Grrl Power #299 – Old gnus is still gnus if it’s new gnus to you
A bit of and odd page. I know people were expecting a scene with the orbs coming out and everyone oohing and aahing, but I thought we’ve already seen that a few times in one form or another. Just assumed that happened, the press took lots of pictures and asked obnoxious questions. Eventually Sydney yelled and waved her hands like she does and shooed Joel into the back office to get up to speed.
It really only occurred to me as I was drawing panel 5 of this page that Sydney’s phone should have been going berserk all last night. She had it on her at the restaurant, and every news agency in the world would have been trying to get a hold of her to get quotes and set up interviews, not to mentions her friends. I guess she had all her calls going to voicemail, or more likely she just turned it off after she called her parents. Of course, any reporter looking for information on her would quickly discover that she has a business partner which is why Joel’s phone is loaded up now. I’m sure everyone she’s friends with on facebook has tons of messages from news agencies as well. She’s going to have some ‘splainin’ to do.
Oh and if you’re curious about my misspelling of “news” in the title, it’s a reference to Garry Gnu, from a old kid’s show called The Great Space Coaster. I remember nothing from the show at all, I even had to look up the name of the program, except for the news segment, which was hosted by Gary Gnu, a muppet gnu (wildabeast) and started with his catchphrase, “No gnews is good gnews with Garry Gnu.” The joke being that anything he said starting with an N got an added G sound in front of it which is of course the opposite of how you pronounce gnu. (Though I realize now my title should say “gnews” and not “gnus”. Oh well.)
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He’s taking it quite well.
Well, that’s on every channel, so many phone messages to leaf through…Give him a chance to actually absorb the kind of impact of what he <completely & totally missed during the course of yesterday.
Let it sink in just how much business is going to increase & how much harder he’s going to have to work every day.
:D
I’m not sure I want to know why he looks at the calls, texts, voicemails and says in a calm and bored tone “Typical”
because it’s typical that he forgets his phone at the store (AGAIN!) and everything happens.
Oh good. I thought it was Sydney related
It probably was that too. And more beside, if I read it correctly.
For my part I was recalling the rant Joel had “yesterday” about flying supers causing traffic problems. And now Sydney IS a super … and the fight she was in is causing traffic problems. Typical.
+4
Plus – she’s a flying super.
This is also how I respond to something bad happening–“Figures” or “Of course” are what I say when something happens that I probably should’ve expected, and this situation is one I would definitely use one of those in.
Exactly, he’s off the grid a few hours and that’s when all hell breaks loose, his crazy partner is involved, and everybody is enjoying his surprise way too much.
Yup. I wouldn’t take his deadpan too literally given this is anything but typical for him.
Or is it?
Dun dun DUN!
Because saying “Typical.” Is AWESOME press for the comic shop!
Actually, I’m kind of surprised that Joel’s phone isn’t MORE loaded up.
He is, after all, not the main subject, so only news agencies and people who know him would message.
He is Sydney’s long-time business partner.
After Sydney herself and immediate family, he is the most obvious person to try and contact about her. He is probably also the default contact for when friends’n’family can’t directly contact Sydney under “normal” circumstances.
…. And I sincerely doubt that the media packs are going to stop with just one text message and/or a single unanswered phone call. No way.
They’ll have enough money to hire the “COMIX!” guy to work in the shop!
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/100
Only if Joel wants to piss her off. Badly. Remember that she did have to double-check if homicide was still illegal, for that guy.
i think he would be on his best behavior around Sydney since she can now use her orbs without fear of retribution*. Brad would be a bad fit though since he is so demanding. not quite the person you want in a customer relation position. if anything hiring Olivia and Tony would be good for business, Olivia as cashier/sales rep (eye candy to get them to buy more) and Tony as general help (both for customer questions and for shelf stocking).
*As long as she keeps it non lethal and avoids major injury.
I think your suggestions are very viable ones. COMIX! however is clearly too dense to make a good employee, if he cannot distinguish between something which cannot be ordered from something which can.
Unless they strictly used him in a bouncer role. And even then bouncers need nouse. They need to be able to easily distinguish between good customers and trouble makers. And to handle potential situations discreetly, before they interrupt business. I cannot see him being able to do that.
not to mention that if you look at comic #12 in the archives, Brad has the wrong build for “big intimidating bouncer”- the intimidating bouncers tend to be large because of muscle, Whereas Brad’s just overweight. (I say this because Brad has about the same build as i do myself, and I know I am overweight.) It’s a problem for bouncers, because the usual idea is that someone who might be inclined to start shit with the bouncer decides it isn’t worth risking it. The idea isn’t that they are able to beat the crap out of someone- though they usually can- as much as people don’t try to start a fight in the first place. (partly because it’s a liability nightmare for the bar, plus it’s usually the bar that has to pay to fix any damage to the bar)
We do know that Olivia eventually winds up at the gaming table, so there’s a future friendship there at the very least. We also know that they get a bigger, nicer store… one with a second storey for the gaming room.
I’m imagining that we missed a ‘flat what’ when the reveal happened.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FlatWhat
Fortunately for DaveB & this comic, there are few (if any) commenters who get THAT flabbergasted.
:)
(Sits back & waits for a lot of new examples to pile up here, just to try tuning me into a liar)
Deadpan “Typical” Joel really knows what to expect from Sidney.
It actually would have been MORE surprising if it were a poster or something normal.
Now I really want to see the montage going through his head right now. Also, nice use of the HTC Sense UI. :) Of course, the city name should be visible…
Though similar, there are differences – the battery icon being one notable difference (which appears to me to be completely dead, but charging). There’s also no apparent wifi or cell signal (turned off?)… maybe it’s a widget designed to look like the weather widget on the Sense UI, but be JUUUST different enough?
His phone has the lightning bolt in the battery icon. Usually stands for charging. *grin*
We cannot see all of the phone. He may well have just jacked it in, to check the display. That would certainly correspond with Sydney’s accusation that he had forgotten it again.
True.
Lightning bolt with an empty looking icon complete with working phone, means to me that the graphic showing the green moving up and down on a phone’s charging icon has already gone through one cycle.
If it’s like an iPhone, it’s the same symbol, but there’s no moving green bar. Instead, the green bar fills up behind the lightning bolt (in other words, without the charger his phone would be dead, which with all those messages I wouldn’t be surprised).
Actually my Samsung Galaxy S4 shows the weather gadget on the front screen even without being on wi-fi or internet. It simply stays on the weather it last updated when it was connected.
” Of course, the city name should be visible… ”
Why? Joel doesn’t need to know what city he’s in. :P Also DaveB wanted to keep that “hidden” until it was needed for some sort of reveal.
Dave, you spelled fox news with a ‘fear zone’
At least you got the f right ;)
all news programs do this, its just that fox news is more blatant about it…
That’s almost an understatement. Bloviation Station sums up the old men and young blonde bimbos at Faux Noise perfectly
Bloviation: Orate verbosely and windily.
Yup, that’s Faux Noise.
Actually, I think it’s a Ben 10 reference. “Threat or Menace?” is something I remember hearing a few times from the early episodes of Ultimate Alien being used to describe the main character.
Actually their used to be a program that was really called the Fear Zone, most people don’t recall it though because it was cancelled when Bush left office and Obama started up. What’s bad though is I’m not joking I’m being honest and serious. Fear Zone was an after midnight news program on NBC.
…As if some people don’t already have enough trouble getting to sleep at night…
:/
Sleep?!?!? You can sleep with all that’s going on out there???? What’s wrong with you????
What? You’ve never heard of the word “Insomnia” before? Where have you been hanging out?
;)
Really? I just tried doing a web search for it and came up with nothing.
Ha ha, typical fearmongering to get more view- OH GOD HE HAS NO EYES!
…Maybe he’s a super?
Maybe he’s the “human-like avatar” of that unnamed demon-thing Dabbler banished earlier…
Bitching shockwave indeed – if my local news was that cool I’d start watching it again…
Much more exciting than the “Fear Zone” show right?
What do you expect from our Suzie News
+1
Channel 5 have gotten themselves the hottest new reporter on the block, along with her now legendary bleeper and captions behind-the-scenes backup. Their collective improvised actions will have taken the TV watching public by storm, and the station are letting the team run with their newfound style.
I think that “Suzie News” should be a regular feature dealing with her own unique take on superhero-related news.
Suzie is my favourite supporting character in the comic. The more we see of her the better.
Quick correction, I snipped out something, in error, when editing that. What I was aiming for, before accidentally hitting the submit button was:
That said, I eagerly await seeing more of Gwen, as she has piqued my interest, from the little we have seen of her.
I think you meant “Suzie is my favourite non-Archon character in the comic.”
No. I view the protagonists as being:
Sydney, Maxima, Dabbler, Harem and possibly Anvil. With Sydney being the primary protagonist.
As such each of them takes their turn as the protagonist. So, although several of them are, if they feature in a given scene, playing a supporting role, they also get to be the principle character, when the comic is following them.
Of the purely supporting cast, I rate Suzie above others, such as Math and Achilles. In terms of being an interesting character, who I, personally like. Bear in mind that Sydney has had more contact with her, than with Achilles, as an example. And Suzie and Sydney got to meet each other before anybody at Archon (other than Maxima herself) even got to see her.
Plus they are both going through life-changing circumstances. To me Suzie represents how profound an impact introducing supers can have, on the mundane people. Without even having gained powers herself, her life has turned upside down since yesterday!
And there are various ways that her relationship(s) can develop. I am hoping she will become firm friends with Sydney, and be able to separate her private life from her reporting. So that she does not abuse privileged information, which she stumbles across, as a friend.
