Grrl Power #273 – Power… drain?
So a bit of a mixed reaction to the last page. That’s ok, not everyone is going to agree with everything in the comic and I felt that the stakes needed to be upped before we hit the resolution. As always, my pacing could arguably be better, but I’ve written out to the end of the fight and the entirety Vehemence battle is actually less than two comic books worth, (American comics, not 100+ page manga) so take that Dragon Ball Z. Hopefully the bi-weekly posting schedule is what’s making it feel drawn out, but that’s really only something that can be fully judged when it’s possible to read the whole fight in one sitting.
Oh and I just want to say up here in the comments that the solution people are suggesting rather a lot, which is that Sydney put an airtight shield around him probably isn’t a viable solution, because as far as has been revealed in the comic, Sydney doesn’t know how to make the force field around someone else. She has to be in it, and by default it’s centered on her, though that can be adjusted. I only mention it here because I’ve seen it get suggested about 14 times per page for the last several comics. I’ll go ahead and spoil this: she doesn’t know how to do that, it’s not a deus ex I’m holding on to, and it would be super OP if she could anyway.
On this page we see Maxima’s weakness, if it’s fair to call it that. Force her into a high armor state and she’s only able to bring her default strength to bear. It’s not much of a weakness since she’s so strong to begin with, but in the rare case she’s up against someone hugely powerful it can become a problem. Vehemence stumbled onto it but didn’t quite guess its nature. Dabbler did figure it out on her own which is how she was able to fight Max to a standstill. Dabbler forced Max into an armor dump and left neither one of them capable of hurting the other. The real trouble happens if someone forces her into a strength dump – someone with gravity powers or enormously powerful telekenesis or something like that. It would leave her only slightly tougher than a really butch tank, which again, not that much of a weakness, but against right super powers that can still be a problem, as we saw how the tank fared in at the firing range.
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Come on, what’s the first rule of martial arts? Use your enemy’s strengths against him. That’s the path to victory. Vehemence versus… himself.
I keep mentioning that they should just dump a bunch of itching powder on him, but…
Gasp! Curses! You have discovered my ONE WEAKNESS!
And then he starts scratching all over. That would be terribly funny, but it would detract from it.
Yes! So since he’s highly intelligent, they should all do something stupid! And because he can recover from any injury, the secret is to not hurt him! Genius plan!
How exactly do you use his strengths against him? Do so much violence that he absorbs too much energy and explodes from it? I’m not seeing it.
You mean clones? :p
Hum. Electricity. Is it Jiggawatt’s turn?
pretty sure vehetron just made a causation/correlation fallacy.
goldilocks having/choosing to put all her power into defence means giving up strength. thats how her abilities work. the electricity just happens to be there.
And since he’s not aware of her power set, he’s assumed something incorrect. This will work against him in the future.
Yes cy414 & ryan. Exactly my thoughts on this.
The author says as much in the comic commentary…
I’m thinking that he’s doubling down now on voltage, which Jiggawatt has fine control of. Can she do something nasty there? Electricity can mess up your day without being outwardly violent.
For that matter, he’s developed new bits… Can you get him to develop new weaknesses too?
I did an archive binge recently and the pacing seems fine when re-reading it but yeah at twice a week it seems more drawn out. That’s a hard balance to get through and long term favouring the re-read is probably better.
“What’s this colonel?”
Ok, now I am hearing Vehemence as M Bison.
Psycho Crusher!
I called it…like…since Vehemence started talking I said that. XD.
But remember he’s a ‘gentleman’ brawler! So give him an English accent and he becomes far more amusing.
Or have him quote Raul Julia (“It’s Tuesday”).
The late Mr Julia was M. Bison
Exactly the point.
Yes…YES!
So right now Vehemence can’t hurt max, she’s basically indestructible, but at the same time has no offensive or maneuverability. Pretty much making her the worlds best unbreakable rag doll.
Talk about being on the ropes.
She’ll probably go for the “fake knockout and backstab” routine
I thought that that was Achilles’ title. Maxima be trying to move in on his turf yo!
Well, if you change the phrase to “world’s best unbreakable *statue*” then there’d be no reason for Achilles to be upset.
This has likely been suggested, but I can’t go ahead and scan through about a years worth of comment sections, but couldn’t they just overcharge V? Assuming he runs off the logic of a battery, you can cause too much wear for it to contain it’s power (well, hydrogen gas but we are talking metaphors here)
Couldn’t the really destructive teammates keep going, full force, to the point he wears out? Now, I’m not sure if Max can do much this very second, but if she gets free and hits him rapidly and repeatedly with the same level blasts that atomized his arm, and keeps doing it until he’s trying to regenerate from nothing more than that damn smile of his, shouldn’t he become too overtaxed?
Following that battery logic, he might explode…so…time to super-speed him to a safer place for that…
So yeah, can’t they just solve violence with more violence?
Unfortunately there is no evidence that he works that way. There is, in fact, evidence that he will just keep converting some of the energy into additional mass to store more energy. Eventually he would be as big as Godzilla with enough strength to punch the moon out of orbit.
Could work that way, or he could just stop being able to absorb energy until he burns off enough to make room for more. Or maybe he does go into Chernobyl mode and have a runaway reaction. At this point we just don’t know. We don’t even know if his ability to absorb violence is voluntary or involuntary. What is he can just “stop eating violence” if he wants too?
Also Dabbler stated that vehemic users alter battles and WARS. On the scale of war Dabbler has (Just imagine 100 battle mages on each side and work from there) seen in her space travels, it is probably fair to conclude that the team won’t be maxing his power level any time soon.
Of course, he’ll also probably crack through the ground and stand there confused saying “Well, that was interesting”
Sure, give him some more free energy. Even if he has an upper limit for storage, who says that he’ll keep absorbing after that limit has been reached. He could simply plateau and have the excess energy go to waste.
I really don’t get why so many (yes, it has been mentioned before) people would be willing to risk creating a physical god that cannot be contained. Archon is barely hanging on as it is.
Also not to mention, odds are they’ll push V to the point where he can pinkie-swat the whole city block into oblivion long long before they overload him, and will hit the point where none of their attacks can even annoy him before that in all likelyhood.
If we go by tropes then now would be the point for Sidney to defeat V, using her comic book knowledge and powers. I just don’t think that’s going to happen because Sidney already had time to shine. She did exceptionally well already, both with knowledge and powers. She has nothing to prove at the moment.
There is also the issue of her powers being ineffective. Shield is out, Flight is nothing going to help with anything, Lighthook is barely a distraction, PPO is too violent and dangerous, Illusions don’t work on V and using the unknown orbs would be deus ex machina.
V has already demonstrated that he knows about magic, uses it himself and that he has so much to spare that he’s pretty much invincible. I doubt he can be seduced either, otherwise he would have made sure to take out Dabbler first.
My money is on Sidney figuring out a power stunt using the powers of ArcSWAT. Some weird combination no one thought of yet. Although I wouldn’t give that 50% probability at best because, as I wrote earlier, Sidney did that already.
From a PR point of view it would be best if the veteran members managed to subdue V on their own. Yeah, Sidney is a part of them now… but she is completely untrained and if she manages to show up the rest of the team, then that’s not going to be a positive development.
Or she can use what has consistently been demonstrated as her best and strongest power. Her Genre Savvy.
As for showing up the rest of the team… that only makes sense if it was some sort of competition. They aren’t really competing and all the public really cares about is can they deliver on the protection they are promising.
Or she doesn’t use the team at all…
What about using the media against him? He’s shown that violence adds to his power, but what happens if everyone watching starts laughing at him because Sydney makes him look bad?
Neah, we can’t use the media against him, everybody knows there’s way too much violence on the media these days.
Yes use the media to drag in a bunch of hippies to sing kumbaya in a circle while holding hands. V wouldn’t want to fight them, no challenge and little energy, and all that peace would sap his strength. Or he might just go “Hulk smash” with a chain of hippies. I prefer the latter option, does that make me a bad person?
