Grrl Power #400 – Holy blasphemy Batman!
Batman is a powerful motivator, but like any aphorism or drug, the subject will develop a tolerance for it. Without the extra motivation though, I’m not sure Sydney could actually climb that rope, even doing the foot thing. It’s hard to say as I’ve never been a skinny but unfit 22 year old nerd girl before.
Someone has plenty to talk about at Nerd Confession. Now say 20 Hail Wonder Womans and 10 Our All-Fathers. Or should that be 20 Hail Jordans. Cause… Green Lantern is Hal… Jordan? >cough<
Hmm. Nerd Confessions. I’ve never seen Battlestar Galactica. At least not the new series. I saw the old one when it was in syndication, so when I saw the pilot for the new series, I was put off by the infiltrator cylons. A sci-fi trope that I think is played out. I mean, I get it. Aliens (or cyborgs or whatever) that look human to infiltrate us is pretty easy on the effects budget. I’ve also only seen bits and pieces of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’m familiar with most of the characters and I’ve seen a few episodes here and there, but I’ve never sat down and binged it. I’m probably short on a few critical novels as well, like… well, lots of them actually, but stuff like Hyperion by Dan Simmons and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson spring to mind.
What are the alarming gaps in your nerd vitae literacy? We’ve all got them. Stuff you know you should read/watch but have never gotten around to? Confess and be absolved! No self-flagellation necessary, unless you’re into that. I’m not here to judge.
Holy crap, I’ve drawn 400 of these things! Yes, I know it’s still day 3. I would promise the days will get shorter, page wise, as we get more of the early setup out of the way, but… clearly I’m a bad judge of these things. It’s my intent to eventually get to slightly more traditional story arcs where several days or even weeks can pass between them, but there’s still too much good stuff to mine from Sydney going through basic. I may decide to start saving some of that stuff up for flashbacks though. And before you point out that the whole comic is a flashback, I would suggest that maybe the first few pages were a flash-forward.
Patreon supporters can view this page at twice the size! ($1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :) I will post this page when I get up (then immediately go back to sleep.)
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.
Too MUCH motivation, this time…..
It’s ok, Sydney. after all, you are still merely mortal because the orbs give you the powers, just as Bruce Wayne’s fortune gives gadgets to the Batman. Let’s face it though, there’s nothing merely about Batman & it took several years of training before he even donned the Batsuit for the first time. You, Sydney, are still on your first day…Give it time.
:)
Plus, I refuse to believe that Batman doesn’t have a healing factor.
Naa, no healing factor, probably just some decent medical knowledge I’m thinking. That & a very high pain threshhold, that’ll keep you going for a while…
I can vouch for the high pain threshhold keeping you going. One time my ex ran over my foot with a full cooler on his way out the door – he thought I was out of the way and I wasn’t. It hurt, I ignored it, two days later (been doing things as normal the whole time) it’s hurting worse so I figure I should get it checked out. Turned out I’d been walking around on a bone bruise.
You think that is bad? I once broke my left pinky toe on an old sturdy chest and spent days not trying to “over react to a stubbed toe”. Now it is rotated 10 or so degrees further counter-clockwise than it should be
…and Alfred was a medic or some such in the British Army.
Not just any old department of the British military, but the SAS.
And worked closely with the French Undgerground, against Nazi occupation. Which begs the question: How the hell is he still alive after all these years? the war ended a bit over 75 years ago & he would have needed to be old enough to actively participate before that.
They’ll probably retcon him sooner or later as having served in Desert Storm or something rather than World War 2.
When you say something against your own fandom…
Told ya Sydney’s big eyes would return :P
Don’t think we don’t see you back there Math, you cheating cheater :P
I don’t think years of intensive martial arts training counts as cheating.
Then Morph can’t be accused of cheating either
Math isn’t cheating, he’s doing the course no-hands, upping the difficulty for him. Monkey bars would be interesting tho, walk on top or swing using feet/knees?
“…upping the difficulty for him.
Not by a whole lot, apparently…
How is it cheating? As far as I know the point of the exercise is to get over the wall. Just because he can do it without using his hands doesn’t make it cheating.
Most likely he finds the course too easy, so he puts self imposed challenges.
Self-imposed challenges. Oh dear, don’t tell me he’s turning into him!
Now i want to see fanart of Math as Mighty Guy
I’m thinking he’s doing the course with only one leg,.. so he does 4 laps? One for each limb?
*watches Math do his 5th lap bouncing on his head…*
and his 6th, as per the 5th, just….
yeah, i can see you cringing now.
Might Guy would be Math’s perfect training partner too.
Which lap would it be when Math does the “buttocks-walk?”
Dabbler’s
rimshots then slaps self for making a bad joke accidentally.
Adams: And I thought. If I could light my own farts I could fly to the moon, or at least Uranus. But if I couldn’t do that at least I could use my penis as a pogo stick and that might be a way of getting around.
I’m loving how nonchalant he looks lol
I think sending the new recruits with Matt to the trainging dismotivates them a lot.
Does this mean he’s sick of looking at naked boobs now? I mean, the order was to stare at them until he was, right? I don’t recall any caveats like “except for when we’re doing PT.” Mind you, there also weren’t any caveats like “except for when you go to the bathroom” or “except for when you’re sleeping” so I guess I oughta cut him a little slack.
How says he is not looking at them right now?
