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.
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Nice Math cameo! This makes me believe there is soon to be a backlog of supers behind Sydney. She’s kinda behind the curve…
He must be finished looking at boobies…. for now
We need more swearing Sydney! And moar cute adorable Sydney!
Math only takes his hands out of his pockets when shit gets serious.
Extreme Super PT? Not serious.
I was finally starting to get into Avatar: tLAB when the movie was announced. Okay! Have to check out the series more, I’d seen a few episodes, it seemed to be a good show, I was just busy with other things.
Then the bitching and moaning from to many fans on the subject of casting, ruined getting into the show. If I could tell from what little I watched, that the characters where not Asian, that it wasn’t even on earth, but then what seemed like a large portion of the shows fanbase couldn’t tell the same thing because they were so frigging dumb, it just sort of ruined the show for me. :/
I don’t think the issue was with them not making more of the main characters Asian, it’s just that they made the entirety of the originally ethnically diverse cast of heroes in to a bunch of white kids who were terrible by child actor standards.
Don’t blame the fans or think about them. Both are good shows. Yes there are two series done by the same people. About Korra, that Avatar that came after Ang. We get to see some of the characters now old but still involved plus lots of new ones.
Don’t use the fans to not watch. Either watch them or not. I think they are very good shows. The movie was so-so. Don’t cop out.
I know I shouldn’t. I’m sure at /some point/ I’ll buy it and watch it with my daughter. Still, some fans just put a bad taste in your mouth to watch a show.
Don’t be put off the cartoon series because of the horrendously bad movie (just remember, it’s a Shamallama’s Dingdong movie), just like people shouldn’t be put off watching or reading the original DragonBall cartoon or manga because of the Hollywood live-action movie (personally didn’t have a problem with the movie, still hoping for the sequel)
Not put off by the movie itself. It was the fans, who moaned about the cast of the movie, when the cartoon didn’t match what they wanted either :p
Good thing they have a magic doctor on staff – THIS level of ‘encouragement’ is insanely dangerous. Sidney will very likely get injured. Possibly seriously injured. Sprains, tears, stress fractures, nerve damage….
ADHD people are known to often have a very, very high pain tolerance. So high that they can exacerbate a minor injury to a major one simply because there was a task they wished to complete.
Yup I walked around a convention for three days once with a stress fracture of the cuboid bone in my left foot. No cast, no pain meds. Just a painful limp. Doc said I was insane. I told him he couldn’t make that diagnosis because he was an MD not a shrink. XD
Would be cool if the comic let Sidney suffer an “over-training” injury. Especially because it wouldn’t really be the instructors fault. MOST people’s pain response triggers with a generous safety margin. So standard training is designed to teach recruits to “push until it ACTUALLY hurts”. My brother went through all of Marine boot camp doing pushups on a broken hand simply because he didn’t want to be “a wuss”. -_- So now I can officially call him an idiot.
Sidney (and her trainers) are gonna need to learn she needs to stop “when it feels funny”.
When I went through Navy Boot one of the other Boot Companies had a guy who had a heart attack while running during PT and died.
Yes, but that might’ve had less to do with the exercise, and more to do with a congenital defect that wasn’t caught (it happens more often than you know… some subtle heart defects don’t even cause any symptoms until later in life). Without any information beyond “he had a heart attack while running”, we don’t really know what caused it.
As a side-note, technically speaking, everyone dies of a heart attack (cardiac arrest). This is why “cause of death” is sometimes listed as “cardiac arrest” initially, then they go back and change it later, once they complete an autopsy and figure out what really killed them.
It’s good that you can recognize BS when you hear it & can call ’em out on shoveling it. You should seriously consider running for government office sometime…If not to actually get the job, then to just shake things up during the campaign. You know, like Richard Pryor did in the movie “Brewster’s Millions.”
;)
so it did work, not even 2 push ups
thanks for the new page
Good reaction with the flight orb!
Oooo, hadn’t noticed that: did Sydney instinctively ‘call’ for the Flight orb? or did the Flight orb realise it’s mistress was falling and went to assist and the distance was too low or Sydney remembered her instructions of ‘no touching her balls during training’ and didn’t activate flight?
