Grrl Power #387 – A noble investment embiggens the smallest wallet
Deus claiming to be the 98th largest economy in the world sounds crazy, but the fact is that the top 10 wealthiest people in the world each have more money than the GDPs of the bottom 100 nations. Even having “only” 1 billion means you have more money in the bank (assuming all your assets are liquid) than the annual gross income of the bottom 14 countries, at least in 2015. Now, a lifetime of personal wealth accumulation does not compare to the annual income of a country. The next year that country will generate that much revenue all over again (assuming global economic stability) so personal wealth vs. GDP is not a real comparison. Still it makes for a cool brag, and Deus may be throwing it out there to test the general economic acumen of the room. But probably mostly to brag. Also remember his claim takes place in a flashback to a decade-ish ago, cause otherwise people will try and look up exactly how much money he’s claiming to have and I don’t have the time or frankly the interest to work up a historical timeline of his wealth. It’s double digit billions, probably less than Batman at this point, but with not nearly as much tied up in themed private fighter jets. Every time I see a Batwing get shot down in a Justice League cartoon, I can’t help but think that’s got to be like what, $20-30 million dollars easily? F-16s are something like $17 million, and they’re made on an assembly line. Batwings are all custom built and dare I say it, artisanal?
Also keep in mind that most of what Deus is saying here is a sales pitch. Being skeptical that the king of a sliver of a nation could become the richest men in Africa is probably sensible. Of course, who knows what Deus’s plans really are? Besides the Shadow. That guy knows. I mean, it’s his job.
As per requests from last week, here is the money map from the talk show’s set. (updated with the kr symbol over Sweden) I will admit there are a few patches I used the “Unspecified Currency Symbol” in a few places: ¤ mostly because I had already spent at least 2 hours on the map and it was getting really tedious and I needed to finish it to get the backgrounds done, and also because there are a few spots where there are a bunch of small countries right next to each other and the size of the font I was using to make it remotely legible in the background of the comic meant their symbols wouldn’t show up unless they were all the same across their contiguous area. I can probably fix it if anyone is terribly put out about it since most of the work is done already. I can also do one with the country borders showing if there’s any particular demand for it. I only hope the symbols I used are current. I did just enough googling to get the map presentable. One thing I learned while doing this is that the US dollar and the peso (some pesos, not all) both use the $ symbol, which is slightly disappointing, but obviously made my job easier, or it would have if my source listed the symbols and then all the countries that used it instead of country then symbol. :/
I didn’t get a chance to update the vote incentive because I had to get two double pages drawn this week, which put me slightly behind but I’ll get to it. I want to see it colored as well.
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.
The Philippines uses a peso symbolized by a doubly crossed P, but doesn’t have large enough landmasses for it to be really visible.
Eastern Europe doesn’t use the euro, but it’s all kind of mixed up. The Czech Republic uses crowns, Hungary uses forints, and Romania uses lei (which have the unusual distinction of having a short enough name to not require a symbol). I’d at least add the lei to the map.
Okay I am predicting he tells people the scar is from dueling with “naked blades” rather than practice blades. Hence the “X”. It’s what any guy with a huge ego would do regardless of the real origin of the scar.
This is why I’m calling tattoo. He seems more than vain enough to get a tattoo like that just to both “look cool” and to work into the whole Deus ex machina thing he has going on.
Maybe if he had an unjustified ego and just a poser, but his ego is totally justified and thus he doesn’t need to get a fake ‘scar’ to ‘look cool’
Also egotistical enough to duel with naked blade in order to get a duelling scar. If you recall, the main purpose of Prussian naked blade fencing was to get cool scars. Surprisingly few people died.
Now see This guy knows how to start, and micromanage, a world dictatorship.
If I had money like that, I’d absolutely find a break-away region in some African country to buy, hire some security company to become the law enforcement and military there and have me a real-life game of Civilization 4 with advanced start.
actually scratch buying, I’d just hire the company to invade and bribe neighbouring countries’ officials to look the other way while the invasion takes place…
Funny thing. There are a couple of small For Rent areas that the news has talked about over the years. For so much per day/week, someone can be king or queen complete with their own currency.
I honestly can’t remember where to find those articles now.