They DO have glasses with Holographic overlay. Maybe he is testing one of the new versions to look at boobs while doing this training free handed?
You know why he needs his hands free… ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Does it have something to do with the fact that his hands are clasped behind his back?
Okay, think about that one for a second & I’ll have the Brain Bleach™ ready…
How do we know he’s not looking at them now? Simple, he’s doing the course beautifully. It was only what, 2 days since the big Super fight? From what i’ve seen of you meatsacks, it takes something extreme to change behaviour that severe that quick. during the super fight, he was so distracted by boobs he did nothing about getting a knee to the face.
If he was watching boobs via glasses-HUD, he’d be running face first into that wall…
Actually, maybe that’s exactly the type of training he needs? Have Math do a lap like he is now, use that as a baseline, then make him do 5 more with boobie-vision glasses-HUD, & if he isn’t close enough to his baseline, he gets punished. For extra difficulty, have someone like Maxima attack him randomly (with punishment still given), so he HAS to ignore the boobies or face both pain & punishment…
Actually him making it without hands is all the more impressive.
Her eyes in those last 2 panels are the best!
And gaps in my nerdery? Soooo much. I quit watching tv 10 years ago and stopped reading comics 20. So much gets talked about any more and I have no idea what’s going on. I only recently found out the Game of Thrones tv show was a thing. Never cared for the books myself. Now I hear about a Shannara tv show?! But made by MTv, ugh.
Really? I’d say the Arianna eyes she’s sporting in the bottom of Panel 2 are a lot more amusing. The kicked sad puppy eyes in the last panel come in a close second.
Similar to you, I stopped getting new comics something like 15 years ago…Haven’t even plugged in the TV for about 4 years & even for the 3 years before that was watching little other than documentaries & some WWE. I can’t afford Netflix and I’m soooo far behind with Dr. Who. (sob)
For those, who can’t afford Netflix there are always torrents.
I am currently on the second series of the first Doctor, never having watched the series. I now have a SIL who is a huge fan, so I have had to correct my ignorance.
So you are watching the old black and whites , huh?
Yeah–and enjoying them more than I thought I would. Even the reconstructed ones.
Good for you.
Well, I just set myself the goal to finally watch Babylon 5. We’ll see.
I like Math in the background being a total boss.
I wonder how many of the supers just jump over such a wall without sweating
Daredevil could complete this course blindfolded! Wolverine did it better at 200 years old, and Superman at 2 years old!
I see what you did there… :P
You made her cry. Good job.
Peggy is playing drill instructor right now, tears will happen.
Yeah, this is the first time I’ve seen or heard of a DI who actually apologizes without mean-minded sarcasm when making a recruit cry. Sydney’s really getting under everybody’s skin, isn’t she?
;)
Yeah, she’s become both the group mascot and little sister
And everyone is aware that she’s a special case, not really made for this kind of thing and abruptly new at it.
I have never seen even a single episode of original Star Trek.
You, sir, may hang your head in shame. (j/k)
J/k? Shouldn’t that be JTK? :)
I’m proud to say that I got the entire Star Trek ToS on VHS, from Colombia House.
:D
My first exposure was 5 episodes of TOS on the big screen–between age 8 and 11.
I lived on a USMC Recruit Depot, my folks din’t have a TV, and the depot theater had a matinee on Saturdays. I went one weekend, intending to sneak out and leave my little brothers there while I spent some time in the library, when, suddenly, instead of the inevitable and unending John Wayne western I was expecting–I got the Starship Enterprise. For Five GLORIOUS Weeks! I saw “Amok Time,” “Charlie X,” “The Way to Eden”, “I, Mudd,” and “A Taste of Armageddon.” The matinees went back to westerns after that, and never played anything else again, but I had been well and truly hooked.
The depot library also had a few of the Star Trek Photonovels, including “Trouble with Tribbles,” All Our Yesterdays” and “A Piece of the Action” and the paperback novelization collection which included “The Naked Time,” And that was it. I read other scifi to try to make up for the lack of Star Trek, and eventually became a fan of that as well.
Those memories had to sustain my Trek fandom until I was in high school and was able to find the paperbacks (I think I read “The New Voyages” before I finished collecting the Original Series’ novelizations) at yard sales. I never saw the series until the Columbia House VHS came out (Bless ’em!), but it never looked right on a TV screen.
A few years ago, I finally bought a projector so I could watch my Star Trek pre-CGI DVDs as the Great Bird intended, on a 120″ screen, the largest I could fit in the house.
Considering that Abrams reboot of ST turned it from a cerebral exercise into just another action flick, I was not surprised to find out:
https://deadline.com/2013/05/video-jj-abrams-never-liked-star-trek-jon-stewart-500176/
He says he didn’t like it because he couldn’t understand it…which also says something about his lack of intellectual capacity.
I feel sorry for the new generations that are unable to read, watch or otherwise enjoy good intelligent science fiction.
Still haven’t seen the new films–, though I read the comic backstory. I understand lots of people like it, but I guess I’m afraid it will taint the series in my mind, much as other remakes of the few shows I watched in my younger days.