Savy hippies know that kumbaya isn’t really an African song, it’s a made up song. So it doesn’t really symbolize awareness of and the embrace of a different ethnic culture, it symbolizes that people didn’t really know diddely-squat about this foreign ethnic culture that they were trying to respond to in a token manner.
Might be true, I’m not a savvy hippie. In fact, I’m no hippie at all. However your point is entirely out of context here.
Using the media will end in violent protests over something completely unrelated that will surely help V more than hurt him.
Wake up Portal and have her ‘port about 20 lbs of concrete into his lungs. He coughed earlier due to dust, so his breathing is important. He also stated that towing him into space might have worked.
Dump the concrete and then he has to figure out (quickly, I might add) how he is going to remove it?
Opal has a severe concussion. She’s not doing anything for a while.
Plus even if that was an option, based on what I’ve been seeing with the ‘Let Vehemence be able to adapt to anything at all’ lovefest for the baddie that this comic has been driving towards, even if you did teleport 20 pounds of rocks into his lungs, he’d probably say ‘oh but I can regenerate from that too!’ or ‘I also have so much power to burn that I can now breathe rocks!’ or ‘oh that’s violence! It’s making me even stronger’
Yawn. I hate Vehemence. Such an unbalanced, deus ex machinae, plot-armored moronic character idea that started out promising until he started pulling out powers from his now gigantic butt.
I do so agree! Do not care for ‘V’.
The sad thing is, aside from what’s been happening with Vehemence since he grew and became the Dragonball Z power hour, I was liking this webcomic.
That doesn’t really seem to be fair to the author here, considering the genre. Unbalanced, deus ex machinae, plot-armored characters are a staple of superhero comics as heroes and villains both, and Vehemence seems to be standing in the “heroes risk failure so we take their fight seriously” spot. There are bunches of characters in comics that have almost no weaknesses. Just to pick on one example, look at Superman. His power set is so unbalanced that they had to create the deus ex machina of kryptonite for most supervillains to even be a threat to him, AND saddle him with a “don’t do anything that might kill someone” ethic most of the time as well in order to keep the recurring villains recurring. I don’t find him unbalanced in a level that makes it unreasonable compared to the rest of the genre.
Which was one of the reasons I was liking this webcomic – it was decidedly pointing out the tropes of that and doing a more fun-to-read way. I can’t stand silver age stuff which rely on deus ex machina, like where Superman gains a new power every week out of nowhere, or where Batman always has a Bat-anti-whatever spray. It’s lazy and uninspired as a way to resolve a story.
This does not make for an interesting story when the bad guy keeps being shown to be unbeatable UNLESS the heroes use a deus ex machina. Which is why I really hope the way to beat him is one of the now VERY shrinking ways that wouldnt involve D.e.M.
The first question in whether that’s possible would be whether Portal’s abilities require prior knowledge of the target location or not. I doubt she’s seen the inside of V’s lungs. :D
Ok my first comment here but from what I have seen, he is not invulnerable. The longer the fight goes on, the tougher he gets but if you can overwhelm his defenses you can hurt him badly. Normally that just fuels up his powers, but it seems it takes conscious though for him to use them. What if he isn’t capable of thought after the attack? What is Sydney breaks out the PPO and takes his head off? No head, no thought, no thought, no regeneration. I think that was Max’s plan, but being the good guy she tried to give him a chance to surrender so she took his arm instead. Now she is unable to do it so that leaves Sydney. The question is Sydney capable of killing in her first real fight?
First she has to learn how to fire and aim the PPO at will, something she had big problems doing.
True but I think Sydney is the kind of person who is easily distracted but very focused when she has to be. While she does need practice, in an emergency you sometimes do things you didn’t know you could.
Focus is less the issue and more of practice. That was pretty much the result of her demonstration. While she could miraculously get it right all of a sudden, I’d be more inclined to see massive collateral damage first.
biggest problem with this plan is that you assume Sydney is capable of killing another human being. She might be, but she also well might not be. Especially killing someone she’s talked with and exchanged witty banter with. It pretty much flies in the face of all she knows is right from her genre savvy ways.
Also there’s the very real possibility that V has become too tough for sydney’s beam to instantly sear his head off. (Maxima’s arm-destroyer move was pretty damn violent after all).
Yes, right after lack of control, this is problem number two. Her reaction to even contributing to getting his arm blown off should be the big indicator.
That is what I asked in my last line of my comment. Killing someone is not an easy choice, and Sydney doesn’t strike me as the type of person who could overcome that reluctance easily. That said, if she thought someone’s life was in serious danger, I think she coul.
I actually thought of Sydney aiming the PPO at his head, somehow able to hold the blast back, damn near in tears because she’s about to obliterate someone.
indeed, he doesn’t really regenerate…he heals himself.
Technically, V’s not healing or regenerating…He’s *replacing* lost body parts, pretty much like how he replaced his pants earlier. More conjuring new material, rather than boosting his biology.
Okay, that’s actually another good method of beating him that would not be a DeM. PPO to V’s face ASAP.
FTW, QED. OK?
Okay watching his “stripes” I notice when he was made to look a fool, they seemed to dim, when people got embarrassed or aroused by the de-pantsing they seemed to dim again. Perhaps a non violent emotion drains him a bit? Embarrassment, lust, humor. Perhaps the other side of the emotional coin drain him. He keeps wanting to fight despite he seems far stronger then Maxima now. Perhaps because to keep them from figuring it out.
His stripes also started out blue and are progressing towards the other end of the spectrum. I’m expecting that he’s going to learn a very hard lesson about gluttony pretty soon.
So looks like Maxima will take the “fake knockout and then backstab while their backs are turned” approach. I wonder what the thought bubble will look like when she draws points away from one of her powers and puts it all into another one.
counting double pages as one page and including gap pages (such as dabblers corner) it’s only been 75 pages. i you had been doing three pages a week instead of 2 we would be at this point September 12th. So I think Yes part of the reason it feels long is probably because of it’s only coming out 2 times a week. (not that that’s bad given the quality)
I admit that the slow turnout of the new ‘episodes’ is probably making this fight seem a lot more infuriating than if I read it one after the other in an archive, but even if read archived, it does seem pretty annoying that V keeps pulling out new powers that he can do with his ‘abundance of power blah blah blah’…. pretty sure in an archive I would eventually start wanting to skip past the V wankfest and get back to good parts of the story :)
Just had a thought with regards to Vehemence charging his powers (stop me if it’s been postulated before). Rather than fight the ARC team, could he have had Opal create multiple portals that connected to points inside thunderstorms or other points of violence? Since his absorption range is definitely “well under a mile” he could have used her to open several portals across a large scale incident of violence to absorb more than he would be able to otherwise. Things like riots, warzones, gun ranges, forest fires, places projected to be hit by tsunamis or earthquakes, etc.
His language about Opal when he reveals the nature of his powers seems a bit ambiguous as to whether or not he new of her prior to setting up the attack on the ARC team, but it does suggest that he had connections and would probably have known of her.
I think knowing a portal/teleporter user was central to how easy it was to set things up here so he knew about her a little in advance anyway.
I haven’t read every comment since his appearance but I think you have hit upon something unique here. My guess is that the greater the distance the more limiting it is on her powers but you would think that with enough time she might manage to create a few to some hot zones. If so it seems a shame V burned this bridge.
Still V seems to know magic himself. Perhaps after he defeated the closest thing to a threat in this nation he was planning to use his immense pool of mana to create those portals himself. Thus becoming self sustaining at these incredible levels. Once he had enough he would travel to Jupiter and absorb energy from the massive storms there and once THAT helped him ascend, and enlarge, even further he would go and eat the violence of the Sun! Finally transforming into the colossal OMIGRAWD the Star Devourer! MUWAHAHAHA!!
Ohhh kay there. Just put that edge case scenario down and slowwwly step away from that particular brand of insanity
Hey…Given what we’ve seen from Vehemence, Observer’s scenario doesnt seem all that far fetched.
