Grrl Power #277 – Aura you having chowdah at the cah pahk?
Sydney confirms her suspicious on this page as well as discovering a new power in a rather nonchalant manner. Presumably she’ll get excited about this later. Does this vision mode detect all magic or just auras? She’ll need to experiment with that at another time. I wanted to have her cycling through other visions modes as I had some other jokes lined up but at this point I’m cutting everything that doesn’t move the fight forward. Still, ideally I would have liked to have her fumble around a bit before she happened on exactly the thing she needed.
I would have liked to 3D map the aura onto the battlefield, make it contour to the ground, but that’s not really a tech I posses in my drawing programs. Also the aura itself took much longer to draw than I would have guessed. The fight in the middle panel has a few bits I especially like, I’ll probably post it in an enlarged format on the DA page later today. Edit: Here it is. Lots easier to see the detail in this version. Edit 2: I’ve also posted the raw aura here, which makes it way easier to see all the stuff I hid in it, if that’s a thing you like.
Thursday is Xmas, but I’ll be posting a page anyway. I expect people will be otherwise occupied for most of the day, and honestly a day or two off wouldn’t kill me either, but I don’t want to hold up the fight at all, so check in when you get a chance. Also, thanks to everyone who used the Amazon referral link to do your shopping, it definitely helps to defray my own Xmas shopping costs.
Speaking of moving the fight along, of the next 4 pages, three are doubles and the single has 14 panels on it, which is why I haven’t been able to update the vote incentive. I appreciate everyone who keeps clicking on it even though it’s well beyond stale by now.
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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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Nibbling her lip…precious. : )
Honestly, that look has me terrified. o.O
Probably for good reason.
Halo seems to be the resident creepy person of the team. Seriously, every time you see her in the comic she gives off a seriously creepy look :p
Sydney more creepy than The Lech? o_O
Death Tolls is still out for the count. Did Vehemence exclude him? Or is he just THAT out of it?
Either way, Yay for alternate functions.
Wait if each of those symbols acts as a different sub-power, does that mean the PPO will have different rates of fire?!
Death Toll’s Nemesis power apparently works while he’s unconscious, negating the aggro aura, I guess.
Either that or Vehemence actually knows how to intentionally exclude individuals…
I’d still agree it’s DT’s power working even though he’s unconscious though.
It’s also possible that he’s really almost dead from the beating he got, and can’t get up
The world may never know. It may be a combination of the beat down and Nemesis. I’m not sure that he could exclude people from an aura effect.
Not just a beating, but a spurting arse-artery due to someone sticking a bloody great knife in his left arse-cheek
Better luck on the aim next time; it should have gone between the arse cheeks
My guess is, he already managed to get spanked again.
Also STARGATE?!
oh my god i totally missed that!
maybe there is an adress to summon dabbler’s big firy nemmesis?
& X-box (check next to Death Toll). I think there’s also a metroid, but I’m not sure.
That’s absolutely a metroid! The entire ring is metroid icons, most of em suit/weapon pickups. I see long beam, bombs, varia suit (thats NO xbox symbol :p), screw attack, speed boost and a couple I don’t recognize off hand…
Looks like he picked icons from several of the games, as long beam is from original metroid, but speed boost debuted in super metroid. Awesome!
A couple Starfleet symbols from Star Trek in the ring just past the Stargate ring and a Triple X logo down by Heatwave.
That looks like Vidiian script down by Heatwave.
He was referring to the one just above heatwave that is kinda 3 x’s in a row. it is the symbol used for he triple x movie.
So the ice shooter is not standing on a Poke-Ball? Too bad.
Nah. A pokeball would not have a line going up. Close, but not a pokeball
Holy crap! That’s amazing! Good eye. And fantastic work Dave.
I also see Akaviri symbols (Skyrim) in there too, but hey I might have glossed over them all if you hadn’t ponted them out :P
You gotta respect somebody who goes “okay, gonna include some symbols from Elder Scrolls” and goes with Akaviri instead of Daedric or Dragon.
Actually i was mistaken, there is a picture of a Metroid that i saw upside-down that looked like the Akaviri symbol for dragonborn :P
PacMan, dots, power dot, ghost
90% sure there is also the energy sword from halo pointed at FWTDT
In the 2nd ring in from the Stargate symbols, part of those symbols are Pac-Man symbols. I see Pac-Man, pellets, a Power-Up, and a Ghost. I don’t recognize any other symbols in that ring, though. However, the symbol directly between the mirrored Ghosts looks like a bat silhouette.
I eventually got bored after drawing tribal tattoos for an hour so I started putting other stuff in there. :)
If nothing else, V looks THAT much more genre savvy for it. :p
Those are actually magical symbols that Vehemence went to great lengths behinds the scenes to have inserted into popular game series for decades. They magically link the games to him but he can’t “reach” them distance wise until he has reached a certain power level. This is why his powers seemed to become astronomical after a certain point. ;)
I say make this canonical, but only to the level that there is a limit on how much aura he can obtain from the games.
Something like a ‘hexidecimal digitizing conversion hard-access limiter’ (I dunno, it needs to sound sciencey and bullshitty at the same time)
So we are his corporate slaves… Mind. Blown.