Then there is the fact that she has hit it off with Arianna. I would love to see some follow up to that. And, of course, she can represent the friendly face of the media, to the rest of Archon too. Offsetting the negative reporting, such as that from the Fear Zone.
Finally she is just cute. I loved how freaked she was by Sydney’s over the top behaviour. Yet pressed on regardless. She is a nice counterballance to Sydney. And she was chilled out, at having been caught up in a super-fight, enough that she could take the time out to sort out her make up. And check out the aftermath, in her mirror.
I like her.
I don’t know if she really “hit off” with Ariana. More like “Hit”.
Heh. You got the play I was aiming for. I had meant to put ‘hit it off’ in inverted commas. But the Klingon kiss was just one scene. Next time you are doing an archive trawl, check out just how supportive Suzie was being, throughout the press conference.
Be it from provided light relief, whilst allowing a serious note to be addressed. Through a consistently supportive attitude. All the way up to turning a tumble-weed moment, into a round of applause. You can be certain that, at a professional level, she has made a very good impression with Arianna.
But, beyond that, Arianna did gush over the sheer prospect of enhanced marketing. Her emotions are very much bound up into her job, and prospects of maximising the success of Archon. As such, I think she may well see more in Suzie than just being a friendly face in the press pack.
Take another look at the Klingon kiss scene, and see if you think I am reading too much into that possibility.
Yeah, if Suzie is talking with Sydney & says “Off the record” and actually MEANS it, she’d gain a lot of respect from me & quite probably most of the readers of this comic.
She’s the only one that actually looks happy about what’s going on! It’s superheroes people! What’s wrong with you!?
Most of the news companies and anchors will be trying to balance the alarm felt, by the public, with the excitement that such a big story can also bring. Whilst it is easy to bash them, for when they get it wrong, it is actually a tricky job. One minute reporting on a violent rape, and the next on rescuing a kitten from a tree.
Smile at the wrong time, and you can end your career!
Suzie, however, can unashamedly show herself as pro-hero. Her station managed to scoop the rest of the world, so are capitalising on that. They have a reporter who is closer to the heroes than anyone else. If they keep up the friendly reporting, thereby winning Archon’s favour, then they will maximise her chances of further scoops.
I bet their ratings have gone through the roof as a result.
Which will explain the sombre faces of the rival mainstream anchors. Their own ratings have suffered a corresponding proportional hit. Whilst their numbers will actually be up, due to the vast increase in news-watching audiences, at this momentous time, their percentage of that will have suffered.
Also, “Bad News Is Good News”. Put another way, “If It Bleeds It Leads”.
Look at how news is typically arranged (in my experience):
*The guy that goes crazy and kills six people with power tools, that’s Page 1.
*The disaster, in some place most people have never heard of, that killed several hundred people, Page 3 or 4.
*A medical breakthrough that will save thousands of lives, and/or reports about people who really DO make the world a better place, they are all somewhere near the back of the newspaper, squeezed in between ads and sports.
Very similar story for broadcast media. Mostly, it’ll be Gloom’N’Doom, with maybe two minutes at the end about a parrot that can play pingpong or something. And they wonder why fewer people read newspapers or watch news programs.
you alzso need to remember Suzie is in the position of being saved twice by supers.
first the bank indecent that she dose not know was staged.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/231
then from Vehemence and his aggro aura
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1572
that means she is Sean to have a lagitement resign to be pro archon and she has a lot of cred when talking about Vehemence. any news network with that recorce would have her front and center. add to that that we know Arianna is just going to love Suzie’s “rah rah archon” attitude that she is probably at the top of a very short list of potential archon official press correspondence
Well said. I agree with all your points, and your conclusion.
by the time her internship ends( https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/311 ) the station will pretty much have to offer her a full time position. if they haven’t already.
“Smile at the wrong time, and you can end your career!”
Very true. There was a newscaster in the Houstom area in the late 80s who only lasted about 6 months. No matter what he did with his face, he always looked like he was about to crack the biggest grin ever, regardless of what he was talking about.
Super powered individuals are a terrifying existential threat. Tomorrow a girl could wake up with the power to crack the earth like an egg by sneezing. Someone with very strong feelings about the Middle East could discover time traveling powers. No one in-setting should be happy about this change to their world.
Except the change isn’t that superpowers suddenly exist. People have had time to come to terms with that, they were chatting about it as common knowledge at the beginning. Anyway, the cold war was a terrifying existential threat. People got used to it.
Anyway, the change is that superHEROES now exist, and they just overcame incredible odds in a spectacular battle against supervillains, without seriously harming anyone.
So I’d say that’s good news. We are no longer defenceless when someone tries to crack the earth in half.
+1
I was hoping somebody would step in, to field that one. And you did so very well.
Ok technically I’m not a girl bot while my sneezes are powerful they are that bad yet.
Shh! With that avatar you could have passed as an AI. Even though you made a basic mistake that humans would typically pick up on. ‘Cause girls are not normally called Peter. But, keep working at it, and you may yet pass the Turing Test!
Just do not go mentioning the fact that you are not a ‘girl bot’. That gives the game away. Your false denial just flies against the observable facts.
;p
In comic 297 while she is flying above the city trying to figure out how to get to work she mentions that her phone is dead so she can’t use her gps. So at this point, no, nobody is reaching her no matter how many calls their sending her way. All her friends though, their more than likely calling her like crazy about this time trying to find out WTF is going on. Then again since Sidney does have a history and beating up a mugger and that whole flipping the bank robber by the tongue thing, well, yeah for Joel this is totally typical Sidney. personally I’m not really that huge in the surprise category. Also when Joel really thinks about it during all her lies about what was in the tube she did actually say the truth but again, she had lied several times and he might not have picked up on it but would remember it. Yeah with her condition this would be totally typical.
Actually, it’s her armband computer that’s out of juice. However, Leon added security to Sydney’s phone & web presence, which might cut down on some of the madness. Also, if she forgot to plug in one device, she quite likely also forgot the other.
By the time she got home, the only thing Sydney wanted to plug in was herself into bed. At least her phone still had enough juice to interrupt Dabbler getting her juice…
;)
If you look back she called Dabbs on the pipboy not her phone.
Yea, but it is all linked. We saw Sydney was so tired that she collapsed into bed. Even though she had a momentary recovery, to phone Dabbler, I can well see that her head hit the pillow seconds after that scene ended.
Hence her pip-boy having been uncharged for the flight. I read it as being that neither will have been recharged. She will have probably checked that too, prior to bothering the traffic reporter.
My guess is that a part of the security upgrade to her phone was having all incoming calls and messages screened. If the sender isn’t in her contacts it is redirected to an answering service run by Archon where voice calls and messages are screened by the security department. Calls from any kind of media is probably routed to the PR department, and it’s quite likely Sydney now has a personal secretary handling her calls and keeping track of fan mail and the like.
I’m also guessing that Sydney doesn’t have a clue about this yet, as she never really read the contract she signed with Archon.
I might as well go all out and continue guessing that Sydney will not be all that happy about this, only to get a shock as they pipe several hundred pending calls and a ton or so of mails to her phone making it crash under the load. Not to mention the three vans with mail they deliver to her apartment…
That arc, while awesome, and in character, would take 2-3 pages at least. Dave B is getting better about not burning multiple pages for a single gag, and in the greater scheme of things, that’s not a super joke.
But yeah, I figured the security upgrade did the same. Smart phones are just handheld computers, adding an app to the phone layer is a little trickier, but not impossible.
So, what do we call the Branch of ARC responsible for answering the Super’s Phone calls to screen for undesirables?
ARC-Tone? ARC-Ring?
ARC-Rounding?
Geometrically speaking, an ARC is kinda rounded, isn’t it?…
:)
false, an arc is the span between two points. it can be a strait line or a curved bridge or an electrical charge and therefore not always rounded. you are thinking of an arch that is a purposeful curved structure that allows objects and organisms to pass through it.
And Archon has seemingly recruited a whole bunch of well-rounded personalities, hasn’t it?
;)
nope they seam to have forgotten sane
If they can be encouraged to come on board with their honeys, then they could crew the USS ARC-Hon. Commanded by Captain Noah.
Or, if the designations are only reserved for units, then the United States could take a leaf out of the British concept of the honours system. The most honoured heroes could be inducted into the honour unit. Which would, naturally enough, be called Arc-Honourable. Or Arc-Hon, for short.
The correct form of address, for such a hero would be “the Honourable Halo,” for example. As opposed to the Honourable Schovillem Jnr.
Several curvy ones anyways.
Yea, you have summed up the Sydney side nicely. I think the “typical” also has a self-depreciating side to it too though. As in, “typical, all this would have to kick off on the night I forget to plug my phone in – again* “.
* Possibly he has a history of missing major news stories too. Or, at least, being out of the loop, when something happens in his social circle.
I think that, from Joel’s perspective, trying to get a straight answer out of Sydney is literally trying to unscrew the inscrutable. You know, like anyone other than a Time Lord trying to untangle that big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-winey stuff.
yeah but even with a time lord it gets away from him a bit in the end. As long as you don’t blink its fine though :)
If you blink, you might miss that multi-dimensional crack in the wall…
Bad Wolf!
As per last page. He left his phone at work again didn’t he? (Emphasis Mine).
See, now I’m just thinking Joel: actually Donna Noble…
*self-deprecating Yours would work better if he was into self-abuse. Heh.
Wow…
If that doesn’t faze him… I’d like to see what will.
Well, he IS used to working with Sydney.
Or it’s shock, and it’ll all come in a minute
“If that doesn’t faze him… I’d like to see what will.”
Sydney(who has been scanning the page comments): “How about this?”
(pulls out phaser and shoots Joel) “Pew! Pew! Pew!”
Joel: “Quit opening the merchandise!”