I want to see him try and “eat” a black hole.
V to Black Hole: HA! You’re trying to suck me into your singularity from which nothing can escape as I get spaghettified and die! That just makes me stronger! Now I can pull a white hold out of my nose to counteract the black hole and now I win! BECAUSE I HAVE POWER TO BURN HAHAHAHAHAHA
white hold=white hole
This arc is really bringing you down, huh?
The God like beings and Elders that seem to litter comic universes have to come from some where. Maybe all it takes is the right man with the right starter power to have the balls to take an educated chance that some overexcited cop wouldn’t say pop his grape with a .50 cal or disintegrate his head before he reached the turn-over point to ascendance. Thank goodness we live in a universe with much jumpier trigger fingers so we need never know such a being! XP
Well… the deus in deus ex machina does stand for ‘god’
And then supernovas. Which he creates himself. At which point he becomes Tengen Toppa Vehemence.
He’d better have dimension-hopping powers though, because his exponential power consumption woulc speed up the universes heat-death like nobody’s business. If he can jump to other universes he’s pretty much set, since he can then feast on some tasty big bangs.
Quesiton is: What does an all-annihilating space-god do for fun?
Gardening
Rock Gardening.
*airguitar*
Hell yes!!!!
If thuis fight ends up on the internet, Maxima is going to spend the rest of her life being harassed by two-bit electric supervillains. “Haha, you are helpless before the might of… Static Klingon!”
I dont care who you are. That sh!t right there is funny …
Batman did have the Condiment King as an enemy.
Oh gawd, that was awful. Please accept your +1 and retire victorious.
Attempting a “what could be next?” list –
One of Halo’s “useless mystery orbs” suddenly proves useful.
Halo uses the Lighthook to tickle (pretty amusing trope, if it worked well), or at least distract/blind V.
Halo spots something critical with Truesight, possibly leading into…
Dabbler figures out a magical or supernatural vulnerability in V.
Dabbler (who earlier Blinked herself away from the ribbon-turned-sword) teleports Max out of V’s grip.
Jiggawatt counters V’s electricity with her “positron lighting”.
Yet Another Super (maybe Vale with something from Deus’s secret labs?) shows up.
A Villain (Death Toll or Opal?) pops back up and attacks double-crossing V.
[Gag item] Dabbler transforms Halo into an octopus, able (with 8 arms) to use all of her Orbs at once!
1) Useless mystery orb idea = the definition of a deus ex machina since no hint of those orbs being useful in this situation was ever even alluded to
2) Tickle attack idea = doesnt actually stop V
3) truesight idea = okay, maybe that could do something….
4) Dabbler idea = she already stated outright that she didnt have any way to stop him other than the mummy gun thing, which she said would probably fail, which did fail. She tried magic already when he was significantly weaker and that failed even then.
5) Dabbler teleport idea? – when did Dabbler ever show that she can remotely teleport other people like she had done to herself (which I’m assuming was some sort of function of her teleporter arm thing – okay, it’s at least not a deus ex machina. But also still doesnt solve how to beat V.
6) Jiggawatt idea – Jiggawatt’s out of commission, plus that only counters V’s electricity even if she wasnt out of commission. No gamma particle problem because of Dabbler’s toy though, at least.
7) Yet another super idea – deus ex machina idea if another super comes in who has never been alluded to or mentioned or was not at that party or mentioned in any way who happens to have exactly the power set needed to defeat V without him making some spontaneous counter to it
8) Villain idea – Opal would probably just teleport out of there, since she seems to be intelligent. Although she COULD teleport him away, I guess, assuming V doesnt just knock her out again before she can. Death Toll is unconscious, though his unconscious body maybe can be used to counter V without it being deus ex machina
9) ha ha.
What’s stopping Dabbler from just seducing Vehemence? He’s somehow resistant? That would kind of defeat the purpose of her power.
The fact that a few people would be resistant doesn’t “defeat the purpose” of the power, it just means that it doesn’t affect everyone in all cases.
Besides, seducing Vehemence wouldn’t mean that he wouldn’t want to show off for her by defeating everyone else or something like that. It’s not an “automatic win” card, and it would be boring if it was.
A female fighter in the Dragonball Multiverse webcomic tried that as a way to win when she couldn’t possibly handle a straight-up fight against a counterpart to Goku, except he had a standard Saiyan personality and all it got her when she tried to tell him to give up was back-handed and told it was time to put out and breed kids for him leaving her to panic surrender so his leader would recall him. So not a good idea to try and use such a tactic against someone so horribly over-powered compared to you due to it not being a certainty they’ll end up a fawning loveslave but could instead get you the Stalker With A Crush reaction.
The fact that a few people would be resistant doesn’t “defeat the purpose” of the power, it just means that it doesn’t affect everyone in all cases.
Sure it does. What I mean is, it makes for bad storytelling if the author can just arbitrarily dismiss people as “resistant”. It’s a lot better to add consistent exceptions, like “can’t effect wood”, or “grows weak in the presence of kryptonite”. That way, the outcome can be predicted by the viewer in advance, and the strategy eventually used to defeat the villain, whatever it is, is a lot more satisfying. Otherwise, it’s always hanging over the viewer whether that power can be used or not.
V is getting SO overpowerful, he’s almost become the standard uber villain trope.
Since violence doesn’t work, how about slipping a ferret into his pants?
Those pants are made out of vehemic energy! Don’t you know what will happen if you put a ferret inside of pants made of vehemic energy?
You don’t?
Dang. I was really hoping someone could tell me. All right, let’s try it.
As the Grrls can attest to, Vehemence’s trouser snake would probably kill the ferret…
Just have Maxima do a blast right into his chest or face now to kill him so we never have to deal with seeing him in the comic again.
It’s made out of vehemic energy. It’s made from matter alteration. It’s made from magical conjuring. It’s made from ‘look we don’t want him swinging pipe during the rest of the fight’-ic energy.
What are the odds they can just toss him into a wormhole like the Justice League does with Darkseid.
IF they can find a wormhole to drop V in AND manage to get him there, it should work.
Nah he’d just suddenly have a spontaneous power to defend against that too, because he’s a poorly written villain. Cause he has ‘so much power to burn’
I am looking forward to a “Dabbler’s Science Panel” strip with Vehemence as a guest instructor.
And having them sign off with the tagline …
V: “… and now you Know.”
D: “And Knowing is half the battle” ;)
V: “the other half is ME!” :D
Speaking of “Sex and Violence in the Media” ….
How much fun would a Vehemence/Dabbler team up be?
They may be on opposite sides of the fight at the moment
but I think the two share a set of moral compasses that dont neccessarily point in the obvious directions that their peer sets would indicate.
And they both have taken an immediate shine to Sydney. …
Perhaps in a future storyline Syd gets sucked into a portal to the Aetheon Thrones (Ironically the portal WAS in New Jersey. Syd was visiting the Secret Stash. Dont give me that look. You would too if you were suddenly a very famous Super. But I digress)
So Dabbs decices she must get her back and the only “help” immediately available is Mr.V. Who decides a “road” trip to the thrones? that could be violent…
And may feel bad for the Kid.
And the company is … not unpleasant.
Rom-Com Hilarity ensues as V and D go on mini quest to find Syd.
Actually i take this back. This is just a good recipe for some Really Bad (is there any other kind) FanFic.
But not the first bit.
that science corner can be comedic gold. (and instruct readers on how things work from the Word of God)
I would take credit but I am sure DaveB already thought of this first.
Yay, he just pulled yet another power out of his butt. Vehemence really has gone from being a character that was interesting to one of ‘The Sentry/Dragonball Z’ lameness now.
And plus now creating weaknesses for Maxima on top of it. Meh.
He’s just using damned magic. We’ve seen him do it, I don’t know why you thought it would only be pants-related.
And Max’s “weakness” is him misinterpreting her redistributing power from strength to armor as her being weakened. Maybe you should read what DaveB writes before calling him a bad writer.