I figure it was Sydney’s “survival instinct” kicked in & the orb reacted on her basic reflex. During her test flight with Maxima, her flight orb had no problem with leaving Sydney’s hand when she let go of it, even while she was still up in the air. I figure that the orbs don’t act until they are commanded to act, aside from having their default “hover pattern” while in stand-by mode.
I have never watched Any Battle Star Galactica, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, or Arrow/Flash. And I probably won’t due to lack of time.
Also, I hesitate to confess this, but…I don’t really like Doctor Who, despite having a girlfriend who requires that I still follow proper protocols and spell out is title.
You can’t please everyone can you? All good shows, except for GOT since I don’t have HBO. And it really doesn’t interest me.
Dr. Who has had it’s ups and downs. the series prermis is tight as hell, just sometimes the writers suck. I especially loath the last incarnation. there are so many holes in the plot and reasoning you could drive the CSCL Globe through it.
Yup, Moffet seems to have turned it into his own personal “Companions are the Star” show, refused to watch any of the Smith series after the episode with the Weeping Angels
People need to understand, that when Doctor Who restarted with Eccleson it became aimed at the US market
I liked Eccleston. Unfortunately, he didn’t like Moffatt, which is why he was only the Doctor for one season. 2017 will be the last series penned by Moffatt; in 2018, Chris Chibnall takes the reins.
Welp, now you’ve done it. You broke Sydney. Shame on you Peggy.
I haven’t seen most sci fi movies/series, such as star wars, star trek, battlestar galactica, I haven’t even seen the matrix.
I’m far more of a fantasy nerd
The gaping hole in my reading is superhero comics, all the Marvel and DC universes (I know, GASP!!!) The notable exception being Spiderman, since that was syndicated in my local paper (Houston Chronicle) growing up . I was into pretty deep and dark hard sci-fi when I first wandered into comic stores as a teen, and tended to purchase what were called at the time “underground” comics. Drugs/sex/rock&roll/horror/humor/fantasy/sci-fi stuff. Had a bit of an attitude about the muscly guys in tights with magical powers. That being said, have seen most of the movie adaptations of the superhero comics, but don’t have the background to be pissed when they go off-canon, so probably enjoy them more than you pure Marvel/DC geeks. Oh, I am also an otaku who really dislikes the giant robot flavor of manga/anime. Why, if you were designing a giant weapon would you make it bipedal, FFS? Go figure.
Well at least the nice thing about being skinny is you don’t have extra weight and so don’t need extra muscle to lug yourself up. Could you imagine if you were the average American? No muscle and overweight!
Fun fact. The average sedentary obese person is stronger then the average sedentary skinny one. Think about it. Strap 5-10 lbs on each limb and 30-40 around the waist and go about your average daily activities. You would pack on a fair bit of muscle.
I am fat , lazy, and American.
And I do more hard work in 1 day than a lot of people do all week.
Speaking remembering those ropes in elementary school – I loved them because I love heights, but I did NOT love my hands after. Same with the monkey bars if she ever gets her hands on them. If you don’t start out with appropriate calluses, both will give you lots of torn skin and blisters VERY fast. By the end of PT I expect she’ll be cradling her hands and weeping.
Yeah, loved the rope during highschool: would use just the hands, monkey bars were another great upper-body workout masquerading as a kids playground equipment, was a challenge to see how many bars you could ‘skip’
I really hated the rope climbing. I liked the framework construct in the playground though. I even liked climbing trees. I also liked crossing the monkey bars, but this became my favorite: https://pepperminthelmet.com/comic/monkey-bars/
Nerd Confession: I’ve never read, nor seen, any of Game of Thrones. And I read the Lord of the Rings omnibus in middle school, as light reading.
I’m similarly slow to pick up most popular new Anime- I’m currently watching through Slayers, super slowly.
Hrm.. What else…
I don’t particularly like Fallout- any of them. I don’t like the setting or story. I think Oblivion is the weakest of the modern Elder Scrolls titles (Arena kind of gets a pass since it’s so old, and Bethesda didn’t know what they were doing back then.)
