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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Well, if it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it.
Oh, come on, you all know someone had to say it…
They had all this Baroque art lying around, so they had to affix it. That’s why it’s on the walls of the geology wing.
These jokes are shist. I think you should both gravel for forgiveness.
*go buy a bunch of unopened geodes online to crack them open and drink them like coconut*
the likelyhood of you getting poisoned from heavy metals toxic minerals or radioactive rocks is higer than you getting super powers. :P lol
Those all seem unlikely. Most geodes are made of silica-based crystals like quartz or amethyst which aren’t toxic or radioactive. Geode water is basically salt and sand slurry – gross, but not dangerous.
So, if Maxima’s appearance changed after this… I wonder if Sydney will begin to subtly change as well? I can definitely see her freaking out over a tiny growth spurt, clamoring about aliens “needing the tall ones for their purposes”
Unlikely. Sydney’s powers aren’t as deeply integrated into her. Most of the time, she doesn’t even touch the crystals.
Hunh. It looks a little like the balls. And both are now extraterestial in origin. And they are SMART superpowers, max can adjust mentally where the power goes, sydney has the upgrade screen. I wonder if they are from the same source and part of the obvious fondness max has for syd is in part a subconcious “cousin” feelling?
It seems a bit more likely that they were from rival sources.
Ok, that’s fair, but I wonder if it might not start, especially now that she’s beginning to use them more? After all, they have formed a bond with her, and don’t switch allegiance to anyone who comes by. The fact that they can only be activated by her hands suggests some kind of specific interaction between something on her hands and the orbs. That kind of interaction might spur some kind of change. And like I said, it would be subtle. Max had some kind of super geode water integrate with her skin, probably being absorbed into her. But Sydney has only touched her orbs sparingly before she encountered ARCHON, and remember, it’s only been a few days since then. Max has had a lot longer for the changes to manifest.
Initially read it as “Geordie” for a sec, there.
Well the water in Newcastle is a bit sludgy, it’s why their ale is so very very brown… ;)
Knowing Deus, he put it on the display stand entirely to troll Maxima.
Well, duh! The question has to be: how long was it in that display?
And where’s the other half.
He was disappointed when he thought she was going to leave without saying anything. It think it’s quite clear from his own thoughts he put it there just for her to notice.
max was cute before she become goldy
What do you mean, ‘before she become goldy’? You saying she’s not cute as the GEOD? o_O
Gold and got pointed ears.
Which is somewhat bizarre. I can see the whole ‘gold skin change, hair colour change’, etc. That’s kind of an overall thing. But ears changing? Cosmetically?
Makes me feel that it’s either an oversight, or…the geode was some alien thing meant to change people into a specific form.
Did Mini Maxi at least pay for breaking that rock? o_O
The sign says it’s $15 to do it, so… probably, yeah. Hell of a steal, all things considered.
Or maybe not. No other museum goers are there and there’s a “Back Soon” sign, after all.
She like 12-13yo here. Hell no she didn’t tell anyone. Not until AFTER she turned gold, I suspect.
Yes, ever since.
I feel very smug now, considering my comments concerning Maxima’s origin only a couple of days ago. :)
However, it occurs to me that in the pro and con list when they debated whether they should let Sydney in, Maxima argued as a con that they didn’t know a thing about the origin of the orbs. Now it turns out that she, too, got powers from a source they didn’t know a thing about.
So, Arc Swat’s two strongest team members aren’t natural, and the artificial means are unknown. That surely won’t come back to bite them in the ass later.
Depends. These things may not be replicable, or even able to be analysed.
I think Mekronid was implying that the creators of these artifacts may come to claim them later. The artifacts themselves. Or, the ones to which they are attached.
That’s kind of what I was thinking. Especially about the orbs that Sydney got.
omg! so i guess Max and Sydney are two of the only supers (that we know of) that got their super powers from items. Max’s are just a little more internally locked. she doesn’t look too old, either. like 14ish?