Yes he’s using magic to do anything and everything possible. It’s a crappy idea for a villain, especially their FIRST major villain encounter. I’d like to see Vehemence have an actual weakness instead of pulling new powers out of his humongous rear end every 5 seconds because he has ‘power to burn’ – whether in the name of magic or the name of ‘I have so much power muhaha whatever shut the hell up Vehemence’ or his epic plot armor.
Btw I don’t care about the pants power because that’s clearly for comedy satire reasons so you don’t have him pulling a Dr Manhattan for the rest of the fight, but the regeneration, then the ‘I have a metal arm’ then the ‘oh and I can make it shoot out electricity now just because I have power to burn so why not’ mentality on top of being magnitudes stronger than he was in the BEGINNING (when he was already strong enough to tank Dabbler’s magic and knock out Stalwart in one punch BEFORE all this additional fighting with Maxima happened) is just becoming too much
I have to disagree with your sentiment. I don’t see this as a really overpowered guy just wearing plot armor, I see this as a really powerful guy who was clever enough to set the situation up to his advantage. I just see this the same way I would see a wizard tapping into a leyline instead of his own reserves. Vehemence knew he could regenerate, be tough, use magic, and eat violence. He set himself up to eat more violence than ever before and he had enough magical knowledge to use the power when he got it. Sure, magic does seem to be easier in this universe than I would expect, but he doesn’t have infinite reserves. I don’t think there is much violence to body modification, electricity generation, tying yourself to the ground, or pants. Eventually he will empty himself by casting all of these spells. If they had encountered him on his own or in some situation unhelpful to him, then the rest of the team would have beaten him pretty badly and Max could probably hold him down with one hand. I don’t think he is overpowered, just good at planning smart.
How exactly will he ’empty himself’ when he keeps getting stronger when he attacks others or they attack him’ – pray tell. And how is electricity generation to ELECTROCUTE SOMEONE ELSE not violent? Heck, him spontaneously creating a new power of electricity also makes him stronger, because he’s using that power to inflict violence on Maxima.
So yes, he’s overpowered. He’s overpowered because in addition to his powerset, he’s this frigging master strategist who had prep time. So the only way to beat him now is to use some sort of deus ex machina as well, or use Death Toll’s body maybe, unless the yellow orb finds some specific weakness which would narrowly NOT be deus ex machina. When the only way to beat someone is a deus ex machina, sorry, but you have an overpowered, broken villain concept. I like the comic but I can’t STAND this character and how broken and overpowered he’s become.
In the event that he escapes or leaves after beating the hell out of everyone, he has NO future storyline potential unless he does this crap all over again. Because the first thing any hero would do who isnt carrying an idiot ball is to kill him RIGHT AWAY with a lethal attack to his head or throw him into space RIGHT AWAY before he can blink.
Also, from how V’s been doing things, Magic DOES seem to be infinite because no matter what happens, he magically has some way to counter it, then is stronger, then has some new power he pulls from the nether regions of whoopieville.
Personally I kindof like the fact that we have a villain who thus far is able to hold his own against the Golden Elf. I was getting really tired of seeing her always have her power points magically allotted “just right”. (Sorry, I’m just not a Max fan.)
Besides, I figure that Dave has an interesting method of defeating V already planned.
I’m not a big Max fan either, but I’m a lot more her fan than I am of the walking plot armor which is Vehemence. I liked that Max isn’t the type of female superhero I always see in the normal comics, where sure, she’s super, but she’s not so super that there can’t be a man to put her in her place. It was original. Think about it. Supergirl – she had a good run going on with writers, and CHARACTERS IN THE COMIC, all saying she was stronger and faster than Superman. To the point where Superman monologued it in internal thought bubbles multiple times, and he had to use a kryptonite ring to beat her. Then they nix that with one panel in one HORRIBLY written storyline where Superman says ‘oh I’ve always held back.’ Sure. You hold back when you’re going to be killed by her but will use a kryptonite ring, while monologuing in your internal thought bubbles that ‘she’s stronger than you’ and ‘she’s going to kill you’ and ‘she outran you even with all your powers.’ Wonder Woman? For most of her history her weakness is the idiotic ‘if she’s bound by a man she loses her powers’ (thank god they got rid of that – unfortunately Wonder Woman has the personality of cardboard). Any other top level heroines always have powers which are decidedly NOT based on strength or if they are based on strength – it’s based on magic or grace or martial arts (though Richard Dragon is still a better fighter than Cassandra Cain for reasons that totally escape me and make no sense) or psionic mental powers or force fields…. they’re certainly not ‘the strongest people in the world/universe/etc’ – for STRENGTH and INVULNERABILITY is the domain of men. (sarcasm).
I just hope that DaveB’s method for defeating V is not a…
say it with me kids….
deus ex machina.
I hope it’s something that’s at least been alluded to, if not to the characters, at least to the readers.
I am working under the assumption that he is purposefully misleading the team, just like he has the rest of the fight. Others have clarified most of my points, but I want to clarify that I don’t think he is being fully honest. I know that if I had powers, I would lie about their full extent. He may be able to reclaim some energy from attacking, but I don’t think he can recover all of the energy that he spends casting a spell. So he modifies his body, but uses up some energy doing it that he won’t get back. Also, I think you are confusing deep reserves with infinite reserves. We have absolutely no idea how much power he absorbed, so we have no idea if he is at 90%, or 20%. He could be halfway through his pool and just bluffing about his reserves at this point. The man doesn’t have an energy gauge above his head. I would wager that he is currently at a lower energy level now than he was right before he regenerated his arm.
Third, you say ‘V knew he could regenerate.’ There was NO hint that he was able to regenerate until his arm gets blown off, despite the fact that he’d lost an eye and two teeth. Because if Maxima’s plan to blow off an arm then make him surrender worked, THAT would have shown that his powers were finite still. Right now it’s showing his powers are IN-finite.
I mean, if she had blown off his arm there would have been a good storyline there too, with Sydney being uncomfortable about how Maxima handled things, and Maxima needing to explain to Sydney that life isnt like in the comic books and sometimes a fight is not going to be all clean and wrapped up. Then would mention something like World War Hulk so Sydney would understand.
But no, instead it’s just a big wank for saying ‘look how awesome V is, you need to think he’s cool too because he’s so powerful and awesome and look he can do this power and this power and this power too because he has so much power because he planned this and now he cna do this power and this power which he could never do before and never has done before because now he’s really powerful love him love him love him!’
Ugh. I hate him. He’s like the Sentry. Next thing, the comic will be saying Vehemence has the power of a million exploding suns.
Exactly. And then all the girls will have sex with him because he is so awesome. And the boys will transform into girls and also have sex with him. And he will rule the universe. And have lots of sex. And punch stuff. Obviously.
Should I be swooning yet for his awesome awesomeness yet, as he punches suns together to create a big bang to make him more powerful than the universe itself?
V is not a master strategist, if he was he wouldnt have Had to knock out vekter and Opal to get them to not teleport everyone away, he wouldnt have revealed that violence makes him stronger because even if its too late for them to do much about it.. knowing is still half the battle and its a half of the battle more than they would have had otherwise.
V fights well and obviously enjoys it, but he managed to forget about the sniper both for the first shot (which cost him an eye and could have cost him way more if it had been used earlier) and for the second shot.. though by then he was strong enough to tank the hit.
Finally he makes mistakes, like incorrectly concluding that it was his electricity that caused maxima to “weaken”. Its not an unreasonable conclusion to make… but that doesnt change that it is incorrect and might cost him later. (it’s sure to cost any electricity based villain who hopes to cash in on it down the line).
V has two powers as far as we can see, one is feeding on vehemic energy, the other is being able to regenerate and gain a powerbonus from this. This isnt too cheesy as the weakness is obvious, if you dont give him power to start with, and dont harm him in ways he can regenerate, he’s not much more dangerous than a normal human (though as math teaches us, there is no such thing).
