, she didn’t switch her power set around too much, but maybe just enough to loose.
She was getting overconfident after all…
You ignore a story tree though, usually around this time in a plot the MC and friends meets some major defeat to prove the point that there are more bad ass people in the world. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect
About time….. anyways… this needs to happen. Max is so over-confident in her abilities, and utterly unconcerned with the consequences of what she has set up with the little “look how awesome we are” conference. There are real villains out there. They don’t monologue, they don’t rob banks, they don’t announce their plans, and they have no pity, no remorse, and no conscience. They are perfectly willing to commit wholesale genocide it it get’s them what they want. V needs to show them, and make them understand just how terribly unprepared they are for what they’ve stepped into. Max and the rest of the crew’s arrogance is just going to get not only them, but likely anyone who was counting on them killed.
I think Sydney is going to be the one who steps up and tells him, “Ok.. we get it… we aren’t ready.. so what do we need to do?”
Bring in a Federal Marshall or 2, some FBI agents, also some NSA, CIA, and others of the alphabet soups to teach them how to be cops not targets.
I don’t know about that, I think part of the point of their Organization would be to help direct the random acts of superpowers towards themselves. If Max can’t handle it, you at least know where the problem is. Though if Max can’t handle it you have a problem more so.
Keep in mind Max and Peggy met each other while they were both recuperating in a hospital. So Max has been there and done that and should have already learned any lessons of being over confident.
Then Peggy must have already known about Max being a Mollusc
https://www.compoundchem.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Chemistry-of-Blood-Colours-v2.png
Good thing her blood isn’t her haircolour.
I can imagine hearing Harem and Dabbler telling her that she is a ….worm
Also I imagine a following explosion roughly the size of the Tsar Bomba.
are you sure that’s blue, it seems sort of violet to me, maybe with a bit of blue in it, but if it is both violet and blue what would that mean?
Disclaimer: I have not read every comment for the last four years, so someone may have brought this up.
If Max is seriously injured and needs a blood transfusion, who is compatible enough to give her one?
If the answer is no one, then I hope she has had the foresight to do a series of auto-donations in the past and had Dabbler put them away in a stasis chamber for potential need.
Side note:
Dave, in your universe have you ever considered having a ‘black ops’ unit of the army that has tried experiments like giving blood transfusions from a super to a non-super to see if they could give someone powers? Because, hey, what could possibly go wrong?
Transfusions? No No No. Think “clone”…
My only question is how the hell V managed to travel three times his height up the column. He doesn’t have any earth-gliding stuff like Concretia, and he damn sure as hell isn’t going to FIT in it, particularly not as ‘hulked out’ as he currently is. While superheros routinely tell physics to sit down and shut up, this is just… it breaks verisimilitude.
Grabbing the bottom of the pylon and shoving it back into her face? That I could’ve totally understood. Sliding around it and jumping up? I could probably live with that. Punching through it? Not buying it.
Max is pushing down on the pylon even as she was twisting it for the grinding motion. V just punches & crumbles the pylon as it gets lower. When V got to the top end of the pylon, he reaches the beginning of Max’s nose…Again.
Still don’t see it. In panel 2, Max is way the hell out of reach. And if he had taken the time to pummel the pylon down, she’d have certainly noticed and shifted her focus to defense.
look at panel 4,
She noticed, just didn’t know what she noticed and was caught still pushing down
how about burrowing through the center of it?
Look at the size of the arm. Just the arm. The column barely fits around it. Do you honestly think there’s enough column for him to fit in?
Called it.
Hey dave, while browsing the archives i noticed #177 was missing its comic.
Nope, it’s there. Maybe you accidentally hit the next button twice?
seconded
when i posted my comment i tried to load the comic’s page in another window and it came up as 404 file not found. now its fixed.
