Grrl Power #412 – How long can trusty Recruit Scoville hold out?
Ok this is one of those situations where the webcomic format is not ideal since you guys reading along as its posted can’t just turn the page. Obviously Max is pointing at one of the trinkets on the shelf I mentioned last page, so just bear with while this gets resolved.
Deus saying “lease” in the first panel is the result of some significant editing. Originally there was a tangent there about having to bribe and shoot his way to the coast. Shoot bandits, not so much the legal authorities, unless they go overboard with the bribery. Pirates he’s not so worried about. Aggressive, unregistered vessels in international waters make excellent targets for weapons tests. I liked the detail and the world building but ultimately there was too much dialog and I didn’t think he’d spell out the seedier side of his business foibles to Max.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, when Veridian Dynamics got cancelled went out of business, Deus scooped them right up. Weaponized pumpkins? That’s right up his alley. If you don’t get that reference, then you should check this out. Arrg. And if you can’t see that link for whatever reason, it’s a show called Better off Ted. It was all too short lived but I consider it one of the funniest things ever on TV. Not quite on the same echelon as Red Dwarf or Archer, but still way up there.
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And now the actual reason for the meeting….
Where have I seen those lab guys?
Stripperella, the animated series?
Oh. That.
Not sure I watched that show.
I’m sure I didn’t watch the Get Smart reboot movie.
True story – me and my family went to see the Get Smart movie and it was sold out.
Know what we had to see instead? Wall-E.
I’m sure you all feel tremendously sorry for me….
You missed a great shot of Carrel’s ass.
Aaand, that’s about all.
No, not Stripperella, or any animated series, there was a short-lived(?) TV series about a corporation that made stuff for bad guys? Had fun little ‘infomercials’ advertising their products
Those two were two of the scientists that kept coming up with whacky ideas that usually were designed to hurt or maim but inevitably failed in some way
They are from Better Off Ted, in the show they worked for Veridian Dynamics, (hence the commentary for this comic)
Although one does have to wonder who took them down, there are only three nations more powerful than them left.
And 2 of them are obviously owned by Dues
That was the name of the show, and for those interested: Better Off Ted
Their bios are at https://betteroffted.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Better_Off_Ted_Characters
If you haven’t seen it,you can think of ‘Better Off Ted’ as being Dilbert, Rashomoned to the Pointy-Haired-Boss’s point of view.
Definitely from Better Off Ted
Holy shit, Phil and Lem! Definitely not where I expected them to turn up but hell, it makes sense. Gotta wonder what happened to Veronica in that case though…
Dammit! Should have just continued reading the comments :P
Wit, which ne was Veronica again? The horrible man-hungry boss or the ditzy potential love-interest for the main character?
The boss.
Curse you web format! *Shakes fist*
So instead of letting his people go through a trial, he’s getting this done under the counter. This will be a nice way to out flank Max, since Ariana has proven that she’s quite willing to keep things secret ‘for the public good’.
Also, will Sydney be able to walk out with a few extra goodies that she forgets to put down in her crazy ‘what does this do’ phase? After all, being chaotic means less reasons to make an alignment check.
There wouldn’t have been a trial anyway: they were mostly being held until the could be checked out, although Deus doesn’t actually sound too upset if Vekter gets locked up for outstanding parking tickets
It would be funny to see her with the evil lightning trigger.
As Max and Sydney walk away with the building in view behind them.
Maxima: “Sydney, what did you ‘forget’ to put back?”
Sydney: “I don’t know. But it has a button!”
Maxima: “SYDNEY DON’T!”
Sydney presses button
Nothing happens…
Sydney: “That was anti-climactic…”
Sydney presses the button a couple more times.
Massive thunder sounds suddenly on one of the floors of Deus his building with bright lightning effects.
(insert Deus “Aaaaahhh!” bubble there too) xD
So. Now we know “How long can Trusty Recruit Scoville hold out?” About as long as it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.
But, I think the original involved a “Trusty Cadet” and the History Eraser Button. The beautiful, shiny button, the jolly, candylike button … How? Long? Can? He? Hold? OUT??!
“As long as it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop”. You mean 3?!?!
Also, since nobody else has pointed it out, Vekter and Opal were (maybe) being mind-controlled by Vehemence at the time, thus weren’t legally responsible for their actions.
Allegedly being controlled
Vekter also “alledgedly” got most of his ribs broken too, though.
