Grrl Power #354 – And I would fly 500 miles…
A music video in case anyone isn’t familiar with Sydney’s tune. The first time I ever heard this song it was actually in an AMV. Not this one though. That was a video from before YouTube existed. This video is cut from an anime called Redline, which I’ve never heard of before. It looks amusing, even if it contains some… questionable physics.
Mach 4 is pretty impressive. America is about 2600 miles across, and mach 4 is about 2700 miles per hour at sea level, meaning Sydney can get anywhere in the contiguous US in about an hour. Well, excluding her needing to stop every ~15 minutes to refresh the air in her shield, but lets assume they do eventually equip her with some sort of air tank or rebreather.
I’ve never said explicitly where the team is located other than somewhere “central-ish.” I lean towards Dallas because that’s where I live, but Denver or Kansas City would make as much sense. The idea being that they’re already halfway to anywhere they need to go in the states, so really Sydney’s only 30-40 minutes away from anywhere USA, and Maxima can get there even faster if need be. Of course most of the team still needs conventional transport, but the centralized location minimizes their travel time as well. The eventual goal being to split the team into different groups as their membership grows and establish at the very least an East and West Coast base.
Being able to cross the US in an hour is pretty incredible, but it makes me think how ridiculous The Flash and Superman are, who, depending on the continuity reboot you’re referencing, can both travel at the speed of light. I don’t keep up with DC comics these days, in fact 95% of my DC knowledge comes from Batman the animated series, Superman TAS and Justice League animated. I assume the current power levels are tamped quite a bit though, cause otherwise it would cause enormous writing problems. Ignoring relativistic problems and city destroying wake – it’s fine, he’s using the “speed force” whatever – there are issues like if someone shot someone on the West Coast, The Flash could run from the East Coast and back 50 times before the bullet left the barrel. How was a guy like Captain Boomerang ever one of his enemies? Boomerangs are WAY SLOWER than bullets.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
No cloaking device? You can bet the orbs weren’t built by the Romulans then.
Sorry, I thought Sydney was trying to turn one on, not see through one. If she’s looking for spaceships, could they be over Area 51?
Except that, with the background and the tourists, it looks more like the Grand Canyon.
I’d guess they went south-east and hit Florida since we’re not given a amount of time that’s passed.
“The Klingons… Thhe Borg… The Mighty Halo… Just who else is going to steal our cloaking technology” ~ Commander Jarok, R.RW.W. Lleiset, (Butterfly)
You may be joking, but there are a LOT of open tracks and two orbs of unknown powers.
Actually, there are three remaining obs. One of them just has a cloaking device.
(It’s the one that hangs directly over her head, so you don’t see any gap in the orbiting ones.)
Oh, sorry. Forgot to say “Spoilers!”
There are also a lot of open dots for ‘combinational powers’ possibly.
This leads me to wonder…Would Sydney’s Truesight be able to see through an SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem) shield? The SEP shield doesn’t actually “cloak” anything; it more or less takes advantage of the fact that people tend to ignore something that may seem out-of-place, but not behaving interestingly enough or posing an obvious threat. Sort of like the concept of “I got 99 problems, but a spaceship parked in the middle of the street ain’t one of them.”
Why I wonder this is because, even if Sydney’s Truesight could show her were an SEP shielded object is sitting, but wouldn’t Sydney’s brain just sort of “filter it out” & ignore it?
Please refer to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series & the good ship Bistromath, where the SEP shield for a more full description.
Is that similar to the Doctor Who “perception filter”?
Yea I think that pretty much describes a perception filter.
The ‘perception filter’ was a nod to the SEP, since Douglas Adams was a writer for Doctor Who for some time. The new series contain a lot of H2G2/Dirk Gently references.
Eh, we Transformers just turn into things the locals have around to blend in. See that car over there? Could be 1 of us. That computer you’re working on? Could be a full sized Cybertronian using mass-compression, but that quite rare nowadays, so a hiding Minicon would be more likely. No need for those “perception filter” things, we just fit right in…
I’d say she’d see it normally like everyone else,then dismiss asap. She’s not the most best at focussing at the best of times, I think she’d be very suceptible.
There was a set of spells in the SERRAted Edge Series used by a human mage. One he called the “Look at ME” (Useful to gain a certain person’s attention) and the “Don’t Notice Me” (NOT an Invisibility Spell. He [and his car] simply wouldn’t Register in a person’s mind a Camera would still catch him and when he had to drive across the city at high speeds with it he had to be extremely careful because people might try to pull into the “Empty Traffic Space” he was in.)
I bet that Sydne would be able to see through an SEP without the orb. Because Sydney’s brain ain’t normal :)
Speaking of ridiculous speeds – I was just watching a Justice League movie where Superman was trying to destroy some missiles about to hit the sun and trigger a solar flare that would travel ‘at the speed of light’ back to Earth, and he made it back from solar orbit to the Earth’s surface in about a minute. They kept referencing the 8 minutes until destruction from the time the missiles hit, so it was obvious they meant the flare would move at light speed, meaning Supes was going at least 8 times that.
Justice League: Doom is the one you are referencing. Green Lantern is also faster than Light as well in that one.
Yep, exactly so! Didn’t get a great reference for his speed, though (other than FTL).
And really, I don’t think Superman was maxing himself out, either, knowing he’d have to do *something* when he got back, he would likely be holding some power in reserve.
The DC Universe always puts Superman at a level that breaks physical law. He travels at speeds that would cause the very atoms that make him up to break down at dissolve into pure energy, he lifts/pulls/pushes weights that would destroy the ground he was standing on (yet no damage, not even a crack), and he withstands forces that could annihilate matter. Green Lantern, Flash, and even Batman have been known to do things that don’t just bend possibilities to the extreme, but break them and turn them into bastardizations of everything scientific.
This is why I usually stick with the Marvel universe. At least there the laws of physics don’t break completely, they just push the boundaries of the possible.
Let’s see; what physics laws get conveniently forgotten over at Marvel on a semi-regular basis?
Conservations of Mass: Vision, Bruce Banner/Hulk, Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk, Peter Rasputin/Colossus, Janet Van Dyne/Wasp, etc. Anybody who changes size/mass without consuming vast quantities, or getting rid of a lot of mass somehow. Dr. Banner goes from 175 pounds to 1000 pounds in a manner of a pissed-off minute. Pym particles? Hold on; I’ll get to that.
Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Cyclops (If he hits somebody hard enough to throw him into the wall behind him, then Scott needs to be pushed just as much in the other direction).
Bernoulli’s Principle: Angel (he couldn’t weigh more than 30 pounds and still fly with only a 12 foot wing span). This also applies to ground vehicles traveling at ridiculous speeds; without down-pushing wings, these things will tend to want to leave the ground.
Co-efficient of Static Friction: The maximum acceleration of a runner, like Quicksilver, is dependent on the friction between his feet/shoes and the surface he is running on, with a maximum co-efficient of static friction being just slightly greater than 1. This means if a man weighs 180 pounds (800 N), then the maximum force he can apply and not lose traction is 180 pounds (800 N) horizontally. This means that he can accelerate at a rate no more than gravity, or about 10 m/s^2, not instantly up to Mach 1 or something like that. At 10 m/s^2, it would take about 35 seconds. Reaching the speed of light at 1 G acceleration would take about a year (much longer for an external observer.)
Conservation of Energy: The speedster in the previous example would require a HUGE amount of energy to run up to Mach 1. Ignoring the effects of air resistance and other inefficiencies, Ek = mv^2/2. So for a man with a mass of 80.0 kg (176 pounds), at Mach 1, he would have a kinetic energy of 4.6 MJ which is about 1100 Calories, about half the daily calorie intake for an average adult. No wonder these guys are always eating.
Quantum Mechanics: Oh boy; let me count the ways ;P Shrinking/growing? Yes, the space taken up by atoms are mostly empty (as far as we can tell), but the locations of the electrons are very specific. Each electron can only exist a particular locations from the atom’s nucleus. So what is so special about each of these distances? First, consider wave-particle duality. Depending on how you look at things, subatomic particles, like electrons, can be considered matter (particles) or energy (waves). These quantum waves have a wavelength that corresponds to the total energy of the particle, also known as its mass (E=mc^2). The electrons’ positions around the atom are where it can exist in integer multiples of its wavelength.
You can not shrink by compressing the empty space of an atom without changing the fundamental electrical force constant (good luck with that one) or removing lots of mass from an electron, so that its wavelength can shrink. Not going to happen.
sorry about this, but, wouldn’t DC have all those problems but worse with superman?
Most stuff about physics and Superman are usually just explained by ‘the Kryptonian biomatrix’ which is a biologically-based field which explains most of his powers and why a lot of normal physics rules don’t apply to him. At least in New Earth.
In Silver Age, I think it’s just that comic book writers were on crack when they write anything.
Aaand there goes a catgirl…
+1
Eh?
There’s a popular meme about god killing a catgirl when you drag physics in where it’s not applicable.
Are they available for adoption? ;)
*Sacrifices a goat for Curry* There, the Catgirls are safe.
How does Catwoman fit into this, though? Batman could probably take advantage of this and threaten to spout off physics whenever they’re fighting.
She’s not a catgirl. She’s a normal human who happens to dress like a cat.
Cheetah is a catgirl, if you want to stay in the same universe. (At least most versions of her are.)
Cheetah was also a catboy at one stage :eek:
Problem is, not one of them actually looked like a Cheetah :(
https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/1/15776/2310248-cheetah_doom_12.png
Ah, fair enough. Still learning all this Human stuff. Daniel the Human says I’ll learn it all soon, but he was laughing a lot at the time, so I’m not 100% convinced I can trust that statement…
Marvel goes around a lot of this stuff with displacing mass. Think with portals.
I could go through every single one of those and try to come up with ways of showing the difference between their suspension of disbelief of the physics between Marvel and DC, but it’s 6AM, I’m just finishing my shift, and I’m too lazy.
So the TL:DR is Marvel at least has some semblance of reality within the way they portray their powers. Yes, it’s not exactly perfect and they use quite a bit of concepts that are mainly used to make the characters seem more/less powerful and heroic/villainous, but it’s the idea that the powers they have aren’t ludicrous. You won’t see Cyclops pushing an Earth-sized planet away from Earth with his laser eyes. You won’t see Quiksilver running 12 times faster than the speed of light in order to reverse time. You won’t see Juggernaut lifting an entire continent out of the ocean and throwing it into outer space.
About the most extreme thing is regeneration abilities along the lines of Wolverine. Being able to regenerate back to perfect health when you were dissolved into nothing more than your adamantium bones is pretty ridiculous. But that’s one. Superman is basically just a bunch of writers going “Screw physics, lets have Superman use two planets as boxing gloves because that’s something that would be fun to see.”
I think this whole thread of discussion can be summed up with:
Superhero comics are fiction & superhero physics are best described as Rubber Science…
…Not to be stretching the point…
I believe what you are trying to say is that mainstream Marvel hero power levels make more sense than DC ones.
Marvel has its share of world breaking characters, but they tend to get far less spotlight than Supes.
Galactus…nuff said
I can make it easier for all of us:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SuperWeight/ComicBooks
Tiers 5+ is generally your clue.
The fact that Squirrel Girl is a tier 7 really tells you all you need to know about comic book hero strength.
She is Tier 7 because of her army (they are everywhere, just look out your window!)
I believe you need to Meet the Gladiator, he can lift continents and such, being the mutant version of superman, he pulls every mutant with the exception of the Phoenix apart
Marvel has a copy of every single DC character in their universe.
phoenix is not a mutant.
its a supernatural being from outer space that can posses people.
at least that’s what it is in their universe.