Eh. Everyone thinks Oblivion is the weakest elder scrolls. That’s nothing special. Now, true nerd wars are over which is best. Morrowind, Daggerfall or Skyrim. Of course, everyone who doesn’t say Morrowind is wrong.
For game mechanics, I agree, Morrowind is the best. For Graphics, Skyrim… but for sheer originality, Daggerfall was the first real RPG sandbox ever put on the market, and you could play for months without ever touching the main storyline. nothing else was like it at the time it came out, and it set a bar.
Heh… unfortunately, Daggerfall did have one major flaw. If you got wrapped up in all the randomly-generated quests, it was entirely too easy to forget exactly what you were supposed to be doing, when you finally decide to go back to the main story.
The random quests sometimes didn’t work as well as they were supposed to. I remember one in which a member of the mage’s guild (we’ll call him Doug) asked me to return a shirt to Steve. Steve was standing an arm’s length away from Doug… you couldn’t have just handed it to him, Doug? Are you not on speaking terms anymore or something?
I also had a merchant (we’ll call him Bob) who wanted me to challenge Bob to a duel. There was not a single other Bob in the entire game world. That’s right… apparently, Bob had decided to commit Suicide By Adventurer, which makes it rather difficult to collect your pay. (The amount of gold on his corpse was less than what he was going to pay me, but at least the quest was flagged as “Complete”.)
Oh, and people standing inside an inn or tavern must’ve been stoned out of their gourd. Try going into an inn (we’ll call this one “Stagger Inn”), and ask someone where Stagger Inn is. “Um, far to the northeast, I think”. So let me get this straight… you’re in Stagger Inn, and you don’t know where Stagger Inn is? What the hell are you smoking… and will you share some of it?
Then there’s the random treasure drops, some of which have enchantments that are beyond your ability to make, even with the enchantment maker. “Loincloth of Flame Jet”… so you say there’s a burning sensation when you urinate? Sometimes, thanks to the way the game tracked the item’s condition, it led to even stranger results, like the time I found a “Loincloth of the Orc Lord – slightly used”. Yeah, I didn’t want to touch that one.
Non-story related, they never were able to fix the bug in the random dungeon generator that sometimes caused you to fall through the “seam” between two sections of the dungeon. That’s why, in the final patch (the tenth patch, IIRC) they turned on the cheat codes and left them on, so if it happened to you, at least you could hit the cheat that would teleport you back to the entry of the dungeon.
Having said all that, Daggerfall is still incredibly fun, and available from Bethesda as a free download that you can run with DOSBox.
Confessions:
I don’t like DC Comics. Haven’t watched the last two Batman movies.
I only like the original Star Wars movie
My anime experience stops at Star Blazers
Never read or seen Game of Thrones
I only liked the original Highlander (well, that’s a given)
Stopped watching Star Trek after Next Generation
Didn’t watch the new Battlestar series either. (A female Starbuck? Pleeeease.)
Didn’t watch Babylon 5 or any Dr. Who
Quick time to invoke the shadow, the hero both scarier and more ruthless than batman…
We totally need to see that fight.
$20 on that Bat.
Pulp novel Shadow or radio Shadow?
Either, they were both scary in their own ways and they were quite willing to inflict karmic deaths on their opponents if need and it was the shadow that come up with the idea of a rogue’s gallery of villains.
I always preferred the pulp Shadow to the radio–at least in the novels I had. No powers, just ninja-like skills wedded to a mastery of disguise and gadgetry which left his opponents convinced he had mystical abilities. Lots of parallels to the Batman.
Now I feel the need to dig out my old pulps: I find myself missing my old companions, the Shadow, the Spider, Doc Savage,The Lensman, etc.
What I can I say, I grew up listening to recordings of the shadow radio show which is admittedly why its my favorite version… brought to you by blue coal… Besides the shadow originated on radio first as the mysterious host of the detective story hour which led to the demands for a shadow detective magazine which didn’t exist at the time but was soon created because of the demand.
Yeah–I don’t think I heard The Shadow radio program ’til I was in high school, but I had been reading pulp novels since discovering Doc Savage at the base library in grade school. I guess it’s what you grow up with.