I’m thinking (as others have probably said) he gains power the more damage he takes. Then, when he reaches a certain limit, he goes all beserker mode and is suddenly stronger and more damage resistant. Kinda like Brick from Borderlands. It appears as though he’s reached that point since he was able to effectively burrow a hole through a steel reinforced concrete pillar with his fist. They may have to team up and just dog pile V if Arc wants this fight to come to an end. Doesn’t matter how strong you are, it neigh impossible to defend against 8 attacks at the same time. Even Achilles who is straight up invincible is able to be tossed around fairly easily.
no, not inVINCIBLE… inVULNERABLE… there IS a difference… invincible means “cannot be defeated” but invulnerable means “cannot be DAMAGED”… Achilles CAN be defeated, heck right now he’s probably still under the rubble of the restaurant, and will be, until someone digs him out. he’s not damaged in any way, but he sure isn’t stopping anybody from doing anything nefarious…
as for defending against 8 attacks at once, that becomes problematic when you need to be careful to NOT hit your teammates with YOUR attacks when they close in for their attack, thus limiting the maximum number that can happen at the same time to just two or three I’d say… then it’ll look more like a typical Ninja horde versus the one good guy fight… they all stand around taking turns getting killed one by one. the fight may LOOK like they are ganging up on four or five at a time on the one guy, but if you look closely it’s just a series of one-on-ones, really closely spaced… i foresee that happening here, too.
And yet the news conference was made just the same.. invalidating your conclusion. Max may have experience, that does not guarantee wisdom or insight. Hence why she just got punched in the face again, though this one looked MUCH harder then before. She, and by extension, the rest of the team, are not prepared for what is coming.
Now he went and made Max mad.
She’s enjoying this more than Vehemence is.
Even with a double smooshed nose? o_O
I cant decide if V’s tattoos have changed colour from blue to yellow or if that’s just a dust coating.
Doesn’t look yellow to me
I see a sort of shimmery greenish metallic effect on them on this page, where on other pages they seemed more straight up white glow with blue effects at the edges.
I don’t know if this means A) Vehemence’s powers are in a different ‘mode’ B) his power reserves are low C) his power reserves are Higher or D) something else entirely.
I like it – it’s subtle.
They were definitely white to start off. I bet they are charging. Makes sense considering how happy this guy was to get into a fight with the most powerful member of the team.
I think this is where Sydney should come in with her PPO.
More likely Max will open fire with the gold beam first.
For crying out loud Max – start hitting him with something harder than concrete… like Achilles for example!
I approve.
I don’t. While Achilles is agravatingly invulnerable, he’s not that much stronger than normal, which means he’s rather bendable in the middle. While he makes a good spear since all his joints are in line maximizing impact, used as a club he would actually be more of a flail. A good weapon, but not the best choice for this situation.
What are you talking about? Maxima already threw him like a javelin in the beginning of this whole brouhaha.
That was more of a ‘bowling for supervillains’ move. She was attempting to get a bunch of them off the roof with minimum damage and used Achilles as a big broom. If she wanted to actually hurt them, she would have used something more, umm, ‘concrete’.
Throwing Achilles is the equivalent of firing an oversized beanbag out of a riot gun.
You do know that a javelin is a type of spear…
or don’t you?
I see your point – but if Achilles is truly invulnerable and takes no physical harm whatsoever, then Newtonian physics (Ie: every action has an equal an opposite reaction) means that he’s basically got a x2 multiplier when used as a weapon. If that concrete pylon had the same properties as Achilles body, the all the lost energy that caused the column to shatter when it struck would instead be channeled into the other object – or other super in this case.
If Max held Achilles like a shield, then ever punch V landed on Achilles would only do damage to V – it would be exactly like a regular human punching solid steel ten feet thick, using every ounce of their strength.
Problem is Achilles is invulnerable but he is not inflexible. Hit him and he will flex. The difference you will feel when punching him as opposed to a normal human male of the same height and buld is if you try to break an arm, finger or his knee or attack some other joint. He is not super strong nor super hard, just unbreakable. So hitting him is very much like hitting any normal squishy human with the difference being that he can’t be damaged.
So yes, Max could use him like an over sized meat flail, and he would definitely cause some damage, but he isn’t some fantastic super weapon.
