Grrl Power #414 – The O.G.s (Origin of the Gold stuff)
So yeah, turns out, Max’s trajectory to superdom was a little different than usual. This gets expanded on a little in the next page, but basically all that Deus knew was one year Max came back from summer break gold, and given there are no other gold skinned supers as far as anyone knows, he thought it might be worth looking into.
I guess Max’s family is the sort that visits museums at 9am on a Tuesday. I wasn’t being lazy by not drawing other people, there actually wasn’t anyone there to witness what happened to her. Not that the event seems significant on its own, she just got splashed with “geode” “water.” She even told her parents when she found them, but by then it had all “evaporated.” She was like “I just got a mouthful of geode water.” And her dad was all “So I guess you don’t want your 7up?” But like I said, more info on the next page.
As for why baroque art is right by the geology exhibit, uh… the museum is remodeling the baroque wing? Cause, you know, it needed fixing?
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It’d be funny if that summer just happened to be when Maxima’s powers manifested, and that geode is actually a worthless rock.
Always a possibility, but in the third-last panel, some of her skin seems to already be changing colour.
Isn’t that just the orange colored geode water that hasn’t evaporated yet?
Pro tip Max: It’s… not evaporating.
Orange coloured geode water that hasn’t been absorbed, then.
What if the gold skin from the weird alien geode is completely separate from her powers? Ooooh, or if the stress of her skin turning gold just happened to be the trigger event for her getting powers?
I would be quite tempted to say “succus lapidificatus” – but then someone remembered me of the ears and how Maxima’s powers go much beyond metalic skin and super-strength & resistance.
And her general “not a rock”-ness.
We’ve got two origin stories, now. Sydney found her orbs on the bottom of the ocean, and Max found a geode full of super-goop.
Leading me to ask the question: are these artifacts from a lost civilization of psycho-kinetics? Or is some sociopathic entity just littering the planet with stuff that gives you superpowers?
Good story opportunities there.
like a cross between Elminster and DCUO Lex Luthor
I think it was mentioned that Supers are just recently becoming a thing in this world, maybe starting to emerge about a decade back or so. Given aliens and demons and who knows what else exist and aren’t necessarily recent things.
Perhaps, as in some fiction, Earth has as of late become some manner of focal point and now various and sundry factions are starting to play their chips in some sort of shadow chess game.
Supers had been around longer than that, and are believed to be the actual beings behind some of the legends and tall tales that are commonly known (Paul Bunyan being the one that was mentioned earlier in the comic.)
Lincoln presidency mentioned here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/942
Specific reference for my arguement: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/984
Could also bee a natural geod thad had natural but super rare super mutating making bakteria inside it. That would also be great sorce of story line. Criminal tresure hunt fore the sorce of THAT power.
So Max’s first facial turned out to be a golden shower…. Poor gal, I can easily see how such a tragic transformation from a young teens point of view started her down the fema-nazi route!
I…. I can’t tell if I want to be mad at you or commend you…..
Regardless, no one can say he’s not a brave… and probably now dead man…
Fema-nazi? So she’s a racist and an ecoterrorist?
geode self contained very primitive life ecosystem,a contained evolutionary reactor
actually, my first thought was wondering if a significant amount of the liquid did evaporate and end up in the atmosphere. Her being more powerful than many of the new sudden crop of supers might have been related to the concentrated dose she received.
That sounds like true comix sience
Okay, Deus is really giving me a creep vibe, here. Imagine going to your ex’s office because of business and discovering that they’ve got your old [insert high school sport here] trophy in a case on the wall…. Just… Ick.
Even creepier is she never thought of them as having a relationship
Clearly one of them did though. /shudder
I’m not sure that is canon. The lady doth protest too bit much, methinks.
Wasn’t it the other way around?
Trophies are pretty tame. This would be more like… I dunno, her placenta. If placentas were recognizable. And less horribly inappropriate to keep on a display shelf under any circumstances.
Geode Water – nature’s equivalent to a loose oil drum full of experimental industrial waste (a la Daredevil). Kudos Dave, for giving us an environmentaly “friendly/green” origin story.
Now, I understand that this geode is already canon, but really? She turns yellow later on – the true culprit might actually be the “mustard” on that “hot dog” her dad gets at the museum cafeteria.
i think it was mislabeled by the museum staff and was never a geode in the first place, unless geodes generally contain stuff that turns you into a Penumbrate-lvl superperson
Nope, it had nothing to do with the geode. It really was the mustard all along. but seriously, those truck stop grade hot dogs barely qualify as a food and god knows what is actually in some of those wanna be mustards that they use. It’s a mutagen and we all know it.
ehhh kids like em cuz they have too many tastebuds for their own good so they prefer bland stuff like hot dogs and Kraft mac n cheese and Hot Pockets and Totinos pizza and Red Baron pizza and Hormel anything and bologna and Wonder Bread and Twinkies and basically stuff that discerning adults would avoid; i still like mac n cheese but i go Annies, and Red Baron is ok but California Pizza Kitchen is better, and i guess if you know what yer doing Spam is a useful ingredient in cooking, my aunt and uncle made Spambalaya once, my first time ever having Spam and it was pretty good, ofc it helps that i was probably hungry since we were camping and it was eat then or not eat, no snacking options later
That geode is not a geode. I wonder what it actually is.