Dave you have made this comic hit new levels of nerd awesome!
Tribal tattoos; molecules; Pac-man, Batman, katakana, & stuff; Zaph Dingbats; Stargate symbols, Metroids & Metroid powerups; XXX tattoos, Covenant Type-1 Energy Weapons/Swords, & stuff; and Tribal tattoos
The Xbox logo looking one is the Varia Suit and the Pokeball looking one is the Power Grip from Zero Mission
we’ve seen halo’s normal plans, so when she starts froming better plans…. yikes.
Add to that her face in the last panel. I’d say be afraid. Be very afraid!
Run away! Run away screaming!!
Considering that Sydney has already emulated the Roadrunner, it would be appropriate to whistle the Looney Tunes theme song while running…
:P
Do the green areas represent safe areas?
I’m not familiar with the gamer tropes.
i think that is just grass…
The green blocks are just grass at the ends of the parking spaces.
The safe area is the ‘shadow’ cast by Sydney’s shield. It looks like the aura not only can’t penetrate inside the shield, it doesn’t extend behind it either.
And thus we have an answer to the age-old question: Would Harem be able to teleport between points whose line of centres crosses Halo’s shield? No. She would not.
You are assuming that for Harem to get from point A to point B she also has to, in some sense, pass through the space between said points. Since her teleportation range seems affected by how familiar she is with a desired destination. Does not actually require line of sight if she knows the spot well enough, is able to Un-teleport some of herselve-s and the gear they are wearing while doing so there’s no real reason to assume this is true. All we know is that the force field stops things from passing from outside to in or, we assume, from inside to out, halo’s other orb powers excepted and also useful things like non-harmful levels of light and sound, but not anything with substance such as air even if said air is essential to halo’s ability to breathe.
In short, not saying that your line of reasoning is flawed from the point of view of applying common sense and conventional ideas of how things work. But we are dealing with a super hero verse here, so all assumptions based on how things would normally work are pretty much hopeful as opposed to educated guesswork here ^.^
I expect after the battle, Halo and Harem will test extensively how the shield blocks teleportation.
I would expect after battle dabber and halo would also be spending time on how the shield is effected by magic and what exactly shes seeing with the new comm ball mode. being able to read a magic aura and know what exactly it dose could be very helpful. Also spending some time in different environments with a O2 meter to how exactly air exchange works with shield it can’t be air tight but we also know the air dose degrade over time so its only semi airtight. would lots of movement (aka high speed flight) or make the air exchange better? . Halos be playing with her powers solo up till now with other supers and access to gear she can learn a lot more about her limits/abilities.
How do we know the shield isn’t perfectly air tight?
On the contrary:
We know it IS perfectly air-tight; see the previous comic where she had to drop the shield because she had started to exhaust the usable oxygenated air.
(Was just before Vehemence started his ‘appearance sequence’, so… 20-30 strips back, maybe?)
Simpler answer the author said so then.
perfectly air tight.
Oh crap.
If she expands it without shutting it down first, the result will be a depressurization approaching vacuum, if she makes it too big.
If she starts small, she will compress the air quickly.
That could have effects ranging from giving her the bends eventually or flash frying her….depending upon the variables of size and speed of shrinkage.
“If she starts small, she will compress the air quickly.”
EDIT:
If she starts BIG, and shrinks it, she will compress the air quickly.
We’ve already covered the larger/smaller shield thing, and as to why it DOES NOT compress/decompress, the answer is “I don’t know” yet.
It doesn’t expand like that. It just appears at a different radius. Which is why it doesn’t tear up the ground either.
When Halo was cracked in the face way way way back when the battle first began, Harem pleaded for Halo to drop he shield since she could not teleport within it.
he said if sydney’s shield was on the path between ports that harem would not be able to teleport to her desired location. however teleporting is something that just requires line of sight and since harem can have multiple lines of sight to her destination she would most likely be going around halo’s shielded area instead of through it.
Except she was teleporting to the equipment room in ARC HQ from the restaurant, not a line of sight situation. By my understanding, Harem cannot teleport to inside Halo’s shield, but she can teleport to a place on the other side of it. When Harem said she couldn’t teleport through her shield, negga knuckles phased through the floor to inside Halo’s shield. He wasn’t on the opposite side of it.
The shield wasn’t up until after shadow dude was already attacking. The shield was reaction to getting a glanced hit.
Also, just remembered something, during Dabblers science corner, it was explained that Harem can teleport to places based on familiarity. So she can teleport to her childhood home, but not back.
I deliberately didn’t use the ambiguous phrase “line of sight” for the very reason you’ve highlighted. Harem cannot teleport from a point outside/inside Halo’ shield to another point inside/outside. Her ability to teleport is not restricted to locations she can see, but locations she has familiarity with. Her teleportation involves either extradimensional or intradimensional negotiation. Intradimensional would be blocked like V’s aura. Extradimensional would require Halo’s shield to also be extradimensional.
Yeah, but that was already confirmed back during Halo Vs Shadow Boxer… Not exactly an “age old question”.