Maxima remains the queen of being the most powerful “no charge up, no buildup or prep required” superhero, she can go from zero to kicking scary levels of ass with no need to wind her up or aid her with another person… She’s even scarier at the head of her team naturally as shown here, but in this one scenario, V was able to play on police procedure and tactics and that of their super heroic selves to ensure he’d be given the time and opportunity to charge himself up to levels where even maxima cant simply steamroll him.
This doesnt make V stronger than maxima any more than it makes Spiderman stronger than Firelord (one of galactus heralds, capable of generating energies on the level of a highpowered star, complete with gravity warping, rediculous heat levels and all things fiery, hence the name), despite the fact that once, through sheer desperation in spiderman’s case, he managed to beat an overconfident Firelord.
In short, paper may beat rock… that does not mean paper is going to always be the better choice
Actually V -is- a master strategist, since he’s the one who planned ALL of this.
Also, he didnt forget about the sniper. Getting shot in the eye makes him stronger. Just because. Besides he can regenerate his eye. Just Because.
V does have 2 powers. But you’re wrong about what they are. The first is ‘feeding on vehemic energy. The other seems to be ‘whatever the hell I want since I have power to burn. Which now includes – growing, matter alteration, increased speed, increased strength, increased invulnerability (all to Maxima golden triangle levels so far and probably a lot higher soon), regeneration, metallic skin/muscles, and electricity. Based on what’s been shown already, there’s nothing to show that that’s even the limit – his limit seems to be literally ‘whatever I want’ – which again is a lazy power to have. Plus he knows apparently EVERY metahuman who even Arclight did not know about, is a good enough manipulator to make Vektor think it was his idea, is stealthy enough to be able to sneak up on Opal when Stalwart wasnt able to, is at his pre-max fight level able to knock out Stalwart in one punch, and an expert brawler apparently.
So no, he’s not a god yet, but he might as well be if they run out of non-Deus Ex Machina ways to beat him. Because once you have to use a contrived ‘out of nowhere’ way of beating a person to win, the character is broken. Maxima winning by the arm destruction would not ahve been a ‘steamroll’ since she did still get knocked around and hurt a lot. And even if he did regenerate, that I might have been able to say ‘okay…. fine at least nothing else is happening’ – but no, now he has lightning which can hurt Maxima if she doesnt put EVERYTHING into armor, and still seemed to hurt.
I’d think in a comic that’s called ‘Grrl Power’ there would be more willingness to have a woman be the strongest and most powerful character without people saying ‘whew, at least we got a male villain who’s able to show her that she’s not the strongest!’
The phrase was “V knew” not “Everyone knew” He can know as many abilities he hasn’t shown yet, as he or rather the character wants.
dear brain- It’s CREATOR not Character
Considering that as far as we can tell his strongest reason to do this is because he wants to see just how strong he can become and also that he could only become this strong by taking advantage of a situation similar to this one by fighting with beings who hold the violence of a whole storm in one bunch its not real surprising he has been slowly plotting and planning how he will take maximum advantage of it when it comes along. So he learned the magic and how to dump his super power’s gathered energies into it. ((I would have been upset if Ka-Pants was all he could do by the way. A character going out of his way to learn one spell because its funny doesn’t get a pass from me. Comedy shouldn’t be allowed to totally and completely break logic. Bend it a bit maybe… but the more logically the funny thing fits into the world the funnier it will be as far as I am concerned.)) He sandbagged about the full extent of his abilities at every stage of the fight and allowed them some hope of defeating him with a lesser amount of commitment because it increased the likely hood that they would dick around with lesser attacks and less lethal plans so he could gather the power he needed to both attack at Maxima’s level AND cast spells/regenerate even though it uses more energy then he is currently bringing in. He took damage on purpose because he knew that even though he shrugged it off having such obvious damage out there for the whole team to see would give them enough encouragement to not escalate appropriately. (the fact its Maxima’s first big and public fight as a cop type agent is probably making her hold back a lot as well)
So yeah, he is overpowered because his careful years of planning to help him take advantage of an opportunity like this one, we’ll probably find he helped ARC’s creation along in some small way like creating visible super threats for congress to worry about, have all come to near perfect fruition. A few surprises like getting his eye popped but he got lucky that they waited to do that and the arm thing until he could handle it. He is extremely committed and brave really. V went all in and took all the risks that his “good guy” alternate wasn’t willing to go far enough fast enough. Every mastermind/supervillain is looking to become overwhelmingly overpowered as compared to their opposition. The smarter ones with the most patience and the sheer balls (brave or insane…), like Vehemence, sometimes reach that goal for a bit before the “good guys” find a way to find or create a weakness where there seemingly wasn’t one. (unless its a darker story where they fail at first)
This scenario is pretty normal for such stories and it was bound to happen. The thing that is really bothering people is that it came up so soon in a fight that lasted too long (Dave’s admitted pacing issues which probably aren’t that bad as an archive dive) but its not the first time its happened or been made to work out OK in a story (usually stories who don’t have a lot of time on their hands to get things rolling ).
Dave seems to want a reusable villain or even neutral character and he is grooming V for that potential. If he gets away V will most likely not show himself until he has reached this level already, maybe he will never show himself and just take the power of their other super fights off somewhere else to do what needs doing, or get himself a teammate(s) or boss that complements his nature (having learned from this fight just how important unbackstabbed team mates can be! lol ). The struggle of an intelligent man who has touched true god-like greatness trying to get it back despite having tipped his hand to the main opposing force for this hemisphere could be interesting to read.
That’s the long term plan but in the short term it is starting to look like V is the bad guys “Worf” maybe. Someone who is made to look incredibly, impossibly strong just so that there are plenty of kudos to go around (like a whole teams worth but especially Maxima and Sydney) when our protagonist Sydney plans a battle strategy Maxima and the others enact. It would be better story wise if Maxima has some kind of strong role in stopping V like coming up with the strategy that Sydney and the others use or at least being the major instrument of V’s downfall but it looks like this might be where Sydney gets her shot and becomes “big guns” without regard to how this negates our expectations of Maxima’s abilities, both super powers and much larger combat experience, generated by dialogue and flashbacks earlier in the story. I’m not really happy about that as its too early in the story for her abilities to be shot down in opposition to the foreshadowing this way… First fight should have had her shine as both a power and a strategist. *sigh*
So yeah its early for this sort of thing but it can work and has worked in the past. (minus my rant about potential Maxima character issues) I totally understand if its not your cup of tea. Do also note that despite the pacing issues with this fight (Dave’s still learning ya know) that fighting isn’t really the true focus of this story. He’ll get back to things less annoying to you if you do choose to hold in there. Not saying you should. Just saying. *shrugs*
I think that covers a lot of what you have been saying in your many replies here abouts. (plus a side rant about what this might do to Maxima’s character! LOL )
I agree with you. I don’t have a problem with V as a villain. Where my problem lies in the destruction of Max’s character. She has been beyond sloppy and reckless with V the whole time and is not at all showing the knowledge she supposedly gained in actual combat. She is basically just turned into a damsel in distress that has to be saved. I find it sad really.
I agree 100 percent.
One trope that hasn’t really been done yet is “get him monologing.” Usually, it’s just a way for the hero to rest up until she can attack again, but in this case, monologue violence. If he’s just talking, he’s not getting any stronger. That doesn’t deal with the fact that he’s already got “an excess of power.” How do you drain him? What’s the opposite of violence?
Taylor Swift.
They did a JLU cartoon called Hawk and Dove where they had to fight some sort of mystical armor that got its power from war and violence, and the way to beat it was to just not fight it. But that would NOT WORK HERE. Because that was a machine essentially, that could only attack things that were attacking it. V has already shown that ANY violence works for making him stronger – including violence that he initiates himself. So the opposite of violence (peace) won’t work here.