Vehemence seems to lack any form of aerial powers, he should be easy to defeat if he can be suspended out of reach of the ground or objects to push off from. ARC needs to get a telekinetic in to lift him.
this is the part where Max has her golden ass handed to her.
Right in the already broken nose, that, is going to hurt so badly for quite a while.
Hopefully they got ways of healing stuff a bit faster then usual when it comes to fights like this.
That said, I don’t mind the fight lasting, the way I see it is more of a puzzle then a ‘power’ fight, while maxima is ‘known’ in terms of power, vehemence is unknown, and the way he behaves and fights doesn’t really reveal much about his actual power.
In other fights in both movies/anime/books/comics, e.t.c. at this point both sides would be known and just be battering each-other around endlessly, and this doesn’t feel like that feels much much better, keep it up!
Hey Dave! Could you provide a link to the original size for the 4th panel? I’d really like to see it better as I imagine Max’s face is rather exquisite in her moment of wtf-disbelief (and sadly the more subtle nuances can be lost when you need to alter page dimensions).
I second that, would love to see the largest size of panel four as well, her expression :)
I would just like to point out that until now, Max has been going easy on him. Remember, she’s riding the high from a successful grand stand, and just screwing around with Vehemence as a result and not really taking him very seriously. Basically, until this point, Vehemence was just a new, extra durable chew toy. All he did with that punch was make her mad. Now she’s likely going to rip the squeaker out of the chew toy and spread the stuffing to the wind.
A broken nose is not a small thing
I just noticed that Vehemence is curling his thumb into his fist. Does he want a broken thumb? Because that’s how you get a broken thumb.
And ants. That’s how you get them.
…Funny…You don’t *look* like Archer.
Sadly, I don’t drink or shoot like him either. :(
And for that, both your liver thanks you & your pistol instructor thanks you…
Nah, he just has the tip tucked into the curl of his index finger. You’d see much less of his thumb if it was entirely curled.
Looks like this pepper has more punch than Maxima bargained for. Hand him over to Sid, she’s great handling things that are Too Spicy For Yog Sothoth.
I realize that the conversation about Max’s blue blood was pages ago, but I just saw this article today and I thought of Max, plus, look at all of that blood of hers all over the place.
https://www.compoundchem.com/2014/10/28/coloursofblood/
…
If Maxima gets injured, how the hell can anyone operate on her?
She probably just reallocates energy to regeneration.
I am… not entirely displeased by this. ^^ It’s good to know Maxima isn’t unbeatable; it keeps things interesting!
So Glad not one sided it what destroys DC, Superman wins what a shock, Superman Always wins and it get stupid and predictable. Makes all the other heroes pointless. Bust SuperMan was the golden age one that could bleed and not even fly.
Your Hero is only as good as his Villain….
Your forgetting Doomsday which was in reality a draw even though it put him out of action and very nearly killed him.
Looking at the strip… Did V just SWIM up through the concrete pillar?
That’s what I’m pretty much thinking, yes
Ok Maxima, you’ve shown that you’re the big strong kid in the playground who can take a punch, now you should probably start treating this like a real fight rather than trying to show off, or you may actually get hurt…
*sigh*
How much longer is the fight going to go?
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the big free-for-all, what with the quips and quick reversals and stuff, but this is becoming a bit tedious.
i like male genitals . i love herpes. i enjoy fart play.
Actually, the energy of a punch is what is going to do damage. The energy available to impart from a thrown pylon is from velocity, E=mv^2 (mass times velocity times velocity). Some of this energy goes into destroying the pylon, and some into vehemence. How much will depend on how hard vehemence is relative to the pylon.
The energy imparted from a fist (or a pushed pylon) also comes partly from the mass and velocity of the fist, but also from the force of the muscles behind it. The energy available from muscles is E=FD, or force*distance after the punch hits. The velocity energy from before is still there as well, so the massive and fast-moving pylon acts like a reservoir of energy to be powered up before the actual hit. The amount of energy expended in (messing up the fist/messing up the target/busting the pylon/accelerating something à la team rocket) depends again on the hardnesses.