Yeah, he only had a couple ribs break
Just saying, that not all of them needed to be controlled to be there, and Dabbles’ ‘snack’ wasn’t being controlled, he was there for his friends (who may or may not have been controlled themselves)
Can’t follow the Netflix link while out of country, can someone spot me the info? Thanks.
Some dumb looking show called Better Off Ted.
You bite your tongue! For your blaspheme, sir, you shall be transferred to the Department of Test Subjects. Report to Phil and Lem’s lab, immediately.
I wish I could find some good clips to link, cause I think it’s really quite funny, but most of the stuff I find on youtube is sped up and/or cropped to try and slip by the content ID system.
I’ve got some stuff you could probably work into the comics pretty easily.
There’s actually 2 sets of stuff:
The rather well-known “Evil Overlord List” (a la TVTropes), which, let’s face it, is perfect for Deus, because he’s obviously got that vibe going full-bore already. (The savviness, I mean, not necessarily the whole evil part.)
Then there’s the certainly-less-well-known but arguably much funnier Skippy’s List.
Skippy’s List would, I suspect, be a perfect way to garner ideas to come up with a “Dabbler’s List” and a “Syndey’s List”….as well as a “Maxima’s List”, which will inevitably have ‘do not destroy mosques’ listed on it somewhere.
;)
Don’t we already have a “Sydney’s list?”
Not quite. We have “The List”, which belongs to Sydney, but the new list would be “Sydney’s List (of Things She Isn’t Allowed To Do)”; same goes for Dabbler.
Strangely enough, before I clicked the link you provided, my first thought about “weaponized pumpkins” was in reference to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Goblin
Here’s a few links that show just how perfect Phil and Lem are for the GrrlPower universe.
https://youtu.be/DG3ORCDEYUE
https://youtu.be/dheFPAe4NW0
it is for the show Better Off Ted
I haven’t actually seen it either, but here is it’s page on Wikipedia.
Err Dave, silly question, but whats so special about an advert for netflix or that’s what i get over here
I’m guessing something is l.i.t. if you’re now IP’d in the US.
He was linking to the programme that featured Phil and Lem
I’m sure this has been mentioned before, but, Deus keeps reminding me of an actually successful Coil, from “Worm”.
Anyone else get that vibe?
Not really? I mean, “supposedly un-powered guy putting himself in charge of super-people in order to build an empire” is both of their schticks, but it’s a pretty common trope in superhero fiction. Beyond that, their personalities and motivations and tactics seem to be completely different.
when i think super genius with a empire like dues only one name comes to mind Lex Luthor (from the comics not the old superman movies)
He’s always struck me as a more socially-adjusted von Doom. Hammy, controlling, yet when you’re not on his bad side, a pretty good dude to have in charge. Deus just has a much, much smaller bad side to get on.
Oh, please. Amateurs both. Deus is working hard (and being semi-successful, except for the ‘wild/evil laughter’ thing) on being David Xanatos.
Maxi is either pointing to her bedroom door key, or her braces from middle school
Either those or the necklace (and gotta love Deus’ grin in the last panel :D)
At a guess, Max is pointing at the trinket that was behind Deus’ shoulder in the previous comic. (the bottom left of the display)
You mean, the one we couldn’t see?
(WildMassGuessing)
Max’s First D&D figurine…
My bets were either that she did take some ‘interesting’ photos, or it’s a picture of her before her transformation.
That, or a powerful Maguffin, but that’s a “I got something just to rile you up’ grin rather than a ‘gotcha’.
I hope it’s not a kryptonite kind of artifact.
My vote’s on the necklace – middle of the shelf, near Deus’ eye-height as far as I can tell, roughly where you’d put it to make it easy to catch out of the corner of your eye.
Although, I do wonder how much time supers with boosted speed spend scanning the room, during a normal-speed conversation.
I think necklace too. My guess is before she became Maxima she did a stint as a more embarrassing vigilante
Maybe, or an old ‘gift’ Deus gave her back when they were ‘colleagues’, and definitely not ‘dating’
One of the objects on the middle shelf is a green item that (to me) looks imperfectly made.
I’d guess it’s an ?ashtray? she made in pre-school. Which would explain her reaction. (I GAVE that to MOM, she’s had that in her KITCHEN since I was FOUR!!!)
What transformation are you referring to?
Max wasn’t always gold.
Really? I thought supers in this universe were born to it. That’s why Sydney is so different, in both body type and power source. She is an A-cup in a D-cup or bigger collection of supers who all have internal powers while she relies on a set of foci.