Oh, I liked it as an action movie, but it just wasn’t Star Trek. Merely dressed up to look like it.
we need a like button so bad for these comments. +1 just doesn’t cut it.
you are not missing much it was full of cheesy plots and over acting. now the movies are grate (just save the motion picture for last [and after you see 2001 a space odyssey])
-denigrates tos for cheesy plots and over acting
-recommends the new movies
splendid, good sir!
no we were talking about the original series i ment the movies that go along with them. i never voiced my opinion on the new stuff
Aww, she’s going to make Sydney cry. Am I the only one getting the sense that she’s getting a bit more attached to Sydney than she’d be willing to admit? With the amount of attention Peggy’s giving her, I get the feeling like Peggy’s got a puppy now. :P
Don’t believe Peggy is giving Sydney any more attention than she would to any other new recruit at the bottom (below bottom?) of the fitness scale
just remember its normal for the military to push you until you brake so it may have been intentional to push sydney till she cried
I do not know jack about roleplaying/tabletop games.
I only know what a D20 is through simple observation, i don’t know what races have what buffs. I only found out what a Drow was from reading Tales of MU 3 years ago (which is also where i learned of Drizzt Do’Urden)
For me the only dice that exists is a 6 sided one. I always get confused when people talk about D numbers
I was really into D&D so far as to get the entire Boxed Set rules & a the hardbacks for AD&D 1st edition. I even got the original Deities & Demigods before the bible-thumpers made them TSR edit a whole bunch of stuff out of it & rename it to Legends & Lore. At a good $25 a pop, I haven’t done anything about 2nd Edition yet…And probably never will, at my age now.
The Legends and Lore title was the bible thumpers. The edited content was various copyright owners threatening to sue TSR into oblivion.
Nerd confessions. I haven’t read or seen the final book/movies of the Harry Potter series. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of a few episodes of Doctor Who. I refuse to read past Feast for Crows until George R R Martin either finishes the series or drops dead after Robert Jordan chose the latter option.
I read the first book of Game of Thrones and found no reason to pick up the second. Or watch the series, but I’m another non-TV-watcher.
And my entire consumption of the superhero genre in the past 40 years: 1) Grrl Power. 2) El Goonish Shive, which barely even qualifies.
As far as my faulty memory serves me (this was something like 30 years ago, so I won’t feel too bad if I missed some details across that time span), all that was pulled was the Melnibonean mythos.
Yup, Michael Moorcock came at Gary Gygax with a vengeance, as well as the estate of H P Lovecraft for the Cthullu Mythos stuff that was in there.
Yeah, my book has that stuff in it. After that debacle was over with, I didn’t even bother to look at the corpse that was left behind…There was nothing pretty about what they did to it.
On my 3rd copy of it.
Had to sell first 2 cause I needed $ badly.
Never, I say NEVER! I’m going to have those books buried with me when I go! Not even my heirs shall sell them off!
you do know they are at 5th edition now right? i like 5e it is a lot faster and more streamlined. full disclosure i am a 5e dungeon master.
I haven’t tried 5th yet. 4th basically destroyed my regular gaming group and the remnants switched to Pathfinder. If the regulars would by into 5th, I might give it a shot, but everyone involved was so sick of 4e that only “hey guys, Pathfinder is basically 3.75 could get them back to the table. Even then, it really hasn’t been the same.
I’m still enough of a geek to at least be aware of its existence & to hear bits-n-pieces about it, but there’s no way I’ll be able to keep up with the D&D franchise. Age has a way of slowing people down, whether they like it or not.
So many games.
Not enough time or money.
Who wants to help me mug Trump?
Better idea. In the entryway of your house, hide a vibrating platform under the surface. Then, invite Bill Gates to come visit. Try to vibrate a couple hundred bucks out of his pockets. It literally is not worth his time to pick it up. (Someone once figured out the average amount of time it takes for a man his size to pick up a $100 bill. Turns out, he makes more than $100 in the amount of time it would take him to pick it up.)
While an amusing tale, he makes what he makes* at the same time as he picks up the $100 that fell out of his pocket, so it is still “worth his time” to do so. When I was a kid my father used to make all kinds of proclamations about how such and such activity was not worth his time due to his $/hour earnings. I always cringed and waited for someone to inform him that he wasn’t paid at all after hours or on the weekends and so that time was essentially valueless to him if he was going to insist on setting it equal to his $/hour rate, but it never happened.
* Now I’m wondering how whomever came up with this story calculated Gate’s earnings over time. Salary? Investment income? Both?
Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve been wondering the exact same thing for a long time.
I’m just the reverse. About the only kind of geek I am now is a table top Role Playing Game Geek.
Well, that and perl coder.
The original Deities and Demigods got thumped on FIRST for not getting permission for intellectual properties that were included (Michael Moorcock’s Elric / Melnibone Mythos and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos). Gygax took a soaking for that, both monetarily and against his nascent professional reputation.
After the Satanism fad of the mid 70’s (and by this I mean the fad of Satanists being the boogeymen of popular films and TV), anything smacking of religion / mythology from history (that was NOT Christianity) was severely demonized (sword-and-sorcery, as a genre, took a shellac-ing on the bookshelves at the local drug store). After the horrible Tom Hanks made-for-TV movie Mazes and Monsters went public, TSR made a tactical decision to step as much out of that spotlight as they could. Caving? You bet … but they survived where many others did not. Re-packaging themselves and their products resulted in HUGE growth for the company that only got stopped by a HORRIBLE book deal for their properties.