For example, if Max hit a hard, light thing, it might fly forward. If the thing is soft like a watermelon, it will explode. If Max braces herself really well and hits a really hard, heavy thing, her fist might explode. If she doesn’t brace, she could be flung backward.
Hardness here is just something’s resistance to squishing when a force is applied (the technical term is the ‘elastic modulus’). And I haven’t even gotten into toughness: some things absorb a little energy and bend, like steel, but are still mostly OK, whereas some things absorb energy and shatter, like concrete. And if you hit a tough thing like steel really fast, it might not have time to bend and end up shattering more like concrete or glass (the technical term is ‘impulse’). Solid body mechanics are hard.
Here’s a way Maxima can win this fight. Vehemence can’t fly, he has no control over where he goes while in the air. With the amazing speed, strength, and flight that Maxima is capable of, she should be able to launch him into orbit. Considering how resistant he is to impact (even his eyes!), he probably wouldn’t pop from the pressure, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t freeze or suffocate. Grab him by the foot (so he can’t grab back), fly at top speed (maxing speed) and then launch him (maxing strength) at an escape trajectory. Looks like Team Vehemence’s blasting off again! *twinkle*
Okay, so, looking at this, Vehemence symbols are indeed a different color. They started out being laid back blue, and when he started fighting, they started glowing white with the blue tinge, now they’re sort of off-green. So clearly, he’s changed something about his powers, and the tattoos reflect that change. I don’t think it’s as simple as an aggro/damage absorption either. Most heroes or villains have names that, to some degree, reflect their powers. Maxima, for example. She’s good at many things as a general rule, but she can maximize her powers as well. Halo, named for the fact that the orbs float around her head.
Thus, I looked up the word Vehemence, and it is defined as “the display of strong feeling; passion.” Therefore, it has to do with his state of mind, at least to some degree. The more he’s into a fight, the stronger he can become? Which would explain why he wanted to pick a fight with Max. There’s a fight that proves to be a challenge, and if he has the same degree of fight lust that Math has, it would fit in moderately well, and the color might indicate that he finally views it as a real fight. I don’t know for sure. This is just my conjecture.
While Sydney is arguably the main character, I hope Dave doesn’t fall into the mindset of having Sydney be The One Who Cannot Fail. The one with all the answers whom everyone else looks like they can’t wipe their butt without her guidance. It’s stupid, illogical, and nonsensical. I know a lot of readers are expecting or hoping for that, but not me.
Lets face it: Sydney has NO TRAINING. She doesn’t even know what two of her balls do, and she has by her own admission had VERY little time to practice. She got lucky figuring out Death Toll’s Nemesis power; a bit of esoteric knowledge dredged up from her geek mind. She’s a valuable addition to the team, certainly…but she’s also very much a rookie.
And sorry, Max is *supposed* to be one of the most powerful, if not *the* most powerful super on the planet. I want to see her shine, but in ARCSWAT’s very first fight, she coincidentally runs into a guy who can stand toe-to-toe with her, trading punches? And the rest of the team basically gets their butt kicked?
No. It’s trite, it’s boring, and it’s something we’ve seen in EVERY comic out there, and I definitely expect more from GRRL POWER. If Max can jack her strength up beyond the maximum, I want to see her do so and rip this dork’s arm off and beat him to death with it. Not some super-coincidental perfect power-cancelling match waiting on The New Kid to magically save the day and win everyone’s love and affection.
Because God forbid we have a capable confident woman as the most powerful superhero ever. No, lets make her meet her match in a male steroid queen and get her butt saved by the dorky quirky *non-threatening* girl!
I gotta say, Dave, that’s some seriously sexist BS right here on this page. Build Max up as vastly more powerful than even her closest competition…nope, just a girl trying to play in the big leagues and can’t.
What, proof? Max has blood all over her nose and face. Not a *single* scrape or mark on Chrome Dome, and here he is punching her again. My guess is next page, he has her make him a sammich because he’s working up an appetite slapping her around. It’s pretty darn obvious he can take everything she can dish out and punch her in the face after.
Because we CAN’T have a WOMAN be the unchallenged best! Nope, she has to EARN it, take her a few hits, learn her how the real world works…right?