I don’t think I can agree with that conclusion, actually. I’m of the impression, given this new evidence, that Halo’s shield is acting as a barrier to the “wave” of energy V is using. That works as long as you assume a constant radiation from V himself. To put it another way, if V is a light bulb, Halo’s shield is a solid sphere that keeps light from reaching a wall behind it. Harem’s teleport works in a different way, since she doesn’t have to see where she’s going (as far as I know); it’s more of a “dissipate and reform elsewhere” than “move in a linear fashion between two points.”
Sorry, Aclys; your comment hadn’t posted when I started typing.
Actually, you’re concept is basically stating that Halo shield is like a celestial body which is occluding another body behind hit (at any distance) but which does NOT provide any method of gravitational lensing — that is, the shadow behind Halo will only get more and more distinct as the aura extends further, but will (proportionally) cover less and less area of the aura as the radius of the aura gets larger and larger.
And people say you never use math IRL.
Idiots.
You don’t use HISTORY irl. Usually.
So, you mean the difference between “umbra” and “penumbra”? I’m sure the ideal thing is to get the shadow (umbra) as large as possible, which means enlarge the shield and get it as close to V as you can. Besides, in the enlarged picture, the shadow edges look sharp (implying V is a point source ¯∪¯).
That’s an interesting idea. When Harem teleports one of her forms, it dissipates, its substance being absorbed by her remaining forms, then relinquished and reforms at her target destination. Which would still involve moving in a linear fashion, just not a single linear fashion. She’d still be able to teleport one of her forms around an obstruction such as Halo’s shield, as long as her target was not obstructed to at least one of her other forms.
As with Aclys, I will remind you that I used the term “line of centres” not “line of sight” so as to discourage any ambiguity about Harem needing to rely on visual acuity.
You’ve misspelled Aura as Arua in the central panel.
Figures. It’s fixed now.
I give you as many errors as you need every time you post, so long as one of them isn’t “I forgot a main character’s name and how to spell it properly for the entire page”, because that’s a sign that you really need sleep.
/unrelated
Have you played The Talos Principle yet?
Seriously, PLAY IT IF YOU HAVEN’T.
Sydney will make a really good Intelligence Officer for ARC-SWAT once she masters this thing.
Intelligence gathering is handled by Arc-Light or Arc-Dark, depending on specifics, but yeah, Sydney could be pretty handy there. That is sort of like the U.S. Government using both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. for intelligence gathering, just for different sorts; C.I.A. is boots-on-the-ground spying while the N.S.A. is electronic measures, including looking at radio, satellite, and Internet communications.
With that grin on her face, I feel an evil mastermind-worthy idea coming up.
HEY! sidny’s shield is deflecting the aura, see the aura free zone behind her?
Good eye!
I only noticed it wasn’t under her.
Aw, I was just about to post that her shield was casting a shadow in the aura, but y’all beat me to it.
Nice catch. Maybe she could cancel V’s aura by making her shield so big it encompasses all the fighters.
Downside is that she’ll no longer be protected from V or other fighters
Or you know she could just walk closer to make the shadow/umbra eclipse effect wider and angle it so that she can selectively choose who’s freed of the aura.
Hey, DaveB. Could you have a like feature to the comments? I want to +1 this one. BTW, while you are at it, the ability to edit our one posts, even for only a few minutes afterwards, would also be handy.
DaveB’s already said he likes seeing the typos, so I don’t think edit will come anytime soon anyway.
The +1ing of comments would, I think, require a whole new comments system, like Disqus or something. I don’t think I want to go messing with the existing comments to that degree, but it’s something I could look into, maybe once the fight is finally wrapped up presumably I have a little more time.
Oh sweet gods and goddesses, please no Disqus! Pretty please? With sugar on top?
Alright, I’ll bite. What did Disqus do to you?
malware, adware, popups, popunders and a nice little flash ad that keeps loading on the bottom right side of my screen that keeps putting my browser into “not responding” mode while the audio and video go all herky jerky.
Uh huh, well yeah I’d say that’s a decent reason to treat it like the plague. Not sure how it would do that, but I’m not a programmer of evil ware either.
If you have Firefox get the add-on AdBlock Plus. It works wonders blocking ads!
A quick search of the WordPress plug-ins yields several for adding a like/unlike button and several more that allow a user to edit their comments. I realize doing the experimenting will take up valuable drawing and family time, but the options are there.
Nice catch! She could use that to block out the effect from people. Still, just putting everyone in a “hate free” zone isn’t going to be enough to stop Vehemence at this stage.
But it might be enough to get Stalwart and Hiro to stop fighting. Go run over between the pair and Vehemence and tell the guys to quit it! If she can get her allies to be actual allies again, then Archon can start to gain the upper hand.
Sydney: Hmm, let’s see. Aura nullification, aura nullification. If I was an aura nullification feature, where would I be? I wonder if it this symbol on the PPO? Oops, nope that’s not it!
Well… successfully hitting him is kinda like an aura nullification. Just more… BBQ.
It looks like her shield is not only preventing V’s aura from affecting her, but would also block it from anyone who happened to be standing right behind her shield. Since the aura seems to act something like an explosion, with its effects radiating outward from himself at the center, but like an explosion, Sydney’s shield also protects the area immediately behind her.