XD *gigglefit*
I’m REALLY curious as to what Sydney has done before that makes this “typical”
The truth is that he is saying typical about it being before noon, he needs a STRONG drink after watching that.
Yeah – It looks that way to me too, i.e. it’s not even 10 AM and Sydney has already stirred things up…
You only THINK you want to know…
I might love Joel, just warning you.
Don’t warn us…Warn Joel!
Run Joel, Run.
*starts playing “Yakety Sax”*
We’ve seen Sydney running off while expressing the “woo woo woo” that Curly used…Maybe we’ll see Joel running off while whistling the Looney Tunes theme song.
:D
No I see Joel strolling off to the end music from The Incredible Hulk TV show.
I am guessing Leon knows how to handle obnoxious calls.
It probably involves disconnected phone carriers, denied service, missing records & files, frozen financial accounts…You know, the usual.
Personally I’d get a Party line, and just shunt all the trivial calls into it. Gives the Pro-Heroes a chance to gush and form fan clubs. Plus who’s going to be harder on a Anti-Hero caller than a chat room full of Rabid Fans? Add an .99 cent per minute fee, and you can actually turn a profit off of it!
Waived, for said rabid fans, of course.
If they are frothing at the mouth already, you really do not want to provoke them!
Set it up for allowing two rates so you send fans in for 5 cents per min and anti hero callers being charged… More. (Insert evil laughter here)
Leon reroutes the callers to each other at random. Then records the best results for the next office party.
I gotta ask, what is it that Joel finds “typical”? The fact that Sydney was lucky enough for this to happen to her or that dispute it happening to her he is still having to deal with the consequences of Sydney’s actions? Anyone else have a different theory?
Probably the fact that Sydney’s made his life insane again and it’s not even noon.
But yeah, I’d also go with having to deal with her messes and the fact she did something insanely crazy.
Nah. The fact that all this goes down when he doesn’t have his phone on him. Especially so if his phone (like mine) rarely sees use for actual communications.
I think it is a many-layered comment. Unlike me, he is a man of few words. And that one conveys a host of possible interpretations. Here are the categories that spring out, off the top of my head:
Sydney
Joel
The media
Society, and their reactions
Leaps in history/ society/ evolution/ science/ theology
Comics having gotten it right
Yes.
Note Dave’s deadpan execution here.
*nods, in appreciation*
ah the mathematicians answer a writers best tool to say nothing while at the same time saying something
That’s a typical tieshaunn (dot WordPress dot com) answer. It is a superhero web serial where the author loves to give ambiguous answers to reader questions like that.
It’s a great story if you liked Worm (It’s the same genre of story), although the updating is erratic. It’s still a good archive binge though.
Dave… you missed your Emphasis brackets… let me fix that for you:
[Kosh] Yes. [/Kosh]
there… Much better now… :D
Now there is nerd diplomacy
i was thinking it was “typical i tell Sydney about one problem (not enough customers) she fixes it and adds 50 new problems to deal with”
Is that Susie News in panel 4?
Yep. The only reporter with a positive report about the supers.
Yea, it is Suzie. But I disagree about the latter. Panel 2 appears to be very much in favour of supers, judging by their caption, anyhow. Albeit not exactly feminist friendly. So, for a random sampling of channels, we have two thirds of them appearing to be positive.
A low number for safe statistical analysis, but it may be representative. Hopefully the nutball channels are in the minority though. With the rest are providing balanced analysis, without to much sensationalism and panic mongering.
Did I manage to keep a straight face, when saying the last sentance?
Hard to tell…Your avatar has that same look of surprise it had ever since way-back-when.
;)
Put that down to DaveB.
That is, he keeps managing to surprise me with plot twists. Look at today, there I was challenging him to out-do the original reveal of the orbs. And he yanks the carpet out from underneath me, by going for the underplayed angle. Very cleverly done.
I highly doubt Maxima is happy with Panel 2 News. Let’s hope Maxima misses this moment (and that there aren’t others that are worse) or else Arianna will have one more angry person to deal with (Arianna may say she loves this, but I’m sure it gives her a headache sometimes).
It does. You can see the vein pulsing, in her forehead.
That’s not the headache, that’s the blood pressure.
True, they are separate things. However there can also be a direct correlation. I have a friend who had (literally record breaking) high blood pressure, which always caused severe migraines. And made the blood squirt into his eyeballs. And almost killed him.
Dunno why, but the ‘link’ seems to be firmly established in my head since then. ;-)
Probably.
Wait a minute, wasn’t it said that Sydney’s orbs didn’t show in pictures?
Orbs themselves, yes. User interface for leveling, no.
Telepresence? Not sure –but would be too helpful in an RPG setting so I would require points be spent…
Nah, the Orbs appear just fine, it’s the skill tree that was invisible to cybernetic eyes.
And possibly the glow? I would need to trawl back through the ballroom scene to confirm that though… :\ I certainly recall talk of “psychic light” at some point
Back in the conference room yesterday, Dabbler said that she could see the orbs glowing but just couldn’t find the source of the glow.
The orbs are clearly glowing in the camera footage, however.
Well, let’s see here. The skill tree was invisible to cameras, and the orbs were invisible to magic scans, but I don’t think the orbs have ever been invisible to cameras.
Dabbler also said that she couldn’t see any markings, runes or symbols on the orbs either…But WE saw runes on her FF Orb (The Embiggener) at the press conference & runes on the Comm Orb when she used True Sight on Vehmence’s Aggro-Aura during the big battle.
The orbs themselves are unmarked but as with the skill tree there appears to be an overlay of control symbols on activated orb which may be seen but is undetectable by video capture devices or magical and technological scans.
Didn’t Leon adjust her phone? Maybe he rigged it to send calls from everyone except the ones on Sydney’s contact list to the public relations office…
I admit, that one hadn’t occurred to me. I thought of filters & such, but not a contact-list based redirect. She still ought to have a massive influx of messages from everyone she knows. And, as I said above, her phone is likely as dead as the arm-computer.
There are also apps that will automatically silence the phone at certain times or locations. Then again, Sydney was so tired she might have slept through the phone calls, thus explaining why the phone would have a dead battery too.
Sounds like a very sensible hypothesis.
That’s actually really good. Though Sydney may not be too happy if a call she WOULD have liked to have taken gets shunted off over there and she finds out about it. Probably make her paranoid(er)
She just let a technologically adept representative of the government * tinker with her phone. Without checking to see what he did. Perhaps elevating her paranoia level, a bit, would not harm a super-solider?
* Aka those shadowy individuals she has been fearing vivisection by, for the last several months.
Sydney doesn’t like answering incoming calls anyway. She already warned Harem about those kind of calls.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/939
:D
:-D Well connected.
that was Brooke, AKA Heatwave, the one that doesn’t think quite like the rest of us… not Harem.
I feel honoured that Joel has the same clock widget as I do.
Looks like a standard HTC Sense clock widget, at least from a few years ago. The phone doesn’t look like an HTC, though.
Of those 71 missed calls, at least 60 of them were no doubt from his mother.
And as a middle aged single man in what she would perceive a dead end job, THAT to him would be typical.
It’s the other 11 calls he needs fear.
But Joel & Sydney actually have their own business going. It’s not “just” a job, it’s an actual career.
…Oh right…His MOM…The business involves COMIC BOOKS…What was I thinking?
:P
Unless his mom is the one who got him into the geekiness, like mine.
Let’s just say that I could have been a millionaire by now if my mom hadn’t thrown out a lot of my comics, or my old-school GI Joe stuff.
You and me both buddy.
I still fume about the original, signed, Wolverine mini series, among other such that was tossed out when I was out of state for a while.
But I’m not bitter. Nope, not at all.
I feel for you bud. Likewise for a refugee from New Orleans I met, the day after Katrina hit. His passion was for collecting first edition books. Katrina trashed ever last one of them! He was, justifiably heartbroken.
Mind you, he had is priorities right. He was thankful that he, his friends and relatives all escaped the flooding unscathed. Homeless, for a number of them, including him. But wisely took the ‘life goes on’ attitude.
but books are life………
His mom is the one that should be on the top of his list of priorities. She is the one terrified, that he has fallen into bad company, and ‘that weird girl will get him in danger or killed’.
This is offcourse asuming that his mom doesn’t actually know Sydney.
If she did, that concern would have already been expressed ALOT
Mmm, no, I would be very surprised if they had set up a business together and his mom did not know about her. I was just implying that a mom would be concerned with her son hanging around with someone who behaves as eccentrically as Sydney does. Let alone relying on her as a business partner!
The fact that she is now in control of artefacts, of unimaginable power, and has already gotten into a a massive fight would just compound that view.
What do you mean, “artifacts of unimaginable power?” Dave has already imagined them & we’re all still speculating about what Dave has imagined.
;)
Our imagination pales into insignificance when compared to that of a mom worrying about her son.
Joel, stop dicking around, and call her back! Unless she has the tv on the live news feed, she must be worried sick!
add to that his mum is probably watching fear zone right now
Assuming that Joel’s mother is alive (fairly safe bet), and that he has contact with her (again, a fairly safe bet), and let’s assume that Joel’s mother has met Sydney, then we know that Joel’s mom will have one of two reactions to Sydney: Circle one: [LOVE] [HATE]. My guess would be love. Even if Joel doesn’t marry her, at least he has contact with a woman, who, allegedly, has contact with other women, thus significantly increasing Joel’s chances of getting married and providing the much-desired grandchildren. Of course, I am ignoring the possibility of Joel being gay and/or not wanting children, but those two points would be irrelevant to a mom bent on having grandchildren to spoil.
There is also the possibility that he is happily married and…
nope, there is no way that a family, including tech-savy kids would all be oblivious to the news.