You dropped the ball, Dave…badly. Or not, since it’s your story and your world…but I’m sincerely disappointed. You went with the “But it’s more exciting if Max is *challenged*!” trope, which never works out well. Maybe more visually exciting in the short run but in long-term story implications, it’s a serious dis-service.
Unless you’re going gritty and in the next panel Max *does* rip off his arm and beat him to death with it. Otherwise…put him in prison. Gee, power outage causes the nullifiers to fail. He’s free. He beats Max again until Sydney saves the day. Oh, a new supervillain ports into prison so he can keep Max and ARCSWAT busy while the new villain assassinates the Prime Minister’s kitten…until Sydney figures it out and saves Max. Oh, no…Federal budget cuts and during the routine prisoner transfer, the armored truck hits a pothole which causes a stress fracture in the nullifier cuffs…
See where I’m going with this?
In *my* opinion, not necessarily anyone else’s, there’s two ways to salvage this. Go gritty; Max gets pissed and cripples or kills Chrome Dome…or they fight each other to a standstill and it’s revealed the Chrome Dome is actually General Faulk and this was a planned/staged finale.
Otherwise…anyone who’s ever read a comic book has seen this before…as many times as they’ve read a book. I, personally, expected better from this awesome comic.
Whoa there, hold your horses!
You jump to conclusions based on incomplete evidence and accuse Dave of things that have not yet happened.
Personally, I would’ve found it boring if Max just effortlessly wiped the floor with Vehemence. It would have reinforced the notion that she, and by extension all of ARCHON, can take all heat. Super fights where one side is clearly superior, especially then it’s the good guys, are boring. Fights involving Superman are often a good example of this. You know a villian is POWERFUL when he can go toe-to-toe with Supes without Kryptonite.
And V is not without his set of scars, either. His missing some teeth and the “Dirty Pool” trick cost him an eye. And we don’t know what he looks like, apart from an intact arm. Given that most damaging attacks caught him off-guard, it stands to reason he either has an adaptive powerset like Max’s, or has to actively guard against attacks. And Max has not shown the extent of her powers either. She could max speed and run circles around her opponent. Max power to uppercut him into low Earth orbit, if not pulverizing him. And we don’t know whether he can take a beam attack.
Last but not least, there’s no indication that Sydney will in fact save the day. We’ve already seen V shrug off her go-to move, the Lighthook. She probably won’t try for the PPO, because she can’t fully control it yet. And if they wanna try for a beam attack, Max is sure to be the better option, both in power and control.She might find out what one of her other balls do, though. It might be a tactical analysis – think Chopper’s Brain Point from One Piece. That way, she might contribute in finding out his weakness, but still let other team members shine. The easiset thing she could still do without endangering herself would be to telepresence herself into V’s face and scream into his ears – taking away two of his most useful senses: sight and sound. Again, nothing gamebreaking, but well within her powers.
Ack dragged into a reply by the sexist card troll… Oh well. 1) He has two teeth missing, one of which Max did. 2) A .50 cap to the eyeball made him jerk back but did not pulverize the sack of gel itself.
You are disappointed? Darn. Your expectations aren’t being met, well here is your refund 00ooh sorry you paid zero so your expectations were high. Get over it. Maxima went into a fight with a chip on her shoulder and led with her–nose– in this case. If she decides to win it without killing him, that makes her more powerful than the idjut kicking the nuclear weapon. Is he insane, probably. Does that mean she gets to rip his head off? Nope. She is an officer of the Law and she knows it. Have him injure a bystander and she is likely to put him in orbit and leave him there but until then –give the elitism drivel a rest.
Geesh, yes.. jumping the gun a lot here I have to say. As Smilley pointed out V is hardly in pristine shape and that arm looks covered in more than a few bruises to me.
in terms of injuries, he’s missing teeth, one of his eyes is closed and looks like it might be bleeding, and the arm that came out of that pillar is covered in bruises. And in the shot before she mashed that pillar down on him he was in the smoke coughing up what I assume is blood or at least suggesting he’s having trouble breathing after that shot to the gut.