That goes some way to explain why Max has such a soft spot for Sydney, too.
Actually, the cast page says Gwen got her hands on some real magic books so you could argue for three supers getting their powers from items.
Does Jack the Plaid know Gwen borrowed Tomie?
Zebra Girl reference! I haven’t read that webcomic for a long time.
I damned near thought that you were referring to the OTHER “Tomie”. (don’t ask! Nasty piece of Japanese manga horror!)
Now Im gonna have to find me some Geodes and start splitting….who knows
It’s a fun pasttime! Even if you don’t get superpowers, you get to look at pretty rocks.
And if you drink the water inside them, you could get….
A serious case of lead, arsenic, other heavy metal poisoning.
For the first time ever, I want to buy a print of this. I don’t know if it’s related to the artwork in the first panel, but I just do.
Also, enter golden shower joke here.
Too late…Someone else already did that on the first page of the comments.
;)
did anyone else think “mustard and relish” was some sort of pg swearing
For a minute, yeah. It reminded me of a character on a TV cartoon show who would shout, “Cheese and crackers!”
So is Maxima more a Captain Atom type or a “RAGE” TYpe Both are hero names
Hey, Dave, think you could post larger versions of the paintings in the picture somewhere? I’d love to see what goodies you stuck in the background.
I just googled “baroque art” went to image search and picked out a few nice big ones.
Center:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/1710-15_de_Matteis_Triumph_of_the_Immaculate_anagoria.JPG
https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/167/flashcards/566167/jpg/baroque-art-041337563159283.jpg
Lower:
https://quizzart.free.fr/baroque_fichiers/rubens.jpe
Right:
https://www.sightswithin.com/Nicolas.Poussin/Battle_of_Gideon_Against_the_Midianites.jpg
Low right: The Nightwatch by Rembrandt van Rijn
Just in case the others are (in same order that O.B. Juan’s URLs):
Triumph of the Immaculate by Paolo de Matteis
Bacchanal before a Statue of Pan by Nicolas Poussin
Allegory on the blessings of peace by Peter Paul Rubens
Battle Of Gideon Against The Midianites by Nicolas Poussin
BTW in real life “The Nightwatch” is a big paint almost 12 feet (more than 3 and a half meters) wide, while “Allegory…” is much smaller with about 6 and a half feet, “Bacchanal…” even more with less than 5 feet, and “Battle…” in the left is just about 4 and a halt feet wide. I don’t know “Triumph…” size.
DaveB: thanks for once again include amazing art in your comic :)
Sorry:
“Low right” should be “Low left” and “‘Battle…’ in the left” should be “‘Battle…’ in the right”.
This is kind of a nitpick, but that DS feels rather anachronistic to me,because if this happens about 20 when Max is in her mid to late teens, and the current day of the comic is during the Obama administration then max would have gotten her powers during the 90s. The Game Boy or Game Boy Color would be more fitting than a DS.
Hey, if Dudley Dursley could have a Playstation in the early ’90s…
I actually think it;s a GBA SP at a weird angle. I had one of those in HS.
Max was 13 when this happened, she’s 34 now, so… hmm, yeah, I guess that should be a regular gameboy.
It could be a Game & Watch. The DS case design is heavily inspired the the multi screen versions.
Or one of those Tiger Electronics travel games.
I would vouch for that.
Those things were life savers on long family trips when I was a kid. The drive from central Indiana to the Grand Canyon is torture for an adhd 9yo. Kansas is goddamned boring as shit and Missouri is worse. My only solace was Paper Boy, Marble Madness, Mini Golf and a mega pack of AA batteries.
So Max got exposed to some kind of ooze, and became a teenage mutant.
Cowabunga Dude!