Yep, your observations are well thought out.
there is also the possibility that he was once married and is now divorced.
I’d also like to add that not all mothers are eager for grandchildren, myself included.
Acknowledged. I was basing my suppositions on the median within our society.
Understandable, and the attitude that it’s ok, or even desirable, to pressure people into parenthood is one I’d like to see nuked from orbit.
Why would the press call her cellphone? Who makes their private number public? Not even my landline number is in the phone book and I do not use my private cell number for work.
If someone needs to reach me for work related purposes, then they can call me at work during office hours or send an email. When I’m on call, I have a different cellphone just for that.
I mean, that’s just the basics.
That just means you’re more intelligent than the average person.
By my reckoning, FAR more intelligent.
People give their cellphone number (and their contact list) away when they install some apps. Those apps look at a smartphone’s number and try to match it with the name in the contact list or a name on the account used to sign into the app. The apps send that info back to a person or business that manages the app, and they sell your info to whoever will buy it (usually advertising companies).
That’s not even counting “true” caller ID, which is an expensive service but your number can’t be blocked on it so a lot of businesses use it. I worked at a place once that got a bomb threat. The caller had blocked their caller ID but the company got it anyway, with True CallerID. If you do due diligence at security you can block a lot of the phishing attempts to get your phone number, but not all of them.
You’d be surprised how investigative journalists can get when the biggest world changing event in history happens.
… And how little respect said journos might have for concepts like personal space.
and if you are one of those people that can AFFORD three or more phone lines, great, more power to you… but like most people, we can only afford one cell phone with a land line as your home phone. i know some friends that don’t even have a land line anymore, the ONLY way to reach them is thru a cell number.
as for making any of your phone numbers “private”,it’s mu understanding that it cost’s money to get it unlisted, but having it public is free. and as of yesterday, having it unlisted wasn’t needed. so her numbers are still in any phone books that were printed before today, AND in any online databases that keep track of stuff like that. Leon MAY have been able to wipe those numbers, but any physical books (and I’m SURE that news agencies would have them) are still out there.
as for her having a work only number, that would imply a second cell phone owned by the comic shop itself, because each cell can only have one number attached to it, and with the way their finances are going, i don’t think the comic shop could AFFORD that…
The cost of a private number can be up to $5/month (if you have Verizon).
heh poor staters being forced to pay to protect your privacy.
here in sweden its free =))
was a bit of a pain to find the correct pic i wanted for my gravatar but finally found it
You have awesome taste.
power to the vikings!
sadly its all going downhill for us…
Staters, how accurate:
State of despair, disgust, dyspepsia, disenfranchisement …
*hugs*
Keep hope alive. Someday the political climate might change, enough that the United States can seek re-entry to the United Kingdom. Try putting a brave face on it, until such a day comes.
i use staters because frankly america is the whole freaking continent not just the second 1/4 of the continent
And even the USA is supposed to be The States United, limiting government Power instead of letting government grab all of the Power.
We effed up bad quite some time ago and the vultures are circling. Eisenhower warned us about letting the government and big business share a toothbrush.
Sounds like a wise man.
to be fair the “states” has always been to better 1 group of people first it was the white men, after that came the plantation owners, industrial tycoons, wall street fat cats and now companys at large.
the common man has never been in the spotlight before
That is precisely my thought. Most do not have extra phones and multiple numbers lying around for a reason.
And then there’s the fact you can still get her number even if it’s private. Simplest example, catch one of her contacts who is naive enough to give the number away.
I guess that’s the difference between our countries then.
When you get set up for a landline, you can decide if you want to get listed in the phone book or not. No charge either way.
The second cellphone is not mine, it belongs to the company I am working for. Whoever is on call uses it.
Why would a comic shop list a mobile number in the first place? They have a landline and that’s all they need.
Well said. As for your last, I have already argued the counter-point to that. But such argument would only really apply to small businesses which are afraid of loosing out on custom, out of hours. Or those which do not have a way for emergency business contact to be handled.
Whereas a shopkeeper who can properly separate his work and private time will have a much better quality of life and thereby life expectancy. I think Joel will need to become a master of balancing things now, if he wants to keep the latter long.
As you have seen from some comments, many businesses cannot afford to give out company cell phones, so no such thing for Joel and Sydney in their situation. Money is tight to afford such a luxury.
As far as why even give out your cell number, several reasons I can think of. Main thing is the cell provides direct contact to the owner or manager of the shop, while the land line is not so much. It means you can talk business directly to the owner, and the owner can be outside of the building during business hours to make contact. Since they are desperate for income, it means people can get a hold of Joel anytime from not just customers, but from, say, suppliers, or other vendors. Doesn’t matter that it’s a comic shop, there are still situations where you need to go mobile.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean either Joel or Sydney actually use their cell phones for business. However, as also noted, just because you keep your number private doesn’t mean people can’t find you. If you’re newsworthy, people will find a way to get your contact.
I worked for a cell phone company, for about 5 years. Cell Phone numbers are not listed anywhere by default, in fact our company’s contract required getting our written permission to put your cell phone number into a phone directory. Although, in the 5 years I worked for them I don’t know of one instance where that policy was enforced.
*nods*
About what I expect when the market is allowed to police itself. Things. like cold-calling and harassment, become a lot harder, when there are laws designed to allow folks privacy, if they want it. And giving big fines to companies is a useful way to ensure that they do not neglect such policies.
Joel has trouble even managing the one phone, I think it highly unlikely that he would want, or would remember to check multiple ones. Most small businesses have to keep things simple. If there is an out-of-hours business call, they have to take it. It could lead to some profit, and they were in financial woes.
Alternatively it could be a problem with the premises. Either way, they need to have the option of responding immediately. No point carrying around more than one phone, for most people, in those circumstances.
The evil press ferreted around until they found someone who did have his number?
They should make a cell phone that can switch between “accounts” so you can shift it over to a different number/contact list.
They do make phones that can take multiple SIM cards.
Actually finding phone numbers hidden and otherwise is pretty dang easy. I used to have an uncle who programed satellites for a living. He showed me how easy it is to find the phone number of any person in the world within 10 minutes. Their are lists on the internet which allow you to look them up even if they are unlisted. The internet is powerful my friends.
It really is not what I was expecting. I had to go back and check if I missed an extra page or something.
I really don’t want to tell you how to do your jo… your absolutely free webcomic; but let me note that it is quite confusing in this way.
A whole lot of assumptions happened that you write in the blogpost and the blogpost is not going there when you make a book. Depending on what comes next, it may become clearer though.
I’m just saying this because you have made little corrections to earlier pages too.
But maybe it’s just me and it’s all clear for everyone else?
Yeah, it’s just you.
I think DaveB was afraid that it may not have come across as intended, given his blog that you mentioned. But, judging from the reader comments so far, the majority of folks have had no problems with this.
However everybody interprets things a bit (or a lot) differently. So it is good for you to give Dave feedback.
I have to admit I thought a page was missed too at first, but you can still follow it so no real biggie. I did really want ot see his reaction in front of all those reporters when she finally did the reveal to Joel though, I’ve been waiting since just after they first introduced him and Sidney went to the bank to see his reaction. But the typical reaction was pretty dang priceless at the same time.
Joel: MASTER OF DEADPAN, LEVEL UP!
so he’s a Arch Deadpan now? or maybe a Litch Deadpan, hm…
If he signed up, he could become an ARC-deadpan.
Or he may wind up being Archon’s unofficial mascot. No matter what happens, just show a shot of Joel saying his deadpan “Typical” afterwards & that might diffuse a lot of potential panic among the public.
You go to sleep, 10 hours later you notice you’ve missed superheroes turning up in the world.
Hate when that happens.
This totally makes me think about Shaun of the dead where he is completely oblivious of the zombie apocalypse going on around him.
As bad as that might seem for Joel, think about how much of an impact Rip Van Winkle had in his life when he woke up.
There was a real-life situation, along those lines. A guy who went into a coma, in Soviet-era Russia. Only to awaken many years later, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
He could not believe the variety products in all the shops, and no queues to get them (comparative to the ones which used to go down the street, anyhow).
Forced “time travel” into the future really sucks, doesn’t it?
:P
Well, to be fair, he was having a hard time adjusting, and did, to some degree, harken back to the familiar times he was used to. It was not all ‘democracy and the free market is the dog’s bollox’.
http://Www.bloodsplatteredsocks.com
At least there is no killer after you aswell, and you don’t know why.
An old RPG game from AD&D fame, called “Planescape:Torment” shows what it’s like to have been “time traveling” (dying & losing all memories, but still physically healing & resurrecting) & still have an implacable enemy follow you.
I saw a film with similar plot to that story, called Goodbye Lenin (despite the title, it’s in German).
Basically, wacky antics ensue when the protagonist must conceal the fact that the Berlin wall has fallen from his ardently communist mother.
There was a sorta-similar case in the USA. This guy had a problem where, every once in a while, at completely unpredictable intervals ranging up to five years apart, he would *FORGET* everything that had happened to him since the middle of 1969.
So, one day you’re a hippie getting ready to climb into a van and head for woodstock, the next day you’re fifty years old with a wife and kids you’ve never met and a 9-to-5 job you have no idea how to do. Forced time travel with a twist that another you’s been there the whole time and you get to take his place (and his aging body, etc).
Actually, at the start of the series they say that supers are around, but are very rare. So, it’s not suprising that supers are around, but that there are more out there than they thought. Plus, a new goverment agency and a huge super battle all happening in one day.
I think of it as being like UFOs today. There are a lot of people who have seen them (but of course that is not to say that UFO = space ship). Further there are a lot of people who are convinced that they are extra-terrestrial in origin. Likewise a segment of the media report on them as if they were real. Whereas others debunk them.