Actually, the Phoenix Force is the core manifestation of the total psychic power of the entire universe. Jean Gray didn’t actually become the Phoenix…The Phoenix became Jean Gray, manifesting her physical form and entire psyche/personality.
Oficial Marvel powergrid states that “superman copy”- Hyperion is as strong as generic Iron Man armor.
Which is super weak by DC standards.
The amount of times that Marvel and Wildstorm (and so many other companies) have stated so-and-so is their version of Superman tends to get ridiculous :) All comics are always trying to come up with their own ersatz Supermans. Heck, DC sometimes tries doing it as well (Icon).
Frankly, I think it’s because his powers are pretty much the ‘core’ idea of what a superhero traditionally is. The whole ‘flying brick’ with superspeed and some sort of energy attack.
Sentry
Gladiator
Hyperion
Statesman
Plutonian
Supreme
Mr Majestic
Blue Marvel
Ultiman
the Samaritan
Mr Hyde (from The Intimates)
Atoman
The Public Spirit (from Marshal Law)
Optimum (from Future Shocks)
The High (from Stormwatch)
Omniman (from Invincible)
Captain Dynamic
Sovereign
Heck, there are about 84 different ‘Superman’ types in PS238 (starting with Atlas and ending with 84).
On Earth. And excluding any discovered after 84. But then there are all those on Atlas’s home planet too. Then increase that for every alternate dimension with the same or more.
But IIRC, Gladiator’s powers are based on his self-confidence. Once he starts to question himself, his power drops dramaticly.
Yeah, it can drop to near normal human levels. IIRC he fought Cannonball who (barely) took Gladiator’s best hit and played it off like it was nothing. Gladiator lost almost all of his power and cannonball knocked him out by punching him
Someone is a DC man, I see…
all these- and more- are explained in ye old official handbook of the marvel universe. for example: mass change occurs because ‘spare mass’ is either pulled into our plane of existence from outside potential reality or pushed back into it; the hulk for example borrows mass when hulking then sends it back when done.
(In marvel, the universe is just one page of a very dense book of realities, that can be traveled to and from.)
The main problem with speedsters is the “maximum tractive effort”, that is, how much forward thrust you can generate with foot-on-ground traction before your feet began to slip or road surface begins to break.
There are two limiting factors on ground-vehicle maximum speed; power limit and traction limit.
Most vehicles are power-limited; when the speed is increased, at some point the power requirements of rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag are equal to engine power output, and then the vehicle has reached its maximum speed.
Some vehicles have more than enough engine power, but are traction limited: when speed in increased, at some point the tractive effort (wheel to pavement) equals the aerodynamic drag. If the engine power is still increased, the wheel begins to slip and lose the traction.
This is the reason why high-power motorbikes have active traction control. When your rear wheel loses traction it begins to slide in unpredictable way. A good example of traction-limited motorbike is “Kawasaakeli”. The instrument panel shows the wheel-slip curve, which is the only thing limiting the speed when he drives 412.5 km/h (~256.3 mph)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2SjvEMlIWE
Traction limit is the reason why sprinters have cleats on their shoes and why dogs have claws on their feet.
Just about everything I saw in “The Flash” TV series was impossible because of traction limit.
There is also another limit on acceleration, imposed by the centre of mass being above the ground contact point(s). Accelerate hard enough, and any vehicle (or whatever) will simply flip over backwards (often seen during dragster races).
Supers have to avoid this by leaning into the direction of acceleration, but at some point the angle of lean required gets to be ridiculous. For example, an acceleration of 5g means leaning at 79 deg from the vertical!
I think Hulk might be worse offender than the Superman.
Guys that can regenerate from a single living cell also make zero sense.
Then there is Dazzler who once used “Sound of exploding solar system to supercharge herself to get some goodies from a black hole”.
Then again all of us generated from a single cell. Granted that cell had an entire host body to supply it with energy / reaction mass and wasn’t expected to encode a lifetime’s worth of memories in addition to the usual genetic makeup.
Yeah, we all know thats not the case.
That was when Galactus used her as an agent in order to reclaim one of his rogue heralds from where he was hiding in a black hole. She was being continually powered by one of the physics-ignoring super-scientists/villains via superscience, rather than the ‘sound of an exploding solar system’ you referred to.
The specific herald of Galactus she was sent after was Terrax
That was is in issues 10 and 11 of her original series, in 1981 and 1982
I don’t think Hulk can regenerate from a single living cell. I think you might be thinking of Lobo instead.
Or Cell, from DBZ
I was talking about wolverine and his offspring.
Ohhhh Wolverine. Yeah.
We have a survivor!
*glances at severed hand in gauntlet*
You call that a survivor?
Eh… Nah. I’ve never heard of Hulk being able to heal to that extent to begin with. Supes as far as I’m concerned is still the worse offender. Did he not at one point hold a black hole in the palm of his hand?
And then we have Superman Prime One Million…
Yeah, hulk held black hole open with his hands as well.
I don’t remember Supes blowing a planet with a clap.
Actually Superman moved a black hole in his hands.
And Superman didnt do this, but Supergirl did – destroying a planet without even trying.
Hulk never blew up a planet with a clap btw – he did destroy the Eastern Seaboard with a stomp though (Worldbreaker Hulk)
That black hole thing was really stupid, I admit :) I wasnt aware that hulk’s done that too. Can’t find where that happened.
Here are some Marvel heroes dealing with black holes.
https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/206-comics-and-graphic-novels/71400076?page=8
Well, Green Lantern is of course able to go FTL. The Lanterns are members of a corps of space police whose beat is the entire universe conveniently, and ridiculously, divided into 3600 sectors. If the ring didn’t have FTL capacity the whole organization would be moot.
Actually, the GL Corp. covers just the Milky Way galaxy, not the whole universe…
In a few of the animated continuities they only cover the Milky Way galaxy Midnight (such as the Green Lantern animated series and the DCAU) but in the comics and in general they cover the entire universe as per canon. They reduce it to the galaxy in the adaptations because it sounds too large to really cover and is handwaved away in the comics that there really isn’t that much life in any particular sector making it semi-plausible that the corps can cover each of their sectors even sized on the scale of the universe.
Actually I’m pretty sure they’re a police force for the entire universe, since the Maltusians (who then became the Oans when they split up from the Zamorans and the… whatever the third splinter group was) were one of the first sentient races in the universe in DC. I might have a link to a comic page of that.
I seem to remember a throwaway line about their power rings opening a wormhole that they could travel through–but I’m not sure if that was ever an official explanation.
Does physics really apply to sufficiently advanced alien technology from another universe? And on that note, are we living in the most boring universe ever, aside from the one composed entirely of shrimp?
No, we live in the Universe where we can experience all Realities, hardly ‘the most boring universe ever’
In an infinite amount of possible universes, we are simultaneously able to be in both the most boring universe ever and the most interesting one ever.
Gettin’ zen on yo mind!
In Triangle and Robert, the entire universe is made of pudding. “What flavor of pudding?” “Universe-flavored. What you mortals call butterscotch.”
Of course, this is after the universe has ended and been remade several times. Been a long time since I read T&R, but IIRC humans were in the Fourth Universe, and the strip is taking place in the Seventh Universe. I think the inhabitants of the Third Universe were sentient redwood trees.
Yes, it’s a very strange comic strip, with a lot of growth. It starts as a simple gag-a-day strip and ends with an amazingly-plotted story arc that is several hundred strips long.
Justice League: Doom?
ninja’d
Superman exists beyond physics. I don’t recall which comic it was in, but there was a recent one where Jimmy pushes the signal watch while Superman is on the other side of the galaxy. He not only hears it out there but gets back in around 10 minutes. The DC universe is rather lucky Krypton blew up. Imagine if the entire population figured out Earth and moved there.
I’d imagine they’d move anywhere that had a yellow sun. It isn’t choosing to live on Earth that gives Superman his powers, it’s the fact that we have a yellow sun. Any yellow sun would give a Kryptonian super-powers. So they wouldn’t necessarily have to move to Earth.
That’s pretty much why the Green Lantern Corps (or, rather, the Guardians) let it blow up.
i can see it now
“Hey you know that planet, the one with the aliens that gain powers if they go near a yellow sun”
“yeah”
“well its about to explode”
“FUCKING FINALLY!”
“what!”
“Seriously fuck those guys”
You know… Kryptonians also get powers from orange and blue suns, as well as white dwarfs, magnetars, neutron stars, and anything that’s a shorter wavelength than a red star.
In fact, with magnetars, neutron stars, and white dwarfs, they get MORE power. And with blue suns, their power levels are insane even by Kryptonian standards.
Orange suns, their powers are halved, but that’s still half of a huge power level. There was this comic arc called ‘The Third Kryptonian’ where that was discussed by a Kryptonian called Karsta Wor-Ul who had been a soldier in the Kryptonian Armada before the Science Guild took over, and she had been hiding on Earth for decades pretending to be human to evade a warlord who was hunting Kryptonians.
What? Sol is the only yellow star with a habitable planet? In the entire Universe? o_O
And speaking of the Greenies: isn’t yellow their deadly rival or something? O_o
Not any more they figured out what the problem was.
And what was that? That being scared or weakened by a colour is stupid?
Well, specifically that there was a yellow fear beast lurking in the lantern battery, and then that said beast is the avatar or somesuch of another lantern corp in charge of another part of the “emotional spectrum”.
And then there was a whole rainbow of people with different power rings. For some reason, rookie GLs still have trouble with yellow specifically…
that’s because rookie GLs are still afraid of stuff. You look at John Stewart or Hal and they have MASSIVE amounts of Will, to the point in one issue the Green Lantern Ring actually gives John a “Will exceeding power of ring” warning
So much for the rings being the most powerful weapons in the universe. Or are these new rings in the new continuity, and they’ve been toned down because it’s incredibly irresponsible of the Guardians to hand out rings capable of ridiculous feats of power based on imagination and willpower to their soldiers simply because they were judged as being fearless? I mean, that is how we got rogues like Sinestro and Hal Jordan.
They are toned down rings compared to the Silver Age version Kevin, the original pre-Crisis version could basically qualify as an omni-power bordering on omnipotence as you could do anything you could conceive of. Hal Jordan easily transformed himself into a robot for example just by willing it then back again when the robot form wasn’t convenient. You had power to rival someone like Superman if your will was strong enough
Since Sol is white, a planet with a sufficient atmospheric nitrogen content to absorb the blue wavelength. This can be used to explain why Supes gets stronger out of atmosphere as he’s getting blue wavelengths as well. He is stronger under a blue star.
Going by one old Jimmy Olsen story humans are basically like Kryptonians except they have to get under a blue-white star to go Superman when he went Superman during one of his many adventures off-planet.
Yeah. I think he clocked in at least 800,000,000,000 mph there.
If you think we’re lucky that only one Kryptonian survived, you seem to have fogotten all about the planet Daxam. In the (future) Legion of Super Heroes, Mon-El is a Daxamite & has all of Superman’s powers…HIS planet (& population) is still intact, last time I heard.
Which is why they have them be so xenophobic (like they retconned Kryptonians to be) to the point of not wanting to leave their planet under a red sun to interact with any other races, when someone managed to turn them into an army they were devastating. It kept them from being a problem for writers. It’s also why the animated Legion was so awesome when in the bottle Brainiac 5 resets the bottle’s sun to yellow and the population sends the big bad running in terror.
“…someone managed to turn them into an army…”
If I remember correctly & I’m thinking of the same story-arc as you are, that “someone” was Darkseid.
The best thing about Daxamites is that while they’ve got all of a Kryptonian’s powers, their weaknesses are reversed. Their X-ray vision can’t see through Kryptonite, and they’re weakened by lead.
Yes, that’s right, a super hero who’se primary weakness is: getting shot by bullets.
