One of the (few) drawbacks to having an especially active community here in the comments is that a page or two following a big reveal will generally be retread or just confirmation of what’s been discussed by you guys. It’s stuff that needs to be said in the comic anyway since not everyone reads the comments and also there’s the book version to think about. I’ll reiterate one thing I said in the comments for the previous page since it’s easy to miss, is that while Vehemence can draw power from any sort of violence, from a mugging to an earthquake, violence with intent is higher quality and better ‘tasting’. Presumably it comes with lots of Vitamin V. Also there’s a finite amount he’d be able to absorb from something as violent as an earthquake since the range at which he can absorb the energy from is limited. A 2000 mile long fault line’s no good to him if he can only absorb stuff from… well, I haven’t decided his range, but it’s well under a mile. Localized violence is better.

I really wanted this page to be a double page, as Vehemence’s speech took rather a lot of room, but I think I’ve kind of gotten into the habit of trying to make every page I can a double. I’ve done 7 of them in the last 10 pages, and it’s been a little stressful. Burnout is far too dramatic a word, but making this page and the next singles was almost like a vacation for me. By vacation, I mean I didn’t have to draw all day Sunday as well as the other 6 days and it was nice. I did some chores, went to the gym… then spent the rest of the day coloring the vote incentive anyway, but the point is that I wasn’t under the gun trying to get a page finished so I wouldn’t be behind on Monday which is when I write and start penciling new pages.

There were several suggestions in the comments that the team take a break and power up Dabbler to match V’s level, and Dabbler alludes to it here. It would be an epic bait and switch if I just suddenly changed the comic into a 20 page lesbian orgy right now, but… nah. :)

The question is, if Vehemence is so powerful, or at least so potentially powerful, how did Arc-LIGHT not know about him? Granted they haven’t done a great job tonight anyway, but in Vehemence’s case, he’s mostly just hung around in the background gathering power and never really needed to join in. What’s he going to do, get powered up during a race riot, then leap out and start attacking looters? He’d pulp anyone he hit, and while killing someone is usually a pretty violent thing, a dead rioter can’t continue rioting.

Even when he hung around underground super fight clubs, which given the low incidence of super powers are rare, but they still happened, he’s got nothing to prove. He’s just there for the meal. He’s revealing himself now mostly because as debuts go, this is a pretty good one, and also right now he’s so amped it’s like he’s been snorting Excedrin.

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Here are some fun links for you. This one makes envious of the gals, cause whereas girls can wear basically anything without anyone batting an eye, guys are generally limited to 2-3 kinds of shirts and either pants or shorts, meaning there’s a whole range of geek wear I’m shut out of, like this Baroness tank dress. Though even if I was a girl, I’m not sure I would traipse around in something quite that sheer, though maybe it’s only partially see-through under studio lights. And probably direct sunlight, but then how often do proper geeks get exposed to that? Anyway if you’re within a decade of my age that site may have a few gems for you.

Here’s a quite funny webcomic I found, Deathbulge.  As with a lot of webcomics, it takes a few strips to find it’s footing but is solid once it hits its stride. The RSS seems to be broken unfortunately, but it’s worth going through the archives IMO.

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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.