I didn’t know about the Detective Story Hour thing–cool. From radio to print and back to radio. Do you know who played him on DSH?
The Shadow radio program first aired about 40 years before I was even born. Despite being one of the older people on this forum, I think I’ve heard exactly ONE episode. I knew who he was, of course, from the comics.
If you want to listen to some of those old radio shows, you can stream the 33 episodes where Orson Welles provided the voice of The Shadow (yes, that Orson Welles… before a certain Martian invasion rocketed him to fame, he funded his theatrical productions with radio work, including a one-year stint as The Shadow) from the RKO archives.
The recordings can be found here:
https://archive.org/details/RkoOrsonWelles-TheShadow-RadioRecodings
Old Time Radio Theater. Got to hear all kindsa programs–X-1, The Great Guildersleeve, Fibber McGee & Molly, George & Gracie, Duffy’s Tavern, The Shadow, Jack Benny, etc., etc.
Also the one with the sound of the crypt door creaking open, but I’m blanking on that…
Who knows what evil lies in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Spooky laugh!
The weed of crime bears bitter fruit!
Mind you, who ever heard of a weed that bears any kind of fruit at all? Maybe the Shadow’s writers had access to a little weed . . .
The best way to define the difference between a plant & a weed is that the plant dies when you water it, but the weed grows back even after you pull it out the roots.
Your lawn grass isn’t really a weed because you can’t pull it out by the roots…The root network is to intertwined & widespread through the topsoil to stop it from growing back with anything less than a “scorched earth” technique. Heck, even covering it with pavement can’t stop it! It’ll come back through any cracks!
I always said “Big equals flower, little equals weed.” and when my mum wold object, I’d look quizzical and reverse it.
Saved me endless hours of work in the garden.
I would say most of them do, given that a fruit is just the part of the plant that carries a seed.
You may be technically right, but over here in what I loosely and laughingly call my “Mind,” the word fruit implies something we can eat, not just a seed delivery mechanism. I have yet to see anything like an apple or an orange hanging off a dandelion. :)
Poison ivy produces a berry-like thing, IIRC.
But you probably don’t want to eat it.
While there is plenty of stuff I haven’t seen/read/heard, there is plenty that I have. The wonderful thing about nerd fandom is that it isn’t uniform, and there are all sorts of sub-branches for particular interests. My thing is a metric crap-ton of anime/manga for example. So much I can’t even begin to remember it all. Never ask me to get character names right because after literally thousands of them, I just can’t keep track anymore.
Yeah I don’t bother remember Japanese names in anime/manga. Most of them just seem like a jumble of consonant->vowel syllables to me. I guess it’s because I’m used to European names.
I currently have 1.21 terabites of anime on my computer, and around 100 dvds of it. Right now the major comics I have are the complete original run of Magnus Robot Fighter. And the first 12 issues of Tigers of Terra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus,_Robot_Fighter
“1.21 terabites”. Great Scott!
I remember Magnus…I used to read that when I was a kid. I have none on computer, but have quite a few of the printed original books.
the first pages can’t be much of flash forward, the PT sydney is doing will reshape her body pretty dramatically in a few months.
The flash forward is only three months (or flash back really)
Math, you smug motherfucker.
*smooth
As he endeavors to prove, the two are not at all mutually exclusive.
“Why make it bipedal?” “Go figure.” The pun is strong in this one.
in the next to last frame, I almost thought Sydney had accidentally popped the blue orb into her mouth.
20 Hail Hydras.
What you talkin about Willis?!?!?!? (old reference) Hydra? Hydra?!?!?!?!?!?! Hydra!!!!!!! Why are you using a hail dealing with an enemy to the entire world?
Vee cause it rolls off zee tongue better zen Hail Vonder Voman und does not involve green animated suits?
Zo, 10 Our All-father’s and 20 Hail Hydras. Now zomeone go und wake Baron Mordo und tell him to get ready for zis….. Stephan Strange.
“What you talkin about Willis?!?!?!?”
…and now the “Diff’rent Strokes” theme is in my head…
Thanks. Just Thanks. :(
I have seen the new and older series for Galactica, I preferred the old one, especially when they finally found earth. That’s where the old sereis actually got pretty interesting.