Did Max also not have that body type earlier?
Also, source?
Hmmm… I checked the cast page to see if I could find anything about Maxima transforming, but nope. But there was this for Achilles:
So clearly he had a transformation. The odd thing is that bit about him not knowing while anyone else would know. Was he on acid or magic mushrooms, or drunk? Or unconscious? I’m finding it hard to imagine many other situations other than unconsciousness, sleep, or out of his mind of something like drugs or alcohol which would allow that to be the case.
Given his mullet and the fact that he’s throwing the horns in his bio drugs can’t be ruled out (although you could easily be a mullet wearing metal head without being a drug user). I suppose if it was the case he’s a bit bummed that they no longer effect him. On the plus side he’d have no withdrawal to go through either.
I am not going to search through 400 pages to find it, but there was a flashback scene of a teenaged Maxima who had accidentally punched a hole in the wall, and said something like: “Apparently I can do that.” This makes it pretty definite that she didn’t have her powers from birth. The big difference between Sydney and the rest is that Sydney’s powers come from some external objects.
That’s okay. I know where it is.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/720
Thank you, Ignoble. That was obviously it. :)
That only means that she wasn’t aware of all of her possible powers. In the link that Ignoble provided she is still gold.
Transformation is looking less and less likely.
I don’t understand where you get that from. It’s true that we hardly know anything about the source of superpowers in the comic, but that panel is one of the only tidbits that we’ve got, and that shows Maxima surprised by her own abilities in her teens. I read that as a sign that something strange had happened to her very recently, and she was still in the process of figuring it all out. That strange thing could also have involved her skin turning gold.
And of course, it might be misleading, and we’ll learn differently later, but we can only go by what we’ve seen so far, and that panel is pretty much it. And the fact that we haven’t seen any superpowered children. Unless you count Sydney’s imaginary reality show with the little girl with the 16 ton weight. Keyword being imaginary.
A bit late but…
DaveB’s comments on #334 – Make down
So, Sydney’s 8th Orb? Or, even, the missing instruction manual to go with them?
I was thinking the falcon myself.
Considering the look on her face, I don’t think it’s so much of a surprise item, but a rather personal item. She doesn’t look shocked, she looks pissed!
As to Sydney in the labs, I’m just hoping she fires up her Telepresence/Truesight. :D
Sydney knows to keep that orb a secret, she may be off her meds, but she ain’t stupid
sydney in a lab with lots of dangerous stuff and WITHOUT putting her in different room with “unbreakable” glass or simply putting her in a boring office?
as often said the smartest people OFTEN DO the worse dumb mistakes…
Unbreakable room, with armed guards weilding horse tranqs, a halon system, and hand and feet cuffs bolted to the floor……we are talking about shiney buttons and dangerous chemicals in Deus’s Headquarters lab
None of that is necessary here. Deus would have built a fake lab with non-working copies of everything to use when showing around dignitaries or muckity-mucks. Of course the lab would be well stocked with cliched “science lab” props, that’s why there is a reel-to-reel tape drive. I bet another view would show a several glass flasks with bubbling contents and helixed glass pipes.
Okay, I’ll bite, what’s she pointing at?
Tune in next time!
Yes, I think it’s frustrating the rest of us, too.
Anyone else heard the MetalGearsolid sound on the second to last panel? (if only it was interactive so that if you pressed the exclemation mark you would Actually get to hear it ^^)
Yeah I heard the klaxon… glad to know I’m no the only one
I heard it too. Now i challenge you to the game of ‘place that person’ and like Grrlpower characters with there MGS counterparts….Have fun.
I just thought she suddenly had a quest for him…
I like his face xD
the smuggest of faces
OOH JUST WANT TO PUNCH IT
Okay, anyone else wondering which corner Vale is curled up, rocking back and forth, in?
Max walks i see everything on fire, the air filled with toxic smoke, Phil and Lem hiding under a table whimpering and Vale in a feotal position in the corner mettering “it’s all just a bad dream” repeatedly.
Max then walks over to Sydney smiles and gives her a friendly pat on the shoulder “That’ll do Scoville, that’ll do.”
This was of course Maximas plan all along just to mess a bit with that smug bastard Deus.
Will the conversation be interrupted with a large boom from the lab below?
For some reason I found Veronica Palmer’s amorality and casual evilness to be ridiculously sexy. I’m guessing she and Deus would get along entirely too well.