I was trying to figure out the geometry of it, thinking the tiles it’s composed of were laid out like a soccer ball. But I suspect I’m overthinking things. Nevertheless, absolutely artificial. Natural geodes have crystals inside, not plates.
I agree, it’s a technological artifact. This business of being able to reallocate power at will among several different abilities smacks of some form of technologically moderated alteration. That leaves me wondering if it originates from the same culture that produced Sydney’s orbs.
Daniel here. What I’m thinking is since the “geode” is obviously artificial & might be alien, & Sydney’s Orbs are potentially of an alien origin too, what if they’re from OPPOSING cultures?
If we accept both are of alien origin for argument’s sake, let’s compare. Sydney’s Orbs are large external units, require physical contact with her hands to operate, and can only be operated 2 at a time. Max’s powers on the other hand are internal after being delivered in a liquid form, physical contact is no problem cause it’s a part of her now, and they are not only all available at the same time, but their levels can be customized as needed…
That sounds like 2 pretty different “breeds” of technology to me.
So, they seem to come from 2 different races, doesn’t mean they’re from opposing sides, right? Then why are they both on Earth? What if they’re lost debris from a nearby battle in space, with 1 race loosing at least 1 container of their Captain America-style Super Soldier Serum, while the other lost a warrior who fell to earth, their Orbs coming with them as their died then held each other close once dead, only to land in the Florida Quays…
Just putting it out there…
The two at a time limitation is Sydney’s, not the orbs. Maybe the beings that lost them here had 7 hands.
It’s a crystalline dragon egg from a long gone species. She cracked it well before it could hatch.
Wait, so she in essence ate a dragon fetus? Powering her body with it’s dragon placenta and stem cells?
You see people! This is what we could be getting is stem cell research got the darn funding it needed!
I’m voting for “really, really misplaced Solar Exaltation containment device”.
She used to be a Valley Girl XD
I hope we see more of Teen Max, such as her transformation and also discovering her powers.
Human teen max was really cute :D
Actually, it had the expected effect – it turned her to gold! At least it’s living gold and not Goldfinger/King Midas immobile statues. Where the heightened speed came from, or the laser finger or the superstrength — and the fact that they are switchable (Champions Multipower style) I’m not sure, but might refer to other aspects of Philosopher Stone alchemy that I don’t know off the top of my head.
So, there is this episode of Futurama, wherein Fry is infested with a civilization of intelligent worms, and there main goal is the improvement of their host and his life, in every facet. Personally, I think Fry made a poor choice on that one. Maybe Max made the other choice…
That’s the thing: Fry made a personal choice, he could have taken the easy route and had artificial improvements, or do it the hard way and change through hard work (it was actually a story about anti-drug use and the downside of taking short cuts to self-improvement)
that episode is when I stopped watching Futurama. He was becoming the person he could have ultimately been. Few get that opportunity. Drug use steals potential, so the anti-drug use metaphor falls apart. it was basically laziness on the part of the writers. they could not write a story with a strong male protagonist. I am personally sick of the “reluctant hero” and ” it’s too powerful for one man” tropes. grow a set of balls and seize power! same thing happened in Star Trek voyager, when neelix and Tuvok merged. they killed him, violating all tenets of the Prime directive, and getting rid of one of the truly interesting characters from that show. The route is hard enough, seize any advantage you can get, and hope it’s enough. Fry is still a dumbass, so what good did it do him? none.
Can understand your point, but look at it from Fry’s point: using the worms to improve him would not be self-improvement, and that was around the time he really started to want to improve because he wanted to be worthy of Leela (and you saw at the end of the episode him in his room practicing with that flute-thing)
Neelix and Tuvok merged? I was done with Voyager long before that. I did make it up to and past the point where Neelix’s girlfriend was killed off. So it sounds like they really hated the character. Or the actor.
At least in TNG when they killed off, um, tall blond warrior woman, they brought her back as a Romulan kinda-clone or something. Wait, what am I saying? That was as dumb as a bucket of rocks also.
IIRC they brought her back as the Romulan daughter of her time-travelling alternate universe counterpart. Being a kinda-clone suddenly seems a lot less dumb compared to that…
It’s very Trek, though–how many Earth clones did TOS Enterprise encounter?
Kohms/Yangs, Miri, etc.