Noticed that too, maybe she could talk to everybody behind her, as they are then normal again, and then do a circle untill all are normal again. it wuld stop his power build up, but knowing Sydney she probably has a sneaky idea already
Doing that she would gain teammembers but the thugs would have to be allowed to escape.
Can’t be helped.
Let the pawns go to save the queen.
And kill the king
The thugs escaping isn’t a bad thing at this point. They stop fueling V if they leave, that’s why he stopped the escape plan earlier.
I think the reason why V stopped the other villains from escaping at that time was because Opal was about to teleport them all away, including Vehemence himself. He wanted to stay there & fight, but had to stop Opal; V probably figured he could free them later, after he was done wiping the floor with ARCSwat…Or in this case, free them to add more fuel to his fire.
Legally speaking, all the attackers have to do is claim they were under V’s mind controll and the cases against them will have to be dropped.
Yes, he is giving them the perfect legal loophole to escape being sent to prison for the attack!
Woah holy crap! This has potential! She doesnt have to encompass people in her shield to block the rage aura! So she makes her shield as big as she can, without including bad guys, and then is able to snap everyone out of it by getting between them and vehemence. Use her flight orb for speedy travel to gather them all up.
By the time she is done, she has a wedge formation of heroes behind her and she may also have them use a brief bit of overwhelming force to take out the bad guys again. By making it quick and clean instead of letting the fights take more than a second, it minimizes vehemence’s profit and lets them recapture the bad guys and restrain them. We may be seeing the start of the plan that earns her a corporal rank. I mean, she is currently a recruit, so normally there is no way a few months later she would already be a corporal, but earning a battlefield promotion by saving the day might work.
Assuming that aura is an effect that continuously emanates from Vehemence, rather than, say, a product of invisible magical runes that are already on the ground.
Based on the ‘dark shadow’ behind her, that would seem t have to be the case. Unless for some reason he laced his pattern skipping any area behind halo …
I posted on this lower down, not seeing this thread up here. But everyone else’s comments made me think of this going one step further, is it possible Sydney’s shield could block the violence itself from getting to V? So any fight that happens “behind” her wouldn’t feed into him? Even if that doesn’t work, it seems even more likely violence inside the shield couldn’t get out (but not guaranteed). So Sydney embiggens the shield, we get Anvil, Harem, dabbler, and maybe Goose, Stalwart, Hiro, Heatwave and the other woken up Arc on board, then dog pile one villain at a time inside, giving V as little vehemic energy as possible, and a freshly revived group of supers to work with.
And I agree, if Sydney pulls off a reversal here, a promotion really should be in order. Maybe putting her on that officer’s track…
V is already well feed and can make powers on the fly… I don’t want to be with him in a close space right now.
I think the shield will negate ALL of the Aura’s effects. Re-unconsciousing Math and all the previously unconscioused villains.
Psst David. Misspell of aura in the page. Panel 5, second sentence. Thanks David!
Thanks, I got it. :)
Syd’s expression in the last frame.
V is goner.
*insert Syd’s maniacle cackle*
Poor Heatwave. This little piggy was forced to fight on. TT
So people standing behind Sydney’s shield might be OK?
What are support doing we wonders?
Now that you mention it, I wonder if V’s Aggro Aura reaches out to were ArcLight has been sitting? If so, I wonder if their cloaking effect has dropped & who’s fighting who back there.
(rides up on motorcycle with lights flashing) Attention, this is the grammar police. We have a report of ‘who/whom’ violation in progress. And it appears that you are commenting under an expired poetic license. But seriously, I would be more concerned about the trained sniper with a fifty caliber rifle than the retired archaeologist.
You all know what this is leading up to. With the blizzard of comments about Sydney putting her shield around V, this is Dave’s way of forcing Sydney to make the decision that the only way to block the rage aura is to actually put her shield around Vehemence. The trick will be the ‘staying alive’ part.
She could have her real self’s shield occupy roughly the same space as her illusory self’s shield meaning that both would be in the same basic area but on opposite sides. That might buy her a second. Of course she would then become a berserker I suppose trapped inside with the concentrated aura.
Then it would be time for ‘Tongue Fu’ round two :)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/241
She tongue fu’s everyone in the shield and ties their tongues together.
. . . I think Dabbler and Harem wouldn’t mind too much. Math wouldn’t mind if he was tongue tied with Jabberwoky.
Oh also I would be just as concerned about Gwen.
Gwen is trying to strangle Leon and Zephon is trying to pull her off of him. Oh, I see. Leon did not realize that Gwen was actually being insulted by his teasing. Leon, make sure you talk about her mental abilities as much or more than her physical attributes, like cup-size or weight.
Going to guess she wakes up Death Toll and tells him V’s power is based on violence absorption and since his power is in effect pacifist, he is the only person who can fight V without further powering him up.
It’s not pacifist. But he would be the one whose Nemesis ability has the best chance of sapping V back to a point where Max could just kick V in half. Still, I’d rather see the heroes work out something that doesn’t rely on a villain. Unfortunately, while I would have loved to see some teamwork take him down, that seems unlikely at this point. Let’s see what Sydney has up her sleeve.