At least it’s not purple ooze…
“Think of all the things I missed. The Black Plague! The Spanish Inquisition! The Brady Bunch Reunion!“
* Beats MrInsecure with a Morpher*
She’s a Hero in a Gold Shell…
If you are worried about strange juxtapositions of objects in Museums you haven’t worked in the Museums & Gallery business. Lots of Museums and Galleries are hog-tied by donors conditions, such that either rare and interesting pieces are not shown at all or they have to be shown along with a pile of trash pieces – at the level of ‘You can have my Van Gough and exhibit it only if you show it along with my nephew’s watercolours’.
The interesting thing about backstory… is that you start to wonder at all the things in between. None of us really knew anything before now about Maxima’s childhood, except she knew a guy who surprised her by popping a paper bag, once. For some reason, I was thinking something along the lines of “Ma and Pa Kent found a gold-colored baby while traveling through the suburbs”.
Now… we start to figure out that Max had changed, and likely had to grow up very quickly as a result. Just the immediate effects from Max’s origin are mind-boggling. After all, what would you do if your daughter started to look 24-karat plated? What would it be like at school, the first day back from that?
Her origin story as I’m relaying it over this page and the next is hugely compressed. I’d love to expand on it in the future, cause origins in superhero stories are always fun. Well, they have the potential. Some of them are dull or badly told. I just didn’t want to get into a 20 page tangent right now.
Hoo boy, the next page should be a trip…
Give that her gold skin is sort of a defining characteristic, and the resemblance of the geode and contents to some representations of a philosopher’s stone, I’m gonna guess it’s NOT magic…
…but other stones like it have been found before on Earth. Maybe not in the last few hundred years though :).
That wasn’t ‘just some guy’, that was her brother (the same brother in this page)
To be fair, I’ve seen museums with that kind of design before. (yes this is what I choose to comment on first)
I hope we get to see her reaction to the transformation in the next page, reaction/realization is my favorite part of this stuff ^_^
under preasure and with uranium ,crystals become fuel and control rodes,an exotic ancient reactor simelar to the french ore site in africa
Nah, it’s just a cosmic cocoon that contained the essence of that mega-demon that Dabbler banished.
Dave,
Does max have the other half of that geode? I can imagine if the museum still had both halves, Deus would have somehow gotten his hands on both of them instead of just one half.
And is he giving it back to her now that he’s done testing / experimenting on it?
Stay tuned!
It can be assumed that Deus had the geode out in the open, for Max to see, for a reason other than simply getting a reaction from her.
Gonna guess he’s using it in a ploy to have some control over her.
My guess is he had his lab jockeys go over every square nanometer with a spectrometer and an electron microscope.
Little do either of them know it wasn’t just the geode water. It was geode water combined with mustard, relish, processed meats, the classified formula 7-Up as well as the slight radiation from the uranium in the paints of the baroque paintings that gave Max her powers.
You know, the standard super origin.
I have a bright shiny nickel that says Deus has had that ‘geode’ gone over with all the tech at his disposal looking for any trapped fluid or residue thereof.
If Max has the other half, odds are that someone else has gone over it with a Scientific Microscope. Wouldn’t be surprised if Dabbler has seen Max’s half of the Geode and has already studied it carefully.
No. Freakin’. Way. So many new theories just materialized in my vastly-underpowered brain meats.
Probably the Air force wanted to know, when she was old enough to volunteer. And by extension, since Archon wanted to know something of Sydney’s origin, they probably know Max’s origin too. Of course, both of those would put it under security classification though.
So, among those who know her secret origin are her brother and parents.
I think I’d like to know more about her brother. If he is still alive, might be nice for a family reunion to occur.
Also, Max’s brother’s name. Or is that classified as well?
If they named their daughter ‘Maximillia’, then who knows what they would have named their son.
The parents seem to have a liking for classical art and Roman-sounding names, so maybe Kirk wasn’t the only kid saddled with ‘Tiberius’.
Stephan.
They kept guessing wrong about apparent gender and making last minute tweaks to assumed names.
I suspect that her full first name was originally “Maxine”.
Which is NOT a superhero name.
But note that her brother already calls her “Max”. That fits her name, but it needs to be an abbreviation of something suitable – such as Maxima.