Wait… so Maxima’s powers werent stuff she was born with?
That… is still to be determined
Did the geode juice give her all of her powers? Or just the golden elf look and that triggered her latent abilities?
I think a little of both. Max was a latent super, but the geode-water added to them, making her a super-super.
Just a thought here, (couldn’t see it mentioned elsewhere) but Geode’s are not shaped like that on the inside. That was constructed, imho, to contain something. Something she let out?
maybe that’s why Varia can’t read Maxima! because she can only make contact with the maybe magic/maybe demonic/maybe alien/possibly technological super serum that changed her DNA or cell structure or something. point is, we don’t know, and this will bother me for some time
**vague gesture**. This is not the geode you are looking for. Move along
…and then it dawned on me. In Grrlpowercomics, all girls have balls. Somehow. Feminists however are pissy because they only got one…
What if…Max’s gold skin…is actually the suit the user of Halo’s Orbs is supposed to wear, for full accessibility of all the orbs powers and effects? Just thinking out loud. >.>
Well then Maxima’s golden shower would only exist so that she could play with Halo’s Orbs…..
You mean her balls (it’s okay to mention Sydney’s balls)
I kind of want to see how her brother turned out after that childhood and its ensuring drama. How much we betting on that he has a long line of therapists?
Y’know, a young woman and her family dealing with her developing super powers and growing to become a premier super-heroine is a wonderful premise for a story of its own. I’m a little sorry that we probably won’t get to devote more time to it in Grrl Power. We’ll likely just get a flashback page and a few jokes summarizing the experience with a shrugged shoulder.
I hope we at least get a suggestion that it wasn’t a simple affair. Perhaps there could be a “back-up” story sometime down the line which could further explore Maxima’s experiences growing up.
It makes me very sad to think that the onset of Maxima’s indestructible toughness probably means that she will die a virgin. Poor girl.
Has this been asked already? What about the other half of the Geode? Did Max keep one, then Dues got a hold of the half left in the museum?
So, she was hatched from an egg.
And Maxima was by no means as well endowed back then. I mean, I know she was just a teen,,, But maybe… Did the orb do that too?
Canon states that supers as a group are more physically beautiful than non-supers, so perhaps having her powers granted/activated kick-started the Amazonification process?
I dispute that enlarging her breasts made her more beautiful! But, yea, that is a side effect of getting super powers, in this setting. Mind you it is also a product of maturing, and Maxima might have not finished natural development, at the above age.
I have speculated, in the past, that the form developed by supers is based on cultural expectations of an idealised person. So, in societies where the majority of people favour females with large breasts, then their superheroines will appear large-breasted.
By that logic then Masai super heroes will be very tall and thin (even if, prior to gaining their powers, they were short and fat), whereas other tribes might have superheroines with stretched necks or ear lobes the size of dinner plates. Or Buddhist super heroes might have very long earlobes (like Buddha). And Indian ones might have multiple arms and heads! Or animal heads maybe?
I’ve been wondering about that too!
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostCommonSuperpower
Ok, I have saved up $25. Two of the slooshy ones please.
Two of…. the slooshy augmentation spheres? Where are you gonna put the….m…
…o.o; *cough*
Well… Okay… that kinda… hmm.
I guess it’s your body image, so… uhm. Okay.
Hey, founding a dynasty that will last, until the end of time, takes balls!
Just came across this in a Wikipedia article and immediately thought of this comic.
“In 1858 the newspaper Alta California had published a bogus letter claiming that a prospector had been petrified when he had drunk a liquid within a geode.”
So Maxima isn’t the first of her kind, but something went wrong back then and it took them over a century to work the bugs out and try again!
Oh my God, OH MY GOD!
How may I help you?
Har har.
So I assume splitting geodes is something that you can do at some real museums in the world? I’d never even heard of a geode prior to reading this page, let alone seen one, or been to a museum that’ll let you “split your own”.
I have seen them in shops and private houses many times. Always carefully cut in half, and polished until they are shiny.
But someone must have cut them in half, in the first place. I see no reason not to draw the public into the process. Albeit that I imagine, in real life, they would have a skilled gem-cutter (or someone similarly qualified or trained for the specialized task) to supervise the splitting.
They are hard enough that I do not see them normally breaking apart at a touch, myself. But they are crystalline and a prior drop could have created a flaw. Or it might have been weakened, in the mining process, when it was originally obtained. Or it could just be a sword-in-the-stone effect (sans sword) and would only break in the hands of a just individual.
Geodude
Geodude
Graveler?
GOOOOOLEEEEEM?
If he didn’t have blatant ulterior motives, this move would qualify as being stalkery as heck.
Wow imagine in an alternate universe that her brother swiped the not-geode and it opened up on him instead. And instead of Sydney finding the orbs it as nerdy guy who found them. We could have a genderflipped au.