And about the same time, computer games got *good*, and that was the final nail in that coffin for TSR. :)
Buffs?…didn’t have them in my day…
I bought a “Deities and Demigods” with Elric removed, after seeing the original at someone’s house–I was so pissed. I haunted garage sales and book stores until I found a “real” copy. And then I bought “Legends and Lore,” along with all of the rulebooks with the new covers, but I still have my battered first copies to hand.
Later, I bought the 2e books, but never played them, as I started uni and lost touch with my old group. I started to buy 3e, but then didn’t bother.
Don’t! Just don’t apologise for drawing 400 pages that cover just 3 days, “The Mansion of E” did almost three times that number for just. ONE! day. and that was publishing one new page per day (and not saying there was anything wrong with that webic either), draw as many pages as you need to tell the story, not just to ‘move the story along and get to the good bits’, because, as we have seen, there have been vocal complainers complaining about every change of scene or location, this is your story, we are just along for the ride
I concur. DaveB is still establishing character conceptions (there’s quite a few of them), setting & the historical context of his world’s present day. Rome wasn’t built in a day (so to speak) so, to speak from the viewpoint of an RPG player & GM, it takes a while to create a world…Let alone a universe. Let’s face it, DaveB has already established that magic exists & works, so that already opens up entire worlds & dimensions as part of his story. Aliens walk the Earth, so that even expands upon Sydney’s entire universe, in conjunction with all of those others as well.
“That’s going to take time, sir.”
“Let it take time, lad.”
~Lt. Cmr. Sulu & Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott
Yep, it’s your story, so you take your time about it. If they don’t like it they can go draw their own cartoon, with hookers and blackjack…
The rest of us are enjoying it, don’t change to suit the loud and annoying.
I’ve yet to break the seal and let others see what I’m working on and frankly terrified of what some will say. But, as I’ve told others, you have to ignore the negatives and listen to the positives. (Well, listen to constructive criticism too sometimes, but ignore the loud mouth idiots).
My confession. I’ve never seen Firefly. It is only one series, so should get it over with.
one season and a movie to the rage of the scifi gods make more
yeah Dave, tell your story your way. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve enjoyed every page. I can’t say that about all the comics I’ve read. The only complaint I have is that I get antsy waiting for the next update..that’s on me though and I’ll keep reading this comic even if you post nothing for six months. I’ll still check it every day.
Getting antsy for new pages just means the story is that good
Only complaint so far, is all the ‘cut’ pages due to whiners and complainers
This is a joke well done.
As for my confession: I’m not actually a comic nerd.
I am 24 years old and never read a super hero comic (not counting webcomics in recent years). The only ones I read are Donald Duck
I also never saw Star Wars or Star Trek movies. I don’t care about Game of Thrones
I have owned a box-set of the first 4 seasons of GoT for about a year. Still in the cellophane, never watched an episode.
My confession:
I am old enough to have watched the original Star Wars trilogy in theaters, and now think they are laughably, MSTK3K-worthy bad, along with TOS and TNG of Star Trek.
I diss on anime constantly as being ridiculous and stupid, but my anime knowledge is Akira and Dragonball Z.
I constantly dog on comics for being “grimdark” or “so srs bznz”, but find they often tell better, more compelling, and in-depth stories.
I also find Monty Python to be incredibly boring as a general rule, with rare, fleeting bits of chuckle-worthy humor.
It’s a rare person (but intellectually/emotionally well-balanced) that can enjoy Monty Python AND Benny Hill.
;)
Let’s face it, even the most high-brow humor can sink in & make a person think in profound thoughts, but everyone can still use a break with a bit of down-n-dirty school-boy humor to take the edge off a bit.
Huh, I never thought of Benny Hill as particularly high-brow.
So, you are a hipster then
I may be a Nerd, but there is still a lot I have yet to get to. Often I am reminded of how I never watched Bablyon 5 whenever I watch early episodes of the Big Bang Theory.
Daniel here. Not big on comics here, only comics that have my attention are the Transformers Combiner Wars ones that are come with the Combiner limbs. Don’t collect every Transformer, but again Combiner Wars has my eye…
Only seen some Star Trek universe episodes for each series, but seen all Star Wars movies. No original expanded Star Wars Universe, have seen a good few Clone Wars (Saturday morning post-night-shift recharge) but no Rebels.
I hear Game of Thrones has tons of sex & incest…
Love Anime, even buy the DVD sets for series I wanna watch. They’re currently in a pile waiting for me to find the time… :(
Guess I’m a fan of many trades, master of none…
As for Screwball, I’m surprised he doesn’t rant on here about his guns & his “Mercenary” (paid to set off traps & get shot at) work for the Australia Government. That said, I told him about how America keeps having so many School Shootings we sometimes hear about them on the news, he mumbled something about the Cybertronian war & didn’t really post about his guns or work after…
There’s actually 4 Green Lanterns on Earth: Lantern Stewart (can’t remember his first name), Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, and (the original) Alan Scott. No, I’m not a big DC reader, I got this all from a fanfic.
Confessions: I’ve never watched Star Trek, in any form, except maybe up to 4 episodes because my dad was watching them as I passed by. I’ve never read a DC or Marvel comic. It seems that most things I reference as nerdy or sci-fi stuff I have read/seen is not pop culture, and stuff people expect me to have read/seen I’ve mostly never heard of. Stuff I think is best: online comics (like this one), The Chronicles of the Lensmen (6-book series), the Big Hero 6 film.