Is that Powerball jackpot still up for grabs?
?
Yes it is.
1.4 bil over 30 years, or a lump sum of $870mill.
Last estimate.
Why Africa? Fairly sure there are enough regions in the USA who would be willing to do that :p
those kill-joys called “the Feds” most likely wouldn’t like that very much & I’d have to bribe most of the Congress; might as well take over USA while I am bribing politicians, but then I’d have to start fixing everything I think is wrong in USA, and considering I wanted a real-world Civ 4 -game I’d probably choose the “nuke it & start from scratch” -solution…
See? Dictators have been given a bad rep by overpriced PR firm of losers: not all dictators are evil or bad, they simply have a vision for their country and won’t let anyone mess it up
If nothing else. He’s making a profit too. And if the country prospers, they’ll be thankful to him. Win-Win. Not exactly a philanthropist, but the results wouldn’t be argued with.
Dave, put this comment in the ‘character style’ folder.
In panel 3 D’s nose and mouth match up fine. In panel 6 when you went for the (harder to draw) upward angle they appear to be slightly off alignment. The nose is also wider, but this may be due to foreshortening.
Not complaining, just noticing a stylistic change.
P.S. In the last page you wrote that you didn’t want to pin down Deus as his first or last name. In the previous visit to his office Harem referred to him as ‘Mr. D.’ which adds evidence towards the ‘last name’ theory.
Double P.S. That page also showed a samurai sword in his office. Perhaps a visual clue as to how he got his distinctive facial feature? If so, it looks like he is even worse with a sword than Dabbler.
Speaking of stylistic changes, I see several subtle tweaks to D’s face that suggest to me that he’s younger. Sharper chin, more prominent eyes. Subtle, but well done.
not sure he’d be worse than dabs, i mean she lost a hand and an eye. that’s a noticeable fraction of her mass, whether or not she replaced them with cybernetics.
The style ‘errors’ in panel six is, as you said, due to ‘foreshortening’ and for added dramatics ie, not an error but a deliberate style choice
The fact Abbey called him “Mr. D.” doesn’t indicate anything, Harley calls Joker “Mistah Jay” afterall
When Harem calls him ‘mr.D.’, I totally heard her saying it like Harley Quinn says ‘mr.J’…maybe that’s just me.
Yeah, those angles are hard to get. I still get hung up on stuff like that. I guess my brain doesn’t think 3 dimensionally very well. I’m like Khan in that regard. The further off the x-axis a face it is, the tougher it is to keep all the parts looking consistent.
That “artisanal” link was -not- what I was expecting….
Coming out of lurking to note – as someone who grew up in Zaire/DRC during that time period, this comic comes across a bit weird to me. I’m thrilled someone mentions the country, but the premise (that a warlord was able to carve out – and keep – a territory from that area without anyone noticing until too late) doesn’t ring true to me. Unless the new country was approximately the size of the Dutchy of Grand Fenwick, I just can’t see it being overlooked like that. And if it was that size, it would have been steam-rolled by the hordes of bandits, refugees, and soldiers of various factions all running around in that area.
At the same time, it’s always cool to see DRC mentioned, especially since it, it’s economy and resources, is becoming increasingly significant to modern life. If “Galytn” includes a portion of DRC’s uranium deposits or Coltan, that alone could give it some major economic leverage.
Incidentally, I agree with the posters that say that “Galytn” doesn’t sound African. Mostly because ‘ytn’ is just not a sequence of letters likely to come up in Bantu languages. Even adding a vowel between the t and n would be a major improvement.
Anyway, it’s pretty cool to see a reference to the country where I grew up. I’ll go back to lurking now.
A couple things, namely: the warlords in that region didn’t have someone like ‘Deus’ to buy protection nor lived on a world that had ‘real life’ superheroes
Also, ‘ytn’ is not a sequence of letters likely to come up in any language, not even English
Now that you have ‘de-lurked’, there is no reason to go back to lurking :D
Maybe he can just rename it ‘The Republic of Deus” (not to be confused with the Democratic Republic of Deus) Too bad the territory probably does not have a coastline. He could could call the region “The Holy Sea”.