He can feed off of his own violence but I bet its mostly a “maintenance charge” giving back most of what he used as opposed to a decent feed of any kind. It means he can take the chance to beat on them with no fear of loosing what he’s gained even if they don’t fight back. If they don’t fight back his charge will most likely slowly ebb away since he has to maintain his new constant powers especially his defenses or he could have his head blown off before he could react. If he just sits there maintaining his super strength, defense and speed capabilities at these high levels without anything but his own maintenance charges trickling in from his own attacks he would eventually eat his own fuel up.
That’s not gonna happen though cause V knows that and so would just keep attacking targets that force a reaction until he has enough juice to kill all the major official opposition in this nation and then probably go off and kill some of the villainous organization powers that could threaten him as well if they are close enough. (if he can power down while holding his pool of violence from a previous fight he might be able to string this into becoming the last villainous super in the area… he seems to know a lot of people)
Seems to me to be more like the way Sebastian Shaw punches walls for an hour so he’s always super-powerful each morning.
Mind you, I somewhat dislike Sebastian Shaw as well, but at least he has a LIMIT to how much he can absorb – the Hulk managed to hit him so hard that it bypassed his absorption power, and Rogue was able to throw him out of the battlefield without Shaw spontaneously coming up with a power to prevent that.
This Shaw guy sounds like his powers would be their own defense so he tanks up and his powers will keep him safe till he releases what’s in the tank as he chooses.
V’s defense isn’t built in. He absorbs the “violence” (whatever that is) but the damage still occurs. So his defense at least would cost him maintenance charges over time.
So yeah he’s basically invincible at this point….. Unless…. wait a second…. Does anyone have a Venusaur or a Klefki or something? No one has tried Poisoning him or putting him to Sleep or paralyzing him or tear gas or any kind of Chemical weapons. I don’t think any of those would count as violence!
More solutions open up once you start applying Pokemon logic to situations. Heck while I’m using Pokemon logic if someone could just use confuse ray on him he’d basically kill himself! And there’s other mental affects that could work like possession and mind control…. and It just hit me that despite hitting most of the typical super hero types Archon doesn’t have a Professor X/Jean Gray/Martian Manhunter on their team……So how many Venusaurs have joined Archon?
Dabbler tried a sleep spell earlier and he shrugged it off while informing her it would need to be way stronger.
May or may not have a defense against more mundane methods, but probably does.
Plus he shrugged off her magical attack BEFORE all this Maxima and Anvil and Stalwart stuff, if I’m not mistaken.
No ones tried a unmagical attempt to poison him, remove his oxygen or sleep him no. We’ve been talking about it and waiting patiently for Dave to show us why it can’t be done for many updates now. The question is does he still need oxygen and is his skin still permeable to chemical attacks? If he can simply feed off his mana pool to stay alive and regenerate even his lungs (then gaining evolved lungs… ) can he even be knocked out at this point? Kind of curious why they didn’t send Harem for something to try it with earlier but I can see their hesitation now.
Don’t recall if I thought of choking him, but I did wonder about keeping him contained, and figured that’d be bad since she’s still in the shield.
Pretty sure that trying to choke him would get the response of ‘I’m so invulnerable now that you can’t get the strength enough to cut off oxygen from my throat!’ or ‘Oh I have another power where I don’t have to breathe anymore!’ or ‘I have a magical glyph now which is going to form around my head so negate your attempt to choke me since I have power to burn now ha ha ha’ please die already Vehemence.
Speaking of DBZ, I like how Vehemence’s regen=more strength basically makes him a Saiyan.
I envy your mastery of musculature.
I think it´s time for Dabbler to travel trough time.
To ancient Rome.
Directly into an Orgy…and again…and again.
She did say, that if the parking lot would have been an orgy instead of a battlefield, she would have enormous power now.
The problem with this strategy is the time factor for dabbler to get powered up & return *before* the rest of ARCSwat gets creamed. The only way time travel could eliminate that problem is if Dabbler could return to just after the instant she left. Any other way would take too long for Dabbler’s new power to do any good.
There is the possibility that she want back in time, and either found out the location of the orbs in the past, or even after many years managed to create them in her lab. Then she went forward to Florida of the recent past and placed the orbs in the ocean for Sydney to find. And now in the present Sydney has the tools necessary to defeat Vehemence.
Two problems with this theory:
1) She decided to put the fate of the world in the hands of of a total head case.
2) At the start of the fight she could have just said. ‘Ignore everyone and get that guy behind the tree!’
There’s always going to be problems whenever you mess around with a big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.
The best way I can see to defeat V is Sydney doing her comic connection skill (that many geeks have) that is adding abilities together for new ideas & skills. She would tell Dabbler to use her spell caster sword on V, using its magic challenging abilities (such as a primal force of power, Vehemic Energy) & use that power to cast ice on the target. This would both drain V of the energy he has collected, and put him in a non violent hold. The combo of losing his own power into a prison he is making would stop him.
The only other option I can see as possible is finding out another orb power – the 2 most probable to help this fight end would be some kind of energy absorb / transfer, or one of the orbs is an equalizer / normalizer – this would be the recovery orb, or the orb that also can depower people, by setting them back to a “normal” physiology (removes wounds back to normal, whether physical or mental injury & would work on anyone else she touches with it.).
channeling, not challenging >.<
The only problem I see with V’s powers right now, is that Dave B wants to use him as a recurring Villain…. If max survives this and V escapes, what will stop Max from NOT going straight for the head/kill before he is powered up next time? A soldier who barely survived a encounter because she went easy on him at the start will NOT make the same mistake twice. Max will surely go for the instant kill if she ever meets him again unless they find a very easy was to take him out.
If he had either been beaten and escaped a WHILE ago, or had not kept popping up new powers, he could have made a good recurring villain. Now he is a total suckfest as a recurring villain, because assuming he isnt killed here (which I hope he is because he now is the Dragonball Z Freiza/Vegeta/Goku/Marvel Sentry/DC Spectre of villain unbalanced D.e.M. powers), then the very next time he makes his face visible in a confrontation before he gets a chance to power up, Maxima is throwing him into orbit then using a full plasma blast to his face before tearing his heart out so he will be dead before he can have ‘power to burn’ (which is now a phrase I find as irritatingly stupid as the concept of Hulk’s strength being infinite because his rage is infinite – there’s no such thing as infinite strength or infinite rage, especially when it’s contained within a person). Tangent, sorry – I just really hate Vehemence and how he’s making reading the comic more of an exercise in irritation instead of watching trope-savvy superheroines kick butt (as opposed to being the damsels in distress or idiot-ball holders they usually become in the regular comics).
*delurk*
Heeeeey, so I’ve been lurking this comic for a while and I just thought of away to K.O. V, who remembers that death toll guy? The nemesis ability dude. Even if he is unconscious, shouldn’t his power still work?
Just a lurking.
*Relurk*
That’s actually the only idea I’ve been able to think of also to deal with Vehemence without using some deus ex machina power or ability. Since it’s already been clearly established what Death Toll’s power is, and it could concievably be used to counter Vehemence’s ‘I can create any power I want on the spot just because I want to because I have power to burn’ megapowerset. So Death Toll, if his powers work when he’s unconscious, coudl be put in front of Vehemence RIGHT before he’s about to land a punch of shoot electricity or squirt deadly acid out of his nose or whatever new power he’s going to create out of nowhere, then counter it and undo all his powers like some vacuum power drain. Which at least would be consistent with what’s been presented in the webcomic so far power-wise.
I’d still like to point out that even if it worked, Death Toll could sue the living shit out of Archon afterward. Cops cannot use a subdued perp as a human shield.
Unless Archon’s charter gives them immunity against that
Veh got it wrong obviously. What he perceives as a power drain was just max readusting her power levels as shown. I am thinking this incorrect assumption will be the beginning of Veh’s downfall. For some reason i have an image of Sidney grabbing the two mystery balls and saying… power drain, I wonder if that is what one of these do, since to test it requires the presence of a super which before today she had no access to. Obviously this will lead to Vehs downfall and another upgrade for sid,s power nodes!