Max on her end? Bloody nose mostly from her trying to grand-stand instead of going for optimal combat efficiency with her choice of moves for the first hit, and the second one is kind of out of nowhere unless youre genresavvy like sydney. Mixed in with her showing off some fine teamwork with Peggy and some pretty awesome moves in general. She has been shown to be a badass Not shy of dishing out the pain and really the only reason V isnt sporting a broken neck or the aforementioned “beating to death with his own arm” mentioned is because Max -is-, in the end, trying to take him down alive.
That said, I seriously doubt max is out for the count, dazed mebeh but its going to take a lot more than a broken nose to take down a superpowered soldier who has, apparently, had injuries bad enough to put her in a hospital (where she met peggy, apparently).
Thirdly, on the whole sexist tirade. Is it any less sexist to assume she Has to go all berzerk tear the arms off in a bloody meat-grinding to beat this guy? As far as I know women do have more speeds than “delicate flower” and “psycho heart-ripper” and I belive if brute strength and savagery is the only way she should be able to defeat him that’s not really doing the character any more favors for equality than if she does it by getting some help from her team.
Maxima has already demonstrated that she stands (or floats) a good head, shoulders and gold-chromed waistline above pretty much every other super we’ve seen thus far in the comic in terms of raw power, she does not need to beat V to prove this, that he is a he and able to trade blows with her does not make her any less of a powerhouse, it just means she is not the only powerhouse in the world and there are others, male and undoubtedly plenty of female villains and heroes in this setting who will be able to challenge even her.
Finally, while I can kind of see your point about wanting to see a woman who can beat the opposition into submission without needing the help or assistance of anyone else to “let” her score the win. I do not think it is a sign of weakness on her part to have teamwork and the aid of her friends and allies, subordinates at that, be an asset to her in battle. It would be different if, say, max gets beaten down and captain Muscles McBrawn comes in out of nowhere to punch the villain down with relatively minor effort, but if her teammates, nearly all of them established as being individually less powerful than her, can help tip the scales in her favor against an enemy of similar power-level, that does not take anything away from her as a powerful person, female or otherwise).
To reiterate: Max has been `canonized’ as one of, if not THE most powerful superhumans in the world. And the first fight we see has a male taking everything she has thrown at him and coming back at her hard.
Sorry, but we have seen this is EVERY comic book ever. Superman, for example…by rights, he should mop the floor with everyone, but through some oddity of writing, everyone and their pet otter has the supposedly-extremely-rare Maguffin to pose a `challenge’ to Krypton’s Favorite Son.
I see nothing wrong with Max BEING the baddest babe on the planet, bar none. I’m all for her challenges being limited to deciding which pair of badass boots goes best with her tactical uniform. If she’s supposed to be the baddest babe on the planet, LET HER BE IT! You don’t need to challenge her…because in the end, this has been presented as Sydney’s story. Sydney is the one to grow and learn and develop. What’s wrong with Max being the awesome role model Sydney looks up to, a good example of how a powerful, intelligent woman behaves?
Sure, it’d get boring if Max beat down everything that came ARCSWAT’s way. Why even have ARCSWAT when you have Max? But again…GRRL POWER has been primarily about Sydney, a clueless dork with more power than she knows how to deal with, and virtually every `issue’ has dealt with her learning and exploring her potential.
As admitted, perhaps it is just me and I have unrealistic expectations that really don’t mean a damn thing since I’m not the one telling the story. However, as Dave admitted in his own comments, he was going to have Max be the big bad to finish the fight…and changed it to something more `robust’. Meaning Chrome Dome *has* to be more powerful than Max. First major fight and the female superhero takes second place to the male. Only way to get `robust’ is to have Max *not* be able to defeat Chrome Dome on her own, and certainly not easily. Thus, Max is *not* the most powerful and the male is. And some question how that may be interpreted as sexist?
But it’s Dave’s story and we’re only along for the ride. He’s the only one knows how it goes, and that’s the way it should be. I may think this bit is a miscalculation on his part, others don’t, and that’s cool.