Kidding aside, DaveB’s bio says he lives in the Dallas area. There is a section there called ‘Galatyn Park’. I think this is most likely the etymological origins of the ersatz empire carved out by Deus and his wanna be warlord. https://www.visitdallas.com/listings/Galatyn-Park/7394/
I picked that area sort of arbitrarily after looking over a map of Africa for a while. Originally I was thinking of something costal, around the Senegal – Togo area, but a scant amount of research led me to think the political instability of Zaire would make for a more plausible secession. There are probably a lot of spots in Africa which could have fit that bill, but I also thought any stretch of the African coast would have been more vigorously defended against warlord trying to carve them up because of shipping concerns. Deus needed a place in which he could begin to do what he needed to without too much interference.
Thanks for replying!
You’re quite right, really. In fact, one of the things keeping that region unstable is a few people who keep trying to do just that! And at the same time, there are quite a few businessmen interested in doing exactly what Deus is doing, though on a much smaller scale. DRC has seen a great deal of interest recently from the business community. Which is why, scary as it is, this idea is almost laughably realistic. Actually, I can’t really think of another area in Africa that would work better, unless he took over Malawi. (Malawi is a real-world African nation that is one of, if not the, poorest countries on the planet) The problem with that idea (beyond the issue of having him take over a real-world country) is that, unlike eastern DRC, there’s not much in Malawi for a businessman to exploit.
So, I guess I should take back my initial statement. It still seems odd to me, but not any more than any of the other fantastic fictions necessary to the world.
Next page: Sydney is curled up asleep in bed. Anvil suddenly opens Sydney’s door and calls out like a drill sergeant.
Sydney: Zzzz…breathe Zzzz
Lt. Cassidy: Okay, sleepyhead! Rise and shine! Time to greet the morning.
Sydney: mumbleI’ll get up in five minutes, Mom.
Next panel: Anvil is holding Sydney tightly by her right ankle, letting her dangle from Kenya’s horizontal arm. Anvil is blushing due to the list of invectives and expletives coming from Sydney.
Anvil: You keep wiggling around like that and I just might drop you. So, calm down!
Anvil tosses Sydney back onto the bed.
Anvil: You have 15 minutes to get ready for P.T. That means you are on the track in your P.T. gear in 14 minutes. You will shower after this morning’s workout. Now move it! Daylight’s a-wasting!
Anvil closes the door gently as she leaves. Sydney scrambles around so she is sitting up, with straight arms are supporting her upper body and her legs are out front of her.
I like the fact that Deus wears his tie in a Trinity knot.
Clearly he has a lot of money, because he can buy a custom tie. I’m not quite as big as him, and I totally can’t tie a trinity knot because I don’t have ties long enough.
I have the opposite problem. I topped out at 5’5″, and they don’t make ties for adults
that short.
I have the opposite problem. I topped out at 5’5″, and they don’t make ties for adults
that short.
This double post brought to you by Amazon Fire.
Deus tu parcus
Your comment about Batman reminded me of a great column that Chris Sims writes over at Comics Alliance. Specifically, this one: https://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-250-misinformation-about-batman/
The main reason is that it brings up the whole stealth jet issue and Bruce Wayne’s wealth. Rather then try and paraphrase it, I’d really suggest checking it out firsthand.
It does bring up an interesting point though. In Marvel Comics, there’s always been the idea that Doom has done a lot to make Latveria into a haven of prosperity in Europe, but most of the times when it’s portrayed, the citizens dress and act and seem to live like they’re in the middle of the 18th century, so maybe Victor could take some lessons from Deus here.
Just because they are prosperous, they have to give up their hundreds of years of national apparel? o_O
Oh, I’m all for rocking out a pair of lederhosen, just that it seems that Doom’s idea of ‘propserity’ is to force his people into being caricatures of European peasantry while keeping all the technology and modern living for himself.
Who says it’s a caricature? Or that he keeps all the technology and modern living for himself? Because they still have wooden fronted buildings instead of concrete and steel featureless boxes? o_O
Batman comics are just uniformly terrible with this topic. Even this guy just handwaves it away with ““The Wayne Fortune” is a nebulous concept that exists as a plot contrivance”.