John Stewart is the black Green Lantern
John Stewart is a Green Lantern? So is that why he had to quit hosting The Daily Show?
Oh Lord, please let someone talk The Daily Show’s John Stewart into making a Green Lantern satire movie.
Preferably with an outrageous ethnic accent of some sort.
I thought that was Daffy Duck
Him too :D
you forgot about Kyle Rayner
There’s some confusion about which Lantern Corp (Red, Yellow, White, etc.) some of them are in now.
Just have her say the Green Lantern oath 20 times and she’ll be good.
actually.. there’s Seven. you forgot Kyle and the newest black GL (who for some reason uses a gun)
Hmm, always believed the first rung on those overhead ladder things were in reach of the starting platform… or did Sydney try for the second rung? o_O
She’s just really short.
Yeah, but if she was just jumping up, she would have landed back on the step, not face first in the bat-mud
The place was made for people who are all fit and over 6′ tall, excluding a few of the girls. Peggy is 5’4″, and Sydney is 5’0″. These are also made so that the first rung is not over the platform, because otherwise the platform will get in the way. So yeah, she’s just really short.
Looks like she may have tried a short-running leap, which is why she face-planted in the mud. Running Leaps rarely work, unless you are running from roof-top to roof-top.
Actually, seeing ArcSWAT chasing a ‘Bad-guy’, parkour style, from roof-top to roof top, could be interesting. If Sydney can’t fly for some reason, her Flight ball could still give her incredibly long leaps.
If Peggy was being generous, she could let Sydney use the Flight Ball long enough to reach the bars, then have her let go of the orb and make her way across. That would be cheating, but then again, how many times has Batman cheated?
either that, or, once Sydney has it down, start calling out orbs as she grabs each rung, imposing a penalty for getting the wrong orb in her free hand…
No, not flight orb, Molest-orb
Don’t feel bad about never watching the “Battlestar” reboot, it was rubbish (the ‘prequel’ was even worse)
but have you seen the one from the 80’s
Yes, saw it in the 80’s
The Original Series actually started in 1978 and only lasted, maybe 2 years. Then there were spin offs for a while, including the one set on Earth.
In the late 70’s there wasn’t a whole lot of really good Sci Fi on TV, BG was about the best there was. Though looking back on it, it was rather campy and a bit preachy.
Before that there was Space 1999, which was pretty good as well.
The true ‘jump the shark’ moment for the old Battlestar is when they added the robot dog.
https://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Muffit.
In Space 1999 they had a tendency to go overboard on the special effects to make things exciting by blowing things up. I always kept wondering where they got all the additional ships to replace the ones they destroyed. The math part of my brain also was skeptical of how big an explosion it would actually take to throw the moon out of Earth’s orbit.
I actually liked Muffit. For me, the Jumping the Shark moments came with episodes that appeared to make Apollo out to be the Second Coming of you-know-who.
You are right about Space 1999, there was very little scientific logic behind it. I often wondered just how long Moon Base Alpha could survive without supply runs from Earth. Water and Air can only be recycled for so long before they both got too stale to use.
The moon has been confirmed to have large deposits of water at its poles. It is spread very thin and mixed in or under the rock (there’s a term for the lunar ‘soil’ that I’m not remembering right now. Regolith, perhaps?). So renewing water and air would not, assuming they had the right equipment (and why wouldn’t they, they had all kinds of other equipment.) be a challenge. What might be a challenge is power generation. They can’t have an unlimited supply of fuel, even assuming that they could extract hydrogen from the lunar water using less energy than they would get for using it as fuel. And solar is right out once they lost proximity to Sol. So they would eventually just freeze to death.
Also, if I recall correctly, they actually traveled through several other solar systems. Which means that the explosion that flung them free also propelled them up to near-light speeds, and then they somehow managed to brake, interact with whoever lives in the current solar system they are passing through, and then re-accelerate. That’s a pretty specific explosion!
Also, they left behind a dead Earth, as the consequences of suddenly losing our moon would cause widespread species extinctions and other unfun stuff.
I enjoyed UFO. It was a trippy little show that didn’t last long or didn’t get shown long near me, whichever. The whole “Keep the general population in the dark while still protecting them” theme reminds me a bit of the Harry Potter series. I don’t recall why they had to keep people in the dark, perhaps it was mass hysteria?
Not really. Or did you not know we are gradually losing the moon already? It gets about an inch further away from us every year.
The biggest problem caused by losing the moon would have to do with the Earth’s wobble. Right now the spin axis of the Earth very slowly wobbles over 26,000 years, like a slowing wobbling top, because of the tug of the sun. The wobble causes true north to not always point at Polaris, a.k.a., the North Star. The moon acts sort of like a shock absorber to this wobble — keeping it from getting out of hand.
It’s possible that Earth without a moon would wobble wildly, sort of like Mars does. The Red Planet’s wobble is so extreme that it may be the cause of some cycles of climate change there. If the same thing happened here, Earth might wobble so much that seasons would become inhospitably extreme and Earth would be a much less stable and habitable planet.
But even then, for the wobble to get that extreme, would take millions of years. So they wouldn’t actually have “left behind a dead Earth”, not immediately anyway.
Not really? Really?