Still be a mildly amusing “You’ve brought your own doom with you.” kind of things. Vehemence brought a power capable of kicking his ass even in uber mode AND pointed Sydney at Death Tolls in order to distract her from him but as a result Sydney has a lot of data on how Death Tolls powers work and when she thinks of victorious plans vs. super villains he’s gonna be recent and large in her mind.
There is some poetic justice or karmic boomerang or something in there somewhere.
Ahh, but what if better plan is ‘pick up unconscious Death Tolls (assuming his power is still in effect) with the PPO and make Vehemence hit him like a punching bag’.
That would be hilarious…
Pick him up with the particle cannon? How?
I think you meant Lighthook. The PPO is an explodey laser beam that’s not very good at picking people up.
Well, it might be said that they get picked up (& thrown away) by the force of the explodey-part of her beam…but yeah, I’d agree that you couldn’t really be precise with where they go.
;)
I see Stargate symbols and I think those are icons from Metroid next to it.
Huh, that aura thing looks like It’s Native American in origin. Like, Mayan, Aztec, or Inca.
Yes, yes and yes. Then there is the Stargate, Metroid, etc. symbols.
Pretty Sure vehemence was a gamer & Bull-shited some runes with videogame icons & they worked.
Or perhaps in Sydney’s world Vehemence or his mentor had an effect on how video games were made. Inserting magical symbols for the purpose of linking them to spells as needed or perhaps specifically to feed once his range increased.
Wait, are two copies of harem fighting each other? or is the long haired blonde one one of the villains.
personally cant decide if it is harem fighting herself, harem and a villain fighting or two harems(how the hell do you pluralize a name) doing an assisted drop kick on a villain (muscle guy).
my favored theory is the double team dropkick.
Yeah it’s 4 of the Harem’s fighting crystal claw from like the 3rd page of the fight. Her martial art style is gang up and hit ’em from all sides.
Works for me, LOL!
Naruto, only fewer and hotter?
Harem Jutsu? So basically just Naruto with fewer clones. ;D
Took me half an hour of posting my original thought to realize ‘wait-a-minute, Harem-no-jitsu…’.
Hehehehe… heh.
I originally thought that was where her name came from! XD
Instant flash mob…
And possibly in more ways than one.
“Crystal claw” huh? Adding that to the list of names!
… the arrangement of the parking spaces makes it look like a Magic: The Gathering pad.
Actually that sounds like awesome merchandise. An MTG pad based on this scene.
Seems like Stalwart’s space shuttle crashed… Ouch!
Pretty much.
That was the Apollo 13 reference on the last page, but because Stalwart was “space shuttling” Hiro, a Columbia or Challenger reference might have been more appropriate. Mind you, in Apollo 13, nobody died.
Considering what Hiro did to Stalwart’s…er…mechanisms…on the previous page, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Stalwart’s “landing gear” failing to hold him up.
Two died during the making of this picture.
Would that count as a Darwin Award?
That would only be considered depending on how *permanent* the damage really is…But it would be one of the rare occasions in which a Darwin Award is NOT awarded posthumously (or even post-humorously).
If his billions of mini space shuttles can’t… swim, we will know.
You want to check? Feel free, or him.
Just so you know, posting on the holidays automatically makes you eligible for the Top 10% Webcomickers Club. There are so many webcomics people out there who slack during the holidays–the times their audience needs the fresh content the most–posting either filler or nothing, that just by keeping to your schedule, you have done something very special.
(And to all webcartoonists who say “Don’t I deserve a break too?”, I say “That’s what buffers are for!”)
Some people are getting new Tablets this Xmas.
What better way to try it out than a new episode?
Some people don’t have time to make buffers. Let’s see you make more than one high quality page in three to four days. He’s working hard to get this out, so I personally think he deserves a break.
And the proper answer to this line of reasoning is “Howard Tayler and/or Phil Foglio”.
Plus, a majority of webcomic artists out there use the “draw it on the day it is due” method, which is unwise. Sometimes they can get the comic done in 2 hours and sometimes they can get it done in 10 hours. If they are allowing themselves 8-10 hours to get a comic done, then the wise thing to do is when they only take 2 hours is to keep working for another 6 hours on the next comics. This would inexorably create a buffer, allowing them to (1) complete the day’s minimum 1 comic in a much less hasty and stressful manner, and (2) have a reserve available for when they want to have a few days off for sickness, vacation, family, or what have you.
Most webcomic artists don’t do it for the same reason that most of us don’t take that $20 we saved by buying something on sale and stick it into a savings account–it is so tempting to splurge whenever you get a windfall, rather than saving up for a rainy day or a fiscal opportunity.
It’s human nature. That’s why both of us are frittering away time we could be using to improve our lives in concrete matters an instead are putting that time into a no-returns activity like posting to the comments section of–well, any comments section, really. However, the people who don’t get blowback for inconsistency are the people who choose time and resource management as a priority. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, and all that.
Oh noooo. Will all these people who suggested to put Vehemence inside the shield be right, because it cuts him off from receiving violence energy?