However, in fairness, most superhero comics are uniformly terrible with real world concepts. Example: In the real world, the cities where DC superheroes are based in would have 9/11-level casualties every 2-3 weeks due to the number of buildings that explode, have superheroes/villains thrown through them, used as baseball bats, etc. Marvel’s New York would be a ghost town by now as their casualty rate would be a 9/11 equivalent every couple days.
Money is just another thing that nobody really discusses and is just a plot contrivance like Batman being able to build jets/satellites (Thinking Brother Eye here)/Robot armies without there being a single audit trail. (Except when Ras al Ghul is involved).
The villains don’t appear to be very smart about their resources either. For instance, take the old Superman cartoon ‘The Mechanical Monsters’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mechanical_Monsters
The villain has the technical expertise to develop an army of robots with an independently operational A.I, a powerful self-contained power supply, audio, visual, tactile, and self navigation abilities, as well as built in weaponry. Oh, and did I mention that they can also fly? And what does the villain do with these robots? He uses them to rob a jewelry store. The cost of research and development alone let alone the manufacturing costs would far exceed any return he could hope to get from the robbery.
If this guy is in it for profit he could just offer to sell the advanced technology that went into creating the robots for enough money to hire Bruce Wayne as his own personal butler.
Yeah, that’s what Dave was talking about here.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1904
or like those old Captain Planet cartoons where the villain would threaten to run an oil tanker aground unless he was paid a few million and not one henchman would say “Why don’t we just sell the oil? This way, we still get the payday and a blue guy in tights doesn’t beat us up.”
or the worst offender in recent history: Maya Hansen and Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3.
In the movie, Maya says she had to go to Killian for funding because a chemical compound that can cure virtually every known genetic defect in the world, can regrow missing limbs, and can create dragon people who can tear an Iron Man suit in two with their bare hands or melt through same suit evidently has nobody else who would be interested in funding such research. Also, while Tony Stark can fix the formula while drunk and banging Maya, nobody else in the world can do so after 13 years.
Killian decides that, instead of the power, influence, and money that the CEO of a corporation with such a compound would have, he’d rather be able to control the War on Terror.
SERIOUSLY?!? The stupid from that movie….it…it just burns. As I said, the superhero genre is just written in a uniformly terrible way with such subjects.
You’ve missed one of the points from the above linked article, namely that when the villain spends his time signing business deals and sitting around being rich, it makes for a bad story, at least in a comic book. No one wants to read a comic book solely about the villain making money selling a medical cure. Besides the fact that the lack of fights and super cool Dragon abilities would make it boring, there wouldn’t be any conflict for the protagonist! The villain has to do something illegal/wrong, or else what would drive the plot?
The same goes for Stark solving the formula, or Wayne spending impossible amounts of money, or thousands of people not dying in super fights every day in NYC- those things, in those storylines, make for a plot that has, respectively, a protagonist with special abilities which make them uniquely capable of resolving the conflict, a lack of boring scenes involving an accountant going through tax files, and a sustainable environment where people bother to live in NYC and death still has some impact story wise.
Arguing about these details in a story where people can lift buildings and see through walls and regenerate limbs is missing the point- these works don’t exist to provide an accurate simulation of a world with special abilities, they exist to tell a good story.
As long as they do that, I’m cool with it.
“Its not about making money, its about TAKING money!”
– Dr Horrible
Of course, that motive only works for a Card Carrying Villain from an organization like The Evil League of Evil.
For me, the artwork does not make it look like the X is a scar from cuts like you would get in a sword fight. It would be a very unusual kind of tattoo, as well. It looks rather more like a scar/marking a comic book characters might have gotten from exposure to “science”. What’s more, Dave is very silent about the source of it in the comic, in the texts and in the comments… so it probably has some significance.
Also, some commenters have already voiced a suspicion that Deus might be immortal or at least have an unnaturally long lifespan, due to his apparent lack of aging.
But them both together and what have you got? Exactly.
So here’s my guess: Deus was actually present when The Event (TM) happened. The Event (TM) that brought Super Powers into the world at least as long ago as the Lincoln presidency. That’s where he got that scar. Whether he was part of a team, whether he was involved, how he is related to the Eventers (the ones responsible) I don’t know, but somehow, he was present.