I dunno, I don’t think either one would handle not being in charge.
Veronica had no problem with other people being in charge, she WAS middle management after all. She would however be fighting for a position on his board of directors
You bastard. Teasing us like that.
“The beautiful, shiny button! The jolly, CANDY-LIKE button!”
It’s almost adorable how happy Deus looks that Max finally noticed the trinket he wanted her to see. Seriously, for someone as ruthless and obviously egotistical as he is moments like this and his obvious enjoyment of having a dramatic crack of thunder available on command to accompany his maniacal laugh makes him to really hard to dislike. :D
I must admit, I thought the same thing. :)
It’s disconcerting that Deus can look so darned adorable.
One WORD JABBERWOCKY!
Deus face is the last panel is une of the best things you have ever drawn Dave.
I wouldn’t imagine someone with such a square jaw could do a :3 face, but he managed it.
Evidence of superpowers. Super smugness.
I couldn’t agree more.
Is that really what’s going on with Sydney down in the labs then, or was that just what Maxima and Deus imagine she’s doing down there? I’m gonna guess it’s the second.
You think reality is worse?
I get the impression these guys are used to people being more intimidated by their lab than excited over it.
So Sydney turns into Dee Dee every time she’s in a lab?
Yes, every time she’s in a lab. Or a doctor’s office. Or, I imagine, most china shops.
Fifth panel sound effect: snakedetected.wav
Hahahahaha look at that GRIN! XD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0LdJ2a2yn8
Someone needs to find that image of Tobey Maguire doing that emo grin
How would Deus profit if he had the following items in his possession…
An ancient Gaulish magic potion
A flute with six holes that causes whoever’s listening to it to dance uncontrollably and then pass out afterwards.
Can anyone guess which French and Belgian comics those items are from?
The potion is from Astrix, but I don’t recognize the flute
The cartoon he’s referring to is “The Smurfs and the Magic Flute”
Can Deus profit from those aforementioned items?
He is Deus. He profits, period.
I recognized Phil and Lem immediately. I loved that show so much.
As soon as I saw Lem and Phil I was like NICE!!! Better off Ted
DaveB, it’s called a “cliffhanger.” Don’t apologize for that. Now you’re keeping us on our toes until Monday wondering exactly which trinket she’s pointing at. Presumably not The Maltese Falcon or the Dark Crystal shard. Also, it always bugs me when one character explains something to another that there’s no reason to explain at that point except the obvious reason of exposition for the audience. It just seems artificial. Keep it until it’s needed.
I’m tempted to try to get into the American Netflix to check out that series, but they’ve become far more thorough blocking out the international audience recently.
If you use a proxy with a U.S. address it should fix that. Netflix would get THEIR IP and think you’re also in the U.S.
For those that don’t understand proxies, once set up anytime you send anything on the Internet it goes to the proxy instead. They take the info, stip off you IP, put on one of THEIR IP’s assigned to you, then send it on. When they get a response with your assigned IP, they strip that off put you IP back and send it to you. It does slow access by adding the extra distance and steps, but it makes your currant location only accessible with a subpoena valid in the PROXIES country (which is why scammers and thieves use proxies in Eastern Europe where they don’t have treaties with the U.S.) .
Unless they know that the IP address belongs to a proxy service, and block that. Besides, most of them result in a poorer video quality, presumably because the video stream takes a roundabout way before I get it. I have used a DNS service, Media Hint, that uses some trickery to identify me as American while keeping a direct link between me and Netflix, and I was able to use that with my Chromecast as well. I have not been able to do that with any proxy or VPN service.
Oh good lord, Syd in a science lab… that is not good. Not good at all.
Worse than that, she’s in a lab with Phil and Lem!!!!
Better Off Ted was brilliant and funny. Of course it ended too soon.
Veridian Dynamics: Right and Wrong. It means something. We just don’t know what.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/BetterOffTed
must… not… click… tvtropes… link…
*click*
Wow. An actual reel to reel tape drive in a supposedly state of the art lab.. and nobody mentions it? ;)
Surprisingly a lot of companies use tape as a means of backups. It can store a massive amount of data on the with the drawback of having to use a linear search to find what you need. Considering that in a recovery situation you would need all the data no matter the order, I’m not surprised that it’s there.
I wonder if they still use dial-up modems too?
“Sir, this just came in off the teletype!”