Actually, Mon-El joined the Legion of Superheroes in the future, because in Superman’s time, he got lead poisoning. Supes beamed Mon-El into the Phantom Zone where the effect of the lead poisoning was suspended. It was in the time-frame of the Legion when Braniac 5 invented a cure for Daxamite lead poisoning & let Mon-El out of the Phantom Zone.
No the daxams were all killed off in a green lantern comic
Daxamites are no longer quite the same as Kryptonians. Their biochemistry was altered significantly. Among other things, they can be killed by common lead. So…. a bullet COULD kill them, actually. Even in the future, Brainiac 5 made a cure for Mon-El’s lead poisoning, not the Daxamite lead weakness in general, far as I know.
As for Kryptonians, there are more than one left.
Superman
Supergirl
Power Girl
Karsta Wor-Ul / Kristen Wells (the original Superwoman, not the fake Lucy Lane one)
Non
Zod
Faora/Ursa
Lor-Zod (Zod’s son, Christopher Kent)
Doomsday (technically he’s Kryptonian – he’s like a Kryptonian Hulk)
Thara Ak-Var (the Flamebird)
The 100,000 Kryptonians who were stuck in Kandor (who then were the inhabitants of New Krypton, which then was, I believe, placed into the Phantom Zone after the New Krypton/Earth War ended – this includes Ak-Var, Tes-Var, Alura Zor-El, etc)
Also not including all the Bizarro Kryptonians or Evil Universe Kryptonians like Ultragirl or Ultraman.
I do not think the ability to travel at FTL means the ability use this in a fight.
Halo can reach mach 4, which is roughly 4 times faster than Quicksilver, but there is no way she is beating him in a fight.
Sydney would SO beat Quicksilver in a fight. It’s not like speed is her only power.
Speedsters are OP. Sydney might land a lucky hit on him with her laser, but I believe it to be unlikely.
Quicksilver explained why is it a bad idea to fight a speedster very well in Dark Reign.
For most of Quicksilver’s existence, he could not move as fast as Mach 4. He was only powered up massively rather recently (probably because of complaints about how massively inferior Marvel speedsters were to DC speedsters).
Plus for all we know, Sydney’s yellow truesight ball might be able to help with reaction time. Also not to mention Quicksilver wouldnt even be able to touch her unless she allows it. She can fly, have an impenetrable force field, and do a huge area of effect attack.
I think it’s more of the speed of the lightwave from a solar flare moves at lightspeed, but the light itself isn’t much of a threat; the biggest threat to Earth would be the radiation wave that follows the light…Which is considerably slower than the speed of light. Depending on the EM-frequency of the radiation wave, Earth could have a couple or so hours between seeing the flash of light & getting cooked by the radiation.
>>The speed of light in vacuum is constant and does not depend on characteristics of the wave (e.g. its frequency) (c) I dunno, but its literally first link in google.
Radiation IS the form of light.
In Einstein’s formula, E=MC squared, the C is the Constant…The speed of light traveling in a vacuum. The “in a vacuum” part is an important factor, because the speed of light depends a lot on the medium through which it’s traveling.
I’m sorry, but i must be missing your point.
I would assume that radiation (a form of light) travels through the exactly same space that visible light does (another form of light), which is mostly vacuum between Sun and Earth.
The threat from a solar flare is really the fact you’re hitting the target with a massive amount of super-heated plasma but coronal mass ejections like that take WAY longer than the light/radiation takes to get from the sun to Earth (hence why astronomers can see the flare coming and give some warning before the major portion comes near). So the flare even with help from the missiles should have not even remotely been moving near the speed of light and the heroes should have had way more time to set up the phasing device, plus as something of a rehash of a Superfriends episode they have a supposedly genius-level intelligence individual too stupid to know that a solar flare actually able to reach and hit the earth would sterilize it and reduce it to a molten wasteland not just burn and kill everyone on the side facing the sun.
I skimmed the wikipedia article on solar flares and stand by my point. In real solar flares, matter is not the issue, it is just radiation spikes. Astronomers watch solar spots to predict solar flares, but the precision is not particularly good on that.
I do not remember the plot exactly, but unless it specifically says something about gas cloud, I would assume that radiation wave is just this: a radiation spike.
Also, while I googled it, I found another big issue with Supes talking to Batman on the radio transmitter in real time while being near the Sun.
Never would have caught up on this one myself.
You might want to read up on what radiation really is (light and light-like particles, see?).
Radiation moves at the speed of light (electromagnetic radiation), or slightly below it (alpha/beta particles, and other matter high enough in kinetic energy to count (neutrons, protons, neutrinos if you are next to a supernova, etc)).
It wil get here at or very, very close to the speed of light (the most common radiation from the sun is in the frequencies we call light, which is why we use those specifically to see things)
What is most damaging from a flare is charged particles at low speeds (a few % of the speed of light) hitting our magnetic field, inducing rather impressive amounts of electromagnetic energy (causing, as an example, the southern/northern lights and huge electric fields that induce current in long conductors. Say, electrical lines.)
This can trip breakers, and in more extreme cases destroy transformers and other equipment, and in really extreme cases break about all things electrical (it used to be it could take out our telephone network etc, but those are switching to fibers for all long-haul lines).
It is not really radiation. Unless you count induced and shifting voltages as raditation?
Right. I blame all things Hulk related for the fact that I forgot about all radiation except gamma one.
It also depends on the local spatial density/curvature of spacetime/intensity of gravity well; however you want to think about it. People think that the speed of light is absolute, but it is only so locally. When traveling through gravity wells it travels slower than it would through straight cartesian space.
This would be how supes, GL, and flash move faster than light; they warp space to permit the kind of speed they want, specifically by creating a field of reduced spatial density around themselves while maintaining their own spatial density. (to prevent spaghettification and undesirable time dilation) The sharper the curve between the field of reduced spatial density and normal space, the faster they can go. This also means that they can affect the rate of passage of time locally, which explains their superhuman reflexes. That is, they reduce the spatial density of the area their body occupies. If they buffered that in a field of increased spatial density, then another field of reduced spatial density, I think they could also avoid effectively changing size.
Incidentally, this WOULD allow them to do things like enter earth’s atmosphere at insane velocities without destroying everything, because they don’t actually have momentum and kinetic energy associated with their movement. To explain it a different way, they are not actually moving fast, they are removing space between themselves and their destination. It’s like imagine if you were on an elevator going up to the 10th floor of a building and suddenly the 9th floor disappeared, meaning youd go straight from the 8th to the 10th floor with no intervening space. The elevator isn’t going faster, but you arrive at your destination sooner.
However, as I understand it, this means that any matter passing through these intensely warped fields surrounding their bodies would be crazy distorted to the point of disintegration. I.E. if supes is generating an FTL warp field and tried to shake your hand, your hand would disintegrate.
When traveling through gravity wells it travels slower than it would through straight cartesian space
So wrong. The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant. The gradient of a gravity well only affects the curve of the space light travels through, never the velocity of light itself.
But if you turn the vacuum on, it slows it down a little bit, by the sucking.
No, bgrunge is correct: all observers measure the same local speed of light (c) – they don’t necessarily agree on the speed of light elsewhere in the universe. Since time passes more slowly inside a gravity well, light travels more slowly than ‘c’ there as well, from the point of view of someone outside the gravity well.
Try Einstein’s trick of visualising it, with him riding on the beam of light. Now, although the guy could have done with a few more hearty meals, he was still pretty massive. Waay heavier than light. So I think he would just thud to the ground, on top of it.
Under those circumstances the speed of light would be zero!
So, you’ve got poor Einstein riding a light cycle? The indignity…
And just who would be his competitors? Newton, Hawking, and a pale android? ;-)
“Radiation is the form of light” – nope. Light is an example of one form of radiation, but there are also alpha particles (aka helium nuclei), beta particles (electrons or positrons), neutrons… various such things moving at high speed.
But in a solar flare the hazard is this huge mass of plasma, extremely hot and variously ionized, blasting out of the sun. It’s pretty slow compared to light, but even a small flare – if the plasma happens to hit earth – can severely disrupt communications, damage some satellites, and if there are any astronauts in orbit there’s a serious chance they’ll be killed. Hypothetically a sufficiently large flare could scour the surface of the planet. A somewhat smaller one could overload the ability of the planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere to shield us from normal radiation…
(The good news is that I don’t think we’ve ever seen a solar flare that large from our sun *at all*, not many solar flares send plasma blasts far enough – over 200 solar diameters, the plasma does cool somewhat in transit, and the earth is a pretty small target.)
There are 4 types of radiation, Alpha, Beta, Gamma and neutron. Alpha, Beta and Neutron radiation are all particles radiation, and as such travel at speeds much lower than the speed of light. Gamma radiation is a very high energy photon and as such moves at the speed of light.
Alpha radiation is the nucleus of a helium atom. They are heavy but have a positive charge and are relatively large and can be stopped by a sheet of paper.
Beta Radiation is an electron. It is very small, but has a negative charge, and can be stopped by a sheet of aluminum.
Gamma Radiation is a photon and can be stopped by a block of lead.
Neutron radiation Is a neutron, it has no charge and therefore only stops when it hits a nucleus of an atom, where it can either trigger fission or can merge with the nucleus creating an isotope. They need to be blocked by many feet of hydrogen containing material such as water or concrete. This is why they store radioactive materials in pools, to absorb the neutrons emitted.
Well. Strictly speaking radiation is “the transmission of energy via particles or waves”. So there are many more kinds than the normally listed ones.
Commonly encountered examples also includes sound, positrons, protons, neutron-proton nuclei (heavy hyrdogen nuclei, expelled by some reactions, much like alpha), pistol bullets etc.
Neutron radiation, specifically, is almost only emitted during active neutron triggered chain reactions, so it’s not really the main reason for that protective water. Water is in general really good at stopping all kinds of ionizing radiation. I guess it’s a good thing that it also stops neutrons, since even if somebody stacks all the nuclear fuel in a big pile it can not start even a minor reaction.
Incidentally, even the highest energy neutrons can not make it through more than a few hundred meters of air, unless there are absurd amounts of them flying around, causing interesting effects (see also: Neutron bomb (an atom bomb designed to expel ridiculous amounts of neutrons, to effectively kill of living things, since they, containing a lot of hydrogen (really, unpaired protons) readily absorb it (a feet or two of human is just as efficient shielding as water. The absorbed energy is more harmful to the human, though)
Normal atom bombs are designed to reflect the neutrons inwards, after slowing them down, to continue the reaction, making the bomb significantly more efficient if you want a big explosion, and thus release really low levels of neutrons.
Flash is a hard hero to define, he is potentially stronger than any other hero in the DC universe. Because of that potential, he is often depowered or sadly used a lot as comic relief like he often was in the Justice League animation. Granted the one in the Justice League animation was Wally West the least serious person in the entire world, but still he got hit by so much stuff that as a speedster should have been easy to dodge.
I loved the episode where Flash took out the Lex/Brainiac hybrid.
One of the few that actually showed his potential. One of my favorites as well.
I think the best episode I have seen that shows off the power of a speedster is where Lex Luthor and Flash get bodies swapped, he basically takes out everyone.
As well as the Days of Future Past, where Quicksilver is only in a single scene, because the whole thing would have been done in minutes, if he had stayed with the team.
also arguably one of the most hilarious scenes, given i think he wedgied at least two of those agents.
That was one of the single most awesome moments in that entire series, where Flash proved for all time that his status as one of the original seven members of the League was not just for show by single-handedly taking down the villain who had just finished wiping the floor with the other six.