I… never got into the Discworld books.
That is a shame, Sam Vines has to be hands down one of my favorite fictional Characters.
Oook
My friends are responsible. They gave me a bunch of the books to read, like it was English homework. Assigned reading is inherently unlikable, no matter how high quality the reading material!
have not watched walking dead. its a alright show but not my cup of tea. love the warhammer 40k universe ( WARRGGGH FOR LIFE) but can not stand paying for those waaayyy too expensive figurines or paints… does this make me a bad person?
Nope. Especially not at the prices Games Workshop charges. $20 for one figure… plus the cost of paints and glue. Some of the larger units (tanks, titans, etc) I’ve seen for as much as $125. Even the cost of cheap plastic figures is outrageous.
Also the probability they will change the rules and/or setting soon.
Like they did with fantasy.
I love the big dark eyes of shamed horror at what she’d done, the sheer GUILT screaming out of those wide pupils. I feel sorry for the horror she’s feeling, the inner betrayal she’s given herself…and that means you did a fantastic job with conveying the rightful horror of this moment.
Poor Sydney.
Good DaveB.
Well Done.
Congrats on 400 strips.
I have not read a single Miles Vorkosigan novel, authored by Lois McMaster Bujold. I’ve seen the occasional person quote him in their .sig or something on various forums or whatever, but it never drew my attention. Until just a few days ago, when I was reading an old Analog magazine my dad gave me, and the novella (typically the longest piece in any given magazine, longer stories are serialized so they can still fit a few short stories, novelettes, etc.) was by LMB. It was an excellent piece (Weatherman was the title), and made me want to read more. So LMB can expect a few royalty pennies the next time I hit the book store, and I can expect some good reads.
Oh, and I have seen exactly zero episodes of Enterprise. I saw previews and commercials and it just didn’t look all that good.
They had a slave Gorn in the first Mirror Universe episode…
I’d yell “Spoiler alert!” but there’s very little chance that I’ll ever watch the episodes. I’m not going to buy them, and aside from the BBC carrying reruns of TNG there’s no other Star Trek being shown on TV.
Not really a spoiler, just a background treat for fans of TOS. I think by that time they were trying to make up for all the times they “technically avoided” violating Canon, in the hopes of winning back some of the fans.
I have complete fairy tail manga and anime. Complete claymore manga and anime battle angel Alita hellsing and hellsing ultimate spice and wolf light novels and anime all the got and wheel of time plus all macross except macross 7 plus much more anime and manga highschool of the dead manga and anime I am a major otaku love Star Trek don’t own any Star Wars.
Ok, here’s a confession.
I’ve never watched more than 5 minutes of Firefly (and nothing of the movie). I think it’s because I found Nathan Fillion’s character (and that fingernails down a blackboard singsong accent) in Buffy so repellent, that when I tried to watch an episode of Firefly he just put me right off. I’ve been given the DVD’s for the series and movie and they are in my “must watch one day” pile, but meh – not right now.
This may be my favorite page from this comic in over a year.
Among a lot of great pages this is the one that cracks me up enough to spit take.
Come on, Sidney, let it out. It’s okay to be pissed at Batman. He is a case study in why virtue ethicists make terrible superheroes and philanthropists.
Pretty well off on movies in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, but I have been a bit lax in live-action shows, and I almost never have had access to comics. I have seen Doctor Who, a bit, anyway, Matt Smith threw me off the series for a while, seen the original Star Trek and all related movies. Abrams-Trek doesn’t count. I’ve read The Hobbit, trying to get the Lord of the Rings trilogy of books, seen the trilogy of movies, not The Hobbit, though, and I’ve never been able to play D & D. Not for lack of trying, but never could get a group together.
I only actually saw the original trilogy the night before I saw Force Awakens. My biggest thought watching the original trilogy was, “Damn, if I’d been 13 or younger when I’d seen this, it would be the most amazing thing in my universe.”
Looks like we found Dave’s “Sad Girl in Snow”: “Sad Sydney in Mud.”