Only from the energy outside of the shield, as well as affected things outside of it. He still has a full charge of power and can still absorb energy originating from within the shield. Though it is unknown if killing Sydney while the orbs are active will have some sort of side effect.
Except they’d still be right about how he only would need to knock Sydney out (which would take him a stiff sneeze at this point) to get out of it.
Before that even happens, there’s first the issue of Sydney being affected by the aura while inside the shield. Which I think would be hilarious.
. . . V would be overloaded.
Looks like the orb only detects auras or Dabbler doesn’t uses magic right now
Dabbler has a tiny one under her & so does Heatwave
Does that mean that Heatwave is magically powered or that Sydney sees more than just magic?
It didn’t work.
He did not say “I’m cutting everything that doesn’t end the fight in one page”. This page definitely reveals information that sets up the incoming finale, and thus moves the fight forward.
It was all the way back in #270 when Sydney got the last panel with her going “Hmmm.” You know, as if she had a thought on how to end this interminable fight. So no, this comic really didn’t do anything other than to repeat that, 7 unnecessary comics later. The only real difference being that Sydney gets almost the entire comic just for her to pull out a new power and start pondering yet again.
Gotcha, so you actually want Dave to go back in time and do the last 7 comics differently. :P Dave clearly wanted to set up the violence aura and Sydney’s new power, and even he has acknowledged he took longer getting there than he would have liked, but let’s not pretend this doesn’t move the fight forward because you’re bitter it didn’t happen three weeks ago.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there is a crucial element in this page to getting to the conclusion of this fight, and it’s not Sydney going “hmm…” The crucial element is the evidence that Sydney’s shield blocks V’s aura. I’m not sure how much of a help that will be, but I’m betting it’s fairly critical to the final denouement.
This is actually the first page in a while where I actually feel hopeful :) Plus it’s just a cool looking page in general.
It also reveals a new function to the tele orb, which is some crucial information
We don’t need to pretend anything, that is exactly what happened.
Just because you’re bitter about my criticism doesn’t mean that the events of the last 7 comics were at all necessary.
It’s character development. Fleshing out Vehemence.
Showing his powers, giving us an extra glimps at his motivations, his thought paterns (like that he didn’t intent to kill anyone, but now feels forced to kill)
I’m sorry, but his claim that he didn’t want to kill anybody but now he feels that he has to kill Maxima? That breeds zero sympathy; actually, it makes him seem like sort of an idiot- “I was just going to get into a serious scuffle with off-duty superpowered law enforcement… but golly-gee, I hope nobody gets killed!”
I realize that may not have been your intent with your comment, but arguments like that (he’s a gentleman brawler!) get my hackles up.
Wasn’t really talking about sympathy. Just that it offered us a look in how he thinks.
I also don’t think he actually cares much for the lives off others. He wasn’t specificly planning to kill anyone, because he knew they weren’t much of a threat to them. So for him, it was just sparring, and getting a gigantic violence rush. Sure someone might die if I hit them, but he doesn’t care about that.
Only now he finds out he was partially wrong, and Maxima is actually dangerous to him. So now he has to fix that problem.
I have already dropped the thought that he was a gentleman brawler though. He’s capable of being a gentleman, I have no doubt he knows how to properly use 6 different sets of silverware in a single meal. But right now we see what he really is
As far as that goes, we’re pretty much in agreement. I just don’t think it’s fair to claim that nothing on this page was needed to move the plot forward. Would this page have worked well much earlier? Arguably yes- I say arguably because there is the ongoing question of whether or not the pacing in an archive dive would have been as tedious- but I’m not entirely convinced.
I would say that the necessary parts (from my perspective) would have been the demonstration of V shrugging off physical violence, his regeneration, his capture of Maxima (and attendant misreading of her powers), and the waking of the vombies.
OK Let’s put everyone who WAS upset with how long it took to get to this fight in a room with everyone that IS upset with how long the fight is taking in a room and let them sort it out among themselves. Before someone jumps me for being mean, I’m only trying to make a point or two. Whichever camp you’re in, you must admit this is a fun read or you wouldn’t still be reading it. Just sit back and enjoy it like the rest of us.
I don’t understand why anyone is upset.
If they are not paying for it, they are basically upset at free ice cream.
EVERY reader is volunteering to be here.
As we said in the US Canoe Club.. “You volunteered. Your fault.”
Cool. So she can basicly see spells now.
Interesting note: Everyone pair has complementery powers. There’s noone fighting someone they can easely beat (Anvil fighting a tank, the ranged people are fighting eachother, ect)
Except Jiggawatt telebolting four people.
Only 2 as far as I can see. Except for Gauntlet, the original 2 she also telebolted when she made her entry.
The body on the ground next to the first bolt impact is one of Concretia’s failed atempts to rise up, and next to that is the void of concrete where she stood up from
This is probably a bit of author-fiat to make sure that nobody winds up messily dead. Because that really would likely happen if you made a bunch of supers so mad that they randomly attack the closest person.
That said, the speedster with the knife is probably about to kill Goose.
Sounds very “Day of the Dove” out there, but Sydney has a cunning plan.
Looks like Hiro’s Apollo 13 move had succes.
You can see him looking over a crouching Stalwart.