Honestly i don’t know why they kept pitting batman against the high super power stuff in the justice league stuff. he’s good, but to use a boxing term he’s outside his weight class. batman works as a street level hero, keep him here
It’s largely because of his brain — compared to all the other members of the JL (I’m not sure about the JLU), he’s way more intelligent when it comes to analyzing enemies, even ones he’s never encountered before.
Are the rest of the JL members idiots? Hell no. But that’s like pitting me against Einstein or Hawking, then expecting me to measure-up because I’m not an idiot — I’m way out of my league.
On a final note, remember who funded the Watchtower :P
Well, you say that stuff about strategy and then cheer for Batman as he wrestle Darkseid and dodges Omega beams.
Although I was reminded recently (also, again) that arguing about power levels in mainstream comics is pointless. Way too many canon conflicts.
My roommate has a simple question with regard to any crossover conflict between heroes…
When the conflict is described, he just asks “Whose book is it?” That’ll almost certainly predict the winner, or at least who comes out of the tie looking better before the real villain gets crossover-stomped.
Very true
As much as I love Flash, Martian Manhunter had it worse. He is stronger than Supes, immune to kinetic attacks, easily one of the smartest beings on the planet and a strong telepath, but they put them on the sidelines for most of the show.
That’s probably because of his ‘weakness’. Fire, any fire, will put him down like Kryptonite for Superman. And considering that Fire is one of the first tools man harnessed… Yeah- any yahoo with a can of gasoline and a disregard for local fire safety laws could potentially take him down.
Don’t get me wrong, I love him as a character, but the way that his Martian ‘superpowers’ don’t work so well with extra gadgetry (for the most part- even his clothes are usually just shapeshifted from his skin) and he’s got such a well known weakness, I don’t think it’s too surprising that he stays as a coordinator most of the time.
It’s not really that the Martian Manhunter’s weakness is so well-known being the problem. Superman’s weakness to Kryptonite is well known, but it’s pretty hard to find any. MM’s weakness is really just too flippin’ easy to find or create on a spur of the moment. It’s not the weakness itself that’s really all that comparable, it’s how common the weakness shows up that’s MM’s problem.
Not according to the source material it doesn’t. I don’t remember a single time in JLU or in JL: Doom that Martian was incapacitated with fire. He was just sidelined because if he didn’t, there would be no story to tell.
It is the same as sidelining the adults in Young Justice cartoon. They were just too powerful for the story, so they had to be on a off- planet mission for most of the plot.
Except the plot point of JL: Doom of course.
To quote Batman:
“I have a $70,000 rock for the alien in Metropolis. For you, I just need a three cent match.”
I feel bad for doing this but the quote is ““I have a $70,000 rock for the alien in Metropolis. For you, I just need a penny for a book of matches.”
You’re right. And I am both humbled and ashamed. I grant you 3 points of nerd credit from my private account. Spend them wisely. :)
Exactly: characters like Superman, Martian Manhunter, and Flash are so flipping overpowered that any one of them should be able to end any threat that isn’t named “Darkseid” during the pre-credits teaser. So in order to have a show they kept nerfing all of them: Flash was an idiot hero, MM was always losing telepathic battles and fainting (and forgetting to use his phasing powers), and Supes was always getting electrical shocks that could incapacitate him.
It’s why in Justice League: Unlimited, the writers chose to focus more of the story on characters with little or no powers, like Green Arrow and Black Canary. And why they had Captain Marvel quit the team so quickly while Captain Atom was incapacitated after fighting Superman.
it’s actually more that Martians as a race had a Paralyzing racial phobia of fire. It’s part of their Religions and mythos in some continuities.
Going just from memory, J’Onn gets nailed by fire twice in the Justice League cartoons first season (once by a giant fire-breathing snake in Paradise Lost, the other by Metamorpho in Metamorphosis), and at least once in the second season (look at his face as Doonsday ignites a stream of gasoline from a police van in A Better World).
And have you truly forgetten the scenes in JL:DOOM where J’Onn starts running around in a blind panic after M’Ale F’arc lights his skin on fire or the look on M’Ale F’arc’s face as the rocket goes off in his face? He literally shapeshifts out of a form that might’ve been able to take the blast and just stands there.
What’s different from the comics is that nobody ADVERTISES their weaknesses in ‘Justice League’. You’ll never catch anybody from that show saying “OH NO!!! Fire/ Kryptonite/ the color Yellow, my greatest weakness! AAAHHH!!!”
And the departure of Supes, Bats, WW, MM, John Stewart, and Hawkgirl had less to do with their power levels and more to do with the fact that they starred in ‘Justice League’. Let’s face it, getting rid of John Stewart doesn’t do any good when you’ve still got Hal Jordan and Guy Gardner on Earth. Same for Superman. Proper use of Captain Marvel (who is basically Superman without any weaknesses) and Captain Atom (Superman-class strength & durability, flight, and nuclear energy blasts) should leave Superboy without anything to do. Unless of course, the writer keeps them out of the story until he either has to show them (like during the invasion of Warworld) or he can take them out offscreen (like when Vandal Savage and Klarion stole Warworld out from munder the League’s collective noses).
Thats similar to what they did to Swampfire in Ben 10 Alien force/ Ultimate alien
First, Swamp fire has all these crazy ass powers; Regeneration from a single cell, plant manipulation flame manipulation, plant growth, super strength, immunity to lazers, among others
but despite all these awesome powers Ben uses him very little!
He would be my goto alien for anything!
And then in Ultimate alien, he goes ultimate form and gains…
A kamehamaha, and duriblity, while losing everything else.
MM was not stronger than Superman. He’s supposedly ‘as strong as Superman’ – although that is never actually shown to be the case. Ever. I’m pretty sure it’s the DC equivalent of the whole Marvel’s ‘Sentry is as powerful as a thousand exploding suns’ – yet he can’t even lift the shield helicarrier without help.
There is a difference between being powerful and being strong
MM is neither as strong as, NOR powerful as, Superman. He’s close in strength, and his powerset is pretty different than Superman’s otherwise. His main advantage over superman, his psionics, was intentionally negated by MM himself, who built up Superman’s mind based on the kryptonian ability to compartmentalize to make Superman more resistant to mind control because of the inherent danger involved in that happening (not that it didn’t still happen anyway, like when someone massively psionically powerful like Max Lord mind-controlled Superman – it just makes it a lot harder).
There’s also the fact that the weaknesses of the two are significantly worse for MM than for Superman.
Superman’s weaknesses? Magic, Psionics, and Kryptonite
Manhunter’s weaknesses? Magic and Fire. Psionics too, but since MM is himself psionic, he’s more capable than Superman of fighting it. But Superman does have things like Torquasm Vo and MM’s own augmentation of Superman’s Kryptonian mental compartmentalization to help against psionic attacks.
Main point is…. Fire is a lot easier to find than Kryptonite. Especially in a matchup between the two of them, since one of them has heat vision.
All I can say to this is all supes powers are mental they just seem like they aren’t. I’ll try to remember where I found this tidbit of info and post it here.
This has been reconned both ways. Actual status at any given time will depend on the writer.
I cannot find a source for you, but I am certain that I seen one claiming Martian to be physically stronger than Supes. Supes seems to be more durable however and Martian doesn’t have superspeed , so he is less powerful overall.
Sorry but there are no sources saying MM is stronger than Superman. I actually like MM, but there’s NOTHING ever saying that (also there are quite a few examples of both Superman and Supergirl beating up MM with raw strength). Even in the DC compendium, Superman is listed as stronger than MM. He’s -also- more powerful but I’m just talking about raw strength.
What MM does have over Superman is psionic attacks, though. However, MM intentionally made sure to build up Superman’s mind against his own martian mind powers. He also has phasing abilities and invisibility, but apparently Kryptonians can vibrate their hands fast enough to catch them (as Supergirl has done before) and Martian invisibility doesnt seem able to hide themselves from Kryptonian vision, as their vision goes way beyond the visible light spectrum (not to mention their other senses).
Of course the biggest advantage MM has is his extreme shapeshifting ability, which does make him INCREDIBLY resilient.
You MIGHT be thinking of a page where MM fought someone and said ‘I’m almost as strong as Superman – why do people keep forgetting that?’
Captain Boomerang can throw his boomerangs around corners. That’s why he was able to go toe to toe with Flash. Flash can’t see around corners, and would run into the boomerangs.
As an aside, Captain Boomerang is one of the most successful veterans of the Suicide Squad. He was able to continue committing crimes under the nose of Amanda Waller by disguising himself as Captain Cold and continuing using his ice gun.
That’s right! Captain Boomerang is so versatile he was actually pulling off heists AS Captain Cold on the streets of New Orleans WHILE HE WAS A MEMBER OF THE SUICIDE SQUAD.
He’s bonzer, mate!
Reading the comics, I always assumed that Captain Boomerang had one of those completely terrible fake Aussie accents like you hear American actors using on TV, that sound half British and half South African.
That is what an Aussie sounds like :D
Not if you are one.
The thing about accents is that people with accents rarely notice their accent because to them it’s the baseline that everything else differentiates FROM.
not to mention he ALSO did it as Mirror Master. got caught that time though.
thats technically the same as saying snails should be hitting you all the time, just because they can go around corners… :P
He also can’t see behind him, so every time Captain Boomerang ‘misses’, there’s a re-roll on every attack
Except properly written there really isn’t any blind-siding to someone who moves at the kinds of speeds of Flash because everything’s pretty much not moving at all once he turns on his super-speed, his perceptions in general are so fast (in the just after post-crisis period for Wally West when he was massively depowered he had his powers instinctively turn on when someone was spraying the movie theater he was in with bullets when the bullet touched the back of his head) he could easily turn and stop or dodge the boomerang (which they did to Hawkeye when he used a boomerang arrow against the Barry Allen Flash in the JLA/Avengers limited series).
In one comic, flash was shot in the back of the neck. He felt the bullet hit his skin, then dodged it. He was not expecting an attack, thats just how absurd his reaction times are. He can register something touching his skin and react in time to move out of the way, when its traveling at around supersonic levels of speed. So no, a boomerang doesnt make any freaking sense. But thats power creep for you. Flash evacuated an entire city when a nuke went off and personally removed everyone before the blastwave could hit anything. Let me repeat that. A nuke went off, and flash personally evacuated an entire city before the explosion could hit anyone.
Barry and Wally are two of my favorite fictional heroes, and everyone can agree his power is absurd.
One of the things that have helped close a more sensible gap between Flash and the new Captain Boomerang (Digger’s son) is that Captain Boomerang now has bursts of super speed. This, coupled with forethought, gives a boomerang-wielding villain an edge against speedsters.
What’s interesting to note is that in classic Suicide Squad, Captain Boomerang was often tasked with killing speedsters. Waller knew that he had to most experience with fighting speedsters, and not surprisingly was actually really good at it. (Oh, someone who can catch my bloomin’ boomerangs outta the air? Well I’ll just switch up and throw razor sharp boomerangs. CUT HIS FAWKING FINGERS RIGHT OFF THEN!)
Also teammates. He was also really good at killing members of his own team.
Well. If you somehow can accelerate people without killing them to the speed of light (and how does that not induce fusion in their atoms, anyway? :)) it is almost doable. You could save everyone more than 2km from the explosion rather easily.
Really near the nuke you have to worry about gamma radiation. That is however very very quickly absorbed into the atmosphere (and other physical stuff nearby) turning it into a superheated plasma, being heated frrom inside (for a few microseconds, until the actual nuke stops exploding).
The plasma will radiate at various frequencies, but significantly above ultra violet it’s just absorbed by nearby air (and other stuff) turning it into a plasma (see the pattern? :)).
Once the plasma stops expanding by radiation absorbtion/reemission, a few hundred meters away from the epicenter, this stops, but the fireball has beeen expanding at a large fraction of lightspeed to this point (note that if there is no matter nearby a nuke is way less impressive, a point of really bright light that goes away very quickly.).