As far as “only three days” is concerned, many full issues of print superhero comics span only that long, and I’m thinking of complete issues, not one part of a multi-issue story arc. You pack a lot into each page, and this is one of your better ones. :)
Yes, completely agree with this
Ah, memories of PT during Basic. At the beginning, I slammed into that stupid wall. By the end, it was leap, grab the top, pull myself up so my hands were at my hips, lean over the wall and swing out and land on the ground (feet first this time). That rope was a bain! Mind you, Sydney is a foot shorter and 100 pounds lighter than I was at the time. Hauling nearly 200 pounds up that rope was literally a pain.
My guess is that Archon is using this morning’s exercise session as a benchmark to see how much improves over the next few weeks.
Meh. People have said worse about the ol’ anti-hero.
And much of it would never get past the Comics Code Authority…Good thing DaveB doesn’t have any use for it here, huh?
;)
The CCA is as dead as a doorpost. The last companies that still adhered to it were DC and Archie… and even they stopped using it in January 2011.
Smartest thing they ever did, because the CCA never had any real authority to begin with.
and selina would love to follow that order
My nerd cred is so low it would be faster to list the things I *am* familiar with rather than the things I’m not. I read a number of 90s Star Wars EU books, some forgotten realms, and the song of ice and fire series. I’m familiar with a number of video games released in the 90s (ID, blizzard, square soft) but Diablo 2 was really the last game I played with any frequency, and I gave up on the FF series after 7. I’ve watched some of the older Star Trek shows but only enough to have a passing knowledge of the universe. Other than that, I’m clueless. I know nothing about anime, I’ve never played an MMO, I’ve never read a comic book, I have no interest in most nerd shows, and I haven’t even seen many of the superhero movies. It’s a pretty sad nerd resume. If I didn’t have a geeky job, I might not qualify for the title at all.
Batman is the worst example for a hero (or even an anti-hero): he is, simply, a sociopathic rich kid who never grew up or got over the death of his parents, and, instead of using his billions to actually help the city and the police, he uses it to dress up and terrorize the entire country (and other parts of the world)
Although I would not go that far, it would certainly cut down on the number of unsolved cases if he gave the Gotham PD lessons in forensic crime scene analysis and had Wayne Tech donate the the associated technical equipment.
The same could also be said of Sherlock Holmes instead of him fiddling away his spare time between cases (literally).
Instead of spending his millions on making military-grade equipment and gear just for himself, he could use that to make protective gear for the police, and police cars that won’t blow up going over a pot hole
Or spend some of that money improving the ‘bad parts’ of Gotham: improved lighting and more medical facilities and schools for a start
Holmes was never part of the police force, and was reluctant to actually work with them, he only did so when he was personally requested or hired to or when a case intrigued him or when he literally stumbled upon a case (the police kept going to him because they were, mostly, idiots and this was at the beginning of the ‘modern police force’)
Also, some of the police force apparently didn’t like Mr. Holmes. There are quite a few stories were some cop would grudgingly admit that Sherlock had set them on the right track or outright solved the case, but then say that he hadn’t really deduced anything – that it was just a lucky guess.
As one of the detectives said in The Sign Of Four, “It’s true you set us on the right track, but you’ll own now that it was more by good luck than good guidance.”
I will never understand the appeal of Batman.
Sex and violence.
The violence, self explanatory.
Sex, all the ladies in skin tight or just barely there costumes.
Same for most other comics.
Batman is for those folks who have been wronged, who have no power to redress that wrong (or believe they don’t), and can relate to the idea of taking out one’s frustrations about being wronged against those who demonstrably and unimpeachably deserve retribution. From time to time, I can relate – the world is unjust and those who create injustice do so precisely because they cannot be called to task. Batman is for people who are sick of that shit.
Superman is for people who are faced with a sense of helplessness and are looking to the sky to save them. His power is equal to any task and even with all that vast power he still is able to not abuse that power. I can relate – Superman is who I (and the Iron Giant) aspire to be like, even though I am, in many ways, fundamentally powerless.
Spiderman is for folks who feel like they all too often make bad decisions about how they use what power they have and want to make up for their failings. I can relate – most of the time, I’m my own harshest critic.
We tend to like those character with whom we can relate, whose point of view makes sense to us.
However, Dr. Revenge is also correct. :)