So basically the only way that can be thought of to beat Vehemence is for Sydney to use one of her two unknown orbs and find that one of them has a deus ex machina power to beat Vehemence.
For those who don’t know, Deus ex machina basically means some new event/ability/object/ etc to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem – which having one of Sydney’s ‘unknown’ orbs do without any previous glimmer that they could do that would be. But then again Vehemence has been pulling deus ex machina repeatedly as well to beat Maxima and ArcSWAT, so that probably is as good a reason as any for Sydney to do one also.
Most super-hero weaknesses translate to “things I am not quite invulnerable to” as adverse actual weaknesses.
Apparently V’s lightning attack is even more powerful than Maxima’s plasma attack too, since she already showed an ability to shrug off the explosion from her own plasma attack back when she destroyed the tank, and when she destroyed V’s arm earlier – since there she didnt need to put her points into armor, just her regular golden triangle of powers (unless she has a secondary power of being immune to her own plasma attacks, which is consistent in comics like Human Torch’s fire or Cyclop’s/Havok’s force beams).
Apples and Oranges.
In an explosion you have the inverse square law working for you. Whereas AB’s shaped charge as well as V’s punches and shocks transfer their energy pretty much directly to the target.
Furthermore: who said that Max didn’t max her armor when in her ‘splosion?
Because you didnt see one of those thought bubble things that show her changing to her armor. And DaveB already stated that Max’s default for power distribution is a ‘golden triangle’ of power.
I’ll grant you the whole ‘directed charge’ thing though.
Just because it wasn’t shown to us doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, especially since it was not in combat, and the “thought bubbles” are just to give us a heads up of what to expect Max to be able to do probably to help Dave keep “himself honest”.
Actually, that’s the whole point OF something being a deus ex machina. Where someone pulls a power out of the ether which they never alluded to having and there was nothing that even implied they had that power – in fact where past events worked against the idea that they had that power.
And since every time Max has changed power levels, DaveB’s shown the power distribution, and stated that her default is a golden triangle of power (haha I like the double entendre you just brought up), it’s a little lazy to say ‘the only reason we havent seen her do it before is because DaveB didn’t bother to draw that before. If he didn’t draw it before, then afterwards starts drawing it whenever she changes her power levels, it’s a pretty clear implication that back during the big explosion, her power levels were at ‘golden triangle’ levels.
She didn’t when she flipped to flight and speed to rocket out of the restaurant.
Or when she flipped to flight after V launched her. Or when she flipped to particle beams to launch that press conference explosion. We don’t see it every time, only when we need to to understand what’s happening. You are a very pessimistic person and you seem very upset that a character whose powers are still being defined, and are therefore being displayed rather than pulled out of nowhere- whether or not you think he has ‘too many’, it’s not Deus ex Machina- has three displayed powers, at least one of which is learned rather than innate.
Relax. Let Dave tell the story, trust that he’s got a plan for it, and honestly? I recommend you stop reading for three or four weeks, come back and archive binge the remainder of the fight to make it easier to stomach, and enjoy the next chapter with us. I don’t know, it seems like you’re past constructive criticism and into stressed-out, pessimistic ranting with lots of nasty assumptions made. That’s fun for no one, least of all, I’m sure, you. Maybe you should step back for a bit. A nice luxury people have with webcomics.
Max golden triangle (no, not that one) leaves the explodey thing at base power. I’m pretty sure that big kaboom was not her base power. Not full power, she said that, but I’m 90% sure that she put some juice in there. Otherwise her powers would be skewed heavily towards the plasma blast, and everything we’ve seen so far indicates they’re distributed about equally, regarding both baseline ability and potential maximum.
Point is: She has almost certainly shifted her power distribution on screen without the grid showing up in the panel.
What has been shown to imply that she’s shifted her power distribution on screen without the grid showing up? DaveB even stated outright ‘her default is a golden triangle of power.’ then every time she’s moved from that default so far, he’s shown it (which is actually something I like). Until DaveB says ‘oh she’s changed her golden triangle to other shifts before ONSCREEN, I’m not going to assume that she has, and really, you shouldnt either. I think her plasma blast to the arm was NOT full power. It was like when she shot at Sydney as a test of her shield (which itself was pretty massive for an explosion, which she then said was also not even close to ‘full power’) It was golden triangle level power. If it was full power, or even having some additional power over her ‘average’ power, I think DaveB, given what we’ve seen of his diligence in showing how Maxima’s powerset works, would probably have shown that as well – especially since it could have been a significant turn in the fight.
a) Max has fired blasts of different orders of magnitude. You can’t claim with a straight face that the one she shot at Budget Halo was comparable to the one she took out the tank with. In neither case was her power grid shown.
b) Showing the grid every time she adjusts her powers mid-battle would quickly become tedious. Everyone who has read the cast-page knows that Max can shift her power distribution, so some variance in her abilities should be easily understandable. We only need to see it in special cases, like when it’s illustrating her decisions, or, like now, to show that she’s at the end of her rope.
c) Do not tell me what I should or should not assume.
a) Actually I can claim that – or at the very least, she used FRACTION of her lowest level. She never had to power up beyond base.
b) Not only was it not shown in the grid (and there have not been a ton of times where it would have needed to be), but DaveB hasnt even said in the comments that she was powering up that area, and he does seem to let the readers know about that sort of thing. If he doesnt say it, don’t assume it.
c) When you make up facts to suit your belief, I feel pretty justified in saying you shouldnt assume. To quote Felix Unger from the odd couple:
“Don’t assume. When you assume, you make an
ass-
out of -u-
and -me.”
c) funny, I was thinking the same thing.
But for the rest: yes, you have won. Give yourself a cookie.
nom.
“Max golden triangle (no, not that one)…”
Are you sure it’s golden? Back at Archon HQ earlier, Heatwave pointed out that Max doesn’t use makeup & her feministic attitude pretty much proclaims that she wouldn’t use any hair color either.
All clues considered, I’d have to say Max’s drapes match the carpet.
Interesting theory, and very plausible. Just a matter of testing it out. Any volunteers?
Well, of all the people that might be capable of finding out without instantly being sent to meet their Maker, Vehemence happens to be right there…
Hmmm, I may just have to break out the old teleportation ray, just to settle our scientific curiosity .
The carpet, yes, but what about the, uuh, floor boards?
That wasn’t her strongest attack and she had some distance.
Because you didnt see one of those thought bubble things that show her changing to her armor. And DaveB already stated that Max’s default for power distribution is a ‘golden triangle’ of power.
He said fatal> mistake. Does that mean he’s through playing and now the kid gloves are coming off? Or am I reading too much into that?
I think it’s just basic gloating.
Another pretty substantial problem with Vehemence is this – he’s already ruined the concept for which DaveB said he was hoping to use him to accomplish. He said, and I quote:
“I needed Vehemence to be so tough that if he ever shows up in the comic again, everyone knows that the proper response is “Oh shit, run!” He was always my guy who could go toe to toe with the Hulk or Juggernaut, Superman or even Darkseid, assuming Darkseid didn’t open with the ol’ Omega Beams. Vehemence is smart enough to know not to face off against a threat like that without warming up a little, which is a large part of what makes him Arch tier.”
Congratulations – this run-on, ‘give him any powers he needs the longer a fight goes on’ scenario has basically ensured that if he survives this fight (assuming some deus ex machina isnt used to defeat him, which has been debated quite a bit already in the comments), then the very next time he appears, the FIRST THING THAT HAPPENS is a kill shot at max power to his head or putting him in orbit so that he dies of asphyxiation and explosion as all his oxygen rushes out of every orifice and his eyeballs freeze and his blood boils into the vacuum of space.’ In other words, ‘omega beam is the first attack on him.’ Or just dodging and blocking the entire time and never actually fighting. Though that probably won’t be as good as just a first kill shot since his own violence can power him as well. IT won’t make him a good ‘recurring villain.’