In this case, as there will be very real individuals at the core, it clearly will not be as near to that end of the spectrum of public belief. There will have been some instances where it could clearly be proven. But these could well have been the subject of official cover-ups. Which would still leave a big proportion of the public able to live in plausible deniability.
If you look on it, in the way I suggest, then the conversation which Sydney and Joel had, about supers, does not conflict with the press conference’s attitude of ‘here is a new thing’.
I don’t think it as quite that secret. I mean, everyone must have at least heard of Maxima, if not by name. She’s not exactly a “Black Ops” soldier, is she?
And that search and rescue guy they mentioned seemed like common knowledge.
I think supers were something that everyone knew about, but just didn’t seem very important.
Unless I have misread it completely, I think Maxima was a secret asset, up until now.
Your latter is a reasonable interpretation for the situation. And, supporting that is the fact that legislation must have gone through for the formation of a new arm of the military. However that could have been done secretly. To avoid drawing public attention to the fact that, until that was done, America was undefended against super villains.
Incidentally I have no idea if the US political system has provision for that. But I know that Parliament has the capability of meeting in secret, and passing legislation accordingly. Much as we value openness, there are times when such can critically endanger the public safety.
Of course there is no reason why my view of it need be correct. We each place our own interpretation on the situations. Such speculation is interesting, whichever we each prefer to favour.
The bit which makes me favour my particular one though, is that no one at the press-conference was going ‘yea yea, we know all this. just get on with the new stuff’. If supers were well-established public knowledge, I do not see that Arianna would have felt the need to do a history lesson. Press conferences are there to provide news, after all.
Not only that, but Max was deployed primary (if not entirely) in classified military operations overseas, not on US soil. That would tend to make her pretty much unknown over here…Except maybe from those internet geeks who use links to foreign news on a regular basis.
Also don’t forget that college incident where she blew a hole in the wall when someone popped a bag near her while she slept, that just had to get into the papers.
Termites, maybe? Plus a small gas explosion.
Under the right circumstances, it might have been barely mentioned at the local media level. Not every “odd” occurance in the local area get elevated to city, state or national news.
Parliament = the Parliament of England
England does not have a parlament
wales has an assembly
Scotland has an assembly
northern Ireland has an assembly
united kingdom has a parliament (based in England)
England has a… well nothing
That was doubly careless of me. You are correct.
Around but previously unacknowledged and believed to be rumors. That was the reason for the Bank incident, Arianna’s attempt to bring it out in the open before the press conference. (I’m 90% + sure on this, it’s been a few years, our time, since that happened.)
One other way of thinking about it, if folks do not think my UFO analogy holds water, is that of the stealth bombers and fighters. Officially they did not exist for years. Despite the fact that you could buy (very accurate) models of them, in toy shops around the world!
Whilst I still prefer the previous analogy, both serve to show that there can be a big discrepancy between what is officially acknowledged, and what is ‘public knowledge’.
You know I kind of wonder how Joel got mixed up with Sidney to the point where he’s co-owner of the shop when she’s so obviously crazy and he isn’t.
He responds to the news of superheroes and Sydney being one of them with complete ambivalence, and you think he’s not crazy?
Complimentary personalities and skill sets. She is the charismatic front of house representative and can relate to the customers as an equal enthusiast. He is the level-headed businessman.
“BUY MORE COMICS!!!” XD
Expert customer service IF THEY ACTUALLY ARE CUSTOMERS
Now that I think about it, Joel is closer to being Unfazeable rather than Imperturbable. Basically, unless confronted with something obviously dangerous, Joel would be exempt from Fright Checks & most Reaction Modifiers has no effect either way.
I think the reason Joel’s eyes popped when Sydney opened the tube was because he still wasn’t sure if its contents weren’t “dangerous or illegal” & after about 3 months of Sydney dodging the answer about the tube, he was merely surprised rather than being alarmed. Remember that Sydney wasn’t really sure herself when Joel asked her about it. Joel was concerned, yes, and probably surprised, but not really alarmed.
Correct.
MASTER OF FEW WORDS: LEVEL UP!
Dammit, that just earnt a LEVEL DROP.
Bummer
Oh well, at least you still came out even. ;)
Padawan .
Darksider!
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
At least there’s plenty of cookies…
But the cookies are a lie, only to entice more recruits. Once crossing the line, there are no cookies! How do I know this? I looked before leaping!
Don’t forget the bacon .
We has bacon!
How should real Americans feel about this? We should fear it because it’s different!
. . . I apologise in advance, and do not mean to cause any offense to anyone, but the following immediately came to mind after reading your comment:
“Well, they certainly have reservations…”
(Because, you know, real Americans, rather than pawns of French tax dodgers…)
actually, the Boston Tea Party was kicked off when the british crown removed the import/export tax on tea in an effort to help the british east india company clear out a massive backstock. the American Colonists, fed up with all the other crown meddling going on economics wise in their area and seeing a once valuable good go dirt cheap and screwing up their economy, got understandably ticked off.
Part of the problem is they only removed it for the East Indian Tea Company; every one else still had to pay it.
Imagine a 35% tax on selling coffee for every company but Starbucks.
The East India Tea company were not allowed to sell directly to colonies. The tea was bought by other companies, who then sold it on, so it’s more like a company selling coffee beans getting a tax break. Starbucks/Costa/etc can still compete for the end price.
The East India Tea company were also not allowed to sell directly to colonies. The tea was bought by other companies, who then sold it on, so it’s more like a company selling coffee beans getting a tax break. Starbucks/Costa/etc can still compete for the end price.
Bleh… I had an error poting a reply, and then it re-submits my previous message as a reply to itself.
It was a comment on the Royal Charter, and how it gave EIC a monopoly, and why that was a bad thing, but the better than some alternatives. Complete with comparisons to the modern banking crisis
That’s really not any better because the supplier is still a distributor while the colonies may have been on equal footing with each other they were not getting the same tax break benefits that other British citizens were.
No, it’s not massively better. But a large number of smaller companies wouldn’t have been able to start the original venture, and taxing it supposedly put less risk of having to pay for a bailout than if the company was directly owned by the government.
Of course, many of the shares were then bought by by aristocrats or politicians, so they put pressure to save their investments – much like modern bank bailouts!
(It’s interesting to note that existing anti-monopoly legislation was effectively overruled to allow for the creation of the EIC… They’d have been better with the creation of 2 or 3 different large companies)
Except the only color such companies have proven to be loyal to is cash green. They’re not loyal to any country, just the money. Why else would they offshore jobs even after getting getting loopholes to make the current corporate tax rate disappear. How is is that really better. We are taking real money out of the economy when we do things like that. Better dozens even hundreds of small to moderate sized startups.
Well, ‘cash gold’ at the time. And, as I mentioned – the cost/benefit balance was skewed to make the risks too great for ‘lots of small startups’ to work, but at least some competition would have helped bring prices under control.
Big companies can weather setbacks which would drive SMEs to bankruptcy, even with all the newfangled modern protections in place. Once the systemwas established though, small groups of traders would have been able to start new, smaller ventures. Your arguments are fine for the modern world, but rely on infraestructure not available at the time.
Partly correct. The tax “cut” was on trade of tea within the British Empire, but was also to try and prevent smuggling by bringing the prove of legal tea to below that of the smuggled stuff. And it did not remove the tax so much as trigger a refund for tea sold to colonies.
So, smuggling and tax rebates. Fun stuff.
Ah, quick correction – Dutch tax dodgers. The French won the war of independence. Sorry!
Ahh, you made a slight typo there, “the war of independence” should read “the British Civil War in the Americas”.
I was going to put that, but thought that it would spark yet another argument.
Like how the American pretext for the Vietnam war was that an American ship was sunk, but documents declassified in the past 5-10 years admit that the whole story was made up :)
and had George Frederick successfully put down that pesky little rebellion, it likely would’ve been called just that. As it stands, however…
The victor always writes the history books, as you say. Had the American Civil War gone the other way, it may have been termed the Confederate War For Independence. Or something like that.
The myth that real Americans exist is still out there?
Sure they are. They live in reservates
+1
Nah, I don’t let anyone else (especially on TV) tell me how I should feel about anything. I’d rather go digging for facts rather than accept a knee-jerk reactionary’s word for anything.
Which makes you smarter than most FOXNews devotees.
Actually, it’s the “liberal-slanted” news channels I don’t pay attention to…In fact, I haven’t even had my TV plugged into the wall socket for at least 3 years & am far better off for it. I get multiple sides of the story before I form my own opinion, not relying on any SINGLE source.
Thus, I debunk your Anti-Fox bias…
Trust me on this no channel which thinks for you is worth it but sheer amount of misinformation coming out of FOXNews is greater. It’s the difference between take everything they say with a grain of salt and “Hi, I’m Harcourt Fenton Mudd.”
You might want to look up the actual numbers before making such statements of “fact.”
https://newsbusters.org/blogs/randy-hall/2014/06/10/poll-msnbc-least-trusted-tv-news-source-fox-news-most-trusted
That is of interest to me,mainly because I have an axe to grind against bad media reporting in general. And so tend to check out stories which feature that. Fox News does feature all too often. Of course I should not assume that my experiences correlate to there being such a statistical basis.
So your survey is interesting, as it does not match my expectations. There may be a simple reason for that, such as my sources (mainly the BBC, for this kind of thing), could have an anti-FoxNews bias themselves.
Checking out that link though, I see the survey was conducted with reasonable methodology, so it is an interesting result. None the less you should not knock Peter Sadlon and support the counter-argument against his comment with that survey.