No moon, no tides (solar tides are pathetic in comparison to lunar tides). So there go all the species which rely on the tides to breed, for food, etc. And once they go, there go all the species which relied upon them for food.
No moon, no moonlight, so there go all the species which rely on moonlight to hunt, to move about, to breed, etc. And once they go, there go all the species which relied upon them for food.
It’s a chain reaction with no good consequences.
Well, I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but those species wouldn’t go extinct overnight. It’s not as if they’re going to say, “Oh, the moon’s gone, I’ll just die right this second. *thud*”
Hence, that’s why I said they wouldn’t have immediately left behind a dead Earth. And there are other species that would adapt… that’s the entire point of evolution. The species that can adapt will survive. The species that can’t, will die out. The real question is, will there be enough species that are able to adapt, in order for the ecosystem to rebalance itself?
Evolution is a harsh mistress. If adapting to gradual change was the path to survival, then all the mountaintop species would not be dying out, as they are, due to global warming slowly destroying their habitats. The polar bear is another good example of a species which will probably soon (as in, within the next hundred years or so) be extinct due to a gradual change in their environment. The simple fact of the matter is that evolution is a very, very slow process, and cannot cope with even a gradual change on a scale of hundreds or even thousands of years.
99%+ of all species which ever evolved on this planet are now extinct. Citing evolution as the panacea for something as significant as the sudden loss of the nighttime illumination which allows your species to hunt or find a mate or even move about is ignoring the facts.
“The true ‘jump the shark’ moment for the old Battlestar is when they added the robot dog.”
Muffit was introduced at the end of the first episode…
The same episode in the reboot that saw it die :p
Glad you posted that – I was questioning my recollection of when the Mecha-Daggit made its appearance (sadly, I still remember the name of the creature on which Muffit was modeled).
Of course, O.B. Juan may be implying that the show jumped the Shark in the *very first* episode. That’s how I took it at least. :)
Watched the original series as it was originally aired, I knew the series was doomed when they cut into the middle of the pilot to show the signing of the Camp David Accords, imagine the reaction of a bunch of sci-fi loving sailors to that situation!
TBH, mostly why I haven’t kept up with a lot of nerd-stuff over the past 15-20 years is because reboots pretty much ruin the original concepts. I petered off about the time of the 2nd Highlander movie…There should have been only one. GAH!
*grabs you by the lapels and starts shaking you* That movie doesn’t exist!
Since I got the entire set of the first 5 seasons on the Highlander TV series from Columbia House (which remained faithfully true to the concept of Quickened Immortals), I at least got rid of the bad taste of that…that…blasphemously unholy…failed abortion…THING…
Some of the later movies returned to the original “unexplained mystery” about Immortals & with Duncan picking up the torch with the TV series, I could finally just sweep that…THING…under the rug & move on.
I don’t feel one misses much by missing the “new” Battlestar Galactica. They pushed it for too many seasons, I think trying to squeeze out a Stargate SG1 longevity (which if you haven’t seen that series, I think we get to take some kind of card away). They also got fairly garbled with Cylon God bit, trying for something meaningful/messagey and not quite achieving it. I also feel the ending was weaker than the original series.
Personally I’d watch Battlestar Galactica done as a decently high quality single season anime. Following more or less the plot line of the “old” show run… just cleaned up a bit.
Yeah, that last could work.
The original BSG series was incredibly cheezy, but I enjoyed most of it. Never mind that they had only about eight special effects shots for the entire series, and just kept editing and re-using those in every episode.
Hated “Galactica 1980′ was just horrible – they dropped or killed off so many characters I liked, and turned the remnants into a kiddie show. Or far more of a kiddie show than it had been previously
New BSG was a downright atrocity. People blather on about how brilliant the cast and the characterizations were. Maybe so. But all I ever saw of it was a mixed bag of characters, some good and some not-so-good, all endlessly spiralling down into becoming such total @$$holes that I ended up rooting for the Cylons before the end of season 1.
And the less said about the show’s finale, the better, IMO.
I think Sydney just got a mouthful of mud…
AND smacked her head on that wooden crossbeam. Maybe that’s why she’s crying?
Face full of mud, banged her head on the wood behind her when she slapped her hands over her mouth, but the crying seems to be from the “Oh my God FUCK BATMAN!” line. She is a big comic books fan after all…
At least she had her flight orb dart to her hand. Maybe she caught it in time to minimize her impact at least a little bit. Given the size of that splat though, I doubt it.
Did Sydney bump her head against the platform step in panel fourteen? Or was that her balls hitting the wood?
A whole new level of the phrase, “getting a woody”…
I’m not the only one wondering what they heck she hit her head on. Good.
I think it’s her head banging on the wood as she covers her mouth. No ball-banging here I think :P. The Orbs do seem to avoid colliding with things unless Sydney wants them to…
Yeah, the orbs are definitely altering their orbiting arc to *avoid* banging into the wood. That’s definitely Sydney giving herself a headjob on ARC’s woody.
+1 whole internet :D
I preferred Guy Gardner as the Green Lantern. He was more human. He also contrasted nicely with Superman, and pointed out what a dick Supes could really be, especially being so full of himself. I role-played Guy once, and a good friend played the Blue Beetle. Our in-game rivalry, based on the comic, pretty much destroyed the GM with fits of giggles. Even more fun was using Guy to get under Supes’ skin and drive him bonkers with misinformation, which I always was able to turn the blame back on Superman, since he made assumptions and didn’t ask follow-up questions, even knowing how Guy acted.