If it wasn’t for the implication that they’ve dated, or at least Deus thinks they dated, I would have said that he is her little brother…
My theory would have been something like him growing up seeing his older sister turn into this golden goddess and felt left out. So if he couldn’t be as strong, fast, or tough as her he would do anything to prove that he could match her in how much impact they had on society. It took many years and he couldn’t afford to always play nice, but he managed to reinvent himself as Deus, and now he wants to show his invulnerable flying brick sister just how powerful and important he is.
The “dating” part sank that theory before I even had a chance to formulate it, but I felt a need to at least throw it out there. Someone might find it interesting or at least good for a laugh…
the “dating” part of your theory could be chalked up to Deus’ attitude. After all, villains could pick up on the concept of incest; look at the Game of Thrones stories, for example…A lot of very-not-nice people there.
Or Dues could be trying the “dating” angle to manipulate & control Max, with no thought at all about the sexuality implications. Dues has already shown himself to be the controlling/manipulator type of villain anyway.
All true, but as this is supposed to be a family friendly comic I’m pretty sure a little brother turned villain with incestuous feelings for his big sister the superhero just isn’t going to happen.
I suspect this: Deus has her little brother. Either as an employee/minion or hostage. That’s what this is leading to.
Probably not but nevertheless!
Calling it right now: That geode is the reason for Deus’ involvement in Galytn. Either:
1) That geode came from Galytn, and Deus wants to see if he can find more of them, or
2) Deus has reverse-engineered whatever it was that was in that geode, and Galytn is the only source of one of the things he needs to recreate it.
I noticed the odd pattern on the geode at the time, but I figured it was just an artistic choice. Didn’t think it would turn out to be an alien bio-weapon…. ok, so that’s my take on what Maxima has become. We make tanks with thick armor, treads, and metal throwing explosion tubes, they make flying gold skin armor with particle beam weapons.
Heh, Max’s hot dog order is the same as mine, though I also get raw onion as well sometimes.
So her brother is the one we see in comic 122, when Max tells Sydney about her near-tragic accident? I thought it was a bit foolish to pull jump-scares on someone who doesn’t seem to understand her powers.
Two words: Little. Brother.
Also, neither of them knew she could blast holes through walls
Up until that time, she was just his weird older sister who was getting weirder by turning into a Golden Elf
She should have called herself “Geodude”.
I love the first panel. The interior is si Frank Lloyd Wright. :)
As one who has visited a lot of museums, (I like looking at the past), many smaller gift shops in older museums are placed in areas with incongruent subjects and basically sell anything that the museum might have a display of. So seeing baroque art near a stand selling geodes, not a far stretch.
Oh, I just noticed something coincidentally horrible, so I’ll spoiler it out.
Did max just get a golden shower?
You were neither the only or the first to notice that…If you’ll read through the comments more closely.
;)
Frankly, I’m just waiting for someone (probably Dabbler or Harem) to find out and make jokes about it.
Also, the mixed feelings on Max’s face at the end really make me want to give her a hug.
I wonder whether she ever wishes that she could reverse the events of that day…
My guess is that she goes back and forth on that subject.
Is there The Doctor in the house?…
Well, now. I did not see that coming. 0.0
Hummm. If geode mutagen turned Max into Maxima… could the process be reversed? And has Machina Industries been investigating both the ooze’s origins and how to manipulate it…?
Is Deus giving it to Maxima,just like that????
In that case, it’ll smell like a trap!!!
Funny thing. One of the ads on the sidebar is for buying gold. X3
ok. so…. that dosent look like any geode ive seen and as an aspiring gemologist ive seen plenty then again it looks like something not of this earth too…. meybie its not a geode but a container?
Okay, so it’s NOT a ZPM.
Depends. I recall seeing a number of ZPMs in various conditions dueing the course of SG-1 and Atlantis (can’t speak for Universe), but I’m fairly sure we never saw one cracked open.
Rodney implied in one episode that it was either impossible or cataclysmic to do so.