So. The people up to 100m away would be.. hard to save even if you can move infinitely near the speed of light.
Once this stops the fireball is still expanding, but now we are talking speeds that are not all _that_ high (for values of high), it’s due to thermal expansion, and the radiation has also accelerated everythign it hits outwards to rather high speeds, these particles hit nearby particles, accelerate those, and deposit a lot of thermal energy. Etc. This is the start of the shockwave, but particles being hit here are still superheated.
The people in this zone (up to 2-3km from the epicenter for a tsara bomb, basically the part of the blast that turns into a crater) are saveable, but you better move quickly.
Now, there are two additional issues here: That fireball? It’s rather hot. And really bright.
If you look at it from anywhere near you are dead, and you will start burning just due to pure thermal radiation in a hundreds of a second or so.
However, it’s not nanoseconds but multiple milliseconds. That’s probably enough time! :)
The shockwave/wind will soon start moving really really slowly, mach 5 or so near the nuke and down rather quickly to mach 1, so it’s not an issue (it is what causes most damage to buildings and such, not counting lingering fires).
Incidentally, if the nuke does go of in space and for some reasons people are hanging out nearby in spacesuits he would have a much harder time saving them. The radiation, going out at the speed of light, will not be hitting air and turning it into plasma, slowing it down, instead it will hit people in suits, turning them into plasma, and slowing it down. But unless the suited people density is really high that is unlikely to shadow anyone further away, but still too close efficiently. :)
I saw the math, there was something like 10^20 speed of light there. E
Well. Everyone about 2km away from even the most impressive nuke can easily be saved, since at that point you have several milliseconds, and if they are not in direct view of the fireball, about six seconds.
It’s the ones closer than that you are going to have issues with. And, as mentioned, mainly the ones less than 100m from the epicenter.
Then again, if it’s an airburst (which is optimal if you want to destroy the city, not frustate the Flash) he only really has to compete with the speed of sound, once the few in the open viewing the fireball has been collected, since the shockwave very quickly slow down to that speed, the direct destruction close to the fireball is not relevant to what happens on the ground.
I still wonder how he accelerates people to high speed without killing them off faster than the nuke would, however. :)
The official answer to that is that the Speed Force which he’s linked to allows him to add or subtract speed from anything he touches. (And yes, he’s used this to stop people before.)
The team will hopefully grow and eventually establish a base on the east coast and another on the west coast, says DaveB. So in they are the “real-life” equivalent of the Avengers?
As long as they don’t establish a tem in the Great Lakes area, we’ll be fine.
What are you, part of the Grand Lakes Legion?
Gah- The Grand Lakes Heroes League. The fact that the story is titled Legion of Nothing always screws me up.
I think Swamp Thang is remembering the (I think) short-lived Great Lakes Avengers. After Mockingbird left the WCA because they found out she’d killed the guy who brainwashed and raped her for months while she was stuck in the past, she and Hawkeye went to Chicago to try to work things out. Then they ran into an unlicensed group calling themselves the GLA. If I recall, there was Big Bertha, a woman who could inflate herself up to Blob proportions and with similar power-set, Dina Soar, a pteradactyl-woman who could create ‘anti-sound’ rendering an area silent, Door, who could turn himself into a teleportation portal, and Captain Immortal, who could come back from the dead in a few minutes (depending on how badly damaged his body was), but would be in kind of a low-grade berserker rage when he initially jumped back up.
It was a silly team.
That aside, the ‘coasts’ don’t really make much sense for two-team placement. Instead, the teams would be better off placed, roughly, in Boise, ID and Lexington, KY. This is because they are most likely to be called upon for ~internal~ defense–essentially, an anti-terrorism/police unit. While they would certainly be deployed in an invasion scenario, timeliness is going to matter more when Vehemence shows up in some random city in the middle of nowhere and starts turning it into a bloody riot. Since supers are mostly not readily identifiable until they start using powers, you can’t plan on stopping them at the borders. The named cities cover both the central US, and the coastal states, including at least southern Alaska, with maximum efficiency.
(I am assuming you’s want them somewhere near a moderate population center if for no reason other than morale; however, it might actually make sense, ultimately, to stick them in the Appalachians and Rocky Mountain ranges, just to make sure they don’t accidentally kill a lot of people the next time a group of supervillains decides to go for a take-down.)
Don’t forget the greatest under-appreciated Hero of all time: Doreen Green (aka The Scourge of Latvaria, She Who Causes The Mad Titan To Tighten His Sphincter: Squirrel Girl and Tippy-Toe) :D
Ah, I’d stopped reading not long after they were first encountered, actually, and I don’t think Ms Green had joined the team at that point. That said, I’ve loved every time I’ve been fortunate enough to see something featuring her (and I gotta say, she’s hella fun to play in Marvel Puzzle Quest).
Yup, she’s fun to play in Marvel Heroes 2015 as well :D
You forgot Squirrel Girl, whose powers are the appropriate squirrel themed abilities her name suggests and also that she’s a Silver Age character in the modern age, meaning that she will always beat the bad guy no matter how absurdly over-matched she is.
the GLA still exist, they’re just the Great Lakes Iniative now…. after calling themselves the GL Avengers/Champions/X-men, and getting those teams pissed at them :P
While the Rockies are fairly steep and hard to inhabit, at least in places, the same cannot be said for the Appalachians. They are actually fairly inhabited through most of their length.
…Which actually makes me realize that a decent place for a East Coast base is the town I live in, for much the same reasons we’ve got a couple of Coast Guard bases: Martinsburg, WV. In the middle of the Appalachian ridges, about halfway north/south, not a major population center itself, but close enough to several for people to get out. (And the closest being DC is an added bonus, in that it enables quick-response to attacks on the government, or relatively easy visits either way for high-level officials.)
There are Coast Guard bases in WV because Senator Robert Byrd had the power to pork-barrel them there.
Yeap. ;)
Though the fact that it’s not a completely illogical place to have one doesn’t hurt.
Exactly, and I think the reason the Avengers ended up bi-coastal is because their original base was NYC.
” So in they are the “real-life” equivalent of the Avengers?”
Mr. Steed and Mrs. Peel would be their British associates.
Brilliant! :D
Is it just me, or is Sydney especially cute when wearing a hat? I mean, she looked adorable in Max’s hat, at the press conference in that uniform cap, and now this one!
Speaking of cute, can someone take a look at the tourists and tell me who that little blonde girl with the pigtails looks like? She seems awful familiar for some reason, but the only character I can come up with is Penny from Inspector Gadget. That doesn’t see right, though.
Kind of looks like Angelica Pickles from rugrats.
I think she looks like a colour changed version of young olivia form the beginning
She’s a super villain in disguise…
As soon as Sydney grabs the true sight orb and talks about clocking devices, she runs away in a panic…
The little Girl is EVIL INCARNATE……
Little Tiffany is the real evil Incarnate…Apparently an 8 or 9 year-old girl with post-graduate Physics Books? She’s gonna start some real shit, Zed.
Or MAYBE you owe that little girl an apology.
Not yet, no-one’s put a hole between her eyes…
That said, J still got the job anyway… :P
While she is that, we’ve definitely seen her somewhere else. Including the wide eyes. But I have no clue where to look!
Kinda reminds me of Riley from Worm. But I think you’re probably thinking of Yotsuba.
Yotsuba has four pigtails and green hair. That girl looks like original-model Penny with Gadgetinis-era pigtails.
Made me think of the little girl from:
Gah. Link didn’t work.
CRASH ZOOM – Movie Massacre: https://youtu.be/TnyBXvB3_ho
You meatsack Humans are a funny lot. so many…friendly people… :P
You’re most likely thinking of the hypothetical super strong girl from page #6 or so, dealing with super-reality tv. She was wearing a blue dress, though.
Yeah, thats it!
For anyone unfamiliar with Redline, you can access some of the highest quality encodes right here: https://bakabt.me/torrent/164745/redline-bd-1080p-thora (alternate links at the upper right of the page, including dubbed for those who don’t like subs).
I recommend it if you want something fast and brutal and just plain fun. The animation is pretty amazing. It’s a bit of a cult-level movie … but I’m confident that most Grrl Power fans will appreciate it just for being fun and get the blood pumping. A bit silly? Yep. Still …. sort of like Rollerball meets Death Race 3000 meets the Grand Theft Auto franchise meets one of the more outrageous Japanese anime houses.
Just do it already. There’s even naked boobs. ;-)
Alternatively, the Redline movie is on Netflix. My brother wanted to get his friends and myself to watch it.
No its not.
At least not for us Americans.
Might be different in Canada/UK.
I live in Maryland/Virginia. Evidently it’s on the list of things they recently removed, along with Galaxy Quest.
Or buy the DVD. Daniel the Human has it, but not the time to watch it. It’s in a pile of noticeable size, all DVDs he’s brought & is yet to watch…
I agree, Everyone needs to watch it. It is a movie made of awesome set in a world that runs on the Rule of Cool. Reality? Laws of physics? nobody needs those…
So that means all the team has a conventional way of transport. Others can just lie in sydneys shield bubble. Maybe she cannot max out at mach 4 anymore, but surely mach 1-2 is doable.
Also there is a false statement in todays comic. The order of speed = Harem, Maxima and then Sydney.
Unless Maxima beats teleporting speed… does she? regardless harem outruns sydney
I suggest you re-read what Maxima said. She said Sydney is the team’s second fastest flier, not the second fastest period.
I can’t wait to see them test her shield. How invulnerable is it? Is it capable of taking a point blank shot of a thermo-nuclear device? And can it be manipulated to surround just the device instead of Sydney?
Basically, are we talking standard ionic shielding, AT Field, or quasi-Superman status?
Not sure how you’re going to test that without violating any number of treaties regarding the testing of thermonuclear weapons…
But, like the rest of the orbs, it has abilities that haven’t been unlocked yet, so who knows?
Nah it’s fine. You are not testing the weapons, just using them to test something else :P
Testing for the FORCE of a nuclear blast is probably possible. Max can probably get pretty close. (She was holding back during the press conference) The bigger problem is even if they were allowed to test an actual nuke, the question is whether the shield would stop the radiation. It can stop the force and the effects of the blast itself but if it doesn’t stop the radiation…..dead Scoville.
Once you are not actually close to the nuke (more than 1km away) almost all radiation that hits you is thermal (granted, some slips though, gamma is absorbed by plasma _really_ easily, and in air about every two meters absorbs half of the gamma going through it, so 200m away you only have 1/(2 to the power of 100:th) left.
A km or two away it’s almost entirely thermal and plain old visible light (also a really unhealthy amount of UV, the fireball is in the 30kK range, but that probably does not matter much to you since if you can see the fireball directly at that range you are on fire).
And then there is the kinetic energy in the shockwave, which is rather impressive.
But her shield has been stated to filter out harmful levels of light, so unless it lets through thermal radiation that should be fine, which “only” leaves the shockwave (pulverizing buildings with ease at that range).
One of the more interesting quotes about blast effects from the wikipedia article: The range for significant levels of initial radiation does not increase markedly with weapon yield and, as a result, the initial radiation becomes less of a hazard with increasing yield.
Well. Only because everything in there is already vaporized or crushed or atomized. :)
The destructive force of the blast I’m sure the shielding could take, but it would probably still blow her back and a very rapid rate. The thing I’m interested in is whether the shield could take the heat itself and the radiation burst at point blank.
I compared it to those three shieldings for a reason. Ion fields (ala Gundam) can filter mostly solid matter and render it null along with much of the concussive force.. This includes all forms of ammunition. It helps with missiles and other explosives as the shield takes the concussive force of the blast along with the shrapnel, but the heat and fire are stopped by the armor of the Gundam itself. Energy blasts and beam sabers are generally too powerful and will only be minimally effected by the ion field.