I will say I grew bored fairly quickly with the holier-than-thou stupidity of most mainstream characters, and much preferred the (at the time) lesser-known titles such as Badger and Grimjack (obviously). The hypocrisy and stupidity of the Good Guys got annoying. Honestly, Batman *should* have broken Joker’s neck the first time he escaped Arkham and killed. Superman *should* have torn Lex Luthor’s arms off and beat him to death with them. The Bad Guys are a clear and present danger to the life and limb of innocents, and in any rules of engagement that is grounds for lethal force. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing…and if we’re morally okay with the SEALs putting a few rounds into bin Laden’s head, or drones targeting terrorist motorcades…well, why not ARCSWAT putting down supervillains who attack them?
For the record, I don’t expect GRRL POWER to go down that road; it’s primarily a humor-action story. But then, I also don’t expect Max…supposedly one of the most powerful supers ever…to be made to look stupid and weak. My expectations have no bearing on the story Dave is telling. I love Sherlock Holmes but don’t like his drug addiction; Doc Savage is awesome but his forced lobotomies give me the WTF Blues. Anyone at all can justify those two examples all they want but it’s never gonna make me believe they’re necessary or A Good Thing.
Same with this bit of GRRL POWER. It isn’t enhancing Max’s character. My opinion, nobody else’s, take it for what it’s worth…which is nothing.
Only sexist cares whether his boss is a male or a female. I think that it boils down to that to previous people responding Grimjac. And I agree with them that your focus on the gender of characters is a bit.. excessive. TBH I dont care for the remainder of your point whether V has moobs or boobs to put it that way. It is irrelevant.
And why not meet the archvillan right away and let the other previously shown badasses be easier to handle (for whatever reason, be it teamwork or enemy weakness)? There are so many twists possible that I have to agree that you are jumping to conclusions a bit too quick. So dont be dissapointed just hope for the best :)
OK, let’s take this from the top, shall we?
To reiterate: Max has been `canonized’ as one of, if not THE most powerful superhumans in the world. And the first fight we see has a male taking everything she has thrown at him and coming back at her hard.
When you think you’re untouchable, you become complacant and open up to surprise attacks.
A good approximation would be Damien from El Goonish Shive. A guy engineered to be a messiah of sorts, who believed his own myth a bit too much. And with the power to superheat his body to the point of going nova and extreme health regeneration, he never had a real fight til the bitter end.
And Max doesn’t even rely on her powers alone.
You might want to re-check the “first fight” thing, though. We’ve seen her take down several supers that got the rest of the team sweating in one shot, even bypassing or outclassing their strengths. If V wasn’t putting up a fight, you might not have even noticed him.
Sorry, but we have seen this is EVERY comic book ever. Superman, for example…by rights, he should mop the floor with everyone, but through some oddity of writing, everyone and their pet otter has the supposedly-extremely-rare Maguffin to pose a `challenge’ to Krypton’s Favorite Son.
Check the comics where Supes isn’t fighting Darkseid, Doomsday or a guy with Kryptonite. Those are BORING. He swoops in, backhands the enemy without breaking a sweat and has a date with Lois before the bad guy even hits the floor. If Grrl Power did that with Max, she’d be the ultimate panic button. No matter the odds, no matter the danger, she could always save the day in one fell swoop. And given her powerset, she could be just about anywhere in a jiffy if need be.
…because in the end, this has been presented as Sydney’s story. Sydney is the one to grow and learn and develop. What’s wrong with Max being the awesome role model Sydney looks up to, a good example of how a powerful, intelligent woman behaves?
Sure, but you couldn’t build up suspense if Max was always there as a backup to bail her out. And if she was always “conveniently indisposed”, that would a) quickly grow old and b) negate any sort of chemistry or relationship between them.
As for “positive, intelligent role model”, Max is brash, short tempered, and extremely overconfident, with little regard for leadership or public image beyond her own.
As admitted, perhaps it is just me and I have unrealistic expectations that really don’t mean a damn thing since I’m not the one telling the story. However, as Dave admitted in his own comments, he was going to have Max be the big bad to finish the fight…and changed it to something more `robust’.