@DaveB: Do you have a big version of the central pannel. We’d love you so much
It’s up at the DeviantArt page. Check in my comment below the comic for a direct link.
The detail on that page is AMAZING. I’ve spent way to much time pouring over it. You can see the actions of each character, and way more detail in the aura thing.
After much examination, I noticed that there are also some sort of symbols around Dabbler. This makes sense. All the other characters may be standing near other symbols, but they do not have any that appear to originate from them. Except for Heatwave.
There is a small, but distinct pattern around her. It does not appear to be a mark on the pavement, which would be a suspicious coincidence anyways. It does not fit into any pattern in V’s aura. Dave, are Heatwave’s powers magical? Does she possess latent magical abilities? Has some sort of spell been cast on her? What is this hinting at?
Maybe Sysney sees more things than magic.
Hmmm. HMMMMM!
So minus the doubles and such, is fight would have been eight or nine more pages?
At least this panel isn’t more of the Vehemence Super Rage Monster Tour.
And FINALLY Sydney starts using her real superpower.
Ummmmm. Refer Panel #5. Is an “arua” anything like an “aura”.
How does ball manipulation fit with her real superpower of die rolli– wait.
OMG! Future Sydney cheats at dice! It all makes sense now!
I think of Sydney’s real superpower as following ‘The Captain Kirk Principle’.
Specifically, if you don’t like the game, then CHANGE THE RULES.
Actually, that principle wasn’t related to any kind of game, so it’s more accurately “Changing the conditions of the *test*.”
In this case, Sydney’s ability to focus her concentration even with her meds wearing off IS the test.To me, it seems that she’s testing her ADHD-problem to think outside the box, but still focusing on an effective result at least two steps *after* the current situation.
Question about the vote incentive, how the HELL does Twokinds have almost FIFTY THOUSAND votes and Grrlpower (2nd place…) have ~6k votes?
Furries, dude. Furries.
Maybe 4 years and 277 pages versus 11 years and 836 pages?
I’m gonna go with Furries as well…
That and a nearly proportional amount of extremely racy vote incentives.
So, roll call, anyone?
Heatwave vs. un-named ice dude
Jiggawatt vs. … 3 mooks? (can’t see)
Teal-Haired-Twit vs. Boilerplate
Hiro vs. Stalwart (poor Stalwart…)
Dabbler vs. Gauntlette (top of the panel)
Math vs. … maybe Jabberwokky?
Explosions: perhaps Glowbug still fighting Atomic Bombshell?
Goose vs. “Mach The Knife”
Anvil vs. un-named giant dude
Blonde Harem vs. Co-ed Harem
Punk Harem + 1 other vs. “Naked Crystal Hands” guy.
… and the ‘1 other’ must be Goth, unless ‘Thing 1’ is fighting on with a broken wrist.
I think Co-Ed Harem is fighting the blond warping chick that Vehemence KO’d, not herself.
Not sure about that. Opal has a white dress, purple belt and purple boots.
Co-ed is fighting someone in a pink dress with blue boots.
we talking about the two near the big muscle guy cause i’m pretty sure their double teaming him hard to tell from the angle tough but one of them looks like they are in a kicking position.
Yes, sorry, it’s a double team. All four Harems vs. Crystal Mits. WoG in the comments above.
Correction: it’s Math vs. Heavenly Sword. And only 2 targets for Jiggawatt.
Perhaps Jabberwokky will turn out to be one of the fatalities.
Yeah, much better view of the whole parking lot. And that kick on Heavenly looks that much more painful. I hope Jabber won’t be a fatality. I like her shirt.
Well she was squashed between 2 concrete slabs
I’m getting a serious feeling she’s gonna make a call to ACME for some equipment in a few minutes…
I apologize for being this guy, but you have incorrectly spelled Aura on the middle panel as arua.
That thing does look like it would’ve taken a long time to draw.
V wearing real pants confirmed. :p
They are not illusionary, but not confirmed as “real” pants. They could be ectoplasm (or nanobots) shaped like pants, for instance.
They are tangible pants at least! That counts for something!
Also, that aura is like a spell filled with easter eggs! Love how different symbols were incorporated! :D
Don’t care if they’re nanobots, spandex, or unicorns. They’re pants, and they cover everything important. ;)
unicorn pants. Gives a whole new meaning to “my little pony.” HAH!
But I don’t think he has a ‘little’ pony. Heh.
A horse maybe?
A wild stallion!
*plays air guitar, not caring if anyone got the reference*
Your mind is going on a bogus journey.
Um, Dave? Sydney’s glasses are missing their bridge in Panel 7. Not sure if that is on purpose.
Hah hah, that’s a first. Next I’ll forget to draw her ponytail.
I’m kinda impressed you draw V’s panel lines on his arm with consistency.
So besides this page being awesome, with Easter eggs aplenty in the pattern, I think one of the major developments of this page is Sydney’s shield isn’t just isolating her from the field, it’s casting a shadow behind her. If she embiggens her shield, she might be able to occlude enough of the fighting supers to get them either to go unconscious again, or hopefully listen to reason. At the very least it should help stop the “blue on blue” fights Then they can move with the shadow, stop fighting, and not give V any more energy. Not sure what happens then, I still don’t have any good ideas for how to pry V of Maxima.