His comment dealt with the issue of misinformation. Whereas your rebuttal was about how trusted the sources are. Whilst the two issues have a seeming correlation, they need not be linked in the least. If a source is good at lying, it will be trusted. Likewise, if it is popular those who like it, will tend to trust it.
Adolph Hitler was a master of the big lie, and propaganda. Germany trusted him. Even today we can see Putin employing misinformation, on an audacious scale. Yet Russia trusts him. He enjoys staggeringly high popularity levels, and corresponding levels of trust. This despite the fact that modern-day Russia is internet savvy and can access the same facts we can that way. But their mainstream media is obviously holding sway.
We likewise must be wary of allowing our own propaganda machines to get away with their own biases. Note that I am not, in any way trying to associate Fox News with the Nazis. I am just pointing out that if we allow the media to be controlled by those with political influences, then we, the voters, will be the victims. Regardless of the parties involved.
This is compounded by people mainly choosing to listen to sources which have a similar stance to their own. I just hope to convince people to make that stance “I want unbiased news”, rather than “I want news that reinforces my political views”. The latter just leads to polarised political views (in two-party systems) or acceptance of the status quo (in single party systems).
when ever you talk about the fox right wing propaganda Chanel that gos by the name fox news there is a fact you need to remember. the average age of the viewers is around 75 (dont recall exactly). thats not the group who can easily go and look up the facts online
Thinking for yourself? What if you think wrong?
At least it will be your own wrong thoughts instead somebody else’s. Someone else’s wrong thoughts aren’t likely to take your needs into account.
Its better than the wrong thoughts of the politically abusive leftist controlled media you seem to be toting as correct when they skip anything that makes democrats and Obama look bad. That’s really wrong especially since the left has been using groups like the IRS as a weapon against the people of this country and trying to cover it up and make it look like they have the right to do so when its a direct violation of the laws of the land. Not to mention everything that Obama, the current president has done which is not only illegal but all grounds for his removal from office and his installation into a jail cell which isn’t happening because the leftist media refuses to report the truth of the matter and do their job.
Ok, I am banishing this thread to panel 1 of this comic! Discussion of the pros and cons of media styles is on topic, and invited the current comic. But getting too heavily into contemporary politics can lead to the debate getting overheated, and some readers getting put off the comments.
I appreciate that American TV very much has the political parties intertwined with the particular news channels. However that is not actually true the world over (although it is mostly). Where possible, please try to separate the political issues, from the style of reporting, and similar media specific topics.
I have no idea whether Fox is pro-Democrat or pro-Republican, and really do not care. I phase it out when comments get into that. But their style of reporting (and their lax fact checking) does tick me off.
If, as I gather from previous comments, rival stations, with opposing political views, are just as bad, that is simply indicative of poor standards industry wide. Which is a major cause for concern. One that I feel would be more useful addressing, than the well-known political divides.
DaveB very carefully avoids party political stances in his comics, so we should follow his lead and try and avoid it here in the comments too. Please.
Hey, I tried to at least keep the bashing on the level of “media bias” without going into politics…My only point is that no one should restrict themselves to only one type of source for information & news.
dave should make you the referee over the comments because you know when everyone needs to take a chill pill
I totally agree with you, I just got tired of the FOX news bashing and the refusal to admit that the other stations are as bad if not worse. That’s why I actually after all this time finally just tossed that out there.
I agree. The way people rag on Fox news all the time to the seeming exclusion of all other news venues can be pretty annoying, sort of like seeing people write “still a better love story than Twilight” all the time. It gets very old very fast.
It may be worth noting an outsiders perspective here mind. Whilst I am clearly biassed, due to my liking of the BBC, I do not particularly hold them in any higher regard than ITV, Channel 4 or any other British TV news I have come across. None demonstrate bad bias.*
So, from the perspective of a Brit, I find it sad that any news station, in the US, has managed to gain itself such a bad reputation.
Here I am dipping my toe in dangerous waters, so must point out that I am talking in the abstract here. Not with a poke at any particular party. But I suspect that the root of the problem in the US is the very fact that party politics are so heavily bound up in media coverage.
If you were to get so fed up with biassed coverage, that you legislated to strip blatant media bias towards any political party, you may be able to free yourselves of that problem.
All news stations make gaffs at times. But if it is to do with a political issue, the rival parties, and their followers, will revel in the mistake and keep bringing it up. Likewise editors and journalists, who are trying to make a political point, may overstep, and be more likely to make such an error, than a journalist who does not have a political angle to push.
Personally I view our society as having put too much power in the hands of the media (be that via print or broadcast). Theoretically, as democracies (and the variants thereof), we, the public, are meant to have political power.
But whilst we rely on biassed and politically motivated editorial teams, to choose what news we see, how it is presented and what solutions are pressed, we are actually putting a vast amount of the power in the hands of those who run and own such businesses.
That is bad. We should do something to stop it. A basic democratic right should be easy access to unbiased news. It is absolutely vital, if we want to have anything approaching a real democracy. Rather than the oligarchy we live in today.
* The BBC has always heavily reported on environmental news and issues mind. So, in that regard, they do have a bias. And all news services have some kind of leanings, depending on their editorial team, and their priorities. But, on UK TV, they work very hard to keep to the high standards initially set by the BBC. They would not have gained viewers otherwise..
Nor would they even get licences to broadcast news, if they were perceived to have lost their reputation for being unbiased. Yep, the UK does, in effect, have the laws I am talking about already. Albeit only for TV news. Keeping the granting and renewal of such licences in the hands of an independent body, rather than politicians, helps to reduce the risk of political bias creeping in.
This really does pose and excellent question.
“How would any of us respond to finding out that one of our very close friend or closest friend is actually an incredibly powerful super hero/heroine.”
I believe my own response would be to quote Samuel L Jackson in saying: “M***********”
My response. ” Well, that explains last wednesday, but where’s the TV remote?
My initial reaction would be alot like Joel’s right now.
Some time later, after all the information has been processed, It’d probably blow my mind
Ironically enough, it seems Joel is the last person to know when Sydney’s secret identity became a public identity…score another trope-buster for DaveB!
Dave said that Sydney eventually shooed the reporters out of the store to talk to Joel. Being in her natural pop culture habitat, the rant probably went something like:
“I have had it with these motherfuckin’ reporters in this motherfuckin’ store! “
I still hold with my prior reactionary table. Joel would initially be saying to himself if nothing else, WTF, then switch to the deadpan typical after looking over all the news he missed.
Ahh, but Sydney and Joel are opposites. She reacts expressively and expletively, whilst he reacts unexpressively and unexpletively.
True, but didn’t you see his eyes when Sydney first opened the tube, even though we don’t see what happens when the balls come out of the tube,which I would have loved to see his reaction to, he does show something in that split second of the last panel. This is something which in point of fact may at least in part negate his normal stance when he is caught off guard. We the reader however never see the other half of this situation, or a mental readout of Joel reacting to the realization that Sydney has gone super. All we see if the Typical after the event has taken place so in reality we never really know what his first base reaction would be.
Personally, I read the above as being his reaction. His eyes bulged at the sight of the tube being “SWISHED” around telekinetically, and then relaxed to the deadpan expression, we see above, as the orbs rose up in front of him. I do not feel that there was, nor needs to be a gap.
Dave is very aware of user feedback, and knows there would be a lot of people who found the anti-climax disappointing. I too was looking forward to seeing the original unveiling, of the orbs, topped in some spectacular fashion. However, whilst that may have been satisfying, it would simply be repeating the earlier scene, in the board room. Which is not necessarily good story telling.
So Dave has chosen to go a route which simultaneously subverts those expectations, catching the reader by surprise (which serves to enhance the comedic deadpan situation), and also giving us a very strong feel as to Leon’s character. He is unflappable. Most people would have an intense reaction to something so mind-blowing. He did not.
Up until now, we have only seen him in everyday situations, conducting normal conversation. Whilst that allows us to assess him as being a normal guy, with a sound business head and a liking for Sydney, it does not do much to show his inner character. This scene very much does however, and sets him apart from the norm. He may not have super-powers, but he is a personality.
Because Dave is kind, and wishes to offer an olive branch to those he knew would find this unsatisfying, he has offered us an alternative way of viewing it. However, I really do not think that is necessary. In the fullness of time, the fact that Joel has this trait will stand out as a defining part of his character. And we will realise that this was the moment that it shone out.
We will forget the disappointment at the anti-climax and relish the unexpected reveal. Which was not that of the orbs, but of Joel’s personality!
trying to decide if his “typical” comment is directed at Sydney, the media or both.
All of the above, plus himself, and more.
This is typical of what happens when Joel forbids Sydney to be in charge of advertising.
Heh. +1
+2
It was never explicit that Sydney was forbidden to market or advertise for the store…Only that she’s never been in charge of doing so.
Remember when news was more than just sensationalism? I sure don’t anymore…
I’m old enough to remember real investigative journalism. Now it’s pretty much all flash-in-the-pan, dog & pony stuff (no offense intende to Yorp).
*wags tail*
I REMBER!
I miss real news.
Wow. Showing your age there. Newsreel does go back a wee bit.
Mind you, I can remember when radio and documentary shorts, prior to the main feature, were the way to get the news too. Before TV was introduced. My mum got irritated that our school teachers were setting homework, based on the TV due that night. “What about all the households who do not have TV? Why are teachers encouraging children to watch all that mindless drivel!”
I can remember going to a friend’s house, to see their TV. And the living room was packed out, with other friends doing the same. Being so crowded, that people were even having to watch from outside the windows!
The memory being particularly poignant, in that the faces outside were all black. But that was a sad sign of the time and the place.
My earliest solid TV memory is Richard Nixon’s resignation. I was 5. And very upset because I was too young to understand why he was resigning. All I knew was, it must mean something bad has happened. (I know better now).