I preferred Guy Gardner as the Green Lantern. He was more human. He also contrasted nicely with Superman, and pointed out what a dick Supes could really be, especially being so full of himself. I role-played Guy once, and a good friend played the Blue Beetle. Our in-game rivalry, based on the comic, pretty much destroyed the GM with fits of giggles. Even more fun was using Guy to get under Supes’ skin and drive him bonkers with misinformation, which I always was able to turn the blame back on Superman, since he made assumptions and didn’t ask follow-up questions, even knowing how Guy acted.
I haven’t seen any of the Matrix movies. Or Avatar.
Purposely skipped the Avatar movie. (The blue people one)
It didn’t pass my “Buy the premise/Buy the bit” test.
I really how you also skipped the air bender avatar movie. That one is holy tits levels of bad
ah, the avatar movie, alle the hype when it came out made me just go nop, and they showed it on tv last weekend, and I just watch an old episode of Perry Mason, so maybe some day when I am done with watching perry mason and Ironside.
Avatar was a pretty-looking pile of rehashed old clichés. Like, for every scene I could point at the movie that did it, and for every background concept the novel.
Not that I found it terrible, exactly. I like visual spectacle and it was agreeably pop-corny.
“it was very pretty, but I preferred it when it was Fern Gully”
I like the dual synopsis from the guy who compared it to Disney’s Pocahontas.
https://www.slashfilm.com/lol-james-camerons-avatar-is-disneys-pochontas/
I use that line on my daughter all the time. She gets so mad at me.
Why? Does she like ‘Fern Gully’?
I liked it most when it was Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld.
Well, that only took a single montage to go wrong.
Over-invoked!
Bunch of books I haven’t read that I feel I ought to. Ringworld, Hyperion, Island in the Sea of Time. Tried to read the Mote in God’s Eye and just got bored. Oh! and Pern! Cam pretty late to Discworld, haven’t sat down and read through some of the long-running parts like the Guards books.
Haven’t read/watched the Expanse or the 100. Only the first book and film of the Hunger Games, but I think that’s passed now from geekdom into general pop culture.
Because I am broke I don’t usually watch Marvel movies until they’re available for rental.
Sure I’m committing a heresy here, but the first season of Avatar is really meh, but from the second on it’s utterly brilliant.
you just sent me giggling, imagining a superhero set-up in Discworld! o.m.g. Batman, with nothing but horrid puns in his utility belt! Spider-Man, without a ‘-‘ to swing on! Both literal and figurative superpowers!
Come to think of it, now I WANT to see this.
I’ve never seen anyone mantle a wall. Don’t be cross, Syd. You can do it… eventually.
Until then, of cores, she’ll just have to settle for crusting defeats.
(Am I applying these geologically nouns correctly?)
A bit rocky, but not gravelly so…
Reading this thread is making me all sedimental.
Carefully now. You don’t want to be taken for granite
All the puns!
I lava this!
Quit with these puns or I might have to say cyanide-a.
I think Sydney may be above average for someone spoiled by western civilization. I’ve been to a commercial course a few times and many women cannot climb the wall without help (a lot of men cannot either).
I don’t think you have to see every scifi/fantasy/superhero show. I came across a website once that computed the time spent on tv series and I was shocked by the amount I spent on stuff that was definitive not worth it. There is just to much to see it all.
‘Mantel’?
That’s the shelf over a fireplace, right?
Different spelling, but maybe so. I didn’t get it, if “mantle” is a new word for getting atop or over something.
Think ‘dismantle’, without the ‘dis’ing
Dont think Peggy is being a very good trainer to be honest, that seems like an unnececarily hard course to start someone out on, who lies around 0 on the fitness scale.
It’s probably the easiest Archon have…
Never been to Basic Training I take it.
The 1st couple of weeks are, well, sort of made to make you think you are made of fail.
Then the last week they more or less repeat the 1st week and your all “This is a freaking walk in the park, what was my problem?”
This, BTW is based on US Army BCT circa 1978. I have no idea if they still do that.
puppy eyes level OVER 9000
I highly recommend that you give another chance to the new Battlestar Gallactica and The last Airbender, both series start slow but get sooo much better over time.
About confessions, let’s see…I never finished reading Lord of The Rings. I liked X-Men 3(The last Stand).
I’m sorry. I have seen enough of nuBSG to know that I would get a more fun experience by going out into the woods and self-performing abdominal surgery with a sharp stick.
Yes, some people blather on and on and on about the quality of the cast and their characterizations. All I ever saw was a bunch of characters, some arguably quite good people originally, all endlessly spiral down into becoming such complete @$$holes that rooting for the Cylons to wipe them all out seemed like the better choice. And let’s not get into the randomness and numerous idiocies of the finale.
Sorry, not for me. No way. If you like the show, fair enough.
I knew I’d seen Sydney’s new bosses plotting to invoke Batman on her like this somewhere. Turns out, it was right here.
And now Peggy’s gone and ruined everything . . .
Also, after crash landing in the mud like that, I’ll bet she’s glad she decided not to wear her glasses while doing PT.
To be fair, I don’t know anyone that would wear glasses during heavy exercise
if you need glasses in the military you wear them to pt as a part of uniform
I wear mine. Almost always. Except when in bed or while reading, as I am near sighted.