One possibility: Super powers are an unexpected side effect. He opposes the Eventers for what The Event (TM) was actually about. Now he uses his ability to learn and to accumulate wealth to prepare for an attack against the Eventers. Thus his glee when Archon was announced was due to his approval of supers becoming more open, showing their powers. His future army is beginning to form, without them realizing it yet.
And he likes to think about himself as a villain because the end goal is, after all, the destruction of the Eventers. If you ever anticipated destroying something, you can probably understand the devilish fun that can bring, even if it’s not actually evil. He just lives that fun because after all, he can, so why not enjoy it.
Of course I could be lightyears away from the “truth”, but I love this version of the story. If it’s not the truth to be told here it is at least true in some parallel universe, which is good enough for me.
To me it looks like a knidling-mark. It’s rare in the last couple of centuries, but up until, I dunno, maybe sometime in the 1740s or so? It was not terribly unusual for someone to be marked as a knidling, or criminal, for doing something heinous that didn’t quite justify killing them and in the absence of a prison to put them in. Knidling-marks took various forms – sometimes a brand on the cheek or forehead, sometimes scarification like Deus shows. The point of the deal was that nobody should ever mistake the knidling for a normal, trustworthy person again.
Neal Stephenson revived the idea in ‘Snow Crash’ with a villain who has the words ‘POOR IMPULSE CONTROL’ tattooed on his forehead, because he was found guilty by a court in a jurisdiction too poor to afford a prison.
The thing is, a knidling-mark doesn’t work if the knidling outlives the culture within which it had meaning.
So, from what i’m getting, the made-up state above formed sometime amidst or a little before the upheavals of the civil wars in Rwanda and Zaire in ’96-97, about….. what, almost 19-20 years ago depending on how you count. Damn, i’m feeling like an old bastard now.
I’m right there with you. I keep finding myself explain things to my 18 year old niece, expecting her to know about them. Then realize they happened over a decade before she was born.
Then I go out side and yell at those damn kids to GET OFF MY LAWN!
Try explaining black & white TV with only 3 or 4 channels, along with am radio.
AM Radio isn’t that hard to explain, considering that most radios still do have an AM setting, and there are some AM stations still operating (I can pick up at least five of them, though I only seldom listen to one of them and never listen to the other four.)
Today it’s mainly home to talk radio, and nobody under 50 listens to that.
Either that or sports commentary, and I don’t listen to that. There are exactly a dozen AM stations that “may be within listening range” of me; four are sports, three are news/talk, two are gospel music, one is country, and the “partridge in the pear tree” (the one I sometimes listen to) is Classic Hits.
Wait, you had 3 channels?
4,5, and 9
NBC, ABC, & CBS.
4 if you counted PBS.
Same here, with only minor changes…
3 (ABC), 6 (NBC), 12 (CBS), 13 (PBS)
In Los Angeles, when I last had a black and white television, they had a whopping 13 channels, if you counted the 5 UHF channels.
Let’s be honest. The people who play the sort of game Indinge and Deus are playing here do not tend to die of old age. The distribution of power among them is rarely up to the challenges of maintaining the trust between them, so the relationship formed is unstable. Most of the people who offer the kind of ‘development’ that Deus is offering do not take a long enough perspective to be truly beneficial to the people living in the places they administer. And many of the people who accept the kind of development that Deus is offering turn out to be kleptocrats who would rather pocket the investment than allow it to be invested in such a way as to bear returns, leading to understandable friction.
That said, there is nothing with the offer in principle. Hard-working people given first-rate education and health resources can provide a first-class return on investment while also enriching themselves vastly more than they can without it. It’s a shame that in real life issues of trust, greed, and excessively ambitious neighbors usually conspire to undermine the plan.
Reading between the lines Indinge senior is no longer with Deus, his son is.
I would not bet on that. Indinge Senior is/was a conqueror, looking to expand, and conquerors tend to take a considerably longer view than most kleptocrats. The political atmosphere of the country in question was probably such that he would have been thrilled to death to have a stable, friendly, and “friendly” official in place to make things happen. It is unusual, but about one time in fifty, the general keeps his word, and lets things go ahead, especially when the investor does not own the entire country’s economy, which appears to be the case here. If I understand the details of the contract correctly, Deus owns the roads, schools, and utilities, which means that he represents something like a third of the country’s GDP. Since he is running this as a for-profit enterprise, he will charge for those services, but that will still leave the vast majority of the country’s wealth for the general to tax.