Incidentally Dave, I love the homage to J. Jonah Jameson: “Superheroes: Threat or menace?”. Was that intentional?
My first significant memory of TV was when Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder of the Lunar Module…
I apparently watched that but (being 2 months old) have no memory of it.
I was 8 years old at the time & still remember watching it.
I vaguely remembered hearing about Neil Armstrong landing on the moon but dismissing it because I thought Tintin got there first?
Even before Tintin, Baron Munchausen got there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Baron_Munchausen
:D
Cyrano de Bergerac beat them both.
But only by a nose.
+1 for Yorp.
I thought Alice Kramden got there first…
Naa, Impey Barbicane and Michel Ardan made the trip the century before that.
I was a scant month old, so no fond memories of the moon landing >.<
I feel similar to that, concerning when JFK was shot in Dallas. My mom saved the newspapers with the headlines on it, but someone (who shall remain nameless) scribbled all over them with orange crayons…
Yes I remember, and now I feel old, thanks. =P
Really want to feel old? Go listen to your favorite cartoon shows theme songs from when you were growing up and then realize, cartoons will never be that good again.
Oh, do not worry. You have your second childhood to look forward to yet. Having to wear nappies* is a down side. Enjoying simple cartoons again though is a definite up.
* Diapers to our far-side of the Atlantic cousins.
The fun things you learn reading forums:
In America, old people go “nappies”.
In Britain, old people go _in_ nappies.
In Soviet Russia … look a squirrel!
All Hail our Fuzzy Overlord !
What do you mean the remake of Yamato was really good. Oh you mean that American made Super friends drivel sigh to be that young and uneducated again. No scratch that I want the knowledge I have now.
Agreed
I remember Walter Cronkite. Need I say more?
it is obligatory that you say “…and that’s the way it was.”
Personally, I have too much respect for the man to infringe on his trademark sign-off.
Mmm, one man’s ‘infringement on trademark sign-off’ is another woman’s independently originated turn of phrase. Or perhaps, directly (or indirectly through mimicking common usage) an homage. Personally, not being a U.S. TV watcher, I have never so much as heard his sign off. Although the name is famous enough, to ring a bell.
I do not know about the Plasma variety, but mongooses are ‘native to southern Eurasia and mainland Africa.’ I doubt many of them get to watch U.S. TV either. So that may simply be an innocent co-incidence.
Love your name. Perfect for pointing out errors.
I still remember when journalism was an honest profession, that was before they went out of their way to slam everyone running against Obama and had a website dedicated to all the reporters getting together to decide what lies they would tell about his opponents, and I mean out right lies that they told about everyone running against Obama. Fox News actually brought that up once. But it was also brought up by Rush Limbaugh. When they press conspires to bring in a candidate which they hand pick and refuse to report anything which makes their candidate look bad its time to remove all the press from their jobs and bring in new people who might actually be honest, its also time for the companies running the news to lose their right to tell the news. If they can’t be trusted to tell both sides of a story, then what good are they?
I suggest you switch to watching BBC America. No news organisation is without some political influence or bias. But they do try hard to keep their reporting unbiased. Going out of their way to show both sides of the story.
For instance, when reporting on the Ukraine crisis, they do try to point out the viewpoint that Russia and Putin have on the situation. Despite the fact that it would be worthwhile, for British national interests to downplay their arguments.
Of course, if there are gaping holes in one sides arguments, the BBC will point those out. But simply by stating the facts which contradict the stories, but without going so far as to say “so clearly they are talking bollox”, or even to bias the presentation to imply that. They let the viewer join the dots, if they so choose.
If the counter-claims (in this case being from pro-western or pro-Kiev sources) are unsubstantiated, or contested, or otherwise less than perfect, then the BBC do not hesitate to point that out too. Favouring neither one side, nor the other.
Now, contrast that with a new station that I stumbled across the other day, ‘RT’. It appeared in free feeds, and was not blocked in my zone. Which were good plus points. BBC TV does not do that (I am restricted to their website only, as I do not pirate their broadcasts). So I was quite keen to get TV news.
I managed to watch the articles for no more than about eight minutes, before the repeated, heavy bias became unwatchable. In this case being very heavily pro-Russian. That did not bother me, as hearing things from a different point of view is healthy.
What did bother me was the political angle being shoved hard down my throat, washed down with ‘facts’ which I had previously carefully researched and independently verified. And, as such, I knew that they were clearly stretching the truth and presenting other points in a very misleading way. Anti-west I would have no issue with. Trying to slip a lie or half-truth past me? That is a no no.
When I did a quick google of ‘RT’, I found the pretty obvious reason why it was so badly biassed. It is the English language news feed from Russia.
Pretty stupid of them to think that propaganda, which is readily accepted by their own public, would play well to international audiences. Had they actually tried doing balanced reporting, but bringing up true facts, which international audiences might not have been otherwise exposed to, they could have added me as a viewer. Whereas, for a propaganda exercise, they failed completely!
Actually BBC is one of the few news groups I do listen to. I also take the time to look up people running for offices myself and do a total rundown on their history. As an example, when Obama brought out his proof of birth, I find that really interesting for one reason. The hospital in Hawaii that he has stated in there as his place of birth hadn’t been built yet. To me that is news worthy and yet all the news agencies seem to just ignore that fact. How can you be born at a hospital that hasn’t even had the concrete poured for the foundation?
Heh, a good point. Possibly you may have stumbled upon something there. However, in given that there were such a lot of people actively looking for such a flaw, I suspect that there is probably more to it than you discovered.
Perhaps there was another, earlier, hospital of the same name? Or maybe the building itself had not been constructed, but there were facilities of some sort. Say operating out of temporary, pre-fabricated buildings or mobile medical units.
That is not to discount your discovery, as it is interesting, and would be newsworthy either way. One of the possibilities having a lot more ramifications than the other, needless to say. And there is no reason why profound discoveries cannot be made by regular members of the public. Whilst it may seem likely that others would have found that fact, it is by no means a certainty.
It was a forest then a vacant lot for about 30 years before it was turned into a hospital, and no other hospital in Hawaii has ever held that name.
oh and he was born 5 years before the hospital was built…
I too came across something that would play well to international media, as it would offer insight into the Julian Assange situation. But, in my case all that there would be to offer is a lack of evidence, other than my (and others’) testimony that we saw it.
In this case I am referring to an interview I saw with him. It was an impromptu one, conducted immediately after a talk he gave, about his organisation. In which he was asked if the members of Wikileaks ever found themselves being intimidated or threatened. Note that this was shortly after they had started revealing many embarrassing secrets from the US.
He confirmed that they all did. And, in particular, they had just recently been warned (by a ‘highly placed source in Washington’) that they should be wary of smear tactics, possibly of a sexual nature.
A little while after that, the first allegations of sexual misconduct were levelled against him. I immediately thought of that interview. What sprang to mind was that his claims could be one of two things. Either they were genuine, which would go a long way to vindicating him. If he had received such warnings, would he have, so soon afterwards, allowed himself to be trapped in a compromising position?
Thereby strengthening to the supposition that US intelligence operatives found a way to frame him, and thus discredit, and weaken, Wikileaks. However, there is also clearly a counter-argument. That he had acted inappropriately, realised that it was only a matter of time, before it became public knowledge, and had been conducting a damage limitation exercise. By speaking of such a ‘conspiracy’ he would be creating plausible deniability.
I realised that the key point would be timing. If the incidents had occurred prior to the interview, then the latter option became the more likely (all other things being equal). However, if it was the other way around, then it would very much strengthen the possibility of him having been set up.
Fortunately checking the dates was easy. A little bit of research found the dates that the incidents were alleged to have taken place. I then found the lecture, and noted when it had been recorded. Which pre-dated the earlier incident! In fact even the date it was posted was prior to that, and that matched my memory of when I saw it. Thus eliminating any chance that the dates had been tampered with.
Feeling this to be an exiting discovery, especially as it was immediately after the news broke, so I felt it possible that others may not have drawn that connection yet, I prepared to send an email to various friends pointing this out, and seeing their reactions and opinions. As is my wont, I decided to point them at the relevant part of the video. Namely the interview, at the end.
Which is where the trail goes cold. That part had already been cut from the tape! The earlier talk was exactly as I remembered it. But the impromptu interview, at the end, was no longer part of it.
It is worth noting that the servers of the hosting company are located on US soil. And that said organisation is likewise US based.
You want something even bigger look into the death of Obama’s Kenyan Grandmother. When he was first elected as president their were a few interviews with her where she kept talking about her grandson who was now the US president and how he had been born in Kenya at a hospital there. I don’t know if she is really actually dead, but I heard she had been murdered and suddenly all stories of him being born in Kenya suddenly stopped.
The one major thing that raised my hackles up was back during the 2008 election cycle, the major news networks were using words like “savior” & “messiah” to describe Obama. That’s when the media bias became blatantly obvious to me & I started looking around for more balance.
I’ll be the first to agree that Fox news is very Bias, however it shows the other side of the coin which the leftist news feeds refuse to show. This in point of actually makes it unbiased in an extremely twisted way as when you compare it with the other stations which are owned and run by the leftist agenda you see what those other stations refuse to show. Yes it is biased, but, it shows the other side of the street which the other stations go out of their way to mine with out right lies. The actually truth is somewhere between Fox and those other channels, unfortunately the further the other channels go out of their way to subordinate the confines of truth and continue to only show what they think the public wants without giving an unbiased view the less believable those other stations become and the less faith the public has in both sides.
Surprised that Joel didn’t ask Sydney about the bank deposit.
He may send her to the bank again.
(Is that the time Apple used in the print ads for the iPhone?)
I saw it as Sydney late to work and/or nearly opening time and the day
is already shot to hell.