Can’t do PT if you can’t see the course–but she really should be wearing those military issue black framed glasses. Ugly but almost indestructible.
I remember those…we used to call them Birth Control Glasses.
Because they were so ugly that no one would dare to f**k someone who wore them…
It’s not dare to as much as want to, since they were so very ugly and out of fashion.
darnkitten was right about them being nearly indestructible though. I’ve seen guys throw the glasses against a brick wall & chip the paint off the wall, without even a scratch on the glasses. I had little doubt that if thrown hard enough, they’d even chip off some of the brick before they’d break.
…and what was worse, even kids got them issued at the base hospital. Not that I minded at first–it was SO AMAZING to clearly see a stop sign at the end of the street. but, yeah, those ugly things lasted through bike wrecks, pool mishaps, younger siblings and, unfortunately, schoolyard crushes.
I’d almost bet they are still sitting in one of my mom’s boxes, as pristine as the day I first wore ’em.
Well, she didn’t do push-ups till she puked, but she did run till she puked, does that count?
I’ve seen a DI make a guy do pushups until he puked…then made him keep doing pushups, right there, face first into the puddle.
That was almost enough to make me puke.
Never watched the Alien series, because fuck the horror/splatter genre. Not ashamed at all.
I’ve only watched the second one. I’m no fan of horror either, but that flick came across to me as more of a Rambo shoot ’em up in space than as a horror movie.
The first movie, Alien, was, to me, much less splatter-y than what I had anticipated. It’s really more a a suspense movie than a splatter movie, albeit of the “cat jumping from the shadows” type.
And yes, a cat *does* jump from the shadows in Alien.
I think… (been WAY too long since I’ve watched it).
formerly skinny severely out of shape 25 year old here: no amount of idol invoking would encourage me. omfg id be passing out and cramping long before then.
Anyone want to Tie Math’s hands behind his back AND Bind one of his hands? might make it a greater challenge for him than what we see in Panel 11.
Also I am trying to fix the hole that is Ready Player One and Armada in my Geek Literature.
I’ll confess to not having read snow crash, but seriously? Hyperion? Not having read that particular sequence of metaphors and epic trials is almost hypocrisy to me. I once met someone who didn’t use the word “kwatz” correctly, using it like “desu” because they’d seen it attached to the end of a sentence! Heretical!
Amend your ways, wayward son! Read the books! Witness the future and past as only the shrike can show!
Ahem.
What I mean to say is, give Hyperion a try. You might like it!
There is so many gaps in my nerdness i am shamed people around me call me a nerd.just because i know a thing or two :P
The land of nerds is full of many different types of nerds and things that are considered nerdy,
So do not be ashamed of not being a “true” nerd.
For to be a nerd of any type is a GOOD thing.
“Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Nerd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Nerds
Confession: I think my main ‘nerd gap’ is Alien. Haven’t seen it (or indeed Aliens).
Though really, I think at this point geek culture has grown to such an extent that no-one can possibly be expected to have watched/read/played *everything* considered a must-see classic.
You really ought to see the first one at least. Near the end is an up-shot of Sigourny Weaver in her panties…
Would they really be putting Sydney through all of this training on day 1? Shouldn’t they be putting her through a regular exercise routine for the first few weeks so she can build strength?
Also Confession: I never have read any Lord of the Rings even though I love the movie series.
i read The Hobbit before anything else, and was put off from reading the main series due to how very boring The Hobbit was. i’m glad Tolkien influenced fantasy literature but…. it’s obvious he was influenced by Norse Sagas, to have the entire first chapter just be genealogy.
You can’t really compare the Hobbit to the Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is basically a child’s book. LOTR is an epic saga.
Though I’ll agree there are some parts that do nothing but describe a setting. I personally love those parts, but I can see how they feel boring
That’s the introduction which you can easily skip and is really wholly unnecessary. The actual chapters pick up the pace quite nicely, I thought.
See my reply about how Basic Training works. You are expected to fail, badly, the 1st week or so.
At least that is how they did it back in my day.
Day 1 is when the DI gauges what kind of shape a recruit already has, so they can keep pushing for improvement enough to get the recruits up to minimum standards before releasing them into service after boot camp. Recruits have to measure up to the standards within 8 weeks.
…Sydney’s got a looong way to go…
The eyes in panel #3 oh, and since this is not a boot camp and supers are a limited resource, it seems foolish and unlikely to risk injuring one by expecting that level of fitness on what amounts to her first day, good for sight gags though so Ill allow it.
In order to rebuild someone, you first have to break them a little
Steve Austin, Jane Austin… 12 million dollars later… I wonder if Batman could’ve done it for less money.
Snow Crash is a fun romp. A lot of it is a dated view of the future, but still a great adventure with comedic elements. Recommended. :)
Seconded. One of my all-time favourites.
Neal Stephenson is a compelling writer. Good enough to compel me to read his entirely-too-wordy novels despite the wasted prose within them. Cryptonomican made the history of WW2 cryptography and computing actually fairly interesting (as compared to very dry non-fiction books on the subject I managed to dredge through).
ReamDe, Zodiac, and Diamond Age were all fine books, within their premises. SevenEves made me want to kill the human race myself, given the idiocy of the characters within its pages. And sadly, I can’t quite convince myself he didn’t get it right…
Need more money to buy more books and more time to read them