If I had to guess, I’d say the senior general got voted out, or retired. This is not a quick project we’re talking about here–it would take a minimum of ten years to turn a profit, if not twenty. And with Deus’s support, the son would have a firm enough power base that Daddy would not have to stick around and be paranoid all the time. Effectively, Deus now rules the country, while at the same time not having to kill anybody to get it. Big risk. Bigger payoff.
DaveB, the US money symbol has 2 vertical lines through it. The symbol with one line is recognized in most financial circles as an international symbol for money.
The U.S. dollar sign can be either one or two strokes. It just depends on what’s popular at the moment. Growing up, I’d swear the double stroke was everywhere, but today you almost never see it. I’m still trying to figure out exactly when the transition happened.
The double line is still the standard for USD for anyone who deals with money on a regular basis. You’re seeing the single line dollar sign more frequently because it’s less effort to put a single generic money sign in a tablet alphabet than to include all the various symbols other nations use.
Being skeptical that the king of a sliver of a nation could become the richest men in Africa is probably sensible. Of course, who knows what Deus’s plans really are? Besides the Shadow. That guy knows. I mean, it’s his job.
It’s actually not as far fetched as it sounds. There are plenty of massively rich warlords in Africa. It’s easy when you take so much of the wealth in your territory that your people are perpetually on the edge of starvation. Like I said previously though if you pour an advanced tech industry into a 3rd world country the kind of wealth generation he’s talking about is possible. That decade that it took was probably mostly spent raising the general population’s intelligence level through free training programs so that he has a work force capable of filling roles in industry beyond farm work and basic goods manufacturing.
“There are plenty of massively rich warlords in Africa.”
I know. I keep getting these emails saying that one or another of them needs me to help him get his money out of the country. Which appears totally legit, because total strangers are way more capable of doing this than private banking cartels, or organized crime or drug syndicates.
I normally reply by flying over and “retrieving” the funds from them physically if the funds exist but they only existed once (and that was less than $5k when the offer was $800k), and the rest didn’t want to go to the bank with me to do the transaction like they didn’t have the money at all.
Now, see, if this was real, he’d be running against Donald Trump in an election for President…and I’d vote for him.
On a related note, if I ever win the lottery, I’m going to hire some mercenaries, and do just that to, say…Somalia. I’ve even got it all figured out. Make a Warlords Council, with each Warlord plus the head of state having a seat. Give everybody in the country the chance to declare allegiance to a particular warlords for the next five years, with everybody who doesn’t back a warlord who qualifies to sit on the Council owing allegiance to the head of state. Throw in an independent judiciary, and you’ve got the beginnings of a pretty respectable tribal-based democracy…and all without having to fight a massive civil war to do it.
Saw this up top and had a bit of a laugh: https://imgur.com/JkjD0Eo
I personally love that Deus is sporting a trinity knot on his tie!!! now i have to go back and see if his last appearance was too!
Custom fighter jets would be easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars each, if not hundreds of BILLIONS. R&D is EXPENSIVE, and making a prototype that actually WORKS AS INTENDED? *very* expensive. Look at the F-35; they’re STILL having issues with it. One could make snarky remarks about “government cost overruns” but even if you cut the cost by a factor of ten for inefficiency that Bruce Wayne wouldn’t tolerate, it’s still gonna be hundreds of billions of dollars development and testing.
Now, given what Wayne Enterprises does, one could postulate that what he’s doing is CUSTOMIZING an existing design that his company already manufactures. THAT would be a lot cheaper, but — as you say — is still going to be well into the tens of millions range.
I’m sure this has been pointed out but F-16’s cost way more than 17mill (think 40-60mill for a block 60 F-16). A custom aircraft however must factor in dev costs, just the modifications from block 50/52 to block 60 on the F-16 totaled 3billion. So if you want a low production vehicle like a batmobile, be prepared to pay a arm and a leg.
The worst part about this page is that Deus’s scheme is still far more ethical than the crap Bect@l and related companies pull.
I wonder if Batman 3D prints his planes these days?