Much can change between revisions of a storyline. Theophilius DuMedd in Girl Genius was supposed to die while leaving Castle Wulfenbach, but now he’s a support character with family ties to both the main heroine and the main villian. You can’t make assumptions on a story by what could have been.
Meaning Chrome Dome *has* to be more powerful than Max. First major fight and the female superhero takes second place to the male. Only way to get `robust’ is to have Max *not* be able to defeat Chrome Dome on her own, and certainly not easily.
Even if Maxima can’t defeat Vehemence on her own, it just means that he has a compatible powerset. Maybe if he was paired with another super or just attacked the wrong way, he’d already be out for the count. But he chose this encounter because he assumed he would come out on top.
Thus, Max is *not* the most powerful and the male is. And some question how that may be interpreted as sexist?
There’s a reason we do. Unless V gets his powers from magical testicles or his powers include sapping a female’s strength, he did not defeat Max because he’s a man; he defeated her because he’s the main villian. At this point in the story, V could be a male, female, transsexual, genderless alien or robot, and it wouldn’t change anything for him.
And I think sexism has to go both ways: if the roles were reversed, would you be crying foul if a male Maxim was pummeled by a female Vehementia? Why is it OK for Harem to undress the male crew and why would everyone scream “sexual harrassment” if Math did the same to the girls – retaining the same amount of decency, of course.
Honestly, Batman *should* have broken Joker’s neck the first time he escaped Arkham and killed. Superman *should* have torn Lex Luthor’s arms off and beat him to death with them.
From an in-story perspective, because they are better than their villianous counterparts. Cops don’t always go for headshots on suspected murderers, either.
From the narrative perspective, it’s hard enough to write an affable, yet dangerously insane villian, let alone come up with one for every new storyline, just because the hero does the sensible thing and kills off any dangerous villians. You wouldn’t be as invested in villian #503 either, if you knew they’d just end up face down in the gutter by the end of the issue.
and if we’re morally okay with the SEALs putting a few rounds into bin Laden’s head…
That’s why many of us aren’t. He had the same rights to a fair trial as any other person. Sure, there was no way he’d be sentenced innocent, but if we don’t go through the motions, where’s the line dividing justice, vigilantism and cold-blooded murder?
What has to be realized is that Max, while powerful, is not as powerful as she is PERCEIVED to be. People see a bullet flatten against her eye when she maxes armor, move in the blink of an eye when she maxes speed, and grind pepper with a concrete support column when she maxes strength. People see those instances and think she’s capable of ALL those feats ALL the time. She doesn’t have all those powers, though. Just any of those powers.
All I can say without spoiling anything is stay tuned. Thursday’s strip will explain much. :)
I think vehemence is secretly a good guy they’ve thrown in to really test the team.
Definitely not. The idea has been bandied about a bit before. I would not expect Dave to waste time that way.
Out of curiosity anyone else notice Veh’s white tattoos are taking on a decidedly yellow goldish tint on his arm we see punching Max’s nose in the last panel. I am starting to think all Max has done is power Vehemence up….
DaveB. Just a note: Great Comic. Story works. Drawings sizzle. You know you have achieved worth when the trolls start crap bombing your forum. As much as I’ve posted thoughts on ways it _can_ go I do not assume I know your world better than you. I like to be right and I like to be surprised (aka wrong). Been both around here. And on occasion even got that left field feeling of total “she did wha…?”
Buuut, we could really use a “Holy ferret balls” from Sydney about now. ;)
This just occurred to me, but Vehemence was pretty obviously hurt at least somewhat from Maxima’s previous combo, and it appears that his markings have gone from blueish to greenish, so what if those markings are a sort of health meter for him, the further down the color spectrum it goes, the worse he is hurt, but probably gets stronger as a result.
Is it me or is there an earth worm eating it’s way out of a concrete pillar??..
I guess all living beings can have super powers…
That is rebar. It is part of the metal support inside the pylon .
Figured that, just looks like an earthworm….. personally I would rather the idea of a super power earth worm….