I find the Iwatch interesting myself, but the apps on it have all been done in one way or another. What I would love is a watch that’s like an Ipod where I have a massive hard drive and can play videos, tv series, or movies while looking at the watch on my wrist. THAT would be something worth getting. I suppose the new Iwatch has its place since it can link to the Iphone and everything, but it really couuld have been so much more in the end.
“Threat or menace?”… I’m going to be chuckling about that all day.
I’ll bet JJ Jameson will try to make them pay royalties to use his usual tagline for Spiderman columns…
O.o
You think Gordon Godfrey works for Fear Zone? I bet he would.
the typo monster strikes again
“A bit of and odd page….”
shouldn’t that be “A bit of an odd page….”?
Not to be nit-picking but in the very first sentence “and” should be “an”. I wouldn’t have said anything but it sticks out like a sore thumb to me.
I think ‘an’ and ‘and’ are secretly autocorrected. I have to edit my posts sometimes but I’m sure I typed it right.
I have typed it myself and not caught it a few times. It’s very close and if you don’t look hard it can be easy to miss.
I can’t actually see your thumbs?
*blushes*
Don’t mind me, I shall just go and look off in this direction instead.
Well technically penguins don’t have thumbs or wings and can’t fly(sigh). But they do have toes and can drink salt water. They also have really good hearing and good vision even in water.
On the plus side, penguins DO have knees!
https://penguins.neaq.org/2010/07/faq-do-penguins-have-knees.html
this is just so no one has to lie awake at night because their brains keep asking…
;)
Yeah but they are kinda knobby and embarrass us so we cover them up.
Also to muffle the sound when the weather’s so cold that they start knocking together…
:)
Imagine the sound of a whole colony of knees knocking. Deafening.
Hey, what happened to the rotating character pics at the top of the page? They used to change on every load/reload but they appear to be fixed now.
They rotate for me
And I have Dabblers happy rope jumping face.
I have old-school for most of them. Except that same new one of Dabber. But do have one new face, that I have not seen on the rotation yet. A blonde Jiggawatt. Quite clearly immediately post-injury, from her nose-bleed.
I think the blonde hair, eyebrows and lipstick do suit her well. An improvement over the too-close-to-Storm white that she used to sport. I shall be interested to see how well any future changes she makes will work out.*
Dave drew her look well, although blonde on a black face can go badly. Here I am thinking of Wesley Snipes (I think) as the villain in a disappointing sci-fi. Maybe it was just because I was too used to his normal looks, and the change was jarring. But it came across as really awful.
* The white will be retconned out, by the way, for anyone not up on Dave’s comments. So she will have been blonde from the outset. But he also indicated that Jiggawatt likes to change her hair, so there will probably be some actual changes, in the future, rather than just that correction.
Yeah, I noticed this a couple of days ago. It appears they rotate for some people, but for other people it only changes about once per day.
Browser dependent? Firefox 35.0.1 here.
Google Chrome. Mine rotates once every 24 hours, as best I can estimate.
Settings, I guess. I have Google Chrome and mine rotate on every refresh.
No, I have not changed my settings in a long time. Refresh used to change things for me. There is something else afoot!
I.E. on pc.
Whatever on my tablet.
Nope, not browser dependent, I’ve tried two different browsers, and they display identical images.
I finally got a clue to look at the HTML. The image source is {address}/rotate_{charactername}.php, for example, rotate_max.php. The ‘php’ part is the hint that the banner images are controlled by a script at the server level, so it is not browser-specific. Unless my understanding of coding is _way_ off – I guess a browser could have some say in when the code is run.
I think I have to disagree with the suggestion in your first paragraph Dave. It works far better with the way you have drawn it. Whilst people can insert a scene in between the two pages, I think it works much better just reading it as shown. Sydney gets the orbs out, and they are spinning around her head, in Joel’s eye-line, in panel 1.
The media need not react, as they are there trying to catch the scene, and are very well aware of what was just about to pop out. It is the TV watching audiences, at home, who will be doing back-flips over the sofa!
The underplayed scene is a very clever foil to our expectations. I love it. Especially as it managed to retain the character of the previous scene, without having been predictable. Or, if Joel were commenting on your writing capability, “typical”.
“As sweet as Sydney’s smile”
BTW DaveB, nice color on the vote incentive.
Yes, yes. Keep voting everybody.
We are doing amazingly well, keeping the comic in the top spot. Let’s see if we can manage that all the way to the end of the month!
Haha, I would love to see the results of that poll. DaveB’s evolving art style was mentioned I think last post; I have to say, while it looks more polished, I’m really starting to miss the bold colors and simple lines from the bank era. It lended itself well to Sydney’s physics-defying antics.
I do like the art then too. However, I find the shading, shadow, light-play and other subtleties to add tremendously to the art in the present day style. It gives a richness to expressions and depth to the scenes.
I wonder how many people got the “splaining” joke?
I did.
I Love Lucy
Well of course you did.
I Dream of Jeannie
Ah yes…I remember Barbara Eden well…the first TV actress to successfully slip the female belly button past network censorship.
Also one of the first actresses to be rule 34’d back when dial-up and BBS’s were all the rage.
I feel like this post captures the essence of American “news” and reporting perfectly.
Joel’s reaction is just the strawberry on top of the ice-cream sunday.
Guys, guys! You missed the real answer, Joel’s typical is actually shorthand for, “So I miss all these great events AND the weather today is going to be cloudy and overcast? Typical.”
Nice one. Or, if he really does have Unphasable, as proposed by MidnightDestroyer, above, then it may just be. “
So I miss all these great events ANDthe weather today is going to be cloudy and overcast? Typical.”I also wanted to add with a number of comments, the news coverage actually makes sense. You have the gossip tmz “news” groups covered by the whos the hottest coverage, you have the ra ra, fuck yeah! positive coverage of one station and the doom and gloom end of our nation as we know it coverage of the other. I didnt name specific stations because politics is a stupid thing to bring up on a webcomic site, and because depending on whats being covered, who the positive and negative stations are switches.
Another reasons for the yay and boo coverage is, as someone pointed out, suzie news has the inside angle on positive coverage. Its going to be hard to compete with that perceived advantage, so instead they go the opposite direction. Instead of echoing the positive stuff secondhand or in less detail and sharing a smaller part of the viewership, they focus on the negative and scaremongering to bring in that portion of the audience instead.
The Unphasable Joel. Had his phone been on last night, and he found out the events unfolding, he may well have gone to check up on Sydney, in person. Being able to show that he is a friend, and business partner, they may well have directed him to the Steakhouse.
JOEL (at the Steakhouse): Sydney, you forgot to enter the revised stock figures. I need to know them, to send off the orders.
SYDNEY (running to put her shield in front of a space marine, before he is hit by enemy fire): Kinda busy right now!
JOEL (walking off, through a hail of anti-squirrel fire): Sure. I will take a best guess. You recon you will be in on time, tomorrow morning?
It was on, it just wasn’t home. He left it at the store. Ironically I find when I don’t have my phone, it’s not working or it’s just plain off, that’s when I get bombed with calls, texts, notifications, queries, answers, etc.
I only ever get phone calls when driving or in the washroom.
Or it could be that, knowing Sydney had been involved with a bank robbery, Joel intentionally left his phone at work. Knowing Sydney as well as he does could be WHY Joel “forgets” to take it home. He’s already seen quite a few Sydney-induced shenanigans & just didn’t want people bugging him while he’s at home. This would be consistent with how often he’s done this before.
Faze, not ‘phase’. Phase is the girl in my gravatar.
Doh. Thanks. If he was Unphasable, then he would have a superpower with invulnerability to being phased. Rather different to my intent.
Bit of a dull power mind. Kind of like being able to detect magic, in a word where there is little or no magic. I wonder if folks with weak super powers also have the rest of their super package weakened, in this setting? In which case, I may have, in misspeaking, actually hit on his power!
Also, “reckon.” Recon is something different.
Oh, that was a simple typo. The other one I knew I had misspelt, yet still managed to eff it up!
I often wondered if we live in a universe with a very low magic ground state. Say the normal level of magic in a universe is 100 but this one is a 1. Of course there would be pockets of higher level but not enough to do real magic which can be seen. This could account for some minimal power usage like dream-walking.
In GURPS RPG, the normal, everyday, modern “real world” we live in would be Low Mana. In a typical “swords & sorcery” genre, like that in AD&D, would be considered Normal Mana. Even so, GURPS accounts for any single world-setting to have pockets of higher or lower mana levels.
Even so, I’d guess that Dave’s world might be Low Mana with pockets of Normal (or higher) Mana & also many account for some supernatural entities to be Mana Generators. But then again, even a world with Normal Mana might be treating any magical knowledge as highly secretive, which would keep the number of practicing mages down too.
Currently there is a major story arc going on in El Goonish Shive, which has the local mana level being influenced by an invisible immortal’s meddling. Such that even folks who normally could not cast spells can do so. Aided and abetted by said being also enhancing their ability to do that.
I also like space whales.
at least yorps not being a bad puppy and chasing the nice squirrelgirl. (moves tail to gently pet yorp.)
“Typical”
Wait..he’s been left out on stuff this huge BEFORE?
I think it’s a case of leave’s his phone on nothing happens, turn’s it of and his business partner turns out to be a super hero and the world, his wife and their kids try to phone him out
there again it might be overcast
Ooh, you could be on to something! Is Joel the Dallas representative of the MIB, keeping an eye on Sydney?
Good luck with that.
Strangely enough, he doesn’t look much like the “Agent J” we’ve seen before…
Heh. Good point. Mind you, when talking MIB, appearances can be deceptive?!
when on agent buisness he uses invisibility tech and the name x, not really.