I have a dial-up modem, landline & a local ISP connection as a backup. When my yearly rate dropped from $110 to $12 a year I asked how they stayed in business [here in Silicon Valley] and was told that most of the high tech businesses still have dial-ups and landlines as emergency backup – and keep the local ISPs in business thereby.
Oh, I saw it! My first thought was: “How archaic! No one uses tape drives anymore…” My second thought was: “Wait a second… It isn’t like a hard drive, no matter how good the hacker, if the tapes isn’t hanging the data can’t be accessed…”
This set me off on one of my little research binges. Turns out tape is a long way from dead… It still has the problem that the latest file gets written again at the end, but the ability to read the versions back and forth is greatly improved. And the information density has climbed astronomically from where it used to be… I found 135 terabyte reels.
They have tapes smaller than a VHS that can store multiple terabytes of data. The next best backup medium is Blu-ray and that can only store 25GB per layer.
That said those old reel to reel ones aren’t used as modern backup, it’d be something for a legacy machine.
Modern tape drives are still reel-to-reel… it’s just that one of the reels is inside of the drive, and one is inside of a cartridge where the tape lives while it’s being stored.
The next best back-up method ISN’T blu-ray, it’s based on the old removable 1st gen hard drives. They had 10-15 platters bigger than the size of an old vinyl LP record that could be removed from the drive. Considering you can now store 2-4 terabytes on half that many cd sized disks, I’d expect they could hold at least 32 times that per stack.
I’d assume it’s either backup for something with an old interface (a lot of old equipment is still the best at what it does, and a lot of new stuff has to be able to interact with it), or a prop along with everything else in that particular lab so they have somewhere safe (and with no actual company secrets) to put the tour groups.
Don’t dis the reel-to-reel, microfiche is still used as permanent long-term storage (don’t need a power source or a computer to access it, just a light source and a magnifying device)
Working for Dues has got to be pretty familiar for Phil and Lem..
Phil: “This must be how Dr. Frankenstein felt. And that creepy scientist on the fourth floor who tried to build a wife out of mannequin parts and chicken skin.”
Lem: “Yeah. It was awkward at the Christmas party when we had to pretend she didn’t smell like chicken.”
Phil: Give a man an insult, he can hurt people for a day. Teach a man to insult, he can hurt people who tease him because he never learned to fish. Anyway, I’ve devised a formula.
Lem: Look at that. You had a problem in your life and who stepped up to help you? Math. She has always been there for you, hasn’t she, Phil?
Phil: If she ever took physical form, I’d leave my wife and marry her.
Lem: Stand in line, my friend.
Phil: Anyway, it’s really quite simple. You take a person’s most marked physical feature, compare it to genitalia—male, female, or animal—and end with the suffix “-bag,” “-wipe”, or “-muncher.”
Lem: You could also add an optional reference to excretion from any of the glorious openings offered by the human body.
And if you don’t like Better Off Ted your nothing but a Tory loving royalist..
So. One of the trinkets on the wall has caught Maxima’s eye? 5$ it is the necklace! Place your bets now! You cant win if you dont play!
Took awhile percolating around the inner recesses of my mind, but the center object in the cabinet (second shelf, middle) looks an awful lot like a melty, burned out ‘Zero Point Module’ from Stargate Atlantis.
Kinda looks like a geode.
Later when Sydney meets up with Max.
Sydney: “Hey Max, want to rock out old school?”
Max: “How do you mean?”
Sydney:”When I was in the lab I picked up this thing they called a boom box. Let me press this button to turn it on.”
Max: “Wait. Don’t…..”
BOOM!!
(Don’t worry. I won’t leave this as a cliffhanger. Max’s speed got them both away OK.)
“Lease” was a great choice, I think that conveyed exactly the sort of everyone-on-every-side-is-a-bit-bandity shenanigans you were trying to convey in one word :)
A computer that operates with a magnetic tape may be extremely obsolete but you should have one anyway in your supervillain lair since it’s what everyone expects to find in the labs of mad scientists and supervillains. It’s traditional.
Don’t forget the other rule that all computers must have long rows of blinking lights.
That is true. It’s strange that a supervillain fan like Deus didn’t remember to put blinking lights on his computer. But at least he did equip his lab with a open jar with green liquid and a big red button with lots of warnings on it.
Love the shit eating grin in the last panel. I’m hard pressed NOT to like this guy.
I don’t think those scientists were quite prepared for Sydney.
Scratch that; I don’t think anyone is quite prepared for Sydney.
If anyone wold be prepared for Sydney, it would be Phil and Lem :D