Except he is pretty smart, and probably would see for some first-strike protection (or appearing only after charging up through proxy-fights or otherwise).
Or perhaps he will escape this fight without significant damage and a large portion of stored energy, and be a general menace further on.
I mean that now, if you somehow see big V with orange or red-glowing tatoos, you can be sure that this will be a pretty tough fight.
I agree with some of your points. But please state them and then let others have a go. Your ability to state the same thing over and over again is beginning to rival V-s ability to godmode. For reference: Your posts form about a third of this comment page’s mass by number and by volume. If or when this fight is solved, you’re welcome to gloat a bit, but please don’t overdo it. It’s one thing to speculate and another to utterly discredit the author. Some of us actually want the comic to continue.
He’s gaining new permanent powers through this regenerative evolution thing so he’ll start out stronger next run. Vehemence went out of his way to target the team when they were all in one place to get more juice. The team is most likely going to be operating in smaller units as the threats/natural disasters they are dispatched to deal with are judged in power level. Clearly they have multiple tanks, multiple blasters, multiple multitaskers (heh) and even two mages (and one magic advisor without known magic powers in addition to) so they can split up to cover a whole nation plus be loaned out to allies. When things go south this turn he may decide to rabbit while he still has some in the tank and just power down back at the lair voluntarily to conserve power between disasters. So he waits till the smaller unit of his choice has engaged a target, possibly also of his choice and feed some juice into his already partially filled tank before revealing himself in an attempt to finish them off in parts. An evolved and partially juiced V is going to be brown trousers time for any 3 or 4 (even 5) person team of ARCies without Maxima. And snipers are a lot more effective when an intelligent baddie hasn’t had control of where the fight is going to take place and knows you have a sniper who has to set up somewhere around there…
He seems to know a lot about what going on out in the world and beyond. He may invest in some armor and gadgets next time as well. Use his remaining power to permanently create some cool stuff. Or combine the two. Buy some cool stuff tech and enchant it. An intelligent and well informed super villain who gets his ass kicked but lives is going to go all out planning his next dance with the ARCies.
The long term future is no big. Good writing can solve any long term problem. The real issue is where we are right now and can Dave believably get us out of this with foreshadowed abilities (Bell Tolls entire existence may have just been to foreshadow Sydney’s outside the box thinking. In fact we pretty much know that to be true. ) And above and beyond that what damage will that do to Maxima’s “told” but not entirely “shown” yet reputation of having all this great power and more importantly combat experience (some as a leader no less?) if her strategizing is handed off to our mostly fresh and green protagonist while she her equally “told” amazing levels of power are held helplessly pinned?
Its all down to the ending of this fight. Nothings seriously wrong until that ending comes. Good luck Dave. I’m rooting for ya!
I’m hoping Dave does a non DeM too. Because I like the comic and up until the Vehemence pulling stuff out of the ether, I thought the writing was top notch also because he hadnt been relying on any poorly crafted lazy storytelling cheats (again pre-Vehemence regeneration), and had been making it a pointedly clear thing that the most powerful being on the planet was a woman, without there being some man to put her in her place by being more powerful than her. (which is something a lot of male comic book readers seem to need to see in the paper books)
Above in other replies I agree with you partially on the Maxima thing. V’s fine as far as I’m concerned. He was designed from the ground up to be like this in this moment. If Maxima wasn’t acting this way he’d be so dead by now you wouldn’t even know he could do the regeneration! LOL
Or instead of people freaking the hell out about this “overpowered” villian we could give the author some frakking credit, wait and see how this goes actually down.
Amen.
Agreed. Dave has shown his chops with several unexpected twists already in the ongoing brawl alone, there’s no reason to doubt that he has a plan and that it will in all likelyhood prove an interesting one for how things will go, based on his prior work.
I think most of the frustration at the present stems not so much from V seeming to be overpowered, as that his powers are so flexible at this point, due to his ability to fuel magic spells with his Vnergy means there’s no easy imaginary limits we can establish on what he can or cannot do at this point. Which naturally leads us to having trouble guessing what if anything might work as a counter.
My bet remains on Sydney and/or the gang managing to trick or Sydney him into spending too much of his power reserves somehow to the point where it either makes him vulnerable to a KO or it forces him to retreat before he reaches that point.
I would not be surprised if he finishes handing them their asses and then just turns and walks away. Leaving them broken, scared, angry, etc… about how badly he took them down. Why kill someone when you can break their spirit, more evil that way. It’s what I would do. Granted, the best thing to do in the long run would be to kill them now.
I wouldn’t be surprised either, but for ArcSWAT’s sake and for the plot’s sake, it better not end that way. V doesn’t need to be captured, he can run to fight another ray, so long as ArcSWAT wins this one. Let the team get a few wins to establish itself before the comic decides to pull an Infinity Gauntlet on us.
I can think of a couple of things…..first of all, since it has to be non violent, one could put like hot sauce on his eye or something like that that wouldn’t really be violent but could still stun him. And another one I noticed hasn’t been done yet. Dabbler + succubus power + porno enhancement aura + kiss = very horny, very much mind controlled guy. I mean seriously, aren’t they supposed to be super adept at controlling someone through their balls? Its literally the best thing to do to someone super powered. If it can breed, it can be manipulated through sex.
This is a PG rated comic…
That said, that much lust combined with that much violence leads to…”Shall I beat everyone to death, or shall I screw everyone to death? Decisions, decisions…”
Why not both?
His raging hard on can probably do both anyway.
I say again:
Throw Anvil at it, by the face she made she wouldn’t mind…
…and I think, neither will V.
…and how many guys could say that they’ve got throned an anvil at their #$%%$# and came out with a smile?
ULTIMATE BRAGGING RIGHTS!!!
Obviously it is not throned…although, come to think of it, it works well also!
Remember when that unmemorable first guy burst through the ceiling and hit Anvil? He said it was like punching through sand or something? This plus your comment reminds me of a popular insult retort around here, “Go pound sand!” which while it originally had something to do with pointless or endless menial tasks (go fly a kite) somehow came to have sexual connotations locally. Long story short this made me laugh for reasons not everyone will get. XD
Even though Dabbler & anvil seemed pretty intrigued by Vehemence (when his pants went AWOL), the true romance is being established between him & Maxima.
The clues are there…Look at V’s face, he’s positively ecstatic when he’s holding Max…Max is getting all choked up over the blossoming love.
Yep, this is definitely a case of “love at first fight.”
For sure, there is a spark…
The mood is positively electrifying…
(sorry, missed the last puns round, had to make do)
I for one cannot wait to see how the team manages to take down V. This fight is thrilling. Keep it coming.
I guess you could say she’s…
(•_•). ( •_•)>⌐□-□. (⌐□_□)
MAXED OUT!
Sydney isn’t out of the action or possiblities yet, and she does have a “super” power , or her name isn’t Scoville for nothing ( she had just eaten a killer hot food ) ! Then there’s the notion of the force field being impervious, that if she can’t surround something with it , she can at least get between things , ( think electrical insulation or the wrestler antaeus )
He took a bullet to the eye – pretty sure he can take 3 million scoville. Plus Halo hadnt eaten anything spicy for dinner. Baked potatoes are not spicy (at least the one she ate wasnt).
Still hoping Fedorka pulls the ‘not complete bad guy’, by saying next page “But not from me!” (lifts her up and turns to the rest of the team) “Here, you better get her checked out, make sure she’s not too hurt.”
Of course…He doesn’t want to kill someone who can power him up like Max can. He’d literally be biting off the hand that feeds him.
Unless this is a all or nothing gamble to ensure that he never has to power up from scratch again! Heh Heh Heh…. (V is a magic user. Magical portals to violence hot spots theory up above.)
I had to look through all four pages of comments but I finally found someone else considering this possibility. High five.
V revealed his plan back when he first got into the fray. It was “beat the hell out of you”, not “kill you”. He profits much more from ARCSwat continuing to do their thing than he ever would from their deaths. Dead people have very weak kung fu.