Can Maxima keep her stats allotted while she sleeps? Do you think V needs to sleep? If they just pull everyone away, could they just wait for V’s power to drain?
There’s also a dark ring in the pattern a few feet away from V, that seems like it might be significant.
Dave, Mr. Crystal Hands hand placement seems a little convenient, is he actually fighting in the buff?
Also, very impressed at your dedication, a lot of webcomic artists take a holiday vacation, (and other, random, non holiday vacations) I certainly think you deserve one, but we are all grateful you aren’t taking it.
I’d still be interested in seeing the alternate modes of the com ball, maybe a vote incentive sometime soon?
I think the dark ring is scorched pavement, either from a blast or V’s electrical arcs.
Depending on how invincible Sydney’s shield is maybe she could get between V and Max so as to shield her. Remember Max has told at least one or two to get behind Sydney’s shield.
Turning the aura into something as a location-based power rather than an individual-based one certainly changes the game a little. I figured V had just used his power to turn everyone as violent as they are, so that each one was affected individually by his abilities, but if it’s something like this, a magical circle or area-of-effect, dispelling it would likely work like a blanket cancellation. That sort of thing can have a double-edged effect though. Often in the case of intricate designs like this, dispelling can have a number of conditions.
There’s the simple one – dispel or disrupt the circle at any location and the effect is cancelled. That would seem a little too easy, but since Sydney is the only one aware of this it’s made more difficult by her not having any obvious magic disruption attacks. This circle having no physical presence removes a lot of the possibility of damaging it.
There’s also the common one of dispel from the source, but that would entirely depend on if the source is now fixed, or if it relocates with V. If it relocates, then he’s the permanent source, which has the problem of being V. If it’s just a dispel from source on the ground, refer to my first thoughts.
Then there’s the possibility of magical restraint. Because we don’t know the specifics of this circle, it’s entirely possible that destroying a certain part of it without shutting down the source of magic will have unforeseen consequences. One of the writer favourites of this is it summoning demons, which would actually pave the way rather well for Dabbler’s old nemesis, but I doubt that’s something Dave has planned considering the length of this fight already.
I’ll have to join some of the commentors on previous pages in asking: where is ARC Light? This seems exactly the sort of thing that Zephan and Gwen would be perfect for tackling. In fact, that would make a pretty satisfying ending… everyone on the team gets to claim a share of the glory. If they disrupt the flow of energy, then the rest of the team could take on the – relatively – crippled V.
Also, I think this feeds into the column of evidence for V’s exaggeration of his own abilities. Not that I blame him, honestly. If I were to attack a team of superheroes, you’d better believe that most of what I demonstrated would be a fake-out in some form. I wonder if he realizes that he’s tipped his hand by using an AoE attack instead of an individual like he’s done up till now.
Good thought on ARC Light. I agree that this is their area of expertise and they could use some more screen time. The only counter I have is that Dabbler is also good at magic, perhaps as much or more than ARC Light, and she isn’t trying to disrupt him. However, she is in his area of effect, so perhaps non-violent solutions are not occurring to her right now.
When last seen they were at ARC headquarters helping with the tactical assessment. Barring one of them having a teleport spell, they won’t be here anytime soon.
Really? The last I recall, they were on a building nearby, helping clear the area of civilians (which, given the nature of V’s power, was a Very Good Thing). Maybe I’m wrong, though.
No, they were set up a few buildings away, under a ‘you can’t see me’ field.
Problem is they’d also be affected by the aura, if they show up
We see that she does in fact have a magic disruption attack—notice how the aura is gone on the other side of her shield? It won’t help against the root cause, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of magic circle where you can scratch out a hidden rune anyway. It seems like a generated field, not a marked field.
That’s an excellent point, one that I didn’t notice myself originally and does in fact show that disruption of the field at least in the physical plane won’t cause any immediate damage.
Regardless, while it in itself is a generated field, it is a generated marked field. The field is being constructed as a metaphysical construct meaning that there is likely a way to interrupt it through disturbance, but using a method beyond obstructing it in the standard plane, or taking out V.
Well, yes, OBVIOUSLY it’s a hostility aura. Anyone who watched ST:TOS Day of the Dove knows that one.
But it looks like our heroine is finally making that ADHD brain get to work on the problem rather than just contemplating how awesome Vehemence is. I especially like her forming one plan, then realizing that anything she could immediately think of Vehemence has probably already allowed for.
Well, Sydney is taking Math’s advice into account; think three steps ahead. At this point, it seems like she’s only getting two steps ahead. When she manages to master three steps (or more) ahead, she’ll be *super* dangerous.
And when she adss a fourth? O.o
That’s when they start prescribing Meth.
I also like the fact that her shield apparently doesn’t just block physical attacks, but magical EFFECTS as well. She’s shielded from the Aggro — and judging by what we see, so is anyone who stands BEHIND her.
Critical thinking. The most dangerous super power of them all!
And I thought it was a useless AS level qualification! :D
Psst, Sydney, remember: THREE moves ahead…
Hiro only needed to go one step above.