AT Fields (ala Evangelion) can take just about anything and everything you throw at them. Until you pass a certain threshold of energy (for instance, the entire energy output of Japan formed into a single 1m diameter beam), the AT field will disperse or negate the energy. However, the force of a nuclear bomb is enough to get through the AT field to cause damage, sometimes severe damage, based on the proximity of the explosion. While Evangelion uses N^2 bombs (non-nuclear explosives) the force behind them is similar based on the size of each N^2. The concussive force is negated to the point of minimal recoil, but the heat from the blast can get through, melting fortified armor like butter.
The quasi-Superman is….well…complete invulnerability. Aside from magic and the specific radiation of kryptonite, Superman is invincible as long as he has energy from the sun.
So, the question really is which of the following does the shield negate, disperse, weaken, or have no affect at all on?
Solid matter – Basically anything.
Energy – To some degree, but what is it’s limits
Radiation – ???
Heat/Cold – ???
Concussive force – to some degree, but what is it’s limits
Gravitational force – we know she gets her own personal gravitation field while using the flight orb, but what would happen if she just had the shield up and two gravity forces acted upon her from opposite sides. Would she be pulled to either one?
“Pulls up in a Bolo” lets find out.
Depends on your defition of flier I guess. No need to go into that. I interpreted it as movement off the ground. But sure, if you go with constant floating in the air.. although now I am thinking about it. if harem keeps teleporting herself to the same spot, cant she simply float?
*Wonders what de deadtime is for Harems teleport ability*
She could, but unless she wannts to keep building up momentum (which might be dangerous if she loses her concentration) she would have to alterante between teleporting herself upside down, which might be annyoing if someone is trying to keep a conversation with her.
It may have sometihng to do with a conversation had earlier, but when MSpears said “the second fastest period”, the first thing to come to mind;
Overall time or ejection speed?
Dabbler might have ways of transdimensional or transgalactic travel, which would put all of them to shame.
Harem can only teleport to where she has been before, so that kind of makes her way of travel useless in case of a local emergency somewhere across the nation.
Or, if she can see where she is going (like she did after the Bank ‘incident’)
She does a “Seven league step.” She teleports to the edge of her vision. Then that Harem provides the anchor for the next to teleport from. If she is taking advantage of buildings or other high ground (or is anywhere in the great plains region) she could move really fast.
She was able to *vorp* to the ambulance because she could see it on the TV, so, theoretically, she could *vorp* anywhere in the world that is shown on a live broadcast
she could only teleport to the ambulance because she had seen it on tv AND been to that bank before.
Given that that would probably always require a moment so that you can get your orientation sense back up, I doubt she would be faster with the anchor method that the uberschall flyers.
In City of Heroes, I had a teleporter character. I’d travel long distance by ‘porting up into the air, then rapidly ‘port to my max distance repeatedly, still keeping my aim up in altitude. I could out-distance the fastest fliers that way (for as long as my Endurance held up)…
I miss that game. At least City of Titans is still under development.
Even more fun was Team Teleport. It was slower, but much like being inside Sidney’s shield, no one got to say no.
Back when we first meet Harem and the gang at HQ, Harem said that Max could not catch her because she can teleport, but Max caught her anyway. Wedgie time!
That’s because Maxi went for one of the other Harem and not the one she was originally confronting: Bodie was caught un-awares
A germaine question: Is the speed/whatever passes for thrust of the flight orb affected by drag? If Max or Sydney don’t think of testing it, I am sure one of the more physics inclined members of ARC will.
Harem is a complication when it comes to who can move the fastest. In terms of a liner race, Max is faster because Harem has to use line of sight to move to places she’s unfamiliar with, which limits her TP range to what she can clearly resolve with her eyes. The time it takes her to TP, then re orient and acquire a new destination isn’t much, like maybe a second, but in that time Max can put down the hammer and cover huge distances.
The complication comes from Harem’s range being hugely extended as her familiarity with a place increases. She can teleport several hundred miles to places like the farm she grew up on or back to the Archon headquarters, so in that case she can definitively beat Max.
The screwy thing about her power is that since each of her is a copy of sorts, she can teleport immense distances if she herself is spread around. If one of her is on the east coast and one of her on the west coast, she can unteleport a third her from anywhere and re-integrate near either of the two on the coasts, since in a way, the one she teleports to is “making a copy” near them. So with a little setup, Harem can actually cross the globe in a second.
I’m wondering though – outside of harem, where would jiggawatt’s Telebolt be placed in terms of speed (unless she needs specific atmospheric conditions to use it) – a lightning bolt is still pretty fast :)
I’d imagine she’s limited by conductive medium and conditions. She’d need different charge regions to build a passage, if it works like actual lightning. Which would mean, while fast, any long distance travel would likely require stops as she bridges electrically stable zones. It would also be fairly erratic.
Her advantage would be energy manipulation where she can create her own zones of differing charge. Make her own Stepped Leader (ionization path), which comes down to range of her powers. It’s how she can get away with making lighting bolts at ground level and directing their blast.
She could definatly region hop. Lighting has been know to strike as far out as 25 miles from the edge of its originating storm system. The freakiest (and sad) story is that of the cyclist who was killed 16 miles away from a thunderstorm, under clear skies, on the other side of a mountain range. Given the right conditions she could easily hop across a large metropolitan area such as Dallas or Phoenix.
I would think that Jiggawatt would not be faster than Sydney… I mean…. a typical lightning bolt does travel at around 224,000 mph (which is insanely fast) but it arcs all over the place, and it can only go a short distance before losing massive amounts of speed as soon as it goes near any object, or even comes into contact with highly saturated air, upon which point it dissipates.
Then again, I got this information from my Google Fu, so I could be mistaken.
Yes, just because something can go at that speed, doesn’t mean they can go that distance
She can travel 224’000 mph, but only go 20 feet (but she can do it rilly rilly quickly!)
I was wondering one thing about her teleport capability, though:
Is it teleport as in actually disolving, aka killing one of her selfs and building one from scratch or is she moving the particles of her former self to the rebuild place?
1) In the first case, could she teleport into a vacuum, as it requires materia to “build” another self of her, aka conservation of mass?
2) In the second case, wouldn’t that mean that she is not actually teleporting, but just moving at the speed of light in whatever medium she currently is in?
Fairly sure it was ‘dissolving’, just one day she forgot to dissolve at her starting location and learnt she can make doubles
Also, fairly sure she wouldn’t be going anywhere near a vacuum as that would kill her dead
She could probably get away with it, as long as she doesn’t hang about. The human body has been known to withstand exposure to a vacuum for a short time – without exploding. She’ll have a few seconds to find another location before passing out.
As for ‘conservation of mass’: that’s going to be ignored whether or not she’s ‘porting into a vacuum. Not much mass in a human-sized chunk of air…
Since she has no visible exhaust, if she fly in the upper layer of the atmosphere she should be able to reach much faster speeds (maybe even unlimited in complete vacuum of space).
Yes, but in the vacuum of space, she has the whole “limited air supply” issue to worry about.
Large oxygen tank and a space suit and that should take care of that.
Alas, then she runs into the problem of her Nemesis: ‘mittens’.
there has been comment-chat of custom mittens to hold the orbs in place. Maybe space-versions with the flight & shield pre-loaded in the glove…
All those comments have been ignoring the fact that Sydney herself has said she needs physical palm and finger contact with her balls (one thing that hasn’t been suggested yet, and came to me as was typing this, what if she gained Morphs ability and was able to spread the flesh of the palm of her hand to encase all of the balls? or would she still need the finger input?)
Which is why they’d be custom. Something that would allow the ball in, and hold it against her palm.
So would they be called “Glorbs or Orves”?
If she still could only hold and use one per hand, what’s the… oh, so that she could travel to cold places and still be warm and protected
It also might allow her do to things like put her earpiece in, by allowing her to move her fingers without dropping the ball.
That of course is theoretical until tested. We don’t know how much of a grip she needs to activate them.
That’s why I suggested custom space gloves with those 2 orbs preloaded in, in other words orbs go in, hand goes in, seal is closed. Mind you, she wouldn’t be able to use her hands for anything else, but it’s an option…
Well there is that entire progress bar on Sydney’s flight orb skill tree that she hasn’t unlocked yet. (needs that 5th skill point in normal flight to unlock superflight and then there’s the double linked dot at the end of that chain… WARP SPEED ANYONE???
The doubled linked dot is probably teleportation or something similar to Jiggawatts self-transformation lightning.
Basicly, you desolve into particles and travel at the speed of light.
I also doubt that the second cross-linked skill line is just a continuation of normal flight. It’s probably something related to gravity modification, like an ability to make other people fly.
…Let’s just hope that there’s a way to resolve those particles when you reach your destination…
ahead warp 4.5. engage Mr Sulu
Hmm. Are those sunglasses prescription? I run into that a lot, can’t find decent sunglasses that fit over my regular glasses without making me look like a bug-eyed freak. Prescription sunglasses are the way to go.
Ditto.
We don’t know her prescription. She might just need them for reading.
I think she is slightly near-sighted, as she was wearing her glasses when driving but took them off to look at something close-up. I am the other way around. I wear my reading glasses when I need to see things closer than a meter, but when driving, etc. I do not wear glasses.
I have seen some sunglasses designed to go over prescription glasses, but I do not think they would go over Sydney’s large lenses.
Actually, didn’t DaveB say somewhere that Sydney was farsighted? I don’t think it was in the comic so much as somewhere in the comments.
Yeah, she just uses her glasses for reading. (Which makes me wonder why they’re so big actually)
Rule. of.
Funny CuteAdorkability!Which could be true. She might just like the look better. (It’s also typically easier to see through glasses if they are larger and you don’t have to worry about the edges of your vision, but that’s a more minor effect.)
Yeah, back before had laser surgery to fix vision, used to wear glasses, they looked nice but could see the top rim, which got very annoying as the eyes got so used to seeing the ‘rim’ it basically got embedded into the vision for months (could still see it even when not wearing the glasses)
Bifocals with a zero on the upper half. It’s just convenience.
If her eyes can handle the distance well enough, there’s no real reason to make them bifocals – it would just make them more expensive. I’m mildly nearsighted, but I just wear my glasses rather than take them off or get bifocals. Bifocals have downsides to overall vision and cost, and it’s easier to just let my eyes handle it, since they can.
“Which makes me wonder why they’re so big actually”
Noodle guards! You saw what happened when she took them off last time during a meal.
I read “Noodle guard” and thought that’s just stupid. The Flying Spaghetti Monster isn’t evil, so there’s no reason you would have to guard against it…
Then you mentioned the Unmaker incident and now I’m convinced you’re correct.
Do you wear glasses? If not, let me tell you: big glasses are way more comfortable for the eyes, as most modern shapes of glasses heavily obstruct the view in peripheric FoV.
It might not be the reason why she wears giant glasses. But it’s a good enough reason anyway.
Anyone else notice that Sydney hasn’t had too many problems with exposure to sunlight this day?
Well, to be fair she’s been a bit distracted with going incredibly fast and nearly falling to her death and so on . . .
Maybe she used “protection from sunlight” after leaving her cascet this morning?
Well, she WAS just using the shield orb during the flight… so perhaps she considers that protection enough? Along those lines, while it passes visible light, does it block U.V.? If so, does that mean whoever made these things was susceptible to U.V. radiation?
Or would that imply the shield orb innately understands and protects against the vulnerabilities of it’s user (such that a Vampire halo would have a shield orb that was opaque against sunlight or a Superman / Halo hybrid’s shield would only really block Kryptonite radiation?)
Maybe effects of the shield?
If it’s set to block “harmful effects”, from Gas to emotions, maybe Ultra Violet light counts.
She’s having too much fun flying to be a dork about it. If the forcefield lets through UV, though, she will end up with a bit of a sunburn.
We still have the unresolved question of how the force field could let ordinary light through, and yet block lasers. Seems like it is tuned to protect against anything harmful, so it would block UV, or most of it.
i just remembered!
Wasn’t Halo not allowed to leave the building until she completed the “be nice to the media” course?
True, but Maxima is a military officer; Arianna is just a civilian. That means that Max can overrule Arianna.
Not always. Sometimes civilians are given command over military personnel, and are ordered by whoever the civilian works for to follow their orders as though the civilian was a higher ranking officer.
However, I think in this case, Max is the officer who is in charge, and Arianna was just given status over the rest of the team via either Max herself, or through another higher ranking officer.
We had a couple of civilians on base in Japan that we were to treat as though they were officers. We just didn’t have to salute them.
If you really, REALLY want to get technical, the POTUS is a civilian, yet I guarantee that no person in the military is going to overrule his orders.
I just double checked and yeah hes a civilian. interesting.
this could potentially alter my plans for world domination.
Oh wow. I actually got fact checked. Normally people just take what I say as fact and move on.
Also, your plans have fallen through, might as well sign up to work for me as I finish my plans for world domination. We have medical, dental, no uniform other than the hat, and Joe in the kitchen mass produces every cookie you can imagine for free. Currently hiring programmers, gunners, and we still need a person to run the dry cleaners.
Hmm, what kind of hat?
Not that i am joining…
I’m just, weighing options.
Stupid bad HTML coding.
This one, but with different pins.
I haz dental and penguins. They is really cute and you can pet them!
Yorp…you only have penguins because you keep breaking into the petting zoo. You already work for me. You’re our mascot.
*wags tail happily*
[Good, he hasn’t even got a clue. I bet he also thinks the mice aren’t scientific researchers.]
Naaa, making good enough money as a Merc. Apparently because my Pretender Armour’s combat mode is that damn tough, I’m usually hired as the guy who deliberately sets off the trap/bomb/ambush/etc., then doesn’t get deaded till backup arrives…
That said, maybe if you could afford my rates…
All I’m putting in my resume to Waldo is: I can make explosives out of the materials in an average English classroom that is just for English. Don’t even let me into the science room
I will help you.
It is always nice having a front person to take the heat.
This exactly. You follow the orders of the boss you are given, not the boss you want. Sometimes it’s even a foreign national…
Congress is all civilians & they can override POTUS orders given to military personnel. The POTUS is only the Commander In Chief “when called to the actual service,” but guess who has the Power to give that call? Congress.
Congress has more Power AND responsibility over the military than anyone else in government. Congress’ duties & responsibilities include recruiting, payroll, equipping & supplying, living quarters, hiring/firing, disciplining, etc, etc. Also, even while exercising the C-inC title, the POTUS still has to answer to Congress for his actions & orders.
Are you talking about some other country? Because that is not at all true. Congress is not part of the Chain of Command for the US Military.
Not true at all, no matter WHAT certain Congressmen think.
There ARE also “Secretary of the…” that are in the chain of command who are civilians.
Navy Example
I wonder if they just haven’t appointed a Secretary of ARChon yet. General Faulk is obviously the military, but probably NOT in Joint Chiefs. And it’s a VERY short command chain, with Maxima being in charge of field ops, training, and everything else…
Read the US Constitution; specifically, the Powers of Congress in Article 1. It’s all there.
I can’t find the quote, but one president ordered the Army to go… somewhere… with orders to return fire if fired upon (not to START hostile actions) and said if the Congress ever wanted them to come back they’d have to fund them.
Sounds like a combination of what President Polk did to Mexico in the 1840’s (Go there but don’t start anything), and what President Roosevelt did with the Navy in the 1900’s (The Fleet will sail to the other side of the world. If you don’t cough up the money, it will just have to stay there.)
Yeah, the US unfortunately had a number of Presidents who have abused & violated the limits of their Command Authority, even against the overall general goals set by Congress; it’s up to Congress to set the overall goals, even while the C-in-C issues the specific orders to “make it so”).
You’re probably right.
Advisors would be my guess. We had a few of those pay us a visit when I was in the Air Force. Had a higher security clearance than just about anybody else on base.
Yeah…I think that’s what they were. I only know the one time I saw them I wasn’t in uniform and they were hanging out with the base admiral and a few captains and commanders by the NEX. I saw all that brass and went “Nope.” and hung out at the base galley for a while until I was sure they were gone.
Keep in mind, arianna more meant, “Dont let her go home” Sydney is still being trained by maxima, so once they get back to base she may get yoinked for a press training meeting.
The Flash (Barry Allen) is literally made of “goes fast” as my friend puts it. When Barry died in the comics he wasn’t actually dead but in fact out running Death itself. He’s beaten a teleporter in a race by running so fast he went back in time and waited at the finish line on the other side of the Galaxy. When channeling the speed force, Barry can read an entire library with perfect recall and use the architectural information to rebuild a building and all this within the course of a few seconds. He has mastered the infinite mass punch where he punches so fast, his punch has relatively infinite mass. Barry Allen is the most broken overpowered superhero and Superman can’t hold a candle to his speed.
Please don’t start a superman/flash speed war.
I see enough of those on youtube.
Then again, this place is CONSIDERABLY more intelligent than the youtube comment section.
Oh I didn’t mean to start a speed war. Both The Flash and Superman are broken and over powered. A lot DC’s characters are like that. The Goddamn Batman can beat anyone with prep time. The Flash is The Fastest Thing Alive. Superman has no definable limits to his strength and power. The Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) is special because he has such immense will power. Most of DC’s big names are super powerful.
> Please don’t start a superman/flash speed war.
Hasn’t that one been settled in canon? According to Flash:Rebirth, Flash is faster, by a lot. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/415175659369276129/ for the relevant page. Summary:
[Superman and Flash running side-by-side]
Superman: I’m not going to let you do this.
Flash: You can’t stop me.
Superman: I’ve raced you before, Barry. I even won some of those races.
Flash: Those races were for charity, Clark. [disappears in a giant BOOM of speed]
It is also physicly impossible for him to exist in anything resembling a real world.
And an ‘infinite mass punch’ is silly. If he travels at the speed of light, his entire being is infinite mass. That’s the whole reason you can’t accelrate to the speed of light. At the speed of light, any amount of mass has infinite mass, which means it’d need infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light
Fair enough, good thing he’s a comic book character. Also Speed Force. I’ll be perfectly honest, my knowledge of the Flash comes from my friend who has read comics and frequents comic book boards. That said, the Speed Force is basically a tool for writers to explain away the inconsistencies in the Flash’s speed, allow him to maintain a base more reasonable speed but still occasionally do crazy things like outrun Death. And since Barry is the living embodiment of the Speed Force, physics more or less take a backseat when he’s running. It’s how they explain why The Flash doesn’t break every window he runs past.
But ya, Super Speed on the level of the Flash is just broken.
He does have one fundamental weakness. He can’t stand on or walk over an iPad. Because iPads don’t support Flash.
Go to your room.
It isn’t even just his speed. Barry has conscious control over every molecule in his body. While he doesn’t make use of this to shapeshift as such, he can put himself back together from damage that would instantly kill Superman.
I have in my possession a Silver Age Flash comic in which Dr. Alchemy magically transmutes Barry into a cloud of water vapor and he just rains himself back together. It’s batshit stuff.
I’ve seen a comic when Flash was trapped in an alternate dimension that had no surfaces for him to get friction…He got back to the entry-portal by Molecular Propulsion…That is, he started throwing off some of his own body’s molecules to generate thrust. In other words, given that he can only spare so many molecules for that, he can fly!
Barry’s basically an energy being whose body is just something he subconsciously creates because he remembers having one prior to becoming the Flash, you can get that from him events like that or when Zoom rigged Barry’s Cosmic Treadmill to explode Barry survived by spreading his molecules over several hours of time and waiting for all the atoms to catch up with each other. He was conscious the entire time and you see just his foot having assembled while he’s thinking about his quick thinking (no pun intended) of using that stunt, without his foot dying or otherwise suffering from the effects of zero blood flow along with any of his other cells as they caught up with each other.
Are we seeing through the comball in the second to last panel? Because if we are then the guy in the brown hat and jacket is A GOD DAMNED ROBOT. Or wizard alien, I don’t discriminate.
Holly shit! hes a Chee! im calling it now.
‘Chee’? What’s a ‘Chee’?
Do you mean Marvel’s ‘Kree’? Or Star Wars’ ‘Chiss’?
Animorph Chee
Has this been mentioned before? o_O
Just looked it up and the results seemed familiar!! O_o
I see him, he went from white skin to grey.
Good catch, as his skin DOES change color between panels.
Good spot! Although it could have been a colouring issue, looks like he’s about the same colour as the background sky.
If that’s the case though, I think it’s funny to roll with mistakes where possible so I vote for making it canon at some point!
mmmmmnope. nope. Zoom in enough and you can see that his ears change shape, too (they turn in to a triangular shape that reaches the brim of his hat)
Great spot, all the same, DRock.
In addition to his skin color and the shape of the ears changing, his facial features go from rounded like Sydney’s to chiseled like Max’s.
Ah Hell, did I get caught on camera AGAIN? I quietly change “personalities” in normal Pretender Armour, changing skin tone & face, & some idiot takes a pic, or even just takes 1 look & freaks out! Oh well, Just as long as Daniel the Human doesn’t find out, he won’t chew me out over it…
We have seen one person with blue skin before.* Shade is off, but not beyond normal artistic variability and/or explainable by lighting conditions.
The hair colour is the big difference, but there is white in the older picture, and clearly it is an individual** who wants to conceal their identity. So hair dye or a wig are not unreasonable possibilities. If it is hair dye, then the long hair would simply be tucked under that hat.
* Or possibly a blue leotard.
** Or possibly two individuals, but both sharing a desire for anonymity and taking extreme measures to ensure it.
A coloring issue just as Sydney uses the orb to see past anything that’s hidden?
There had to be something in the last panel for us to see.
The questions are:
1) Will Sydney spot him?
2) Since no one knew where they were going, he isn’t there for them. So why is he there?
Aliens can’t do the tourist thing?
Yeah!? Can’t we? Just cause I was switching my Pretender Armour to Merc-Job-Meeting-Face…
..Either that, or the Armour’s face & skin are holograms. Never did bother working that bit out. Might explain a few things…
Holy crap. Did you just find an actual easter egg?
It seems like a very odd collour to get wrong in 1 pannel, especially since the stance is basicly the same (so probably copied and adjusted, rather than drawn new)
Nice catch. I doubt this is coincidence.
Thanks guys, of course now we have to wait until Monday just to find out whether or not Dave is going to leave this dangling thread hanging. Hanging in our FACES.
The comball wouldn’t explain why in the last panel the girls doing the selfie are now frowning and the little girl is running away…
No, but the slight passage of time between the before and after would explain the difference.
Comic convention wise, we get to see things as Halo sees them. So when she has the Truesight Orb in hand, we see whatever lies underneath illusions.
Hm, Sydney’s shown she can carry people in her shield while flying as well…I wonder how many/if she could ferry folks without significantly losing speed
That’s a good test. How much do the orbs suffer from drag from her shield being bigger?
If they don’t slow down with a bigger shield, then Sydney could make the shield into it’s embiggened size (80-100 ft wide from the press conference) and make a hella sonic boom/turbulence attack. Or just run into things at mach4 with her shield .
I just imagined Sydney piggybacking someone for a flight *snicker*
Dave, I recommend Colorado Springs. It’s a medium sized city, and its proximity to NORAD, the Air Force academy, and their resources would make it a good place to build that bloody arcnet skyscraper/shopping mall. Plus if you base the…. Base…. In Colorado, there’s room for tons of weed jokes, involving say, tons of weed?
Panel 1 in #297 has a river or long narrow lake in it. You could wade across the only major watercourse in Colorado Springs except during the spring thaw. It could be Denver, looking west from the Arsenal toward Thornton.
But then you have another problem, there are no mountains on the horizon in any of the outdoor shots. In both Denver and Colorado Springs the Rockies are everywhere along the horizon.
Major midwestern cities with rivers: Kansas City, Omaha, Saint Louis… maybe Souix City. Probably not Saint Louis; the Arch is a really visible landmark from the air. Omaha and Kansas City have enough rivers that seeing one from the air isn’t necessarily going to tell you exactly where you are (Omaha has 2, Kansas City has 3).
In case anyone is wondering what actually happends when something travels at (or near. At is physicly impossible) the speed of light, this is a fun read:
https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
And a nice one on Redit explaining why you can’t go at the speed of light, and why time slows down as you go faster.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l39o6/eli5_we_all_know_light_travels_186282_miles_per/
Gotta love the last two paragraphs at RobK’s link.
The fun thing is that the way the math works, it’s theoretically possible to move *faster* than the speed of light – and the faster you go, the less time-dilation there is (and the less energy it takes to accelerate further, because your mass decreases). The catch is how to switch from going slower than light to going faster than light (or vice versa, in case you eventually want to stop somewhere) without ever even for a fraction of an instant traveling at *exactly* the speed of light. Also, we don’t know which direction you would perceive time as going.
What about those people,some with camera phones,and how will Arianna react to that???
I doubt she’ll have much of a problem with our heroes making an impromptu public appearance so long as Max doesn’t do another of her Big Bangs and Sydney doesn’t do . . . well . . . anything.
Did you notice the two women taking a selfie together? They seem less than pleased in the last panel to having been ‘flying photobombed’ :)
For reference, mach 4 is 4900km/h
The song is The Distance by Cake from their 1996 album Fashion Nugget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cno20onK9dY
Recognized the song, not sure where or why heard it before though o_O
If anyone remembers a show called “Chuck” the opening theme was a instrumental version of “Short Skirt Long Jacket” by Cake.
If those things start getting updates that should probably be cause for concern…
I did some math, 2600 miles is roughly 4200km, light travels at almost 300000km/s.
4200km divided by 300000km/s leaves us with 0.014s.
A bullet can travel at speeds between a bit below 300m/s (.45ACP) to over a km/s (.22-250 rem)
300*0.014 gives us 4.2m and 1000*0.014 is 14m
(I’m assuming the bullet already left the barrel when the Flash starts running)
So, if the target was less than 4m from the muzzle, it will get hit no matter what.
Of course if we’re taking into account the time the bullet needs to accelerate, the time the firing pin needs to strike and the reflexes of the shooter, then our superhero might just make it.
But he won’t be able to run 50 times that distance.
Flash occasionally said “screw relativistic physics and all physics in general” and ran at speeds of about c*10^20.
Funny choice for theme music. If you’ve never heard it, you should look up “The Distance” and play it through. It’s all about hanging in a competition when all hope is lost, even when you know that you’re going to be DEAD LAST.
Or the loneliness of the long distance runner :D
It’s sort of a running joke amongst fans that the Flash has really sucky villains, yeah.
Didn’t Rogue’s Revenge gave them some cred?
The Rogues are actually really cool. They have the Batman charm of being humans with skill and preparation, and very little of the Batman wank and apologism (when the Rogues are dicks, everyone understands *the Rogues are dicks*. When Batman acts like a manipulative, emotionally damaging douchenozzle, it doesn’t make him any less heroic in the eyes of writers).
Also helps that nobody is playing for serious. The Rogues keep their casualties minimal and their crimes purely material because then Flash isn’t going to go full tilt at them and risk killing them. The Rogues ain’t Doctor Doom. They’re in this for the money. And neither Barry nor Wally were ever the type to go “light speed punch” at someone who was just robbing a bank.
Mach 4 for Sydney puts her in the same general speed class as the SR-71 Blackbird and the XB-70 Valkyrie (Both “officially” Mach 3+). Extremely respectable company by any standards.
And she has room to improve!
I wonder if her speed goes down if she “Embiggens” her shield, or if her flight is able to just ignore drag. If her flight power can ignore the drag of the shield (or if the shield has a friction less surface) she could serve as team transport by stuffing everyone into a large shield.
If her powers are vulnerable to drag, she ought to pop a max size shield and try some sub-orbital hops; if her flight orb has a max power output, her velocity should only be limited by relativistic physics.
I was just thinking ‘this mach 4 was done at a fairly low altitude (no doubt so that Sydney could replenish her air supply often) and that she could likely go fast higher up where the air is thinner.
So, how high are they flying? The people in the foreground seem to be viewing the Grand Canyon. The average elevation of the the canyon’s south rim is around 6,800 feet (2,072 meters) with the highest spot, Grandview Point, being 7,400 feet (2,255 meters).
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Geographic+Center+of+the+Conterminous+United+States/@39.8282109,-98.5795706,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x87988f5625fc1527:0xde5763fad96b22b3
Lebanon KS [On 130 rd and Aa rd.], is the Geographical Center of the Contiguous US. Which is about 261 miles from Kansas City. Dallas is about twice that distance. Being 563 miles.
Of course for Mach 4, a flight to either location is pretty much a matter of minutes rather than hrs.
The Distance done with Speed Racer video is the original AMV created by a regular at A-Kon and a winner of the AMV Kontest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AMh2Ho346c&list=RD2AMh2Ho346c
I like the consistency shown in panel 5 showing the duct tape on the right hand, and Sydney using her left hand for the other orb. Dave is getting better with his updates :)
Someone like Superman should still be limited by the atmosphere – being able to fly at Mach 1000 is all very well, but you’ll probably destroy whatever city you were going to. And the one you left from. And any ones you fly over.
The key to flying intercontinental in a few minutes is to get out of the atmosphere.
Take 2 minutes straight up to get to the edge of space (stay subsonic for the first minute or so and then gradually accelerate), a few seconds at your top speed to fly around the planet and get above your destination, and another 2 minutes straight down to land. If you go any faster than that, you’ll break windows.
But, toph, how do you know stuff about flying? i thought you were blind?
She sees with soundwaves traveling through the earth. She knows about sonic booms.
I’m glaring in your general direction.
That’s why Supes is often depicted going UP to the edge of the atmosphere and then power-falling back down again
The DC Adventures system handles space travel not with the Flight power, but with the Movement power, which doesn’t have actual speed ranks, just interplanetary/interstellar/intergalactic. My DCA character had a high subsonic Flight rank and interplanetary space travel Movement, so, basically, anywhere on the planet was twenty minutes away for me using that trick. It’d take me ten minutes to break atmosphere at my Flight speed, and then traveling to above the destination was practically instantaneous at speeds that could get me to Mars in minutes. Then it was ten minutes to come back down. I didn’t actually use it much, though, because we had an intergalactic-range portal-maker on the team.
According to his DCA stats, Clark has Flight 15 (64,000 MPH, close to Mach 100), but only Movement (Space Travel) 1, which is interplanetary rank. He can do the up and down bit in like eight seconds, if he’s willing to smash the sound barrier into little bits, but isn’t any faster once in space than I am, and isn’t capable of unassisted interstellar travel on any kind of reasonable timescale.
(And I can shut off his powers.)
As fun as that is, such physics effects are usually ignored in comics. Unless we are talking about atmosphere reentry.
The white haired guy in the brown does change color and it looks like his ears changed too.
Good catch! Maybe the last panel is in Sydney’s vision and she did catch someone hiding using a non-material disguise.
You might be faster than *I* some day.
The way to check is to put in the verb and see if it is still good English. Compare:
“You might be faster than me [am] some day.”
“You might be faster than I [am] some day.”
[end grammar Nazi]
If it’s good enough for Will, “A man no mightier than thyself or me…” but with considerable reputation with teachers of English, then I’m going to have to accept that treating “than” as a preposition is at least as valid as treating it as a conjunction. ^_^
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Than
[end counter rant]
I read the other day that the guys who edited Hitler’s speeches were literal grammar Nazis.
When Sydney grabbed the true sight orb, the guy with the brown hat and jacket in the crowd turned blue.
Was that intentional or an accident?
Cake reference! I like Cake. “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” was a fave, but it got a little old as the theme for “Chuck”. (Yes, I’m a nerd.)
Thanks, Dave. See you all next week.
Mach 4 at what altitude? It’s about 3000mph at sea level, 2640mph at 36,000′, and drops steadily as you climb above 50,000′.
Also I suspect it doesn’t have a progress bar for a reason. Sydney would exploit a progress bar to heck and back once she worked out what she needed to do to grind her xp.
That’s an easy thing to exploit. All Sydney has to do is find people with glowing punctuation marks above their heads…These are NPC Questgivers & all she has to do is accomplish a few quest for XP bonuses.
Nah, they would be “missions”, not “quests”. Fantasy heroes go on quests, super heroes go on missions. ^_^
Well, military also go on “missions.” Archon IS a new branch under the DoD, so…..
Hm my “Possibly incoming Superfight Sense” is tingling,
in the two panels with the crowd is a guy with brown hat and top.
He seems to change the color of the skin *gets the popcorn*
Oh, dunno.. while an illusion may have been seen through, they are still an impressive distance away from each other. Sydney will need good eyes to notice that one guy waaay over there changed skin color somewhat.
Especialy when he doesn’t look up.
Don’t get me started on one of my favorite wrong if you think about it powers, Wolverine’s claws. I can accept that they’re made of up breakable metal. And that they’re very sharp. So how exactly does he use them to effortlessly cut through anything? Is he strong enough to push them through thick metal plates? Not really. Do they generate some kind of power field that can disrupt the molecular structure of what he’s cutting? Not that I’ve ever seen. This would be like someone well trained with a katana hitting the aluminum side of an M113 APC. The katana is very sharp and far harder than the metal the tank is made of, but all he would do is gouge it not slice right through. At best Wolvering would be able to scratch anything, which makes him more annoying than impressive.
The moral of the story is, ignore physics when comic books are involved.
Eh. There’s a long tradition of well trained swordsmen being able to cut iron in fantasy.
>>The katana is far harder than the metal the tank is made of
Hahaha, no.
If you want to go technical, the problem is that while the edge might leave a mark on tank’s armor, the rest of the sword is way too think to fit into this chink.
With unbreakable metal, you have the ability to make the entire blade very, very thin. Ideally you make monomolecular edge AND the entire blade.
Supermans powerless is still totally OP. The guy is scarily OP once you think about it.
Deathbattle recently estimated his average travel speed to be somewhere around 1,000,000 c – lowballed.
But the part where he heard a acoustic signal over 25 Lightyears instantly was way more impressive!
About the Flash:
It seems he still has to accelerate/decelerate. While his acceleration is unrealistic, he can’t just go from stand to 1c in the blink of an eye.
Also he might have to pick a route without people&cities in the way, go mostly straight and the like.
I always asumed his maneuverability decreases as his speed increases past a certain level.
Yes anywhere within an hour is accurate enough. That said many distances would be significantly reduced by the fact they are based out of Texas.
And an excellent reason to get out of Texas too…. :P
No one’s mentioned the selfie teen twins…posing perfectly for a selfie then next panel they suddenly DUCKFACE… If Sydney sees that she’s gonna do more than photobomb them.
Damn, I knew Dave was obsessed with realism in his comic, but this is getting grotesque! :D